Abstract
In the Christos Paschon, a Christian tragedy attributed to the fourth-century archbishop of Constantinople Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 329–390), the voice of Mary lamenting her son’s death at the foot of the Cross traces the first lines of what will become a common image of the Virgin.1 Already in Gregory’s text, Mary takes up a curious threnody, a chanted funerary lamentation, in which she weaves together ancient and pagan figures, letting the traditional cries of women in mourning resound:
[I am expiring, my child, life no longer gives me joy!
Alas! The darkness is already descending on my eyes;
I expire and wish for death’s underground sojourn.
Beneath the earth, in the shadows beneath the earth,
deprived of your gaze, I want to dwell from now on.]
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Critical edition and French translation published as: Gregory of Nazianzus, La Passion du Christ: tragédie, ed. André Tuilier, SC 149 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1969).
On the attribution of authorship, see Marek Starowieyski, “Les Apocryphes dans la tragédie Christus Patiens,” Apocrypha 5 (1994): 269–88, at 280–84.
See especially Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 62–66, and 102–29;
and Margaret Alexiou, “The Lament of the Virgin in Byzantine Literature and Modern Greek FolkSong,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 1.1 (1975): 111–40.
For a contextual overview, see Loring M. Danforth and Alexander Tsiaras, The Death Rituals of Rural Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982)
and Antigone Samellas, Death in the Eastern Mediterranean (50–600 AD): The Christianization of the East (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002).
See especially, Ernesto De Martino, Morte e pianto rituale: dal lamento funebre antico al pianto di Maria (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2000), 15–53.
See Plutarch’s Lives, ed. and trans. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 1: 445–78, at 462.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Epitaphios for His Brother Caesarius 1, in Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 6–12, ed. Marie-Ange Calvet-Sebasti, SC 405 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1995), 182.
See also Gregory of Nyssa, De mortuis, in Sermones, vol. 9 of Gregorii Nysseni Opera, ed. Günter Heil (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 3–68;
and Gregory of Nyssa, Gregorio di Nissa: Discorso sui defunti, ed. and trans. Guiseppe Lozza (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1991).
For a broader study, see Johannes Quasten, Musik und Gesang in den Kulten der heidnischen Antike und christlichen Frühzeit (Munster: Aschendorff, 1930), 295–347.
See Gudrun Ahlberg, Prothesis and Ekphora in Greek Geometric Art (Göteborg: Paul Aströms Förlag, 1971), 77–78.
Lucian of Samosata, De luctu 12, in Lucian in Eight Volumes, ed. and trans. A. M. Harmon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 4:118–30.
Robert Herzt, “Contribution à une représentation collective de la mort,” L’Année Sociologique 10 (1907): 48–137.
Walter Burkert, Homo necans: Rites sacrificiels et mythes de la Grèce ancienne, trans. Hélène Feydy with Karola Machastchek (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2005), 5.
Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage: étude systématique des rites de la porte et du seuil […] (Paris: E. Nourry, 1909), 27.
Evanghélos Moutsopoulos, “Euripide et la philosophie de la musique,” Revue des Etudes Grecques 75 (1962): 400–402.
Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969).
See Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Le Chasseur noir: Formes de pensée et formes de société dans le monde grec (Paris: Maspero, 1981).
On women in Greek religious life, see Pierre Brulé, La fille d’Athènes: La religion des filles à Athènes à l’époque classique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1987);
and Pauline Schmitt-Pantel, “La religion et l’arété des femmes: à propos des Vertus de femmes de Plutarque,” in La Religion des femmes en Grèce ancienne: Mythes, cultes et société, ed. Lydie Bodiou and Véronique Mehl (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009), 145–59.
See Barbara Levick, “Women and Law,” in A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, ed. Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 103;
Joëlle Beaucamp, “La Situation juridique de la femme à Byzance,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 20 (1977): 145–76;
reprinted in Beaucamp, Femmes, patrimoines, normes à Byzance (Paris: Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2010), 21–56;
and Beaucamp, Le Statut de la femme à Byzance, 4e–7esiècle, vol. 2, Les pratiques sociales (Paris: De Boccard, 1992).
John Chrysostom, De sacerdotio III 13.5, in Sur le Sacerdoce: Dialogue et homélie, ed. Anne-Marie Malingrey, SC 272 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1980), 216.
The critical edition is Vie de sainte Macrine, ed. and trans. Pierre Maraval, SC 178 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1971), 247;
For liturgical evidence, see Elena Velkovska, “Funeral Rites According to the Byzantine Liturgical Sources,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 21–51.
For hagiographic sources, see Callinicus, Vie d’Hypatios 51.7, ed. G. J. M. Baterlink (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1971), 290.
See Tertullian, De Anima 56.3, ed. J. H. Waszink (Amsterdam: J. M. Meulnhoff, 1947), 74;
or Erwin Rohde, Psyche: The Cult of the Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1925), 727.
For a study of this topic, see Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
For a discussion, see Gregory W. Dobrov, “A Dialogue with Death: Ritual Lament and the ‘Threnos Theotokou’ of Romanos Melodos,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 35.4 (1994): 385–405.
For the theme of vengeance in ancient rites, see Gail Holst-Warhaft, Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature (London: Routledge, 1992), 4 and 43–47.
Acta Pilati X. 2, in Constantinus de Tischendorf, ed., Evangelia Apocrypha adhibitis plurimis codicibus Graecis et Latinis (Leipzig: Avenarius and Mendelssohn, 1853), 282–83.
On this source, see Rémi Gounelle, ed. and trans., Les Recensions byzantines de l’Evangile de Nicodème (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 68–73.
Bertrand Bouvier, Le Mirologue de la Vierge: Chansons et poèmes grecs sur la Passion du Christ (Geneva: Droz, Institut suisse de Rome, 1976);
Nicolas Constas, “‘To Sleep Perchance to Dream’: The Middle State of Souls in Patristic and Byzantine Literature,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 91–124.
For a more detailed study of one exemplary practice, see Hélène Bernier-Farella, “Les Mécanismes rituels de la parenté spirituelle dans les monast è res byzantins: Rites de commémoraison et nourritures funèbres (IVe–XIIe siècle),” in Les Réseaux familiaux: Antiquité tardive et Moyen Age, ed. Béatrice Caseau (Paris: ACHCByz, 2012), 21–44.
See D. I. Pallas, “Aνασκαφη έν Παλαıα Koρíνθω” Praktika Ergon (1953): 175–83.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2015 Irit Ruth Kleiman
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bernier-Farella, H. (2015). Ritual Voices and Social Silence: Funerary Lamentations in Byzantium. In: Kleiman, I.R. (eds) Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-39706-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-39706-5_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-39705-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39706-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)