Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity. Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil.

Иисус учил своих последователей, что легче верблюду пройти через игольное ушко, нежели богатому войти в Царство Небесное. Тем не менее, ко времени падения Рима, Церковь стала богатой сверх меры. «Сквозь Игольное Ушко» - это  развернутая интеллектуальная и социальная история неприятной темы наличия богатства в христианстве в последние дни существования Римской империи, написанная сообществом ученых поздней античности. Питер Браун рассматривает возрастание Церкви через призму денег и тех вызовов, которые они бросили Церкви, поддерживающей добродетель нестяжания и называющей алчность корнем всех зол.  

Eastern Christianity is pluralistic. How might exchanges among Christians in geographic areas where different expressions of Christianity developed in the ancient Near and Middle East have been determining factors in the evolution of specific Churches? Encounters among Christians during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages resulted in fertile adaptations and enrichments leading, through mutations and cross-influences, to the emergence of new identities. Such interculturality provides a response to the challenges of the dominating Byzantine, Persian, and Arabic cultures, as expressed through intellectual currents, artistic influences, and constructions of traditions. 

Director of Byzantine Studies Margaret Mullett spoke recently with Professor Kalavrezou about her research, and about her time at Dumbarton Oaks both in the past and at present.

From 12-14 November 2012 a conference will be held at St Tikhon’s Orthodox University of the Humanities: “Byzantine hagiography: themes, texts and projects”.

L’Association des étudiants du monde byzantin (The Association of Students of the Byzantine World) aims to unite Byzantinist students in an associative structure. It facilitates exchanges between students in all disciplines involved in this field, creates a bridge between undergraduate students or master and doctoral students and young doctors, and allows students to learn about the various ongoing work in the Byzantine field, as well as French and foreign teachers who are likely to welcome them to continue their studies. Finally, it helps students of other periods to gain familiarity with Byzantine studies and the diversity of the field.

How did the sense of the individual arise in European culture? And why did this sense develop more strongly in the Latin West than in the Greek East, in spite of the fact that some of the earliest reflections on the nature of the person belong to the Orthodox Christian world? In this searching investigation, Stelios Ramfos explores the roots of the modern debate on the person and concludes that the preoccupation of the Byzantine Greeks with eternity inhibited them from developing a fruitful sense of interiority. He argues that, nevertheless, a figure such as Leontius of Byzantium can suggest a way forward if Byzantine theological thinking is revisited in the light of insights derived from the Western philosophical tradition.

Dumbarton Oaks will hold a symposium entitled ‘Rome Re-Imagined: Byzantine and Early Islamic Africa, c. 500–800’, from April 27–29, 2012. The event is organised by Susan T. Stevens, Randolph College and Jonathan P. Conant, Brown University.

The reign of Constantine (306-37), the starting point for the series in which this volume appears, saw Christianity begin its journey from being just one of a number of competing cults to being the official religion of the Roman/Byzantine Empire. The involvement of emperors had the, perhaps inevitable, result of a preoccupation with producing, promoting and enforcing a single agreed version of the Christian creed. Under this pressure Christianity in the East fragmented into different sects, disagreeing over the nature of Christ, but also, in some measure, seeking to resist imperial interference and to elaborate Christianities more reflective of and sensitive to local concerns and cultures.