Phil Booth
University of Oxford, Theology, Faculty Member
- University of Oxford, History, Faculty Memberadd
- noneedit
- I am the A. G. Leventis Associate Professor of Eastern Christianity at the University of Oxford.edit
Research Interests:
In an ideal world, hagiography and the cult of saints would develop in parallel and strengthen each other: a successful cult would need texts, just as much as it needed shrines, relics and feasts. This book, studying the evidence from the... more
In an ideal world, hagiography and the cult of saints would develop in parallel and strengthen each other: a successful cult would need texts, just as much as it needed shrines, relics and feasts. This book, studying the evidence from the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Georgian worlds, shows that the reality of the link between hagiography and cult was often more complex. Some stories were written in response to existing veneration, but the cult practices and the image of the saint which they presented, differed from those promoted by the principal shrines of the same saint. Other stories preceded the emergence of cult, and gave rise to it only very much later. Yet others, while enjoying considerable literary success, never achieved for their heroes a shrine or a place in the calendar of feasts. Hagiography could initiate, support, change, or even ignore cult; but cult could just as well initiate, support, change, or even ignore hagiography.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
By using several contemporaneous compilations now embedded in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, and by putting these in conversation with parallel texts produced in Syriac, this article explores the revitalisation of the... more
By using several contemporaneous compilations now embedded in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, and by putting these in conversation with parallel texts produced in Syriac, this article explores the revitalisation of the contacts between the Severan patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch in the context of the late Marwānid and ʿAbbāsid periods. It argues that, while the commitment to communion was a shared inheritance of the late Roman period, the same commitment was renewed and refashioned in a quite different context, wherein the shifting distribution of power within the caliphate had placed the Alexandrian patriarchs in a position of distinct disadvantage and discomfort, far removed from the centres of patronage and of power.