On the Once and Future Melkite Church

With the news of the resignation of the Melkite Patriarch Gregory III Laham comes, no doubt all too briefly, a return to focusing on Arab Christianity, and the Christians of the Middle East more generally. But for those wanting to focus even more particularly on the Melkite Church herself, it is passing strange to me how few scholarly books we have for doing so in English. If someone is aware of significant studies I have missed, or is aware of some that are being prepared even now, I should be most grateful if s/he would let me know so that I can draw attention to such books.

There are, however, books that treat the wider context of Arab Christianity, many of which I have noted on here over the years, including one, The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700 - 1700: An Anthology of Sources, whose editors I interviewed here. One of those editors, Sam Noble, has gone on, with Constantine Panchenko, to co-edit a second valuable work, Arab Orthodox Christians Under the Ottomans 1516–1831.

I heard His Beatitude give a lecture at the Sheptytsky Institute in Ottawa in the early part of the last decade, and he discombobulated some in the audience when he said to us something similar to what he says in this article: “Our simple existence ruins the equations whereby Arabs can’t be other than Moslems, and Christians but be westerners.” He was, on that occasion and many times since, inclined to use the phrase "the Church of Islam," which, admittedly, could perhaps be explicated with greater detail sometimes. But I always assumed that he had something in mind along the lines of what Sidney Griffith describes in his invaluable book, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam.

That book, for all its merits, first appeared now a decade ago in hardback, and was a work of history; it did not really attend to current Melkite realities, especially from 2011 onward.

Griffiths' more recent study, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the 'People of the Book' in the Language of Islam, is not of course especially focused on the Melkite Church, but it is useful also if only in dispelling the depressingly common assumption I encounter in my classes every semester that (as His Beatitude noted) all Arabs can only but be Muslims.

If wide-ranging general studies of the Melkite Church are few, there are at least some in-depth studies of some of her illustrious figures from the recent past, including perhaps the most notable among them, Louis Massignon, about whom I have read a number of interesting articles over the years, and presided over publishing several of them as editor of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. 

One such article was by Christian Krokus, author of a just-released study that looks to be among the most important and comprehensive: The Theology of Louis Massignon: Islam, Christ, and the Church (Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 272pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Anticipating the vision of Nostra Aetate, Louis Massignon (1883-1962) imagined and worked toward a revolution in the relationship between Muslims and Christians, from one poisoned by fear and rivalry to one rooted in mutual understanding and fraternal correction. His lifelong study of the Qur'an, Muhammad, Arabic, Sufism, and the Muslim mystic and martyr al-Hallâj (858-922), who was executed by crucifixion for having publicly claimed union with God, grounded Massignon's conviction that there was a Christological nexus between the two religions. His founding of the Badaliya sodality with Mary Kahil (1889-1979) sought to bring Christians and Muslims together in prayer and substitutive love, and his writings and personal contacts helped to form the views of the men who would eventually draft the statements on Muslims at the Second Vatican Council. For all those reasons and more Massignon has been called "the single most influential figure [in the 20th century] in regard to the Church's relationship with Islam," and his approach has only become more important in the decades since his passing.

In The Theology of Louis Massignon, author Christian Krokus argues that Massignon's achievements in Christian-Muslim understanding, his activism on behalf of Muslim immigrants, refugees, and Middle Eastern Christians, as well as his developing understanding of Islam must be understood in the light of his Catholic convictions in relation to God, Christ, and the Church. With ample references to primary works, many translated into English for the first time, Krokus offers a comprehensive account of the main points of Massignon's religious thought that will prove essential to theologians and historians working on questions of Christian-Muslim dialogue, comparative theology, and religious pluralism. As global tensions between Christians and Muslims rise, the learned, religious, and humanizing vision of Louis Massignon is urgently needed.

Massignon, in fact, comes in for sustained attention in another book published only this year: Dorothy Buck, Louis Massignon: A Pioneer of Interfaith Dialogue (Blue Dome Press, 2017), 306pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The root of the word Badaliya in Arabic, means to replace or exchange one thing for another. The French scholar and spiritual seeker, Louis Massignon (1883–1962), interpreted the word as a willingness to put oneself in the place of another, to give one's own life for the sake of someone else. This offering of himself for the well-being of his Muslim brothers and sisters was the inspiration for Massignon's entire life. In 1947, the renowned orientalist, who had regained his Christian faith and identity while on a research expedition in Baghdad, in present day Iraq, established an international prayer association that he named, the Badaliya and for which he remained the organizer until his death in 1962.

The fifteen annual letters and ninety-one monthly convocations of the Badaliya are as much invitations to prayer and a consecration of individual lives as they are a witness to the incarnational spirit active and alive in our contemporary world today. These letters read like a diary that follows the events and conflicts of the time but also, due to the genius of Massignon's mystical reading of history, these precious documents reveal fifteen years of a singular spiritual adventure. Framed by an introduction presenting the context and genesis of the prayer movement and completed with a description of the Badaliya today, this book permits the reader to grasp the fruitfulness of the spirit of the Badaliya. No other text has yet permitted us to so deeply penetrate the heart of the spirituality and the struggles of Louis Massignon, who remains, even today, a master for our time.

Finally, this collection by Jerrold Seigel, Between Cultures: Europe and Its Others in Five Exemplary Lives (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 288pp. This book has the merit not just of a chapter on Massignon, but also one about Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish writer courageous enough to call his countrymen to account for the Armenian Genocide.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

Richard Burton. T. E. Lawrence. Louis Massignon. Chinua Achebe. Orhan Pamuk. The remarkable quintet whose stories make up Jerrold Seigel's Between Cultures are all people who, without ever seeking to exit from the ways of life into which they had been born, devoted themselves to exploring a second cultural identity as an intrinsic part of their first. Richard Burton, the British traveler and writer, sought to experience the inner life of Islam by making the pilgrimage to Mecca in the guise of a Muslim in 1853. T. E. Lawrence, famously known as Lawrence of Arabia, recounted his tortuous ties to the Arab uprising against Turkish rule in his celebrated Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Louis Massignon was a great, deeply introspective, and profoundly troubled French Catholic scholar of Islam. Chinua Achebe, the celebrated pioneer of modern African literature, lived and wrote from the intersection of Western culture and traditional African life. Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, explored the attraction and repulsion between East and West in his native Turkey.

