Volume 106, Issue 2

A study of the extensive corpus of around 200 Greek homilies dating from the late ninth to the end of the tenth century has revealed a clear trend in Byzantine homiletics, which has practically escaped attention so far: references to Ancient Greek myths in the form of exempla occur in roughly one tenth of them. All of this material is presented in detail and analyzed in the article. Moreover, this paradoxical phenomenon of incorporating pagan material in religious works that were read out in church is accounted for by appealing to a number of factors, including the influence of Gregory of Nazianzus’ and Photius’ examples on the homilists involved, the flourishing of rhetoric in the era of the “revival of learning”, and the classicizing spirit of the “Macedonian renaissance”. While the use of myths did not imply acceptance of their ethics, a special fondness of erotic myths makes its appearance. The trend under discussion here emerges as a literary counterpart to classicism in the art of the tenth century.

Theodoros Daphnopates was an outstanding Byzantine politician and writer of the 10th c. His letter-collection is relatively short, but very important. Although 35 years have passed since it was published in a critical edition, it is still very scantily explored until now. The present article discusses, in its first part, the authorship of five anonymous letters preserved in Cod.Vindob. phil. 842. It is generally accepted, but very problematic that Daphnopates may have been their author. This article attempts to prove that the five letters can be undoubtedly classified as a part of his letter collection. The main task of the second part is the literary analysis of one of Daphnopatesʼ letters. This letter, a highly developed rhetorical masterpiece containing some ekphraseis of loci amoeni, is discussed in the broad context of Byzantine epistolography. It is demonstrated that this text, as well as Daphnopatesʼ other letters, is completely untypical for its time by showing some new trends, which will later flourish in the literature of Comnenian period.

The following article deals with the results of four excavation seasons (March 2000, March 2001, March-April 2002, and November 2005) in the area of the Episcopal town Pharan (Arabic ‘Firan’) in South Sinai. They refer, as main subjects, to the fourth-century church on the summit of the hill opposite the town, where according to the legend Moses once stood supervising the battle against the Amelekites (Exod. 17.12), and secondly to the church on the acropolis of the town. Further subjects are the presumable house of the bishop at the western slope of the acropolis hill, the discovery of a fish-pond in the valley and the excavation of some private houses in the town.

The original meaning in early classical Roman law of the term natura, to express external and internal characteristics, was extended to contracts and actions in late classical law. It also refers to the substantive characteristics of contracts and actions. By using φύσις in his Digest teachings, the sixth-century Byzantine jurist Stephanus was able to explain changes to contracts and actions. Not only could a contract be changed into a completely new contract, but a pactum could also transform the contract itself. Stephanus also used φύσις to explain the use of the general condiction, ὁ κέρτος γενικὸς κονδικτίκιος instead of another specific condiction. The term φύσις does not cause new rules of law to be enacted but the application of φύσις explains their effect in practice. Stephanus used fixed verbs for the changes, transformations and adaptions. He appears to have been unique in this theory. In the Byzantine lexicon Ῥωμαϊκαὶ ἀγωγαί and the Meditatio de pactis nudis parts of Stephanus’ Digest teachings about φύσις can be found.

Once Theodore Doukas conquered Thessalonica in 1224, he struck coins picturing Saint Demetrios and Archangel Michael presenting him with a triple-towered castle. Thereafter, this type of castle was continuously depicted on the coinage of Thessalonica mint until the early 14th century. The article begins with the examination of each of these emissions in connection to the changing political conditions prevailing in the Balkan territories under Byzantine rule. It then proceeds with investigating potential sources of inspiration. Focus is placed on archaeological and numismatic evidence from Greece,Western Europe and East Mediterranean. Combining political, cultural and ideological factors with the aspirations of Theodore’s short-lived empire, Hohenstaufen Italy is suggested as the potential source from which the triple-towered castle was transferred and assimilated in the late Byzantine imagery of power, as depicted on coinage.

Hagios Nikolaos in the village of Theriakisi, 25 km south of Ioannina, is a case of a minor undocumented provincial monument belonging to the great development of local mural painting in Epirus at the end of the 16 th c. Inside, the church is full of frescoes, though with significant damage on the southern wall. The iconographic program is limited to the basic scenes from the life of Christ which decorate the upper zones of the walls. In this program, dogmatic themes dominate. This is particularly obvious if we interpret the meaning of the other representations in conjunction with the Ἄνωθεν οἱ Προφῆται: Elisabeth and Mary’s embrace projects the message of the Incarnation. The most important characteristic of the iconography of Saint Nicholas in Theriakisi is the undeniable similarity with the art of West Macedonia in the 16 th c., as noticed at some other provincial monuments of this era in Epirus.

The present article focuses on inscriptions carved on the marble templon screen of the Middle Byzantine era, an architectural and decorative element that played an important role in the liturgy, also dressed with multiple symbolic meanings. The study of the existing examples, dispersed in many regions of the Byzantine territory and dated from the 9th to the 12th c., provides us with evidence on matters of worship, language, art and patronage. The majority of the inscriptions consist of dedicatory texts that commemorate acts of donation and express the donors’ concern for salvation. A smaller group reproduces quotations from the sacred scriptures or has references from the liturgy and the hymnography. The short number of the inscribed material of this kind, compared to the templon screens that were erected during the same period, corresponds to the general decline of epigraphy after the 7th c. and the gradual disability of the public to communicate through written texts.

Many linguists refuse to believe that poetic − and especially metrical − texts can provide reliable evidence of linguistic phenomena. In this article, I show that the Medieval Greek πολιτικὸς στίχος poetry represents an exception. By means of a case-study I demonstrate that the metre of the πολιτικὸς στίχος does not constitute a straitjacket for the language, but actually presents a flexible system: a comparison of the distribution of the object clitic pronouns (OCP) in the two parallel manuscripts in which the 14th century Chronicle of Morea has been preserved not only confirms the established rules for OCP distribution but also reveals that the πολιτικὸς στίχος allows many rephrasing possibilities on all levels of grammar (phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax).