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An unknown post-Byzantine journey to the other world*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2016
Abstract
This is the first publication of a tale about a journey to the other world from two seventeenth-century manuscripts kept in St.Petersburg. In the IS80s, the soul of a poor miner Nicholas from the Macedonian village of Izvor was mistakenly and prematurely snatched from his body by an angel who accompanied him through the heavens. After Nicholas' return to life, he described his adventures, which, although reminiscent of the famous Byzantine visions of the afterlife, still diverge from them in some important details. The tale not only helps to recreate the social life of the mining area of Siderokausia, but also portrays the infighting among the local Orthodox Christian clergy.
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- Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2015
Footnotes
*
This study was supported by the Academic Fund Programme of The National Research University-Higher School of Economics, in 2014-15 (research grant No. 14-01-0031).
References
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95 Here RAIK 130 breaks off.
96 We take the meaning from a passage in the chrysobull of Alexios I Komnenos, a. 1102: 
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97 Instead of 
, we adopt the conjecture .
98 With the conjecture 
, instead of ; the word would mean craftsman/carpenter.
99 John 14:2: 'In my Father's house are many mansions'.