In 1261, Michael VIII Palaiologos, the founder of the last Byzantine dynasty, captured Byzantium and put an end to the Latin empire of Constantinople; being an outstanding general and a brilliant master of diplomacy, he managed to save the reduced Byzantine empire. The tragic events surrounding the sacking of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204 had terminated abruptly almost 900 years of artistic and cultural traditions, but after 1261 Michael reestablished Constantinople’s role as the most important cultural capital of the Christian East. In this period the capital received very important intellectual and artistic stimuli from several female members of the imperial and other aristocratic families. This talk will concentrate on Eirene Palaiologina, the favorite sister of the emperor Michael VIII; after the death of her husband, she took the veil in a female community in Constantinople; she turned against her brother and was much engaged in the anti-Union controversy, while Michael promoted the Union with the Catholic Church. Her spiritual growth has been guaranteed by the guidance of a certain Markos the Monk, whose instructive writings will briefly be analyzed in order to get acquainted with his spiritual program; special attention will be paid both to his shorter and his monumental anthology.
Peter Van Deun (° 1961) is full professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Leuven, Belgium, and teaches e.g. Byzantine Literature, Byzantine History, Byzantine Art, Byzantine Institutions and Religion and Mythology of the Ancient Greek World. His area of specialization is Patristic Greek and Byzantine literature; the last decade, he paid specific attention to Byzantine compilation literature (different anthologies such as the “Florilegium Coislinianum”, the “Loci Communes” and the Sicilian Florilegium of Nilus Doxapatres; texts belonging to capita literature, …); several doctoral and other projects have been obtained to develop this research interest. A broader research interest of Van Deun is the preparation of critical editions of Patristic and Byzantine texts and the study of their textual history; more especially he often focused upon the early Byzantine theologian Maximus the Confessor (580-662). He is editor-in-chief of the Series Graeca of the Corpus Christianorum, the internationally well reputed series in which these editions are published, and also of the journal Byzantion and the series Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta (both of them internationally peer-reviewed).