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Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

Producing books of original medieval and Byzantine texts with facing-page translations.

February 28, 2016 by jes5970

Miracle Tales from Byzantium

Talbot, Alice-Mary and Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Volume | 12
Publication | May 2012
ISBN 9780674059030 | 480 pages

Miracles occupied a unique place in medieval and Byzantine life and thought. This volume makes available three collections of miracle tales never before translated into English. Together, the collections offer an exceptional variety of miracles from the Byzantine era.

First are the fifth-century Miracles of Saint Thekla. Legendary female companion of the Apostle Paul, Thekla counted among the most revered martyrs of the early church. Her Miracles depict activities, at once extraordinary and ordinary, in a rural healing shrine at a time when Christianity was still supplanting traditional religion. A half millennium later comes another anonymous text, the tenth-century Miracles of the Spring of the Virgin Mary. This collection describes how the marvelous waters at this shrine outside Constantinople healed emperors, courtiers, and churchmen. Complementing the first two collections are the Miracles of Saint Gregory Palamas, fourteenth-century archbishop of Thessalonike. Written by the most gifted hagiographer of his era (Philotheos Kokkinos), this account tells of miraculous healings that Palamas performed, both while alive and once dead. It allows readers to witness the development of a saint’s cult in late Byzantium. Saints and their miracles were essential components of faith in medieval and Byzantine culture. These collections deepen our understanding of attitudes toward miracles. Simultaneously, they display a remarkable range of registers in which Greek could be written during the still little-known Byzantine period.

Table of Contents

Introduction

 

Miracles of Saint Thekla

Scott Fitzgerald Johnson

Appendix: Two Variant Endings to the Thekla Legend

 

Anonymous Miracles of the Pege

Alice-Mary Talbot

 

Miracles of Gregory Palamas by Philotheos Kokkinos

Alice-Mary Talbot

 

Notes on the Texts

Notes to the Texts

Notes to the Translations

Bibliography

Index

Filed Under: Byzantine Greek

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© 2016 Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC, Trustees for Harvard University. All Rights Reserved.

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