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Michael Glykas and the Afterlife in Twelfth-Century Byzantium*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Yannis Papadogiannakis
Yannis Papadogiannakis*
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Oxford
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Extract

From the range of sources on Byzantine religious life, and Byzantine views on the afterlife in particular, the correspondence of Michael Glykas stands out as precious but neglected evidence. Glykas’s correspondence with people from all walks of life and his engagement with their preoccupations and with other controversial issues of the day reflect a dense network of communication and links with monks, laymen, members of the imperial family and imperial bureaucrats, situating him at the heart of the moral universe of twelfth-century Byzantine culture. Glykas’s correspondence and, in particular, his collection of ‘Questions and Answers’ (Kephalaia) shed light on the kinds of religious issues that were being raised in twelfth-century Byzantium, and they also highlight the multifarious issues and pastoral challenges which Christian theologians had to be prepared to deal with in their pastoral, pedagogical work.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 45: The Church, the Afterlife and the Fate of the Soul , 2009 , pp. 130 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2009

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Dr Joseph Munitiz for his helpful comments on this paper. The paper is a development of my wider current research on late antique and Byzantine collections of questions and answers, including Glykas and his Kephalaia.

References

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22 Kephalaia, ed. Eustratiades, 1: 245 (Q. 20).

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27 Ibid. 2: 273–74 (Q. 78).

28 Ibid. 1:88 (Q. 7).

29 Ibid. 1:89 (Q. 8).

30 Ibid. 1: 116(Q. 9).

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33 Kephalaia, ed. Eustratiades, 1:117 (Q. 9).

34 Constas, Nicholas, ‘Death and Dying in Byzantium’, in Krueger, Derek, ed., Byzantine Christianity (Minneapolis, MN, 2006), 124–45, at 144.Google Scholar

35 Kephalaia, ed. Eustratiades, 1: 120 (Q. 9).

36 Ibid. 1: 125–26 (Q. 9).

37 See also Constas, , ‘Death’, 144.Google Scholar

38 Kephalaia, ed. Eustratiades, 1: 123–28 (Q. 9).

39 Ibid. 1:129 (Q. 10).

40 Ibid. 1: 132–33 (Q. 10).

41 Ludlow, , Universal Salvation, 63–64.Google Scholar

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44 Further details in Constas, , ‘An Apology’, 278–79 Google Scholar; idem, ‘“To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”’, 110–12.

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47 Kephalaia, ed. Eustratiades, 1: 248 (Q. 21).

48 Ibid. 1:251 (Q. 21).

49 Ibid. 1: 251–52 (Q. 21).

50 Ibid. 2: 55–61 (Q. 50), to the same (Neilos the monk). Following the editor Eustratiades, Constas notes that Glykas is here drawing partly on the section on the feast of Protopsychosabbaton (Saturday of All Souls, the first Saturday of Great Lent in the Orthodox calendar) in the liturgical calendar (synaxarion) dedicated to the prayers and memorial offerings for the dead: Constas, ‘“To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”’, 102.

51 Constas, , ‘Death and Dying’, 137 Google Scholar; Dagron, Gilbert, Troisième, neuvième et quarantième jour dans la tradition byzantine: temps chrétien et anthropologie’, in Le temps chrétien de la fin de l’antiquité au moyen age, IIIe-XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1984), 419–30.Google Scholar

52 Perhaps he had in mind the Apostolic Constitutions 8.42.1, ed. M. Metzger, SC 336 (Paris, 1987), 258. The Byzantine practice of mnemosyna, however, was interpreted by some as an imitation of Christ’s resurrection on the third day and his ascension into heaven on the fortieth: Constas, , ‘“To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”’, 103.Google Scholar

53 Kephalaia, ed. Eustratiades, 2: 59 (Q. 50).

54 Ibid. 2: 215–29 (Q. 69).

55 Ibid. 2: 228 (Q. 69).

56 Ibid. 2: 221 (Q. 69); see also discussion in Baun, Tales, 138–44,300-12.

57 Kephalaia, ed. Eustratiades, 2: 380 (Q. 85).

58 Ibid. Constas (‘“To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”’, 113 n. 77) sees in this an allusion to the debate on purgatory that was to erupt few years after Glykas’s death.

59 Magdalino, , Empire, 406.Google Scholar

60 Constas, , ‘“To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”’, 100–01.Google Scholar