34 - World and Empire: Contrasting the Cosmopolitan Visions of George of Pisidia and Maximus the Confessor in Seventh-Century Byzantium

Summary

In seventh-century Byzantium, the imperial panegyrist George of Pisidia and the peregrinating monastic theologian Maximus the Confessor represent two distinct ways of knowing and interpreting the new creation purportedly being realised in the empire. George envisions it largely in terms of the political and military exploits of the emperor Heraclius, Christ’s viceroy on earth. Maximus sees it instead as the work of the peerless agent of creation and redemption, Christ himself, whose unique politeia, embodying a whole new mode of creaturely being in the world, has inaugurated a new eschatological ordering of existence. Yet George and Maximus both engage primarily in theôria, a heightened spiritual vision of the created universe, integrating perspectives from biblical history, the contemplation of created nature, and the observation of current events. Each writer is a theoros of the new creation unfolding in the imperial and ecclesial foreground.