Involving a vast number of texts, saintly heroes and authors, Byzantine hagiography stands out as a field of scholarly research highly rewarding for both the philologist and the historian. The studies reproduced in this volume cover a chronological range from late antiquity to the Paleologan era. They bring together annotated editions of specific texts and discussions of their contexts, complemented by comprehensive surveys of saintly and monastic cult. Having appeared over the last twenty years, they also illustrate and reflect upon the significant development and re-orientation which has...

For an entire millennium, Byzantine hagiography, inspired by the veneration of many saints, exhibited literary dynamism and a capacity to vary its basic forms. The subgenres into which it branched out after its remarkable start in the fourth century underwent alternating phases of development and decline that were intertwined with changes in the political, social and literary spheres. The selection of saintly heroes, an interest in depicting social landscapes, and the modulation of linguistic and stylistic registers captured the voice of homo byzantinus down to the end of the empire in the...

The patriarch Tarasios holds a key position in the ending of the first period of Iconoclasm in Byzantium, with the seventh Oecumenical Council at Nicaea in 787. His Life forms an equally key source for the history and culture of the Byzantine world in the eighth and ninth centuries. This book provides a full introduction, a critical edition with English translation, and a detailed commentary and indexes for this important document. The introduction first places the text within the framework of other patriarchal biographies composed in the period c.850-950. Dr Efthymiadis then looks at...