Seigel considers these five individuals not only for the intrinsic interest of their stories but also for the depth and breadth of their writing on the challenges of creating an intercultural identity, enabling him to analyze their experiences via historical, psychological, and critical approaches. Fascinating in and of themselves, these lives between cultures also highlight the realities faced by many in this age of high mobility and ever-greater global connection and raise questions about what it means for human beings to belong to cultures.

Philosophy, Theology, and the Search for Unity: An Interview with John P. Manoussakis (Updated)

I have read Jean Claude Larchet over the years, and used to think him a serious scholar, so it is disappointing that he here engages in such jejune criticisms of John Panteleimon Manoussakis and other Orthodox scholars. So I take the opportunity of re-printing here my interview from March 2015 with Manoussakis about his short but powerful and welcome book.

I was of course greatly interested when a new book crossed my desk bearing the title of  For the Unity of All: Contributions to the Theological Dialogue between East and West. I was even more interested in seeing that the author is already someone on whom I had commented previously, viz., John Panteleimon Manoussakis, an archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Church and a professor of philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross. As I noted earlier, Fr. John's previous essay was a wonderfully bracing blast of cool reason in the often overheated world of East-West dialogue. We have more of that in his short but elegantly written and winsomely argued book bearing a foreword from the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. I sent him some questions for an interview, and here are his thoughts.

AD: Tell us a bit about your background

I was born in Athens, Greece and finished my primary education there, including a year of theological studies at the Rizareios seminary. In 1994 I received a scholarship to study theology at Hellenic College, the seminary of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. I was then already a novice in a monastery. So I embarked on my studies and the next year I was tonsured monk and ordained to the diaconate. I completed my bachelor’s degree and continued my graduate studies at Boston College in classics (MA) and philosophy (MA, Ph.D.). My years at Boston College were of the happier sort—the kind of happiness that one intimates in Aristotle’s description of contemplation in the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, for example. It was a life immersed in books and stimulating exchanges and discussions with professors and classmates.

I had the good luck to study under Richard Kearney whose profound knowledge of philosophy, literature, and the arts was only rivaled by his generosity and hospitality, both academically and in his personal life. Under less hospitable circumstances one could imagine a work like God after Metaphysics: A Theological Aesthetic being looked upon with suspicion as crossing the borders between “unadulterated” philosophy and theology. This was never the case at Boston College—on the contrary, I was encouraged to pursue my philosophical interests no matter how far from the philosophical canon they might take me. Such an encouragement was Richard Kearney’s own work (his The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion came out just as I was working as his assistant), Fr. Richardson’s seminars on Heidegger, and Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenological readings of the Church Fathers (Marion was visiting then as the Gadamer chair). The Jesuit community at Boston College provided me with an intellectual home (I recall our endless discussions with Fr. Gary Gurtler for example) that proved equal to the excellent reputation that the Jesuits have as educators, in-forming the whole person (cura personalis). After I completed my doctorate, I was ordained a priest and continued teaching at various positions until I came to Holy Cross.


AD: What led to the writing of this book, For the Unity of All?

As I relate in the Introduction, this book was for me an outstanding debt of sorts, dating back to the theological discussions that I had with my classmates at our junior seminary in Athens. At the time—and I am afraid it might be still the case—there was a deep-rooted fear of all things Latin in the ecclesiastical environment of Greece. It was not unusual to hear teenage students recounting with the seriousness and confidence of a prelate a list of "Latin errors." These were, of course, second-hand positions, received and repeated uncritically (as one might expect) and, more importantly, very useful in solidifying one’s own identity in opposition to the West. A number of my classmates and I began to question these polemical discourses. Some of them, by the way, have moved on to become talented clergyman as, for example, the Grand Archimandrite of the Patriarchal Church at the Ecumenical Patriarchate Fr. Bessarion (we used to joke that his name was given in honor of Cardinal Bessarion who distinguished himself at the Council of Ferrara-Florence).

This interest in ecumenical dialogue, especially with the Catholic Church, was sustained throughout my life and was fostered by a number of occasions and professional engagements. I think that living and working in America—that is, in a country that is, more or less, denominationally neutral—makes it easier to engage in the ecumenical dialogue among Christians and to appreciate the need for such a dialogue. I was thinking recently of the important role that the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America played, and continues to play, in this rapprochement: the great Patriarch Athenagoras, who became the man with the courage to open his arms to the Pope at that historic embrace of 1964 in Jerusalem, had previously served as the Archbishop of America. Similarly, Archbishop Iakovos of America and Athenagoras of Thyatira were instrumental to those first meetings that broke the silence of centuries. The affiliation of all these men with the Orthodox Church in America is not accidental. From the vantage point of a religiously homogeneous country (often with a “national Church”), such as the historically Orthodox countries of Russia and the Balkans, it is difficult to recognize in the face of the fellow Christian, whether Catholic or Protestant, a brother or sister in Christ, without mistaking it for the face of the enemy. So, I credited the last twenty years of studying and serving as clergyman in the United States as formative of the openness that became the presupposition of writing this book.

For the Unity of All: Contributions to the Theological Dialogue between East and West is also a book outside the main line of my research and publications, which are focused on philosophy and, in particularly, phenomenology. Yet, the need to write it was irresistible and, therefore, worth the time that I took away from other projects. I felt that I could not move on with these other projects unless I had first “expectorated” as Kierkegaard would say what I had to say in this book. Writing it was for me an affair with a personal urgency.

AD: As you doubtless know, some people, including in the Church of Greece and atop the Holy Mountain, regard all dialogue with the West as a danger if not a ruse to distract and destroy Orthodoxy (the "pan-heresy of ecumenism"). So tell us how you see the "theological dialogue" mentioned in your subtitle.

