Volume 108, Issue 2

Medieval East Central Europe is currently defined as the territory between the Holy Roman-German Empire and Byzantium. Little attention has been paid to how the region mediated between Byzantium and the rest of Europe. From relics to texts, and from coins and pottery to helmets, the countries in East Central Europe - Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia - have not let all things Byzantine move farther afield. What and when Byzantine things were allowed to pass has been a matter of political circumstances. Particularly significant in this respect was the crusading period, during which Hungary came to be regarded as the gate to Byzantium. East Central Europe was perceived as an alternative, not as a part of the Byzantine Commonwealth. That may explain the weak interest in things Byzantine among the scholars in the region, with the notable exception of the Hungarian historians.

This article presents a critical edition and annotated English translation of the Invocation of the holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel by Metrophanes, who was bishop of Smyrna in the second half of the 9th century. The text has only been preserved in the 12th-century manuscript Oxoniensis, Bodleianus, Auctarium E.5.12 (Miscellaneus 77). This new reconstruction of the Greek text replaces the unreliable edition of 1887 by Basileios Georgiadès. In the notes accompanying the translation, references to expressions and Biblical quotes recurrent in the oeuvre of Metrophanes have been added.

The Church of St. Catherine representing one of the outstanding achievements of Byzantine architecture in Thessaloniki, and vital to our understanding of late Byzantine church building, has not been sufficiently studied. The intention of this study is to present a number of issues - taking into consideration that the information about this church is dispersed in many studies about different topics of Byzantine culture and archaeology - and to focus on its topographical setting, its immediate environs, the available sources, and the current state of scholarship, as well to present new information such as the document of dedication on occasion of its conversion into a mosque. - The main conclusions to be drawn are the following: Limited information about the church and its area; its identification mostly with churches dedicated to Christ; its dedication to St. Catherine mentioned for the first time in the Ottoman period; conflicting proposals to dating the monument between the twelfth and the second half of the fourteenth century; consideration of two opinions, first holding the church design and its implementation according to a unified plan, and a second based on different phases requiring further examination.

This paper focuses on the construction of space in five collections of Byzantine edifying stories (Historia monachorum in Aegypto, Daniel Sketiotes’ Dossier, Ioannes Moschos’ Pratum spirituale, both collections of Anastasios Sinaites, and the tales by Paulos of Monembasia). While in the earlier collections the opposition between monastic and secular environments (the “desert” and the “city” or “village”) is the determining element for the construction of space, other dimensions are important in the later collections: the setting of the story as a space full of wonders in the stories of Anastasios Sinaites and the combination of the everyday and the adventurous in the collection by Paul of Monembasia. Finally, I discuss the symbolic function of space as a “heterotopia” on the example of the function of the grave and the ship in selected stories.

The present contribution will concentrate on the central issue discussed by Bessarion in one of his major works, the De natura et arte (written in 1458 and published in 1469 as the sixth book of Bessarion’s In calumniatorem Platonis), i. e. the concept of deliberation and the relationship between nature, purposiveness and deliberation. In De natura et arte Bessarion responds to an attack by George of Trebizond, who had demonstrated, against Bessarion, not only that nature does not deliberate, but also that deliberation cannot be attributed to God who guides nature either, since deliberation implies doubt and ignorance. In this contribution I will examine the strategies Bessarion uses in order to reaffirm the possibility of attributing deliberation even to God and the arguments through which he succeeds in stressing the fundamental agreement on this subject not only between Plato and Aristotle, but also and more importantly between Plato and Christian theology.

This paper offers a close reading of the passages in the Historia Ekklesiastike kai Mystike Theoria, a liturgical commentary attributed to Germanos I, patriarch of Constantinople (d. 730), that pertain to the church building. The Historia’s interpretation is highly symbolic, steeped in scripture and dependent on earlier and contemporary theological thought. On occasion, the text sheds light on actual architectural developments, as in the case of the skeuophylakion. On the whole, however, the discussion of architecture is rather vague. I argue that the Historia is part of a long exegetical tradition on the liturgy that disregards the functional aspects of church buildings, a disconnect enabled by the adaptability of Byzantine liturgical rites.

This article discusses an invective dialogue in verse between two 10th century intellectuals: the poet John Geometres and a certain Stylianos. Their lampoons offer a unique instance of internal reader response and invite us to reflect on their contemporary performance and circulation. They illustrate the intense social envy of the time, leading to the debunking of the intellectual abilities of others and to boastful self-representation. The article proposes a new edition of the text, followed by a translation (section I), notes on language and style (section II) and observations on the form and dynamics of the dialogue (section III).

In the present study, the Διδασκαλία εἰς τὸ ῥητὸν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ὅτι ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν ἐντὸς ἡμῶν ἐστι by patriarch Kallistos I is edited for the first time. It is given by two codices of Mount Athos, codex 8 of Hilandar monastery (ff. 169 r -174 r ) and codex 1074 of Panteleemon monastery (ff. 68 v -72 v ). The intentio auctoris of this discourse is obviously to denounce and refute the beliefs of both Nikephoros Gregoras and his teachers that man’s soul is consecrated through secular wisdom and not ἐκ τῶν ἀσκητικῶν καμάτων καὶ πόνων, as supported by Gregory Palamas and all the previous hesychast tradition.

The modern explanation of the Byzantine distinction between Roman and barbarian has focused on a dichotomy based on political allegiance to the emperor. In this interpretation, while individuals could change identity by changing loyalty, the categories themselves did not change. This essay argues that sixth-century Byzantine military elites had more complex opinions about identity and loyalty. In particular, they could accept that many who served the emperor loyally were in fact non-Romans and even barbarians, even if they liked them and refrained from using that term pejoratively. In fact, Byzantines could exhibit approval and fondness of non-Romans in loyal service to the emperor. The application of the pejorative label “barbarian” to non-Romans serving in the Byzantine military was limited to occasions when criticism was deemed appropriate (such as the misbehavior of the non-Roman) and those situations in which a reference to traditional barbarian tropes served a literary purpose.

This article presents formerly unknown folles of emperor Justin II. with the letters COS preceeding the title Augustus,which were issued in his regnal years 5 (569/70) and 6 (570/71) at the Kyzikene mint. Already known coins of the same type minted in regnal year 3 can be associated with the well-documented, but mostly neglected second consulship of the emperor in 567 AD. Thus the new numismatic evidence apparently points to an unknown third consulship of Justin II. in 570 AD. This consideration is placedwithin the broader context of the history of the consulship and of relevant coin issues in the 6th century.

This article deals with the alleged and lost ʻcoinʼ of the Empress Theophano (959-969), attested by one eighteenth-century engraving and other two of the nineteenth-century. Since several lead seals with similar portrait and inscriptions survive, many scholars have evaluated the graphic documents deriving from a real copper coin or from a seal of the existing type. A careful iconographic and stylistic analysis would suggest the restitution of two distinct objects; this idea was never presented before because of the little consideration of the eighteenth-century engraving. The comparison with other middle Byzantine numismatic and sphragistic examples suggests for the first engraving the reproduction of an unknown and misunderstood lead seal and, for the second and third one, the image of a forgery realised in the wake of the more ancient illustration.