This book focuses on the attempts of three seventh-century Palestinian intellectuals--John Moschos, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and Maximus the Confessor--to determine the Church's power and place during a period of profound crisis, as the eastern Roman empire suffered serious reversals in the face of Persian and then Islamic expansion. Through their stories, Booth documents nothing less than a profound change in the very nature of the self-perception of a religious society. Although focused on the first half of the seventh century, this book throws bright light both behind itself--on the nature of the role of the holy man in late antiquity--and in front of itself--on the nature of the Byzantine Orthodoxy that would emerge in the middle ages, and which is still central to the churches of Greece and Eastern Europe--
- | Author: Phil Booth
- | Publisher: University Of California Press
- | Publication Date: Nov 07, 2017
- | Number of Pages: 412 pages
- | Language: English
- | Binding: Paperback
- | ISBN-10: 0520296192
- | ISBN-13: 9780520296190
