1 See, e.g. the public preaching of Jesus at Nazareth: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor’ (Luke 4:18), or his ‘Sermon on the Mount’ (Matthew 5-7), where he says ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3). Also relevant are: ‘Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me”’ (Matthew 19:21); ‘For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that’ (1 Tim. 6:7-8); ‘Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’ (Matthew 19:4); and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-21), to which we return below.

2 Gordon, B., The economic problem in biblical and patristic thought (Leiden 1989) 24-8Google Scholar.

3 Words connected to poverty or wealth in this world carried moral connotations; the lower class were the ‘bad’ and the upper class the ‘good’; Croix, G.E.M. de St., ‘Christianity and property’, in Whitby, M. and Streeter, J. (eds.), Christian persecution, martyrdom, and orthodoxy (Oxford 2006) 338-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Lactantius, , Divine Institutes, b.VII, ed. Fletcher, W., in Roberts, A., Donaldson, J., and Coxe, A.C. (eds.), Ante-Nicene Fathers, VII (Buffalo, NY 1886) 201 Google Scholar. For a discussion of the ideas of wealth and poverty, work and usury as expressed by the early Fathers of the Church, see Perrotta, C., ‘Patristics: end of the contempt for wealth and labour’, in Perrotta, C., ed., Consumption as an investment: the fear of goods from Hesiod to Adam Smith (London and New York 2004) 43–56 Google Scholar and notes on 249-52.

5 Gregory of Nazianzos, Carmina theologica, II, xxxiii, 113-16Google Scholar, in de St. Croix, ‘Christianity and property’, 360.

6 Viner, J., Religious thought and economic society: four chapters of an unfinished work, 1957-1962, eds. Melitz, J. and Winch, D. (Durham, NC 1978) 15–16 Google Scholar.

7 Berry, C. J., The idea of luxury: a conceptual and historical investigation (Cambridge 1994) 87-100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should be noted that the wealthy were often considered immoral in antiquity as well; Malina, B., ‘Wealth and poverty in the New Testament and its world’, Interpretation 41 (1986) 354-67Google Scholar.

8 Clement of Alexandria, The pedagogue, II.13 Google Scholar, ed. Wilson, W., Ante-Nicene Fathers, II (Buffalo, NY 1895) 268 Google Scholar.

9 Basil, Letter CL to Amphilochius, ed. Jackson, B., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, VIII (Buffalo, NY 1895) 208 Google Scholar.

10 Basil 7. 3, Saint Basil, Exegetic Homilies, ed. Deferrari, R. J., Fathers of the Church, 46 (Washington, DC 1963) 110 Google Scholar.

11 Chrysostom, John, De Lazaro Concio II, 1 Google Scholar, ed. Roth, C. P., On wealth and poverty. Saint John Chrysostom (Crestwood, NY 1984) 40 Google Scholar. For the discussion of Chrysostom’s views on the topoi of wealth and poverty as related to social reality see Mayer, W., ‘Poverty and society in the world of John Chrysostom’, in Bowden, W., Gutteridge, A., Machado, C. (eds.), Social and political life in Late Antiquity (Leiden and Boston 2006) 465-84Google Scholar.

12 Roth, On wealth and poverty, 139.

13 The Sacra Parallela is a theological and ascetic florilegium of biblical (OT and NT) and patristic citations, all conventionally labeled Sacra Parallela and related to a now lost model entitled Hiera, composed in Palestine by John of Damascus (ca. 675-ca. 749). For an updated and complete bibliography on the text see Evangelatou, M., ‘Word and image in the Sacra Parallela (Codex Parisinus Graecus 923)’, DOP 62 (2008) 113-98Google Scholar, esp. 113-14.

14 Weitzmann, K., The miniatures of the Sacra Paralleh: Parisinus Graecus 923, Studies in Manuscript Illumination 8 (Princeton 1979) esp. 20-5Google Scholar.

15 Cormack, R., ‘Patronage and new programs of Byzantine iconography’, The 17th International Byzantine Congress, Major Papers (New York 1986)Google Scholar; repr. in Cormack, R., The Byzantine eye: studies in art and patronage (London 1989) study X, 635 Google Scholar n. 39; Brubaker, L., Vision and meaning in ninth-century Byzantium: image as exegesis in the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus (Cambridge 1999) 25 Google Scholar, 112-13; Brubaker, L. and Haldon, J. (eds.), Byzantium in the iconoclast era (ca. 680-850): the sources; an annotated survey (Aldershot 2001) 49–50 Google Scholar (with an overview of the literature).

