In Nectar and Illusion, Henry Maguire examines Byzantium’s ambiguous relationship with nature in both art and literature. He demonstrates that after Iconoclasm, visual representations of the terrestrial world displayed in public settings were in “a constant tension between acceptance and denial,” but “tended to flourish most abundantly in…[Read more]

Dedicatory inscriptions on Middle Byzantine reliquaries have been analyzed for their documentary information, including prosopography, provenance, and date. Relying solely on this data limits our understanding of these objects. The methodology in this paper recontextualizes Byzantine reliquaries and their dedicatory inscriptions by reassessing the…[Read more]

Dedicatory inscriptions on Middle Byzantine reliquaries convey important information, including the identity of the patrons, the provenance of the relics, and the purpose of the gift. I argue that the placement of the dedicatory inscription in relationship to the image and the contents of the reliquary provides a more nuanced message than that…[Read more]