Taboo or Gift? The Lord’s Day in Byzantium
Church history has tended to trace the development of doctrine, either orthodox or heretical, canonical or anti-canonical. This paper, however, examines ‘para-canonical’ ideas, those which develop alongside the canonical - not quite heretical, but not fully orthodox either. Canonical norms, while co...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2002
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| In: |
Studies in church history
Year: 2002, Volume: 37, Pages: 45-56 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Church history has tended to trace the development of doctrine, either orthodox or heretical, canonical or anti-canonical. This paper, however, examines ‘para-canonical’ ideas, those which develop alongside the canonical - not quite heretical, but not fully orthodox either. Canonical norms, while constant in principle, have always been subject in practice to multiple understandings. Most of these shifting understandings, among groups or individuals, are fleeting and can never be recovered; this is why the history of the reception of canonical norms is so elusive. But for the social historian of religion, reception is often more interesting than the norms themselves.What actually ‘trickles down’ from what the bishops teach? This paper will maintain that some record of how things ‘trickled down’ is preserved in para-canonical religious texts, commonly known as ‘apocryphal’ literature. It considers various ways in which the canonical norms of the Greek Orthodox Church concerning the Lord’s Day were understood in a specific time and place: medieval Byzantium, between the ninth and the twelfth centuries. This was a crucial formative period for Orthodox Church culture, both Greek and Slav, during which ritual and moral attitudes that still obtain today were being worked out. |
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| ISSN: | 2059-0644 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Studies in church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0424208400014649 |