I am well aware of the ecumenical phobias and the anti-ecumenism obsession infesting certain corners of the Orthodox world. One could say a lot about them, but very little to them. The dialogue they oppose so vehemently is not the dialogue with other Christian Churches and traditions but rather the dialogue with the Orthodox “ecumenists.” This is an important clarification, I think. The polemics of those “guardians of Orthodoxy” are not directed against western Christians (even if their language seems to suggest so): they are rather aiming at other Orthodox—it is, in short, a civil war going on within the Orthodox Church. Ironically, these very same people who denied any form of dialogue in the name of doctrinal purity are, in effect, cut off from the Orthodox Church, as their fear of becoming “contaminated” by the “pan-heresy of ecumenism” leads them often to extremes, such as refusing to commemorate their bishop or participate in the ecclesial life of their local church. They set up their own “communities”—usually “organized” around on-line sites that feed off and circulate an entirely uncritical delirium, usually coupled with propagation of conspiracy theories. They have therefore to do more with a virtual phenomenon than with a reality. This is expected: orthodoxy for them is not the truth incarnate in the person of Christ, a life lived concretely in Christ’s body, namely, within the Church and in the Eucharist; their “orthodoxy” is merely an ideological position that needs to be defended at all costs and with the same partisan zeal that, by default, remains willfully blind to both life and truth. For me there is no graver heresy than ideology (and every heresy was, historically, an ideology in its own right)—for it constitutes a denial of the incarnation. Every ideological discourse, even when carried in the name of Christianity, is fundamentally un-Christian and anti-Christian.

AD: In his preface, His All-Holiness notes that in the East-West dialogue "differences in methodological...approaches to primacy" still require attention. Tell us how you understand those methodological differences and what your book offers in this regard.

I believe that the Patriarch refers here to the recent attempts to articulate a position on primacy that would be consistent with the ecclesiology and theology of the Orthodox Church. It is important to notice that the Patriarch lists first the methodological and then the theological differences. In the chapter that discusses the issue of primacy in For the Unity of All, I try to show that the perceived theological difference on this topic between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches is rooted, in fact, in a methodological one: that is, that of inconsistency in failing to apply to the third level of the ecclesiological structure the same principles that we follow in determining primacy on the local and eparchial levels. The Orthodox Church has not adequately utilized her theological resources in thinking through the ministry of primacy. This task is being carried on at the moment, both within the Orthodox world and in the joint international commission of the theological dialogue with the Catholic Church. I have documented the progress and the shortcomings of this discussion in my book, so there is no need to repeat them here.

AD: Your chapter on the Theotokos ("Mary's Exception") is a wonderfully cogent, lucid, gracious treatment, clearing the way of difficulties and misunderstandings. But I noted you did not take up the Orthodox objection I have sometimes heard, viz., that there was no need for the West to dogmatize on the conception of the Theotokos as Pope Pius IX famously did in 1854. What are your thoughts on that?

That’s correct—as this objection does not pertain to the matter at hand but rather it questions the necessity of defining Mary’s immaculate status as well as the prerogative of the Pope to do so unilaterally. It is, in fact, more of an objection to the Pope’s role to define and promulgate the doctrine of the Church. However, in the chapter on “Mary’s Exception” I was more interested in the question itself: is Mary without sin? And how are we to understand such a statement in light of the homiletic and liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church? Perhaps the answer to this question would not have been necessary, had it not been often listed as one of the reasons that underline the separation between eastern and western Christianity. But since it has been cited as such in the past, I thought that it deserved to be re-examined under a new light.

AD: I was of course especially interested in your chapter on Petrine Primacy, and I genuinely appreciated your direct but courteous disagreement (fn. 26, p.31) with my proposal (in Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity) for a permanent ecumenical synod, which I was modeling more on the "synodos endemousa" of Constantinople than the idea of a permanent ecumenical council which, following Zizioulas (with whom I agree) is indeed an event rather than an institution. Is there value for a permanent or standing synod around the one who exercises the Petrine primacy so that it does not become unilateral or unbalanced--that the papal "monarchism" of the past does not rear its head again?

That’s a good question. I think that the confusion here might be due to a certain equivocity. There are two different bodies that bear the designation of a synod: the synod of one particular Church, assembled around its primus or prōtos, and the ecumenical synod or council. The latter is indeed an event and not an institution and therefore it cannot be a permanent body. The former, however, is an institution and it is characterized by permanence. The difference is the following: the synod of a Church is comprised by hierarchs of that Church alone: a bishop who does not belong to that local Church cannot participate in it. While the ecumenical synod aspires to the maximum representation of all hierarchs of all local Churches (it is for this reason that no synod in the Orthodox Church has been designated as ecumenical after the separation from Rome). One needs to respect the difference of these two bodies, even though they both are synods of bishops. To create a hybrid third synod that would borrow the regularity of the local synod but also be comprised by hierarchs of other local churches, as in the case of an ecumenical council, is, in my view, problematic. Nevertheless, there is a point of cardinal importance implied in your suggestion which is the need to inscribe primacy within synodality (that is, the primus, even “the universal primus,” is always in reference to a synod) and, conversely, every synod (even the ecumenical synod) is headed by a primus. This principle, however, does not necessitate that the synod of the primus on the universal level be also a permanent synod: for whoever this primus is, he is also the primate who presides over the synod of his local church, and that is a permanent body of ecclesial governance. The risk of monarchism would be accentuated were we to grant to one primate the presiding role of two permanent synods at the same time, one of his local Church, the other of the universal Church.

AD: Having just given a lecture on eschatology and the Byzantine East, I was interested in your treatment of it, especially in a Palamite light and in your chapter on Will and Grace--as well as your earlier treatment of it in the Harvard Theological Review, which was a very illuminating article. In my lecture  at Baylor on eschatology I noted a number of historians of American Christianity (especially its Protestant expressions) who said that in the 19th century preachers talked eschatology easily and frequently in Sunday sermons but would rarely if ever have preached on sex whereas today the situation is reversed: nobody talks judgment and hell, but homiletical treatments of sex are not at all uncommon. What are your thoughts on all this?

I am not sure that this is a fair assessment, given the recent revival of eschatology in every theological tradition. Think of the works on eschatology published in the last few years by Pannenberg, Moltmann, Ratzinger, and Zizioulas (to list only some representative names). On the other hand, the fact that sexuality has become a question for theology might not be unrelated to renewed interests in eschatology. One of the most pertinent concerns in every treatment of eschatology is the fate of the human body: its desires and, by implication, the question of human sexuality. A couple of days ago I was invited to give a lecture on marriage in Helsinki. I found it impossible to develop a proper theology of marriage without reference to eschatology and the role that sex plays in our salvation and condemnation.

AD: What challenges do you see remaining in the East-West theological dialogue? Do you realistically anticipate a resolution of the question of primacy any time soon?

