Download or read book Sources for Byzantine Art History Volume 3 The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium 1081 c 1350 written by Foteini Spingou and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-21 with total page 1683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the beauty and meaning of Byzantine art and its aesthetics are for the first time made accessible through the original sources. More than 150 medieval texts are translated from nine medieval languages into English, with commentaries from over seventy leading scholars. These include theories of art, discussions of patronage and understandings of iconography, practical recipes for artistic supplies, expressions of devotion, and descriptions of cities. The volume reveals the cultural plurality and the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries. The first part uncovers salient aspects of Byzantine artistic production and its aesthetic reception, while the second puts a spotlight on particular ways of expressing admiration and of interpreting of the visual.
Download or read book SOURCES FOR BYZANTINE ART HISTORY written by Foteini Spingou and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The period encompassed by this volume of translations opens with a major crisis over the status of the icon and its veneration. Charles Barber and David Jenkins (I.1.1 in this volume) present three extensive texts related to this crisis, which began when Leo of Chalcedon objected to the imperial appropriation of materials bearing sacred images, such as the doors of the Chalkoprateia church in Constantinople. As his arguments against this act unfolded in the period from 1082- to 1095, Leo developed a theory of the image that argued for a formal, as opposed to a material, presence of Christ in his icons. Given this presence of Christ's character, Leo argued that an icon should not be destroyed and that this portrayal deserved adoration. A full account of this argument is presented in Leo's letter to his nephew Nicholas of Adrianoupolis. This letter, which perhaps dates to 1093 or 1094, shows how Leo builds his case upon a reading of the ninth-century iconophile writings of Theodore of Stoudios and other authorities, which Leo reads as offering support for a hypostatic presence in the image mediated by the visible character of the subject. A key response to Leo of Chalcedon's arguments is offered by Eustratios of Nicaea. His Syllogistic Demonstration builds upon the logical model of ninth-century iconophile thought to show that the icon only has a formal relation to the subject depicted in that object. It is a response that is notable for its precise accounts of the limits of depiction, which becomes the description of the outline, form, and dimension of the outward and sensible traits of the appearance of a person. This allows him to argue that the material and sensible icon cannot receive adoration: Christ as God is adored; Christ as God cannot be depicted; therefore, the depicted, as depicted, is not adored. So that in no way can we speak of the adoration of a manufactured icon, or of adoration in an icon"--
Download or read book The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium c 1081 c 1350 written by Foteini Spingou and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The period encompassed by this volume of translations opens with a major crisis over the status of the icon and its veneration. Charles Barber and David Jenkins (I.1.1 in this volume) present three extensive texts related to this crisis, which began when Leo of Chalcedon objected to the imperial appropriation of materials bearing sacred images, such as the doors of the Chalkoprateia church in Constantinople. As his arguments against this act unfolded in the period from 1082- to 1095, Leo developed a theory of the image that argued for a formal, as opposed to a material, presence of Christ in his icons. Given this presence of Christ's character, Leo argued that an icon should not be destroyed and that this portrayal deserved adoration. A full account of this argument is presented in Leo's letter to his nephew Nicholas of Adrianoupolis. This letter, which perhaps dates to 1093 or 1094, shows how Leo builds his case upon a reading of the ninth-century iconophile writings of Theodore of Stoudios and other authorities, which Leo reads as offering support for a hypostatic presence in the image mediated by the visible character of the subject. A key response to Leo of Chalcedon's arguments is offered by Eustratios of Nicaea. His Syllogistic Demonstration builds upon the logical model of ninth-century iconophile thought to show that the icon only has a formal relation to the subject depicted in that object. It is a response that is notable for its precise accounts of the limits of depiction, which becomes the description of the outline, form, and dimension of the outward and sensible traits of the appearance of a person. This allows him to argue that the material and sensible icon cannot receive adoration: Christ as God is adored; Christ as God cannot be depicted; therefore, the depicted, as depicted, is not adored. So that in no way can we speak of the adoration of a manufactured icon, or of adoration in an icon"--
Download or read book The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium C 1081 c 1350 Part I Beauty introduction Everyday beauty Natural beauty Human beauty Artistic beauty Part II Literature art and aesthetics Counting down inventories Describing experiencing narrating the use of Ekphrasis Speaking Ethopoiia Instructing and dedicating epigrams on works of art Reading book epigrams Inscribing later Byzantine epigraphic culture Lamenting tomb epigrams written by Foteini Spingou and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book the beauty and meaning of Byzantine art and its aesthetics are for the first time made accessible through the original sources. More than 150 medieval texts are translated from nine medieval languages into English, with commentaries from over seventy leading scholars. These include theories of art, discussions of patronage and understandings of iconography, practical recipes for artistic supplies, expressions of devotion, and descriptions of cities. The volume reveals the cultural plurality and the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries. The first part uncovers salient aspects of Byzantine artistic production and its aesthetic reception, while the second puts a spotlight on particular ways of expressing admiration and of interpreting of the visual"--Publisher's description.
