3.39 FC – Lived Religion and the Environment

In late antiquity and the Middle Ages, memory was often depicted and interpreted as a spatial metaphor. But could the reverse also be true? Was the urban landscape of early Byzantine Jerusalem (fourth–seventh centuries CE) intentionally designed as a “mental map,” integrating topography, visibility, material surroundings, and bodily experience to shape collective Christian memory? This…

Lo scopo di questo intervento sarà quello di confrontare una selezione di inni greci e latini dedicati al santo martire Vito con il testo biblico, per mettere in luce le fonti della produzione innografica e le varianti nella ricezione locale del culto al giovane santo siciliano. Il culto a san Vito, giovane cristiano che nella…

The present paper examines the veneration of natural elements—such as earth, stones, sun and moon, fire, water—rooted in pre-Christian folk beliefs and persisting within Christian practices, particularly those associated with birth and death, during the early and middle Byzantine periods. The geographical scope of the analysis encompasses key regions of the Byzantine world, including Constantinople,…

The fifth century has traditionally been understood as a moment of divergence between the collapsing Western Roman Empire and the enduring Eastern Empire, a dichotomy typically attributed to institutional resilience and strategic choices in the East. This paper reconsiders that narrative by foregrounding the role of natural disasters, particularly seismic activity, famine, and epidemic disease,…