Fools and Holy Fools in Theatre

I have discussed other publications about holy fools on here over the years, including my own; and interviewed authors about their work in this area. Now we have a new book treating the fool in film: Alina Birzache, The Holy Fool in European Cinema (Routledge, 2016), 220pp.

About this book we are told:

This monograph explores the way that the profile and the critical functions of the holy fool have developed in European cinema, allowing this traditional figure to capture the imagination of new generations in an age of religious pluralism and secularization. Alina Birzache traces the cultural origins of the figure of the holy fool across a variety of European traditions. In so doing, she examines the critical functions of the holy fool as well as how filmmakers have used the figure to respond to and critique aspects of the modern world. Using a comparative approach, this study for the first time offers a comprehensive explanation of the enduring appeal of this protean and fascinating cinematic character. Birzache examines the trope of holy foolishness in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, French cinema, and Danish cinema, corresponding broadly to and permitting analysis of the three main orientations in European Christianity: Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. This study will be of keen interest to scholars of religion and film, European cinema, and comparative religion.

The publisher also gives us the contents:

Introduction. 1. The Pauline Holy Fool and Its Successors. 2. Speaking Truth to Power: The Holy Fool in Soviet and Russian Cinema. 3. Holy Fools in the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. 4. The Suffering Fool in French Cinema. 5. The Bressonian Holy Fool. 6. The Fool’s Challenge to Reason in Danish Cinema. 7. Idiocy as Technique: The Dogme 95 Movement. Conclusion.

Fondly Imagining the Liturgical Past

The Byzantine liturgical historian Robert Taft's 2000 essay, "Eastern Presuppositions and Western Liturgical Renewal" first alerted me to the uses and abuses of Christian history in service of present political agendas. It is a fascinating study in the selective appeal to "the East" by Latin liturgical reformers to give cover to what they wanted to do.

Later this year we shall have a collection of scholarly articles that continues to explore such istoriographical questions: Teresa Berger and Bryan D. Spinks, eds., Liturgy's Imagined Past/s (Pueblo Books, 2016), 320pp.

 About this book we are told:

This book calls attention to the importance of scholarly reflection on the writing of liturgical history. The essays not only probe the impact of important shifts in historiography but also present new scholarship that promises to reconfigure some of the established images of liturgy’s past. Based on papers presented at the 2014 Yale Institute of Sacred Music Liturgy Conference, Liturgy’s Imagined Past/s seeks to invigorate discussion of methodologies and materials in contemporary writings on liturgy’s pasts and to resource such writing at a point in time when formidable questions are being posed about the way in which historians construct the object of their inquiry.

The Therapeutic Power of Byzantine (and other) Rituals

Well do I remember seeing first hand, more than a decade ago, the healing power of ritual--in this case the Byzantine "rite of forgiveness" served on the eve of the Great Fast each year. Two people who had been bitterly estranged for years prostrated themselves before each other--as they and we all did--and it served at last to overcome their anger and misunderstanding. One of them reported to me right afterwards--with an enormous sigh of visible relief--that even after decades of knowing intellectually the power of liturgy, it still amazed him emotionally to experience so powerfully the real healing and reconciliation the rite had just enacted between him and his erstwhile brother in the faith.

I myself have explored this possibility of ritual healing in several articles over the years, wondering in particular whether the "healing of memories" of divided Christians can be effected, in part, through liturgy. As I have written about that over the years, it has long remained unclear to me exactly how a vague psychological phrase can be enacted among millions of people in a collective like the Church. Most of the exploration of "healing of memories" has taken place from the theology side, with little contribution from psychological, liturgical, or ritual studies--until now. Set for release later this month is a work from the psychiatrist Erik D. Goodwyn, Healing Symbols in Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2016), 240pp.

About this book we are told:

Ritual scholars note that rituals have powerful psychological, social and even biological effects, but these findings have not yet been integrated into the practice of psychotherapy and psychiatry. In Healing Symbols in Psychotherapy Erik D. Goodwyn attempts to rectify this by reviewing the most pertinent work done in the area of ritual study and applying it to the practice of psychotherapy and psychiatry, providing a new framework with which to approach therapy. The book combines ritual study with depth psychology, placebo study, biogenetic structuralism and cognitive anthropology to create a model of interdisciplinary psychology.

Goodwyn uses examples of rituals from history, folklore and cross-cultural study and uncovers the universal themes embedded within them as well as their psychological functions. As ritual scholars show time and again how Western culture and medicine is ‘ritually impoverished’ the application of ritual themes to therapy yields many new avenues for healing. The interdisciplinary model used here suggests new ways to approach problems with basic identity, complicated grief, anxiety, depression meaninglessness and a host of other problems encountered in clinical work.

The interdisciplinary approach of this accessibly-written book will appeal to psychotherapists, psychiatrists and Jungian analysts as well as those in training and readers with an interest in the science behind ritual.

The publisher also gives us the table of contents:

Part 1: Foundations. The Study of Ritual – Depth Psychology and Symbolic Anthropology. The Interdisciplinary Approach to Ritual. Part 2: The Dynamic Interdisciplinary Approach. Biological—Mind/Body Interactions. Cognitive—Cognitive Anthropology and Psychological Resonance. Psychodynamic—Projection, Narrative, Meaningful Coincidence and Dissociation. Cultural – Structures and Functions. Part 3: Applications. Magical Inscriptions. Healing Rituals. Transitional Rituals. Death. Part 4: Conclusions. The Technology of Ritual and the Ritual Expert. Summary. Afterword.

