Tales from Another Byzantium

Never overlook ill-considered trifles seems to be the lesson of this book. Scholars have been too ready to dismiss Medieval Greek apocrypha out of hand. Jane Baun proves triumphantly how wrong they were and demonstrates that the Apocalypse of the Theotokos and the Apocalypse of Anastasia, which are the focus of her study, provide a key for unlocking some of the secrets of the Byzantine mentality, which (the educated élite excepted) has largely remained a closed book. We will never know for sure in what circles these texts originated, let alone their authors. They simply emerged out of a welter of apocryphal literature—the Apocalypse of the Theotokos by the end of the ninth century and the Apocalypse of Anastasia by the turn of the tenth century. Baun cautions that they never had a canonical form, but changed over the centuries, adapting to new circumstances and societies. They must have been among the earliest works translated into Slavonic. They have remained popular more or less down to the present day among Orthodox Christians

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