1 - Beginnings and Initials
Text, Image, and Sound
from Part I - The Lectionary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2021
Summary
Focusing on recitation and manuscript culture, this chapter opens the book by looking at the manner in which homilies would have slowly unfolded in meaning and comprehension in the minds of listeners during the church service. Studying the syntax and grammar of a Byzantine homily, the point is made that oral texts such as homilies or the Gospel reading could be variably understood given the slow pace of chanting and recitation. With these lessons in mind, the chapter turns to the introduction of illustrated initials into Byzantine manuscripts, which occurred in the post-iconoclastic period during the ninth century, particularly in the contexts of books of homilies. The aim is to understand the oral and aural valences of illuminated initials and marginalia in manuscripts, which came to define how they operated: not as static pictures, but rather as images informed by the act of reading and the complex way in which meaning reveals itself with oral texts.
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- Performing the Gospels in ByzantiumSight, Sound, and Space in the Divine Liturgy, pp. 30 - 67Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021