1 Storyteller

With its roots firmly based in orality, the tale cannot exist without the storyteller, the person who passes it on to others. The storyteller, who is generally a man, might tell a story of personal experience or circulate a tale that he has heard from someone else. When presenting the story of the miraculous cure he receives from saints Kyros and John, Sophronios of Jerusalem (634–638), for example, assumes his storytelling role thus:

I become a grateful promulgator of the saints and I am going to add to what I have told so far what has happened to me. […] I am also going to give my name, city, homeland, and the monastic community where I have been nurtured and formed up according to God’s will. [I am going to talk] about my eye disease and the divine visit of the saints.

γιγνόμεθα ἁγίων εὐγνώμονες κήρυκες, καὶ τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς τοῖς προλεχθεῖσιν ἐπάγωμεν· […] λέξωμεν δὲ καὶ ὄνομα, καὶ πόλιν, καὶ πατρίδα, καὶ φροντιστήριον, ὅθεν τε ἔφυμεν καὶ ὅπῃ Θεοῦ βουληθέντος ἐτάχθημεν, καὶ ἐπὶ τούτοις ὀφθαλμῶν τὴν ἀσθένειαν, καὶ τὴν θείαν τῶν ἁγίων ἐπίσκεψιν.¹⁰

Like Sophronios, most storytellers sharing an autobiographical tale or the story of someone they have met before do provide some information about themselves. They give their name, origin, profession, or religious vocation. They might also describe their bodily and emotional situation, especially when they suffer from some incurable disease, as is the case with Sophronios, or when they find themselves in difficult situations, like Thekla’s hagiographer who is excommunicated by a local bishop, as shown in Chapter 8.

The storytellers telling stories which appear to have a long-term oral circulation, in contrast, are mostly anonymous and give no personal information. With such storytellers anyone who undertakes to tell these stories to different audiences throughout the centuries may identify. Unidentified storytellers populate, for instance, the anonymous collection of the Apophthegmata Patrum that includes stories which are committed to writing after decades or even centuries of oral transmission, and as a result of this long process the first storyteller’s identity is forgotten, while no subsequent storytellers consider it necessary to talk about themselves. In many stories of the anonymous Apophthegmata Patrum, the storyteller is introduced with the following stereotypical phrase: ‘someone recounted that […]’ (Διηγήσατό τις ὅτι […]), suggesting that this someone might be anyone undertaking to retell the tale that follows.¹¹

The storytellers, who are also authors producing tale collections to save important stories from oblivion and to benefit wider audiences, both contemporary and later, might have to undertake long and tiring journeys to find material for their works. This material is provided by other storytellers whom the storyteller-authors consider pious and trustworthy sources of tales. As Palladios (363–431) writes, for instance, in his Lausiac History (c.419), ‘I would make a journey of thirty days, or twice that, and covered on foot, God help me, the whole land of the Romans, and I accepted the hardship of travel gladly in order to meet a man full of the love of God and to gain what I lacked’ (ἀλλὰ καὶ τριάκοντα ἡμερῶν καὶ δὶς τοσούτων ὁδὸν ἐξανύσας, ὡς ἐπὶ θεοῦ πεζῇ τῇ πορείᾳ πατήσας πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν ῥωμαίων, ἠσμένισα τὴν κακουχίαν τῆς ὁδοιπορίας ἐπὶ συντυχίᾳ ἀνδρὸς φιλοθέου, ἵνα κερδήσω ὅπερ οὐκ εἶχον).¹² Storytellers, as is the case with Palladios, might also find some of their stories in written sources that they consider equally valid and reliable.¹³

The storyteller has attracted some interest from narratologists, who have been influenced by cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis. Monika Fludernik, for instance, has focused on conversational storytelling as a remarkable form of narrative in and of itself and as an archetype of all narration.¹⁴ However, she is interested in narrative structures as they have developed from oral storytelling to the realistic novel and beyond, and not in storytelling as an inherent feature of short fiction. In fact, like most narratologists, Fludernik does not draw a distinction between the narrative qualities of long and short fiction. She sees both as canonical literary narratives with the same features, which, as she suggests, should be approached in the context of the narrative properties of oral non-literary genres.

