The Fourth Council of Constantinople and its Acts

I have previously and regularly hailed the efforts of Liverpool University Press to bring out volumes in their series Translated Texts for Historians. The beginning of May of this year will give us another: The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 869-70, trans. Richard Price and Federico Montinaro (LUP, 2022), 520pp.

Readers with better memories than mine will recall, as I seem vaguely to do, that the late John Meyendorff once pleaded with Christians, Catholics especially, to bring this council in from the cold and see it as an important tool to resolving the impasse over papal primacy. I'm sure Meyendorff's views are cited at greatly revealing length in this loser's book.

Anyway, about this new translation we are told this:

The Council of Constantinople of 869-70 was highly dramatic, with its trial and condemnation of Patriarch Photius, a towering figure in the Byzantium of his day, and the tussle of wills at the council between the papal legates, the imperial representatives and the bishops. It was church politics and personalities rather than issues of doctrine, such as icon veneration, that dominated the debates. Out of all the acts of the great early councils, the acts of this council, of which this edition is the first modern translation, are the nearest to an accurate and complete record. Its protest against secular interference in ecclesiastical elections was taken up later in the West and led to this council's being accorded full ecumenical status, although it had been repudiated in Byzantium soon after it was held. No early council expresses so vividly the tension between Rome's claim to supreme authority and the Byzantine reduction of this to a primacy of honour.

How Far East Do You Think the Christian East Goes?

In the hands of some, "the Christian East" and cognate phrases is often used to refer to what later generations might know as "Byzantium." Relatively few, however, remember that at one point Eastern Christianity lived the fullness of that term, stretching all across the easternmost reaches of Asia, and not just as a result of some Jesuit or other having got into China in the post-Reformation period. The Syriac expansion into East Asia in the first millennium is well known to specialists, but probably few others.

A new book out in April will correct that, reminding us of The Luminous Way to the East: Texts and History of the First Encounter of Christianity with China by Matteo Nicolini-Zani (Oxford UP/AAR, 2022), 424pp. 

This book, the publisher tells us,

offers a comprehensive survey of the historical, literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of the first stage of the Christian mission to China. It explores the complex and multifaceted process of the interaction with the different cultural and religious milieux that the Church of the East experienced in its diffusion throughout Central Asia and into China during the first millennium.

Matteo Nicolini-Zani provides an overview of the Christian presence in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907) by reconstructing the composition and organization of Christian communities, the geographical location of Christian monasteries, and the related historical events attested by the sources. Through a new and richly annotated English translation of the Chinese Christian texts produced in Tang China, the volume provides a documented look at what was the earliest, and perhaps the most extraordinary, encounter of Christianity with Chinese culture and religions (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism). It shows how East Syriac Christianity in its eastward expansion along the Silk Road from Persia to China was open to the adoption of other languages and imagery and was able to enculturate the Christian teaching into new cultural and religious forms without losing its identity.

The Oxford Handbook on Origen

I noted on here only last week a new book about Origen, in whom interest has remained very high this century. In April of this year, Oxford University Press will bring out another of their justly celebrated handbooks: The Oxford Handbook of Origen, eds. Ronald E. Heine and Karen Jo Torjesen (OUP, April 2022, 624pp). 

About this forthcoming scholarly collection, the publisher tells us this:

This interrogation of Origen's legacy for the 21st Century returns to old questions built upon each other over eighteen centuries of Origen scholarship-problems of translation and transmission, positioning Origen in the histories of philosophy, theology, and orthodoxy, and defining his philological and exegetical programmes. The essays probe the more reliable sources for Origen's thought by those who received his legacy and built on it. They focus on understanding how Origen's legacy was adopted, transformed and transmitted looking at key figures from the fourth century through the Reformation. A section on modern contributions to the understanding of Origen embraces the foundational contributions of Huet, the twentieth century movement to rehabilitate Origen from his status as a heterodox teacher, and finally, the identification in 2012 of twenty-nine anonymous homilies on the Psalms in a codex in Munich as homilies of Origen.

Equally important has been the investigation of Origen's historical, cultural, and intellectual context. These studies track the processes of appropriation, assimilation and transformation in the formation and transmission of Origen's legacy. Origen worked at interpreting Scripture throughout his life. There are essays addressing general issues of hermeneutics and his treatment of groups of books from the Biblical canon in commentaries and homilies. Key points of his theology are also addressed in essays that give attention to the fluid environment in which Origen developed his theology. These essays open important paths for students of Origen in the 21st century.

Imitations of Gregory of Nyssa's Desires

I am just old enough to remember when it seemed suddenly one day people in theology (at least in Canada) woke up and "discovered" René Girard. I wrote a bit about that, and my own discovery, here. 

More recently, I read Cynthia Haven's intellectual biography of Girard, Evolution of Desire. It is a fascinating read that I must go back to someday. 