Recent events and the kind of language that I hear generated by various Orthodox Churches has made me quite pessimistic with regards to the immediate future of the theological dialogue. In particular with reference to the question of primacy the greatest challenge is the lack of such primacy at the pan-Orthodox level. Yet, it is rather a secular mentality that demands immediate results, results which somehow we can bring about by our own efforts. The gift of Church unity and the road that leads to it does not depend on us—except in the sense of praying and working for it, remaining vigilant and receptive to God’s grace. The unity of our Churches is His gift and His doing. To oppose it is to oppose Him. Certainly, such resistance to God’s call to unity—the unity of all—is possible but it cannot be victorious. I believe, with St. Augustine, that God’s grace is ultimately irresistible and that, no matter how hardened our hearts, one day we will partake from the same bread and the same chalice at the Lord’s altar.

AD: Having finished this book, what projects are you at work on now?

I will return to my philosophical work. I am finishing a book on the ethics of time called "The Scandal of the Good." It is conceived as a sequel of sorts to the theological aesthetics presented in my God After Metaphysics. Even though I keep promising myself to refrain from writing anything theological, I am afraid that I will be returning to these theological questions from time to time.

Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman Period

Several times in the past I have on here sung the praises of Gorgias Press in their wide-ranging treatment of many aspects of Eastern Christian history, tradition, and theology, including most especially the interactions between various Eastern Christian and Islamic groups. In their newest catalogue, sent to me just yesterday, we see at long last a study that has been promised for some time newly released: Khalid S. Dinno, Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman Period and Beyond: Crisis Then Revival (Gorgias Press, 2017), 526pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Despite the protection afforded to the minorities of the Ottoman Empire through the millet system, Syrian Orthodoxy witnessed weakness and depletion throughout the nineteenth century, caused by significant conversion to Western Christianity, particularly in Syria and in Iraq.

The events following the 1895 violence in southeastern Anatolia became precursors to the genocidal Safyo of 1915, which resulted in the annihilation of nearly half the Syrian Orthodox in Anatolia and brought Syrian Orthodoxy to the verge of extinction. The apathy of the victors of World War I towards the beleaguered survivors contrasted with the welcome the exiled survivors found in the Arab lands to the south, where historical affinity was rekindled.

From the safety of this new environment, Syrian Orthodoxy, led by enlightened individuals, was revitalized, drawing on a venerable Syriac cultural tradition and a patriarchal standing that was characteristically free from social elitism and tribal sectarianism. Utilizing the quest for learning that was widespread in the emerging new nation states, this new leadership, despite meager resources, launched Syrian Orthodoxy on a course of revival and renaissance not witnessed since the days of Bar Hebraeus in the late thirteenth century.

No study, in any language, has covered the history of the Syrian Orthodox Church over the designated period as fully as this current work, which it is hoped will fill a dire gap and break ground in new research. The basis for this study, in addition to published sources, has been approximately 6,000 relevant images that were filtered from a collection of over 24,000 uncatalogued, unedited and unpublished archival documents that were made available to the author.

Towards a Theology of Forgiving and Forgetting (I)

Readers may recall that I spent a good bit of time last summer reflecting on David Rieff's book. His is one of several recent treatments of the power and importance of forgetting--Manuel Cruz being the author of another significant coterminous study reviewed here and some possible applications of it discussed here.

Just before either book appeared, there was a collection of academic articles published under the editorship of Hartmut von Sass and Johannes Zachhuber, Forgiving and Forgetting: Theology and the Margins of Soteriology (Mohr Siebeck, 2015), viii +225pp.

About this collection the publisher tells us:

Forgiveness has traditionally been associated with a duty to remember in order for reconciliation to be possible. Human failure, evil, and atrocities could thus only be forgiven on the basis of a saving memory. Forgetting, by contrast, had to be excluded in the interest of a truthful and genuinely new beginning. Historical experience, it seemed, supported this account. The essays collected in this volume seek to challenge this traditional picture - by elaborating on the notion of forgetting, by reappreciating its constructive or even necessary impact on our lives, by paying heed to the potential obstacles for reconciliation due to an unforgiving remembrance, by clarifying the relationship between remembrance and forgetting, which is not necessarily complementary, and by finding new ways of relating forgiveness to forgetting ultimately leading to the precarious question of whether even God forgets when he forgives. Contributors: Aleida Assmann, Agata Bielik-Robson, Brigitte Boothe, Paul Fiddes, George Pattison, Simon D. Podmore, Hartmut von Sass, Lydia Schumacher, Philipp Stoellger, Bradford Vivian, Johannes Zachhuber.

I will have more to say in the coming days about several of the chapters in this very valuable collection. 

Ottoman Imperial Identities

I have previously commented on several recent histories of the Ottoman Empire in monograph form. Now we have a paperback version of a collection of articles looking at many and varied aspects of Ottoman imperial history: Living in the Ottoman Realm: Empire and Identity, 13th to 20th Centuries, eds. Christine Isom-Verhaaren and Kent F. Schull (Indiana University Press, 2016), 384pp.

About this collection we are told:

Living in the Ottoman Realm brings the Ottoman Empire to life in all of its ethnic, religious, linguistic, and geographic diversity. The contributors explore the development and transformation of identity over the long span of the empire’s existence. They offer engaging accounts of individuals, groups, and communities by drawing on a rich array of primary sources, some available in English translation for the first time. These materials are examined with new methodological approaches to gain a deeper understanding of what it meant to be Ottoman. Designed for use as a course text, each chapter includes study questions and suggestions for further reading.

We are also given the table of contents:

Introduction: Dealing with Identity in the Ottoman Empire / Christine Isom-Verhaaren and Kent F. Schull

Part I. 13th-15th Centuries. Emergence and Expansion: From Frontier Beylik to Cosmopolitan Empire
1. The Giving Divide: Food Gifts and Social Identity in Late Medieval Anatolia /Nicolas Trépanier
2. Changing Perceptions along the Frontiers: The Moving Frontier with Rum in the Late Medieval Anatolian Frontier Narratives / Zeynep Aydoğan
3. The Genoese of Pera in the Fifteenth Century: The Case of the Draperio and Spinola Families / F. Ozden Mercan
4. From Byzantine Aristocracy to Ottoman Ruling Elite: Mahmud Pasha Angelović and his Christian Circle, 1458-1474 / Theoharis Stavrides
5. Neşri’s Cihannüma, an Early Ottoman History Book and the Politics of Ottoman Identity / Murat Cem Mengüç
6. A Shaykh, a Prince and a Sack of Corn: An Anatolian Sufi Becomes Ottoman / Hasan Karatas

