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IMC 2009: Sessions

Session 810: East and West in Conflict and Dialogue, II: Orthodoxy and its Discontents

Tuesday 14 July 2009, 16.30-18.00

Moderator/Chair:Paweł Kras, Instytut Historii, John Paul II Catholic University, Lublin
Paper 810-aHeresy is in the Eyes of the Beholder: Visualizing the Iconoclastic Controversy in Early Medieval Rome
(Language: English)
Charles McClendon, Department of Fine Arts, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
Index terms: Architecture - Religious, Art History - General, Art History - Painting, Theology
Paper 810-bThe Sacred Arsenal by Andronikos Kamateros
(Language: English)
Alessandra Bucossi, Stockholm University
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Ecclesiastical History
Abstract

Papers in this session deal with the role of representations of East and West in definitions of orthodoxy in the two domains.

Paper -a:
The Byzantine ban on religious imagery in the 8th and 9th centuries was adamantly opposed by the Papacy. From the beginning of the period, when the policy was condemned as heretical by Pope Gregory III at a synod held in Old St Peter's, to the mid-9th century when iconoclasm was finally repealed in the Greek East, a number of monuments were set up in Rome that proclaimed the papal position in visual terms. This paper explores this phenomenon by examining the contextual meaning of a series of papal commissions, including churches, wall paintings, and mosaics.

Paper -b:
The paper presents one of the most important remaining Byzantine inedita of the 12th century. The Sacred Arsenal - Hiera hoplotheke is a theological text written by Andronikos Kamateros, a nobleman active at the Constantinopolitan court during the second half of the 12th century. The emperor Manuel Komnenos (1143-1180) commissioned this immense work (600 pages) to assist in refuting two enemies of Christian Orthodoxy: the Catholic Church and the Armenian Church. The Sacred Arsenal, completed by its author around the year 1172, remained an authority until the 15th century. John X Bekkos wrote a refutation of this text in his Refutationes (PG 141, 396-613), Markos Eugenikos and Bessarion had this text amongst their sources.