"A Bible Study Followed by a Meal": Ephrem Lash on the Eucharist

More than a decade ago now, in a graduate class on Byzantine liturgical translations, I was first introduced to the Orthodox liturgical scholar and translator Archimandrite Ephrem Lash. Most of his work has been freely available on his very useful website, which I check regularly. Some of his other printed translations are linked here on the right and left.

I've watched a number of his videos more recently, and he has long struck me as embodying a unique kind of English Orthodoxy seemingly without pretense (which cannot always be said): English because marked by dry wit (calling the Divine Liturgy structurally "a Bible study followed by a meal") and unromantic reflection on human nature; Orthodox because of a commitment to beauty and truth.

He died yesterday in London. We pray that his memory be eternal, and that his soul be placed where all the righteous dwell in (to use his translation) "a place of light, a place of green pasture, a place of refreshment, whence pain, grief and sighing have fled away."

Alexander Men, Prophet of Our Time

Northern Illinois University Press continues to bring forth important works in their Russian Studies series as well as their Orthodox Christian series. Fitting into both categories is a book set for release at the end of April, about a man whose martyrdom came at the end of the official Soviet period even as Soviet methods of exterminating "enemies" persisted: Wallace L. Daniel, Russia'’s Uncommon Prophet: Father Aleksandr Men and His Times (Northern Illinois University Press, 2016), 468pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This lucidly written biography of Aleksandr Men examines the familial and social context from which Men developed as a Russian Orthodox priest. Wallace Daniel presents a picture of Russia and the Orthodox Church different from the stereotypes found in much of the popular literature. Men offered an alternative to the prescribed ways of thinking imposed by the state and the church. Growing up during the darkest, most oppressive years in the history of the former Soviet Union, he became a parish priest who eschewed fear, who followed Christ’s command “to love thy neighbor as thyself,” and who attracted large, diverse groups of people in Russian society. How he accomplished those tasks and with what ultimate results are the main themes of this story.

Conflict and controversy marked every stage of Men’s priesthood. His parish in the vicinity of Moscow attracted the attention of the KGB, especially as it became a haven for members of the intelligentsia. He endured repeated attacks from ultra-conservative, antisemitic circles inside the Orthodox Church. Father Men represented the spiritual vision of an open, non-authoritarian Christianity, and his lectures were extremely popular. He was murdered on September 10, 1990. For years, his work was unavailable in most church bookstores in Russia, and his teachings were excoriated by some both within and outside the church. But his books continue to offer hope to many throughout the world—they have sold millions of copies and are testimony to his continuing relevance and enduring significance. This important biography will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in religion, politics, and global affairs.

Gregory of Narek's Festal Works

Pope Francis, the pope of surprises, last year declared the Armenian saint Gregory of Narek a "doctor of the Church," a unique category in the Western Church, as I was trying to explain to my students only last week, that elevates certain saints and Fathers to an even more exalted rank. Now Gregory's works are getting some attention thanks to an English translation that Liturgical Press has just alerted me to. Forthcoming later this month is Abraham Terian, trans., The Festal Works of St. Gregory of Narek (Liturgical Press, 2016), 464pp.

About this book we are told:

This is the first translation in any language of the surviving corpus of the festal works of St. Gregory of Narek, a tenth-century Armenian mystic theologian and poet par excellence (d. 1003). Composed as liturgical works for the various Dominical and related feasts, these poetic writings are literary masterpieces in both lyrical verse and narrative. Unlike Gregory’s better-known penitential prayers, these show a jubilant author in a celebratory mood. In this volume Abraham Terian, an eminent scholar of medieval Armenian literature, provides the nonspecialist reader with an illuminating translation of St. Gregory of Narek’s festal works. Introducing each composition with an explanatory note, Terian places the works under consideration in their author’s thought-world and in their tenth-century landscape.

Dostoevsky's Global Ethic

Is there any other Russian novelist (apart from Tolstoy perhaps) who continues to attract such scholarly attention as Dostoevsky? I've noted other studies of him over the years, and in May of this year we will have this fascinating-sounding book: Leonard Friesen, Transcendent Love: Dostoevsky and the Search for a Global Ethic (University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), 240pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In Transcendent Love: Dostoevsky and the Search for a Global Ethic, Leonard G. Friesen ranges widely across Dostoevsky's stories, novels, journalism, notebooks, and correspondence to demonstrate how Dostoevsky engaged with ethical issues in his times and how those same issues continue to be relevant to today's ethical debates. Friesen contends that the Russian ethical voice, in particular Dostoevsky's voice, deserves careful consideration in an increasingly global discussion of moral philosophy and the ethical life.

Friesen challenges the view that contemporary liberalism provides a religiously neutral foundation for a global ethic. He argues instead that Dostoevsky has much to offer when it comes to the search for a global ethic, an ethic that for Dostoevsky was necessarily grounded in a Christian concept of an active, extravagant, and transcendent love. Friesen also investigates Dostoevsky's response to those who claimed that contemporary European trends, most evident in the rising secularization of nineteenth-century society, provided a more viable foundation for a global ethic than one grounded in the One, whom Doestoevsky called simply "the Russian Christ." Throughout, Friesen captures a sense of the depth and sheer loveliness of Dostoevsky's canon. Dostoevsky was, after all, someone who believed that the ethical life was sublimely beautiful, even as it recklessly embraced suffering and unreasonably forgave others. The book will appeal to both students and scholars of Russian literature and history, comparative ethics, global ethics, and cultural studies, and togeneral readers with an interest in Dostoevsky.