Along comes a new book to continue the discussion of mimesis and desire in a theological context, and this one looks exceptionally interesting: Imitations of Infinity: Gregory of Nyssa and the Transformation of Mimesis by Michael Motia  (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), 326pp. About this book the publisher tells us this:

We do not have many definitions of Christianity from late antiquity, but among the few extant is the brief statement of Gregory of Nyssa (335-395 CE) that it is "mimesis of the divine nature." The sentence is both a historical gem and theologically puzzling. Gregory was the first Christian to make the infinity of God central to his theological program, but how could he intend for humans to imitate the infinite? If the aim of the Christian life is "never to stop growing towards what is better and never to place any limit on perfection," how could mimesis function within this endless pursuit?

In Imitations of Infinity, Michael Motia situates Gregory among Platonist philosophers, rhetorical teachers, and early Christian leaders to demonstrate how much of late ancient life was governed by notions of imitation. Questions both intimate and immense, of education, childcare, or cosmology, all found form in a relationship of archetype and image. It is no wonder that these debates demanded the attention of people at every level of the Roman Empire, including the Christians looking to form new social habits and norms. Whatever else the late ancient transformation of the empire affected, it changed the names, spaces, and characters that filled the imagination and common sense of its citizens, and it changed how they thought of their imitations.

Like religion, imitation was a way to organize the world and a way to reach toward new possibilities, Motia argues, and two earlier conceptions of mimesis—one centering on ontological participation, the other on aesthetic representation—merged in late antiquity. As philosophers and religious leaders pondered how linking oneself to reality depended on practices of representation, their theoretical debates accompanied practical concerns about what kinds of objects would best guide practitioners toward the divine. Motia places Gregory within a broader landscape of figures who retheorized the role of mimesis in search of perfection. No longer was imitation a marker of inauthenticity or immaturity. Mimesis became a way of life.

On the Origins of Origen

It remains forever fascinating to me to see how much interest in and controversy over Origen of Alexandria one still finds today. As I have noted on here for well over a decade, books about him appear in substantial numbers every year or so, and 2022 promises to be no different with the forthcoming publication of Cross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria by Mark E. Therrien (Catholic University of America Press, May 2022), 320pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Even though the theology of Origen of Alexandria has shaped the Christian Tradition in almost every way, the controversies over his legacy have been seemingly endless. One major interpretative trend, for example, has suggested Origen's theology is really akin to the heterodox Gnostics against whom he wrote than the actual teaching of the Gospel, since he (supposedly) had a disdainful attitude towards Creation and ultimately saw little redemptive meaning in the Passion.

In Cross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria, Mark Therrien offers an original interpretation of Origen's theology. Focusing on some of Origen's most important works (especially On First Principles and the Commentary on John, but ultimately making reference to his writings more broadly), this book retrieves and examines some of the foundational pillars of Origen's theology through close readings and re-examinations of those texts. It examines eight of these theological foundations: God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the end, the soul, the world, the cross, and deification. Moreover, by showing the connections between Origen's understanding of these foundational pillars, it also shows the coherence of his theology as a whole. Taken collectively, what emerges from these eight chapters is that two doctrines specially shape Origen's theology: Cross and Creation. As Therrien shows, Origen did not hold contempt for Creation. Rather, Origen thinks that Creation emerges from the very life of God as eternally foreknown and provided for in the person of Christ, the Wisdom of God the Father. Moreover, he also holds that, though fallen, Creation will be restored according to its original, eternal intention in God precisely through the Passion of Jesus Christ on the Cross. The Cross is thus not minimalized in Origen's theology; it is rather its very center.

Greek Nationalism and European Revolution

Nationalism has long been a besetting problem within Eastern Christianity and attracts regular critical attention today, but it has roots that go back to the aftermath of the French Revolution and the revolutionary period in Europe from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. This is perhaps most clearly seen in Greece, about which we have a new book:The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe Hardcover by Mark Mazower  (Penguin, November 2021), 608pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

From one of our leading historians, an important new history of the Greek War of Independence—the ultimate worldwide liberal cause célèbre of the age of Byron, Europe’s first nationalist uprising, and the beginning of the downward spiral of the Ottoman Empire—published two hundred years after its outbreak

As Mark Mazower shows us in his enthralling and definitive new account, myths about the Greek War of Independence outpaced the facts from the very beginning, and for good reason. This was an unlikely cause, against long odds, a disorganized collection of Greek patriots up against what was still one of the most storied empires in the world, the Ottomans. The revolutionaries needed all the help they could get. And they got it as Europeans and Americans embraced the idea that the heirs to ancient Greece, the wellspring of Western civilization, were fighting for their freedom against the proverbial Eastern despot, the Turkish sultan. This was Christianity versus Islam, now given urgency by new ideas about the nation-state and democracy that were shaking up the old order. Lord Byron is only the most famous of the combatants who went to Greece to fight and die—along with many more who followed events passionately and supported the cause through art, music, and humanitarian aid. To many who did go, it was a rude awakening to find that the Greeks were a far cry from their illustrious forebears, and were often hard to tell apart from the Ottomans.

