Jews and Judaism in Middle Byzantine Hagiography, workshop at the XXIV International Conference of Byzantine Studies, Venice/Padua, August 22–27, 2022

A number of Saints' Lives that were composed in the eighth to eleventh centuries pay particular attention to Byzantine Jewry: they stage historical or fictional Jewish characters, describe religious debates, reference Jews as a group or use elements typically associated with Judaism. In the Life of Constantine the former Jew, composed during the reign of Leo VI, the Saint himself was a Jew who converted and became a model Christian who proselytized among his former fellow believers. Diverse in content, some of these Lives are centred on debates between Christians and Jews, others have an eschatological focus and are concerned with the ultimate fate of the Jews, or have a more historical perspective. They are also geographically diverse and were written and/or set the story in different parts of the empire: the Constantinople area, but also Southern Italy or Crete and the Greek mainland.

These Lives constitute a corpus of much value, composed in periods of interest such as the iconoclastic controversy and the forced baptism of Jews decreed by Basil I. As literature with a wide outreach, the Lives are a possible source of information on popular opinion on those forced conversions and on the perception of Judaism, Jews and newly converted Christians in the larger Middle Byzantine society.

With this workshop, we want to bring together different approaches to the study of this corpus. We invite proposals for presentations of 20' that report on ongoing research on one or several of these Lives and/ or the broader religious, historical or cultural context. We also welcome contributions that reflect on past research and on what you believe the field needs. We will look into the possibility of publishing the papers from the workshop.

Conveners
Niels De Ridder (KU Leuven)
Claudia Sode (Universitat zu Koln)
Reinhart Ceulemans (KU Leuven)