Dear colleagues,
I hope this email finds you well. I'm excited to announce this week's talk, the first Cambridge Byzantine Worlds Seminar this Easter term. Friday 27th of May at 5pm (U.K. time) Adrian Pirtea (University of Vienna) will discuss the history of Syriac Melkites during the early Islamic period. The seminar will take place on Zoom.
ABSTRACT
Syriac Melkites in the Early Islamic Period: History, Identity,
Manuscript Culture
Adrian Pirtea (Universität Wien)
27 May, 5pm UK time
By way of a few representative case studies, I will argue that contextualizing the production and circulation of Syro-Melkite manuscripts in the early Islamic period (many of which are now kept on Mt Sinai) can offer new insights into how the Chalcedonian (Melkite) Syriac community developed a distinct confessional and cultural identity in the multireligious context of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. First, I will discuss the tense relationship between Syriac Monotheletes and Dyotheletes in the seventh-eighth centuries, as mirrored by the Syriac Patristic florilegia of the period. In the second part, I will show how Syriac Melkites contributed to the creation of a ‘Syro-Byzantine’ cultural synthesis, esp. in the areas of monastic-ascetic literature and the liturgy. Finally, I will briefly explore the role of multilingualism as a potential marker of identity among the Melkites of early Islamic Palestine.
Research for this lecture is carried out as part of a Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the Institute of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of the University of Vienna (Grant Nr. 841476).
Please feel free to share!
I hope to see you all this Friday
All the best,
Ioan-Gabriel Alexandru
Convenor of Byzantine Worlds Seminar (2021-2022)
Topic: Byzantine Worlds Semniar (Easter Term S1)
Time: May 27, 2022 05:00 PM London
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