Part II. 15-17th Centuries. Expansion and Cultural Splendor: The Creation of a Sunni Islamic Empire
7. Ibn-i Kemal’s Confessionalism and the Construction of an "Ottoman" Islam / Nabil al-Tikriti
8. Becoming Ottoman in Sixteenth-century Aintab / Leslie Peirce
9. Making Jerusalem Ottoman / Amy Singer
10. Ibrahim b. Khidr al-Qaramani: A Merchant and Urban Notable of Early Ottoman Aleppo / Charles Wilkins
11. Mihrimah Sultan: A Princess Constructs Ottoman Dynastic Identity / Christine Isom-Verhaaren

Part III. 17th-18th Centuries. Upheaval and Transformation: From Conquest to Administrative State
12. The Sultan’s Advisors and their Opinions on the Identity of the Real Ottoman Elite, 1580-1653 / Linda T. Darling
13. Fleeing "The Vomit of Infidelity": Borders, Conversion, and Muslim Women’s Agency in the Early Modern Mediterranean / Eric Dursteller
14. Policing Morality: Crossing Gender Communal Boundaries in an Age of Political Crisis and Religious Controversy in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul / Fariba Zarinebaf
15. Leaving France, "Turning Turk," Becoming Ottoman: The Transformation of Comte Claude-Alexandre de Bonneval into Humbaraci Ahmed Pasha / Julia Landweber
16. Out of Africa, into the Palace: The Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch / Jane Hathaway
17. The Province Goes to the Center: The Case of Hadjiyorgakis Kornesios, Dragoman
of Cyprus / Antonis Hadjikyriacou

Part IV. 19th-20th Centuries. Modernity, Mass Politics, and Nationalism: From Empire to Nation-state
18. Ruler Visibility, Modernity, and Ethno-nationalism in the Late Ottoman Empire / Darin Stephanov
19. Muslims’ Contribution to Science and Ottoman Identity / M. Alper Yalçinkaya
20. Migrants, Revolutionaries, and Spies: Surveillance, Politics, and Ottoman Identity in the United States / David Gutman
21. Ottomanism among the Greek Orthodox at the End of Empire: The Multiple Loyalties of Pavlos Carolidis / Vangelis Kechriotis
22. Zionism in the Era of Ottoman Brotherhood / Michelle U. Campos

Chryssavgis on Climacus

Released this year is a Kindle edition of a book first published more than a decade ago by the well-known Greek Orthodox scholar John Chryssavgis: John Climacus: From the Egyptian Desert to the Sinaite Mountain (Routledge, 2017).

About this book we are told:

John Chryssavgis explores the ascetic teaching and theology of St John Climacus, a classical and formative writer of the Christian medieval East, and the author of the seventh-century Ladder of Divine Ascent. This text proved to be the most widely used handbook of the spiritual life in the Christian East, partly because of its unique and striking symbol of the ladder that binds together the whole book. It has caught the attention of numerous readers in East and West alike through the ages and is a veritable classic of medieval spirituality, whose popularity in the East equals that of The Imitation of Christ in the West. Chryssavgis follows the development and influence of earlier desert literature, from Egypt through Palestine into Sinai, and includes a discussion of the theology of tears, the concept of unceasing prayer, as well as the monastic principles of hesychia (silence) and eros (love).

Turkish Denials of Armenian Slaughters

The reviews I have read so far of The Promise, which opened in theatres on Friday, have been rather ambivalent, most of them noting that the movie subsumes treatment of the Armenian Genocide into a love story, and so blunts the force of the film.

Nevertheless, to the extent that it reawakens focus on the genocide, it is to be welcomed. That genocide has been fairly widely studied in the late 20th century. For some of the many books treating the genocide discussed or noted on here, go here.

In addition, see two recent studies, including Mass Media and the Genocide of the Armenians: One Hundred Years of Uncertain Representation, a scholarly collection of articles edited by Stefanie Kappler et al. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 241pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The role of the mass media in genocide is multifaceted with respect to the disclosure and flow of information. This volume investigates questions of responsibility, denial, victimisation and marginalisation through an analysis of the media representations of the Armenian genocide in different national contexts.

In addition, because no historical scholarship is done in a vacuum, and no historical memories are even remembered, let alone analyzed, except in a political context of some sort--which context then, as I have been showing on here the past few years in discussions of, e.g., Vamik Volkan's work and the uses and abuses of the Crusades by ISIS, shapes what is recalled and what forgotten--
this second collection merits some attention, too, for it shows scholars in situ, examining how their own disciplines have treated the genocide--or failed to treat it, as has often happened: The Armenian Genocide Legacy by Alexis Demirdjian (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

About this collection the publisher tells us:

This volume focuses on the impact of the Armenian Genocide on different academic disciplines at the crossroads of the centennial commemorations of the Genocide. Its interdisciplinary nature offers the opportunity to analyze the Genocide from different angles using the lens of several fields of study.

On Failing to Understand and Appreciate Marx and Freud

I have a long review essay coming out at Catholic World Report discussing Alasdair MacIntyre's latest book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative. (A clear understanding of MacIntyre is more important than ever thanks to his having been traduced by a certain blogger hawking dégonflé tracts to fund his oyster habit while prattling fatuously about asceticism.) It is an extraordinary book for a man fast closing in on 90, showing that he has lost none of his formidable powers of synthesis and reason.

I will not repeat here what I shall say there, but let me at least note a few other things about that book and in particular two of the controversial "masters of suspicion" it treats, viz., Freud and Marx.

This latest book of MacIntyre's is in some ways a return to some of his earliest writings about Marx, as captured in, e.g., Marxism and Christianity. That title was a re-working of his earlier Marxism: An Interpretation, which is very hard to come by now.

Helpfully, however, many of MacIntyre's most recondite writings about Marx have been reprinted in a collection that got almost no attention, but without which Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity will be much harder for readers to comprehend: Alasdair MacIntyre's Engagement with Marxism: Selected Writings, 1953-1974, edited by Paul Blackledge.

That collection contains riches beyond counting. Part of its value comes from the fascinating glimpses it gives one into postwar British politics of the left, of socialist and Marxist parties and debates in which MacIntyre was heavily and intimately involved for some time before coming gradually to find himself estranged by and from those groups both politically and philosophically.

