30 mid-ninth century to the early tenth century. The Lives of these other candidates were written later. The choice for these temporal boundaries was motivated by developments in the cultural history and literary production of the Eastern Roman Empire. Hardly any saints’ Lives written between the seventh and eight centuries have survived, reflecting a general lack of (surviving) literary output from this period.97 From the end of the iconoclastic controversy in 843 onwards we have again many saints’ Lives celebrating new saints, many of them considered martyrs or at least fighters for the iconophile cause.98 The Life of Gregory of Decapolis is written most likely in these early years of heightened literary production since the official end of iconoclasm,99 although his hagiography does not present Gregory as playing an active role in the controversy.100 The mid-ninth century, with this surge of surviving texts, is thus a natural starting point for a temporal demarcation of the selected case studies. In the course of the tenth century, another cultural development had a great impact on hagiographical production: that is, towards the end of tenth century there were (most likely) centralised efforts to standardise the canon of celebrated saints and saints’ Lives. Saints’ Lives were selected and rewritten, particularly by Symeon Metaphrasis. Summary versions of saints’ Lives were created and bundled in liturgical collections (synaxaria). These developments, probably on imperial initiative, eventually led to a decrease of the writing of new saints’ Lives.101 Moreover, the new saints that were being promoted must have had much stronger competition from the saints that were already incorporated in these standardised collections. This may have influenced the authorial techniques the authors used to promote the saints and therefore changed the genre.102 Unlike the cases of Euthymius the Younger and Elias the Younger, the advocates of Gregory of Decapolis were successful in spreading his cult to the right places and the right people so that a summary version of his Life was incorporated in a famous and lavishly illuminated collection of synaxaria created approximately 150 years after his death, around the year 1000 for the Emperor Basil II (the Menologion of Basil II).103 However, many new saints did not succeed in being incorporated into these new collections: the majority of celebrated saints included in these were from the early Christian period, particularly martyrs.104 Because of the changing context of hagiographical production in the mid-tenth century, this study chose to focus on saints’ Lives written in the ninth or early tenth century, 97 Efthymiadis (2011a). 98 Ibid. 99 We are of course uncertain if the surviving post-iconoclastic corpus is representative and whether there was an actual boost in literary hagiographical production, or whether particularly iconophile hagiography produced in this period was selected to copy and earlier works were not. 100 See footnote 398. 101 Efthymiadis (2011a), p. 130. 102 The effects of the metaphrastic developments on the contexts for the creation of Lives of new saints still requires more research, but see Høgel (2002); Høgel (2014); Constantinou and Høgel (2020). 103 Vat.gr.1613, digitised at https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1613. 104 See e.g., the same manuscript (Vat.gr.1613).
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