090074 VO The Milestones of Byzantine Intellectual History. Chronological considerations (2022S)

This course aims to present an overview of Byzantine intellectual history by focusing on the most important milestones. This involves thinking first about what constitutes an event, a milestone, a key date in intellectual history. A milestone in the Byzantine case is the time when doctrines change, either because they are replaced by a new idea, or because a debate or controversy leads to clarification and progress in the understanding of a philosophical problem or the definition of a theological question, or because a historical event has a significant impact on intellectual life (war, conquest, etc).
We will retain four types of events to build our chronology of Byzantine intellectual history: the works of outstanding thinkers, the great religious controversies, some historical events that changed intellectual history, and some ecclesiastical events (councils, condemnations) that strongly influenced (positively or negatively) the development of certain aspects of Byzantine thought.
This will allow us to discuss the impact on Byzantine intellectual history of the Arab conquests, the loss of Alexandria (642), the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople in 1204. We will see how several theological controversies (on the double will of Christ, the cult of images, the procession of the Holy Spirit, the place of reason in the knowledge of God, etc.) led to fascinating theoretical reflections on the soul, the limits of representation, logic. We will discuss the significance of the condemnations of philosophers such as John Italos in 1082 and Barlaam of Calabria in 1341.
Thus, thanks to the analysis of some twenty significant events, we will be able to highlight the dynamics, the ruptures and the evolutions that marked the Byzantine millennium.