The Reception of the Virgin in Byzantium: Marian Narratives in Texts and Images

This book explores how the Virgin Mary's life is told in hymns, sermons, icons, art, and other media in the Byzantine Empire before AD 1204. A group of international specialists examines material and textual evidence from both Byzantine and Muslim-ruled territories that was intended for a variety of settings and audiences and seeks to explain why Byzantine artisans and writers chose to tell stories about Mary, the Mother of God, in such different ways. Sometimes the variation reflected the theological or narrative purposes of story-tellers; sometimes it expressed their personal spiritual preoccupations. Above all, the variety of aspects that this holy figure assumed in Byzantium reveals her paradoxical theological position as meeting-place and mediator between the divine and created realms. Narrative, whether 'historical', theological, or purely literary, thus played a fundamental role in the development of the Marian cult from Late Antiquity onward.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Thomas Arentzen and Mary B. Cunningham; Part I. Telling Visual Stories: The Virgin Mary in Art: 1. Embodied word: telling the story of Mary in early Christian art Maria Lidova; 2. Female devotion and Mary's motherhood before iconoclasm Andrea Olsen Lam; 3. The theological substance of St Anne's motherhood in Byzantine homilies and art Eirini Panou; 4. Krater of nectar and altar of the Bread of Life: the Theotokos as provider of the Eucharist in Byzantine culture Maria Evangelatou; 5. The Virgin at Daphni Leslie Brubaker; Part II. Song and Celebration: Festal Hymnography on the Theotokos: 6. The dialogue of Annunciation: Germanos of Constantinople versus Romanos the Melode Thomas Arentzen; 7. Singing Mary: the Annunciation and Nativity in Romanos the Melode Georgia Frank; 8. Mary and Adam on the threshold of Lent: counterpoint and intercession in a Kanon for Cheesefare Sunday Derek Krueger; 9. The spiritual and material temple: Byzantine Kanon poetry for the Feast of the Entrance Damaskinos Olkinuora; Part III. Preaching Her Story: Narrative Discourse in Homiletics: 10. The Coptic homily on the Theotokos attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem: an aberrant and apologetic 'life' of the Virgin from Late Antiquity Stephen J. Shoemaker; 11. Mary as 'scala caelestis' in eighth- and ninth-century Italy Francesca Dell'Acqua; 12. Christological and ecclesiological narratives in early eighth-century Greek homilies on the Theotokos Evgenios Iverites; 13. The homilies of James of Kokkinobaphos in their twelfth-century context Elizabeth Jeffreys; Part IV. New Narratives in the Middle Byzantine Period: Marian Hagiography: 14. The life of the Theotokos by Epiphanios of Kallistratos: a monastic approach to an apocryphal story Mary B. Cunningham; 15. The story of an edition: Antoine Wenger and John Geometres' Life of the Virgin Mary Maximos Constas; Afterword Susan Ashbrook Harvey.

About the Author :
Thomas Arentzen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Theology at the Universitetet i Oslo and currently a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, DC. He is also a Reader in Church History at Lunds Universitet. He has published widely in the fields of Marian Studies, Byzantine homiletics and hymnography as well as Eastern Christianity. His books include Ortodoxa och österländska kyrkor i Sverige (2015) and The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist (2017). Mary B. Ccunningham is an Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham. She works on Byzantine homiletics, with special interest in the interaction between preacher and audience, as well as on the veneration of the Virgin Mary in early Christianity and Byzantium on other Byzantine literary genres including hagiography and hymnography. Her books include Faith in the Byzantine World (2002), Wider Than Heaven: Eighth-Century Homilies on the Mother of God (2008), and Gateway of Life: Orthodox Thinking on the Mother of God (2015).