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A study of the authority of the holy man and its limits in times of crisis, taking as its central figure Symeon Stylites the Younger (c.521-592), who, from his vantage point on a column on a mountain close to Antioch, witnessed a period of exceptional turbulence in the sixth century, including plague, earthquakes, and Persian invasion.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Antioch and Northern Syria in the Sixth Century
- 2: The Sermons of Symeon Stylites the Younger
- 3: The Life of Symeon Stylites the Younger
- 4: The Life of Martha
- 5: Hagiography and the Crises of the Sixth and Seventh Centuries
About the author
Lucy Parker completed her DPhil on Symeon Stylites the Younger at the University of Oxford in 2016. Since then she has worked as a Research Associate specialising in Syriac on the European Research Council-funded project 'Stories of Survival: Recovering the Connected Histories of Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern World' (2016-2018), as a Departmental Lecturer in Late Antique and Early Medieval History at Worcester College, Oxford (2018-2019), and, most recently, as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Oxford working on monasteries and hagiographies in the early Islamic period (2019-).
Summary
A study of the authority of the holy man and its limits in times of crisis, taking as its central figure Symeon Stylites the Younger (c.521-592), who, from his vantage point on a column on a mountain close to Antioch, witnessed a period of exceptional turbulence in the sixth century, including plague, earthquakes, and Persian invasion.
Additional text
Lucy Parker's book explores the hagiography, writings, cult, and public perception of a saint....Throughout the book, Parker shows her solid historical workings. Her careful close reading of the evidence is convincing. She engages with the existing scholarship, identifying its weaknesses, but always acknowledging its merits. She carefully weighs the arguments and proposes the solutions with caution. Her insights into the functions of Symeon's and his mother's literary images and the challenges their cults had to face are compelling.
