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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2016
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.
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).
1 Not mentioned in S. Lampakes, (Athens 1982).
2 I. N. Lebedeva, Opisanie rukopisei biblioteki AN SSSR. T.5. Otdel grecheskikh rukopisei (Leningrad 1973) 130-1.
3 Lebedeva, Opisanie, 131.
4 B. Feida, 30 (1995) 67.
5 I. N. Lebedeva, Opisanie, 119-20.
6 Ioakeim is believed to be the author of the poem about the Cretan war. See T.A. Kaplanis, Ioakeim Kyprios' Struggle; a narrative poem on the 'Cretan War' of 1645-1669. Editio Princeps [Texts and Studies in the History of Cyprus LXVII] (Nicosia 2012). This work was not available to us.
7 I. N. Lebedeva, Opisanie, 119.
8 It was renamed (because of its Slavic origin) only in the 1920s.
9 G. Theocharidou, (Thessalonike 1954) 78; D. Papachrysanthou, 'O 'A (Athens 1992) 124-26.
10 Alexander, J. C., ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away: Athos and the confiscation affair of 1566- 1569’, in K. Chrysochoides (ed.), Mount Athos in the 14th-16th centuries (Athens 1997) 163-64, 176.Google Scholar
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12 Dimitriades, V., ‘Ottoman Chalkidiki: an area of transition’, in A.|Bryer, H.|Lowry (eds.), Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society (Birmingham 1982) 46Google Scholar; N. Nerantzis, 'Pillars of power: silver and steel of the Ottoman empire', Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 9/2 (2009) 75-76. The dissertation of I. Borbe, (Thessalonike 2000), was not accessible to us.
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16 The authors are indebted to colleagues from the Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gritt (Vienna) who kindly shared with us the not yet published entry on Pharaonitai.
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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: . See Actes de Lavra, Premiere partie. Des origines a 1204, ed. A. Guillou et al. (Archives de l'Athos V) (Paris 1970) 286.
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'.