Animal Fables of the Courtly Mediterranean is a treasure trove of stories and lessons on how to conduct oneself and succeed in life, sometimes through cleverness rather than virtue. They feature human and many animal protagonists, including the two jackals Stephanites and Ichnelates, after whom the book is named, as well as several lion kings. At the heart of this work are tales from the Sanskrit Panchatantra and Mahabharata, to which more were added, both in the original Middle Persian collection and its eighth-century Arabic translation, the widely known Kalīla wa-Dimna.

In the eleventh century, readers in Constantinople were introduced to these stories through an abbreviated Greek version, translated by Symeon Seth from the Arabic. The new Byzantine Greek text and English translation presented here is a more complete version, originating in twelfth-century Sicily and connected with Admiral Eugenius of Palermo. It contains unique prefaces and reinstates the prologues and stories omitted by Seth.

Despite increased interest over the last fifty years in childhood in Byzantium, the bibliography on this topic remains rather short and generalized. Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium presents detailed information about children's lives and provides a basis for further study. This collection of eight articles drawn from a May 2006 Dumbarton Oaks symposium covers matters relevant to daily life such as the definition of children in Byzantine law, procreation, death, breastfeeding patterns, and material culture. Religious and political perspectives are also used to examine Byzantine views of the ideal child, and the abuse of children in monasteries. Many of these articles present the first comprehensive accounts of specific aspects of childhood in Byzantium.

Written by specialists in several disciplines, this volume explores the parameters and significance of magic in Byzantine society, from the fourth century to after the empire's fall. The authors address a wide variety of questions, some of which are common to all historical research into magic, and some of which are peculiar to the Byzantine context.

The authors reveal the scope, the forms, and the functioning of magic in Byzantine society, throwing light on a hitherto relatively little-known aspect of Byzantine culture, and, at the same time, expanding upon the contemporary debates concerning magic and its roles in pre-modern societies.

Often simply called the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos was the most famous center of Byzantine monasticism and remains the spiritual heart of the Orthodox Church today. This volume presents the Lives of Euthymios the Younger, Athanasios of Athos, Maximos the Hutburner, Niphon of Athos, and Philotheos. These five holy men lived on Mount Athos at different times from its early years as a monastic locale in the ninth century to the last decades of the Byzantine period in the early fifteenth century. All five were celebrated for asceticism, clairvoyance, and, in most cases, the ability to perform miracles; Euthymios and Athanasios were also famed as founders of monasteries.

Holy Men of Mount Athos illuminates both the history and the varieties of monastic practice on Athos, individually by hermits as well as communally in large monasteries. The Lives also demonstrate the diversity of hagiographic composition and provide important glimpses of Byzantine social and political history.

All the Lives in this volume are presented for the first time in English translation, together with authoritative editions of their Greek texts.

Lazaros of Mt. Galesion was widely recognized as a star of contemporary Byzantine monasticism by the time he died in 1053. His reputation for sanctity rested primarily on his extraordinary perseverance as a pillar ascetic, as he spent the last forty or so years of his life atop a column on the barren mountain of Galesion.

Apart from his asceticism, Lazaros was known particularly for his remarkable insight, wise advice, and unstinting generosity, as well as his miraculous powers. Visitors flocked to see the gaunt old man who had become for them a living icon. On the bleak mountainside around him, a considerable monastic community developed, and, over time, he became known and respected by the rich and powerful of his day.

The vita of Lazaros, here translated into English for the first time, was written shortly after his death by a disciple, Gregory the Cellarer. The tale is not one of simple veneration. Its author makes clear that Lazaros’s reputation was by no means unquestioned during his lifetime, and he reveals the existence of a sometimes startling hostility toward him on the part of local church officials, neighboring monasteries, and even his own monks. Visible here is a fascinating and unusual glimpse into the dynamics of the making, or breaking, of a holy man's reputation. It is a refreshing piece of hagiography that also provides a wealth of information on Byzantine life.

An authoritative new Greek edition and English translation of the life of a notable Byzantine monastic leader.

Saint Peter of Atroa (773–837 CE) was a Byzantine monastic leader, remembered primarily as cofounder and abbot of the influential monastery of Saint Zachariah at Atroa, below the holy mountain of Olympos in Bithynia. Peter sought to live in tranquility and solitude, traveling to the various monasteries he established in northwestern Asia Minor and occasionally joining other notable monastic figures. However, his resistance to the Iconoclast policies of imperial regimes in Constantinople during the first half of the ninth century led to his persecution and the temporary dispersal of his communities. Although he was evidently regarded with suspicion by some of his contemporaries, he gained a reputation as a miracle worker and his tomb became the site of a healing cult in the years after his death.

The Life of Saint Peter of Atroa was written by the saint’s disciple Sabas, also the biographer for Peter’s contemporary and friend Saint Ioannikios, and it survives in two manuscript versions. This volume represents an entirely new edition of the Greek text, establishing the version previously regarded as secondary as the more important of the two, and making the Life accessible to English readers for the first time.

Today the Byzantine mystic, writer, and monastic leader Symeon the New Theologian (ca. 949 to 1022 ce) is considered a saint by the Orthodox Church and revered as one of its most influential spiritual thinkers. But in his own time a cloud of controversy surrounded him and the suspicion of heresy tainted his reputation long afterward.

The Life was written more than thirty years after Symeon’s death by his disciple and apologist the theologian Niketas Stethatos, who also edited all of Symeon’s spiritual writings. An unusually valuable piece of Byzantine hagiography, it not only presents compelling descriptions of Symeon’s visions, mystical inspiration, and role as a monastic founder, but also provides vivid glimpses into the often bitter and unpleasantly conflicted politics of monasticism and the construction of sanctity and orthodoxy at the zenith of the medieval Byzantine Empire. Although the many volumes of Symeon’s spiritual writings are now readily available in English, the present translation makes the Life accessible to English readers for the first time. It is based on an authoritative edition of the Greek.