Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, Band 67/2017

The Atik Mustafa Paşa Camii is the only former Byzantine church in the Blachernai Quarter, which still exists. It owes its survival to its transformation into a mosque. Archaeological evidence suggests that it was erected in the second half of the 9th century. This building was surely not the Church of the Prophet Elijah in the Petrion, because this sanctuary was located much farther southeast between Zeugma and Cibalikapı. Topographical and historical arguments speak for the identification of the Atik Mustafa Paşa with the Church of St. Nicholas of Myra. In its place the church of the holy martyrs Priscus, Martinus and Nicholas, which was constructed by Justinian I, once stood. This church was burnt down during the Avar siege in 626 and renewed at an unknown time—perhaps by one of the first two Macedonian emperors. However, the written sources do not testify to the erection of a Church of St. Nicholas either for Basil I or Leon IV. The generally accepted but unfounded localization of the church within Leon Walls near the Gate of Blachernai must be rejected. The last known visitor to the Church of St. Nicholas in the Blachernai Quarter was the Russian pilgrim Stephen of Novgorod (1348/49).

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St. John the Theologian at Lakki, Leros, is a three-aisled domed basilica with traces of several building phases and repairs. The restoration of the church has revealed important elements of its history. The foundations of the original timber- roofed basilica with a narthex were laid on the soft bedrock of the area. The colonnades dividing the aisles incorporated dissimilar columns and capitals, reworked for aesthetic reasons at one of the later stages of intervention; their original provenance is unclear. The church had a synthronon and arched windows. The masonry was irregular, with a light coating of plaster interrupted in places to expose courses of brick on both sides of the wall and the arches of the openings; such was the original decoration of the monument. The plaster was divided into zones decorated with incisions. Its large size, in conjunction with the terracotta decoration, indicates that is was probably an episcopal church, a possibility also supported by the inscription on the marble lintel originally placed over the central west door. This inscription dates from the earliest phase of the building and mentions the year 1082 and the name of a bishop Nicholas as founder. During the first decades of the 13th century, perhaps after an earthquake, the church acquired a cross-vaulted roof with a dome. The façade was remodelled according to the dominant trend of the period. The apse to the left of the sanctuary (prothesis) was rebuilt without the brick courses, and the outside of the building was decorated with chevron patterns. The windows were blocked and the interior was covered with murals, taking advantage of the increased surface made available for painting. Judging from the north aisle—dedicated to the Blessed Christodoulos, the founder of the Patmos Monastery—the painting programme was of special character. The style of the murals, dating from the first half of the 13th century, recalls monuments of Rhodes, such as St. Michael at Thari and St. Phanourios in the medieval town, which possibly reflect the art of the Byzantine empire of Nicaea. The third important modification of the church, dating from the post-Byzantine period, involved the walling of both colonnades, the blocking of three out of the four windows of the dome and the construction of a wall dividing the sanctuary from the nave. At this time the murals were badly damaged, since a pale plaster coating covered much of the interior.

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This small contribution aims to show that the previously unrecognized pattern of the entire epistle 1657 (II 402 Evieux) of Isidorus Pelusiota is Pseudo-Demosthenes, or. 26, 3. In addition, it may be pointed out that the specific imagery used here can be traced back to Aristophanes, Equites 542–544; cf. also Gregory of Nazianzus, or. 43, 26.

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This paper reviews the evidence for a Byzantine presence and action at the Council of Constance (1414/18), which is usually considered a major step towards Church Union. With regard to the Council’s prehistory, we concentrate on a group of letters addressed to Manuel II and attributed to Sigismund of Luxemburg. The first of them (ACC I 111) is shown to go back to Sigismund’s encounter and alliance with Władysław Jagiełło, the letter’s co-sender, in 1412. Furthermore, we discuss the scattered evidence on Byzantine envoys at Constance from 1415 to 1418. These references, some of which (Syropulos, Ulrich Richental) have to be treated with utmost caution, are shown to be equally compatible with a discontinuous presence as with the permanent sojourn of Greek representatives that is usually assumed. Against this background, a letter by Isidore (of Kiev), if attributed to Nikolaos Eudaimonoioannes as recipient, probably implies that the Byzantine legation of 1416 did not stay at Constance, but travelled to France and England in search of Sigismund.

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Athanasius, the author of Vita A of Athanasius the Athonite, was a highly unusual figure in Byzantine hagiography. Unlike other hagiographers, he did not shrink from making explicit his views on a number of topics. His comments about the importance of learning and about the relationship between the emperor and the law point back to his past as a judge in the imperial bureaucracy. By contrast, his rejection of mysticism and extreme asceticism is in keeping with the Middle Byzantine monastic reform movement. Yet unlike the authors of monastic rules, he does not inveigh against mystics and ascetics but prefers to poke fun at them through elaborate wordplay.

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This paper offers for the first time the recension of the now four known witnesses of the alphabetical compilation known as the Florilegium Hierosolymitanum (= Flor. Hier.): Hierosolymitanus, Sancti Sepulchri 15 (11th c.), Atheniensis, Metochion Sancti Sepulchri 274 (14th c.), Atheniensis, EBE 2429 (14th c.) and Athonensis, Koutloumousiou 269 (15th). By means of a philological study, the author concludes that all of them witness to the same version of the anthology which is headed by the Hier. S. Sepulcri 15. On the basis of the identification of the Atheniensis, EBE 2429 as a ʽfragmentary witnessʼ of the Flor. Hier., the author argues that in its pristine form the anthology reached up to letter Ω and was originally transmitted in two volumes, of which only the first one (books Α–Ε) is preserved in full today.

