Spirituality in Late Byzantium: Essays Presenting New Research by International Scholars
Editor: Eugenia Russell
Date Of Publication: Nov 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1363-1
Isbn: 1-4438-1363-X
This collection of essays on late Byzantine spirituality presents new research covering a very important but less than well-documented period of Byzantine culture. Its thematic cohesion, originality of thought, variety of methodological approaches and broad intellectual range, make it a valuable contribution to the field and an asset for academics and students alike. The essays discuss pertinent historical, textual, liturgical and doctrinal matters, and through new evidence and re-appraisals of accepted scholarly views they seek to make their mark.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Introduction - Eugenia Russell

Part I: The Seeds of hesychia and the Theologians of hesychasm

Chapter One: The Reforming Abbot and his Tears: Penthos in late Byzantium

Hannah Hunt

Chapter Two: The Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos and His Defence of Hesychasm

Norman Russell

Chapter Three: Symeon of Thessalonica and his Message of Personal Redemption

Eugenia Russell

Chapter Four: Reading Denys in late Byzantium: Gregory Palamas’s Approach

to the Theological Categories of ‘apophasis’ and ‘union and distinction’

James Blackstone

Part II: Four Case Studies on Late Byzantine Spirituality

Chapter Five: The ‘Testament of Job’: From Testament to Vita

Maria Haralambakis

Chapter Six: Donors and Iconography: The Case of the Church “St. Virgin”

in Dolna Kamenitsa (XIV c.)

Teodora Burnand

Chapter Seven: The Church of the Most Pure Virgin at the Village of Graeshnitsa

Robert Mihajlovski

Chapter Eight: Journey of the Soul to Perfection: Nicetas Stethatos

Jozef Matula

Afterword - Eugenia Russell

Illustrations

List of Contributors

About the Editor

Index

Hallowed be thy name

Eugenia Russell studied for her PhD at the History Department, Royal Holloway, University of London under the supervision of Jonathan Harris. Her thesis on the Encomia to St Demetrius in Late Byzantine Thessalonica discusses classical and Biblical subtexts in a historical framework. It has also shown, in the words of her examiners, ‘that the generally negative view of Byzantine literature that has long prevailed is untenable’. For her ambitious views on education and the dissemination of knowledge, in 2006 she won a competitive place on the Summer School of the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise, which was held at Birkbeck College, University of London. She organised an international conference in the following year. The resulting volume, Spirituality in Late Byzantium: Essays presenting new research by international scholars is to be published in 2009 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. She has given academic papers at Saint Xavier University, Chicago; Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; Trinity College, Dublin as well as many in the UK. She is a reviewer for the Bryn Mawr Classical Review and for the Southwest Journal of Cultures and a member of the Editorial Board of Social Histories, Pompeii: Open Access Journal. Her current research on the fifteenth century Greek émigré Andronikos Kallistos (c. 1400-1476) and his pupils crosses the boundaries between classical reception and the comparative study of vernacular literatures. An off-shoot of this study is a paper on Byzantine monodies and laudes and she is also preparing a paper on methodologies for Byzantinists.

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