"Others have written about Dostoevsky's ethics, but I am not aware of any single-authored, sustained attempt to make the case for Dostoevsky's 'transcendent love' as part of a larger discussion of a global ethic. Moreover, Leonard Friesen presents his case in an engaging and highly accessible form. He believes passionately that Dostoevsky is deeply relevant to the discussion; his commitment rings through the pages and draws the reader in. In this way, his essay makes an original contribution to Dostoevsky studies that will appeal to scholars in a variety of disciplines and to educated lay readers with ethical concerns about the path of modernity, as well as to the many fans of Dostoevsky's work." —Russell Hillier, Providence College

Transcendence and Transition in Sacred Music

With chapters on the Orthodox musician Arvo Part (about whom see my interview with Peter Bouteneff) and one on the revival of chant on Mt. Athos, this book will belong in every library with an interest in the diverse musical traditions of the Christian East: Jeffers Engelhardt and Philip Bohlman, eds., Resounding Transcendence: Transitions in Music, Religion, and Ritual (Oxford University Press, 2016), 304pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Resounding Transcendence is a pathbreaking set of ethnographic and historical essays by leading scholars exploring the ways sacred music effects cultural, political, and religious transitions in the contemporary world. With chapters covering Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist practices in East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, North America, the Caribbean, North Africa, and Europe, the volume establishes the theoretical and methodological foundations for music scholarship to engage in current debates about modern religion and secular epistemologies. It also transforms those debates through sophisticated, nuanced treatments of sound and music - ubiquitous elements of ritual and religion often glossed over in other disciplines.

Resounding Transcendence confronts the relationship of sound, divinity, and religious practice in diverse post-secular contexts. By examining the immanence of transcendence in specific social and historical contexts and rethinking the reified nature of "religion" and "world religions," these authors examine the dynamics of difference and transition within and between sacred musical practices. The work in this volume transitions between traditional spaces of sacred musical practice and emerging public spaces for popular religious performance; between the transformative experience of ritual and the sacred musical affordances of media technologies; between the charisma of individual performers and the power of the marketplace; and between the making of authenticity and hybridity in religious repertoires and practices. Broad in scope, rich in ethnographic and historical detail, and theoretically ambitious, Resounding Transcendence is an essential contribution to the study of music and religion.

Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment

It has often been said, when people are rushed for a quick explanation as to why Eastern Christianity has not been as riled by philosophical difficulties and doctrinal divisions as the West has, that the East has yet to come to terms with the Enlightenment. I'm not convinced of that thesis for several reasons, but may have to think about these matters differently after reading a collection edited by Paschalis Kitromilides, Enlightenment and Religion in the Orthodox World (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2016), 336pp.

I have found other studies by Kitromilides (discussed very briefly here), who is a political scientist at the University of Athens, to be very valuable, including his study of the influence of the French Revolution on the rise of nationalism and the modern nation-state in such places as Greece, Romania, and other former Ottoman states.

About this book we are told:

The place of religion in the Enlightenment has been keenly debated for many years. Research has tended, however, to examine the interplay of religion and knowledge in Western countries, often ignoring the East. In Enlightenment and religion in the Orthodox world leading historians address this imbalance by exploring the intellectual and cultural challenges and changes that took place in Orthodox communities during the eighteenth century.

The two main centres of Orthodoxy, the Greek-speaking world and the Russian Empire, are the focus of early chapters, with specialists analysing the integration of modern cosmology into Greek education, and the Greek alternative ‘enlightenment’, the spiritual Philokalia. Russian experts also explore the battle between the spiritual and the rational in the works of Voulgaris and Levshin. Smaller communities of Eastern Europe were faced with their own particular difficulties, analysed by contributors in the second part of the book. Governed by modernising princes who embraced Enlightenment ideals, Romanian society was fearful of the threat to its traditional beliefs, whilst Bulgarians were grappling in different ways with a new secular ideology. The particular case of the politically-divided Serbian world highlights how Dositej Obradović’s complex humanist views have been used for varying ideological purposes ever since. The final chapter examines the encroachment of the secular on the traditional in art, and the author reveals how Western styles and models of representation were infiltrating Orthodox art and artefacts.

Through these innovative case studies this book deepens our understanding of how Christian and secular systems of knowledge interact in the Enlightenment, and provides a rich insight into the challenges faced by leaders and communities in eighteenth-century Orthodox Europe.

The publisher also gives us the contents:

Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Preface
Paschalis M. Kitromilides, 1. The Enlightenment and the Orthodox world: historiographical and theoretical challenges
Vassilios N. Makrides, 2. The Enlightenment in the Greek Orthodox East: appropriation, dilemmas, ambiguities
Efthymios Nicolaidis, 3. The Greek Enlightenment, the Orthodox Church and modern science
Dimitrios Moschos, 4. An alternative ‘enlightenment’: the Philokalia
Iannis Carras, 5. Understanding God and tolerating humankind: Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment in Evgenios Voulgaris and Platon Levshin
Elena Smilianskaia, 6. The battle against superstition in eighteenth-century Russia: between ‘rational’ and ‘spiritual’
Andrei Pippidi, 7. The Enlightenment and Orthodox culture in the Romanian principalities
Nenad Ristović, 8. The Enlightenment of Dositej Obradović in the context of Christian classical humanism
Marija Petrović, 9. The Serbian Church hierarchy and popular education in the Hapsburg lands during the eighteenth century
Bojan Aleksov, 10. The vicissitudes of Dositej Obradović’s Enlightenment cult among the Serbs
Vassilis Maragos, 11. The challenge of secularism in Bulgarian Orthodox society
Eugenia Drakopoulou, 12. The interplay of Orthodoxy and Enlightenment in religious art
Summaries
Bibliography
Index

On Learning to Forget

As I noted last summer, I have become more and more fascinated not just with the uses and abuses of memory--in the context of, e.g., the "Crusades," which have become an all-purpose stick with which certain Orthodox Christians and certain Muslims try to beat the Catholic Church--but also with the question of forgetting. Our last century has, for justifiable reasons, been concerned to say "Never again!" by saying "Never forget!" And that is noble, commendable, important if we wish to guard against a repeat of, say, the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, or Holodomor.

