This introduction sets the stage for the different chapters of the volume by offering general considerations about the production and consumption of poetry in twelfth-century Byzantium.

It takes as its point of departure the period beginning from the moment that Alexios I Komnenos ascended the imperial throne in 1081 to the Latin sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. This period saw an unprecedented growth in the production of poetry, as well as various innovative literary developments, including the emergence of vernacular poetry, the extensive use of poetry for ceremonial and didactic purposes at the imperial court and beyond, and the mixing of poetry and prose in so-called schede. While many poets were active in Constantinople, a large amount of the surviving poetry was written in places far away from the Byzantine capital, particularly in southern Italy and Sicily. The introduction discusses the social and intellectual contexts of twelfth-century poetry, addresses issues of geographical distribution and material circulation, and introduces some of the key figures and texts of the Komnenian period.

The chapter looks at a substantial number of texts outside the boundaries usually placed in Byzantine Studies through conventional taxonomic categories such as genre or antithetic pairs like learned versus vernacular language. Four larger themes are used to explore this varied textual production and offer a proposal for understanding its basic socio-cultural and aesthetic functions for its immediate recipients and later readers. The four themes discussed are education and literature, patronage and literary production, rhetoric and genre in prose and poetry, narrative art from the enormous to the small. Despite the strong presence of ‘Hellenic’ subjects, Komnenian literature owes more to its own dynamism (deriving from a reformed teacherly practice in the schools) than to the imitation of ancient models. At the same time, the role of the patrons in promoting literary production shapes much of both learned and vernacular literary experimentation, while religious literature generously defined is strongly involved in an ongoing experimentation with form and content. Finally, the chapter asks whether any form of change can be traced within the literary production of the Komnenian era.

This chapter offers a survey of some basic information on the life and writings of Manganeios Prodromos. It concludes with an annotated edition and translation of a poem dedicated to Manuel I Komnenos as an example of how his verse might be presented to readers today.

The hexametric poem On the Unicorn by Michael Choniates is a poetic rewriting of the parable The Man in the Well. This chapter analyses the text in comparison to the versions of the story as preserved by Barlaam and Josaphat and Stephanites and Ichnelates, and other Byzantine and early modern poems on the same subject. Next, the Byzantine imagery of the tale is described on the basis of the preserved medieval depictions. Finally, the chapter offers some reflections on Choniates, his source (Barlaam and Josaphat) and the interconnections between this poem and another hexametric one by the same author entitled On the Ladder Described in John the Ascetic.

This chapter proposes an assessment of the biblical figure of David as presented by Theodore Prodromos in some of his Historical Poems. David was often considered in Byzantine culture as the first and most important example of a Christian poet. The poet of the Psalms is depicted by Prodromos both as a source of inspiration for the persona loquens and as a role model for the emperor. This twofold representation is crucial to shed light on some of the poetic strategies used by Prodromos when dealing with Psalmic material in poems addressed to emperors. The chapter includes a close-reading of Prodromos’ Historical Poem 17, where a military victory of John II Komnenos is celebrated. In this long text, Prodromos systematically borrows verses from the text of the Psalms and adapts them in order to fit the occasional character of the poem. The analysis of the biblical hypotext as a literary source presented in the chapter provides new insight into the role that the biblical heritage could play within Byzantine authors’ canonical reference system.

This chapter deals with Constantine Manasses’ Astrological Poem. The first section discusses the editorial problems of the work, in the light of Emmanuel Miller’s edition and the new data that the poem’s enriched manuscript tradition has to offer. The second section traces and presents some of Manasses’ possible sources. The third section delineates the cultural milieu in which the poem was composed, which includes Manasses’ association with the circle of sebastokratorissa Irene, as well as the poem’s (possible) relation to other relevant works written during the reign of Manuel I Komnenos – one of them by none other than the emperor himself.

