Innovating “Traditional” Women’s Roles: Byzantine Insights for Orthodox Christian Gender Discourse
Some contemporary hierarchically endorsed statements about gender within Orthodox Christianity appeal to “traditional roles” for women. Byzantine hagiographies about women, however, often confound the stability suggested by such rhetoric, and offer a more open “tradition” of Orthodox Christians cele...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2020]
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| In: |
Modern theology
Year: 2020, Volume: 36, Issue: 3, Pages: 641-661 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Orthodox Church
/ Byzantine Empire
/ Hagiography
/ Gender-specific role
/ Woman
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| IxTheo Classification: | KAC Church history 500-1500; Middle Ages KCD Hagiography; saints KDF Orthodox Church NBE Anthropology |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Some contemporary hierarchically endorsed statements about gender within Orthodox Christianity appeal to “traditional roles” for women. Byzantine hagiographies about women, however, often confound the stability suggested by such rhetoric, and offer a more open “tradition” of Orthodox Christians celebrating diverse and boundary-breaking forms of women’s sanctity (even if via negation of their womanhood). Although these texts betray an unabashedly historical patriarchal perspective, they also can be read as using gender, via an almost apophatic dialectic, to convey theological values that challenge essentialist associations between specific vocations, authoritative positions, and particular sexes. As hagiography is an influential genre for Orthodox beliefs and practices, the ways hagiographers negotiate and depict gender should inform understandings of gender in Orthodox “tradition.” |
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| ISSN: | 1468-0025 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Modern theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/moth.12538 |