Volume 109, Issue 1

The etymologic root of two Greek words (σωμόβουβλ/, ὠμοβουβλ(ίνου)) is soup (ζωμός). Number 2 holds the until now skipped latin signature of the notary Ioshf.

In this paper, a pre-assessment of the Byzantine era of Aigai will be presented. Besides the western Anatolian cities of Pergamum, Ephesus and Smyrna, Aigai is the only city which achieved to cope with the rough terrain among the Aspordenon Mountains north of Smyrna. This city located 17 km east of the Yeni Şakran town in the province Izmir, also known as Köseler castle due to its location on Mount Gün near the Köseler village in the province of Manisa, and is one of the twelve cities within the Aeolian region mentioned by Herodotus. Thanks to the detailed studies by R. Bohn and C. Schuchhardt on inscriptions from Aigai, the city was first introduced to the academical world in 1889. Archaeological studies started in 2004 and were conducted by Prof. Dr. Ersin Doğer. While the archaeological and written sources about the history and civilization of pre-Byzantine Aigai are rather well-known, in this paper it will be attempted to give an overview of the scarce written sources about the Byzantine era and to evaluate them in the light of so-far unpublished architecture and small finds. Since 2004, area based excavations have been carried out in the necropolis of the city, at Demirkapı and the insula situated east of the Tiberius gate which are the entrance points of the city, in the Bouleuterion, Agora and Macellum to its east, in the cisterns nos. I and II and in the easternmost part of the acropolis. The residential areas, built by the last inhabitants of the region, the Byzantines, by using spolia of older buildings, are badly preserved. The architecture, which, due to its location on a hillside, has been harmed by landslides and torrents, but also by human destruction such as treasure hunts and stone borrowing, is very fragile. The only preserved architecture so far is a sacral building dated to the 12th or 13th century. Abundant pottery and glass small finds, together with some metal objects and coins, enable us to get an idea of the Byzantine era in Aigai and provide a foresight to further studies.

The purpose of this paper is to reexamine the role and the function of the krites tou stratopedou mentioned in Michael Attaleiates’ History. The previous conclusions of modern research are summarized and the evidence of the primary sources concerning the krites tou stratopedou and other officials that accompanied Romanos Diogenes on his third campaign against the Seljuks are analysed.

The Greek word scholastikos as a human attribute appears continuously from classical antiquity to modern times. However, over the centuries, the term took various nuances, which are associated with respective activities, the participation in public life and the social status of the persons qualified as scholastikoi. In the article, starting with Axel Claus’ conclusions in his doctoral thesis (Cologne 1965) as well as the exploitation of new evidences concludes that from the 3rd until the 7th century AD the number of people known as scholastikoi is particularly high. These people were well educated with rhetoric and legal knowledge. The term did not designate a specific profession, though often during this period a scholastikos gathered the characteristics of a jurist in today’s sense; he was an advocate, legal advisor, teacher of law, judge, notary, etc. Although he was not directly related to the education system as a teacher or professor of rhetoric, occasionally a scholastikos could have been, under certain circumstances, a private teacher of grammar (grammarian). During the middle and late Byzantine period, the attribute scholastikos for a person is found in very few and isolated cases (Arethas’ letters to Niketas David Paphlagon, Ecloga privata aucta, Alexiad, Nikephoros Gregoras to Theodoros Metochites and Thomas Magistros, Life of saint Athanasios of Meteora). It is clear that scholastikos, as a human type with the characteristics outlined above, did not disappear, but the term was no longer used in this context. According to the rare available evidence, most of the authors used the term in its ancient Greek meaning, associating it mainly with education, teachers and letters in general.

The Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla, a 5 th -century hagiographical work, feature many elements recalling the ancient novel. Even if the first part of the text, the Life, must be considered a novel itself due to its dependence on the model of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, some novelistic motifs - especially the use of descriptions, digressions and first-person narrations − appear throughout the whole text. In addition, we also examine the textual evidence of the influence of the ancient novel on this hagiographical text through the analysis of some lexical details which suggest the reading of the ancient novels. The hagiographer uses these elements to rewrite in same cases the original scene of the Acts of Paul and Thecla or to evoke in other scenes the universe of the ancient novel in order to delight his readers.