Mazower does full justice to the realities on the ground as a revolutionary conspiracy triggered outright rebellion, and a fraying and distracted Ottoman leadership first missed the plot and then overreacted disastrously. He shows how and why ethnic cleansing commenced almost immediately on both sides. By the time the dust settled, Greece was free, and Europe was changed forever. It was a victory for a completely new kind of politics—international in its range and affiliations, popular in its origins, romantic in sentiment, and radical in its goals. It was here on the very edge of Europe that the first successful revolution took place in which a people claimed liberty for themselves and overthrew an entire empire to attain it, transforming diplomatic norms and the direction of European politics forever, and inaugurating a new world of nation-states, the world in which we still live.

Religion in Turkey Today

The role of Islam in Turkey has been changing since the turn of this century, after having changed a lot at the turn of the previous century, especially in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. A recent book helps us understand these recent changes: Kim Shivley, Islam in Modern Turkey (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), 256pp.

This book, the publisher tells us,

• Investigates the social and political forces that have shaped Islamic practices in Turkey, from 1923 to now
• Covers a different topic in each chapter: the Kemalist revolution, Sunni Islam, the Alevi minority, Sufi communities, political parties, religious education, and the contemporary period
• Explores issues that have shaped public debates about the role of religion in the Turkish secular state in case studies on, for example, veiling; the use of Atatürk imagery, and the liberalisation of the media
• Looks at the important – if contested – role of women and gender in religious practice in modern Turkey
• Draws on ethnographic detail based on the author’s research in Turkey over the last 28 years
• Provides the historical context for the rise of the controversial Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party
• Includes a note on Turkish usage and a glossary of key terms

Additionally the publisher reports this: 

This book provides a survey of Islam in Turkey since the founding of the modern republic in 1923. It examines the secularising policies of Turkey’s founders and how these policies have shaped the development of religious institutions and social expectations around religious practice up to the present day. A special emphasis is on the relationship between religion and politics, with chapters focusing on state-based religious institutions, religious education, Sufi orders and religious communities, Alevism, Islamic-oriented political parties, and the effects of economic liberalization on the practice of Islam in Turkey.

Readers will also learn about the political and social developments that contributed to the rise of the current Islamist government of the Justice and Development Party. In this way, Islam in Turkey provides vital historical context for understanding both the rise of the controversial President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and current events in Turkey and the Middle East more broadly.

Medieval Arabic Commentaries on the Coptic Liturgy

I am very glad to see that the Coptic tradition continues steadily to garner more and more scholarly attention. Our knowledge will only increase with the publication next week of Guides to the Eucharist in Medieval Egypt: Three Arabic Commentaries on the Coptic Liturgy (Fordham University Press, 15 February 2022), 240pp.

Part of Fordham UP's Christian Arabic Texts in Translation series, this book is authored by Yūḥannā ibn Sabbā‘, Abū al-Barakāt ibn Kabar, and Pope Gabriel V of Alexandria and translated by Arsenius Mikhail. About the book the publisher tells us this:

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed a rising interest in Arabic texts describing and explaining the rituals of the Coptic Church of Egypt. This book provides readers with an English translation of excerpts from three key texts on the Coptic liturgy by Abū al-Barakāt ibn Kabar, Yūh.annā ibn Sabbā‘, and Pope Gabriel V. With a scholarly introduction to the works, their authors, and the Coptic liturgy, as well as a detailed explanatory apparatus, this volume provides a useful and needed introduction to the worship tradition of Egypt’s Coptic Christians. Presented for the first time in English, these texts provide valuable points of comparison to other liturgical commentaries produced elsewhere in the medieval Christian world.

Byzantine Identity

I mentioned a few weeks back the problem of trendy verbs and nouns dominating scholarly publications for a while. There is arguably no greater example of this than the much-invoked concept of 'identity' which must surely be approaching the end of its useful shelf life. But before it does, we have coming out next month The Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium, eds. Michael Stewart, David Parnell, Conor Whately (Routledge, March 2022), 450pp. 

About this collection the publisher tells us this:

This volume is the first to focus solely on how specific individuals and groups in Byzantium and its borderlands were defined and distinguished from other individuals and groups from the mid-fourth to the close of the fifteenth century. It gathers chapters from both established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines across history, art, archaeology, and religion to provide an accurate representation of the state of the field both now and in its immediate future. The handbook is divided into four subtopics that examine concepts of group and specific individual identity which have been chosen to provide methodologically sophisticated and multidisciplinary perspectives on specific categories of group and individual identity. The topics are Imperial Identities; Romanitas in the late antique Mediterranean; Macro and Micro Identities: Religious, Regional, and Ethnic Identities, and Internal Others; and Gendered Identities: Literature, Memory, and Self in Early and Middle Byzantium. While no single volume could ever provide a comprehensive vision of identities on the vast variety of peoples within Byzantium over nearly a millennium of its history, this handbook represents a milestone in offering a survey of the vibrant surge of scholarship examining the numerous and oft-times fluctuating codes of identity that shaped and transformed Byzantium and its neighbours during the empire's long life.