16 Oretskaia, I., ‘A stylistic tendency in ninth-century art of the Byzantine world’, Zograf 29 (2002-03) 5-18Google Scholar, esp. 11-14. Oretskaia follows Grabar’s suggestion that the origin of the manuscript was a Greek scriptorium in ninth-century Rome ( Grabar, A., Les manuscrits grecs enluminés de provenance italienne, IXe-Xle siècle [Paris 1972] 21-4Google Scholar).

17 Weitzmann, Sacra Parallela, 14-20, esp. 18-19.

18 Oretskaia, ‘A stylistic tendency’, 14; Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, 120 and n. 45.

19 Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, 120-3, 143, 147-8.

20 On the original text of the Hiera and its recensions, see Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, 113-14 n. 1.

21 Evangelatou observed that excerpts of Basil, Gregory of Nazianzos, and John Chrysostom, which are placed right after the biblical quotations, are the only citations illustrated with narrative images in addition to author portraits. She suggests that the length and nature of those excerpts and their illustration was due to both the patron’s and painter’s wish to honor those Fathers and draw attention to their work; Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, 180-1, 189, 196.

22 Weitzmann, Sacra Parallela, 227, fig. 633. See also the discussion of the compiler’s portraits at the beginning of various stoicheia; Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, 121-5.

23 Weitzmann, Sacra Parallela, 212-3, fig. 567.

24 Panofsky, E., Studies in iconology: humanistic themes in the art of the Renaissance (Boulder, CO 1939 [repr. 1972]) 149 Google Scholar, fig. 109.

25 Maria Evangelatou re-examined the so-called recension theory of Kurt Weitzmann, which was based mainly on the assumption of a lost illuminated book recension drawing on late antique prototypes. By the same token, she also re-examined, through a series of miniatures, Weitzmann’s argument that pre-iconoclastic manuscript illuminations copied from at least seventeen books may have served in the decoration of the manuscript. Her analysis refuted Weitzmann’s argument as well as his claim that the illustrations of the Sacra Parallela were influenced by Jewish texts and legends. She averred that the evidence from the illustrations supports the conclusion that although the artist of the manuscript possibly consulted a few illustrated manuscripts as sources of inspiration, he created the images mainly in direct conjunction with their respective texts and based on his own artistic experience. This would make the book a unique production; Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, esp. 116-19, 188-9.

26 Weitzmann, Sacra Parallela, 212-13, fig. 567.

27 This issue is discussed below, pp. 19-23.

28 Hahn, C., ‘Interpictoriality in the Limoges chasses of Stephen, Martial, and Valerie’, in Hourihane, C. (ed.), Image and belief: studies in celebration of the eighteenth anniversary of the Index of Christian Art (Princeton, NJ 1999) 109-24Google Scholar. Interpictorial relationships are not hagiographically bound, as visual analyses of biblical texts demonstrate. On this see, e.g. Emmerson, R. K., ‘A “large order of the whole”. Intertextuality and interpictoriality in the Hours of Isabella Stuart ’, Studies in Iconography 28 (2007) 51-110Google Scholar.

29 MPG 96: 228. While in the past I consulted the image on fol. 272^r directly from the manuscript, for this paper I was able to check the text only from a black-and-white image. The excerpt in the illustrated Sacra Parallela and the one in the PG correspond.

30 Saxl, F., ‘Frühes Christentum und spätes Heidentum in ihren künstlerischen Ausdrucksformen; I. Der Dialog als Thema der christlichen Kunst’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 2 (1923) 63–77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the question orlate antique models in the Sacra Parallela see also Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, esp. 116-19,188-9.

31 Liddell, H.G. and Scott, R., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford 1897 [repr. 1996]) 52 Google Scholar.

32 Fol. 247^r; Basil, Horn, vii in Hexaem.; Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 68, pl. XXVI Google Scholar, fig. 97. And see the discussion in Meyer, M., An obscure portrait: imaging women’s reality in Byzantine art (London 2009) 184 Google Scholar.

33 Fol. 372^r (MPG 96: 428); Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 86, pl. XXXVI Google Scholar, fig. 137. For discussion see Meyer, An obscure portrait, 184.