A theoretical approach to the storyteller and the nature of storytelling that is relevant here is that of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, as described in his famous essay “Der Erzähler: Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows” (1936/7).¹⁵ Benjamin presents the storyteller as the man who tells and retells stories that he collects from traveling and local lore. The storyteller talks from experience, both his own and that of others, and turns this very experience into that of his listeners. In short, the storyteller, who might be the hero, listener, or reader of the stories he shares, is a teacher and sage who advises and edifies others. Storytelling is thus an act of generosity, and as such it appears eminently suitable for Christian storytellers – most of the storytellers examined here – for whom philanthropy is a major virtue.

In his attempt to share various remarkable experiences, the ancient and Byzantine storyteller instills the story with his presence from the outset. Often the storyteller starts by explaining how he has gained access to the tale he is about to tell, adding some information about his storytelling sources. For example, John Moschos (d. 619) introduces a tale in his Spiritual Meadow by saying: ‘Abba Gregory, a former member of the Imperial Guard, told us of a brother of the Community of Choziba who […]’ (Ὁ ἀββᾶς Γρηγόριος ὁ ἀπὸ Σχολαρίων, ἔλεγεν ἡμῖν ὅτι ἦν τις ἀδελφὸς ἐν τῷ κοινοβίῳ τοῦ Χουζιβᾶ, ὃς […]).¹⁶ The source of Moschos’ tale having as its hero a nameless monk at the Choziba monastery in Palestine is the abbot of the monastery, Gregory, who used to be an imperial official and who at some point, as the storytelling voice of Moschos informs us a bit later, became bishop in Caesarea in Palestine. It is, therefore, more important to name the tale’s source rather than the tale’s hero, as it is the authority of the source (an abbot and bishop famous for his exemplarity) that guarantees the truthfulness and the didactic character of the story.

There are also cases in which the storyteller presents himself as the chosen individual of a deity or saint who is asked to circulate a sacred story or to produce a collection of texts including tales. In Hermas’ Shepherd (second century), for instance, an angel appears to the author in the guise of a shepherd (Vision 5),¹⁷ ordering him to write down a collection of mandates (commandments) and similitudes (parables) for both his own spiritual improvement and that of the wider Christian community.¹⁸ In his Sacred Tales, a collection of divine, mostly healing, dreams composed some decades after the Shepherd, Aelios Aristides (117–180) reports that the god Asklepios instructs him to keep a record of their interchanges and the godly healings he receives through the medium of dreams.¹⁹

Like Hermas’ work, which has a title directly linked to one of his visions’ divine figures (the angel as shepherd), the title of Sacred Tales is also divinely ordained. In a dream appearance to Aristides’ foster father, Asklepios provides the title of Aristides’ work: ‘The Sacred Tales’ (Ἱεροὶ λόγοι).²⁰ Like the anonymous hagiographer of Thekla’s miracle collection (fifth century) discussed in Chapters 5, 7, and 8 of this volume, who portrays himself as the saint’s beneficiary and her chosen storyteller and orator, Aristides presents himself as the special protégé and orator of Asklepios, who, as is the case with Thekla, both saves his devotee from grave illness and fosters his text productivity.²¹

In addition to the chosen storytellers, there are those who, having themselves benefited as the listeners of other storytellers’ tales, feel that it is their duty to retell these tales and thus pass the knowledge and edification to others. A case in point is the author-storyteller of the History of the Monks in Egypt who writes in this work’s prologue:

For I have truly seen the treasure of God hidden in human vessels. I did not wish to keep this to myself and conceal something which would benefit many. […] Accordingly, since I have derived much benefit from these monks, I have undertaken this work to provide a paradigm and a testimony for the perfect, and to edify and benefit those who are only beginners in the ascetic life.

