Author: Y. B. Mantova (The Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities (IASH), Russian State University for the Humanities)

Keywords\n hagiography, Byzantium, travel, environment descriptions

Pages\n 610–626

Summary\n: It is usually considered that in Byzantine hagiography travels tend to be represented in a sketchy way. A. Kazhdan connected this peculiarity with the Byzantine writers’ general endeavor to express idea of stability, by presenting the travel not as a process, but as two static conditions: the moments of departure and of the arrival. The paper analyzes travel depictions in the saints’ lives of the Mid- Byzantine period. Observations of the diachronic changes in the description of travels are used to evaluate the evolution of the literary tastes in the 8th– 12th c. hagiography. The earliest chosen texts, vitae of SS. Theodore of Edessa and of Gregory of Agrigentum, comprise distant journeys: however, the hagiographers tend to present the beginning and end of the saints’ routes without further detail. The rare episodes where we can get a glimpse of the travelling saint are due to the author’s need to organize the plot or to show the saints’ ability to overcome the perils on the road or in the sea. The period from the 9th to the first half of the 11th centuriy was a flourishing one in the history of hagiography, leaving behind a considerable number of texts. On the one hand, the authors continue to use the travel motif for the same purposes as the earlier vitae, but on the other hand, some of them appear to pay more attention to the travel itself. In the vitae of SS. Gregory of Decapolis, Gregentios, Theoktista of Lesbos, Nicon Metanoite, Lazaros of Galesionnot travel episodes are not only given more space, but also developped into a picturesque ekphrasis. This tendency is further developped in 12th c. hagiography where the travel narratives are enriched with emotions and personal perception of the travelers. Thus, the vitae of Cyrillos Phileotes and Leontios of Jerusalem have something in common with the travel accounts, which appeared in the Byzantine literature in the 12th c. (pilgrimage of Ioannes Phocas, the poem of Constantine Manasses, letters of Nicholas Mesarites and Gregory of Antioch).

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