34 Fol. 247^r (MPG 96: 144); Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 63-1, pl. XXII Google Scholar, fig. 82; 212-13.

35 Meyer, M., ‘Harlot or penitent? The image of Rahab in Byzantine illuminated manuscripts’, Ars Judaica 2 (2006) 25–34 Google Scholar, esp. 32-3.

36 Leontsini, S., Die Prostitution im frühen Byzanz, Dissertationen der Universität Wien 194 (Vienna 1989) 88–93 Google Scholar. The practice of wearing jewels may be related to the ancient world, in which women adorned with jewellery were considered more attractive; see Wyke, M., ‘Woman in the mirror: the rhetoric of adornment in the Roman world’, in Archer, L.J., Fischler, S., Wyke, M. (eds.), Women in ancient societies: ‘An illusion of the night’ (New York 1994) 134–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The Church Fathers warn against it time and again, seeing the excessive use of jewels and other ornaments as a way to delve into the pleasures of this world and join hands with the Evil One. See, e.g. Clement of Alexandria, , The Pedagogue, b. II, 13 Google Scholar (n. 8 above).

37 Most women when outside the house wore a full-length, long-sleeved tunic and a maphorion over a snug headdress; Dawson, T., ‘Propriety, practicality and pleasure: the parameters of women’s dress in Byzantium, A.D. 1000-1200’, in Garland, L. (ed.), Byzantine women: varieties of experience 800-1200 (Aldershot 2006)46 Google Scholar. On the significance of covering women’s heads see, e.g. D’Angelo, M. R., ‘Veils, virgins, and the tongues of men’, in Eilberg-Schwartz, H. and Doniger, W. (eds.), Off with her head! The denial of women’s identity in myth, religion, and culture (Berkeley 1995) 131-64Google Scholar, esp. 139-42, 146.

38 MPG 96: 232C.

39 Leontsini, Die Prostitution, 133-7. See also Magoulias, H. J., ‘Bathhouse, inn, tavern, prostitution and the stage as seen in the lives of the saints in the 6th and 7th centuries’, EEBS 38 (1971) 233-52Google Scholar.

40 See above, n. 27.

41 For the discussion of this visual element in Roman imperial and Christian art and its adoption in Byzantine art, see Engemann, J., ‘Ein Missorium des Anastasius: Überlegungen zum ikonographischen Programm der “Anastasius”-Platte aus dem Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial’, in Restie, M. (ed.), Festschrift für K. Wessel zum 70. Geburtstag (Munich 1988) 108-9Google Scholar; Deckers, J.G., ‘Vom Kender zum Diener, Bemerkungen zu den Folgen der konstantinischen Wende im Spiegel der Sarkophagplastik’, in Brenk, B. (ed.), Innovation in der Spätantike: Kolloquium Basel 6. und 7. Mai 1994 (Wiesbaden 1996) 149-51Google Scholar. Visual precedents include the veiled hands of the disciples while Christ blesses the loaves and fishes in one of the nave mosaics in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (ca. 504).

42 The young widows on fol 34^r in the manuscript are depicted in a similar way; fully clothed, they stand before Paul (seated) reverently with covered hands, and listen attentively to his sayings (1 Tim. 5:11-15 [MPG 96: 209]); Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 196-7, pl. CXVI Google Scholar, fig. 523.

43 For example, John Chrysostom conversing with Eutropius on fol. 300^r (MPG 96: 308); Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 241, pl. CLI Google Scholar, fig. 697.

44 See above, n. 23.

45 On fol. 314^r (Acts 5:1-4); Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 189, pl. CVII Google Scholar, fig. 485.

46 On fol. 149^r; Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 34, pl. III Google Scholar, fig. 8. Note that the same gesture is employed by the artist of the Sacra Parallela to acknowledge miraculous healings by Christ or the apostles: the paralytic of Bethesda, fol. 260^r (Jn 5:1-15) ( Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 14, pl. CVI Google Scholar, fig. 479, and Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, 126-7, fig. 7); the man born blind, fol. 212^r (Jn 9:6-7), and Peter healing the lame, fol. 213^r(Acts 3:6-8) ( Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 182, pl. CVI Google Scholar, fig. 480, and 189, pl. CVII, fig. 483, respectively).

47 MPG 96: 232B. For an extensive discussion of the close word-and-image relationship in this manuscript, see Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, 120-38.

