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The Contest of Beauty and Sainthood: The Empress Bride as the Mirror of Perfection

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This article deals with the accounts of the imperial bride-show on Byzantine hagiographical sources from the ninth and the tenth centuries. Putting aside the discussion on the historicity of such a ceremony, which is dubious, it identifies as its literary origin the account of the Book of Esther about the search of a new wife for King  Artaxerxes and as its purpose the justification of the marriage of a saint empress to a heretical husband. It proposes to read as an actualisation of the so-called ‘novel of Esther’ the
narratives on the marriage of Theodosius II and Eudocia in Malalas’ Chronography (sixth century) and on the marriage of Theophilos and Theodora in the Life and encomium of Theodora (ninth century). The article also argues that the Life of Theodora could be the model for the other sources on this subject from the ninth century such as the Lives of St Philaretos, St Theophano and St Irene of Chrysobalanton, the Funeral
Oration for Basil I attributed to Leo VI and the accounts on Cassia as a contender in the event for the search of a bride for Theophilos.

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Versió postprint del capítol del llibre: Studia Patristica. Vol. CXXX - Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019

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Capítol de llibre: Vinzent, M. & Chiriatti, M. & Olkinuora, D. (eds.), Studia Patristica. Vol. CXXX - Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019. Volume 27: From the Fifth Century Onwards (Latin Writers); Female Power and its Propaganda; Theologizing Performance in the Byzantine Tradition; Nachleben (295-314). Peeters Publishers, 2021 – ISBN 9789042947887, pp. 295-314

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Llibres / Capítols de llibre (Filologia Clàssica, Romànica i Semítica)

# metadata.dc.title[].value
The Contest of Beauty and Sainthood: The Empress Bride as the Mirror of Perfection