Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai

by Sharon E J Gerstel (Editor), Robert S Nelson (Editor)

Overview

The first comprehensive study of the monastery of St Catherine at Mt Sinai in its full historical, art historical, and religious dimensions, the nineteen collected essays in Approaching the Holy Mountain provide a unique view of the longest continuously inhabited Christian monastery. As an important pilgrimage site, Sinai enjoyed an international reputation in the Middle Ages. The monastery also benefited from regional connections to Egypt and the Holy Land. The essays in this volume examine the pilgrims, monks, artists, builders, and scholars who came to the mountain and left their marks on the monastery and its holdings, as well as the image of the monastery that was promoted outside of Sinai. Because of its dry, isolated location in the Sinai desert, the monastery possesses the world's greatest collection of Byzantine icons. These icons have been celebrated in highly popular exhibitions in Athens, London, St Petersburg, New York, and Los Angeles, few longer studies of the icons have been attempted. In this volume authors investigate icons from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries and offer new interpretations of their meaning, provenance, and function. Essays also explore celebrated illuminated Byzantine manuscripts in the library of St Catherine's, pilgrim's accounts of the monastery, a recently excavated early church on the summit of Mt Sinai, liturgy at Sinai during the first Christian millennium, the influence of Sinai on later paintings and engravings, and the recent history of Sinai studies. The result is a significant advance in our understanding of one of the most important centres of early Christianity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9782503531274
Publisher:	Brepols Publishers
Publication date:	07/01/2011
Series:	Cursor Mundi Series , #11
Pages:	638
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.50(d)
Language:	Greek, Modern (1453- )

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Archbishop's Preface xxv

Acknowledgements xxvii

List of Abbreviations xxix

Sinai Studies: An Overview and an Introduction Robert S. Nelson 1

Paving the Road to Sinai: Georgios and Maria Soteriou on the Holy Mountain Ioanna Christoforaki 15

Place

The Transfigured Mountain: Icons and Transformations of Pilgrimage at the Monastery of St Catherine at Mount Sinai Jas Elsner Gerhard Wolf 37

Excavations on the Holy Summit (Jebel Musa) at Mount Sinai: Preliminary Remarks on the Justinianic Basilica Sophia Kalopissi-Verti Maria Panayotidi 73

The Architecture of the Justinianic Basilica on the Holy Summit Petros Koufopoulos Marina Myriantheos-Koufopoulou 107

Painted Skins: The Illusions and Realities of Architectural Polychromy, Sinai and Egypt Elizabeth S. Bolman 119

Liturgy

Worship on Sinai in the First Christian Millennium: Glimpses of a Lost World Robert F. Taft 143

Late Byzantine Cathedral Liturgy and the Service of the Furnace Alexander Lingas 179

Manuscript

Manuscript Production on Mount Sinai from the Tenth to the Thirteenth Century Nancy P. Ševcenko 233

Sinai, MS gr. 2: Exploring the Significance of a Sinai Manuscript Hieromonk Justin Sinaites 259

Icon

Visualizing the Divine: An Early Byzantine Icon of the 'Ancient of Days' at Mount Sinai Kathleen Corrigan 285

Regarding Prayer: Contemplating an Icon of John the Forerunner Charles Barber 305

Archive and Atelier: Sinai and the Case of the Narrative Icon Paroma Chatterjee 319

Mural and Icon Painting Sinai in the Thirteenth Century Georgi R. Parpulov 345

Sinai, Acre, Tripoli, and the 'Backwash from the Levant': Where Did the Icon Painters Work? Rebecca W. Corrie 415

Sinai and Cyprus: Holy Mountain, Holy Isle Annemarie Weyl Carr 449

Space

Three East Slavic Pilgrims at Sinai Georgi R. Parpulov 481

Turning Holy Mountains to Ladders to Heaven: Overlapping Topographies and Poetics of Space in Post-Byzantine Sacred Engravings of Mount Sinai and Mount Athos Veronica Della Dora 505

On the Painted Ancestry of Domenikos Theotokopoulos's Sacred Landscapes of Mount Sinai and the Monastery of St Catherine Cristina Stancioiu 537

Plates 563

Index 587