Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints' Lives in English Translation (Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Saints Lives)

Dumbarton Oaks is launching a series of English translations of medieval Greek Lives of saints to bring a selected group of these biographies of holy men and women to the attention of a wider public. It is hoped that this new series will make available in translation a genre of medieval Greek text that has hitherto been relatively inaccessible. At present, the majority of the Byzantine Greek texts that have been translated into English are narrative histories or writings of the Church Fathers; these should now be complemented by other types of materials. This project to translate saints’ Lives is not, in fact, a new idea, but one rooted in tradition, for many of the Greek Lives of saints were translated into Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, and Arabic during the early Christian and Byzantine centuries to make them accessible to non-Greek speakers. The rationale for devoting the first volume of the series to selected Lives of female saints is the notable paucity of translations in English (or indeed any western European language) of the vitae of Byzantine holy women, especially for the post-Justinianic period. Therefore, an attempt has been made to include most of the vitae of holy women of the middle and late Byzantine centuries, which are relatively few in number, in addition to some earlier saints who exemplify certain types, such as nuns who adopted male monastic habit and female hermits. The ten holy women whose biographies are presented here represent a wide variety of Byzantine female nuns who disguised themselves in male monastic garb; a repentant harlot who withdrew to the desert for forty-seven years of self-imposed isolation; a nun who escaped from Arab captivity to spend thirty-five years as a hermit on the abandoned island of Paros; a wonder-working abbess who slew a dragon; widows who found refuge in the ascetic life of the convent; married laywomen and a queen abused by their husbands. The careers of these holy women demonstrate some of the divergent paths to sanctification in Byzantium, including mortification of the body, unquestioning obedience to a superior, repentance, acts of charity, prophecy, and miracle-working. At the same time, the texts of the Lives reveal the Byzantine ambivalence toward women, reflecting a paradox of civilization that simultaneously denigrated women as daughters of Eve and elevated Mary as the Mother of God and the instrument of mans salvation. These vitae , ranging from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries, also supplement traditional narrative histories by providing information on such aspects of Byzantine civilization as the impact of Arab and Bulgarian raids, iconoclasm, the monastic routine in convents, everyday family life and household management, and a smallpox epidemic in Thessalonike. This collection of sacred biographies is the initial volume in a new Dumbarton Oaks series, Byzantine Saints Lives in Translation. The vitae selected for the series are rendered into English for the first time and are fully annotated. General Introduction Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations A. Nuns Disguised as Monks 1. Life of St. Mary/Marinos (trans. Nicholas Constas) 2. Life of St. Matrona of Perge (trans. Jeffrey Featherstone, introduction and notes by Cyril Mango) B. Female Solitaries 3. Life of St. Mary of Egypt (trans. Maria Kouli) 4. Life of St. Theoktiste of Lesbos (trans. Angela C. Hero) C. Cenobitic Nuns 5. Life of St. Elisabeth the Wonderworker (trans. Valerie Karras) 6. Life of St. Athanasia of Aegina (trans. Lee Francis Sherry) 7. Life of St. Theodora of Thessalonike (trans. Alice-Mary Talbot) D. Pious Housewives 8. Life of St. Mary the Younger (trans. Angeliki E. Laiou) 9. Life of St. Thomaïs of Lesbos (trans. Paul Halsall) E. A Saintly Empress 10. Life of St. Theodora of Arta (trans. Alice-Mary Talbot) F. Indices Index of People and Places General Index Index of Notable Greek Words Nuns Disguised As Monks. Life Of St. Mary/marinos / Nicholas Constas -- Life Of St. Matrona Of Perge / Jeffrey Featherstone And Cyril Mango -- Female Solitaries. Life Of St. Mary Of Egypt / Maria Kouli -- Life Of St. Theoktiste Of Lesbos / Angela C. Hero -- Cenobitic Nuns. Life Of St. Elisabeth The Wonderworker / Valerie Karras -- Life Of St. Athanasia Of Aegina / Lee Francis Sherry -- Life Of St. Theodora Of Thessalonike / Alice-mary Talbot -- Pious Housewives. Life Of St. Mary The Younger / Angeliki E. Laiou -- (cont.) Life Of St. Thomais Of Lesbos / Paul Halsall -- A Saintly Empress. Life Of St. Theodora Of Arta / Alice-mary Talbot. Edited By Alice-mary Talbot. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes.