The Byzantine Church

Byzantine laws of guardianship developed from the Roman legal system of tutela and aira. Although Christian concepts 

In addition to examining the history of these orphan schools, this chapter will explore other ways the Byzantine Church affected the care of orphans, especially in encouraging laymen to build new orphanages or to provide other kinds of assistance. Finally, this chapter will study 

John Moschos, Pratum Spirituale, 207 (PG, 87.3 3097-3100). See also Chapter Four, note 32. 

At the Council of Sardica, called by the emperor Constantins II in 343 to resolve the many conflicts that erupted following the Council of Nicaea (325), the elderly bishop Hosius of Cordova expressed his irritation over the new political activities his fellow bishops were engaging in. Hosius believed that bishops should return to their more traditional duties of protecting widows and preventing the unjust from dispossessing orphans.  

Despite their far greater responsibilities both in local and in imperial affairs, conscientious bishops of the fourth century continued to support the care of orphans. The famous bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Basil the Great, gained renown for his program to benefit or- 

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In order to supplement the guardianship system the Byzantine state also supported institutional care for orphans. As we saw in Chapter Three, the Byzantine Church had developed philanthropic institutions to assist children who for whatever reason were unable to find guardians. The emperor Leo III considered these Christian orphanages so successful that he preferred them to family guardians except for mothers or, in the cases where both parents had died, tutors designated by testament. The next chapter wUl explore the role of the Byzantine Church in the care of orphans and wUl devote special attention to examining the nature of these chin d orphanages. 

Regarding abandonment and adoption in the Byzantine Em-formulate the key issues with two simple questions Did the people of East Rome abandon as many babies as their pre-Christian ancestors had And, second, were devout Christians willing to adopt the exposed infants they happened to find Answering these two questions would provide valuable information not only about the society of the Byzantine Empire but also about the efficacy of Christianity in reshaping deep-rooted customs and instilling respect for human life in its most helpless form. In sum, answering these two questions would help us gage how much success the Byzantine Church and Byzantine state achieved in their effort to create the New Jerusalem. 

We have already examined how the Byzantine state and the Byzantine Church administered the Orphanotropheion and discussed some of the philanthropic services it provided. In this chapter we will first review the evidence that the Orphanage of Constantinople supported a school for many centuries prior to the reign of Alexios. Second, we will explore what sort of education the orphan school provided for its wards. Third, we will examine the organization of its teaching staflf... 

An example of application with mixed-type binding system constitutes the consolidation of masonry element of the Byzantine Church Acheiropoietos (dated firom the seventh century AD) by grouting in the 1990s with the following mixmre. The choice of the binding system was based on the experimental study of materials and trial mixtures. 

Seismic Analysis of Masonry Buildings Numerical Modeling, Fig. 2 The Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia (360 AD), Istanbul, Turkey... 

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