Urbis et Orbis: Mikroistoriâ i Semiotika Goroda (Dec 2022)

The reflection of the urban environment in the hagiographic works of the 6th–8th cc. AD.

  • Shavarsh Azatyan

DOI
https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2022-2(3)-12-29
Journal volume & issue
no. 2
pp. 12 – 29

Abstract

Read online

The main objective of the article is to present a picture of the early medieval city through hagiographic works. The article presents the places (prison, squares) associated with the activities of the saints. These places in the urban environment are mentioned in connection with the torture and murder of saints, which conveys them a special meaning. It was the hagiographic literature that reflected the gradual decline in the role of the prison in the Middle Ages, where the punishment is served in a form hidden from the eyes of the inhabitants, and the strengthening of the role of the execution place, where the punishment is carried out publicly and in especially cruel forms, with the aim of intimidating and suppressing the audience, binding the active and passive participants in this action with mutual responsibility. In the early Middle Ages, ideas about death changed, the dead, as it were, settled in the city of the living. Certainly, first of all, it is about the grand martyrs, the saints tortured to death became the heavenly patrons of the city. At that, in the Armenian and Georgian hagiography, not only the relics of the saints were sacralized, but also the places of their execution. Hagiographic principles of this particular project about the internal environment of cities Connected by a chain wall. In the center of early-century Armenia, located in the Dvina, in its Central Square, the beginning of the VI century. the social environment of the creation of people arose. Here, after the revival of the palace of the Persian Amarkar, in all likelihood, there was a lack of freedom in the Constitutional Rule of individual situations. The best example of cooperation was the fire that broke out in the aforementioned palace of the Persian Аmarkar, when the Armenians, according to a preliminary agreement, rushed to help.

Keywords