1 See, for instance, the following structuralist works: Genette, G., Palimpsestes: la littérature au second degré (Paris 1982 Google Scholar), Riffaterre, M., ‘Interpretation and undecidability’, New Literary History 12/2 (1980) 227-42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, ‘Intertextual representation: on mimesis as interpretive discourse’, Critical Inquiry 11/1 (1984) 141-62. For relevant poststructuralist work see, for example, Barthes, R., Image, Music, Text, trans. Heath, S. (London 1977)Google Scholar.

2 Eco, U., The Name of the Rose with a postscript by the author, trans. Weaver, W. (New York and London 1994) 511-12Google Scholar.

3 Barthes, Image, Music, Text, 148.

4 In his work Palimpsestes (as in n. 1), Gérard Genette undertakes to systematise the various forms of intertextuality.

5 Falk, R. P. and Teague, F., ‘Parody’, in Preminger, A. and Brogan, T. V. F. (eds.), The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton, N.J. 1993) 881-83, esp. 881-2Google Scholar.

6 See Rose, M., Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-Modern (Cambridge 1993)Google Scholar.

7 Hutcheon, L., A Theory of Parody: the Teachings of Twentieth-century Art Forms (New York 1985)Google Scholar. Obviously, parody can function in a number of ways, and there are instances in which it operates both as a ridiculing imitation of a text and as a serious questioning of an established tradition.

8 Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody, 6.

9 Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody, 19.

10 Edition in Acta Sanctorum Novembris IV (Brussels 1925) 692-705.

11 See Beck, H.-G., Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Munich 1959) 565 Google Scholar. Angeliki Laiou argues persuasively against a tenth-century date of Mary’s Life, and dates the text to the eleventh century or later ( Laiou, A., ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, in Talbot, A.-M. (ed.), Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation [Byzantine Saints’ Lives in Translation, 1] (Washington, D. C. 1996) 239-89, esp. 241-5Google Scholar. As the following analysis will show, the argument that Mary’s Life is a parody of the Life of Macrina reinforces Laiou’s contention that this text could not have been a work of the tenth century.

12 For the construction of Mary’s holiness, see Constantinou, S., Female Corporeal Performances: Reading the Body in Byzantine Passions and Lives of Holy Women [Acta Byzantina Upsaliensia, 9] (Uppsala 2005) 162-92Google Scholar and S. Constantinou, ‘Performing gender in the Lives of lay saints’, in M. Mullett (ed.), Performing Byzantium, forthcoming.

13 The term ‘female Life’ refers to the Lives, whose protagonists are holy women, see Constantinou, S., ‘Sub-genre and gender in Saints’ Lives’, in Odorico, P. and Agapitos, P. (eds.), Les Vies des Saints à Byzance. Genre littéraire ou biographie historique? Actes du IIe colloque international sur la littérature byzantine. Paris, 6-8 juin 2002 [Dossiers Byzantins, 4] (Paris 2004) 411-23,Google Scholar and Constantinou, Female Corporeal Performances, 11-12.

14 Edition by Maraval, P., Grégoire de Nysse, Vie de Sainte Macrine. Introduction, texte critique, traduction notes et index [Sources Chrétiennes, 178] (Paris 1971)Google Scholar.

15 For a discussion of the text’s date, see Maraval, Grégoire de Nysse, Vie de Sainte Macrine, 57-67.

16 As already pointed out, the term parody is used here according to Hutcheon’s postmodern definition, and not according to its traditional understandings which do not apply to the case of Mary’s Life. Of course, the Byzantine readers or listeners of the text did not treat it as a parody. However, I believe that those who knew Macrina’s Life could see the strong parallels between the two texts, and could understand the anonymous author’s implications and criticism, which will be presented in the following analysis. The anachronistic term parody in its postmodern sense is employed here in order to describe in contemporary literary terms the relationship between two ancient texts. As Simon Gaunt rightly suggests, since the Middle Ages did not have a ‘metalanguage[...] corresponding to the style of writing we call literary criticism’, it is not possible to approach the literature of the past without using contemporary literary terms ( Gaunt, S., Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature [Cambridge 1995] 19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For further examples of a fruitful use of contemporary criticism in the study of medieval literature, see Finke, L. A. and Shichtman, M. B. (eds.) Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers (Ithaca and London 1987)Google Scholar. Cf. also Mullett’s, Margaret pioneering article ‘Novelisation in Byzantium: narrative after the revival of fiction’, in Burke, J., et al. (eds.) Byzantine Narrative: Papers in Honour of Roger Scott (Melbourne 2006) 1–28, esp. 7-8Google Scholar; repr. in Mullett, M. (ed.) Letters, Literacy and Literature in Byzantium (Aldershot 2007) study XI.Google Scholar

17 See Canévet, M.. ‘Grégoire de Nysse’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique VI (Paris 1967) 971-1011, esp. 1006-1008Google Scholar.