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The activities of female emissaries in late Byzantium offer an interesting perspective from which to view the transformation of the late Byzantine court and state as the multinational power gradually diminishing to a small principality. As the position of the imperial family stabilized and the fortunes of the empire dwindled, noble and imperial women were able (or perhaps were forced) to leave the female quarters of the palace or the safety of the nunnery and enter the political arena to secure peace at the borders, inside the empire, and even within the Orthodox Church itself. The present study considers sixteen missions headed by female ambassadors and subsequently suggests the circumstances and motives which transformed nine empresses, princesses, and noble nuns into ambassadors of the late Byzantine court.

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The article examines the history of the Stoudios monastery during the Late Palaiologan period and traces its impact on Constantinopolitan public life during the last decades of Byzantium. Although Stoudios was already restored in the early Palaiologan period, it was only during the reign of emperor John V Palaiologos (1341–1391) that it began once more to emerge as a leading monastery in a way reminiscent of its Middle Byzantine heyday. In the late 14th and early 15th centuries the monks of Stoudios, led by figures such as Patriarch Euthymios II and Joseph Bryennios, often challenged official imperial policies. Later, during the reign of John VIII the monastery was intimately connected with the imperial administration. Throughout this period, Stoudios played an active role in the discussions about the Union of the Churches. The textual evidence also provides information on the appearance and status of the monastery’s building complex and reveals its importance within the urban landscape of Late Palaiologan Constantinople.

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This paper presents a children’s grave, found in 2009 during rescue excavations at the settlement of Ancient Pallantion (Arcadia, GR). The grave contained the human remains of five individuals aged between 1 and 5 years, a clay jug, a belt buckle, two earrings and a cross pendant, all dating to the 6th–early 7th c. This assemblage was examined through an interdisciplinary approach (archaeology & bioarchaeology) that revealed evidence regarding the biological identity and health status of the deceased as well as information concerning children’s clothing and burial practices. In this particular grave the individuals—in all probability relatives—consist of primary burials as well as secondary deposits thus possibly displaying the parents’ desire to gather the very young. Finally, the age at death of all individuals confirmed the high infant mortality of the first age category (πρώτη ἡλικία) that can be caused by infections, injuries, malnutrition, unhygienic living conditions as well as the onset of weaning and its accompanying biological adaptations.

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The Latin-Greek glossary of Avranches (11th century AD) belongs to the group of bilingual medieval glossaries for practical use (as e.g., the glossaries of Auxerre, Monza and St Gall, and the older so called “Folium Parisinum”). It starts with some sentences to be used in situations when traveling, especially when staying at the inn. Then there is a small glossary consisting mainly of terms for buildings, building and travel equipment and animals. With this the reader was prepared for leaving for the Byzantine Empire.

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This multi-authored article presents a new project to study Byzantine prayer books (euchologia) by a team of scholars at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The long-term aim of the project is to create a census of all extant prayer book manuscripts for the use of priests in Greek up to the year 1650, in order to facilitate the study of the ‘occasional prayers’ as sources for daily life and social history. After an extended introduction to the history of scholarship and the methodological challenges encountered in the first three years of the project, the first two individual contributions highlight the importance of manuscript study in situ, by addressing issues of codicology and the history of manuscripts as evidenced in the liturgical commemorations they contain. The following three contributions demonstrate the value of the ‘small prayers’ as a largely untapped historical source through the study of prayers for changing religious affiliation, prayers for female purity in conjunction with childbirth, and prayers in the context of primary education.

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Recently an exciting new seal of a Niketas Nobellisimos and Komes of the Opsikion with a bust of the Theotokos on the obverse appeared at the Lanz auction. At first glance it stems from the 8th century, but the only Niketas Nobellisimos documented in the sources for this century, the third son of the Emperor Constantine V and Eudokia, had to be excluded a priori, because he was separated from power at the age of 10 years and became a cleric. Apparently the Niketas of this seal was the eldest son of the usurper / emperor Artabasdos. As there is another slightly older seal of this Niketas, yet with the invocative monogram on the obverse, the bulloterion of the seal above was cut in 742 A.D. On the other hand, this bull proves a certain affinity of Artabasdos’ family with the “ikonodouloi”.

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Manuel Gabalas (alias Matthew, Archbishop of Ephesus, ca. 1271 – before 1360) authored a “short encomiastic introduction” (Πρόλογος διαβραχέων ἐγκωμιαστικός) to Homer’s Odyssey, which was often copied along with the Homeric poem and enjoyed a certain popularity in the 15th century. At a later stage, Gabalas rewrote this preface, which he adapted in order to use it as a prologue to his (still unpublished) work on the Πλάναι τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως. A new critical edition of the second redaction of the Πρόλογος, based on the autograph copy now preserved in Vienna, is provided here, together with an Italian translation. It is equipped with a critical apparatus recording the textual discrepancies with respect to the first version, also preserved in an autograph copy in a manuscript now in Cesena, and preceeded by a short introduction on Gabalas’s interpretation of Odysseus’s myth.

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On the basis of the analysis of the Byzantine and Medieval Western liturgical books this article investigates the role Heraclius (610–641) and his dynasty played in the development of the Byzantine feast of the Exaltation of the True Cross, as well as the evolution of the image of this emperor in the Byzantine liturgical tradition. The paper suggests that the restoration of the Cross by Heraclius in Jerusalem strongly influenced the Byzantine liturgical practice of the Exaltation feast, and that some references to this act were made during the rule of the Heraclian dynasty, but were later eliminated from the liturgical books because for political and religious reasons. By contrast, the Western liturgical tradition of the Exaltation feast conserved a stage of the liturgy before these changes were made which represented (until Vatican II) an element of the heritage of the Monothelete period.

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