But sometimes it seems the only way forward is by not remembering. That is, the way forward is precisely through forgetting. The problem here, of course, is that most of us have been conditioned to think of forgetting as a morally reprobated activity, as a deplorable oversight, as a sin of omission--forgetting the dog in the car on a hot day, say, or failing to remember the dental appointment that morning at 9, or not remembering to buy a card for my spouse's birthday.

But as we ought to have learned by now from Freud, not all forms of remembering are healthful and helpful; and not all forms of forgetting are evidence of unhealthy repression or unconscious frustration. Certain forms of remembering are necessary, while certain others are not. Certain remembrances can help with healing with others can hinder it. This is as true for individuals as it is for Christians and their churches. Indeed, on this latter score, I think there are certain things that Christians can and must come to forget if we are ever to live together again as one body.

I've been thinking about these things for a while now, and continue to work on them for a lecture I'm to give in 2017. These thoughts have also been recently addressed in this fascinating article, which in turn put me in mind of Bradford Vivian's welcome and important book, Public Forgetting: The Rhetoric and Politics of Beginning Again

The author of the article, David Rieff, has a book coming out in May: In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies (Yale UP, 2016), 160pp.

About this book we are told:

The conventional wisdom about historical memory is summed up in George Santayana’s celebrated phrase, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Today, the consensus that it is moral to remember, immoral to forget, is nearly absolute. And yet is this right?

David Rieff, an independent writer who has reported on bloody conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, insists that things are not so simple. He poses hard questions about whether remembrance ever truly has, or indeed ever could, “inoculate” the present against repeating the crimes of the past. He argues that rubbing raw historical wounds—whether self-inflicted or imposed by outside forces—neither remedies injustice nor confers reconciliation. If he is right, then historical memory is not a moral imperative but rather a moral option—sometimes called for, sometimes not. Collective remembrance can be toxic. Sometimes, Rieff concludes, it may be more moral to forget.

Ranging widely across some of the defining conflicts of modern times—the Irish Troubles and the Easter Uprising of 1916, the white settlement of Australia, the American Civil War, the Balkan wars, the Holocaust, and 9/11—Rieff presents a pellucid examination of the uses and abuses of historical memory. His contentious, brilliant, and elegant essay is an indispensable work of moral philosophy.

Italo-Albanian Chant

There are certain groups, even within the often maddeningly confused world of Eastern Christianity, that are especially small and therefore acutely prone to being overlooked. The Italo-Albanians are arguably in this category. But at least one part of their heritage will no longer be so obscure, thanks to the publication next month of Bartolomeo di Salvo, Girolamo Garofalo, and Christian Troelsgård, eds., Chants of the Byzantine Rite: The Italo-Albanian Tradition in Sicily: Canti Ecclesiastici della Tradizione Italo-Albanese in Sicilia (Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Subsidia) (Museum Tusculanum Press 2016), 288pp.

About this book we are told:

This book presents for the first time the complete chant repertory of an orally transmitted collection of church hymns for the celebration of the Byzantine Rite in Sicily. Cultivated by Albanian-speaking minorities since their ancestors arrived in Sicily in the late fifteenth century, this repertory was transcribed by Bartolomeo di Salvo, a Basilian monk from the monastery of Grottaferrata, and is presented here in English, Italian, and Greek.

Arabs and Ottomans

Sam Noble continues the absolutely vital work of making Arab Christian history better known. Fresh off his edited collection with Sasha Treiger (read my interview with them here), Noble has collaborated with Constantin Alexandrovich Panchenko on Arab Orthodox Christians Under the Ottomans 1516–-1831 (Holy Trinity Publications, 2016), 676pp.

About this book we are told:

Following the so called “Arab Spring” the world’s attention has been drawn to the presence of significant minority religious groups within the predominantly Islamic Middle East. Of these minorities Christians are by far the largest, comprising over 10% of the population in Syria and as much as 40% in Lebanon.The largest single group of Christians are the Arabic-speaking Orthodox. This work fills a major lacuna in the scholarship of wider Christian history and more specifically that of lived religion within the Ottoman empire. The author draws on archaeological evidence and previously unpublished primary sources uncovered in Russian archives and Middle Eastern monastic libraries to present a vivid and compelling account of this vital but little-known spiritual and political culture, situating it within a complex network of relations reaching throughout the Mediterranean, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. The work is made more accessible to a non-specialist reader by the addition of a glossary, whilst the scholar will benefit from a detailed bibliography of both primary and secondary sources.

Priests of my People

It has been a commonplace for some time that the development of the Christian priesthood is a relatively late one.  How and why that happened has been the subject of varying theories. A recent book, part of the publisher's Patristic Studies series, offers a new one: Bryan A. Stewart, Priests of My People: Levitical Paradigms for Early Christian Ministers (Peter Lang, 2015), 250pp.

