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IMC 2010: Sessions

Session 613: Networking on the Road

Tuesday 13 July 2010, 11.15-12.45

Moderator/Chair:Alexander Beihammer, Department of History & Archaeology, University of Cyprus, Nicosia
Paper 613-a'Come and I'll show you where heaven and earth touch one another': The Riddle of Rabba bar bar Hannah's Travellers' Tales
(Language: English)
Tziona Grossmark, Faculty of Humanities & Social Studies, Tel Hai Academic College, Upper Galilee
Index terms: Folk Studies, Hebrew and Jewish Studies
Paper 613-bThe Travel of Information: Networking and Decision-Making in the Patriarchate of Constantinople
(Language: English)
Ekaterini Mitsiou, Institut für Byzanzforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Ecclesiastical History
Paper 613-cThe Impact of Travel and Distance on Some of the Early Ecumenical Councils
(Language: English)
Luise Marion Frenkel, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Rhetoric, Sermons and Preaching
Abstract

Paper -a:
A volume of some 22 miniature legends in tractate Baba Batra of the Babylonian Talmud will be the focus of the proposed lecture. In our paper we will maintain that this volume was born within the circles of Rabbis who have traveled between Sassanian Persia and Roman Palestine, creating a channel of communication between the two major Jewish centers of study of the Torah but at the same time they also become a link in the transmission of oral travellers' tales on the eastern trade routes.

Paper -b:
Each trip was dangerous for the valuable asset of information in the Middle Ages. In a document of the year 1389 for instance, Patriarch Antonios IV of Constantinople and the Synod blame former delegates for delivering on purpose false information, which led the previous patriarchs Philotheos Kokkinos and Neilos to false decisions and caused a severe crisis in the relations between the Byzantine Church and Moscow. This paper aims at presenting the travel of information and the ways of distorting the truth in ecclesiastical matters of the 14th-century Orthodox Church.

Paper -c:
Delays due to travel and distance, seen as typical medieval problems, were also earlier an everyday experience for everyone. At the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus I (431C.E.), they affected decisively the extent of the participation from the Latin West and the delay of the party led by John of Antioch had a pivotal impact on the proceedings and thus on the lastingly influential decisions. The analysis of some passages of the acts shows how these events were addressed in written communications and exploited in the quasi-juridical process of the sessions.