Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

As poetry the Akathistos has spurred a whole strain of iconography. The song, however, heaps image upon image, creating a shaky landscape, one which yields an ecstatic kind of seeing. With a form that frequently approximates sound poetry, it complicates a stable gaze.

The icons usually feature 24 narrative scenes neatly representing the 24 stanzas of the hymn. While much kontakion hymnography has a clear narrative layout, the poetic Akathistos actually lacks a narrative development, depending much more on spatially flourishing imagery as it slings itself out in intertwining scrolls. This chapter argues that the icons contribute to a domestication of an otherwise wild and sprawling metaphorical growth, focusing the viewer’s gaze on a humanoid stability absent in the Akathistos Hymn. The Akathistos tradition, then, sprouts with a tension between the aniconic, almost apophatic, darkness of the chairetismoi and the sanitizing pull of the icon scenes. The poetry, ultimately, takes the reader to a place where the iconography hesitates to go.

Having discussed this tension, the chapter turns to the “dark Mariology” of the hymn; the salutations associate the Theotokos with landscapes and fields, an overshadowed meadow, and downplay anthropomorphic forms, giving way to a much more dispersed Marian imagination, connecting her to the rich soil and the fertile earth.

At a time when Christianity was becoming the dominant religion in the Byzantine Roman Empire, Romanos the Melodist (ca. 485–565) was a composer of songs for festivals and rituals in late antique Constantinople. Most of his songs include dramatic dialogues or monologues woven with imagery from ordinary life, and his name became inseparably tied to the kontakion, a genre of dramatic hymn. Later Byzantine religious poets enthusiastically praised his creative virtuosity and a legend claimed that Romanos’s inspiration came directly from the Virgin Mary herself.

Songs about Women contains eighteen works related to the liturgical calendar that feature important female characters, many portrayed as models for Christian life. They appear as heroines and villains, saints and sinners, often as transgressive and bold. Romanos’s songs offer intriguing perspectives on gender ideals and women’s roles in the early Byzantine world.

This edition presents a new translation of the Byzantine Greek texts into English.

I tidlig kristen litteratur kan vi lese om trær som bøyer seg i ærbødighet for det hellige. Er trær noe mer enn bare ved? Hva har vi mistet på veien dit vi er i dag? Hvis alt skapt har en verdi i seg selv, kan vi da forholde oss til andre arter slik vi har gjort de siste århundrene? Må vi begynne å se på stammer, sopp og spirer med et nytt blikk? Og er dette blikket noe vi kan ha til felles, på tvers av ulike religioner?

Kan træer have en form for bevidsthed? Kan de handle på eget initiativ?

Thomas Arentzen er ekspert indenfor tidlig kristen poesi og litteratur og har forsket i de tidlige kristnes opfattelse af træer. Sidste efterår var Arentzen i Istanbul. Her mødte han træer, som har stået på hellige steder i hundredvis af år.