Download or read book The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium c 1081 c 1350 written by Foteini Spingou and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The period encompassed by this volume of translations opens with a major crisis over the status of the icon and its veneration. Charles Barber and David Jenkins (I.1.1 in this volume) present three extensive texts related to this crisis, which began when Leo of Chalcedon objected to the imperial appropriation of materials bearing sacred images, such as the doors of the Chalkoprateia church in Constantinople. As his arguments against this act unfolded in the period from 1082- to 1095, Leo developed a theory of the image that argued for a formal, as opposed to a material, presence of Christ in his icons. Given this presence of Christ's character, Leo argued that an icon should not be destroyed and that this portrayal deserved adoration. A full account of this argument is presented in Leo's letter to his nephew Nicholas of Adrianoupolis. This letter, which perhaps dates to 1093 or 1094, shows how Leo builds his case upon a reading of the ninth-century iconophile writings of Theodore of Stoudios and other authorities, which Leo reads as offering support for a hypostatic presence in the image mediated by the visible character of the subject. A key response to Leo of Chalcedon's arguments is offered by Eustratios of Nicaea. His Syllogistic Demonstration builds upon the logical model of ninth-century iconophile thought to show that the icon only has a formal relation to the subject depicted in that object. It is a response that is notable for its precise accounts of the limits of depiction, which becomes the description of the outline, form, and dimension of the outward and sensible traits of the appearance of a person. This allows him to argue that the material and sensible icon cannot receive adoration: Christ as God is adored; Christ as God cannot be depicted; therefore, the depicted, as depicted, is not adored. So that in no way can we speak of the adoration of a manufactured icon, or of adoration in an icon"--
Download or read book The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium c 1081 c 1350 written by Foteini Spingou and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Byzantine Materiality written by Evan Freeman and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the power of matter and materials in the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium. Recent attention to matter as dynamic and meaningful constitutes an emerging, interdisciplinary field of inquiry known as materiality, new materialism, or the material turn. Materials can be symbolic, but matter can also act on human subjects. This volume builds on these insights to consider the role of matter, materials, form, and embodied experiences in Byzantium. In many respects, Byzantine materiality represents a continuation of its Greco-Roman inheritance, which was also shared by neighboring peoples such as the Umayyads and Abbasids. But the Byzantines also developed their own, unique perspectives on matter and form, as with their parsing of the sacred materialities of icons, the Eucharist, and relics. Chapters in this volume consider the cultural meanings and functions of materials such as gold and ivory, the materiality of icons and relics, experiences of objects, as well as Byzantine philosophies of matter and form. Materiality takes center stage in Byzantine constructions of power, luxury, belief, and identity, which will be of interest to scholars and students of Byzantium and the wider medieval world.
Download or read book Spatialities of Byzantine Culture from the Human Body to the Universe written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-11-14 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compensating a four-decades shortfall, this collective volume is the first reader in Byzantine spatial studies. It offers a diversity of topics and scientific approaches, articulated by up-to-date interdisciplinary dialogue, and reflects on the future challenges of Byzantine spatial studies.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium written by Mati Meyer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-23 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook is the first to consider the interrelated subjects of gender and sexuality in the Eastern Roman Empire from an interdisciplinary perspective. Drawing on both modern theories and Byzantine perceptions, and considering multiple periods and religions (Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, and Jewish), it provides evidentiary textual and visual material support for an analysis of the two linked themes. Broadly, the essays demonstrate that gender and sexual constructs in Byzantium were porous. As a result, they expand our knowledge of not only how sex and gender were conceived and performed but also how ideas and practices shaped Byzantine life. The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of late antique and Byzantine religion, history, culture, and art, who will find it a useful critical survey of current scholarship and one that shines new light in their areas of research. The focus on issues of gender and sexuality may also be of interest to individuals concerned with Eastern Mediterranean culture, as well as to the broader public. Chapter 21 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Download or read book Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art written by Anna Cecilia Olovsdotter and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been an accepted assumption that the abstracted mode of visual representation that emerged in late antiquity reflected a collective shift from the outer-directed and ’material’ world-view of classical antiquity to an inner-directed, ’spiritual’ mentality informed by Christianity: the purpose of this volume is to offer a more nuanced and diverse image of the nature and meanings of abstraction and symbolism in late antique and early medieval art, beyond normative intepretation models, and from a number of different methodological and interpretative perspectives. In ten chapters, ten authors specialised in various fields of late-antique and Byzantine art explore the historiographical background of the ’spiritual’ interpretation paradigm, neuroscientific and theological dimensions of Christian visual aesthetics, meanings and motive factors behind apparently wholly abstract and aniconic compositions, symbolic motifs and schemes for visualising cosmic order and the cosmic state of Christ, and the re-use of symbolic Greco-Roman themes in Christian contexts. The result is a multi-focal image of late antique abstraction and symbolism that illuminates the heterogeneity and complexity of the phenomena and of their study.
