By Michelle Hines, University Relations
"Byzantine Christianity" retells the history of Christianity from the point of view of lay Christians.
A new book edited by a professor of religious studies at UNCG goes back over a millennium and a half to take a closer look at the everyday religious lives of ordinary Byzantine Christians.
Dr. Derek Krueger, head of UNCG’s Department of Religious Studies, edited and wrote an introduction for “Byzantine Christianity.” Published in May, the 272-page, richly illustrated book is the third volume in the “A People’s History of Christianity” series published by Fortress Press of Minneapolis.
The book series is an attempt to retell the history of Christianity from the point of view of lay Christians rather than theologians or Christian elites, Krueger said.
“Byzantine Christianity” spans the time period between the founding of Constantinople in 324 and its fall to Ottoman Turks in 1453.The Byzantine Empire began as the eastern half of the Roman Empire and ended as a small medieval state. Eastern Orthodox Christianity is the direct descendant of the Christianity of Byzantium.
As Krueger argues in his introduction, studying only the history of Christian doctrine and the history of the Byzantine church does not yield a complete picture of Byzantine religious life. Scholars also have to take into account the lives of ordinary townsfolk, tradesmen, peasants, women and children.
“Scholars increasingly understand religions not simply as the assent to a series of intellectual propositions but rather as richly embodied cultural systems,” Krueger writes. “To understand people’s religious lives, we must explore their customs and habits.”
Ten scholars of religion contributed chapters for “Byzantine Christianity.” Chapters include explorations of “Shrines, Festivals and the ‘Undistinguished Mob,’” “Death and Dying in Byzantium” and “The Religious Lives of Children and Adolescents.”
Robert Nelson, professor of art history at Yale University, praised the book’s originality and detail: “For too long, Anglophone histories of Christianity have focused only on Western Europe and America. ‘Byzantine Christianity’ reveals worlds that are familiar and unfamiliar in ways that general readers will find fascinating and meaningful.”
Krueger earned his PhD in religion from Princeton University in 1991, the same year he joined the faculty at UNCG. His other books include “Symeon the Holy Fool: Leontius’s Life and the Late Antique City” and “Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East.”
