A-H 322 Byzantine Art and Civilization
Spring, 1999

Analysis of a Saint's Life for Insights into Art:
your summaries and analyses

 

Navigate by clicking on the name of the saint (below) for relevant summaries:

St. Daniel the Stylite

St. Athanasia of Aegina

St. Theodora of Thessalonike

NB (=Nota bene or note well):
The Latin word for life, vita (nominative singular),
becomes vitae in the plural (or in the genitive, the "of" form,
as in "Curriculum vitae," which means
"course of (a) life."
All of this is tricky if you don't know Latin but you can spare yourself
some embarassment by just noting the way the rules work
from time to time.

If you enjoyed reading about the saint you selected you may wish to read other vitae
at the Dumbarton Oaks website
or through the section on saints' lives ("Religion: Sanctity") at the Medieval Sourcebook website
or in the first two volumes of the D.O. series on saints' lives in translation:
Holy Women of Byzantium, ed. A.M. Talbot (1998)
Three Byzantine Saints,
ed. E. Dawes and N. Baynes
Byzantine Defenders of Images, ed. A.M. Talbot (1997)

An important recent study of images of the saints in Byzantium might also be a great place to pursue
interests piqued by this exercise:
Henry Maguire, The Icons of their Bodies: Saints and thier Images in Byzantium (Princeton, 1996)


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