International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Roger Scott
University of Melbourne, Melbourne VIC, Australia; 
[e-mail]
George the Monk and Kedrenos on Constantine the Great and the 
Vita Silvestri
Malalas in the sixth century is our earliest Greek source for the myth of Constantine’s early 
baptism in Rome by pope Sylvester but it remains just a simple single sentence. A much expanded 
version of the myth was not created until centuries later in the Vita Silvestri: Constantine, suffering 
from leprosy, after rejecting advice to gain a cure by bathing in the blood of suckling babies, is told 
by Peter and Paul in a vision that his act of mercy will earn him both a spiritual and a bodily cure 
if he seeks out Sylvester. Inter alia, after baptizing and so curing Constantine, Sylvester then wins 
both a theological debate and a miracle contest with Jews, leading to their conversion. George the 
Monk’s use of this in his late ninth-century chronicle becomes the basis of later Byzantine chronicle 
accounts. Two centuries after George, Kedrenos clearly used George’s version but also sought out 
and found the original for himself and used it both to expand and revise or correct George’s version. 
The paper notes that, although both George and Kedrenos copy much of this source verbatim, they 
also deserve credit both for seeking and finding new material and for giving some thought to what 
they copied. Plagiarists certainly, but not unthinking ones.

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LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY BYZANTINE ART
Chairs: 
Alicia Walker, Ljubomir Milanović
Diliana Angelova
, 
The Virgin Mary and the Quadernity
Alicia Walker
, 
The Didactic Power of Apolausis in Early Byzantine Mosaic Decoration
Sophia Akrivopoulou
,
 
The Christian Phase of the Rotunda in Thessaloniki