IoA/BM seminar Vicky Manolopoulou

Vicky Manolopoulou: Movement and prayer: the litanies in Byzantine Constantinople

In medieval minds Constantinople was the queen of cities, a world-famous jewel under the protection of God and His mother the Theotokos. The city's sacred landscape hosted the relics of saints and was perceived as a church. The city was the location of religious processions, the echoes of which can be found in various primary sources such as the Typicon of the Great Church. These processions are recorded as having salvific and protective properties acting as a link between people and the divine. This paper examines the spatiotemporal dimension of religious movement in order to understand its role in creating a sacred landscape. It adopts an inter-disciplinary approach towards the archaeology of religion and practice in the Byzantine capital and suggests that sacred landscapes are not static amalgams but exist and are transformed through experience