Defined by many (though not by all) as a separate literary genre (established either by Synesius or Agapetus), Byzantine “mirrors of princes” continued from Late Antiquity to after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Combining praise with admonition, they addressed current and future emperors by reinforcing the socially desired standards of their political and personal…
Punishment processions (διαπόμπευσις) were a standard component of the Byzantine punitive system. These events were regularly staged to publicly shame wrongdoers—particularly high-profile men who challenged or undermined imperial power—as part of their punishment. Such punishments likely resulted in the victims’ social death. Although employed from the fourth to fifteenth centuries, these processions, as a temporary…
Byzantine culture, and especially its writing, is regarded as a treasure of models willingly and creatively adapted by medieval Bulgarians. This paper will look at the relationship of ideas about heretics present in Bulgarian literature and its relation to ideas prevalent in Byzantine literature. An important source of knowledge about heretics was not only ‘mainstream’…