Desire and Denial in Byzantium: Papers from the Thirty-First Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, March 1997

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First published 1999 by Ashgate Publishing. The papers in this volume derive from the 31st Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies held for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton, in March 1997. Desire, sex, love and the erotic are not terms usually associated with Byzantium and Byzantine Studies, unlike celibacy, virginity and asceticism, which more readily spring to mind. In order to examine whether the balance between these two extremes needed redressing, desire and denial was adopted as the theme for this symposium. The papers in this volume, by a group of international scholars, explore the many different aspects of Byzantine perceptions towards their own humanity and the frailties of that humanity. Using evidence from archaeology, art history and literary texts, ranging from sermons to legal documents, these chapters reveal writings about love, both secular and religious; images of sexuality and sensuality; the law; and Byzantine attitudes to bodies and the senses. What the symposium illustrated is that the question of desires in the Byzantine world is significant, and that such desires can offer insights into Byzantine conceptions of their own world. A+

Author(s): Liz James (ed.)
Series: Publications of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, 6
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2016

Language: English
Pages: XII+220

Acknowledgments vii
List of Abbreviations viii
List of Plates ix
Preface xi
Section I. Love Letters?
From Byzantium, with love / Margaret Mullett 3
"Shutting the gates of the soul": spiritual treatises on resisting the passions / Mary B. Cunningham 23
Section II: Do as your Father tells you
The sexual and social dangers of "Pornai" in the Septuagint Greek stratum of patristic Christian Greek thought / Kathy L. Gaca 35
Manly women and womanly men: the "subintroductae" and John Chrysostom / Aideen Hartney 41
Anastasios of Sinai's teaching on body and soul / Joseph A. Munitiz 49
Divine sex: Patriarch Methodios's concept of virginity / Dirk Krausmüller 57
The city a desert: Theodore of Stoudios on "porneia" / Peter Hatlie 67
Section III: Problems with Bodies
Desires denied: marriage, adultery and divorce in early Byzantine law / Bernard Stolte 77
Body vs. column: the cults of St. Symeon Stylites / Antony Eastmond 87
Christian bodies: the senses and early Byzantine Christianity / Béatrice Caseau 101
Writing on the body: memory, desire, and the holy in iconoclasm / Charles Barber 111
Section IV: Fine Manly Bodies
Passing the test of sanctity: denial of sexuality and involuntary castration / Kathryn M. Ringrose 123
In denial: same-sex desire in Byzantium / Dion C. Smythe 139
Michael III and Basil the Macedonian: just good friends? / Shaun Tougher 149
Section V: Byzantine Erotica
Ninth-century classicism and the erotic muse / Marc Lauxtermann 161
Erotic imagery on Byzantine ivory caskets / John Hanson 173
"Ostentatio genitalium": displays of nudity in Byzantium / Barabara Zeitler 185
Section VI: Conclusion
Desire in Byzantium - the Ought and the Is / Averil Cameron 205
Index 215