Accessing and Transmitting Scripture Through Icons

Elizabeth Prodromou is Professor of the Practice in the International Studies Program at Boston College and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Her academic and practitioner work focus on the intersection of geopolitics, religion, and human rights, especially concentrating on the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. She served on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (2004–2012), and she works in various policy and NGO contexts on religious pluralism and peacebuilding. Her publications have appeared in journals such as The Review of Faith and International Affairs, Journal of Democracy, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Orbis. Some of her publications on Orthodox Christianity include co-edited volumes (Eastern Orthodox Christianity and American Higher Educations; and forthcoming co-edited volume on Dissent, Power, and Christian Identity After Nicaea). 

Bissera V. Pentcheva is the Victoria and Roger Sant Professor of Art at Stanford University. Her innovative work focuses on the interaction of art, architecture, and music in medieval art. She has published three books with Pennsylvania State University Press: Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, 2006 (received the Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America, 2010); The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium, 2010; and Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space and Spirit in Byzantium, 2017 (received the 2018 American Academy of Religion Award in excellence in historical studies). She has edited two volumes: Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual (Ashgate 2018), and Icons of Sound: Architecture, Music and Imagination in Medieval Art (Routledge 2020). Pentcheva's research has been supported by a number of prestigious fellowships:  Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2018–2019), J. S. Guggenheim (2017–2018), American Academy in Rome (2017–2018), Mellon New Directions (2010–2012), Humboldt (2006–2009), and a Dumbarton Oaks Junior Fellowship (2000–2001).

Abstract: “The Akathistos Hymn and the Byzantine Icons of the Mother of God”
This talk will explore how the Byzantine icons of the Theotokos engage with two different modes: the narrative and the metaphorical. My inspiration comes from the Akathistos Hymn composed in the sixth century; it is one of the greatest pieces of poetry surviving from Byzantium. It celebrates the role of the Mother of God in Salvation and was originally designed for the feast of the Annunciation. Except for the early stanzas where there is still some narration of the gospel story of Mary, the metaphors, rendered as salutations of the Theotokos, overtake the rest of the poem. These figures of speech do not describe the Mother of God but paradigmatically associate her with a variety of different realms: the earth with its bounty; the stars; the crown and the empire; the impregnable walls of Constantinople and the church. Mary’s unfixed and evolving image shows a capacity to sustain paradoxical associations in one being, exemplifying for the listener and performer of the Akathistos what conception (syllepsis) means: the capacity to hold a paradoxical union without confusion. How did this poem affect the encounter with traditional Byzantine icons of the Mother and Child before the appearance of the literal pictorial cycles? How did the unseen, unfixed, and ecstatically transformed communicated by the metaphors of the Akathistos layer the experience of the painted panels?

James C. Skedros is the Michael G. and Anastasia Cantonis Professor of Byzantine Studies at Hellenic College Holy Cross (Brookline, MA, USA). His teaching and research areas include popular religious practices in Late Antiquity, Byzantine Christianity, the lives of early Christian and Byzantine saints, and Christian-Muslim relations. In addition to his book on the historical development of the veneration of the early Christian martyr Demetrios (St. Demetrios of Thessaloniki: Civic Patron and Divine Protector, 4th–7th c. CE), he has published several journal articles as well as entries in reference works and in books dealing with the veneration and commemoration of saints. He is currently working on a book on memory and holiness in Byzantium.

Abstract: Most New Testament scholars consider Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians as his earliest extant letter and the oldest text included in the New Testament. Although the ongoing historical record of the Christian community Paul established in this northern Greco-Roman region is scant, by the early fourth century, a thriving Christian community is attested, and this community will proclaim its Christian identity continuously down to the present day. This presentation will offer a brief “tour” of the imagery Christians of Thessaloniki used in their churches to express their biblical beliefs and commitments during the Late Antique and Byzantine periods.