[MGSA-L] Princeton Hellenic Studies Lecture: May 10, 2011

[Dimitri H. Gondicas]

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Program in Hellenic Studies

Lecture


Aquinas in Byzantium and Modern Greece


Marcus Plested
University of Cambridge
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton


St. Thomas Aquinas had, surprisingly, a remarkable career in Byzantium. First translated in 1354, his writings went on to exercise a substantial impact on many of the theological productions of the last century of the embattled Byzantine Empire. Thomas found admirers among unionists and anti-unionists, Palamites and anti-Palamites, alike. By contrast, modern Orthodox theologians and thinkers (such as Christos Yannaras) have routinely rejected Aquinas as an archetypal figure of the erroneous West. I intend in this lecture to communicate something of this fascinating and unfamiliar story - one that reveals much about Byzantium and about modern Orthodox self-identity.



Marcus Plested is Vice-Principal and Academic Director of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge (UK). He was schooled in London and educated at Merton College, Oxford, completing his studies with a doctoral thesis on the Macarian Writings, a fourth-century ascetic text from Syro-Mesopotamia.  He is the author of The Macarian Legacy (Oxford: OUP 2004) and of many articles on Patristics and Eastern Orthodoxy. He is currently the George William Cottrell, Jr., Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, where he is completing a book on Orthodox readings of Aquinas.



Tuesday, May 10, 2011

4:30 p.m.

Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
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