Bøger i Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies serien

A translation of the classic work by Ivan Sokolov, first published in 1904, on the history of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople in the nineteenth century. The book has lost none of its potency, and is still the authoritative source of information on the Church and community of that period.

George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis gave Modern Greek language a substantial corpus of translations from poets working in French, Italian, Russian, English and Ancient Greek. This title offers study of translation that is shown to be a powerful tool for study of Modern Greek literature and its relation to other literatures and movements of time.

The observation that domestic artefacts are often recovered during church excavations led to an archaeological re-assessment of forty-seven Early Byzantine basilical church excavations and their historical, gender and liturgical context. The excavations were restricted to the three most common basilical church plans to allow for like-for-like analysis between sites that share the same plan: monoapsidal, inscribed and triapsidal. These sites were later found to have two distinct sanctuary configurations, namely a ?-shaped sanctuary in front of the apse, or else a sanctuary that extended across both side aisles that often formed a characteristic T-shaped layout. Further analysis indicated that ?-shaped sanctuaries are found in two church plans: firstly a protruding monoapsidal plan that characteristically has a major entrance located to either side of the apse, which is also referred to as a 'Constantinopolitan' church plan; and secondly in the inscribed plan, which is also referred to as a 'Syrian' church plan. The T-shaped layout is characteristic of the triapsidal plan, but can also occur in a monoapsidal plan, and this is referred to as a 'Roman' church plan. Detailed analysis of inscriptions and patterns of artefactual deposition also revealed the probable location of the diakonikon where the rite of prothesis took place.

The rationale of this book is to employ a comprehensive micro-history of one particular community, the village of Tsamantas, in north-western Greece, as a means of providing a detailed picture that will permit extrapolation to a wider context. The author draws upon books, archived materials, and illuminating oral accounts of local events.

The cult of St Demetrius is of considerable age but it peaked with the emergence of his city, Thessalonica, as a prominent political and cultural centre in late Byzantium. This book examines the intensification of his popularity and veneration in the late Middle Ages and his impact on contemporary thought and ritual. The encomia written in the saint's honour are significant historical and literary monuments and in their suggestiveness and beauty they are on a level with many better-known works in medieval Greek. Indeed, the encomia have added historical interest because of the prominence of those who wrote them. The likes of Nicholas Kavasilas, Gregory Palamas, Constantine Harmenopoulos and Symeon of Thessalonica were the elite of late Byzantium in intellect and personal influence, while Nikephoros Gregoras was perhaps the finest of Byzantine minds. With their clear links to individual authors, the encomia on St Demetrius present opportunities to the historian and the literary critic, which are fully explored in this book, the first to give them sustained scholarly attention.

This book focuses on the modernization of the Greek Orthodox community of Mytilene - the capital of Lesbos, an island located in the north-east Aegean - the changes it underwent, and its responses to the ever-changing political situation between 1876 and 1912. The author argues that the position of leading community members, particularly journalists, and their receptivity towards the social and political changes of the period, went hand-in-hand with their 'ethnic' and political aspirations for the role of the Greek Orthodox ethnos in the Empire. In relation to the competition among various 'imperialisms' and 'nationalisms' then developing around Mytilene's Christians, the author shows that Ottoman reforms were successful in encouraging them to co-opt local interest such that concern for the growth of the specific community was directly linked to the survival of the Ottoman Empire.

The Greek Bible and the services of the Orthodox Church have proved a rich source of language for many poets of modern Greece, and perhaps for none more than for Kostis Palamas, Angelos Sikelianos and Odysseas Elytis, whose overlapping careers span the period 1876-1996. A blurring of the boundaries between Orthodoxy and ¿Greekness¿ (hellênikotêta, which all three poets celebrate) has often led critics to assume from the Christian borrowings in the poetry the Christian allegiance of the poets. Through detailed analyses of selected poems, focusing on their relation to Biblical and liturgical source texts, this book questions whether the work of these poets is compatible with Christianity at all. It asks whether a Christ who is assimilated, along with the Virgin Mary, into the ancient Greek pantheon, or presented as a symbol of Beauty, or as object of the erotic desire of the women of the Gospels is still within the realm of Orthodoxy. Above all it asks whether, when the poetic ego appropriates to itself words which in their original context belong to Christ or Jehovah, there is any room left for the divine, or whether the poet has not in fact elbowed God off the stage altogether.

This book contains the first complete English translation, fully annotated, of the treatise Concerning Frequent Communion, commonly attributed to Sts. Makarios of Corinth and Nikodemos the Hagiorite, the compilers of the Philokalia. This pivotal treatise, by two central figures in the Kollyvades movement, which originated on Mount Athos in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, addresses a somewhat less well-known corollary issue in Orthodox spirituality, that of frequent Communion. The authors discuss the controversy surrounding a decline in the frequency of Communion in the Christian East, the relationship of that controversy to the Kollyvades movement, and the theological arguments in support of frequent Communion advanced by Makarios and Nikodemos, whose joint authorship of the treatise they endeavor to substantiate.

This volume contains selected papers from the XV International Graduate Conference, highlighting the latest scholarship from a new generation of Late Antique and Byzantine scholars from around the world. The theme of the conference explored the interaction between power and the natural and human environments of Byzantium.

This book chronicles Greece's turbulent history during the first half of the twentieth century as it both shapes and is shaped by one of its most distinguished political figures, Evangelos Averoff. Written by his daughter, the book is part historical biography, part coming-of-age novel and part memoir.

Until now, Georgirenes has been best known for having established the first Greek Orthodox church in London in Soho, and for publishing a detailed account of the condition and practices of the Orthodox church living under Ottoman rule. For the first time this biography reveals the extraordinary further adventures of this much-travelled priest.

This work employs an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, presenting papers first given by graduate and early-career academic researchers from around the world at the XVII International Graduate Conference of the Oxford University Byzantine Society, held on the 27th and 28th of February, 2015.