Literary Style and Theological Substance in the Homilies of Sophronios of Jerusalem, lecture by John Duffy (Harvard University), Princeton University, April 10, 2019, 4:30 pm

In writing about Sophronios of Jerusalem two ninth-century authors comment specifically on the patriarch’s literary style and correct beliefs. Both of those elements will be highlighted in this lecture. It will explore some of the unusual features of his rhetoric, which place him in the Asiatic, rather than the Attic, camp. It will also draw attention to his life-long fight for Chalcedonian orthodoxy and the ways in which his constant efforts on behalf of that cause are reflected in his homilies.

John Duffy spent all of his working life, as a teacher and scholar, in the U.S.A. Following graduate studies in Buffalo he was resident at Dumbarton Oaks for nine years, before joining the Classics faculty at the University of Maryland. In 1996 he became the Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Philology and Literature at Harvard and retired from there in 2013.