Dostoevsky and the Problem of Punishment

If it is granted unto me to live long enough, and to write another book in theology proper (my next two will both be in psychotherapy), I would like to give some sustained thought to the problem of punishment in the Christian tradition, which seems to me to pose nearly insuperable problems in several areas. Until and unless I get around to doing that, I'll have to content myself with reading the works of others, including a new book released just this month: Wages of Evil: Dostoevsky and Punishment by Anna Schur  (Northwestern University Press, 2022), 256pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Dostoevsky’s views on punishment are usually examined through the prism of his Christian commitments. For some, this means an orientation toward mercy; for others, an affirmation of suffering as a path to redemption. Anna Schur incorporates sources from philosophy, criminology, psychology, and history to argue that Dostoevsky’s thinking about punishment was shaped not only by his Christian ethics but also by the debates on penal theory and practice unfolding during his lifetime.

As Dostoevsky attempts to balance the various ethical and cultural imperatives, he displays ambivalence both about punishment and about mercy. This ambivalence, Schur argues, is further complicated by what Dostoevsky sees as the unfathomable quality of the self, which hinders every attempt to match crimes with punishments. The one certainty he holds is that a proper response to wrongdoing must include a concern for the wrongdoer’s moral improvement.

The Western Armenian Diaspora

My two books in ecclesiology both gave pride of place to the Armenian Church, so I always keep an eye out for new scholarship on Armenia and Armenian Christianity. In March of this year we shall have published The Rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire: From Refugee Crisis to Renaissance by Henry R. Shapiro (Edinburgh University Press, March 2022), 336pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book traces how Armenian migrants changed the demographic and cultural landscape of Istanbul and Western Anatolia in the course of the seventeenth century. During the centuries that followed, Ottoman Armenian merchants, financiers (sarrafs), authors, musicians, translators, printers and bureaucrats would play key roles in Ottoman trade, cultural life and even governance, that is, in most spheres of the empire's economic and cultural life. This book shows how that cosmopolitan world came into being.

Using both Ottoman Turkish and little-known Armenian sources, Henry Shapiro provides the first systematic study of Armenian population movements that resulted in the cosmopolitan remaking of Istanbul. In the first part of the book he documents the Great Armenian Flight, showing how the global crisis of the seventeenth century (war, climate change, famine) impacted the historical Armenian population centres of the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia and led to mass migrations and resettlement in Western Anatolia, Istanbul and Thrace. In the second part of the book Shapiro links this history of migration and the refugee crisis with the development of intellectual and cultural life in Istanbul and Western Anatolia – the rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora.

Syriac Hagiography

A little over six years ago I interviewed a young scholar of Syriac Christianity. You may read that interview here. Since then, we have seen additional works emerge on the Syriac tradition as a whole, as well as such topics as hagiography, ecclesial architecture, and relations with Islam. 

We have a recent book that forms the twentieth volume of Brill's series Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity. A scholarly collection, edited by Sergey Minov and Flavia Ruani, the volume is Syriac Hagiography: Texts and Beyond (Brill, 2021), 382pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Chapters gathered in Syriac Hagiography: Texts and Beyond explore a wide range of Syriac hagiographical works, while following two complementary methodological approaches, i.e. literary and cultic, or formal and functional. Grouped into three main sections, these contributions reflect three interrelated ways in which we can read Syriac hagiography and further grasp its characteristics: “Texts as Literature” seeks to unfold the mechanisms of their literary composition; “Saints Textualized” offers a different perspective on the role played by hagiographical texts in the invention and/or maintenance of the cult of a particular saint or group of saints; “Beyond the Texts” presents cases in which the historical reality behind the nexus of hagiographical texts and veneration of saints can be observed in greater details.

Performing the Gospels in Byzantium

There are certain verbs and nouns which become trendy and suddenly one sees their proliferation in book and article titles for a decade or so. "Performing" is one such, and is seen in this recent publication of a book that sheds light on Middle Byzantine liturgics and art: Performing the Gospels in Byzantium: Sight, Sound, and Space in the Divine Liturgy  by Roland Betancourt  (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 320pp. About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Tracing the Gospel text from script to illustration to recitation, this study looks at how illuminated manuscripts operated within ritual and architecture. Focusing on a group of richly illuminated lectionaries from the late eleventh century, the book articulates how the process of textual recitation produced marginalia and miniatures that reflected and subverted the manner in which the Gospel was read and simultaneously imagined by readers and listeners alike. This unique approach to manuscript illumination points to images that slowly unfolded in the mind of its listeners as they imagined the text being recited, as meaning carefully changed and built as the text proceeded. By examining this process within specific acoustic architectural spaces and the sonic conditions of medieval chant, the volume brings together the concerns of sound studies, liturgical studies, and art history to demonstrate how images, texts, and recitations played with the environment of the Middle Byzantine church.

Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology

Good news! Forthcoming in March this year will be a more affordable paperback edition of a book first published a few years ago, which makes an invaluable contribution to the study of the Church and churches: The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology (OUP, March 2022), 672pp. 

Edited by Paul Avis, this volume, with a chapter on Orthodox ecclesiology authored by the venerable Andrew Louth, is also, the publisher tells us;

a unique scholarly resource for the study of the Christian Church as we find it in the Bible, in history, and today. As the scholarly study of how we understand the Christian Church's identity and mission, ecclesiology is at the centre of today's theological research, reflection, and debate. Ecclesiology is the theological driver of the ecumenical movement. The main focus of the intense ecumenical engagement and dialogue of the past half-century has been ecclesiological and this is the area where the most intractable differences remain to be tackled. Ecclesiology investigates the Church's manifold self-understanding in relation to a number of areas: the origins, structures, authority, doctrine, ministry, sacraments, unity, diversity, and mission of the Church, including its relation to the state and to society and culture. 

The sources of ecclesiological reflection are the Bible (interpreted in the light of scholarly research), Church history, and the wealth of the Christian theological tradition, together with the information and insights that emerge from other relevant academic disciplines. This Handbook considers the biblical resources, historical development, and contemporary initiatives in ecclesiology. It offers an invaluable and comprehensive guide to understanding the Church.

Muslim-Christian Relations

We live in a happy time when, as I have tried to document on here for over a decade, scholarship devoted to Muslim-Christian relations, in which Eastern Christians take pride of place, is blossoming. A new book adds to the riches: David Thomas, ed., The Bloomsbury Reader in Christian-Muslim Relations, 600-1500 (Bloomsbury, 2022), 352pp.

About this collection we are told this:

This Reader brings together nearly 80 extracts from the major works left by Christians and Muslims that reflect their reciprocal knowledge and attitudes. It spans the period from the early 7th century, when Islam originated, to 1500.

The general introduction provides a historical and geographical summary of Christian-Muslim encounters in the period and a short account of the religious, intellectual and social circumstances in which encounters took place and works were written. Nearly all the translations are new, and a map is provided. Each of the six parts contains the following pedagogical features:

-A short introduction

-An introduction to each passage and author

-Notes explaining terms that readers might not have previously encountered

On the Christian side topics include: condemnations of the Qur'an as a fake and Mu?ammad as a fraud, depictions of Islam as a sign of the final judgement, and proofs that it was a Christian heresy. On the Muslim side they include: demonstrations of the Bible as corrupt, proofs that Christian doctrines were illogical, comments on the inferior status of Christians, and accounts of Christian and Muslim scholars in collaboration together.

On the Patriarchate of Constantinople

The office of the Roman papacy, of course, attracts huge attention, including from scholars. But the patriarchate of New Rome attracts considerably less attention. A new book, however, will help remind us of its venerable nature and complex history: A Companion to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, eds. Christian Gastgeber, Ekaterini Mitsiou, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, and Vratislav Zervan (Brill, 2021), 322pp.

Part of the series Brill's Companions to the Byzantine World, Volume: 9, this book, the publisher tells us,

provides an overview of the development of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from Late Antiquity to the Early Ottoman period (4th to 15th c.). It highlights continuities and changes in the organizational, dogmatic, and intellectual framework of the central ecclesiastical institution of the Byzantine Empire in the face of political and religious upheavals. The volume pays attention to the relations of the Patriarchate with other churches in the West and in the East. Across the disciplinary divide between Byzantine and Ottoman studies, the volume explains the longevity of the Patriarchate beyond the fall of Byzantium in 1453 up to modern times. A particular focus is laid on an original register book of the 14th century. 

You will note on the list of contributors some of the leading scholars of Byzantium today: 

Contributors are: Claudia Rapp, Frederick Lauritzen, Tia M. Kolbaba, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Marie-Hélène Blanchet, Dimitrios G. Apostolopoulos, Machi Païzi-Apostolopoulou, Klaus-Peter Todt, Mihailo S. Popović, Konstantinos Vetochnikov, Ekaterini Mitsiou, Vratislav Zervan, and Christian Gastgeber.

The Euchologion Unveiled

Have you been reading Job Getcha's books? He had two come out in the last 12 months on liturgy. The most recent of these is The Euchologion Unveiled:An Explanation of Byzantine Liturgical Practice (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2021). 

This book, the publisher tells us, 

describes and explains the sacramental services of the Orthodox Church. The Euchologion is the liturgical book that priests use to serve all the mysteries, or sacraments, of the Church. Archbishop Job “unveils” the history, meaning, and structure of these services, and the Orthodox understanding of the sacraments, through which believers receive grace and become partakers of the divine life.

Though most people have heard of “the seven sacraments” –baptism, chrismation, the Eucharist, confession, marriage, ordination, and unction—this is a later western schema, and the Orthodox Church performs several other sacramental rites, which are also explained here: monastic tonsure, the funeral, the sanctification of chrism, the consecration of a church, and the blessing of water.

This is a companion volume to The Typikon Decoded, and the second volume of An Explanation of Byzantine Liturgical Practice.

