Online Lecture

2024-2025 East of Byzantium Lecture Series

The Malleability of Memory in Memorializing the Saints

Mary K. Farag, Princeton Theological Seminary

Tuesday, April 29, 2025 | 12:00 PM (EDT, UTC -4) | Zoom

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the final lecture in the 2024–2025 East of Byzantium lecture series.

The ritual remembrance of holy ones in late antiquity sometimes had more to do with the intentional formation of the liturgical community than with the life of the holy one. Neither Pachomius, the early-fourth century leader of a monastic federation known as the Koinonia, nor Theophilus, the late-fourth and early-fifth century bishop of Alexandria, were even near contemporaries, but their characterizations were effectively exchanged. The aftermath of the first Origenist controversy rendered their memorialization distinctly malleable. Egypt would remember a Pachomian Theophilus, while Asia Minor would remember a Theophilan Pachomius. Pachomius would become the anti-Origenist that Theophilus was, while Theophilus would become the ascetic visionary that Pachomius was. Their remembrance in hagiographies and homilies was less about making the past present than about shaping the past for the present.

Mary K. Farag is Associate Professor of Early Christian Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. She studies the history of late antiquity with a focus on Christianity in Egypt.

Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

An East of Byzantium lecture. EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center that explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine empire in the late antique and medieval periods.