Symeon Metaphrastes: A Romanticization of the Redacted Hagiographical Discourses

초록

Symeon Metaphrastes represents the middle Byzantine period's cultural identity. The Macedonian dynasty of Byzantium marks the zenith and time of transition between internal and external crisis that engulfed the empire's outer frontiers, political stability, and cultural identity. To examine the elite's cultural taste for both remedying the stress from enduring this historical circumstance and reshaping their medieval identity, this study has examined two interesting choices that Symeon Metaphrastes made for engaging the audience. These texts are not intended to be entirely educational or doctrinal discussions on ideal Christian values. On the contrary, they appear to be deliberately constructed to be entertaining. The focus of this paper moves from analyzing Symeon Metaphastes's historical background, use of novelistic tropes, and to lastly utilization of homosexual relationship between different characters. This roadmap is set out to examine especially Symeon's use of romantic novelistic tropes (thus a theme of 'loveless romance') in medieval Byzantine redacted hagiography to bolster the sanctity of his protagonist and more strongly engage with his audience and readers. The ultimate goal here is to point out that the genre of Byzantine hagiography took a leap from limiting itself merely as providing lessons on idealized spiritual processes. And that this process was accelerated with the emergence of Symeon's redacted novelistic Christian novels.

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