48 For example, Eve’s nudity is condemned by Western theologians and visual artists. The literature on this topic is extensive and only some of the more important works can be cited here: Werckmeister, O. K., ‘The lintel fragment representing Eve from Saint-Lazare, Autun’, journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 35 (1972) 1-30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hieatt, K., ‘Eve as reason in a tradition of allegorical interpretation of the Fall’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 38 (1975) 221-6Google Scholar; d’Alverny, M.-Th., ‘Comment les théologiens et les philosophes voient la femme’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 20 (1977) 105-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kraus, H., ‘Eve and Mary: conflicting images of medieval woman’, in Broude, N. and Garrard, M. (eds), Feminism and art history: questioning the litany (New York 1982) 79–99 Google Scholar; Miles, M., Carnal knowing: female nakedness and religious meaning in the Christian West (Boston 1989), esp. 85-117Google Scholar.

49 Moscow, Historical Museum, cod. 129, fol. 8^r; Shchepkina, M.V., Miniatiury Khludovskoi psaltyri (Moscow 1977)Google Scholar. For positive connotations associated with the depiction of nudity in Byzantine art see, e. g. Maguire, H., ‘Other icons: the classical npde in Byzantine bone and ivory carvings’, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 62 (2004) 9-20Google Scholar, esp. 14-15, where he posits that the ambiguity of the identification of some mythological scenes depicting naked figures is intentional, to eliminate any danger that the viewer would be exposed to idolatry. For the perception of the display of nudity in Byzantine art as a positive trope, see also Maguire, E. Dauterman and Maguire, H., Other icons: art and power in Byzantine secular culture (Princeton 2006) 97-134Google Scholar; Meyer, M., ‘Eve’s nudity: a sign of shame or a precursor of Christological economy?’, in Kogman-Appel, K. and Meyer, M. (eds.), Between Judaism and Christianity: art historical essays in honour of Prof. Elisabeth (Elisheva) Revel-Neher (Leiden 2009) 243-58Google Scholar.

50 Weitzmann, Sacra Parallela, 212-13, fig. 567 (MPG 96: 232).

51 Fol. 282^v (2 Kgs 11:2), MPG 55: 570; Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 83-4, pl. XXXV Google Scholar, fig. 31.

52 Bathsheba’s bath was understood in Christian exegesis not as an event to entice King David sexually, but as a type of baptism, interpreting her and David’s adulterous act as the prefiguration of a sacred union between the Church of the Nations and Christ; consequently, her nudity was perceived as ‘that of a pure heart’, as Ambrose of Milan (339-97) put it; De apologia prophetae David, 3, 14 (MPL 14: 857A-B); cf.Ambrose, , Apologie de David, SC 239, ed. Hadot, P. (Paris 1977) 91 Google Scholar. See also M. Meyer, ‘Theologizing or indulging desire. Bathers in the Sacra Parallela (Paris, BnF, gr. 923)’, Different visions. A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art (forthcoming).

53 It should be noted, however, that not all images of nudity in the Sacra Parallela convey positive connotations. One example is the representation of Zimri and Cozbi stabbed to death by Phinehas on fol. 274^v (MPG 96: 237; Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 60-1, pl. XXI Google Scholar, fig. 78), where it is employed to denounce extramarital sexual relations (Fig. 9); Meyer, An obscure portrait, 256-8, 297. Nudity may also designate humiliation, as in the scene of Agag, the Amalekite king, captured and decapitated on fol. 275^r (MPG 96: 237; Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 76-7, 97, 98, 100, pl. XXX Google Scholar, fig. 115). In other instances, nudity may be used to represent aspects of realia, as for example in the depiction of a couple - the woman naked - embracing in bed (fol. 25^r), an illustration of nocturnal occupations mentioned by Gregory of Nazianzos, De Moderatione, Or. 32.9 (MPG 95: 1585; 36: 184); Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 229, pl. CXL Google Scholar, fig. 644. The question of whether male and female nudity is displayed differently in this manuscript is outside the scope of this article; I hope to turn to it in a future study.

54 Meyer, ‘Eve’s nudity’, 246.

55 Holman, S., ‘The hungry body: famine, poverty and identity in Basil’s Horn. 8’, journal o fEarly Christian Studies 7/3 (1999) 342 Google Scholar n. 18.