The Russian Church in Modernity

That dreary class of human beings called American political pundits has already been aflutter for some time wondering about (and in some more appalling cases openly cheerleading for) war with Russia over Ukraine. So expect to hear a lot more about Russia in 2022, and with it the Russian Orthodox Church, whose stance on any further escalation in the war with Ukraine (started, n.b., in 2014 by a unilateral invasion and annexation of Crimea) will bear watching closely. 

The Russian Church's encounter with "modernity," from the end of the Romanovs through Stalin and later dictators, to the Putin era, is not always straightforward. Reputable scholars know to tread carefully. Regina Elsner is one such scholar, and has, at the end of December, given us a brand new book which I learned about when happily perusing the catalogue of Columbia University Press before Christmas. In it I spy The Russian Orthodox Church and Modernity: A Historical and Theological Investigation into Eastern Christianity between Unity and Plurality (Ibidem Press, Dec. 2021), 440pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) faced various iterations of modernization throughout its history. This conflicted encounter continues in the ROC’s current resistance against―what it perceives as―Western modernity including liberal and secular values. This study examines the historical development of the ROC’s arguments against―and sometimes preferences for―modernization and analyzes which positions ended up influencing the official doctrine. The book’s systematic analysis of dogmatic treatises shows the ROC’s considerable ability of constructive engagement with various aspects of the modern world. Balancing between theological traditions of unity and plurality, the ROC’s today context of operating within an authoritarian state appears to tip the scale in favor of unity.

On Those Evagrian Logismoi

Is it just me--and am I taxing your patience with a bit of psychoanalytic introspection you'd rather not be subject to?--or is it funny how certain topics or personages you did not really attend to deeply at the time nonetheless have a way of staying with you and surfacing at interesting, and often usefully timed, moments? I first heard of Evagrius in undergraduate course now 25 years ago (!) but find myself returning to him regularly. Just last week, in fact, I was recommending him to someone with interests in both patristics and psychanalysis and psychotherapy.

In any event, after a slew of books published about Evagrius in the last two decades, most of the good ones noted on here, we had a bit of a lull until last summer when Brepols brought out L. Misiarczyk, Eight Logismoi in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (vii+313 pp.). About this recent study the publisher tells us this: 

This book presents the teaching of Evagrius of Pontus (345-399) on eight passionate thoughts (logismoi), i.e. gluttony, impurity, avarice (greed), sadness, anger (wrath), acedia, vanity and pride.

This book presents the teaching of Evagrius of Pontus (345-399) about eight passionate thoughts (logismoi), i.e. gluttony, impurity, avarice (greed), sadness, anger (wrath), acedia, vanity and pride. The study first reconstructs cosmology, eschatology, anthropology and spiritual teaching of the monk of Pontus in order to show the nature, dynamics and ways of combating against the eight passionate thoughts as proposed by Evagrius. His teaching in this regard became the basis for later Christian teaching on the Seven Deadly Sins and an inspiration in the future for some currents of modern psychology.

We are further told this about the author: 

Leszek Misiarczyk studied philosophy and theology in Płock and theology at the Theological Institute in Cremisan-Bethlehem (Israel). In 1991-93 he studied biblical theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, obtaining a bachelor's degree and then in 1993-97, patristic studies at the Patristic Institute “Augustinianum” in Rome, obtaining a degree of doctor in theologia et scientiis patristicis. In 2008 he obtained the degree of Habilitation (Free Researcher) at the Faculty of Historical and Social Sciences of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, and in 2018 the title of professor in humanities. He teaches at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw and is the author of many publications in patristics, theology and history of ancient Christianity.

Eastern Christians Under the Habsburg Monarchy

Somewhat confusingly, Amazon apparently has copies of this to sell now, even though it was advertised on their site and elsewhere as not being available until October of this new year, 2022. Still, if you are as eager as I am to read this, then you may want to snap up extant copies now of Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Monarchy. Edited by John-Paul Himka and Frank Szabo and published by the University of Alberta Press, this 248-page collection contains fascinating insights across an impressively wide range of topics. The publisher elaborates: 

The collection Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Monarchy

brings together ten studies by scholars from various countries on a wide array of topics related to the history, culture, and ritual practice of Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Empire from the eighteenth to early twentieth century. This book represents a contribution to the development of newer perspectives on the Habsburg Monarchy emerging in recent years. These newer tendencies seek to understand the dynamics of the Monarchy’s pluralism by marrying local and transnational analyses and examining shared experiences across crown lands within the context of the empire. This approach proves to be valid for the religious pluralism of the Habsburg Empire, where self-professed confessional identity could not be delimited either within a crown land or within a specific ethnic milieu. The studies in this volume explore just such shared practices and experiences encompassing a larger collection of territories within the Monarchy by focusing on those areas that contained large numbers of Christians whose faith and rituals derived from Byzantium rather than Rome, that is, Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholics (Uniates).

