By looking at liturgy, performance, prayer, poetry, and the material culture of worship, this book forges a new conversation about the diversity of Christianities in the medieval eastern Mediterranean, centered on the history of practice. It studies prayer and worship in the variety of Christian communities that thrived from late antiquity to the middle ages: Byzantine Orthodoxy, Syrian Orthodoxy, and the Church of the East. Rather than focusing on doctrinal differences and analyzing divergent patterns of thought, the essays address common patterns of worship, individual and collective prayer, hymnography and liturgy, as well as the indigenous theories that undergirded Christian practices. Following recent trends in the academic study of religion that emphasize practices rather than doctrines, the volume intervenes in standard academic discourses about Christian difference with an exploration of common patterns of celebration, commemoration, and self-discipline.
Focusing on the history of practice and piety shifts the emphasis in comparative religious history beyond the history of doctrine, and in the process narrates a new history of how medieval eastern Mediterranean Christianities came to be. Essays by established colleagues and promising younger scholars interrogate elements of continuity and change over time-before and after the rise of Islam, both under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire and in the lands of successive Caliphates. Groups distinct in their allegiances nevertheless shared a common religious heritage and recognized each other even in their differences as kinds of Christianity. Part I explores the theory and practice of prayer. After an essay illuminating the experience of chanting the psalms, a series of essays consider the late ancient heritage of monastic discourses about prayer especially among Syrian and Palestinian ascetic teachers. Part II considers the localization of prayer, either at pilgrimage sites or within churches through inscriptions. Topics include pilgrimage, donation, dedication, and incubation.
Part III addresses liturgical development through the Eucharist, festal commemoration, communal prayer, and hymns.