About this book we are told:

This book offers an innovative examination of the question: why did early Christians begin calling their ministerial leaders «priests» (using the terms hiereus/sacerdos)? Scholarly consensus has typically suggested that a Christian «priesthood» emerged either from an imitation of pagan priesthood or in connection with seeing the Eucharist as a sacrifice over which a «priest» must preside. This work challenges these claims by exploring texts of the third and fourth century where Christian bishops and ministers are first designated «priests»: Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and the church orders Apostolic Tradition and Didascalia Apostolorumpolis in their own right in the Greco-Roman world, they also saw themselves theologically and historically connected with ancient biblical Israel. This religio-political ecclesiology, sharpened by an emerging Christian material culture and a growing sense of Christian «sacred space», influenced the way Christians interpreted the Jewish Scriptures typologically. In seeing the nation of Israel as a divine nation corresponding to themselves, Christians began appropriating the Levitical priesthood as a figure or «type» of the Christian ministerial office. Such a study helpfully broadens our understanding of the emergence of a Christian priesthood beyond pagan imitation or narrow focus on the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, and instead offers a more comprehensive explanation in connection with early Christian ecclesiology.

Beyond Boswell's Tendentious Pamphleteering

Well do I remember the controversy in the mid-90s when a handsome young historian at some school or other started putting it about that Christians, especially in the East, had been hiding for centuries some ritual that he claimed was a proto-marriage liturgy for same-sex couples. The "mainstream" media, with their usual dreary lack of imagination and empty-headed cheerleading, pounced on this, of course, and spread this nonsense far and wide, tarting it up with pity because this "revolutionary" finding was authored by a man who would not enjoy the results, dying of AIDS in the same year as his book appeared. I read first the book and then, with great relish, one take-down after another in scholarly journals by serious historians and theologians (Robin Darling Young among them) who showed  that John Boswell's Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe had tendentiously ginned up a case for pre-determined conclusions, and made the evidence fit those conclusions because today's politics seemed to demand doing so. It was my first awareness of the uses and abuses of history by Christians.

Now we have a serious Byzantinist examining this evidence anew in her just-released book: Claudia Rapp, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: Monks, Laymen, and Christian Ritual (Oxford UP, 2016), 368pp. 

About this book we are told:

Among medieval Christian societies, Byzantium is unique in preserving an ecclesiastical ritual of adelphopoiesis, which pronounces two men, not related by birth, as brothers for life. It has its origin as a spiritual blessing in the monastic world of late antiquity, and it becomes a popular social networking strategy among lay people from the ninth century onwards, even finding application in recent times. Located at the intersection of religion and society, brother-making exemplifies how social practice can become ritualized and subsequently subjected to attempts of ecclesiastical and legal control.

Controversially, adelphopoiesis was at the center of a modern debate about the existence of same-sex unions in medieval Europe. This book, the first ever comprehensive history of this unique feature of Byzantine life, argues persuasively that the ecclesiastical ritual to bless a relationship between two men bears no resemblance to marriage. Wide-ranging in its use of sources, from a complete census of the manuscripts containing the ritual of adelphopoiesis to the literature and archaeology of early monasticism, and from the works of hagiographers, historiographers, and legal experts in Byzantium to comparative material in the Latin West and the Slavic world, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium examines the fascinating religious and social features of the ritual, shedding light on little known aspects of Byzantine society.

New Publication from the Pope!

Catholics have grown weary of papal speeches and interviews, whether on airlines or in other fora. The endless yammering has turned even the most caricatured ultramontane fantasies or the most outrageous Protestant polemics about "papolatry" into reality: the pope as oracle, ceaselessly pontificating on matters large and small, well beyond his brief and far exceeding any authority he has, and thereby causing far more confusion than clarity. 

How much better the example of the other pope, the one whose use of the title, according to some historians, pre-dates that of the Roman bishop's adoption of it. I refer, of course, to the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria, successor to St. Mark.

Perfectly timed for this Lenten season is a book about repentance hot off the presses from St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, which has just put into my hands: †Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity, 2nd. Eng. ed., trans. H.G. Bishop Suriel (SVS Press, 2016), 322pp.

About this book, now in a second issue from the late pope (who died in 2012), the publisher tells us:

The Life of Repentance and Purity provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the practice of repentance and purity, essential aspects of Christian life. Pope Shenouda III draws on Scripture, the Church Fathers, his own experience of desert monasticism, and his experience as a shepherd to millions of Christians to provide a practical understanding of how to live a life of continually turning to God.

My advice to you, instead of saying, I promise you that I will repent, O Lord, say to the Lord: Restore me, and I will return (Jeremiah 31:18). Ask for repentance as a good gift from him, for he himself promised this, saying: I shall give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you (Ezekiel 36.26). 

The Coptic Studies Series at St Vladimir s Seminary Press was conceived with a two-fold purpose: to increase the accessibility of the many treasures of Coptic Orthodox Christianity to a wider English-speaking audience; and to cross-pollinate the spiritual minds of Coptic Orthodox Christians and their Eastern Orthodox brethren with the knowledge of a common faith in the incarnate Word of God who is the true source of all wisdom and knowledge.