18 That Macrina’s Life was highly admired in Byzantium, a fact making the text more suitable for its use in the composition of a text taking the form of parody, is also attested by the rather large number of manuscripts (about 28) in which the text is preserved. Interestingly, a considerable number of these manuscripts date to the eleventh and twelfth centuries (see Maraval, Grégoire de Nysse, Vie de Sainte Macrine, 118-30), the time in which the Life of Mary the Younger must have been composed.

19 In contrast to Mary’s Life, that of Macrina has received a lot of critical attention: see, for example, Albrecht, R., Das Leben der heiligen Makrina auf dem Hintergrund der Thekla-Traditionen (Göttingen 1986)Google Scholar; Burrus, V., ‘Macrina’s tattoo’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33:3 (2003) 403-17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (Philadelphia 2004) 69-76; Clark, E. A., ‘The Lady Vanishes: dilemmas of a feminist historian after the “Linguistic Turn’”, Church History 67/1 (1998) 1–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Constantinou, S., ‘Women teachers in early Byzantine hagiography’, in Ruys, J. F. (ed.), What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods [Disputatio, 15] (Turnhout 2008) 189–204 Google Scholar; Cox, P. M., Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton, N.J. 1994) 232-49Google Scholar; Elm, S., ‘Virgins of God’: the making of asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford 1994) 78–105 Google Scholar; Frank, G., ‘Macrina’s scar: Homeric allusion and heroic identity in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina’, journal of Early Christian Studies 8/4 (2000) 511-30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krueger, D., ‘Writing and the liturgy of memory in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina’, journal of Early Christian Studies 8/4 (2000) 483–510 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in Krueger, D., Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia 2000) 110-32Google Scholar; Marotta, E., ‘Similitudini ed ecphraseis nella Vita s. Macrinae di Gregorio di Nyssa’, Quaderni de vetera Christianorum 7 (1970) 273-88Google Scholar; and Momigliano, A., ‘The Life of St. Macrina by Gregory of Nyssa’, in Eadie, J. W. and Ober, J. (eds.), The Craft of the Ancient Historian: Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr (Lanham, MD. 1985) 443-58Google Scholar, repr. in Momigliano, A. (ed.), On Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Middletown, Conn. 1987) 206-21Google Scholar.

20 Laiou, ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, 246-51. Another Byzantinist who detects parodie elements in hagiography is Alexander Kazhdan ( Kazhdan, A., in collaboration with Sherry, L. F. and Angelidi, C., A History of Byzantine Literature (650-850) [Institute for Byzantine Research, Research Series, 2] (Athens 1999) 295–308 Google Scholar, but Kazhdan, like Laiou, reduces parody to comic discourse. For hagiographical and other religious parodies in the medieval Western tradition, see Bayless, M., Parody in the Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition (Ann Arbor 1996)Google Scholar.

21 In order to describe the conscious intertextual relationship between two texts, Genette coined the terms hypotext and hypertext. Hypotext, meaning the text being underneath, is the model text upon which a second text, hypertext is written (Genette, Palimpsestes, 13).

22 For other married holy women commemorated in Byzantine hagiography, see Constantinou, Female Corporeal Performances, 162-96; Laiou, A., ‘H ιστορία ενός γάμου: о βίος της αγίας Θωμαΐδος της Λεσβίας’, in Maltezou, Ch. (ed.), H καθημερινή ζωή στο Βυζάντιο: τομές και συνέχειες στην ελληνιστική και ρωμαϊκή παράδοση (Athens 1989) 237-51Google Scholar and Patlagean, E., ‘L’histoire de la femme déguisée en moine et l’évolution de la sainteté féminine à Byzance’, Studi Medievali 17/3 (1976) 597–623 Google Scholar; repr. in Patlagean, E. (ed.), Structure sociale, famille, chrétienté à Byzance IVe-XIe siècle (London 1981) study XLGoogle Scholar

23 Laiou, ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, 251.

24 Laiou, ‘Life of St Mary the Younger’, 251.

25 Laiou, ‘Life of St Mary the Younger’, 252.

26 Laiou, ‘Life of St Mary the Younger’, 247.

27 The English translation of the discussed passages from Macrina’s Life is from Silvas, A. M., Macrina the Younger, Philosopher of God [Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 22] (Turnhout 2008) 109-18, esp. 145CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 English translation by Laiou, ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, 281.

29 Anagnostakis, I. and Papamastorakis, T., Έκμανής νέος Βάκχος: the drunkenness of Noah in medieval art’, in Angelidi, Ch. (ed.), To Βυζάντιο ώριμο για αλλαγές: επιλογές, ευαισθησίες και τρόποι έκφρασης από τον ενδέκατο στον δέκατο πεμπτο αιώνα [National Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute for Byzantine Research, International Symposium, 13] (Athens 2004) 209-56Google Scholar. I would like to thank Panagiotis Agapitos for drawing my attention to this article.

30 Laiou, ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, 266-7.

31 Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 138-9.

