EAN: 9783838217857

THE IMAGE OF THE DEMON IN BYZANTIUM PHILOSOPHIC...

The image of the medieval and Renaissance demon attracts the interest of historians 
philosophers  anthropologists  and many other scholars because of its huge impact on
significant social and political phenomena and because of its relation to many philosophical
and intellectual movements. Nevertheless  such researches are focused predominantly on the
Western evil spirit. Its Byzantine 'colleague'  on the other hand  has been somehow neglected 
even though Byzantinology is at least a century-old field of research. This book attempts to
shed light on a subject which has not been previously in the focus of such exhaustive research.
The image of the demon will be presented in a very different and much more obscure epoque  for
which the main sources are numerous  but not so well-known. The so-called Byzantine 'Dark
centuries' are marked by political and social instability and theological crises. Nevertheless
during these troubled centuries one literary genre flourished. The Lives of the Saints  unlike
the works of the 10th century humanists and encyclopedists  do not shine with the archaic light
of the Hermogenean style or with the well-built reasoning of Procopius  they are vivid
reflections of the real life  of the beliefs and the superstitions of ordinary people. The Evil
and the demons are constantly present in this world and they deserve their own history and
'archaeology' The combination of precision  accuracy  and stylistic elegance makes this this
serious and erudite book both profound and pleasant reading. -Tzotcho Boiadjiev  Professor of
Philosophy  University of Sofia

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