medieval worlds ‒ comparative and interdisciplinary studies, No. 9/2019
Monasteries and Sacred Landscapes and Byzantine Connections
No.:
9
Year of the volume:
2019
1. Auflage, 2019
MEDIEVAL WORLDS provides a new forum for interdisciplinary and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. Specifically it encourages and links comparative research between different regions and fields and promotes methodological innovation in transdisciplinary studies. Focusing on the Middle Ages (c. 400-1500 CE, but can be extended whenever thematically fruitful or appropriate), MEDIEVAL WORLDS takes a global approach to studying history in a comparative setting.
MEDIEVAL WORLDS is open to regular submissions on comparative topics, but also offers the possibility to propose or advertise subjects that lend themselves to comparison. With a view to connecting people working on related topics in different academic environments, we publish calls for matching articles and for contributions on particular issues.
Table of Contents
- Walter Pohl - Ingrid Hartl: Editor's Preface
- Andrew Harris: An Old Ritual Capital, a New Ritual Landscape: Understanding the Transformation of Angkor Thom, Cambodia through the Construction and Placement of Theravāda »Buddhist Terraces«
- Michel Kaplan: The Monasteries of Athos and Chalkidiki (8th-11th Centuries): A Pioneering Front?
- Matheus Coutinho Figuinha: Pro qualitate loci et instantia laboris: Monasteries and their Human and Natural Environments in Late Antique Gaul
- Albrecht Diem: The Limitations of Asceticism
- Edward M. Schoolman: Greeks and »Greek« Writers in the Early Medieval Italian Papyri
- Francesca Dell’Acqua - Clemens Gantner: Resenting Byzantine Iconoclasm. Its Early Reception in Italy through an Inscription from Corteolona
- Johannes Preiser-Kapeller - Ekaterini Mitsiou: Mercantile and Religious Mobility between Byzantines, Latins and Muslims, 1200-1500: On the Theory and Practice of Social Networks
- Pia Carolla: »A Universal Narrative of Humanity«. Travelling to the ›Other‹ from Constantinople: Priscus of Panion (5th c. CE) and William of Rubruk (13th c. CE)
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An Old Ritual Capital, a New Ritual Landscape: Understanding the Transformation of Angkor Thom, Cambodia through the Construction and Placement of Theravāda »Buddhist Terraces«
This paper serves as the first focused study since 1918 exploring the sub-structural remains of Theravāda Buddhist monasteries, known to scholarship as »Buddhist terraces«, at the Cambodian Khmer capital of Angkor Thom. Thought to have been constructed between the late 13th-16th centuries, prayer halls (vihara or praḥ vihar) and other Theravāda buildings are seen by traditional scholarship to be the products of an officially undocumented but visible religious transition from the Khmer Brahmano-Buddhist royal cult, manifested through the construction of universal temple-mountains and esoteric religious practices, to a more socially-inclusive monastic tradition which abandoned epigraphy, the deification of kings, and large-scale religious building. Data acquired from two seasons of site investigations within Angkor Thom has revealed an expansive collection of over seventy »Buddhist terraces« demarcated by sīmā boundary stones, suggesting not only a notable Theravāda building campaign within this cosmologically designed Mahāyāna Buddhist urban space but also the conversion and incorporation of Brahmano-Buddhist monuments as landmarks of the new religion. The interaction of Buddhist monastic architecture with non-religious urban infrastructure, too, most notably the road-grid of Angkor Thom previously mapped through LiDAR and GIS, has revealed intriguing patterns of construction that appear to match a configuration with the southerly temple of Angkor Wat, heavily restored as a royally patronized Theravāda sanctuary in the mid-16th century. Understanding the significance of this shift is necessary to understanding the re-appropriation of the vast urban ritual landscape of Angkor, and in turn serves as a valid study for further understanding the significance and retransformation of ritual space transcending specifically-delineated historical epochs.
Keywords: Angkor, Cambodia, Buddhism, Theravada, monasteries, Ritual, 16th century, Archaeology, survey, mapping
Andrew Harris
Page 4 - 62 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no9_2019s4
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The Monasteries of Athos and Chalkidiki (8th-11th Centuries): A Pioneering Front?
Following the re-establishment of the Cult of Images in 843, the Bithynian Olympus (present-day Uludağ, Turkey) became the site of so many monastic settlements that it was all but impossible for the ascetics there to find true solitude. Therefore, they set their sights on Mount Athos in Chalkidiki, and began to settle there from the ninth century onwards. It was a turbulent time for the region, and as a result of complex political developments the land was abandoned and reverted to the state (klasma lands), with the tax revenues benefitting central authorities rather than local communities. The economic growth of the ninth century thus explains the conflicts over the lands around Mount Athos between the peasant population, the monasteries founded in the Chalkidiki region, and the monks on Athos itself. These conflicts were exacerbated by the foundation of the large institutions of Xeropotamou, Lavra and Iviron – the latter two of which also enjoyed the status of »imperial monasteries«. The extant documentation allows us to better understand both the attempts by the monastery to appropriate the lands and the resistance to these attempts by the village communities, who were particularly concerned with retaining grazing lands for their animals. Interestingly, the officials and judges in charge of the region seemed to have favoured the village communities in these conflicts.