32 For a more detailed presentation of the way in which Gregory views Macrina, see Constantinou, ‘Women teachers’.

33 English translation by Clark, E. A., The Life of Melania the Younger: Introduction, Translation and Commentary [Studies in Women and Religion, 14] (New York and Toronto 1984) 81-2Google Scholar.

34 Clark, The Life of Melania the Younger, 81.

35 For the emphasis of Mary’s hagiographer on the protagonist’s miracles, see Constantinou, Female Corporeal Performances, 184–92.

36 Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 119-20.

37 Laiou, ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, 258-9.

38 Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 120.

39 Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 120.

40 Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 110.

41 For the importance of philosophy in Macrina’ Life, see Maraval, Grégoire de Nysse, Vie de Sainte Macrine, 90–103. For the use of the term in other Christian literature, see Bardy, G., ‘ “Philosophie” et “philosophe” dans le vocabulaire chrétien des premiers siècles’, Revue d’Ascetique et de Mystique 25 (1949) 97–108 Google Scholar; Malingrey, A.-M., Philosophia, Étude d’un groupe des mots dans la littérature grecque, des Présocratiques au IVe siècle après J.-C. (Paris 1961)Google Scholar. A recent study examining the philosophical dimension of Christianity is that of Brown, Alan, The Life of Wisdom: An Introduction to Classical Philosophy and Early Christianity (London 2008)Google Scholar.

42 Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 121-2.

43 Laiou, ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, 258.

44 Laiou, ‘Life of St Mary the Younger’, 258 n. 62.

45 Laiou, ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, 257, 260-1. I have made minor modifications to the translation.

46 Laiou, ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, 273.

47 The underlined phrases in this quotation are parodies of Gregory’s discourse. At some point in the narrative Gregory describes Basil as ‘το κοινον της γενεας καλον’ (Life of Macrina, §14.26), and later the phrase ‘TO Koivov καύχημα της γενεδις’ (Life of Macrina, §22.18-19) is employed to refer to Macrina. Earlier in the narrative the following sentence appears which concerns Macrina’s mother Emmelia: έπεΐ σδν έπαύσατο τη μητρί ή τε της ποαδοτροφίας (ppovťlc καΐ ή της παιδεύσεώς τε καΐ καταστάσεως τών τέκνων μέριμνα [...] (Life of Macrina, §11.1-3).

48 Laiou, ‘Life of St. Mary the Younger’, 254.

49 See Paschalides, S., ‘Όάνέκδοτος λόγος του Νικήτα Στηθάτου ката άγιοκατηγόρων και ή άμφισβήτηση της άγιότητας στο Βυζάντιο κατά τον 11ο αίώνα’, in Kountoura-Galake, E. (ed.), The Heroes of the Orthodox Church: The New Saints, 8-16 c. [National Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute for Byzantine Research, International Symposium, 15] (Athens 2004) 493–518 Google Scholar. Cf. Nikos Oikonomides’ article in the same volume (‘How to become a saint in eleventh century Byzantium’, 473-91) in which he concludes that ‘in the eleventh century Byzantine monastic ideals were changing. Together changed the ideals and the conception of sainthood’ (491). See also Dagron, G., ‘L’ombre d’un doute: l’hagiographic en question, VIe-XIe siècle’, DOP 46 (1992) 59–68, esp. 67-8Google Scholar.

50 As for the texts of the twelfth century that criticize contemporary holy men and monasticism, such as the history of Niketas Choniates, the encomium of Philotheos of Opsikion by Eustathios of Thessalonike, and the satirical poetry of Theodore Prodromos, see Magdalino, P., ‘The Byzantine holy man in the twelfth century’, in Hackel, S. (ed.), The Byzantine Saint (London 1981) 51–66 Google Scholar; Kazhdan, A. P. and Epstein, A. W., Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (London 1985) 86–99 Google Scholar and Angold, M., ‘Monastic satire and the Evergetine monastic tradition in the twelfth century’, in Mullett, M. and Kirby, A. (eds.), The Theotokos Evergetis and eleventh-century Monasticism (Belfast 1994) 86–102 Google Scholar.

51 For the monastery of Theotokos Evergetis and its influence on eleventh-century monasticism, see Mullett and Kirby, The Theotokos Evergetis.

52 See Mullett, M., ‘Literary biography and historical genre in the Life of Cyril Phileotes by Nicholas Kataskepenos’, in Odorico, and Agapitos, (ed.), Les Vies des Saints, 387-409Google Scholar, esp. 409; repr. in Mullett, Letters, Literacy and Literature, study XV, and Mullett, Death of the Holy Man, Death of a Genre (Leiden forthcoming).

53 Mullett, ‘Literary biography’, 409.

54 Mullett, 409.

55 I would like to thank Ruth Macrides and the two peer reviewers for their helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to the members of the graduate seminar on Byzantine studies at the University of Cyprus for their insightful and thought-provoking comments.