The First Edinburgh Byzantine Book Festival

« The Edinburgh Byzantine Book Festival is the first of its kind as a way to learn about recently published books on any area of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies (AD ca.300–ca.1500), including literature, history, archaeology, and material culture. The Festival is an online event, allowing attendees from all over the world to join in. The aim is to hold it every two years in order to promote a wider understanding and awareness of Byzantine scholarship in a spirit of collegiality. It is also intended to encourage future collaborations and networking among the various presenters and attendees, especially in these strange times of the coronavirus pandemic. Hopefully, it will also inspire similar events in other research fields in the future.

The 1st Online Edinburgh Byzantine Book Festival includes volumes published in 2019 and 2020, and forthcoming books with an estimated publication date no later than June 2021. It features monographs published in English, French, Georgian, German, Modern Greek, Italian, and Romanian. »

Télécharger le programme ici. 

Life Is Short, Art Long : The Art of Healing in Byzantium – Pera Museum, Istanbul

Life Is Short, Art Long

The Art of Healing in Byzantium

11 February – 26 April 2015
Pera Museum, Istanbul

This exhibition takes its name from the famous aphorism by Hippocrates and examines the art and practice of healing in Byzantium from Roman times to the late Byzantine period.

Curated by Dr. Brigitte Pitarakis, Life Is Short, Art Long examines faith, magic, and rational medicine as methods of healing. It traces the “art of healing” from the foundations laid by Apollo and Asklepios, healers of antiquity, and Hippocrates and Dioscorides, the founders of rational medicine and also examines the roles of the physician saints. Among the other topics covered and objects on display are icons, reliquaries, and amulets, marble carvings, medical equipment, plants and herbs, medical and botanical manuscripts, and the centers of healing and miracle in Istanbul.

The exhibition reveals that the belief that illnesses were primarily caused by demons co-existed alongside a rational understanding of health and medicine based on the teachings of Hippocrates. The “art of healing” was practiced by physicians, saints, and magicians and involved practices ranging from surgery to daily cleansing of the body and the spirit to exorcism and the veneration of saints.

The works offering insight into Istanbul’s Byzantine past have been loaned from the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, the library of the Holy Trinity Monastery of Halki (Heybeliada), the Foundation of the Yeniköy Greek Orthodox Church of Panayia and School, the Rezan Has Museum, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, Oxford University Herbaria, the Benaki Museum in Athens, the Kastoria Byzantine Museum, and private collections.

Symposium 14.03.2015 Pera Museum

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