Saint George Between Empires: Image and Encounter in the Medieval East

by: Heather A. Badamo (Author)

Publisher: Penn State University Press

Publication Date: 2023/12/19

Language: English

Print Length: 264 pages

ISBN-10: 0271095229

ISBN-13: 9780271095226

Book Description

This volume examines Saint George’s intertwined traditions in the competing states of the easte Mediterranean and Transcaucasia, demonstrating how rival conceptions of this well-known saint became central to Crusader, Easte Christian, and Islamic medieval visual cultures.Saint George Between Empires links the visual cultures of Byzantium, North Africa, the Levant, Syria, and the Caucasus during the Crusader era to redraw our picture of interfaith relations and artistic networks. Heather Badamo recovers and recontextualizes a vast body of images and literature―from etiquette manuals and romances to miracle accounts and chronicles―to describe the history of Saint George during a period of religious and political fragmentation, between his “rise” to cross-cultural prominence in the eleventh century and his “globalization” in the fifteenth. In Badamo’s analysis, George emerges as an exemplar of cross-cultural encounter and global translation.Featuring important new research on monuments and artworks that are no longer available to scholars as a result of the occupation of Syria and parts of Iraq, Saint George Between Empires will be welcomed by scholars of Byzantine, medieval, Islamic, and Easte Christian art and cultural studies.

About the Author

This volume examines Saint George’s intertwined traditions in the competing states of the easte Mediterranean and Transcaucasia, demonstrating how rival conceptions of this well-known saint became central to Crusader, Easte Christian, and Islamic medieval visual cultures.Saint George Between Empires links the visual cultures of Byzantium, North Africa, the Levant, Syria, and the Caucasus during the Crusader era to redraw our picture of interfaith relations and artistic networks. Heather Badamo recovers and recontextualizes a vast body of images and literature―from etiquette manuals and romances to miracle accounts and chronicles―to describe the history of Saint George during a period of religious and political fragmentation, between his “rise” to cross-cultural prominence in the eleventh century and his “globalization” in the fifteenth. In Badamo’s analysis, George emerges as an exemplar of cross-cultural encounter and global translation.Featuring important new research on monuments and artworks that are no longer available to scholars as a result of the occupation of Syria and parts of Iraq, Saint George Between Empires will be welcomed by scholars of Byzantine, medieval, Islamic, and Easte Christian art and cultural studies.