The Byzantine Spirit: In Between the Renaissance and Modernity

This article aims to assess the impact of the peculiar, dualistic “Byzantine spirit” on the rise of the modern world, as a background to contemporary political-theological developments. It will be using the approach and the tools of political anthropology, in particular the terms “liminality”, “trickster”, and “schismogenesis”. The source of such dualistic spirit is the dual nature of the Hippodrome: location of solemn public-religious rituals, on the one hand, and on the other of various circus entertainment, survivals of the pre-Christian Roman Empire; both under the authority of the Emperor, who thus embodied in his person religious and secular authority, deeply confusing charismatic and trickster roles. It was this spirit that was transmitted, in the liminal moment of the sack of Constantinople, into the West, playing a fundamental role in the rise of the modern world, which reproduced the East-West schism with the rise of Protestantism. Focus here will be on the extremely ambiguous nature of the “public sphere”, already central for the hesychasm debate in the 14th century, and which is systematically ignored in the modern celebration of the media and the public.