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Athanasius, the Author of Vita A of Athanasius the Athonite, on Secular Education, Legal Theory, Mysticism and Asceticism

    Dirk Krausmüller

Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 67, pp. 65-80, 2018/07/05

doi: 10.1553/joeb67s65

doi: 10.1553/joeb67s65

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doi:10.1553/joeb67s65



doi:10.1553/joeb67s65

Abstract

Athanasius, the author of Vita A of Athanasius the Athonite, was a highly unusual figure in Byzantine hagiography. Unlike other hagiographers, he did not shrink from making explicit his views on a number of topics. His comments about the importance of learning and about the relationship between the emperor and the law point back to his past as a judge in the imperial bureaucracy. By contrast, his rejection of mysticism and extreme asceticism is in keeping with the Middle Byzantine monastic reform movement. Yet unlike the authors of monastic rules, he does not inveigh against mystics and ascetics but prefers to poke fun at them through elaborate wordplay.