This new book is also a return to Freud, about whom MacIntyre published his first book in the 1950s when he was still in his 20s and a newly minted lecturer looking at the philosophy of psychology and of Freudian psychoanalysis in particular. That book, The Unconscious: A Conceptual Analysis was reprinted in 2004. In both this first book of his, and now his latest, MacIntyre does not hesitate to recognize both the problems of certain strands of psychoanalytic thought, but also the "greatness" of Freud.

What makes Freud useful for MacIntyre is his unparalleled insight into the nature of our desires, and how we fail to be good reasoners when our desires go astray or are corrupted by unconscious trauma; and what makes Marx still so important and useful is that he continues to offer those willing to listen a very powerful critique of how capitalism subtly exploits and fuels those desires Freud recognized.

It is, alas, a staple of too much cheap and grubby Christian apologetics for a century and more now to run down Freud and Marx alike without ever having seriously read either man in the original (or a scholarly translation) and to treat both as the greatest threat ever faced by Christianity. I count myself fortunate to have been introduced, as an undergraduate in psychology in Ottawa in the early 1990s, to the original writings of both Freud and Jung (and others in that first generation around Vienna) in several classes, including especially a class on psychoanalysis and religion taught by a professor who was himself a Christian and not threatened by what psychoanalysis had to offer.

That education allowed me not to assume "straightforward antagonism" between Freud and Christianity--whereas, MacIntyre says, such antagonism is too often assumed by too many Christians with regard to both Freud (and Marx). I have myself, in a very modest way, been trying on here (and elsewhere earlier in my life) to suggest certain areas where psychoanalytic thought and theology are simpatico as seen, e.g., in the work of the contemporary analyst Adam Phillips, who, like MacIntyre, comes out of the British left. In Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, in fact, MacIntyre confesses a debt to Phillips and the latter's biography of D.W. Winnicott, the pioneering English psychoanalyst who did so much to help us understand the mother-child relationship.

Those assuming Freudian-Marxist antagonism do a deep disservice not just to them both but also to Christianity, which has a great deal in common with both men and some (not all) of their ideas, and could be strengthened by a closer alliance with them. Alas, too many people are unwilling to hear this, let alone entertain such an alliance, and usually for one of two reasons: either because they rely on fourth-hand hearsay about what Marx and Freud actually said--a treatment that invariably turns either man into a comic-opera grotesque--or because they fail to appreciate the force of the maxim abusus non tollit usum.

Merely because Marxist thought was abused by and in "Kruschev Enterprises Inc." (one of MacIntyre's several sarcastic names for the Soviet Union) is no reason to write him off; that applies equally to Freud and whatever uses and abuses have been committed in his name. In his refusal to write either man off, and in his willingness, now in his late 80s, to confess that we still need to learn much from Freud and Marx (especially the Marx of the 1840s and his Theses on Feuerbach), MacIntyre is a superlative example of a consummate Catholic thinker who finds good wherever he can, regardless of its provenance and without regard for the fashionable prejudices that have been wreathed about either man for far too long thanks to the "spiritual-industrial complex."

Some of my students next fall will be looking critically at that spiritual-industrial complex and how deeply corrosive and corrupting it is of Christianity from within. And perhaps the weakest point of entry for the kind of commodification of Christianity that Marx foresaw is in the realm we label "spirituality," a term which drips with a repulsive bourgeois self-regard masking little more than straight-up narcissism the perfect companion to which, of course, is the purchase of this book or that program or some other commodity (a "Benedict option," say). In this task we will be aided by reading, inter alia, Vincent Miller's welcome and important book, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, which I commend to your attention.

Russian Orthodox Just War Theories

It has long been alleged, with some justice, that the Orthodox tradition has not developed its own social teaching to the same extent that the Catholic West has; this includes questions of just war. Some within the East--e.g., Alexander Webster--have said that the Eastern tradition is, or should be understood as, pacifist, though Webster himself, more recently, has recognized that the East is not unequivocal on this question.

A forthcoming historical study will shed more light on how the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian, has developed its own understanding of war.

This summer, Bloomsbury Academic will release Betsy Perabo, Russian Orthodoxy and the Russo-Japanese War (2017), 240pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

How should Christians think about the relationship between the exercise of military power and the spread of Christianity? In Russian Orthodoxy and the Russo-Japanese War, Betsy Perabo looks at the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 through the unique concept of an 'interreligious war' between Christian and Buddhist nations, focusing on the figure of Nikolai of Japan, the Russian leader of the Orthodox Church in Japan.

Drawing extensively on Nikolai's writings alongside other Russian-language sources, the book provides a window into the diverse Orthodox Christian perspectives on the Russo-Japanese War – from the officials who saw the war as a crusade for Christian domination of Asia to Nikolai, who remained with his congregation in Tokyo during the war. Writings by Russian soldiers, field chaplains, military psychologists, and leaders in the missionary community contribute to a rich portrait of a Christian nation at war.

By grounding its discussion of 'interreligious war' in the historical example of the Russo-Japanese War, and by looking at the war using the sympathetic and compelling figure of Nikolai of Japan, this book provides a unique perspective which will be of value to students and scholars of both Russian history, the history of war and religion and religious ethics.

Spiritual and Artistic Askesis

Given the ongoing iconoclastic crisis in the Latin Church, which has shown few signs of abating over the last half-century at least, it should not surprise us that the West is not only alienated from an incarnational understanding of imagery in keeping with Nicaea II, but also unaware of the fact that the very process of making icons is itself a spiritual process. Those who have produced images know that it is no mere "mechanical" or "technical" undertaking, though technical skill is of course essential. It is also a process of prayer, fasting, and contemplation.

Thus this latest book, though welcome, has, once again, the feel of the West having to "rediscover" something that was never really lost in the East: Sense and Spirituality: The Arts and Spiritual Formation (Cascade, 2015), 146pp. by James McCullough.

About this book the publisher tells us:

There is growing interest in the relationship between the arts and Christian faith. Much has been written about the arts and theology and the place of the arts in church life. Not as much has been written, however, about how the arts might actually advance spiritual formation in terms of the cumulative effect of religious experience and intentional practices. This book provides a modest step forward in that conversation, a conversation between theological aesthetics and practical theology. Understanding aesthetics as "the realm of sense perception" and spiritual formation as "growing capacities to participate in God's purposes" James McCullough suggests how these dynamics can mutually enhance each other, with the arts as an effective catalyst for this relationship. McCullough proposes an analysis of artistic communication and explores exciting examples from music, poetry, and painting, which render theoretical proposals in concrete terms. This book will engage both those new to the arts and those already deeply familiar with them.

