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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2024

Mark Roosien
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

Between the fifth and the ninth century ad, the church in Constantinople commemorated nine earthquakes that struck the city, prescribing an elaborate liturgical rite annually for each occasion.1 Worshippers sang specially composed hymns, heard carefully chosen passages from Scripture, and engaged in mass processions that retraced the steps of the city’s earthquake evacuation route. The rite, in its original fifth-century form, communicated a theology of earthquakes as divine and terrestrial judgment for collective sin but showed confidence in the power of collective repentance to turn aside natural disaster and divine wrath. These and other rituals and prayers related to earthquakes in Byzantine Constantinople were means by which city-dwellers could make meaning from disaster and renegotiate their relationships to God and the land around them in the face of its most destabilizing ecological characteristic: its seismicity.

Located on the North Anatolian Fault, Constantinople (today Istanbul) has experienced countless earthquakes over the course of its history.2

Type
Chapter
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Ritual and Earthquakes in Constantinople
Liturgy, Ecology, and Empire
, pp. 1 - 20
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Introduction
  • Mark Roosien, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Ritual and Earthquakes in Constantinople
  • Online publication: 05 December 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009427265.001
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  • Introduction
  • Mark Roosien, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Ritual and Earthquakes in Constantinople
  • Online publication: 05 December 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009427265.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Mark Roosien, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Ritual and Earthquakes in Constantinople
  • Online publication: 05 December 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009427265.001
Available formats
×