International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Ida Toth,
Reading Performance: The Late Byzantine Rhetorical 
Theatron
, Reconsidered
Margaret Mullett
, 
Contexts for the 
Christos Paschon

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500
Ouresis Todorovich
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Faculty of Social Theology,
Secretariat School of Theology, Athens, Greece; 
[e-mail]
Analogies between the Transition from the Ancient Performative Image 
to the Byzantine Liturgical Image and Evolving Contemporary 
Concepts of Digital Imagery
In late antiquity, both the portrayal of images drawn from nature and the anthropomorphic 
personifications of seasons and natural phenomena
—
particularly on mosaic pavements in churches 
but also in late antique textiles from Egypt
—
denoted an ambivalent status in a sense that they could 
be understood in both Christian and pagan terms. From a historical point of view, these images reflect 
a complex transitional phase from a pagan concept according to which an image performs a certain 
ritualistic, symbolic and narrative role, to a Christian concept according to which this role continues 
but in time evolves and becomes ever more aesthetically imbued with a new theological content.
This new theological content gradually placed new demands on how an image should function 
and therefore it led to a distinct conceptual transition from what might be termed a ritualistic or 
performative pagan image to Byzantine liturgical image. The twofold aim of my paper is firstly, to 
concisely articulate the previously overlooked aspects of this transitional phase between the pagan and 
the Byzantine concept of an image, and secondly, to corroborate on the significance of that transition 
for understanding problems relating to concepts which underline contemporary digital imagery.