The historiography of the wall painting in the medieval church at Boiana is a representative case in the current critical discussion of basically empiricist approaches and more overtly theoretical methods of modern scholarship described as coexisting as parallel universes in art history today. The parameters of this critical discourse offer an appropriate perspective in which to consider the historiography of these thirteenth-century schemes of wall painting in the Balkans. In turn, this exercise is useful in pointing out new directions in which reappraisals of the wall paintings at Boiana can contribute to the field of Byzantine studies.

Between 1905 and his death in 1933 Cavafy circulated a total of seven thematic collections of his poems, as well as five chronological collections. In the latter the poems are arranged in the order in which they were first published, so that it is perfectly clear in what sense the chronological collections are chronological. The aim of this investigation is to determine in what sense the thematic collections are thematic: to attempt to disclose through a close scrutiny of the collections the principles on which they are constructed.

In the summer of 1205 Raimbault of Vacqueyras, the troubadour who had shared Boniface of Monferrat’s exploits in central Greece, exclaimed enthusiastically in Salonica:

Several prominent Byzantines, including the Emperor John V Palaiologos, converted to Roman Catholicism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This may seem an odd sort of conversion. After all, if the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith are contained in the Nicene Creed, then Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic believers differ on only one tenet: whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son — the Filioque issue. For a Christian to admit the double procession of the Holy Spirit is hardly on the same level as admitting that Mohammed is the prophet of the one God. Indeed, many members of each church have been willing to call the procession of the Holy Spirit unknowable and leave it at that.

The nine letters to be discussed here were written by George Theotokas (1905-1966) in the space of ten months, that is, between the 20th of December 1922 and the 14th of October 1923. This was the first year he spent in Greece and also his first year at the University of Athens where he studied law. Indeed, eight of these letters were sent from Athens and one (No. 8) from Leros where he stayed for part of his summer holidays. The recipient was Sophoclis Dimitriadis, an old school-friend. During the same period Dimitriadis was first in Vienna following a course of commercial studies, then back in Constantinople and finally in Bucharest for business reasons as the family firm had connections there. His own letters in reply have not been found nor indeed any of those which, presumably, Theotokas wrote to him in subsequent years. In the latter instance, the only exception is a card dated 13 September 1947 where he expresses regret for having seen Dimitriadis only once during that summer and explains that he had been too preoccupied with his father’s illness. In fact, although their interests and professional lives were quite different (Theotokas a lawyer but first and foremost a writer, Dimitriadis a businessman), it seems that they never lost touch altogether but made a point of meeting every so often until, that is, Dimitriadis’ premature death in 1964, two years before that of Theotokas.

Because the historical writings of Priscus of Panium survive only in fragments, we regrettably lack knowledge of the full complexity of this fifth century historian’s concerns. Widely cited in Byzantine sources, the greatest part of Priscus’ work is found in the Excerpta de Legationibus, which was compiled from ancient texts by the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos in the middle of the tenth century as part of an encyclopedic collation of educational and practical information. The Excerpta, which dealt with international relations, found much of interest in Priscus, whose history included a detailed account of the struggle between the Romans and Attila the Hun. Of particular value is Priscus’ first-hand account of an embassy to Attila in 449 to discuss the exchange of fugitives and other matters. On this journey Priscus served as an assistant to Maximinus, the leader of the diplomatic mission sent from Constantinople. Envoys to foreign lands regularly included in their reports detailed observations of the societies they visited, and in this tradition the fragments preserved in the Excerpta constitute an invaluable source of information about Hunnic life as well as diplomatic matters. Priscus later reworked his acute observations of the Huns made on the embassy and mixed them with other information in the larger framework of his historical treatise, adapting part of his diplomatic intelligence report to the needs of a different sort of literary enterprise. We cannot know with any certainty the thematic architectonics of this historical work, but its fragments make it clear that Priscus’ treatment of the relations between Rome and the Empire of the Huns and his development of cultural issues implicit in those relations were more subtle than the tenth century editors’ focus on diplomatics might suggest.

The emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143-80) asked a certain fortune teller, how long the dynasty of Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118) would reign. The prophetic response was the word (blood), the first three letters designating the first initials of the Komnenian emperors in the order of succession, namely, Alexios I, John II (1118-43), Manuel I, the last alpha for the name of Manuel’s future successor.

A richly symbolical wallpainting of the Annunciation was brought to light in 1991 in the western conch of the church of the Virgin at the desert Monastery of the Syrians at Scetis (Wadi al-Natrun) in Egypt (figs. 1-5). The interpretation put forward here is that the scene celebrates the Mother of God as the epitome of perfect womanhood at the moment of Christ’s conception with her key role reinforced by explicit symbolism of her virginity. This is stated visually, through the liturgical symbolism of the burning censer at her feet, and verbally through the ‘container’ imagery proclaimed on the scrolls of the accompanying prophets: Isaiah, Moses, Ezekiel and Daniel. A detailed townscape represents the town of Nazareth, both the Virgin’s own birthplace and the site of the Annunciation.

In recent years there have been significant advances in our understanding of the Byzantine rural economy. While work on such problems as the legal status of the peasantry, the fiscal procedures by which the state extracted revenues from the peasantry and the nature of the fiscal concessions which the state made to landowners remains central to our understanding of the Byzantine social structure, greater attention has been paid recently to the history of settlements, agricultural production and the influence of the climate and environment on the rural economy. Recent work has been greatly facilitated by two developments, the publication of more material from the archives of Mount Athos and the upsurge in intensive surveys and other archaeological work which is already providing us with information about regions for which our documentary material is either inadequate or non-existant. This paper will not attempt a comprehensive discussion of all recent work on the subject, but will focus on some of the most significant problems affecting our understanding of the Byzantine rural economy.