Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T12:50:43.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

An unknown post-Byzantine journey to the other world*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2016

Sergey A. Ivanov
Affiliation:
Higher School of Economics, Moscow
Lora Gerd
Affiliation:
St. Petersburg State University

Abstract

This is the first publication of a tale about a journey to the other world from two seventeenth-century manuscripts kept in St.Petersburg. In the IS80s, the soul of a poor miner Nicholas from the Macedonian village of Izvor was mistakenly and prematurely snatched from his body by an angel who accompanied him through the heavens. After Nicholas' return to life, he described his adventures, which, although reminiscent of the famous Byzantine visions of the afterlife, still diverge from them in some important details. The tale not only helps to recreate the social life of the mining area of Siderokausia, but also portrays the infighting among the local Orthodox Christian clergy.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This study was supported by the Academic Fund Programme of The National Research University-Higher School of Economics, in 2014-15 (research grant No. 14-01-0031).

References

1 Not mentioned in S. Lampakes, (Athens 1982).

2 I. N. Lebedeva, Opisanie rukopisei biblioteki AN SSSR. T.5. Otdel grecheskikh rukopisei (Leningrad 1973) 130-1.

3 Lebedeva, Opisanie, 131.

4 B. Feida, 30 (1995) 67.

5 I. N. Lebedeva, Opisanie, 119-20.

6 Ioakeim is believed to be the author of the poem about the Cretan war. See T.A. Kaplanis, Ioakeim Kyprios' Struggle; a narrative poem on the 'Cretan War' of 1645-1669. Editio Princeps [Texts and Studies in the History of Cyprus LXVII] (Nicosia 2012). This work was not available to us.

7 I. N. Lebedeva, Opisanie, 119.

8 It was renamed (because of its Slavic origin) only in the 1920s.

9 G. Theocharidou, (Thessalonike 1954) 78; D. Papachrysanthou, 'O 'A (Athens 1992) 124-26.

10 Alexander, J. C., ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away: Athos and the confiscation affair of 1566- 1569’, in K. Chrysochoides (ed.), Mount Athos in the 14th-16th centuries (Athens 1997) 163-64, 176.Google Scholar

11 Vacalopoulos, A. T., History of Macedonia. 1354-1883 (Thessalonike 1973) 153, 552-3Google Scholar; G. Ostrogorsky, Serska oblast posle Dushanove smerti (Belgrade 1965) 69-79.

12 Dimitriades, V., ‘Ottoman Chalkidiki: an area of transition’, in A.|Bryer, H.|Lowry (eds.), Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society (Birmingham 1982) 46Google Scholar; N. Nerantzis, 'Pillars of power: silver and steel of the Ottoman empire', Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 9/2 (2009) 75-76. The dissertation of I. Borbe, (Thessalonike 2000), was not accessible to us.

13 Rozen, M., ‘The corvée of operating the mines in Siderokapisi and its impact on the Jewish society of Sal-onika in the sixteenth century (in Hebrew)’, in eadem, The Days of the Crescent: Chapters in the History of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire (Tel Aviv 1996) 13–38.Google Scholar

14 Radojčić, N. (ed.), Zakon o rudnicima despota Stefana Lazarevica (Belgrade 1962) passim.Google Scholar

15 E. Zegkine, (Thessalonike 1994) 24-25.

16 The authors are indebted to colleagues from the Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gritt (Vienna) who kindly shared with us the not yet published entry on Pharaonitai.

17 Fraser, A., The Gypsies (Oxford 1992) 109.Google Scholar

18 D. Papachrysanthou, , 125 n. 245.

19 For a general overview of the genre, see Baun, J., Tales from Another Byzantium (Cambridge 2007).Google Scholar

20 Beck, H.-G., Die Byzantiner und Ihr Jenseit (Munich 1979) 50-1.Google Scholar

21 The Life of Saint Basil the Younger, eds. D.F.|Sullivan, A.-M.|Talbot, S.|McGrath (Washington, D. C. 2014) 518.Google Scholar

22 Ibid. 255, 263, 275 etc.

23 Michael Psellos, Funeral oration for his daughter Styliane, in K. Sathas (ed.), 5 (Athens 1876) 62-87, at 83.

24 Delehaye, H. (ed.), Synaxarium ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (Brussels 1902) 114.2545Google Scholar; cf. Gregorii Papae I, cognomento Magni, Dialogi, Migne, PL 77 (1862) 381-88. The motif of the soul prematurely snatched by the messengers of the Other World was so popular in Byzantium that it was parodied in the satirical dialogue Timarion in the twelfth century.

25 Wortley, J., 'Death, judgment, heaven, and hell in Byzantine "Beneficial Tales"', DOP 55 (2001) 56.Google Scholar

26 The Life of Saint Basil the Younger, 516-42.

27 Constas, N., ' "To sleep, perchance to dream": the middle state of souls in Patristic and Byzantine litera- ture', DOP 55 (2001) 108-9.Google Scholar

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95 Here RAIK 130 breaks off.

96 We take the meaning from a passage in the chrysobull of Alexios I Komnenos, a. 1102: . See Actes de Lavra, Premiere partie. Des origines a 1204, ed. A. Guillou et al. (Archives de l'Athos V) (Paris 1970) 286.

97 Instead of , we adopt the conjecture .

98 With the conjecture , instead of ; the word would mean craftsman/carpenter.

99 John 14:2: 'In my Father's house are many mansions'.