The Christian Parthenon
Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens

Examines the history of Byzantine Athens, and especially the Parthenon, which became a Christian church and major site of pilgrimage.

Anthony Kaldellis (Author)

9781009113953, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 October 2021

268 pages
24.4 x 17 x 1.4 cm, 0.436 kg

' … although Kaldellis' work should be recognized for its contribution to our knowledge regarding this time and place, it should also be counted among important paradigm-shifting studies.' The Journal of Church History

Byzantine Athens was not a city without a history, as is commonly believed, but an important center about which much can now be said. Providing a wealth of new evidence, Professor Kaldellis argues that the Parthenon became a major site of Christian pilgrimage after its conversion into a church. Paradoxically, it was more important as a church than it had been as a temple: the Byzantine period was its true age of glory. He examines the idiosyncratic fusion of pagan and Christian culture that took place in Athens, where an attempt was made to replicate the classical past in Christian terms, affecting rhetoric, monuments, and miracles. He also re-evaluates the reception of ancient ruins in Byzantine Greece and presents for the first time a form of pilgrimage that was directed not toward icons, Holy Lands, or holy men but toward a monument embodying a permanent cultural tension and religious dialectic.

Introduction
1. Conversions of the Parthenon
2. From students to pilgrims in Medieval Athens (532–848 AD)
3. Imperial recognition: Basileios II in Athens (1018 AD)
4. Pilgrims of the Middle Period (900–1100 AD)
5. The apogee of the Atheniotissa in the twelfth century
6. Michael Choniates: a classicist-bishop and his cathedral (1182–1205 AD)
7. Why the Parthenon? An attempt at interpretation
8. The light of the Christian Parthenon
Postscript: some Byzantine heresies
Appendix: the little metropolis.

Subject Areas: Medieval history [HBLC1], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], European history [HBJD]