Recollection, reevaluation, distortion: Symeon Metaphrastes’ narrative techniques in retelling the history of iconoclasm
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Lev Lukhovitskiy
Abstract
Four Metaphrastic Lives dealing with the saints of the iconoclast epoch are considered alongside their source texts: the Lives of Ioannikios the Great (BHG 937), Stephen the Younger (BHG 1667), Andrew ‘en Krisei’ (BHG 112), and Theodoros Graptos (BHG 1746). A discussion of the methodological framework and a brief introduction to the texts and their sources are followed by a presentation of the metaphrastic shifts: attenuation of polemical devices, compression of historical time, psychologization, new aspects of Kaiserkritik, thematic elaboration of theological issues. The conclusion argues that it were non-historical literary goals that stood behind the recodification of the cultural memory of the iconoclast period in the Metaphrastic Menologion. Aiming to set the original story free from redundant elements and retell it in a more clear way Symeon Metaphrastes’ team demythologized the iconoclast emperors, interiorized the clash between iconoclasts and iconophiles, and shifted the focus from heresiological issues to emotions and inner development of the saint.
© 2017 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Siglenverzeichnis
- Judeo-Greek wedding poems from the fifteenth century
- ‘Monks who are not priests do not have the power to bind and to loose’: the debate about confession in eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantium
- Evectiones et tractoriae. Identifying the permits for the cursus publicus in the 4th century
- Recollection, reevaluation, distortion: Symeon Metaphrastes’ narrative techniques in retelling the history of iconoclasm
- Die „deutsche Spur“ in der altrussischen Erzählung über die Einnahme Konstantinopels durch die Kreuzritter
- Der neugefundene Text eines Briefes von Maximos Katelianos: noch eine Fälschung von Karl Benedikt Hase
- Makarios’ cycle of epigrams on the Psalms Bodleian Baroccianus 194
- Die Odysseeparaphrase des Demosthenes Thrax
- Astrology, piety and poverty: seven anonymous poems in Vaticanus gr. 743
- Alexandros von Nikaia als Bibelerklärer: ein neues Textstück eines unerkannten Exegeten (ediert aus dem Codex Vaticanus graecus 762)
- II. Abteilung
- III. Abteilung. Bibliographische Notizen und Mitteilungen
- Totentafel
- Autoren- und Herausgeberverzeichnis zu Band 109, Heft 1 und 2
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Siglenverzeichnis
- Judeo-Greek wedding poems from the fifteenth century
- ‘Monks who are not priests do not have the power to bind and to loose’: the debate about confession in eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantium
- Evectiones et tractoriae. Identifying the permits for the cursus publicus in the 4th century
- Recollection, reevaluation, distortion: Symeon Metaphrastes’ narrative techniques in retelling the history of iconoclasm
- Die „deutsche Spur“ in der altrussischen Erzählung über die Einnahme Konstantinopels durch die Kreuzritter
- Der neugefundene Text eines Briefes von Maximos Katelianos: noch eine Fälschung von Karl Benedikt Hase
- Makarios’ cycle of epigrams on the Psalms Bodleian Baroccianus 194
- Die Odysseeparaphrase des Demosthenes Thrax
- Astrology, piety and poverty: seven anonymous poems in Vaticanus gr. 743
- Alexandros von Nikaia als Bibelerklärer: ein neues Textstück eines unerkannten Exegeten (ediert aus dem Codex Vaticanus graecus 762)
- II. Abteilung
- III. Abteilung. Bibliographische Notizen und Mitteilungen
- Totentafel
- Autoren- und Herausgeberverzeichnis zu Band 109, Heft 1 und 2
