saints and sacred spaces

SAINTS AND SACRED SPACES

This sample syllabus is presented here as a graduate level translation and discussion course, though it can be easily modified to reading the texts in translation for an upper level seminar in English. Its progression through the semester revolves around the pairing of a text in the original Greek with a selection of scholarly works examining certain themes, such as the rise of the saint and the holy man, the genre of hagiography, or gender and asceticism in the Lives of the early Christian saints.

INTRODUCTION

The rise of the cults of early Christian saints had wide-ranging impacts on the literary and material aspects of late Roman life in the eastern Mediterranean world. From the formation of massive monastic complexes in the Egyptian desert to the appearance of 'gender-bending' transvestite prostitutes-turned-hermits in Palestine, these figures - some historical, others purely fictional - their authors, and the records of their lives in text and stone changed the way that late antique populations perceived and organized their world. The cult of saints also changed the way that early Christians thought about how to behave, how to dress, and the very substance of their bodies. In the first half of this class we will focus on the creation, role and impact of these saints through reading the primary texts as well as scholarly reactions to them. We will focus on the Greek texts of the eastern Mediterranean in late antiquity, a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural region with a rich corpus of hagiographical texts as well as numerous extant sites dedicated to the saints who became such an integral part of its landscape. Those sites, and their description in both the textual and material sources, form the focus of the second half of the class, during which we will continue to read the saints' Lives in the original but will also look beyond them to examine the built and conceived landscapes within which their audiences were living. By doing so we will examine, from multiple angles, the creation, role, and impact of the cult of saints, as a phenomenon in itself as well as in its individual iterations.

LOGISTICS

I will begin each class with a discussion that situates that day’s text and theme into the overall trajectory of the class. We will then work through translations of different sections of the text. For each session, everyone should pick a short passages from the assigned text that they feel best captures the day's theme; we will focus on these and other passages with which you had problems translating, for the first half of the class.

For the second half of the class, 1-2 students will prepare a short presentation and discussion questions focusing on the theme, especially by drawing upon modern scholarship and comparative examples from other saints’ Lives. These will be assigned on the first day of class; you can volunteer for a certain theme that most interests you or you find most relevant to your own research.

ASSIGNMENTS

As a graduate seminar, this class revolves around the attendance, participation, and discussion of all students at each class. In addition, 1-2 students will have the added responsibility of preparing a short (15-20 minutes) presentation and a set of questions to facilitate a discussion (30-40 minutes) for the second half of each class. These can, but must not necessarily, form the core questions of the final research paper (20-25 pages), which the students will present over the course of the last two weeks of class. This topic must be presented as a 1-page abstract to me and approved no later than the end of the mid-term break.

The weighted breakdown of the final grade is as follows:

Attendance & Participation
Presentation & Discussion
Final Paper Abstract
Final Paper Presentation
Final Paper

10%
20%
15%
15%
40%

SCHEDULE

PART I: THE SAINTS

WEEK 1: SITUATING THE SAINTS AND THEIR LIVES

Brown (1995) Selections from Authority and the Sacred (Chapters 1 & 2)
Coon (1997) “Hagiography and Sacred Models”
Efthymiadis (2011) “Greek Hagiography in Late Antiquity”
Lane Fox (1997) "The Life of Daniel"

Optional: Maxwell (2012) "Paganism and Christianization"

WEEK 2: MAKING MARTYRS, MAKING SAINTS

Text
Selections from the Historia Religiosa of Theodoret of Cyrrhus

Readings
Selections from Castelli (2004) Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making
Selections from Boyarin (1999) Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity
Recla 2014 "Autothanatos"

WEEK 3: ASCETICISM

Text
Athanasius, Life of Antony in Athanasius: Vie d'Antoine ed. Bartelink (1994)
Passages: TBD

Readings
Shaw (1998) "What is Asceticism?" in The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity
Krueger (1999) “Hagiography as an ascetic practice”
Selections from Clark (1999) Reading Renunciation
Selections from Brakke (1995) Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism

WEEK 4: HOLY MAN IN LATE ANTIQUITY

Text
Life of Saint Simeon Stylites in Théodoret de Cyr, Histoire des Moines de Syrie Canivet and Loery-Molinghen (1977-79)
Passages: TBD

Readings
Brown (1971) Rise and Function of the Holy Man
Harvey (1988) "Sense of a Stylite"

WEEK 5: AUTHORITY ISSUES

Text
Selections from Acts of Paul and Thekla
Life of St Thekla in Vie et miracles de sainte Thècle : texte grec, traduction et commentaire ed. Dagron (1978)
Passages: TBD

Readings
Selections from Johnson (2006) The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study
Johnson (2006) "Late Antique Narrative Fiction"

WEEK 6: GENDER-BENDING AND REDEMPTION: HARLOTS AND VIRGINS

Text
Vita Mariae Aegyptae by Sophronius in PG 87:3697–726;
Passages: TBD

Readings
Cox Miller (2003) “Is there a harlot in this text?”
Selections from Ward (1987) Harlots of the Desert
Coon (1997) "God's Holy Harlots" in Sacred Fictions

[MID-TERM BREAK]

PART II: THE SACRED SPACES

WEEK 7: BODIES OF THE SAINTS

Text
Selections from Palladius' Historia Lausiaca in The Lausiac History of Palladius ed. Butler (1898)

Readings
Selections from Cox Miller (2009) Corporeal Imagination
Gonzalez (2013) "Anthropologies of Continuity"
Cox Miller (2004) "Visceral Seeing"

WEEK 8: FROM BODIES TO BUILDINGS

Text
Selections from the Life of Saint Symeon Stylites the Younger in La Vie Ancienne de S. Syméon le Jeune 521-592 ed. van den Ven (1962)

Readings
Hahn (1997) "Seeing and Believing"
Millar (2014) "The Image of a Christian Monk in Northern Syria"
Selections from Yasin (2009) Saints and Church Spaces

WEEK 9: SACRED LANDSCAPES: THE DESERT, THE CITY, AND THE MONASTERY

Text
Life of Euthymios in Lives of the Monks of Palestine by Cyril of Scythopolis
Passages: TBD

Readings
Goehring (2003) "Dark Side of the Landscape"
Frankfurter (2005) "Urban Shrine and Rural Saint"
Bangert (2010) "Archaeology of Pilgrimage: Abu Mina and Beyond"

WEEK 10: THE HOLY LAND

Text
Itinerarium Egeriae (Peregrinatio Aetheriae) ed. Prinz (1960)
Passages: TBD

Readings
Sivan (1988) "Who Was Egeria?"
Selections from Bitton-Ashkelony (2005) Encountering the Sacred
Selections from Taylor (1993), Christians and the Holy Places

WEEK 11: LIVING SAINTS, LIVING SPACES

Text
Selections from Historia Monachorum in Aegypto ed. A.-J. Festugière (Brussels 1961)

Readings
Selections from Georgia Frank (2000) The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to LIving Saints in Christian Late Antiquity
Schachner (2010) "Archaeology of the Stylite"