An extract from A History of Byzantium by Timothy E. Gregory, 2 ed., 2010, Wiley:
It is undeniable that some practices less important from paganism continued to dais fashionable the Neurosis generation. Accurate of these allegedly were useful with ancient festivals of the gods Pan (the assumed Bota) and Dionysos (the Brumalia). These festivals were no longer closely connected with religion, but more willingly were opportunities for dancing, using up, and vast carousing - by far, maybe, in the role of the modern Mardi Gras. The bishops assembled for the Meeting in Trullo were stunned by such demeanor and one of the Canons (decrees) condemned the festivals, but to boot provides us with extreme evidence of the way of demeanor that was allegedly still separation on, well fashionable the Neurosis Empire:
Reign LXII
"The assumed Calends, and what are called Bota and Brumalia, and the full meeting which takes place on the opening of Insist, we wish to be abolished from the life of the dutiful. And to boot the population dances of women, which may do so by far harm and injure. Besides we thrust made known from the life of Christians the dances point in the names of citizens unfaithfully called gods by the Greeks whether of men or women, and which are preformed following an ancient and un-Christian fashion; decreeing that no man from this time forth shall be demure as a woman, nor any woman in the garb friendly to men. Nor shall he have an idea that comedian, satyric, or affecting masks; nor may men juggle the name of the shameful Bacchus time was they have space for out the wine in the presses; nor time was gray out wine fashionable jars [to creator a gurgle], practicing in slowness and haughtiness the matter which do something from the ruthlessness of madness. Consequently citizens who in the nominate venture any of these matter which are in black and white, having obtained knowledge of them, if they be clerics we order them to be deposed, and if laymen to be cut off."
[p. 174]
2.
There are two excerpts from The Meeting of Trullo (691-692): A Investigate Flanked by to Paganism, Heresy, and the Invasions by Give instructions R. Trombley, published in Comitatus: A Record of Medieval and Resurrection Studies, 1978. The full focus is viewable at eScholarship.Org in this. Ensuing citizens two excerpts expound is to boot an overview of some other "Pagan practices" unacceptable by the Trullo Canons that Trombley (who is to boot the essayist of the astounding two immensity Hellenic Theology and Christianization) discusses in his article:
a.
The patience of pagan cult practices stuck between Christians jumpy land and ecclesiastical founding, it seems, to a degree being the era still had a agreeably appreciable, but not very ample pagan convergence. Apostasy was an ever save venture. Skillfully a small number of information survives in the sources about the continuation of pagan cults in Anatolia and Greece following the mid-sixth century. It force be recalled that in 542 John of Ephesus [c.507 - c.586], with the sympathy of Deuterius, the metropolis of Caria, undertook the catechization of the pagans of western Anatolia (the regions of Asia, Caria, Lydia, and Phrygia). John himself penetrated the undulating inhabitants here Tralles, and known visit idol-worshipers to embrace Christianity. He directed these actions from a monastery at D'RYR', and at one time entered the rough-edged mountain territory everywhere a inordinate pagan temple, containing fifteen hundred idols, existed. The deliverance of these populous regions was perfect by the prove of spare than one hundred churches and monasteries. The carry-over of these institutions was important to save the apostasy of the gigantic new get together. The convergence of the regions evangelized by John dexterous the satirical cult of Cybele.... The forcefulness of paganism in these areas, even following John's missionary work, is attested by the end of [the cult of Cybele] in Caria well fashionable the eighth century....
Pagan groups persisted in Greece as well, nonetheless the accurate be incorporated of their cult is not attested. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus news flash in De Administrando Imperio that the city of Maina in the Peloponnese was inhabited by a non-Slavic convergence. The go fast referred to themselves as 'Hellenes' and gave out that in ancient mature they had been idolators in the sculpt of the Greeks of old. They normal deliverance taking part in the decree of Aromatic plant I (867-886). [For spare on the Hellenes of Maina, see the extract from J.B. Conceal in scheme 3 of this post, below.]
[pp. 4-5]
b.
The Sixty-first Reign describes a extra type of paganism, one not definite to Graeco-Roman culture, yet referred to with the residence hellenika. In mature of cataclysm, such as the invasions of the seventh century, possibility tellers and seers do a covetable enterprise. The Reign catalogues more or less types of diviners and charlatans. Diviners (mantai) of the film set life, who read palms and plates, are recorded, in the midst of the assumed hecatantarchoi, old men who claimed to be divine, and known the simple folk of this by displaying bears and other other birds, and consequently making them do charm. Soothsayers went about making pronouncements relating to fortune (tyche), good luck (heimarmene), and genealogy (genealogia) (the augur of the nominate by idea of the do well of be born, in the midst of the set-up of the appealing bodies), which this Reign refers to as the rubbish of blame.' Something else other types of diviners foretold endeavors following gazing at the shapes of clouds at dusk, and 'magicians' (geteutai), who invited themselves fashionable the houses of Christian women by on stage psalms, muttering the names of the theotokos and martyrs, and now amulets and charms. It is recorded that the purveyors of amulets (phylakterioi) were feint a good enterprise.
The Sixtieth Reign reflects various aspect of the pagan subculture. Definite folks, it is reported, imitated the decorum of the hectic. Analogous the soothsayers and diviners, they most probably did this for underground exhibit. Women dexterous this, if Balsamon's belief is accurate, in oracular sculpt come up to that of the priestesses of Delphi. Since the pagan deities were regarded as demons, folks who mock get had, by the veto of this Reign, to go through the identical come down like a ton of bricks on of exorcism as citizens actually hectic.
[p. 6]c.
A long way away Pagan practices plainly proscribed by the Canons enacted at the Meeting of Trullo (in accumulation to citizens named manager) included (as described by Trombley):
* Having a bet with slice. (50th Reign)
* Text shows. (51st Reign)
* Commemorating the new moon (numeniai) by "erecting a pyre in front of one's home or workshop and leaping inert it." (65th Reign)
* Law students were proscribed to practice compound Pagan background (hellinika ethe), and this plainly included attending the show or pony races, or now "unusual or mysterious clothing". (71st Reign)
* According to the 71st Reign, law students were to boot proscribed to study "the sciences" (ta mathemata).
* Men were proscribed to make sure have a wash houses with women. (77th Reign)
* Curses and oaths in the names of Pagan Gods (horkoi hellnikoi). (94th Reign)
* The now of seductive hair styles. (96th Reign)
* "Paintings that bewitch the discernment of scene, whether communicated on prescription or in any other way, which are hurtful to entity, and move it toward the fueling of dishonorable passions." (100th Reign)
3.
An extract from History of the Eastern Culture from the Slide of Irene to the Conciliation of Basil: A.D. 802-867 by J.B. Conceal, opening published in 1912:
It is captivating to detect that on the argument of Taenaron in Laconia a sec Hellenic community survived, a small number of touched by the diplomatic and expansive changes which had reformed the Hellenistic fashionable the Neurosis world. Restricted by Slavs, these Hellenes lived in the garrison of Maina, and in the days of Theophilus [Royal leader from 829-842] and his son [Michael III, ruled from 842-867] still worshipped the old gods of Greece. But the days of this pagan community were numbered; the Olympians were unequivocally to be prompted from their suffer bay. Before the end of the century the Mainotes were baptized [under Aromatic plant I].
[p. 381 in the 2008 Cosimo Classics back number]
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