Download or read book Roman Constantinople in Byzantine Perspective written by Paul Magdalino and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the research perspective in which the literary inhabitants of Late Antique and medieval Constantinople remembered its past and conceptualised its existence as a Greek city that was the political capital of a Christian Roman state. Initial reactions to Constantine’s foundation noted its novel Christian orientation, but the memorial mode of writing about the city that developed from the sixth century recollected the traditional civic cultural heritage that Constantinople claimed both as the New Rome, and as the continuation of ancient Byzantion. This research culture increasingly became the preserve of the imperial bureaucracy, and focused on the city’s sculptured monuments as bearers of eschatological meaning. Yet from the tenth century, writers progressively preferred to define the wonder and spectacle of Constantinople in the aesthetic mode of urban praise inherited from late antiquity, developing the notion of the city as a cosmic theatre of excellence.
Download or read book Natural Light in Medieval Churches written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-12-12 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside Christian churches, natural light has been harnessed to underscore theological, symbolic, and ideological statements. This volume explores how the study of sunlight can reveal aspects of the design, decoration, and function of sacred spaces in the Middle Ages.
Download or read book Theodoros Prodromos Miscellaneous Poems written by Nikos Zagklas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-25 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In twelfth-century Byzantium, poetry played a key part in various contexts of textual production and consumption. One of the leading poets of this period was Theodoros Prodromos, whose surviving corpus comprises approximately 17,000 verses. Even though most of his poetry has been presented in modern critical editions, a group of his works has been overlooked by modern philologists and literary scholars alike. The selected corpus--conventionally designated as Miscellaneous Poems--consists of texts on various themes and in a wide range of genres, ranging from cycles of religious and secular epigrams to riddles, ethopoiiai, and works of a self-referential and essayistic nature. This book includes the first critical edition and study of these poems, accompanied by English translations and commentaries. Their study contributes to a more nuanced picture of Prodromos' intellectual profile, expanding his image as the 'poet laureate' of the Komnenian court and providing entirely new insights into his activity in the different settings of Constantinopolitan intellectual life. The book also sheds new light on the complex relationship between patronage and other aspects of literary activity and the circulation of the same text in different performative contexts.
Download or read book Homer the Rhetorician written by Baukje van den Berg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-07 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Homer the Rhetorician is the first monograph study devoted to the monumental Commentary on the Iliad by Eustathios of Thessalonike, one of the most renowned orators and teachers of the Byzantine twelfth century. Homeric poetry was a fixture in the Byzantine educational curriculum and enjoyed special popularity under the Komnenian emperors. For Eustathios, Homer was the supreme paradigm of eloquence and wisdom. Writing for an audience of aspiring or practising prose writers, he explains in his commentary what it is that makes Homer's composition so successful in rhetorical terms. This study explores the exemplary qualities that Eustathios recognizes in the poet as author and the Iliad as rhetorical masterpiece. In this way, it advances our understanding of the rhetorical thought of a leading intellectual and the role of a cultural authority as respected as Homer in one of the most fertile periods in Byzantine literary history.
Download or read book Writer and Occasion in Twelfth Century Byzantium written by Ingela Nilsson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In twelfth-century Constantinople, writers worked on commission for the imperial family or aristocratic patrons. Texts were occasioned by specific events, representing both a link between writer and patron and between literary imagination and empirical reality. This is a study of how one such writer, Constantine Manasses, achieved that aim. Manasses depicted and praised the present by drawing from the rich sources of the Graeco-Roman and Biblical tradition, thus earning commissions from wealthy 'friends' during a career that spanned more than three decades. While the occasional literature of writers like Manasses has sometimes been seen as 'empty rhetoric', devoid of literary ambition, this study assumes that writing on command privileges originality and encourages the challenging of conventions. A society like twelfth-century Byzantium, in which occasional writing was central, called for a strong and individual authorial presence, since voice was the primary instrument for a successful career.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature written by Stratis Papaioannou and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In twenty-five chapters by leading scholars, this volume propagates a nuanced understanding of Byzantine "literature", highlighting key problems, and presenting basic research tools for an audience of specialists and non-specialists.
Download or read book Geographies of Encounter written by Marian Burchardt and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-19 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection explores forms of multi-religious cohabitation as well as the spatial arrangements that underpin and shape them through sixteen chapters that range across disciplines, historical periods, and global geographies. Focusing on interactions between different religious groups and traditions, the authors conceptualize three types of spatial arrangements and explore how they operate ad geographies of encounter; i.e., multi-religious places, multi-religious cities, and multi-religious landscapes. With perspectives from anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and geographers, the book demonstrates the multiple ways in which geographies of interreligious encounters and forms of multi-religious cohabitation have changed throughout history due to their embeddedness id different frameworks of political organization, shifting religious ideologies, and changing forms of human mobility.
