Ritual and Earthquakes in Constantinople: Liturgy, Ecology, and Empire

Located on the North Anatolian Fault, Constantinople was frequently shaken by earthquakes over the course of its history. This book discusses religious responses to these events between the fourth and the tenth century AD. The church in Constantinople commemorated several earthquakes that struck the city, prescribing an elaborate liturgical rite celebrated annually for each occasion. These rituals were means by which city-dwellers created meaning from disaster and renegotiated their relationships to God and the land around them in the face of its most destabilizing ecological characteristic: seismicity. Mark Roosien argues that ritual and theological responses to earthquakes shaped Byzantine conceptions of God and the environment and transformed Constantinople's self-understanding as the capital of the oikoumene and center of divine action in history. The book enhances our understanding of Byzantine Christian religion and culture, and provides a new, interdisciplinary framework for understanding Byzantine views of the natural world.

座落在北安那托利亞斷層上的君士坦丁堡，在其歷史上經常受到地震的襲擊。本書討論了公元四至十世紀間對這些事件的宗教回應。君士坦丁堡的教會紀念了多次襲擊該城市的地震，為每一次事件每年舉行一次精心慶典的禮儀。這些儀式是城市居民在面對最具破壞性生態特徵的地震活動時，從災難中創造意義並重新協商與上帝和周圍土地的關係的方式。馬克·魯西恩（Mark Roosien）認為，對地震的儀式和神學回應塑造了拜占庭對上帝和環境的概念，並轉變了君士坦丁堡作為全球之都和神聖行動中心的自我認知。本書豐富了我們對拜占庭基督教宗教和文化的理解，並提供了一個新的跨學科框架，用於理解拜占庭對自然世界的觀點。