Earthquakes and Gardens: Saint Hilarion's Cyprus

Essays about ruination, resilience, reading, and religion generated by a reflection on a fourth-century hagiography.

In Jerome's Life of Saint Hilarion, a fourth-century saint briefly encounters the ruins of an earthquake-toppled city and a haunted garden in Cyprus. From these two fragmentary passages, Virginia Burrus delivers a series of sweeping meditations on our experience of place and the more-than-human worlds--the earth and its gods--that surround us. Moving between the personal and geological, Earthquakes and Gardens ruminates on destruction and resilience, ruination and resurgence, grief and consolation in times of disaster and loss. Ultimately, Burrus's close readings reimagine religion as a practice that unsettles certainty and develops mutual flourishing.

Author: Virginia Burrus
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 02/19/2023
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.48d
ISBN13: 9780226824567
ISBN10: 022682456X
BISAC Categories:
- Religion | Christianity | Orthodox
- Religion | Christian Theology | History
- Religion | Philosophy

About the Author
Virginia Burrus is the Bishop W. Earl Ledden professor of religion at Syracuse University. She is the author of many books, including Ancient Christian Ecopoetics: Cosmologies, Saints, Things.