ST THEOSEVIA CENTRE FOR CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY
MICHAELMAS TERM 2023
at St Theosevia House, 2 Canterbury Road, Oxford OX2 6LU
An Ecumenical Centre for Christian Spirituality in Oxford
Remembering Metropolitan Kallistos
Monday 16 October 6.30 pm.
Talk by Fr Stephen Platt and invitation to share and hear memories of Metropolitan Kallistos. All welcome.
Feel free to bring a bottle (not obligatory!)
Holy Women of East and West:
Some Tuscan, Syriac, and Ethiopian Saints
Saturday 11 November 10.30 am – 4 pm
Open Study Day with Paula Clifford,
Sebastian Brock, and Cressida Marcus
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All welcome, no registration required.
Free for students; non-students £5. Tea and coffee provided.
You are welcome to bring a sandwich lunch.
From the Director: Revd Dr Liz Carmichael, St John’s College.
Liz.Carmichael@sjc.ox.ac.uk Assistant Director of Studies: Claire MacLeod@theology.ox.ac.uk St Theosevia House (messages only): 01865 310341. New website: sttheosevia.org
October 2023
Dear Friends of St Theosevia’s,
We hope you have had a good summer. The House has had a ten-year make-over and is looking very smart with its renewed red paint. Alberto Ravani is now in Vienna, and Claire MacLeod is now Assistant Director of Studies.
We look forward to receiving you at two events this term. First, an evening in memory of Metropolitan Kallistos on Monday 16 October, with a talk by Fr Stephen and a chance to share our own memories of Metropolitan Kallistos and listen to others. It would hardly be right to have such an evening without a glass of something, so basic supplies will be provided and you are welcome to bring a bottle or some nibbles! Or, please just bring yourself.
We have one Study Day this term, on 11 November, on the lives and backgrounds of some unusual, mainly lesser known, Holy Women, from a variety of eastern and western traditions. It promises to be an intriguing day.
We can also recommend the Quiet Day with Julian of Norwich, led by Emma Pennington, at OCSG on Sat 25 Nov. https://www.ocsg.uk.net/
Last term we honoured the coronation of King Charles with a very interesting day on the many ritual actions that contribute to the present English rite of Coronation, looking at the Byzantine and the western mediaeval traditions. We were reminded of the prayerful preparation that was undergone by the late Queen Elizabeth before her coronation in 1953, and watched a video of the central part of the Coronation service of King Charles.
With best wishes,
LIZ CARMICHAEL
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Free tea and coffee are available at Study Days from 10 am and in the lunch break 1-2 pm. Bring packed lunch, or find food nearby in North Parade. If you are willing to help serve coffee you will have a free place – please leave a message on 01865 310341 or email Asst Director of Studies Claire MacLeod@theology.ox.ac.uk. It will be appreciated if you can send a Newsletter Subscription, for costs and postage, suggested gift £5 pa. Send cash, or cheque to ‘St Theosevia Trust’, to: Newsletter, St Theosevia House, 2 Canterbury Rd, OX2 6LU. For bank details please ask Claire.
For the Oxford Centre for Spiritual Growth (OCSG), see https://www.ocsg.uk.net/ or contact Ben Simpson at info@ocsg.uk.net
Remembering Metropolitan Kallistos
Monday 16 October 6.30 pm.
Welcome to an evening in honour of Metropolitan Kallistos, a friend and significant presence as an academic and ecclesiastical leader in Oxford since the 1960s, contributor to international ecumenical dialogue, and a mainstay of the House and Centre since its beginnings in the mid-1980s. Fr Stephen will speak and you are welcome, if you wish, to share your own memories. Drinks and nibbles will be provided and you are most welcome either just to come, or to bring a liquid or edible contribution!
Saturday 11 November 10.30 am – 4 pm
Holy Women of East and West:
Some Tuscan, Syriac, and Ethiopian Saints
Open Study Day with Paula Clifford,
Sebastian Brock, and Cressida Marcus
Dr Sebastian Brock: ‘Some holy women from the Syriac Orient’.
Dr Sebastian Brock, a Trustee of St Theosevia’s, was for many years Reader in Syriac Studies in Oxford. He is a leading expert in Classical Syriac language and literature, and on the history of Syriac Christianity. Sebastian promises that: “I shall select five or six holy women ranging in date from the second century BC [sic!] to the present day.”
Paula Cliford: Tuscany’s Noble Treasures: Conceptualizing female religious life in medieval Italy
Raymond of Capua, the 14th-century Dominican, author of the life of St Agnes of Montepulciano, wrote: “Let all of Tuscany exalt because it has been decorated with such a noble treasure.” So, who was Agnes? And who were the other women — Umilità of Faenza, Margaret of Cortona, Angela of Foligno, Clare of Montefalco, Catherine of Siena — who graced mediaeval Tuscany? Why so many — and why just there? Rev Dr Paula Clifford, one time lecturer in Medieval Studies, now a priest in the diocese of Oxford, shares the answers she found in writing her recent book.
Dr Cressida Marcus: The Ordinary and Extraordinary in Orthodoxy: Women, Female Saints, and the Female Element in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Tradition
Anthropologist Cressida Marcus has spent decades studying the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church tradition and faith community
The paper begins by comparing details from mediaeval hagiographies of the very few sainted women of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church with the lives of contemporary orthodox women. Cressida enquires what makes these holy figures Ethiopian? She then develops, reviews, and critiques the current state of knowledge about gender, sexuality, and piety in the Ethiopian Orthodox context.
In recent academic debate on the Ethiopian female saints, Professor Wendy Belcher (Princeton) has seen same-sex intimacies as primarily homoerotic, a viewpoint that sits uncomfortably beside the present posturing around homosexuality in Africa. Instead, through immersion and empathy, the socio-cultural anthropologist gains a cultural intimacy and so can relay a different perspective of cooperation, sisterhood, and Christian love that includes and embraces sexuality. The fertility of women is a shared power, a somatic and spiritual bridge to Mary, the Mediatrix. The African centrality of fertility, and matrifocality, is conceived as an integral female element in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity. The speaker, in counterpoint, joins in the conversation by championing the female voice, as an anthropologist who knows both Academia and the field.
An annual veneration of the fifteenth-century saint Kristos Samra, one of the few whose life is well known, takes place off the shores of Lake Tana. On pilgrimage there, one encounters shared sisterhood and amity, piety and veneration. The presentation includes slides which reveal the vernacular proximity of ordinary women to the sacred, illustrating in their piety, bodily choreography, and prayers. Remembering that women are often the majority of churchgoers, theoretical and empirical insight will develop the female dimension in the everyday as well as for sites of female veneration.
This paper counters received opinions about gender – primarily that orthodox patrimony is solely male dominated – by thinking about the culturally encoded significance of female sexuality.