I am delighted at both this book, and also this new Coptic Studies Series from SVS Press. I am delighted because I have an abiding affection for the Copts thanks to my friendship with Iman Nashed, through whom I was first introduced to the writings of Pope Shenouda in the mid 90s, and to the Coptic tradition in Canada, at whose flagship parish of St. Mark's in Scarborough I gave lectures over the years. The Copts in Egypt have suffered enormously over the years at the hands of Muslims in Egypt but all the while have been a faithful witness to the gospel. In addition, they are second to nobody in the number and rigor of their fasting days each year. They are a model to us all.

Marriage: Law and Sacrament

Given the on-going turmoil in the Catholic Church over the disciplines of marriage, divorce, re-marriage, and annulments, as well as the potential for turmoil at the upcoming 'great and holy synod' of Orthodoxy, whose agenda includes the topic of marriage, this forthcoming study may be of wide interest: Philip Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments: The Sacramental Theology of Marriage from its Medieval Origins to the Council of Trent (Cambridge UP, 2016), 1077pp.

About this hefty tome the publisher tells us:

Among the contributions of the medieval church to western culture was the idea that marriage was one of the seven sacraments, which defined the role of married folk in the church. Although it had ancient roots, this new way of regarding marriage raised many problems, to which scholastic theologians applied all their ingenuity. By the late Middle Ages, the doctrine was fully established in Christian thought and practice but not yet as dogma. In the sixteenth century, with the entire Catholic teaching on marriage and celibacy and its associated law and jurisdiction under attack by the Protestant reformers, the Council of Trent defined the doctrine as a dogma of faith for the first time but made major changes to it. Rather than focusing on a particular aspect of intellectual and institutional developments, this book examines them in depth and in detail from their ancient precedents to the Council of Trent.

We are also given the table of contents:

 1. Marriage as a sacrament
Part I. Augustine:
2. Marriage in Augustine's writings
3. Bonum prolis, bonum fidei: the utility of marriage
4. Bonum sacramenti: the sanctity and insolubility of marriage
Part II. Getting Married: Consent, Betrothal, and Consummation:
5. Betrothal and consent
6. Consummation
7. From competing theories to common doctrine in the twelfth century
Part III. The Twelfth Century: Origins and Early Development of the Sacramental Theology of Marriage:
8. Introduction to the sentential literature on marriage
9. The theology of marriage in the Sententiae
10. Hugh of Saint-Victor
11. The early doctrine of marriage as one of the sacraments
Part IV. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: Development of the Classical Doctrine:
12. Marriage as union
13. Scholastic sexual ethics
14. Marriage as a sacrament
15. The question of grace
16. Human contract and divine sacrament
Part V. The Council of Trent:
17. On the eve of the General Council
18. The Sacrament of marriage at Bologna and Trent
19. Clandestine marriage: Bologna, 1547
20. Clandestine marriage: Trent, 1563.

The Fathers on the Scriptures

I was startled yesterday to receive in the mail the latest catalogue from Fortress Press containing news of a forthcoming publication by a promising young scholar killed almost exactly a year ago. This collection which Matthew Baker co-edited with Mark Mourachian is a fitting posthumous memorial to the former: What is the Bible?: The Patristic Doctrine of Scripture (Fortress, 2016), 224pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The patristic doctrine of Scripture is an understudied topic. Recent scholars, however, have shown considerable interest in patristic exegetical strategies and methods—from rhetoric and typology, to theory and method; far less attention, though, has been paid to the early Christian understanding of the nature of Scripture itself. This volume explores the patristic vision of the Bible—the understanding of Scripture as the word of life and salvation, the theological, liturgical, and ascetical practice of reading—and is anchored by keynote essays from Fr. John McGuckin, Paul Blowers, and Michael Legaspi.
The purpose is to reopen a consideration of the doctrine of Scripture for contemporary theology, rooted in the tradition of the Church Fathers (Greek, Latin, and Oriental), an endeavor inspired by the theological vision of the twentieth century's foremost Orthodox Christian theologian, Fr. Georges Florovsky. Our interest is not in mere description of historical uses of Scripture or interpretive methods, but rather in the very nature of Scripture itself and its place within the whole economy of creation, revelation, and salvation.

The publisher also gives us the table of contents, and we see here a considerable number of highly respected Orthodox scholars contributing chapters:

1. The Exegetical Metaphysic of Origen of Alexandria—J. A. McGuckin
2. A “Doctrine of Scripture” from the Eastern Orthodox Tradition—Oliver Herbel
3. “He Has Clothed Himself in Our Language—Matthew Baker
4. John Chrysostom on the Nature of Revelation and Task of Exegesis—Bradley Nassif
5. Barsanuphius, John, and Dorotheos on Scripture: Voices from the Desert in Sixth-Century Gaza—Alexis Torrance
6. The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ as “Saturated Phenomenon”—Paul M. Blowers
7. Scripture as Divine Mystery—Brock Bingaman
8. The Bible as Heilsgeschichte—Nikolaos Asproulis
9. The Gospel According to St. Justin the New—Vladimir Cvetkovic
10. Reality and Biblical Interpretation—John Taylor Carr
11. Merely Academic—Michael C. Legaspi

Who Has Authority Over Christian Art?

I was discussing iconoclasm in the West, especially in the Latin Church following Vatican II, with some of my students this week, noting with them that iconoclasm is always a prelude to a new politics, and is always bound up with questions of power. That latter question comes in for new examination in a collection just released, with chapters on evangelicalism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy: L.F. Gearon, Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology (Peter Lang, 2015), 286pp.

