Byzantine Christianity
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
This volume, third in the pioneering and acclaimed series of social histories of Christianity, introduces the religion of the Byzantine Christian laity by asking the question, “What did Byzantine Christians do?” During the 11 centuries between the foundation of the city of Constantinople in 324 and its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, Byzantine Christianity developed as a distinct system of religious practice and devotion, different from the medieval Roman Catholicism emerging simultaneously farther west.
Drawing on the techniques of social and cultural history, this international team of renowned social historians offers glimpses into that distant past. Sermons, saints’ lives, hymns, canon law, and histories, together with architecture, icons, church decoration, and small devotional objects enable a rich description and lavish depiction of lay religion among ordinary Christians. We discover what ordinary Christians did in church, in their homes, and their workshops; we learn about the veneration of saints and the use of icons. We gain insight into how Byzantine Christians prayed and how often they attended services; how they celebrated, married, and mourned; how they interacted with priests, monks, nuns, and holy people; where they went on pilgrimage and why they visited shrines; how they transmitted religious values to their children; and how they performed acts of charity.
In the Logos edition, this valuable volume is enhanced by amazing functionality. Scripture citations link directly to English translations, and important terms link to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a wealth of other resources in your digital library. Perform powerful searches to find exactly what you’re looking for. Take the discussion with you using tablet and mobile apps. With Logos Bible Software, the most efficient and comprehensive research tools are in one place, so you get the most out of your study.
- Provides an overview of the life and worship of Byzantine Christians
- Draws on sermons, saints’ lives, hymns, canon law, histories, architecture, icons, church decoration, and small devotional objects
- Gathers contributions from an international team of social historians
- Presents the third volume in the series: A People’s History of Christianity
- General Editor’s Foreword by Denis Janz
- Introduction: “The Practice of Christianity in Byzantium,” by Derek Krueger
- Part 1: Congregations and Preachers
- “Lay Piety in the Sermons of John Chrysostom,” by Jaclyn Maxwell
- “The Cult of the Martyrs and the Cappadocian Fathers,” by Vasiliki Limberis
- “Romanos and the Night Vigil in the Sixth Century,” by Georgia Frank
- Part 2: Places, Spaces, and Rites
- “Shrines, Festivals, and the ‘Undistinguished Mob,’” by James C. Skedros
- “The Layperson in Church,” by Sharon E.J. Gerstel
- “Death and Dying in Byzantium,” by Nicholas Constas
- Part 3: Devotional Life and Artifacts
- “Icons, Prayer, and Vision in the Eleventh Century,” by Charles Barber
- “Objects of Devotion and Protection,” by Brigitte Pitarakis
- “The Religious Lives of Children and Adolescents,” by Peter Hatlie
Hidden for centuries by their anonymity and illiteracy, the people of God—the body of Christ, the church—are finally having their story told, and by some of today's finest historians of the church. The saints, bishops, and theologians of traditional histories can now be placed against the panoramic and fascinating backdrop of the lived religion of ordinary men and women of faith. Highly recommended.
—Mark U. Edwards Jr., advisory member of the faculty of divinity, Harvard Divinity School
. . . this series of books, issuing from editors in whom I have great confidence and many of whose writers I know and respect, ‘turns history upside down’ and reveals what times and events were like for Christians—and sometimes their rivals and enemies—on the ground. Professional historians long neglected this ‘up close’ approach, evidently thinking that the basic folk did not merit attention. Add to that another reason for the failure to take them into account: it is harder to get at the stories and records of their lives. Now, thanks to a generation of historians with interests in ordinary (but really extraordinary) Christians in ages past, these people can be observed as seldom before. While they did not leave documents in the forms of formal creeds, confessions, or concordats, and while their names did not mean as much to cleric–chroniclers of old as did those of bishops, abbots, and emperors, we now have techniques to unearth scraps, snippets, letters, diaries, transactions, which, taken together and treated in expert hands, let us find how exciting their lives are, how misguided decisions were to talk about the elite few and neglect the faithful and faithless many. These stories may come up from the basement of church history, but news about their existence deserves to be shouted from the housetops.
—Martin E. Marty, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity, University of Chicago Divinity School
Derek Krueger is professor of religious studies and head of the department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Among his many publications is Symeon the Holy Fool: Leontius’s Life and the Late Antique City.
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