Christians had always been concerned, since the faith’s inception, about the relationship between violence and belief. In Byzantium, this tension was explored not only in abstract theological texts but in the songs people sang: hymns, a multivalent, fluid form of devotion that served as the meeting place between theological conviction and lived religious experience.Sacralizing Violence in Byzantium is the first book to examine the complex and shifting perceptions of premod...

Gregory the Great (bishop of Rome from 590 to 604) is one of the most significant figures in the history of Christianity. His theological works framed medieval Christian attitudes toward mysticism, exegesis, and the role of the saints in the life of the church. The scale of Gregory's administrative activity in both the ecclesial and civic affairs of Rome also helped to make possible the formation of the medieval papacy. Gregory disciplined malcontent clerics, negotiated with barbarian rule...

"A truly extraordinary reevaluation of historical events in light of new theoretical approaches . . . groundbreaking." — Journal of Orthodox Christian StudiesColonizing Christianity employs postcolonial critique to analyze the transformations of Greek and Latin religious identity in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. Through close readings of texts from the period of Latin occupation, this book argues that the experience of colonization splintered the...

On the first anniversary of his election to the papacy, Leo the Great stood before the assembly of bishops convening in Rome and forcefully asserted his privileged position as the heir of Peter the Apostle. This declaration marked the beginning of a powerful tradition: the Bishop of Rome would henceforth leverage the cult of St. Peter, and the popular association of St. Peter with the city itself, to his advantage. In The Invention of Peter, George E. Demacopoulos examines this Pe...

On the first anniversary of his election to the papacy, Leo the Great stood before the assembly of bishops convening in Rome and forcefully asserted his privileged position as the heir of Peter the Apostle. This declaration marked the beginning of a powerful tradition: the Bishop of Rome would henceforth leverage the cult of St. Peter, and the popular association of St. Peter with the city itself, to his advantage. In The Invention of Peter, George E. Demacopoulos examines this Pe...

In late antiquity the rising number of ascetics who joined the priesthood faced a pastoral dilemma. Should they follow a traditional, demonstrably administrative, approach to pastoral care, emphasizing doctrinal instruction, the care of the poor, and the celebration of the sacraments? Or should they bring to the parish the ascetic models of spiritual direction, characterized by a more personal spiritual father/spiritual disciple relationship? Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the E...

Commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, this volume offers an original examination of the enduring impact of the single most famous gathering of Christians since the apostolic ageDespite the longstanding historical and theological study of the Council of Nicaea, several central questions remain. Was Nicaea a theological event or a political one? What does it mean if it was both? Was Constantine’s intervention without precedent, or was he simp...

This book reexamines the concepts of fundamentalism and religious Orthodoxy in the contemporary world. It brings together twelve essays by some of the leading scholars on Orthodox Christianity that explore the relationship between Orthodoxy and fundamentalist ideas and practices, both in countries and regions where Orthodox Christianity has been the dominant and traditional faith, and in the “New World,” where Orthodox Christian communities constitute a minority. The main issues that the c...

The beginning of the Roman Catholic/Orthodox Theological dialogue during the 20th century raised to some high hopes for an imminent canonical unity between the two Denominations, and this, though premature, is not of course to be blamed; it is impossible for any contemporary Christian theologian not to suffer from the division within this very womb of the ontological unification of all things, which is the Church of Christ—precisely because this division gives to many the impression of a f...

Theosis shapes contemporary Orthodox theology in two ways: positively and negatively. In the positive sense, contemporary Orthodox theologians made theosis the thread that bound together the various aspects of theology in a coherent whole and also interpreted patristic texts, which experienced a renaissance in the twentieth century, even in Orthodox theology. In the negative sense, contemporary theologians used theosis as a triumphalistic club to beat down Cathol...

Traditional, secular, and fundamentalist—all three categories are contested, yet in their contestation they shape our sensibilities and are mutually implicated, the one with the others. This interplay brings to the foreground more than ever the question of what it means to think and live as Tradition. The Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, in particular, have emphasized Tradition not as a dead letter but as a living presence of the Holy Spirit. But how can we discern Tradition ...

The category of the “West” has played a particularly significant role in the modern Eastern Orthodox imagination. It has functioned as an absolute marker of difference from what is considered to be the essence of Orthodoxy and, thus, ironically has become a constitutive aspect of the modern Orthodox self. The essays collected in this volume examine the many factors that contributed to the “Eastern” construction of the “West” in order to understand why the “West” is so important to the East...