Wisdom’s House, Heaven’s Gate: Athens and Jerusalem in the Middle Ages

Taking as its starting point an investigation into the physical topography and symbolism of the two cities of Athens and Jerusalem, this book offers a cultural history of the rival superpowers--the Byzantine Empire and Fatimid Caliphate--that between them dominated the Mediterranean world during the Central Middle Ages. It shows that the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on the orders of al-Hakim punctuated a century of heightened interaction resulting from changing patterns of warfare, trade and pilgrimage. Resettlement of both Christians and Muslims from Syria-Palestine in Asia Minor and the Balkans introduced these migrants’ host culture to new forms of religious and artistic expression. In Hellas, a flurry of building projects reinvented Athens as a New Jerusalem and the Parthenon as a New Temple. The Acropolis became famous for its miraculous lamp and elaborate liturgy. The clergy who performed the sacred mysteries justified them with reference to concepts of hierarchy, illumination and divinisation. These concepts were derived from a philosophical tradition over whose ownership the two superpowers competed. The resulting political theology was the creation of male intellectuals, but female patrons and worshippers also had an impact.

Teresa Shawcross is Associate Professor of History and Hellenic Studies at Princeton University and a Senior Member of Robinson College, University of Cambridge. She has previously published The Chronicle of Morea: Historiography in Crusader Greece and Reading in the Byzantine Empire and Beyond.