56 Basil, Hom. 6.6, ed. Toal, M. F., The Sunday sermons of the Great Fathers, 4 vols. (Chicago 1959) III, 331 Google Scholar. See the discussion by Holman, ‘The hungry body’, 342. This would not be the only instance where nudity bears a sacred meaning. See, e.g. St Basil’s pronouncement on the bodily state of Christ: ‘All that is said to you after this of His bodily state, of the Plan of man’s redemption, that He showed Himself to us clothed in Flesh, His saying that He was sent ...’; Horn. XV De Fide (MPC 31: 486B), in Toal, (ed.), The Sunday sermons, III, 76 Google Scholar.

57 MPG 95: 1509; Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 240, pl. CL Google Scholar, fig. 694. The idea of poverty is also present in the semi-naked figure of Job, his hands raised in prayer, on fol. 256^v (Job 1:21); Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 112, pl. LV Google Scholar, fig. 213. For nudity as a visual sign of poverty see also Evangelatou, M., ‘The exegetical initials of Codex Parisinus Graecus 41: Word and image in a twelfth-century Greek psalter’, Word and Image 24.2 (2008) 199–218 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Chrysostom, John, De Lazaro Concio I, 8 Google Scholar (MPG 48/1: 974); ed. Roth, On wealth and poverty, 26.

59 Gregory of Nyssa, Life of St Macrina, ed. Clarke, W. K. Lowther (London 1916) 35 Google Scholar.

60 See the discussion of cultural aspects in general, and in Byzantium in particular, in Meyer, An obscure portrait, 275-8.

61 See above, n. 55.

62 Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, 34, pl. III Google Scholar, fig. 8. See also Fig. 7.

63 In addition to the figures or Bathsheba discussed above, Ezekiel, fol. 336^v (Weitzmann, Sacra Parallela, fig. 379), the man with the withered hand, fol. 21^v (Weitzmann, Sacra Parallela, fig. 417), the Good Samaritan, fol. 320^v (Weitzmann, Sacra Parallela, fig. 457a).

64 See above, pp. 3–4.

65 See, e.g. Charanis, P., ‘The monastic properties and the state in the Byzantine empire’, DOP 4 (1948) 51-118Google Scholar.

66 See, e.g. Papagianni, E., ‘Legal institutions and practice in matters of ecclesiastical property’, in Laiou, A. (ed.), The Economic History of Byzantium: from the seventh through the fifteenth century, IV (Washington, DC 2002) 1059-69Google Scholar; Brakke, D., ‘Care for the poor, fear of poverty, and love of money: Evagrius Ponticus on the monk’s economic vulnerability’, in Holman, S. (ed.), Wealth and poverty in early Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI 2008) 76–87 Google Scholar. On the conflict between territorial possession and monastic ideals, see, e.g. Morris, R., Monks and laymen in Byzantium, 843-1118 (Cambridge 1995) 200–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 The history of the monastery is summarized in ODB 3, 1960-1: ‘Stoudios Monastery’; Thomas, J. and Hero, A. Constantinides (eds.), Byzantine monastic foundation document, I (Washington, DC 2000) 84–97 Google Scholar. On the influence of the Stoudite reform on Byzantine monasticism, see Leroy, J., ‘La réforme studíte’, in Il monachesimo orientale, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 153 (Rome 1958) 181–214 Google Scholar; repr. Études sur le monachismi byzantin, ed. Delouis, O. (Paris 2007), esp. 155-92Google Scholar; Pott, T., La réforme liturgique byzantine: étude du phénomène de l’évolution non spontanée de la liturgie byzantine (Rome 2000 Google Scholar; Engl. trans. Crestwood, NY 2010).

68 Thomas, and Hero, (eds.), Byzantine monastic foundation documents, I, 72 Google Scholar.

69 Clark, E. A., Jerome, Chrysostom and friends (New York and Toronto 1979) 12 Google Scholar, 15, 19, 55-7; Kazhdan, A., ‘Hermitic, cenobitic, and secular ideals in Byzantine hagiography of the ninth centuries’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 30 (1985) 473-87Google Scholar. See also Mango, C., Byzantium: the empire of New Rome (London 1980) 208-11Google Scholar; Galatariotou, C., ‘Byzantine ktetorika typika: a comparative study’, REB 45 (1987) 121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 John Chrysostom, Subintr. 1.60-3; trans, in Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom and friends, 166.

