From Christian Sect and Social Movement to Paulician State and Nation of Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox Paulicians

Rituals, Collapse, and Radical Transformation in Archaic States, edited by Joanne M. A. Murphy, pp. 56–76. New York: Routledge., 2021

Religion is one of the many potential mediums for emphasizing ethnic difference and highlighting group membership. Particularly in mountainous landscapes, which are difficult for imperial or state powers to control, religion may be a key means of asserting peripherality. The residents of the Mani Peninsula, Greece, converted to Orthodox Christianity during the reign of the Byzantine Empire and maintained this religious affiliation even after Byzantine collapse in 1463 CE, when the region came under Ottoman and, later, Venetian rule. This study reviews the research on Mani's Byzantine churches to date—much of which is published in Greek—and presents new interpretations of the religious practices of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine communities of Mani. This case study sheds light on the role of religion in rural communities and the potential reasons for religious continuity in peripheral landscapes during periods of social transformation. In particular, the firm adherence of Mani's residents to Orthodox Christianity emphasized their ethnic difference from the ruling authorities and simultaneously undermined these authorities' ability to assert hegemonic power in the region.

Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 2016

For a .pdf of this essay, please contact me. Paul, who has had far more influence than Jesus on the mainstream dogmas of Christianity, was (this essay alleges) not a Jew but a Herodian of Parthian ancestry, heavily influenced in his Docetic views and mystery rituals by Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. Hence the decades-long rivalry between him and the very Jewish John the Presbyter, a leader of the movement who actually had known Jesus.

Ceræ / Cerae, 2022

This article explores two 'heretical' movements, the Paulicians and Tondrakians, both of which originated in medieval Armenia and subsequently spread throughout the Byzantine Empire. These movements became the target of elites from both Armenian and Byzantine power structures and, as a result, acolytes were subject to excommunications, forced resettlements, and mass violence. This article investigates the ways in which church and imperial authorities represented and, by extension, marginalised these heretics, as both religious and political threats, which ultimately led to their persecution. This research further examines the way in which adherents of these peripheral heresies were perceived by ecclesiastical and political hierarchies throughout the Middle Ages, whether Byzantine, Armenian, or Islamic. How these heretics viewed themselves and their place within the universe will also be recreated from the historical literature. Although, this is somewhat difficult, as many of the scriptures, sermons, sacred sites, and religious artefacts of these heretical movements were consigned to the flame over centuries of hostilities. Through an examination of primary sources, predominantly from orthodox cleric-chroniclers hostile to the Paulician and Tondrakian movements, this article will explore the ways in which the marginalisation of these heretics led to their excommunication, dispossession, and death.

2008

Studies in World Christianity, 2011

European History Quarterly, 2021

This article explores the conversion of Muslims to Orthodox Christianity during the Greek War of Independence (1821-1832) and the first post-independence years as a case study which shows that religious boundaries in the Balkans do not seem to have been as insurmountable as one might think. The bonds between people of different religious affiliations, including Christians and Muslims, were not so loose in the chaotic period of the nineteenth century. Even though religious differences have always existed in Southeastern Europe, the inhabitants of that region have not always seen fellow humans with different religious affiliations as estranged others. Muslim converts to Christianity were ready to compromise their Islamic faith in exchange for security, social status, and well-being in the changed political and social environment created by Greek nationalism, with a view to advancing their professional opportunities and material interests in the new state. The Greek case is not unique. Religious conversions from Islam to Christianity occurred elsewhere in the region during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet, while Balkan historiographical literature has focused on the Islamization of Christians in the region during the Ottoman period, it has paid little attention to the inverse processes of Christianization of Muslims in the age of nationalism.

Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni, 2021

«Annuntia mihi, quem dilexit anima mea, / ubi pascas, / ubi cubes in meridie…» (Cant., 1.7) 1. These words, spoken by the bride from the biblical Song of Songs, were understood by the Donatists as meaning "in the south" rather than "at noon" (p. 97). Therefore, in their view, the true flock of the Lord was to be found in the area where Donatism dwelled, as opposed to the antagonistic Carthaginian Church in the coastal strip of Roman Africa. The same mechanisms of ingenious interpretation that supported Donatist theories in North Africa were used in Phrygia by Montanus to construct his self-styled New Prophecy, one that would dominate the region from the late second century on. But as Christianizing Asia Minor clarifies, from its intrinsic prophetic tendencies (p. 115) through the intricate complex of sects connected to it (such as the Tascodrugites, who owed their name to their curious custom of praying with a forefinger placed against the nostril, showing the depth of their devotion) 2 , and right up to the labelling of Pepuza as the "new Jerusalem" (p. 247), Montanism proved to be a major-but not exclusive-force in the shaping of Phrygian Christianity. Paul McKechnie, an associate professor in the Department of Ancient History at Macquaire University (Sidney), is a renowned specialist in the Hellenistic world and the Roman East 3 as well as also having widely studied the first centuries of the Christian religion 4. With the present volume, he has managed to achieve, in hardly 300 pages, a fine, focused, comprehensible account of what happened from «the initial encounters between Phrygians and Christian missionaries […] to the time of the Great Persecution (302-312) and the astonishing reversal which followed and made Christianity the favoured religion of the Roman emperors from 313» (p. 17). Its focus, then, lies unambiguously within inland Asia Minor, not in the wider, more general context of Anatolia as one could imagine from the title. However, there are two reasons which justify this decision: first, the very fact that the first Christian

While each Church present in Jerusalem has been studied individually, no analysis of the interactions between the various Churches, nor with the sovereign powers, has yet been carried out. This shortcoming in a well-established field of research can partly be explained by the wide range of written languages involved. Yet the academic compartmentalization of Eastern Christian and Islamic studies may have been the major factor. The ERC project ChrIs-cross will address this issue through a Connected History approach and a re-evaluation of Hodgson’s concept of the ‘Islamicate world.’ The unpublished archives of the Christian institutions of Jerusalem, which consist exclusively of Islamic legal documents, make it possible to study the ways in which non-Muslims were integrated into the Islamic(ate) world. Among these, the archives of the Armenian Patriarchate are particularly rich in information, not only on the Armenian communities, but also on other Miaphysite communities, especially the Ethiopians and the Copts, making it possible to reconstruct the networks that linked them in the wider context of Ayyubid and Mamluk societies.