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The Schism of the NonChalcedonians

Volker L. Menze in Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church
Published in print: 2008 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2008 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199534876 eISBN: 9780191716041 acprof:oso/9780199534876.003.0002 Item type: chapter

Chapter 1 analyses the accession of Justin I in 518 and questions the conventional view that Justin was a convinced Chalcedonian. It argues that the emperor became Chalcedonian for raisons d'tat. He came to terms with Pope Hormisdas and then implemented a papal understanding of Chalcedon in the East which created a clear-cut chasm between eastern Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians whose ecclesiastical positions had been rather diverse so far. Every bishop was required to sign the libellus of Pope Hormisdas but the non-Chalcedonian bishops preferred exile to subordinating themselves and their followers to the papal perspective of the Christian past. Using the available prosopographical data, Chapter 1 concludes with a discussion of how the religious landscape in the patriarchate of Antioch changed in the 520s.

The Libellus of Hormisdas: A Remodelling of the Past

Volker L. Menze in Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church
Published in print: 2008 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2008 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199534876 eISBN: 9780191716041 acprof:oso/9780199534876.003.0003 Item type: chapter

Chapter 2 discusses the use of theological proof text, florilegia and generally the use of argument in the 530s in order to understand what the motives of the protagonists were, and to answer the question why the situation in the 520s had changed significantly. If accepted, Pope Hormisdas' carefully crafted libellus would have erased the postChalcedonian tradition of the non-Chalcedonians and replaced it with a papal remodelling of the past. What follows is a detailed study of
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why the (ecclesiastical) diptychs were important for the churches in order to construct their (apostolic) past and tradition in the fifth and sixth centuries. It is the first study of diptychs and how the names in them of those remembered became relevant for every local church. The libellus seems to have been the trigger for the resistance of the nonChalcedonian bishops, and in order not to be erased from the religious landscape like the Arians, they needed to establish their own church.

The As If of the Book of Kings

Mark Thurner in History's Peru: The Poetics of Colonial and Postcolonial Historiography
Published in print: 2011 Published Online: Publisher: University Press of Florida September 2011 DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813035383.003.0003 ISBN: 9780813035383 eISBN: 9780813038940 Item type: chapter

This chapter is a meditation on the brilliant art and theory behind the early-eighteenth-century histories of Spain and Peru written by the Creole polymath Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo (16641743). This chapter suggests that colonial dynastic history was a letter to the king that was written not so much as a libellus but as if the ear of the distant king was within its acoustical range. Composed within imaginary royal earshot, dynastic histories would not only require the prescribed forms of a respectful appeal but also a bright-eyed, noble, and sweet poetics worthy of the educated king or prince whom it imitated in word. In short, history would acquire the noble aura of the sovereign subject to whom it was addressed. As if presence in words of the imaginary prince, history was, in the words of Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo, an animated reason that was truer than life. As animated reason, history could stand in a sovereign, critical and futural position vis--vis the people it tutored.

Rome: The Invisible Children of Incest

Philippe Moreau in Children, Memory, and Family Identity in Roman Culture
Published in print: 2010 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press January 2011 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199582570 eISBN: 9780191595271 acprof:oso/9780199582570.003.0014 Item type: chapter

This chapter deals with children born of a union considered by ancient Romans as incestuous, mainly from a legal point of view, since we lack any evidence about their social life, with one exception (Digest
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23.2.57a: Flavia Tertulla's children). Romans did not doubt that such an union could result in viable descendants, in spite of Pope Gregory the Great's letter to Augustine of Canterbury, and they were only worried about kinship terms for these children. For imperial jurists, from Gaius down to Justinian, these children were not to be treated differently from the other illegitimate children (spurii). But under Justinian's reign, the legislation worsened the plight of incestuous children, mainly due to the development of a policy of deterrence towards potential incestuous pairs.

Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church

Volker L. Menze
Published in print: 2008 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2008 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199534876 eISBN: 9780191716041 acprof:oso/9780199534876.001.0001 Item type: book

This study historicizes the formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the first half of the 6th century. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 divided eastern Christianity, with those who were later called Syrian Orthodox among the Christians in the near eastern provinces who refused to accept the decisions of the council. These non-Chalcedonians (still better known under the misleading term monophysites) separated from the church of the empire after Justin I attempted to enforce Chalcedon in the East in 518. The book covers the period from the accession of Justin to the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. It focuses in the first two chapters on imperial and papal policy from a non-Chalcedonian, eastern perspective. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss monks, monasteries, and the complex issues of sacraments and non-Chalcedonian church life. Chapter 5 and the general conclusion complete the book with a study of the working of collective memory among the non-Chalcedonians and the construction of a Syrian Orthodox identity. The study is a histoire vnementielle of actual religious practice, especially concerning the Eucharist and the diptychs, and of ecclesiastical and imperial policy which modifies the traditional view of how emperors (and in the case of Theodora: empresses) ruled the late Roman/early Byzantine empire. By combining this detailed analysis of secular and ecclesiastical politics with a study of long-term strategies of memorialization, the book also focuses on deep structures of collective memory on which the tradition of the present Syrian Orthodox Church is founded.

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