Εἶδον γὰρ ἀληθῶς τὸν τοῦ θεοῦ θησαυρὸν ⟨ἐν ἀνθρωπίνοις κεκρυμμένον σκεύεσι· ὃν οὐκ ἐβουλόμην κρύπτειν καλύψας⟩ τὴν τῶν πολλῶν ὠφέλειαν. […] Ὅθεν πολλὴν ὠφέλειαν ἐξ αὐτῶν πορισάμενος ἐπὶ τὴν ἐξήγησιν ταύτην ἐχώρησα, πρὸς ζῆλον μὲν καὶ ὑπόμνησιν τῶν τελείων, πρὸς οἰκοδομὴν δὲ καὶ ὠφέλειαν τῶν ἀρχομένων ἀσκεῖν.²²

In contrast to Benjamin’s understanding of the storyteller as a canonical force possessing the same characteristics in every single tale, the storytellers discussed so far display different features. There are, for example, personal and impersonal storytellers, authoritative and less authoritative storytellers, storytellers who are ordered by a divinity to tell and write down one or more tales, and storytellers who assume their role because they cannot keep just for themselves the tales they know. As Stavroula Constantinou and Andria Andreou have amply demonstrated in a recent article drawing significantly from Benjamin’s discussion of the storyteller and Monica Fludernik’s work on conversational storytelling, there are at least three types of storytellers in early Byzantine tales as far as storytelling voice is concerned: the single omnipresent storyteller, the chain storyteller, and the combined storyteller.²³

The single omnipresent storyteller is identified with the author of a work including tales – a literary miscellany (e.g. paradoxography and Apophthegmata Patrum), a collection (e.g. miracle collections and collective biographies), or a frame narrative (e.g. History of the Monks in Egypt). Chain storytelling refers to the mode in which a particular tale is transmitted through a sequence of storytellers. In this case, a storyteller shares a tale with someone who retells it to another individual, who, in turn, transmits it to a third potential storyteller, and so on, reflecting the infinite transmission of a tale through generations and centuries. Finally, combined storytelling has characteristics of both single-voice and chain storytelling. This third storytelling mode is detectable in tale collections in which there are tales told by an omnipresent storyteller, the collection’s author, and tales that reach the author-storyteller through a chain of storytellers.

In addition to the storytelling types presented so far, Chapter 5, which focuses on the storyteller, for example, brings to the fore some more categories of storytellers, suggesting that there are as many different kinds of storytellers as there are different types of tales. Of course, many more studies are needed to achieve a good understanding of the multifarious storytelling figures that are incorporated into ancient and early Byzantine tales. For example, what about storytellers transmitting other types of tales, such as mythological, ethnographical, and animal tales? Do these storytellers behave differently depending on the type of texts in which such tales are included? In other words, is the storyteller of a collection of animal tales different from the storyteller who tells animal tales in the framework of a letter or a homily? What about the differences between storytellers of animal tales and those of hagiographical tales? How does a tale’s purpose – religious, healing, didactic, satirical, or entertaining – determine the storyteller’s profile? In what ways does a storyteller’s social and bodily situation influence a tale’s storyness and effect? But let us move on to the second constituent of the tale, storyness.

2 Storyness

As implied above, storyness is not used here in the cognitive approach sense adopted by short fiction theorists. According to Lohafer, who has introduced the concept to short fiction studies, storyness concerns reading experience and not the art and craft of storytelling and story-writing that interest us now. Borrowing from textual linguistics, discourse analysis, and cognitive science that ‘anatomizes’ the production of narratives to explain behavior and to study how the human mind processes literature,²⁴ Lohafer has argued that when processing a short narrative, readers not only arrive at final closure, but also identify a series of what she has termed ‘preclosure points’ at which the story might have finished but has not. In other words,²⁵ the mind tends to ‘chunk’ a story into several discrete parts of preclosure or closure.²⁶ Thus readers, as proposed by Lohafer, read a story for its ending.