Keywords: monasticism, Chalkidiki, Athos, village communities, Byzantine taxation, Byzantine taxation.
Michel Kaplan
Page 63 - 81 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no9_2019s63
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Pro qualitate loci et instantia laboris: Monasteries and their Human and Natural Environments in Late Antique Gaul
Focusing on the cases of Martin of Tours’ Marmoutier, the monastery of Lérins, and the Jura monasteries, this article explores the conceptions and interactions of Gallic monks with the human and natural environments in relation to their subsistence. Fourth- and fifth-century authors described these monasteries in similar terms, relying on both Christian and classical literary models. Accordingly, the local human and natural environments were depicted as characteristic of a remote desert. Archeologists, however, have shown that these monasteries were not isolated. One of the reasons for that, I argue, is that they depended on the contributions of visitors and on urban and commercial centers for their own existence. I also argue that, due to different conceptions of the monastic life and practice, monks’ interactions with the human and natural environments varied greatly from one monastery to the other. At Marmoutier, Martin’s disciples relied on the woodland nearby and on the Loire to get part of what they consumed. But because they did not practice manual labor, they may have acquired most of the necessary food from local farmers. At Lérins, where all the monks were required to work, it is possible that they practiced agriculture. But because of the restricted extension of the cultivated terrain and the Mediterranean climate, they did not produce all the food they consumed. As for the Jura monasteries, the monks deforested and cultivated large areas. They also reared cattle, poultry, and sheep, and constructed a mill and tilting hammers to grind grain. But their effort to sustain themselves only through the work of their hands was not enough, for they also relied on the Burgundian kings and pilgrims for their subsistence. The Jura monasteries in particular show us that the practice of agriculture is not per se evidence of economic autonomy.
Keywords: Gaul, human and natural environments, monasticism, Marmoutier, Lérins, Jura Fathers
Matheus Coutinho Figuinha
Page 82 - 111 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no9_2019s82
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The Limitations of Asceticism
This article discusses the limitations and advantages of using ›asceticism‹ as a universal category and as a hermeneutic tool in the study of late antique religious life and comparative studies of religious communities. It first explores the roots and the history of the terms ›asceticism‹, ›Askese‹ and ›ascétisme‹ arguing that they originate from early modern scholarly traditions rather than being based on the language of late antique and early medieval Christian texts. A second part traces the origins of the term askēsis in Greek monastic discourse, using the Vita Antonii, the Historia Lausiaca, Theodoret’s Historia religiosa and the Greek and Latin versions of the Vita Pachomii as case studies. I argue that Athanasius of Alexandria’s decision to use askēsis as a key term of his monastic program was motivated by limiting the range of appropriate religious practices rather than praising what we might call radical asceticism. Askēsis took on a life of its own and attained various meanings in Greek monastic texts but never found an equivalent in Latin monastic language. The third part describes the diversification of ›ascetic‹ practices and ideals in a number of Latin hagiographic and normative texts. I question to what extent it makes sense to consider religious practices emerging in the West (following a rule, unconditional obedience, humility, enclosure, sexual abstinence, liturgical discipline, etc.) as forms of Western ›asceticism‹ and argue that using ›asceticism‹ uncritically carries the danger of obfuscating nuances, diversity and transformations of religious practices in the Latin (but also in the Greek) world of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
Keywords: asceticism, Hagiography, monastic rules, humanist scholarship, Athanasius, Theorodet of Cyrrus, Antony (the desert father), Palladius, late antique and early medieval monasticism
Albrecht Diem
Page 112 - 138 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no9_2019s112
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Greeks and »Greek« Writers in the Early Medieval Italian Papyri
This article examines the instances when Greek script was used in the sixth- and seventh-century papyri documents originally preserved as part of the archive of the church of Ravenna. In interpreting these instances, we find both reflections of larger political events and smaller personal choices against the backdrop of continued migration from the Byzantine east to Italy following the conquest of the Ostrogothic kingdom by the armies of Justinian in the middle of the sixth century and the establishment of an exarchate dominated by military officials with various levels of clear »Greek« identity – political, hereditary, religious, and linguistic. Within this framework, participants in the creation of legal documents who were identified as grecus or wrote in Greek script did so for individual and micropolitical reasons that were distinct from conveying an ethnic identity, highlighting differences brought on by the situations in which they participated.
