6.13 FC – Entangled Emotions in Byzantine Art and Literature

This paper investigates the iconography of the child martyr St Cyricus and his mother, St Julitta, with particular emphasis on their visual representation in Byzantine church decoration across the Balkans and Greece, alongside select examples from the Christian West. According to the Vita tradition, Cyricus, a three-year-old child, was brutally slain by Alexander, the governor…

Over the late fourth/early fifth century, Christians broke a long-standing tabu in the Mediterranean world and introduced depictions of torture and death. With most material evidence lost, scholars debated whether the images mentioned by authors of the time existed, or we are dealing with rhetorical artifice. Supporting evidence comes from Byzantium, where several iconographic formulas…

My paper examines the cultural, ethical, and psychological attitudes toward laughter in the light of contemporary sources, primarily textual but also epigraphic and visual with regard to late antique Antioch. My paper will focus on a few pieces of evidence that underscore the diversity of the available material and offer useful insights into the subject.

In the Gospel of John, in response to the refusal of the apostle Thomas to accept Christ’s resurrection unless he receives tactile proof, Christ declares that ‘blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed’ (John 20:29). The episode of the Incredulity of Thomas is frequently interpreted as an insistent reminder that religious…