The Capital of the World

As I noted on here earlier this year, we have seen several recent studies of the great capital of the East-Roman Empire, and in February of this year a second edition was released of  Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium (Bloomsbury, 2017), 304pp. by Jonathan Harris. Harris is also the author, inter alia, of a study of the Byzantine Empire to which I drew your attention here, and of a study on Byzantium and the Crusades.

About this newest book of his the publisher tells us:

Jonathan Harris' new edition of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, Constantinople, provides an updated and extended introduction to the history of Byzantium and its capital city. Accessible and engaging, the book breaks new ground by exploring Constantinople's mystical dimensions and examining the relationship between the spiritual and political in the city.

This second edition includes a range of new material, such as:

* Historiographical updates reflecting recently published work in the field
* Detailed coverage of archaeological developments relating to Byzantine Constantinople
* Extra chapters on the 14th century and social 'outsiders' in the city
* More on the city as a centre of learning; the development of Galata/Pera; charitable hospitals; religious processions and festivals; the lives of ordinary people; and the Crusades
* Source translation textboxes, new maps and images, a timeline and a list of emperors

Married Catholic Priests

D.P. Sullins has written an important book that deserves careful attention amidst semi-regular papal chatter about possible relaxation of the celibacy requirement for presbyteral ordination in the Latin Church. In Keeping the Vow: the Untold Story of Married Catholic Priests (Oxford UP, 2016), 336pp., Sullins, himself both a married priest and a sociologist teaching at Catholic University of America, has given us a usefully detailed picture of a very select group of men in one country, the USA. Those interested in clerical life, those interested in the marriage-vs-celibacy debate, and those interested in the sociology of the Catholic Church will all find much that is informative in this welcome and tightly written book.

Sullins looks at the advent of married priests in the US from the early 1980s to the present, beginning with the Pastoral Provision, which allowed married Episcopalian clergy entering the Catholic Church the possibility of being ordained as Catholic priests notwithstanding their being married and having families.

As a sociologist, he has studied this group in some detail, and amassed in this book, in a number of tables and figures, the fruits of his research and statistical calculations. Via surveys and interviews, we learn much about the background of these married priests and their wives--education, formation, length of marriage, and location. Strikingly, the largest number of these men is to be found in just one state: Texas.

Sullins has also surveyed these men carefully on a number of controverted doctrinal issues, and all down the line these men are, compared to a comparable group of celibate Latin priests, much more "conservative" or "traditional" when it comes to such things as abortion, contraception, assisted suicide, etc. (Interestingly, however, their wives do not tend to be quite as conservative.)

He has also surveyed bishops to see what they know about these priests, about the Pastoral Provision, and now the Anglican ordinariates, asking them also about their support for married clergy and their views on celibacy.

Sullins has also usefully dispensed with some of the myths that are sometimes circulated to warn people off a married priesthood, especially the myth that it will cost dramatically more. By carefully crunching the numbers, he demonstrates that the average remuneration for a married man would only be slightly more than that of a celibate guy.

Sullins also sheds welcome light on other areas, noting that on average married priests perdure in the priesthood longer than their celibate counterparts, and have much higher levels of job satisfaction. At the same time, however, and most counter-intuitively, they tend to be lonelier than their celibate colleagues precisely because the married men have so few colleagues who can relate to them. Most of these men, entering a diocese, do so among a diocesan presbyterate that has, Sullins shows, its own internal groupings--the relative liberals, the arch-conservatives, those with certain interests or hobbies, etc. Married men find it hard to break into these pre-existing groups, and while their celibate colleagues are as a whole welcoming and friendly, they are also distant. So married clergy find developing friendships a challenge.

Only in a couple of places does he briefly mention married Eastern Catholic priests, a topic he does not seriously treat, and usually stumbles when doing so. Thus, e.g., he says that the Eastern Catholics driven out of the Catholic Church over married priests formed "today's Greek Orthodox Church in the United States" (175). It was actually the OCA that they largely formed, and the Orthodox Church of America has in fact canonized the formerly Catholic married priest, Alexis Toth, who led an exodus of Eastern Catholics into Orthodoxy thanks in part to the stupidity and intransigence of such as John Ireland. My friend D.O. Herbel gives the fullest, fairest account of all this in the first chapter of his splendid and vital study, Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox.

A little earlier he implies (p.151) that the old rule prohibiting Eastern Catholics from ordaining married men in the United States is still in effect, but it is not.

These need not concern us insofoar as I am myself hoping finally to have movement from the publisher on my own book about married Catholic priests, which features a great deal of history and canon law around Eastern Catholics in North America, as well as chapters from married priests today, including several in the Anglican Ordinariates in England and the US.

In addition to not paying much attention to Eastern Catholic priests who are married--which, I must stress, is not a fault at all insofar as this book was clearly written to focus on another group, and so this is decidedly not a criticism, just an observation--there is one group I rather expected would be attended to more than they are: the phenomenon of the several Anglican Ordinariates.  But the book seems largely to have been centred on, and perhaps even written before, the advent of Anglican Ordinariates in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Sullins alludes to them a couple of times, but that is all.

Again, though, what he has given us is a rich, important study that fills a significant gap. Keeping the Vow: The Untold Story of Married Catholic Priests does indeed tell an untold story, and tells it extremely well. We are in Sullins' debt for this fine book.

Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis

Just released this month is a new collection from two editors who have collaborated in the past on another significant collection (noted here): Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis, edited by Andrii Krawchuk and Thomas Bremer (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 225pp.

The role of the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, and other religious groups in Ukraine during first the Maidan and then the Russian invasion has been extremely significant, and a sign of not just ecumenical co-operation and mutual suffering, but also a sign of hope for the development of civil society in Ukraine. Scholars have been paying increasing attention to these developments in a number of articles in various journals, and now in collection such as this.

About this collection we are told by the publisher:

This volume explores the churches of Ukraine and their involvement in the recent movement for social justice and dignity within the country. In November of 2013, citizens of Ukraine gathered on Kyiv's central square (Maidan) to protest against a government that had reneged on its promise to sign a trade agreement with Europe. The Euromaidan protest included members of various Christian churches in Ukraine, who stood together and demanded government accountability and closer ties with Europe. In response, state forces massacred over one hundred unarmed civilians. The atrocity precipitated a rapid sequence of events: the president fled the country, a provisional government was put in place, and Russia annexed Crimea and intervened militarily in eastern Ukraine. An examination of Ukrainian churches’ involvement in this protest and the fall-out that it inspired opens up other questions and discussions about the churches’ identity and role in the country’s culture and its social and political history. Volume contributors examine Ukrainian churches’ historical development and singularity; their quest for autonomy; their active involvement in identity formation; their interpretations of the war and its causes; and the paths they have charted toward peace and unity.

Early Christian Family Life

The University of California Press, which regularly publishes new works in early Christian history, many of which have been noted on here over the years, has recently sent me a new collection of articles edited by Catherine Chin and Caroline Schroeder: Melania: Early Christianity through the Life of One Family (2016), 344pp.

Containing articles by well-known and respected scholars of the Christian East and of antiquity (e.g., Robin Darling Young, Stephen Shoemaker), this volume has articles grouped under thematic headings: aristocracy, body and family, gender and memory, wisdom and heresy, holy places, and "modernities."

About this book the publisher tells us:

Melania the Elder and her granddaughter Melania the Younger were major figures in early Christian history, using their wealth, status, and forceful personalities to shape the development of nearly every aspect of the religion we now know as Christianity. This volume examines their influence on late antique  Christianity and provides an insightful portrait of their legacies in the modern world. Departing from the traditionally patriarchal view, Melania gives a poignant and sometimes surprising account of how the rise of Christian institutions in the Roman Empire shaped our understanding of women’s roles in the larger world.

Doctrine and Dissent in Late Antiquity

Ten years ago now, in an early book to advance the recognition that papal relations to the Christian East are much more complicated than apologists and polemicists on either side have recognized, Andrew Ekonomou, in Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes: Eastern Influences on Rome and the Papacy from Gregory the Great to Zacharias, A.D. 590-752 drew our attention to prominent Byzantine figures working closely with popes of Rome to combat, e.g., monotheletism.

Since then, other authors, including George Demacopolous and Susan Wessel inter alia, have also helped us appreciate the complexity of papal relations both in the Western Church and between her and the East.

Later this year, a forthcoming paperback version of a book first published in 2013 from the University of California Press will advance and further explore this terrain, focusing on three important ascetic-monastic figures well known in the East: Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity (2017), 416 pages.

As the publisher tells us:

This book focuses on the attempts of three ascetics—John Moschus, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and Maximus Confessor—to determine the Church’s power and place during a period of profound crisis, as the eastern Roman empire suffered serious reversals in the face of Persian and then Islamic expansion. By asserting visions which reconciled long-standing intellectual tensions between asceticism and Church, these authors established the framework for their subsequent emergence as Constantinople's most vociferous religious critics, their alliance with the Roman popes, and their radical rejection of imperial interference in matters of the faith. Situated within the broader religious currents of the fourth to seventh centuries, this book throws new light on the nature not only of the holy man in late antiquity, but also of the Byzantine Orthodoxy that would emerge in the Middle Ages, and which is still central to the churches of Greece and Eastern Europe.

We are also given the table of contents:

Preface
Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Toward the Sacramental Saint
Ascetics and the Eucharist before Chalcedon
Cyril of Scythopolis and the Second Origenist Crisis
Mystics and Liturgists
Hagiography and the Eucharist after Chalcedon

2. Sophronius and the Miracles
Impresario of the Saints
Medicine and Miracle
Narratives of Redemption
The Miracles in Comparative Perspective

3. Moschus and the Meadow
The Fall of Jerusalem
Moschus from Alexandria to Rome
Ascetics and the City
Chalcedon and the Eucharist

4. Maximus and the Mystagogy
Maximus, Monk of Palestine
The Return of the Cross
The Mystagogy

5. The Making of the Monenergist Crisis
The Origins of Monenergism
The Heraclian Unions
Sophronius the Dissident

6. Jerusalem and Rome at the Dawn of the Caliphate
Sophronius the Patriarch
Jerusalem from Roman to Islamic Rule
The Year of the Four Emperors
From Operations to Wills
Maximus and the Popes

7. Rebellion and Retribution
Maximus from Africa to Rome
The Roman-Palestinian Alliance
Rebellion and Trial
Maximus in Exile

Conclusion
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index

A Festschrift for Theofanis Stavrou

Just released is a wide-ranging and very hefty Festschrift for a Greek-American scholar: Thresholds Into The Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays In Honor Of Theofanis G. Stavrou, ed., Lucien J. Frary (Slavica Publications, 2017), 687pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This volume is a tribute to Theofanis G. Stavrou, Professor of Russian and Near Eastern History and Director of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Minnesota. A generous and penetrating scholar, as well as an award-winning teacher and mentor, Professor Stavrou is well known for his infectious enthusiasm for collaborative scholarship and wide-ranging expertise in Russian history and culture, Eastern Orthodox Church history, Modern Greek literature, and other fields. The forty-four contributors to this collection are a diverse group of mainly senior American scholars who have published erudite monographs related to the fields of Slavic, European, Mediterranean, and Eastern Orthodox studies.

Professor Stavrou has been a veritable institution in the United States for more than forty years. His works are cited broadly and his research has more often been confirmed than challenged over his career—something others could only wish for themselves. Professor Stavrou has also been the academic advisor of several generations of scholars in North America and Europe, and his ideas have influenced even young scholars who were not ever formally his students. His generosity and breadth of knowledge has been and continues to be tapped by scholars around the world, yet he remains modest about his own accomplishments and place in the field(s) he has pursued. Despite that modesty, this volume convincingly demonstrates that no one has earned the honor of a Festschrift more than he has.

The publisher has provided us with a PDF of the table of contents here.

I've met the editor a couple of times at ASEC conferences over the years, and he's always been a very witty and interesting lecturer about Russian-Greek connections, especially in the 19th century, which he has covered in such collections as Russian-Ottoman Borderlands: The Eastern Question Reconsidered, a collection edited with Mara Kozelsky.

He himself wrote the 2014 book from Oxford University Press, Russia and the Making of Modern Greek Identity, 1821-1844.