Despite its usefulness – particularly for drawing attention to ‘every single word of an unfolding story’,²⁷ Lohafer’s storyness suggests that a short narrative is in its entirety a kind of ending. If there is no closure, then there is no story. Yet what about open-ended stories like the Chekhov type of story mentioned in the Introduction? Should such texts be dismissed as non-stories because they have no closure? And what happens with stories that have an ending, but in which this ending does not have an impact on its readers, as it does not have the characteristics they are expecting for a closure? Do they still count as stories? In sum, Lohafer’s approach cancels the very creation of stories which are meant to be read or heard in themselves and not exclusively for their ending. In fact, the art of short fiction lies in the different combinations of all its inherent parts having certain effects on the readers or listeners. But before discussing story-effect, let’s explain how the concept of storyness is used in the tale-theory approach undertaken here and how it applies to ancient and early Byzantine tales.

For our purposes, as suggested earlier, storyness stands for the tale’s form and structure and for its storytelling devices, namely for all those elements that are responsible for the tale’s artistry, which according to Charles May lies in ‘those magical episodes, lyrical and dramatic, in which we confront the Thou moments in which we are torn away to “dangerous extremes”’.²⁸ In other words, what are those structures and devices that create short fiction – the tale in our case – which May has described as ‘the most paradoxical […] of all art forms, for it gives us reality and unreality at once, gives us both the familiar and the unfamiliar, the universal and the particular, tells us both at the same time that we are separate and that we are unified’?²⁹

The storytelling devices of the ancient and early Byzantine tale can be divided into two major groups: stylistic and narrative devices. The most prevalent stylistic devices include metaphor, imagery, allegory, repetition, and the catalogue. The dominant narrative devices, on the other hand, are the following: epiphany, dream or vision, and the monstrous and the grotesque, but also allegory and repetition, which might be used as both stylistic and narrative devices.³⁰ These devices, the stylistic and the narrative, are employed by our authors in various combinations which create the supernatural or marvelous worlds of their tales that are determined by the nature of the tales’ characters and objects. Supernatural tales involve deities, saints, demons, and objects with exceptional powers. Marvelous tales unfold around strange and bizarre phenomena and objects that lie at the limits of knowledge and rationality.

Turning now to the most frequent narrative devices of early tales, epiphany appears to have four essential features. First, it is a rapid hearing, tactile, or olfactory experience that frequently entails an intensification of sensory stimuli and of emotional involvement. Second, it is a mysterious revelation whose meaningfulness exceeds its observable characteristics. Third, it constitutes an instance of poetic art that is characterized by forceful rhetoric and intensity. Fourth, it is a literary moment exhibiting repeated patterns. Depending on the type of otherworldly figure that manifests itself into the human world, our epiphanies might be divided into three large categories: theophany, hagiophany, and demonophany – the last two terms being created as parallels to theophany. Theophany signifies a manifestation of one or more gods. Hagiophany denotes the appearance of one or more saints, while demonophany stands for the presence of Satan and his demons.

The tales of epiphany par excellence are the miracle stories whose protagonists actively seek divine help. In Christian miracles, to which I now turn, epiphany takes mostly the form of hagiophany. The tale protagonists may see the miraculous saints as themselves or in disguise; they may hear the saints’ bodiless voices; they may touch the saints’ bodies; they may smell the saints or some other intense smell without seeing or hearing the saintly figures; and finally, they may feel the saints without seeing, hearing, or smelling them. Hagiophany may also take different forms depending on the types of miracles performed: cult, healing, punishment, war miracles, and miraculous control over animals and extreme natural phenomena.