The volume also aims to provide a corrective in Eastern Christian studies by looking outside Russia and Greece at the often hybrid practices and cultural and religious experiences of Europe’s westernmost Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic faithful. Several chapters deal with the sacral art of the Habsburg Monarchy’s Ukrainians and Rusyns.

We are also given a helpfully detailed Table of Contents: 

Introduction by John-Paul Himka and Franz A.J. Szabo

Historical Overview:

Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1526-1918 by Paul Robert Magocsi

Historical Studies:

Politics, Religion, and Confessional Identity among the Romanians of Bistriţa: A Case Study by Sever Cristian Oancea

Aspects of Confessional Alterity in Transylvania: The Uniate – Non-Uniate Polemic in the Eighteenth Century by Ciprian Ghişa

Josephinist Reforms in the Metropolis of Karlovci and the Orthodox Hierarchy by Marija Petrović

Transnational Conversions: Migrants in America and Greek Catholic Conversion Movements to Eastern Orthodoxy in the Habsburg Empire, 1890-1914 by Joel Brady

Sacral Culture:

The Art of the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo: Sacral Painting of the Eighteenth Century by Bernadett Puskás

Sacred and Heraldic Images on Ukrainian Banners of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries by Roksolana Kosiv

Facing East: References to Eastern Christianity in Lviv’s Representational Public Space ca. 1900 by Andriy Zayarnyuk

The Sacred Art of Modest Sosenko: Lost and Preserved by Olesya Semchyshyn-Huzner

Sacral Needlework in Eastern Galicia: Social and Cultural Aspects (Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries) by Natalia Dmytryshyn

On the Lord's Appearing in the Jordan

If you go here, you will learn a little bit about Nicholas Denysenko's superb book on the Theophany. And if you go here you will wonder, as I just did, "Can it be a full decade now since I interviewed him about this book? Where does the time go?" I cannot answer that question, but I can tell you that there is, even a decade later, still no finer book than his to fete this lovely feast.

A Short History of Islamic Thought

By virtue of living alongside each other since the beginnings of Islam, Eastern Christians have unique insights into not just the Muslim-Christian relationship ab initio, but also to Islam as such. That does not mean everyone has such insights, or that they are always impeccable in their details. For those needing a refresher, or an introduction, a short new book from the world's leading academic publisher fits the ticket: A Short History of Islamic Thought by Fitzroy Morrissey (Oxford University Press, 2021), 178pp. About this 

About this new book the publisher tells us this:

For general readers, a compact and illuminating introduction to Islam, from its beginnings almost 1500 years ago to the present moment.

While much has been written about Islam, particularly over the twenty-five years, few books have explored the full range of the ideas that have defined the faith over a millennium and a half. Fitzroy Morrissey provides a clear and concise introduction to the origins and sources of Islamic thought, from its beginnings in the 7th century to the current moment. He explores the major ideas and introduces the major figures--those who over the centuries have broached life's major questions, from the nature of God and the existence of free will to gender relations and the ordering of society, and in the process defined Islam. Drawing on Arabic and Persian primary texts, as well as the latest scholarship, A Short History of Islamic Thought explains the key teachings of the Qur'an and Hadith, the great books of Islamic theology, philosophy, and law, as well as the mystical writings of the Sufis. It evaluates the impact of foreign cultures-Greek and Persian, Jewish and Christian-on early Islam, accounts for the crystallization of the Sunni and Shi'i forms of the faith, and accounts for the rise of such trends as Islamic modernism and Islamism. Above all, it reveals the fundamental principles of Islamic thought, both as a source of inspiration for Muslims today and as illuminating and rewarding in their own right.

Leontius of Byzantium

A new book by Brian Daley, or even a new paperback edition of one of his books that has been in print previously, is a Red Letter Day. So it is a real pleasure to let you know you have to part with far fewer of your kopeks to be able to afford Leontius of Byzantium: Complete Works, ed. Brian E. Daley, SJ (Oxford UP, October 2021), 640pp. About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Leontius of Byzantium (485-543) was a Byzantine monk and theologian who provided a breakthrough of terminology in the 6th-century Christological controversy over the mode of union of Christ's human nature with his divinity. He did so through his introduction of Aristotelian logical categories and Neoplatonic psychology into Christian speculative theology. His work initiated the later intellectual development of Christian theology throughout medieval culture. Brian E. Daley provides translation and commentary on the six theological works associated with the name of Leontius of Byzantium. The critical text and facing-page translation help make these works more accessible than ever before and provide a reliable textual apparatus for future scholarship of this key writing.

Ukrainian Nationalism and Ukrainian History

One of the longest "foreign" trips I undertook 20 years ago was to Ukraine. That capped a decade of extensive international travel to five of the world's continents, which included numerous trips just to Europe itself. In the summer of 2001 I left Canada in late June and did not return until late August, spending all but 24 hours in Ukraine (with an overnight stop in Warsaw en route). My two months in Ukraine were wonderful and I have always wanted to go back. In the meantime, I I keep a close eye on Ukrainian realities and national struggles. 

