Spiritual kinship in middle and late Byzantine hagiographic sources

Abstract

The thesis investigates the concept of spiritual kinship through middle and late Byzantine hagiographic sources. It groups the focus of study into two parts: the communal and the personal. In order to grasp the communal spiritual kinship, monastic foundation documents are used. First of all, the manner in which the spiritual family is envisaged is researched and, secondly, the transformation of the roles within the milieu of spiritual kinship along with the political and economic changes are touched upon. In the second part, spiritual kinship is investigated in a more bidirectional context through saints’ lives from the late Byzantine period. The interaction between the socio-political transformations and the construction of spiritual kinship in the literary context is researched. The two complementary approaches aim to reveal how the members of Byzantine society were connected to one another through shared religious affinities in a family-like structure.