29 Introduction Corpus This research has adopted a text-centred case-study approach. It has selected three medieval Greek saints’ Lives written from the mid-ninth to the early tenth century: the Lives of Gregory of Decapolis (c. 797 – c. 842), Euthymius the Younger (c. 820 – 898) and Elias the Younger (c. 823 – 903). These are all Lives of (male) monastic saints who lived in the ninth century and who travelled extensively in the Mediterranean (see the maps at pp. 236-238). The three Lives were all written in the Eastern Roman Empire, but in different geographical regions. The Life of Gregory is most likely written in Constantinople by Ignatius the Deacon, the Life of Euthymius Younger is written by an otherwise unknown bishop, named Basil, in the region of Thessaloniki and the Life of Elias by an anonymous author who most likely came from the southern Italian Calabrian monastery at Salinas. All of these Lives were written within a generation after the death of the saints.93 The reason for selecting case studies rather than an analysis of a large corpus is that this case-study approach allows for an in-depth analysis of the selected texts and allows for the study of these texts from multiple angles. Using various methodological approaches to the same texts, this thesis also presents an example of how these texts can be studied from multiple perspectives and what we can learn from each approach. In the corpus of surviving texts of middle-Byzantine hagiography of new saints, the great majority regard monastic saints.94 Only a handful of these are monks who would have made frequent long-distance travels.95 The saints’ Lives selected concern three of the most frequent-travelling monks, according to their Lives. Although we do not know how many texts have been lost, if the surviving corpus is somewhat representative of the entire hagiographical output, the degree of travel of these monks would thus have been exceptional in the corpus. This, I think, makes them particularly interesting texts for an analysis of the representation of mobility: in a genre known for the use of topoi, the atypical travel theme may have given the authors more artistic freedom of representation, and perhaps allows us more readily to perceive authorial stances on monastic mobility. Moreover, these texts allow us to ask how the authors used the travel theme to portray a certain image of the saints. Other Lives of frequent travelling saints could have been selected as well, such as that of Lazarus of Mount Galesion (d. 1053) or Nikon the Metanoite (d. late tenth or early eleventh century).96 However, this study chose to focus on saints’ Lives written from the 93 For a more detailed discussion of the dates and circumstances of the creation of the hagiographies, see chapter 3, sections 3.3.1, 3.4.1 and 3.5.1. 94 C. 70 out of 119 based on a count of texts incorporated in the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Hagiography Database, consisting of saints who lived from the eight until the tenth centuries. Kazhdan and Talbot (1998) ‘Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database: Introduction’, https://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/resources/hagiographydatabase/hagiointro.pdf. 95 That most saints are only described to go on one or two (long-distance) journeys in their Lives is also observed by Kaplan, who concludes from that that this may be explained that travel was too much against the ideal of stabilitas loci. Kaplan (2002). However, see chapter 1. 96 Sullivan (1987); Greenfield (2000). I
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