Keywords: Byzantine Italy, Naples, literacy, linguistic identity, ethnic identification, Italian papyri, migration and acculturation
Edward M. Schoolman
Page 139 - 159 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no9_2019s139
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Resenting Byzantine Iconoclasm. Its Early Reception in Italy through an Inscription from Corteolona
A source which can be dated to c.730 has never been discussed as evidence of an early reception of Byzantine iconoclasm in Italy. Now lost, this was an inscription put up to celebrate the foundation of a church in the newly established royal residence of the Lombard king Liutprand (712-744) in the countryside of Pavia along the river Olona, known as Corteolona. The inscription tells us that in the time in which ›Caesar Leo fell into the pit of schism from the summit of righteousness persuaded by a miserable scholar‹, Liutprand dedicated a church to Saint Anastasius the Persian. Therefore, the inscription makes use of the perceived heterodoxy of the Byzantine ruler – his attitude towards sacred images – as a chronological and negative cultural reference. In the inscription, Liutprand is cast as a champion of the Catholic Church as opposed to the heterodox Leo III (717-741). This claim naturally had wider political implications: Liutprand wanted to be seen as the supreme ruler on the Italian peninsula. The inscription from Corteolona, with others from Pavia and its surroundings, was transcribed in the late eighth century and thus transmitted to posterity. Having often escaped the attention of those interested in the echoes of Byzantine iconoclasm outside Byzantium, its text is an important document since it suggests that in early eighth-century Lombard Italy, at least in some circles, it was believed that Emperor Leo III was acting against orthodoxy, and that this could potentially lead to a schism within the Catholic Church. In the same years, the early 730s, the papacy too reacted to rumours of heterodoxy in the east, specifically in Constantinople: both a letter by Pope Gregory III (731-741) and the Roman Liber Pontificalis attest to this.
Keywords: Byzantine iconoclasm, Liutprand (King of the Lombards), Corteolona, Saint Anastasius the Persian, Emperor Leo III, Paul the Deacon, Sylloge Laureshamensis, Lombard Italy, papacy, Paul the Deacon
Francesca Dell’Acqua - Clemens Gantner
Page 160 - 186 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no9_2019s160
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Mercantile and Religious Mobility between Byzantines, Latins and Muslims, 1200-1500: On the Theory and Practice of Social Networks
This paper combines documentary evidence with concepts and tools of historical network science and social theory in order to explore phenomena of (especially) mercantile mobility and religious conversion in the late medieval Byzantine world. The intensification of commercial exchange and the multiplication of contact zones between ethnic and religious identities in the 13th to 15th centuries, both due to the growth of the activity of Italian merchant communities as well as due to the Mongol expansion across entire Asia, facilitated the change of places of residence and/or of religious confession for elite as well as non-elite members of these societies. With the help of network analytical and sociological concepts, potential underlying mechanisms such as the »social infrastructure« for these phenomena are described. In general, the last centuries of the relationship between Byzantium and the West saw the intensification of processes of individual and community-wide religious change, which equally shaped the following early modern period of Mediterranean history.
Keywords: Byzantine history, Mediterranean studies, Religious studies, network analysis, social theory, Late Medieval History, Religious conversions, Medieval trade, Church history
Page 187 - 217 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no9_2019s187
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»A Universal Narrative of Humanity«. Travelling to the ›Other‹ from Constantinople: Priscus of Panion (5th c. CE) and William of Rubruk (13th c. CE)
Travelling to the ›Other‹ can be fascinating – and very dangerous, especially when the traveller moves to ›uncivilised‹ peoples like Huns and Mongols. The article shows unpredictable parallels between two travel accounts very far from each other in space and time: on the one hand Priscus of Panion, a learned Greek from the 5th century CE, who goes with the Byzantine ambassador to the king of the Huns, the terrible Attila; on the other hand William of Rubruk, a learned Franciscan from the 13th century CE, who writes in Latin a detailed report about his mission to the Mongol Empire. Both cross Constantinople, the city of cities, and both bear witness to the welcoming ›civilisation‹ they found at their destination, beyond borders and boundaries. From a literary perspective, much to our surprise, Byzantium is the key to open the world of the ›Otherness‹.
Keywords: Priscus of Panion, William of Rubruk, Mongol Empire, Byzantine literature, King Louis IX of France, Attila, Sartaq, Byzantium East and West, Constantinople, 'Otherness'
Pia Carolla
Page 218 - 241 | doi: https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no9_2019s218
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Edition:
978-3-7001-8612-0, eJournal, PDF, limited accessibility , 27.06.2019
Edition:
1. Auflage
Pages:
241 Pages
Language:
English
DOI (Link to Online Edition):