For reasons of space, in what follows I will briefly discuss a hagiophany that effects a climate transformation for the comfort of a pregnant woman. The woman in question, who is named Bassiane, is the heroine of a tale from the Miracle Collection of Thekla. During the final months of her pregnancy, Bassiane has a visionary experience of Thekla, whom she sees in person. Bassiane’s hagiophany takes place after a bodily crisis. The storyteller presents in detail the reasons for the crisis:

One summer day, when the sun was blazing fiercely, Bassiane was spending time in the martyr’s shrine […]. As night came on the heat intensified […]. She began to be distressed, since she was unaccustomed to the heat: she did not know what to do; She was having trouble breathing, and she was drenched in sweat. At one instant, she would toss on her bed, trying to restore and refresh her weary body, and she repeated this numerous times. At the next instant, she would bound up from her bed, when she was already quite soaked, and lean against the marble revetment, which was certainly cooler and could refresh her. In the end she was defeated by the terrible heat – […] the weight of her belly, swollen because she was with child, oppressed her. […] – She rushed to one of the cisterns lying nearby.

Αὕτη ποτὲ ἐν ὥρᾳ θέρους, καὶ ἡνίκα μάλιστα ἑαυτοῦ φλογωδέστερός ἐστιν ὁ ἥλιος, ἐνδιέτριβε μὲν τῷ νεῲ τῆς μάρτυρος […]. Νυκτὸς δὲ ἐπιλαβούσης καὶ τῆς φλογὸς ἐπιταθείσης, ἤσχαλλε μὲν τὴν ἀρχήν, ὡς ἂν καὶ ἀσυνήθης, καὶ διηπορεῖτο, καὶ ἄσθματος ἐπληροῦτο, καὶ ἱδρῶτι κατερρεῖτο, καὶ ποτὲ μὲν κατὰ τὰ χαμεύνια αὐτὰ περιεστρέφετο, ἀεὶ τὸ κάμνον τοῦ σώματος θεραπεύουσα καὶ ἀναψύχουσα, καὶ τοῦτο ποιοῦσα συχνότερον, ποτὲ δὲ καὶ ἀναπηδῶσα τῆς κοίτης, ἡνίκα διάβροχός τε ἦν ἤδη λοιπόν, καὶ τοῖς μαρμάροις ἑαυτὴν προσήρειδεν, ὡς ψυχροτέροις τε οὖσι μᾶλλον καὶ ἀναψύξαι δυναμένοις αὐτήν. Τέλος δε, ὡς ἐνικᾶτο τῷ κακῷ – […] γαστρὸς ὄγκος αὐτὴν ἐπὶ παιδὶ κυρτουμένης συνεῖχε […] – ὥρμησε μὲν ἐπὶ τί ποτε τῶν παρακειμένων φρεάτων..³¹

Being unable to bear this difficult situation any longer, Bassiane rushes to a nearby cistern to enter into its deep waters with the intention of finding some comfort. This was, however, a dangerous endeavor, since, as the storyteller points out, ‘death was going to be the result of her poor condition in any case’ (ἀποπνιγῆναι. τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν τὸ πάντως ἐσόμενον τοῦ κακοῦ πέρας).³² It is at this critical moment that Thekla appears as deus ex machina:

The martyr appeared and, seizing her himation, stopped the woman’s headlong rush ⟨for the cistern⟩ and rebuked her for her recklessness. […] This most gentle of women ⟨Thekla⟩ dipped her finger into [a basin full of water]. […] She then applied it […] to Bassiane’s forehead and to each of her shoulders, and then went away leaving only the sweet west wind blowing on her.

Παραφανεῖσα δὲ ἡ μάρτυς καὶ τοῦ ἱματίου αὐτῆς λαβομένη, τῆς μὲν ὁρμῆς ἔπαυσε, πολλὰ λοιδορησαμένη τῆς τόλμης αὐτήν […]· καὶ τὸν αὐτῆς ἡ πραοτάτη καθιμήσασα δάκτυλον […], ἐπαλείφει τὸ μέτωπον τούτῳ καὶ τῶν κατακλείδων ἑκατέραν, καὶ ἀπῆλθε, ζέφυρον […] αὐτῇ μόνον λιγυρὸν ἐπιπνέοντα καταλείψασα.³³

