The Cult of St Anna in Byzantium

Eirini Panou

may 2018 · Routledge

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The Cult of St Anna in Byzantium is the first undertaking in Byzantine research to study the phenomenon of St Anna’s cult from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries. It was prompted by the need to enrich our knowledge of a female saint who had already been studied in the West but remained virtually unknown in Eastern Christendom. It focuses on a figure little-studied in scholarship and examines the formation, establishment and promotion of an apocryphal saint who made her way to the pantheon of Orthodox saints. Visual and material culture, relics and texts track the gradual social and ideological transformation of Byzantium from early Christianity until the fifteenth century. This book not only examines various aspects of early Christian and Byzantine civilisation, but also investigates how the cult of saints greatly influenced cultural changes in order to suit theological, social and political demands.

The cult of St Anna influenced many diverse elements of Christian life in Constantinople, including the creation of sacred spaces and the location of haghiasmata (fountains of holy water) in the city; imperial patronage; the social reception of St Anna’s story; and relic narratives. This monograph breaks new ground in explaining how and why Byzantium and the Orthodox Church attributed scriptural authority to a minor figure known only from a non-canonical work.

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Dr. Eirini Panou studied Art and Archaeology at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens and earned her Ph.D. in Byzantine Studies from the University of Birmingham (2012). After the completion of her post-doctoral research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) in 2015, she became adjunct faculty at the Open University of Patras and Cyprus teaching Byzantine art and Byzantine Public and Private Life. She is also research associate of the National Research Centre in Athens. She has produced articles on the cult of saints in Byzantium, on art, on female patronage, on magic, on theology, on the Protevagelion of James, and on Byzantine history.