Book contents
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- One Worlds of Byzantium
- I Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship
- II Images, Objects, Archaeology
- Six Movement and Creation
- Seven Letters from the Edge
- Eight Antioch after Dark
- Nine Ars Sacra in the East and after Byzantium
- Ten The Church of the Virgin in Dayr al-Suryān (Wadi al-Natrun)
- Eleven Three Questions Concerning Armenian and Byzantine Art
- Twelve Makurian Visual Culture
- III Languages, Confessions, Empire
- Index
- References
Ten - The Church of the Virgin in Dayr al-Suryān (Wadi al-Natrun)
Architecture, Art, and History between Coptic and Syriac Christianity
from II - Images, Objects, Archaeology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2024
Book contents
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- One Worlds of Byzantium
- I Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship
- II Images, Objects, Archaeology
- Six Movement and Creation
- Seven Letters from the Edge
- Eight Antioch after Dark
- Nine Ars Sacra in the East and after Byzantium
- Ten The Church of the Virgin in Dayr al-Suryān (Wadi al-Natrun)
- Eleven Three Questions Concerning Armenian and Byzantine Art
- Twelve Makurian Visual Culture
- III Languages, Confessions, Empire
- Index
- References
Summary
The Monastery of the Holy Virgin of Anba Bishoi in Sketis (nowadays known as Wadi al-Natrun, Egypt) was founded in the early sixth century. In the seventh century, a church was built that was decorated with artistically and iconographically important wall paintings. Probably at the end of the eighth century a group of Syriac monks from the region of Tikrit joined this Coptic community. It meant the beginning of a process of cultural interaction between Syriac Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox Christianity that would continue over the following five centuries and lead to the introduction of the unofficial name of the monastery as Dayr al-Suryan, under which it became renowned for its library. Not only this library became a testimony of the important position of the monastery as a centre of learning and culture, the church, dedicated to the Holy Virgin, also illustrates this in the mural paintings, stucco decoration, and woodwork that were produced during the period of Egyptian/Syriac cohabitation. The early tenth-century abbot Moses of Nisibis played a crucial role in the development of the monastery. The chapter gives an overview of this rich heritage and the gradual rediscovery of the paintings and text in the church of the Holy Virgin over the last twenty-five years.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Worlds of ByzantiumReligion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East, pp. 280 - 323Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
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