Series: Graphai

The thirteenth-century emperor Theodore II Laskaris, ruler of the Empire of Nicaea, is among those versatile authors of the Byzantine era who produced numerous little-known gems of literature and thought. He composed the sole theoretical work on friendship surviving from Byzantium, wrote philosophy with verve and humour, and was perhaps the most passionate advocate of the idea of a communal...

The Chronicle of Seert, a Middle Arabic history written in the late tenth or eleventh century, draws on earlier Syriac sources from the Church of the East dating back to the sixth and seventh centuries and is the richest repository of these earlier materials. It is a monument to a literature that is now mostly destroyed and an invaluable source...

Greek Magic collects, edits, and translates a vast number of Greek magical texts—spells, incantations, and related elements incorporated in prayers—from over one hundred manuscripts that date from the tenth through the eighteenth centuries and often preserve much earlier works. The result gives us a new understanding of the nature of belief and worship among medieval Greek-speaking Christians and offers a...