The saint’s appearance and disappearance are sudden. Thekla gives directions and acts, providing the scene with a certain realism. First, Thekla seizes Bassiane abruptly by her clothing to put a halt to her flight to the cistern, while at the same time she explains the risks of such a move by reproaching the pregnant woman. The saint’s relatively violent, yet caring, movement is soon turned into the gentle touch of a caregiver.³⁴ With her finger, Thekla applies to Bassiane’s body some fresh water that she receives from the woman’s female servant. The mysteriousness of the martyr’s hagiophany becomes perceptible through the suddenness of her departure, which is associated with the transformation of the fierce heat into a ‘sweet west wind’ (ζέφυρον λιγυρόν) which is felt only by Bassiane, who spends the rest of the summer feeling ‘as if she were enjoying springtime in the wooded, breezy suburb of Daphne’ (αὐτὴ μόνη ὡς ἐν ἦρι καὶ ὡς ἐν Δάφνῃ τῷ πολυδένδρῳ καὶ πολυανέμῳ χωρίῳ διάγουσα).³⁵

The tale of Bassiane has a tripartite structure that has hagiophany at its very center. First, the hagiographer prepares Thekla’s hagiophany. Second, the actual hagiophany takes place, and finally the effects of the hagiophany on the heroine are presented. But how is the hagiophany prepared for? This is fulfilled through the following steps. Firstly, the character (Bassiane) is introduced into the narrative and her piety is described: she is a follower of Thekla who every day spends time in the martyr’s shrine. Then follows a detailed description of the extreme weather conditions and of how these affect the heroine: she is heavily pregnant and oppressed by the unusual and unbearable heat. She finds herself in such a desperate situation that she attempts to comfort herself in a dangerous manner: by entering the deep waters of a nearby cistern.

The hagiophany itself constitutes an independent unit within the miracle story, having its own beginning, middle, and end. It opens with the martyr’s sudden introduction into the narrative when the latter reaches its climax. As suggested by her movements, words, and bodily acts, Thekla’s intervention in Bassiane’s life at that very moment is fleshy. The hagiophany ends through Thekla’s sudden disappearance, which is associated with an abrupt change in the weather. The last part of the tale is concerned with the aftermath of the martyr’s hagiophany. Bassiane is the only person who experiences a springtime amidst the fierce heat of the summer. She has an easy labor through which she is liberated from both pregnancy and captivity.

The narrative closes with the storyteller’s explanation of how Bassiane’s story is turned into the tale that he includes in his work: ‘And a witness to this is the child born from the woman, the very famous Modestos, who is still alive and adorns the city that is called ‘peace’, and he recounts this miracle with every possible grace. He is a kind man and filled with fine artistic sense’ (Καὶ μάρτυς ὁ ἐκ ταύτης τότε γενόμενος παῖς, Μόδεστος δὲ ἦν οὗτος ὁ πάνυ, ἔτι τε καὶ νῦν ἐν ζῶσι τελῶν, καὶ τὴν εἰρήνης, ἐπώνυμον πόλιν κοσμῶν, καὶ τὸ θαῦμα τοῦτο μετὰ πολλῶν καὶ ὅσων τῶν χαρίτων διηγούμενος· εὔθυμος δὲ ὁ ἀνήρ, καὶ πολλῆς γέμων τῆς εὐμουσίας).³⁶ The transformation of Bassiane’s hagiophany and her subsequent delivery into a narrative is firstly performed by the heroine herself, who shares her experience with her own son, who is also a beneficiary of the saint. Modestos is not just a trustworthy and sympathetic storyteller, but also an artful storyteller. It is thanks to his artistry that the tale is widely circulated, reaching the hagiographer’s ears too. We thus have a storytelling chain consisting of three authoritative storytellers (Bassiane, Modestos, and the hagiographer), each of them initiating a different transmission process of the tale. Bassiane’s narrativization and first storytelling act brings the tale into the transmission circle. Modestos publicizes the story to other potential storytellers of his times. Lastly, by committing the tale to writing, the hagiographer ensures its endurance throughout the centuries.

