TeTra | Oana Maria Cojocaru "Dis/ability and Byzantine Hagiography"

TeTra Research Seminar | January 25th, 2024
Oana Maria Cojocaru (Tampere University)
"Dis/ability and Byzantine Hagiography"
Religion held a central role in the daily lives of the Byzantines, not only shaping their identity but also guiding their actions and interactions and shaping their worldview. A fundamental aspect of Byzantine Christianity was the veneration of saints, which offer individuals a platform where they could make sense of their experiences of life, ask for help, express their hopes, fears, and anxieties, and voice their emotions in a cultural sanctioned way. The cult of the saints which prompted a prolific literary tradition detailing their lives, deeds and miracles, serves as a lens to explore the various ideas and conceptualizations of disability in the Byzantine world, and to a limited degree the lived experiences of the disabled. In this presentation I will discuss first the differences in the narrative teatments of disability by various hagiographers, and their attempts at explaining its source or reason depending on their religious and moral agendas. In the second part, I will discuss the religious practices that have at the center the disabled people from all walks of life, with a particular focus on the actions and interactions in various forms of these people with the saints and their relics.
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