Seminari di Leslie Brubaker

Image: Zosimos and Mary of Egypt, from the Theodore Psalter (11th c), British Library, Add.19.352, f.68r 

Leslie Brubaker - University of Birmingham

The Materiality of the Virgin, East & West: Mary, Popes & Patriarchs

The Virgin Mary was (and remains) the most powerful woman in Christianity.  In some ways this is paradoxical, for while she appears in the Gospels, there is little detail about her life in the New Testament.  But while what would become the canonical Gospels paid little attention to her role, it is an indication of her importance from almost the beginning of the Christian cult that other early texts filled this gap:  by the second century, Mary was the subject of a detailed biography – the Protevangelion – attributed to Christ’s brother James.  This was excluded from the scriptural canon by pope Gelasius (492-6) but, despite the apparent papal desire to sideline Mary’s narrative, the Protevangelion was nonetheless widely known and extremely influential.  Still, her gradual rise to greater prominence in the institutional church, as expressed in the Acts of ecclesiastical councils, remained anchored to her relationship to Christ.  It was as the guarantor of Christ’s human nature that Mary was designated Theotokos (God-bearer) by the early fourth century, a title sanctioned by the council of Ephesos in 431.  Across the fifth, and especially the sixth century, however, the Theotokos became increasingly important in her own right:  images of her began to proliferate, and her attributes expanded as feasts dedicated to events of her life became inserted into the church calendar from the sixth century onwards. Visual responses to the increasing importance of Mary in the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire were not, however, identical, and I will examine the material evidence from both sides, to explore what the similarities and differences tell us about the varying social responses to the Theotokos in Late Antique Rome and Constantinople, as evidenced by Marian imagery.

26 marzo 18.00 - Sala Stemmi, Palazzo della Carovana, Scuola Normale Superiore - Piazza dei Cavalieri, 7 - Pisa

Mary of Egypt: Gender, Sanctity and Landscape

The Life of Mary of Egypt, which was probably written in the seventh century, became one of the most popular saints’ lives – and certainly the most frequently copied life of a female saint – of the medieval period.  It was translated into many languages and known across the Christian world.  The reasons for its popularity are multiple:  it combines a story of a shameless and man-hungry woman, saved by the Virgin Mary from a life of carnality (detailed in the text), with a story of the redemption of a proud monk, and an exotic desert setting replete with a gentle lion.  Perhaps because the storyline is so strong, and the setting evoked so dramatically, the Life has never been analysed as a text.  It is, however, as this paper demonstrates, a narrative carefully constructed to make specific points about gender, sanctity and the role of landscape that are particularly pertinent to its Late Antique origin.  Though some of these points remained relevant to later and different audiences, comparison with texts of the later Middle Ages, which omit certain sections of the earlier narrative,  highlights which themes were of particular significance to the original Late Antique listeners.   

27 marzo 11.30 - Sala Riunioni, Palazzo Venera, Università di Pisa -Via Santa Maria, 36 - Pisa