About this book we are told:

The transcripted conversations that represent the substance of this volume are the result of a research project funded by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. The product of nearly three years of interviews conducted with senior religious figures from a diversity of religious traditions, this book represents a physical and political-theological journey around England – from metropolitan capital through provincial cities and rural hinterlands, from rural episcopal palaces to industrial estates, from London mansion houses to remote mountain monastery – and provides a snapshot of how religious leaders and authority figures respond to contemporary issues of freedom of expression. Religious Authority and the Arts has a substantial introduction that situates the conversations within a theological, political, and cultural framework.

Gleaming Silver Lights

Boris Jakim has emerged as the single-most prolific translator of East-Slavic theology today, having translated many of Sergius Bulgakov's books for Eerdmans over the last decade and more, including Relics and Miracles: Two Theological Essays, The Lamb of God (Bulgakov's Christology), The Comforter (Bulgakov's pneumatology), and a lovely collection of Bulgakov's theological orations, Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions for the Church Year. 

Jakim has also been involved in translating other prominent figures, including the great writer Dostoevsky's The Insulted and Injured as well as his Notes from the House of the Dead.

Additionally, other well-known Slavophiles have entered into English through Jakim, including Pavel Florensky's The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters and S.L. Frank's The Meaning of Life as well as his Light Shineth In Darkness: An Essay In Christian Ethics And Social Philosophy.

Late last year, Jakim complied and translated a new collection: The Brightest Lights of the Silver Age: Essays on Russian Religious Thinkers (Semantron Press, 2015), 244pp.

About this book we are told:

The great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev set for himself the task of revealing to the western world the distinctive elements of Russian philosophy: its existential nature, eschatologism, religious anarchism, and preoccupation with the idea of Divine Humanity. In the present collection of essays (the first volume of Berdyaev’s essays ever to appear in English translation), he attempts to define “the new religious consciousness” as it emerged in Russia in the first decade of the 20th century. Berdyaev, like Merezhkovsky and Blok (among others), believed that the dawn of the new century would bring an end to the old atheistic and positivistic world-view and the beginning of a new era of the spirit. The other essays treat such figures as Tolstoy, Solovyov, Rozanov, Bely, Florensky, and Bulgakov--all of them giants of Russian religious thought.

“Nikolai Berdyaev’s essays, like his longer works, are always insightful, penetrating, passionate, committed--expressions of the whole person. They are as intensely alive now as when they were first written. In them Berdyaev enters into genuine dialogue with his fellow thinkers from the great period of Russian religious philosophy. We are indebted to Boris Jakim for the excellence of both the selection and the translation.”--RICHARD PEVEAR, translator of War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov

“Nikolai Berdyaev managed to play two roles in the Russian religious renaissance of the twentieth century. He was a passionate participant in the movement, but also one of its astute critics. His genius in both roles is on full display in this collection of essays assembled and beautifully translated by Boris Jakim. Berdyaev’s portraits of his peers provide us with a concise, colorful, and deep-thinking compendium of all the main themes that occupied the Russian religious thinkers of his generation--the last generation to come of age in Russia before the Revolution of 1917. With the centennial of that great upheaval at hand, we can see more clearly than ever the relevance of revisiting religious-philosophical debates which, far from being over, retain their freshness as vehicles for thinking not just about the future of Russia but about the spiritual challenges facing the modern world.”--PAUL VALLIERE, author of Modern Russian Theology.

“Nikolai Berdyaev, the existentialist Russian philosopher of freedom and creativity, in this collection of selected essays on key figures representative of Russia’s Silver Age, is unabashed in both his praise and criticism of them. Lyrical is his style, his analyses are no less cogent and cutting at times. The translator, Boris Jakim, has taken careful pains in his effort to bring out the best in Berdyaev’s literary and social criticism as he discusses the thought of such notables as Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Lev Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov, Vasily Rozanov, Lev Shestov, Alexander Blok, Pavel Florensky, and Sergius Bulgakov, along with a penetrating essay on theosophy and anthroposophy in Russia.”--ROBERT F. SLESINSKI, author of Pavel Florensky: A Metaphysics of Love

The Oldest Church in the World

Michael Peppard's new book, The World's Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria (Synkrisis) (Yale UP, 2016), 344pp. has just been published.

Given the ongoing conflicts in the region, and the recent and ongoing iconoclastic vandalism of ISIS when it comes to ancient Christian sites, this book could not be more timely in recording Christian history in a region where it is fast being extirpated and destroyed.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Michael Peppard provides a historical and theological reassessment of the oldest Christian building ever discovered, the third-century house-church at Dura-Europos. Contrary to commonly held assumptions about Christian initiation, Peppard contends that rituals here did not primarily embody notions of death and resurrection. Rather, he portrays the motifs of the church’s wall paintings as those of empowerment, healing, marriage, and incarnation, while boldly reidentifying the figure of a woman formerly believed to be a repentant sinner as the Virgin Mary. This richly illustrated volume is a breakthrough work that enhances our understanding of early Christianity at the nexus of Bible, art, and ritual.

Early Christian Devotion to the Mother of God

Yale University Press just sent me their latest catalogue, and in it we find several new and forthcoming works of interest, not least the Orthodox scholar Stephen Shoemaker's Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion (Yale UP, July 2016), 320pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

For the first time a noted historian of Christianity explores the full story of the emergence and development of the Marian cult in the early Christian centuries. The means by which Mary, mother of Jesus, came to prominence have long remained strangely overlooked despite, or perhaps because of, her centrality in Christian devotion. Gathering together fresh information from often neglected sources, including early liturgical texts and Dormition and Assumption apocrypha, Stephen Shoemaker reveals that Marian devotion played a far more vital role in the development of early Christian belief and practice than has been previously recognized, finding evidence that dates back to the latter half of the second century. Through extensive research, the author is able to provide a fascinating background to the hitherto inexplicable “explosion” of Marian devotion that historians and theologians have pondered for decades, offering a wide-ranging study that challenges many conventional beliefs surrounding the subject of Mary, Mother of God.

