Session held at the 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies Byzantium – Bridge Between Worlds. Venice and Padua, 22–27 August 2022
This session focuses on powerful or efficacious periods of time in Byzantine late antiquity. The discussion will include philosophical, theological, eschatological, political, and economic perspectives on time. In this session, the power associated with vigils, days of the week, temporal rhythms, calendrical time, and apocalyptic time will be discussed. What makes a time powerful or suitable for important actions? What types of activities are "time-bound"? What philosophical and eschatological importance was attached to time, and how were those periods of time conceived? These questions will be addressed by an interdisciplinary constellation of scholars and provide a basis for a larger discussion of Byzantine notions of powerful time in late antiquity.
Angela Zielinski Kinney
Citizenship: USA
Affiliation: Universität Wien, Austria
Title: A Good Night’s Sleep: Days for Efficacious Incubation in Late Antique Byzantium
Keywords: incubation, healing miracles, days of the week, saints, hagiography
Uta Heil
Citizenship: Germany
Affiliation: Universität Wien, Austria
Title: The Dark Side of the Lord's Day: Threatening Scenes in the Letter from Heaven and Comparable Texts
Keywords: Letter from Heaven; divine punishment, hell, sacrality of time, pseudepigraphy
Sofie Remijsen
Citizenship: Netherlands
Affiliation: University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Title: The Times of Taxation and the Rhythm of Life
Keywords: experience of time, administrative practices, week, indiction
Nikolas HächlerCitizenship: Switzerland
Affiliation: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany / Universität Zürich, Switzerland
Title: Heraclius as Emperor of the Last Days and the Attempted Establishment of an Eternal Sunday. Observations on the Transformation of Imperial Ideologies in Byzantium, on Religious Policies, and on the Re-organization of Provincial Structures in the Eastern Mediterranean between 628-641.
Keywords: reign of Heraclius, eternal Sunday in Byzantium, Roman emperor of the last days, imperial ideology and religious policy in the first half of the 7th century, provincial organisation in the eastern Mediterranean
Max Ritter
Citizenship: Germany
Affiliation: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany
Title: Times of Trading: Seasonal Markets in Byzantium
Keywords: trade and commerce, pilgrimage, Dark Ages, economy, time
Canan Arıkan
Citizenship: Turkey
Affiliation: Universität Wien, Austria
Title: Inscribing Time and Authority in Early Byzantine Building Inscriptions
Keywords: early Byzantine epigraphy, clerics, building inscriptions, time formulas
