The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens - Hardcover

Kaldellis, Anthony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521882281 ISBN 13: 9780521882286

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Byzantine Athens was not a city without a history, as is commonly believed, but an important center about which much can now be said. Providing a wealth of new evidence, Professor Kaldellis argues that the Parthenon became a major site of Christian pilgrimage after its conversion into a church. Paradoxically, it was more important as a church than it had been as a temple: the Byzantine period was its true age of glory. He examines the idiosyncratic fusion of pagan and Christian culture that took place in Athens, where an attempt was made to replicate the classical past in Christian terms, affecting rhetoric, monuments, and miracles. He also re-evaluates the reception of ancient ruins in Byzantine Greece and presents for the first time a form of pilgrimage that was directed not toward icons, Holy Lands, or holy men but toward a monument embodying a permanent cultural tension and religious dialectic.

About this title

Book Description

Presenting a wealth of new evidence, Professor Kaldellis examines the history of Byzantine Athens. He focuses specifically on the Parthenon, which became a Christian church and a major site of pilgrimage and was part of a broader attempt to fuse pagan and Christian culture in the city.

About the Author

Anthony Kaldellis is Professor of Greek and Latin at the Ohio State University. He has published widely on topics in late antiquity and Byzantium, focusing on the literary and philosophical aspects of historiographical texts. His studies on the reception of classical culture in Byzantium recently culminated in the book Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (2007). He has also translated many Byzantine authors into English (among them Hesychios, Genesios, and Psellos) and one of his side-interests is the Byzantine history of the island of Lesbos.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0521882281
• ISBN 13: 9780521882286
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 268