71 Luibheid, C. and Russell, N. (eds.), John Climacus: the Ladder of Divine Ascent (Mahwah, NJ 1982)Google Scholar.

72 And see the list of dangers lurking in any contact with women as voiced in Theodore’s injunctions, or ‘canons’, in his Testament; Thomas, and Hero, (eds.), Byzantine monastic foundation documents, I, 77 Google Scholar, 78.

73 Talbot, A.-M., ‘Monastic experience of Byzantine men and women’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 30 (1985) 13–14 Google Scholar.

74 Wilson, N.G., ‘The libraries of the Byzantine world’, Greek, Koman and Byzantine Studies 8/1 (1967) 53–80 Google Scholar.

75 As Oretskaia has argued, the making of the manuscript would have ‘needed considerable financing, the presence of a qualified artist and a good library’; Oretskaia, ‘A stylistic tendency’, 14 n. 33.

76 Morris, Monks and laymen in Byzantium, 91 n. 1.

77 Shorter Rules CLXXX, ‘ With what disposition and attention ought we to listen to what is read to us at meal times’; Eng. trans. Clarke, W.K.L., The ascetic works of Saint Basil (London 1925) 296-7Google Scholar. For similar reading practices in Byzantine monasticism from the ninth century onward, see Thomas, and Hero, (eds.), Byzantine monastic foundation documents, I, 27 Google Scholar n. 26.

78 Between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, thousands of cénobites customarily obeyed this dictum. See Lemerle, Le premier humanisme byzantin, 125-6; J. Leroy, ‘La vie quotidienne du moine studíte’, in J. Leroy, Etudes sur le monachisme byzantin, 76, 78. For discussion of the extent of the influence of Theodore’s writings in general on cenobitic life in Byzantium, see Thomas, and Hero, (eds.), Byzantine monastic foundation documents, I, 67–75 Google Scholar (with collected bibliography); Morris, Monks and laymen in Byzantium, 14-16. On the frequent contacts between monastic communities in Byzantium and Rome from the eighth century onward and the transmission of Stoudite books and customs by pilgrims heading to Rome, see Morris, Monks and laymen in Byzantium, 51.

79 Thomas, and Hero, (eds.), Byzantine monastic foundation documents, I, 108 Google Scholar.

80 Špidlík, T., Tenace, M., and Čemus, R., Questions monastiques en Orient (Rome 1999) 195-9Google Scholar.

81 See also Evangelatou, ‘Word and image’, esp. 139–43.

82 The perception of the contemporary viewer was debated by Eisner, J., Art and the Roman viewer: the transformation of art from the pagan world to Christianity (Cambridge 1995)Google Scholar, who claims that the sixth-century Christian viewer brought his own experience of the visual when gazing at works of art.

83 Weitzmann, Sacra Paralleh, 6-7.

84 Cases of flaking include the admonition of Adam and Eve, fol. 9^r; David informed about Saul’s death, fol. 17^r; Michal deceiving Saul’s messengers, fol. 80^r; a creature giving birth, fol. 143^v; Sarah breastfeeding Isaac, fol. 368^v ( Weitzmann, , Sacra Parallela, pl. III Google Scholar, fig. 9; pl. XXXIV, fig. 128; pl. XXXIII, fig. 122; pl. CXXV, fig. 564; pl. IX, fig. 31, respectively). Weitzmann has also noticed the flaking of the flesh area of the folio; Weitzmann, Sacra Parallela, 7.

85 On the influence of Basil’s monastic constitutions on Byzantine monasticism from the eighth century onward see Špidlík, Tenace, and Čemus, Questions monastiques, 195-9. See also Morris, Monks and laymen in Byzantium, 16, 53.

86 See above, pp. 2, 8.

87 See esp. Caviness, M.H., ‘The reception of images by medieval viewers’, in Rudolph, C. (ed.), A Companion to Art History (Cambridge 2006) 65–85 Google Scholar, with additional bibliography.

88 In this respect see C.W. Bynum, who shows how the acts and attitudes of men affected the cultural construction of categories such as ‘female’: Bynum, , ‘The female body and religious practice in the later Middle Ages’, in her Fragmentation and redemption: essays on gender and the human body in medieval religion (New York 1991) 184–221 Google Scholar.