What is it about?
The Eastern Mediterranean is one of the most seismically active regions in the world and experienced abnormally high numbers of earthquakes from the middle of the fourth to the middle of the sixth century. This paper explores how people of that era remembered and commemorated earthquake disasters, particularly in church settings, through each phase of the disaster: pre-impact, post-impact, recovery, and reconstruction.
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Why is it important?
This is the first study to examine the practice of remembering and commemorating earthquakes in late antiquity. It demonstrates how personal and public remembering functions in sensemaking, social-bonding, grief work and psychological coping mechanisms, and how commemorations variously act as symbols of renewal and sites of cultural reflection.
Perspectives
Although Australia experiences relatively few earthquake disasters, we have had some significant ones. This paper was inspired by paramedic Ken Iles' reaction to an anniversary of the 1989 Newcastle earthquake: "People don’t want to be reminded of the worst day of their life." So why do we commemorate disasters? Additionally, this paper served as the foundation for a chapter on earthquake commemorations in old Syriac calendars of saints, which will appear in my forthcoming monograph, Patterning the Past. In the future, I hope to explore how past post-disaster commemorative practices can inform contemporary disaster responses.
Katherin Papadopoulos
St Athanasius College, University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Remembering Earthquakes in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean, November 2021, JSTOR,
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv27vt655.15.
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