So I took special notice, when reading a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, of the ads from publishers of new books about Ukraine, including these two. First up is Ukrainian Nationalism in the Age of Extremes: An Intellectual Biography of Dmytro Dontsov by Trevor Erlacher (Harvard University Press, 2021), 654pp. About this biography the publisher tells us this: 

Ukrainian nationalism made worldwide news after the Euromaidan revolution and the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014. Invoked by regional actors and international commentators, the “integral” Ukrainian nationalism of the 1930s has moved to the center of debates about Eastern Europe, but the history of this divisive ideology remains poorly understood.

This timely book by Trevor Erlacher is the first English-language biography of the doctrine’s founder, Dmytro Dontsov (1883–1973), the “spiritual father” of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Organizing his research of the period around Dontsov’s life, Erlacher has written a global intellectual history of Ukrainian integral nationalism from late imperial Russia to postwar North America, with relevance for every student of the history of modern Europe and the diaspora.

Thanks to the circumstances of Dontsov’s itinerant, ninety-year life, this microhistorical approach allows for a geographically, chronologically, and thematically broad yet personal view on the topic. Dontsov shaped and embodied Ukrainian politics and culture as a journalist, diplomat, literary critic, publicist, and ideologue, progressing from heterodox Marxism, to avant-garde fascism, to theocratic traditionalism.

Drawing upon archival research in Ukraine, Poland, and Canada, this book contextualizes Dontsov’s works, activities, and identity formation diachronically, reconstructing the cultural, political, urban, and intellectual milieus within which he developed and disseminated his worldview.

The next book is by an excellent historian who needs no introduction, whose previous books have been fascinating and important: Serhii Plokhy, The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present (Harvard University Press, 2021), 416pp. Plokhy is one of the most important and prolific historians of East-Slavic realities. About his newest work, HUP tells us this: 

The Frontline presents a selection of essays drawn together for the first time to form a companion volume to Serhii Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe and Chernobyl. Here he expands upon his analysis in earlier works of key events in Ukrainian history, including Ukraine’s complex relations with Russia and the West, the burden of tragedies such as the Holodomor and World War II, the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and Ukraine’s contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Juxtaposing Ukraine’s history to the contemporary politics of memory, this volume provides a multidimensional image of a country that continues to make headlines around the world. Eloquent in style and comprehensive in approach, the essays collected here reveal the roots of the ongoing political, cultural, and military conflict in Ukraine, the largest country in Europe.

The Challenges of Historiography

It was thanks to the combined influence of the historians Robert Taft, late of the Society of Jesus, and David Reynolds of the University of Cambridge (especially in his absolutely spellbinding book In Command of History) that I first came, almost two decades ago now, to take such interest in historiography. This led one on to crucial new ways of critically understanding, e.g., how the story of the quasi-split of 1054 is told, or the Union of Brest, or the pseudo-sobor of Lviv of 1946. The usual renderings of all these--as well as other events--reveal deeply problematic tendencies on the part of Eastern Christians to amplify what Vamik Volkan has so memorably called "chosen trauma," which is so often paired with "chosen glory," both of them distorting the actual nature of the events in question and their long withdrawing roar. 

More recently that has lent itself into writing and lecturing about the shabby way in which Crusades history is recounted, with artery-clogging masses of tendentiousness more than enough to introduce a myocardial infarction in any serious historian--or, indeed, fair-minded observer. 

Along come several recent scholars to keep our historical hearts and minds in fighting form. Up first: The Saint and the Count: A Case Study for Reading Like a Historian by Leah Shopkow (University of Toronto Press, 2021), 216pp. About this book the publisher tells us this: 

 While historians know that history is about interpreting primary sources, students tend to think of history as a set of facts.

In The Saint and the Count, Leah Shopkow opens up the interpretive world of the historian using the biography of St. Vitalis of Savigny (d. 1122) as a case study. This biography was written around 1174 by Stephen of Fougères and provides a rich stage to demonstrate the kinds of questions historians ask about primary sources and the interpretive and conceptual frameworks they use. What is the nature of medieval sources and what are the interpretive problems they present? How does the positionality of Stephen of Fougères shape his biography of St. Vitalis? How did medieval people respond to stories of miracles? And finally, how does this biography illuminate the problem of violence in medieval society? A translation of the biography is included, so that readers can explore the text on their own.

The second book, from the same publisher, is The Devil's Historian: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past by Amy Kaufman  and Paul Sturtevant (2020), 208pp. About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Amy S. Kaufman and Paul B. Sturtevant examine the many ways in which the medieval past has been manipulated to promote discrimination, oppression, and murder. Tracing the fetish for “medieval times” behind toxic ideologies like nationalism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and white supremacy, Kaufman and Sturtevant show us how the Middle Ages have been twisted for political purposes in every century that followed. The Devil’s Historians casts aside the myth of an oppressive, patriarchal medieval monoculture and reveals a medieval world not often shown in popular culture: one that is diverse, thriving, courageous, compelling, and complex.