The Christian Parthenon

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-1-009-11395-3
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 268 Seiten, Format (B × H): 170 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 472 g

Byzantine Athens was not a city without a history, as is commonly believed, but an important center about which much can now be said. Providing a wealth of new evidence, Professor Kaldellis argues that the Parthenon became a major site of Christian pilgrimage after its conversion into a church. Paradoxically, it was more important as a church than it had been as a temple: the Byzantine period was its true age of glory. He examines the idiosyncratic fusion of pagan and Christian culture that took place in Athens, where an attempt was made to replicate the classical past in Christian terms, affecting rhetoric, monuments, and miracles. He also re-evaluates the reception of ancient ruins in Byzantine Greece and presents for the first time a form of pilgrimage that was directed not toward icons, Holy Lands, or holy men but toward a monument embodying a permanent cultural tension and religious dialectic.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kaldellis, Anthony

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. Conversions of the Parthenon; 2. From students to pilgrims in Medieval Athens (532–848 AD); 3. Imperial recognition: Basileios II in Athens (1018 AD); 4. Pilgrims of the Middle Period (900–1100 AD); 5. The apogee of the Atheniotissa in the twelfth century; 6. Michael Choniates: a classicist-bishop and his cathedral (1182–1205 AD); 7. Why the Parthenon? An attempt at interpretation; 8. The light of the Christian Parthenon; Postscript: some Byzantine heresies; Appendix: the little metropolis.

Über Autor(innen)

Kaldellis, Anthony
Anthony Kaldellis is Professor of Greek and Latin at the Ohio State University. He has published widely on topics in late antiquity and Byzantium, focusing on the literary and philosophical aspects of historiographical texts. His studies on the reception of classical culture in Byzantium recently culminated in the book Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (2007). He has also translated many Byzantine authors into English (among them Hesychios, Genesios, and Psellos) and one of his side-interests is the Byzantine history of the island of Lesbos.