This chapter delves into the phenomenon of the so-called mixed style, a distinctive feature found in certain literary compositions of the twelfth century. While focusing primarily on the renowned collection of four supplicatory poems known as Ptochoprodromika, it also examines instances of blending lower and higher language registers in the Grottaferrata version of the Digenis Akritis poem and in the Verses from Prison penned by Michael Glykas. The objective of this study is to re-evaluate existing scholarly viewpoints regarding the principles and functions underlying the shifts between language registers in these works, adopting a narratological perspective. In other words, by analysing the employed types of voice, such as direct speech, narration and metanarration, the chapter seeks to determine whether we can identify more specific principles governing the changes in language levels, beyond the general distinction between ‘more popular’ and ‘more learned’. It endeavours to demonstrate that the selection between lower and higher registers is intricately linked to the narrative distance of the speaking voice from the events being recounted.

This chapter discusses dedicatory epigrams accompanying donor representations in monumental painting. The dedicatory inscription in the Vytoumas monastery (1161) in Thessaly is used to reconstruct the iconography of ktetoric compositions. The now-lost representation of Tarchaneiotes with his wife Zoe and the sebastos Andronikos, probably in a patronal Deesis composition, is reconstituted for the first time. The second epigram, surrounding the mosaic representation of the Deesis in the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos, is used to propose a new interpretation of the relationship between the hegumen Ioannikios and the monk Sophronios, probably the second patron, who completed the dedicatory composition started under Ioannikios. For the last epigrams, from the church of Saints Anargyroi in Kastoria (1180/90), the relationship between the poetic text, the symbolism of the space and the iconography is presented as a whole. These two epigrams are important for understanding the ideology of patronage and some of the problems that dedicatory inscriptions pose, namely the nature of the patron’s involvement in the creation of an epigram and the patron’s interaction with the painter.

This chapter explores the rationales of the paratexts accompanying John Tzetzes’ commentary on Hermogenes in the bespoke copy contained in the Vossianus Gr. Q1. Besides clarifying the circumstances prompting that specific copy of the commentary, these paratexts scaffold Tzetzes’ authorial agency as well as his social role in a cultural economy based on patronage. The chapter also shows how they speak to the way Tzetzes exploits the inherent ambiguities of language and tradition, by looking at them as examples of enacted ἀμφοτερογλωσσία, resting on dialectic.

The didactic poems of Niketas of Herakleia chiefly concern grammar and are written in various metres, all of them accentual, even including hymnographic metres. Rather than being mere reformulations of existing grammatical knowledge, the poems urge us to consider questions related to contemporary teaching practices. How does verse help to transmit knowledge, and which roles do accentual rhythm and musical heirmos play in this process? Issues of performance, audience and patronage are of undeniable importance for this question. The poems reflect a lively (sometimes unruly) classroom situation and an equally lively competition between teachers in Constantinople. Especially Niketas’ remarks on schedography reflect this competitive teaching field. Thus, the poems of this versatile author may explain why grammar became in the twelfth century an object to be reflected upon, reformulated, debated and even aestheticized. The chapter also situates Niketas in the literary tradition of didactic poetry. How does he, as a poet, at the same time represent himself as an able teacher and expert? And how does he combine poetic form and avowedly dry subject matter?

This chapter offers a detailed literary analysis of Theodore Prodromos’ Katomyomachia, highlighting its theatrical aspects, its clever use of textual and structural parody, its function as a school text, and its position within Byzantine beast literature, with a particular emphasis on the ‘Aesopic’ as a literary mode.

Nicholas Kallikles’ poem 29 Εἰς τὰ ῥόδα is a rich and fascinating text which resists its classification as religious epigram and rather inscribes itself in the tradition of spring ekphrasis, of which it constitutes a good twelfth-century example. The relevance given to themes such as learning and rhetorical ability, whose importance is strongly stressed, and the analogies that the text shows with poems related to school contests suggest that it was probably intended to be performed as the opening of a school competition taking place in the theatron. The existence, in mss. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. gr. 92 and Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, conv. soppr. 2, of a schedos on spring attributed to Kallikles and showing some points of contacts with poem 29 supports this hypothesis and suggests that Kallikles, known mainly for his medical teaching, might have engaged for some time also in the teaching of grammar and rhetoric.