| Abstract: | "The texts in this volume Passion of Boniphatos; Life of the Man of God, Alexios; Life of Markos the Athenian; Life of Makarios the Roman; Passion of Christopher; George, the Great Martyr, which includes the Passion of George and also the Miracles of George ; Passion of Niketas were never gathered together in a single collection in Byzantium. The connecting threads, however, that unite these popular legends are multiple. All of them, often with cross-references and in mutual influence, tell stories that configure various dimensions of the "limits" as experienced or conceived in Byzantium: the borders, that is, which separated cultural insiders from outsiders. These borders take, as we shall see, different forms, designating the powerful and the outcasts, the real and the imaginary, the human and the beyond human. They also point to a spectacular reversal of expectations, since what stands at first glance outside borders is projected as the ideal. The stories, with their interlocking themes, will speak for themselves to the modern reader. Yet the texts were to some extent linked also in Byzantine ritual culture and in their textual forms and modes of transmission. In short, they are connected by the usually low-register Greek in which they are told; by the manuscripts (often provincial and usually liturgical in which they were transmitted, sometimes in proximity with one another and other similar legends; and by the implied suspicion or straightforward rejection that they often received from those promoting official orthodoxy. All these texts thus gesture toward what we sometimes call the "apocryphal," as opposed to canonical, Christian traditions, and the "popular," as opposed to more learned, religious expression"-- |
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