REVIEWS 809

commentaries. Perrin’s essay on silence seems to lack any clear focus while
Mariaux’s article on the Gero cross simply fails to convince. These are minor flaws in
an otherwise extremely valuable collection. If much of this review has been spent
presenting the content of the essays, it is in hopes that the individual essays reach the
specialists to whom they are directed and not be lost in what might appear as an
overwhelming opus. Anyone whose interest is the eucharist will still want to read
both volumes carefully, however. They will not be disappointed and 1,200 pages will
seem a very quick and enjoyable read.
SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY GARY MACY

Heilige Berge und Wüsten. Byzanz und sein Umfeld. Referate auf dem 21. Internationalen
Kongress für Byzantinistik London 21.–26. August 2006. Edited by Peter Soustal.
(Philosophisch-Historische Klasse Denkschriften, 379. Veröffentlichungen zur
Byzanzforschung, 16.) Pp. 111 incl. 6 maps and 36 plates. Vienna : Verlag
der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009. E52 ( paper).
978 3 7001 6561 3
JEH (61) 2010 ; doi :10.1017/S0022046910000928
This is a useful and wide-ranging collection of papers, originally the subject of a
panel entitled ‘ Monastic mountains and deserts ’ at the 21st International Congress
of Byzantine Studies held in London in August 2006. Holy mountains and deserts
were not uncommon phenomena in the Byzantine world. They were not necessarily
particularly high or particularly arid, but they were isolated from the everyday world
and offered opportunity for ascetic practices. A few survive to this day, notably Sinai,
Athos, Meteora, Mar Saba and the Coptic monasteries of the Egyptian deserts.
This book is devoted to a selection of those that do not. It comprises seven papers.
James Goehring (‘ Constructing and enforcing orthodoxy: evidence from the Coptic
panegyrics on Abraham of Farshut ’) examines three texts that concern Abraham of
Farshut, the last Coptic abbot of the Pachomian monastic federation, which was
dissolved in the sixth century in the wake of the Council of Chalcedon. Klaus Belke
(‘ Heilige Berge Bithyniens’) focuses on the monastic mountains of Auxentios,
Olympos and Kyminas in Bithynia. These mountains did not form a unit ; and the
differences between them, in terms of density of population, type of monasticism
practised and durability of the foundation, can be attributed, at least in part, to
geographical factors. Richard Greenfield (‘ Shaky foundations : opposition, conflict
and subterfuge in the creation of the holy mountain of Galesion ’) examines three
strands in the narrative of this mountain’s early years : the opposition to its creation
from the local ‘orthodox ’ ecclesiastical authorities, the development of conflicting
factions within the community itself, and the defensive strategies employed by
its founder in the face of hostility. Andreas Külzer (‘ Das Ganos-Gebirge in
Ostthrakien’) provides an overview of the many churches, monasteries and holy sites
in the Ganos mountain range, supported by an interesting selection of photographs
illustrating the landscape and the fragmentary architectural remains. Danica
Popovic (‘ The deserts and holy mountains of medieval Serbia ’) tackles a neglected
topic for which the sources are few and the monuments largely devastated. The idea
of the holy mountain came to Serbia from Athos, and from Hilandar in particular,
but the many illustrations (of variable quality) that accompany the paper show the
810 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
scale and spectacular settings of some of Serbia’s own monastic deserts and
mountains. Angeliki Delikari (‘ Ein Beitrag zu historisch-geographischen Fragen auf
dem Balkan : ‘‘ Paroria ’’’) offers a useful contribution to the long-running debate on
the location of Paroria, the monastic area on the borders of Byzantium and Bulgaria
to which St Gregory of Sinai resorted on leaving Athos. David Khoshtaria (‘ Past and
present of the Georgian Sinai’) also undertakes a little-known topic in his survey of
the neglected monuments of Klarjeti. He too has a rich field to explore but his piece
is frankly a disappointment. He does not trouble to explain the term ‘Georgian
Sinai ’, he fails to make the connection between Klarjeti and Athos and his text
would have benefitted from the attentions of a good copy-editor.
CHRIST CHURCH, GRAHAM SPEAKE
OXFORD

The Christian parthenon. Classicism and pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens. By Anthony

Kaldellis. Pp. xvi+252 incl. frontispiece and 36 figs. Cambridge : Cambridge
University Press, 2009. £55. 978 0 521 88228 6
JEH (61) 2010 ; doi :10.1017/S0022046910000540
The second-century AD Greek traveller Pausanias, himself extremely interested in
matters of religion, praised the Athenians for their piety (Description of Greece 1.17.1).
The special piety of the Athenians has long been thought to be a pagan
phenomenon – the obsession of a world possessed of trinkets ‘ like unto gold or
silver or stone, graven by art or man’s device’ (Acts xvii.29) which appealed to a
populace deaf even to the preaching of Paul (Acts xvii.15–34). No one, in short, has
been much bothered with the religion of medieval Athens. In his major new book,
Anthony Kaldellis has radically reversed the traditional picture of post-ancient
Athens – assiduously ferreting out and adducing a pile of evidence (some of it
very tenuous and fragmentary, some perhaps a touch hopeful, some very well
documented) which, as a consolidated whole, amounts to a fundamental revisionist
argument. His case – and I think he must be right, although some may be able to
tweak his position here and there – is that Athens, resting on its ancient laurels and
adapting its prime ancient temples to churches, was a major centre of Christian
pilgrimage in the Byzantine era, attracting emperors, saints and a series of
miraculous narratives. The progression of chapters give us a slew of distinguished
pilgrims from the emperors Constans II (in 662–3) and Basil the Bulgar-slayer
(in 1018) as well as Henry (Latin emperor of Constantinople, in 1209) via a string of
saints such as Luke of Stiris (the hermit who founded Hosios Loukas), western
pilgrims like Saewulf the Anglo-Saxon in about 1102, to medieval bishops and their
surviving sermons (of whom Michael Choniates, bishop 1182–1205, is the most
distinguished). Within the history of the adaptation of temples to churches,
Athens – and in particular the Parthenon – strikes a note of quite exceptional con-
tinuity and care. The classical temple was turned into a church with the minimum of
defacement, nobody knows when, by whom or why – but let us assume before
AD 600. Its pagan home of the Virgin goddess, the Parthenos, was transformed into
a Christian dedication to the Virgin Mother of God, the Atheniotissa, whose festivals
and specific connections across the Mediterranean world echo, albeit on a smaller
scale, those of her pagan predecessor. The famous Phidian statue of Athena had
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.