The 54th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

The 54th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond

17-19 March 2023, Corpus Christi College & All Souls College, Oxford

The 54th Annual Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies will be held in Oxford on the theme of Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond. The Symposium brings together Byzantine studies with a series of innovative approaches to the material nature and realities of religion – foregrounding the methodological, historical and archaeological problems of studying religion through visual and material culture. Taking a broad geographical and chronological view of the Byzantine world, the Symposium will range across Afro-Eurasia and from Antiquity to the period after the fall of Constantinople. Sessions will be arranged around the themes of ‘Objects in motion’, ‘Religion in 3D’, ‘Religious landscapes’, ‘Things without context’, ‘Things and their context’ and ‘Spatial approaches to religion’.

Confirmed speakers include: Béatrice Caseau, Paroma Chatterjee, Francesca Dell’Acqua, Ivan Foletti, David Frankfurter, Ildar Garipzanov, Troels M. Kristensen, Anne Lester, Birgit Meyer, Brigitte Pitarakis, Regula Schorta, Myrto Veikou, and Anne-Marie Yasin.

The Symposium will be hybrid, taking place at Oxford – Corpus Christi College and All Souls College –, and on Zoom.

Fees and registration:
– In person, for three days: Full: £130; Members of the SPBS: £110; Students/Unwaged: £60.
– In person, for one day: Full: £65; Members of the SPBS: £55; Students/Unwaged: £30.
– On-line: Full: £35; Members of the SPBS: £20; Students/Unwaged: £10

A booking form will soon be available online, on the Symposium website, with further details of registration and payment.

Symposiarchs
Jaś Elsner, Ine Jacobs, Julia Smith

AGAPE: Mapping Greek Patristics in the Early Modern Book World

AGAPE Launch: Mapping Greek Patristics in the Early Modern Book World

14 October 2022 marked the official launch of AGAPE, a new open-access database which maps the reception of the Greek Church Fathers in print throughout early modern Europe. AGAPE represents the main outcome of the four-year FNS Ambizione project The Greek Imprint on Europe: Patristics and Publishing in the Early Swiss Reformation, based at the Institut d’histoire de la Réformation, University of Geneva.

agapepatristics.net

In contrast to the Renaissance interest in the pagan Antiquity and classical literature, the highly significant rediscovery of the Greek Fathers remains untold and largely understudied. The number of inaccuracies in the regional, national and collective online repertoires available at present turns bibliographical research into a time-consuming and little-rewarding exercise, severely affecting the development of the subject.

To tackle this issue, AGAPE records any edition of Greek patristic works printed in Europe from 1465 to 1600 in the original language, as well as in Latin and vernacular translations. AGAPE refines the available data and substantially improves their level of detail: not only does it link each work to the ID of the Clavis Patrum Graecorum (CPG), the standard authority in the field, but also thoroughly describes all contents (text as well as paratext) and strictly relies on the analysis of at least one copy of each edition.

AGAPE currently provides access to all editions printed in the fifteenth century (c. 310). Data related to the sixteenth century will be disclosed decade by decade (1501-1510, 1511-1520, 1521-1530 etc.) to ensure reliability.

Users are encouraged to give their feedback and suggestions through the AGAPE email address available in the colophon of the website homepage.