A fragment of a relief icon, made of steatite plaque, depicting a female saint,was recently found in Acre (Akko) in northern Israel. The plaque has lost the head of the saint, but enough is left of the figure to discern that the pose of the female saint is typically Byzantine. Moreover, the drapery shows stylistic affinities with Komnenian art. The plaque is the first steatite icon found in Palestine and could have arrived in Acre from abroad. The archeological context suggests that it might have been venerated in Acre anytime between the Crusader and the Ottoman periods.

This article addresses the question as to why Maximus the Confessor was first recognized as an official martyr and saint in the imperial Byzantine Church only in the tenth century, although his theology had been accepted by the Sixth Ecumenical Council and his followers began to practice and propagate his cult shortly after his death in 662. The argument begins with a brief description of Maximus’ early veneration and then examines the Sixth Ecumenical Council’s failure to rehabilitate him by detailing the reasons why this was impossible in 681 and also thereafter. Clearly, in the seventh and eighth centuries the cult of Maximus had its centre outside the empire in parts of Palestinian monasticism. During the iconoclastic era, as in the seventh century, Maximus’ name stood once again for opposition to imperial religious policy, for he was held up by those venerating icons as the witness of Tradition to their use. Although during this time iconophile monastic circles in the capital probably fostered his cult as well, his veneration continued to find no official recognition in the ninth century because of on-going division within the church of Constantinople. Only after a great distance in time to the events of the seventh century could official recognition in Byzantium come to Maximus, since the conflicts of that earlier era were no longer relevant. In this context, the ‘Holy Confessor Maximus’ underwent a process of acceptance by the Byzantines who anchored his biography in Constantinople. As a result, the actual circumstances of the monothelete controversy have ultimately been obscured.

The manuscript Plut. 86.14 displays an uncommon variety of geomantical texts in medieval Greek.We propose to challenge the traditional idea of the ‘derivation’ of Greek geomancy from the Arabic one, and to show the existence of an ‘original’ Greek tradition, quite divergent from the Arabic one for what concerns both the technical lexicon and the procedures of interrogation.

A series of seven epigrams from the Anthologia Marciana (MS Marc. gr. 524) sheds light on the life of John IX Merkouropoulos, patriarch of Jerusalem in exile (1157-before 1166). The evidence that comes to light reveals traces of a monastic network connecting Jerusalem with Constantinople. According to the epigrams, John became a monk at Mar Saba - something further evinced by the double vita of St John of Damascus and Kosmas of Maiouma that he composed [BHG 395]. After staying at the Koutsovendis monastery, he travelled to Constantinople, where Manuel I appointed him on the patriarchal see and also made him abbot of the monastery of St Diomedes/New Zion in Constantinople. Shortly before or after John’s departure from life, his disciple, the monk Clement, attempted to manifest that his spiritual father was a holy man. Thus, Clement had John’s portrait placed next to that of St James, the brother of God. John’s complex relationship with the Syropalestinian monastic tradition make his life and the survival of his memory an exceprional case study for understanduing the phenomenon of Holy Men in twelfth-century Constantinople.

In this paper, I aim at sketching the place of the Ancient Greek literary dialects within grammar in the 11th-century Byzantine curriculum, for which a didactic grammatical poem, composed by the polymath Michael Psellus (ca. 1018-ca. 1080), is a unique and understudied source (viz. Poemata, 6). I do so by offering, together with a first English translation of the relevant verses, a close analysis of part of the poem and its sources. This enables us to assess how Psellus pictured the relationship of the κοινή (koinè) with the four other canonical dialects. I likewise argue that, although Psellus does not offer a definition of the word διάλεκτος (dialektos), his poem nevertheless allows us to reconstruct his conception of it to a certain extent. This contribution also seeks to contextualize Psellus’ views against the backdrop of the Hellenistic and Byzantine tradition of Greek dialect studies.