Here is the round up of the latest books on late antiquity - all of them reviewed at BMCR. First up is Sofia Kotzabassi's Das hagiographische Dossier der heiligen Theodosia von Konstantinopel reviewed by Stavroula Constantinou at the University of Cypru:
According to the Synaxarion of Constantinople (10th century), Theodosia, a saint of questionable historicity, was an iconophile nun martyred under the iconoclast emperor Leo III (717-741) for causing together with other women the death of a spatharios ("sword-bearer": member of the imperial guard) while he was trying to destroy an icon of Christ placed above the main entrance to the palace. The fact that the Synaxarion is the earliest text referring to Theodosia suggests that her cult was established in the tenth century. It was, however, not earlier than the late Byzantine period under the imperial dynasty of the Palaiologoi (1259-1453) that Theodosia's cult became most popular, as attested by a considerable number of texts produced during this time: three encomia, akolouthies, canons, megalynaria and epigrams venerating Theodosia, and historical works as well as memoirs of Russian travelers mentioning the saint, the veneration of her relics, and her miraculous cures.
Next up Thomas Sizgorich's Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion reviewed by Daniel King at Cardiff University:
The present work is an exercise in mapping social scientific theories of inter-communal boundary construction and policing onto the late Roman and early Islamic worlds and thereby goes some way towards explaining the particularly (according to the author) intolerant forms of religious activity that took shape in late antiquity and the violence that frequently ensued. Unsurprisingly, given such a broad and difficult remit, not all aspects will satisfy all readers but the final outcome is certainly a positive one and the work fully deserves to be used as a basis for further thinking on the subject. Its particular contribution lies in submitting both Christian and Islamic forms of late antique religion to the same set of interpretive canons, a task still in its infancy.
And finally, Frederick McLeod's Theodore of Mopsuestia reviewed by Mark DelCogliano at the University of St. Thomas:
The volumes published in Routledge's The Early Church Fathers series introduce seminal figures of early Christianity. Each volume is divided between an overview of the life, writings, and thought of a particular church father (Part I) and an ample selection of translations from extant works, often from those hitherto unavailable in English (Part II). One would be hard pressed to think of a scholar more qualified than Frederick McLeod to produce a volume for this series on Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 350–428). Not only does he possess the requisite linguistic skills to translate a corpus which survives in Greek as well as in Latin and Syriac, but he has also been one of premier scholars working on Theodore in the last few decades. In this book McLeod gives an excellent introduction to the thought of Theodore, particularly those aspects of it which scholars continue to debate, and has judiciously chosen to translate texts that help illuminate these issues.
Comments