Overview
Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch: From Hagiography to History is a study of the authority of the holy man and its limits in times of crisis. Lucy Parker investigates the tensions that emerged when increasingly ambitious claims about the powers of holy men came into conflict with undeniable evidence of their failures, and explores how holy men and their supporters responded to this. The work takes as its central figure Symeon Stylites the Younger (c.521-592), who, from his vantage point on a column on a mountain close to Antioch, witnessed a period of exceptional turbulence in the local area, which, in the sixth century, experienced plague, earthquakes, and Persian invasion. Through an examination of Symeon's own writings, as well as his hagiographic biography, it reveals that the stylite was a divisive figure who played upon social tensions and upon culturally sensitive areas such as paganism to carve out a role for himself as prophet and spiritual authority in the face of considerable opposition. It sets Symeon's life and cult in the context of Antioch and eastern Roman society, offering a new perspective on the state of the empire in the period before the rise of Islam. It argues that hagiography is an exceptionally rich source for the historian, offering insights into debates and tensions which reached to the heart of Christianity.
Full Product Details
Author: Lucy Parker (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oxford)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 16.40cm
, Height: 2.00cm
, Length: 24.30cm
Weight: 0.562kg
ISBN: 9780192865175
ISBN 10: 019286517
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 07 July 2022
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
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Reviews
"""In his book, L. P. studies the literary strategies employed in the texts celebrating Symeon...The different literary strategies adopted by hagiographers concerned with the image of their heroes highlight, once again, the richness of hagiographic literature, which is not limited to a single framework."" -- Analecta Bollandiana"
Author Information
Lucy Parker completed her DPhil on Symeon Stylites the Younger at the University of Oxford in 2016. Since then she has worked as a Research Associate specialising in Syriac on the European Research Council-funded project 'Stories of Survival: Recovering the Connected Histories of Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern World' (2016-2018), as a Departmental Lecturer in Late Antique and Early Medieval History at Worcester College, Oxford (2018-2019), and, most recently, as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Oxford working on monasteries and hagiographies in the early Islamic period (2019-).
