ABSTRACT
Holiness on the Move: Mobility and Space in Byzantine Hagiography explores the literary, religious, and social functions of monastic mobility in Byzantine hagiography, touching on aspects of space, narrative, and identity. The ten chapters included in this volume highlight the multifaceted and rich nature of travel narratives, exploring topics such as authorship and audience, narrative structure and function, identity-making and practicalities of and discourse on travel. In terms of geographical span, the case studies cover Constantinople and its hinterland, Asia Minor, mainland Greece, Trebizond, the Balkans, and southern Italy and range chronologically from the end of the sixth to the fourteenth century.
The contributions offer novel insights and perspectives on the importance of mobility in the literary construction of holiness in the Byzantine world and the wider medieval Mediterranean, the spatial dimension of sacred mobility, and the ways in which mobility is employed in the narrative construction of hagiographical texts. As such, the volume joins the burgeoning research on sacred mobilities and will interest students and scholars of Byzantine and medieval literature, religion, and history, as well as a wider readership with an interest in the study of space and mobility.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|87 pages
Mobility and Space
chapter 2|21 pages
Space, Narrative, and Compositional Structure
chapter 3|25 pages
Boundaries of Holiness
chapter 4|12 pages
“I Went Aboard a Ship and Reached Byzantium”
part II|83 pages
Monastic Mobility and Identity
chapter 5|21 pages
The Oration on St John of Damascus by Constantine Akropolites (BHG 885) and Its Source (BHG 884)
chapter 7|40 pages
Local Pilgrimage and Historical Identity in Slavonic Hagiography in Greek Translation
part III|59 pages
Monastic Mobility