Apocalyptic Trajectories in Early Byzantium

Byzantine apocalyptic literature greatly shaped the apocalyptic imagination of the Middle Ages. Various narrative sequences and even whole texts that originated in Byzantium came to condition the medieval outlook of the eschatological future. This session is dedicated to an interdisciplinary discussion of early Byzantine apocalyptic traditions, with an emphasis on historiography, hermeneutical approaches, and textual analysis.

Medieval Greek revelatory texts are our main surviving source for what was once a vibrant and contentious tradition; its focal point was Constantinople, the Queen of Cities, which captivated the imagination of medieval travelers not only through its magnificent buildings but also through its soteriological significance. The Byzantines shared a determined vision of the future, which was a constant bone of contention throughout the medieval period. Armenians, Latins, Slavs, and others fiercely contested the Byzantine prerogative to produce the savior-emperor. Similar disputes ranged around the identity of the Antichrist. These debates were largely carried out in an exegetical framework of continuously (re)interpreting Biblical motifs and typologies. The soft power that Byzantium radiated throughout the millennium of its existence can hardly be understood without appreciating the Byzantine apocalyptic horizon of expectations. Such expectations took shape especially in the early Byzantine period, roughly from the reign of Constantine to the Arab conquests.

The papers of this panel discuss how exegetical techniques were employed in hagiography and homiletics in order to support implicit socio-political claims, how the interpretation of the canonical Book of Daniel was disputed in early Byzantium, and how the late antique apocalyptic imagination was pregnant with political implications, which formed the bedrock on which the influential motif of the last emperor was developed. It is the explicit aim of the panel to integrate references to the Latin West as well as the Muslim East wherever appropriate in order to reconstruct the global dimension of the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition.

This session will not be recorded.