Shoemaker is the author of several important works, including  The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam, about which I interviewed him here.

Shoemaker has also turned his hand to Mariology in other recent studies, including The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption,which appeared in 2006 in the prestigious scholarly Early Christian Studies series from Oxford University Press.

Additionally, he is the translator of Maximus the Confessor's work The Life of the Virgin,which was also published by Yale in 2012. 

Dorothy Day and the Church of Our Time (I)

Is it a violation of the supposed spirit of Lenten humility to draw attention to one's latest publication? Regardless, here it is: a volume I co-edited along with my colleague and friend Lance Richey, based on the conference held last May here at the University of Saint Francis on the life and work of Dorothy Day: Dorothy Day and the Church: Past, Present, and Future (Solidarity Hall Press, 2016), 434pp.

Lance and I, along with many others, helped to organize a fantastic group of speakers from France, Canada, and across these United States. We were happy that most of them agreed to publish their papers after the conference. 

This is a rich collection, and the size of it makes the price very affordable indeed. I will have more to say about the contents in the days ahead, but let me here note what a pleasure it was to work with Solidarity Hall Press, a relatively young publisher with a fantastic crew, especially its publisher Elias Crim; and then with the book designer, Paul Bowman of New York, who did a lovely job on cover, art, and layout. Solidarity Hall has already published one book of significance, and their unique model positions them very well indeed for further publishing and other ventures.

Here is the standard blurb about the book, with more details to follow:

From the introduction by Lance Richey: “The University of Saint Francis and Our Sunday Visitor sponsored the conference ‘Dorothy Day and the Church: Past, Present and Future’ in Fort Wayne on May 13–15, 2015. In planning it, we kept in mind (not without some trepidation) Dorothy’s own complaint on academic conferences in her April 1966 On Pilgrimage column: ‘That is the trouble with such conferences. There are too many workshops, too many meetings, so many speakers, making the sessions too long.’ The enthusiastic response we received to our announcement threatened to make her warning only too prescient. More than 120 attendees, scholars and workers, gathered together to celebrate both her remarkable life and enduring legacy for the Church. This volume gathers together most of the papers and homilies given at this conference, offering a breadth and depth of material which will benefit both casual and scholarly readers, and both students and practitioners of her experiment in gospel living.”

The Church of Smyrna

On my bedside table for bedtime reading is a book I have started but not yet finished: Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City. It is a fascinating if deeply depressing book documenting the destruction not only in the post-war period but also as the Greco-Turkish wars wound down and the Ottoman Empire gave way to the rise of modern Turkey.

Along comes a more recent book to look at Smyrna, but in the ancient period: The Church of Smyrna: History and Theology of a Primitive Christian Community (Peter Lang, 2015), 402pp.

Part of Lang's Patrologia series, this book, the publisher tells us,

deals with the theology of the Church of Smyrna from its foundation up to the Council of Nicaea in 325. The author provides a critical historical evaluation of the documentary sources and certain aspects particularly deserving of discussion. He makes a meticulous study of the history of the city, its gods and institutions, the set-up of the Jewish and Christian communities and the response of the latter to the imperial cult. Finally, he undertakes a detailed analysis both of the reception of the Hebrew Scriptures and the apostolic traditions, as well as examining the gradual historical process of the shaping of orthodoxy and the identity of the community in the light of the organisation of its ecclesial ministries, its sacramental life and the cult of its martyrs.

The Lost World of Byzantium

Interest in all things Byzantine remains as high as ever, as I have noted on here many times.

A book published late last year continues this trend and deepens our knowledge: Jonathan Harris, The Lost World of Byzantium (Yale UP, 2015), 280pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

For more than a millennium, the Byzantine Empire presided over the juncture between East and West, as well as the transition from the classical to the modern world. Jonathan Harris, a leading scholar of Byzantium, eschews the usual run-through of emperors and battles and instead recounts the empire’s extraordinary history by focusing each chronological chapter on an archetypal figure, family, place, or event.

Harris’s action-packed introduction presents a civilization rich in contrasts, combining orthodox Christianity with paganism, and classical Greek learning with Roman power. Frequently assailed by numerous armies—including those of Islam—Byzantium nonetheless survived and even flourished by dint of its somewhat unorthodox foreign policy and its sumptuous art and architecture, which helped to embed a deep sense of Byzantine identity in its people.

Enormously engaging and utilizing a wealth of sources to cover all major aspects of the empire’s social, political, military, religious, cultural, and artistic history, Harris’s study illuminates the very heart of Byzantine civilization and explores its remarkable and lasting influence on its neighbors and on the modern world.

The Fast Approaches

Great Lent in the West is very early this year, beginning tonight for Byzantine Christians on the new calendar--about as early as it can be--and in the East, or at least those parts of it using the Julian paschalion, it is very late, about as late as it can be.

I refer you here to my attempt to think through some of the questions that arise when one discusses fasting. 

My exasperation, and my hope, about solving the calendar question is fully on display here.

Regardless of which calendar you are on, I direct you here to some suggested books for Lent.