International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Yulia Mantova
Russian State University for Humanities, Moscow, Russian Federation; 
[e-mail]
Travel in Mid-Byzantine Hagiography: Literary Representation
The paper focuses on the motif of travel in Mid-Byzantine hagiography, and is particularly related 
to its literary implementation. For a long time travel research in hagiography has concentrated on the 
problem of whether the lives of saints can be considered a reliable historical source of information on 
travel practice in Byzantium, and if so, to what extent. Such an approach omits one crucial constituent 
of the texts, i.e. their literary characteristics and value. There is evidently a perspective in broadening 
discourse of the research towards literary analysis. Moreover, my approach implies observations on 
the diachronic changes in the authors’ manner of describing the travels, which enables us to evaluate 
the evolution of literary tastes in this respect within the 8
th
-12
th
c.

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Travel depictions are widely represented in the saints’ lives of Mid-Byzantine period, thus 
there is vast material to explore. My work is based on 37 hagiographic texts, most of which are 
saints’ vitae, with several translation taken into consideration as well.
It is traditionally believed that the travels in Byzantine hagiography are basically represented 
in a sketchy way. Alexander Kazhdan associated this peculiarity with the Byzantine writers’ general 
endeavor to express the idea of stability, which made them describe the travel not as a process, but as 
a pair of two static conditions: the moments of departure and of arrival. However, we try to argue that 
Kazhdan’s statement was not completely true for different stages of the literary process development.
The earliest chosen texts, vitae of SS. Theodore of Edessa (BHG 1744) and of Gregory of 
Agrigentum (BHG 707), comprise rather distant journeys, but the hagiographers tend to present 
merely the main points of the saints’ routes without adding many details on the process of the travel. 
A few episodes where we can take a closer look at the heroes moving are caused by the authors’ need 
to organise the plot or to mention the supernatural forces of their saints in overcoming versatile 
perils on the sea or on the road.
The 9
th
, 10
th
and the first half of the 11
th
centuries were a flourishing period in the history of 
hagiography, and we inherited a considerable number of texts from those times. On the one hand, the 
authors continue to use travelling opportunities for the same purposes as in the earlier vitae, but on 
the other hand, some of them appear to pay more attention to the travel itself. The vitae of SS. Gregory 
of Decapolis (BHG 711), Gregentios (BHG 698), Theoktista of Lesbos (BHG 1723), Nicon Metanoite 
(BHG 1366), Lazaros of Galesion (BHG 979) demonstrate a highly increased volume of the travel 
episodes, and in many cases they turn into a picturesque ekphrasis. Moreover, we can spot a certain 
tendency looking through a number of travel dangers and difficulties described in later narratives. 
Miracles seem to lose their priority, giving way to more realistic methods of problem solving. 
The tendency develops in the 12
th
c., when the hagiographers enrich their travel narrative with 
the emotions of the travellers and some features of their personal perception. In this respect, vitae 
of Cyrillos Phileotes (BHG 468) and Leontios of Jerusalem (BHG 985) have something in common 
with the travel accounts, which appeared in the Byzantine literature in the 12
th
c.: the pilgrimage 
story of Ioannes Phocas, the poem of Constantine Manasses, letters of Nicholas Mesarites and 
Gregory of Antioch.