Visualizing Christ's Miracles in Late Byzantium

Art, Theology, and Court Culture

Maria Alessia Rossi

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009387606
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book investigates the political and spiritual agenda behind monumental paintings of Christ's miracles in late Byzantine churches in Constantinople, Mystras, Thessaloniki, Mount Athos, Ohrid, and Kastoria. It is the first exhaustive examination of Christ's miracles in monumental decoration, offering a comparative and detailed analysis of their selection, grouping, and layout and redefining the significance of this diverse and unique iconography in the early Palaiologan period. Maria Alessia Rossi argues that these painted cycles were carefully and inventively crafted by the cultural milieu, secular and religious, surrounding Emperor Andronikos II (r. 1282–1328) at a time of ferment in the early Palaiologan era. Furthermore, by adopting an interdisciplinary approach, she demonstrates that the novel flowering of Christ's miracles in art was not an isolated phenomenon, but rather emerged as part of a larger surge in literary commissions, and reveals how miracles became a tool to rewrite history and promote Orthodoxy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• List of Drawings
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Ecclesiastical Policies and the Sociohistorical Context of the Early Palaiologan Period
• 2 A Wealth of Sources: Miracles in Text and Image
• 3 Christ’s Miracles: Selection and Iconography
• 4 Christ’s Miracles: Grouping and Setting
• 5 Christ’s Miracle Cycle in Byzantine Churches
• Conclusion
• Tables A–E
• Bibliography
• Index Locorum
• Subject Index