By using as a case study the hagiophanic experience of a pregnant woman featuring in the miracle collection of Thekla, I have shown that hagiophany is a central element of the tale’s storyness. It is introduced into the narrative at a crucial point, preventing Bassiane’s drowning. At the same time, it is a transformative experience and a powerful instance of dynamism, intensity, and mysteriousness. While it has its own unity, the actual scene of hagiophany becomes an integral part of the examined tale’s tripartite structure, contributing to its closure. Hagiophany is also an essential element of the poetics of the tale that is endowed ‘with fine artistic sense’ (γέμων τῆς εὐμουσίας), to use the author-storyteller’s words. Of course, Bassiane’s story provides just one instance of hagiophany. Thekla’s miracle collection, which abounds with hagiophanies, includes a rich variety of this type of epiphany. Evidently, a systematic examination not only of hagiophany, but also of theophany and demonophany, will shed light on their different characteristics and uses, their narrative and aesthetic dimensions, their effects, and their continuities and transformations from ancient to early Byzantine literature.³⁷

Compared to epiphany, there are more publications examining the narrative devices of dream and vision in ancient and early Byzantine tales.³⁸ As far as ancient tales are concerned, the dreams and visions in the tales of Hermas and those of Aristides, for example, have attracted good scholarly interest.³⁹ For our purposes here, Patricia Cox Miller’s analysis is remarkably enlightening. She describes how the dreams and visions of Hermas and Aristides emerge ‘in the midst of everyday earthly reality’, a characteristic that as indicated above is an important feature of storyness.⁴⁰ Furthermore, Cox Miller discusses the elaborate character and complex structure of Hermas’ dream tales, which further reveal their artistry. The Shepherd’s tales include framing dreams having dreams-within-dreams-within-dreams. Often, as Cox Miller has pointed out, it is hard to distinguish between the frame and the dreams. As she herself has formulated it, ‘inner and outer change place and are multiplied, as though multiple consciousness is what these nested dreams are leading the dreamer into’.⁴¹

In a previous study, I have also tried to analyze the structure, but also the types, forms, and narrative functions of healing dreams and visions in tales that are incorporated into Byzantine miracle collections.⁴² As I have shown, dreams and visions are independent narrative units within a tale, having their own morphology. Yet, like epiphanies, dreams and visions interact with the rest of the narrative. In sum, dreams and visions achieve the following: they set the story in motion; they determine its unfolding; they change its direction; they slow down or accelerate its closure; and finally, they contribute to the tale’s attractiveness by creating the effects of suspense and surprise. Similarly with the device of epiphany, dreams and visions, even though they have been more systematically studied, still remain largely unexplored. The same is valid also for the monstrous and the grotesque, the last important devices of storyness discussed here, which are the least examined devices.

There are only a couple of articles investigating the monstrous and the grotesque in ancient and early Byzantine tales. The first examines the monstrous in Phlegon of Tralles’ Mirabilia, while the second focuses on the monstrous and the grotesque in miracle tales.⁴³ Interestingly, both articles concern the body, suggesting that the most prevalent form of the monstrous and the grotesque in our corpus is directly related to the human body. Focusing on the hermaphrodite bodies of Mirabilia, Julia Doroszewska concludes that it is a dynamic narrative device activating a whole series of other bizarre actions and phenomena which take place ‘in an irrational chain of causation’ and thus endow the text with mystery and fascination.⁴⁴ Employing Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque body, the second article investigates the revolting imagery of the sickly, punished, and suffering body in miracle collections. Beyond its religious significance, as the article shows, the monstrous and grotesque body is not only the kernel around which the miracle tale develops, but a device of great aesthetic and entertainment value.

Another important aspect of storyness that is not sufficiently discussed in this volume is intertextuality – or what I would call ‘inter-storyness’. The storyness of the tale, which comes into being through a chain of storytellers, both textual and extra-textual, who tell and retell it and thus adjust it to fit new circumstances and the expectations of different audiences, is unavoidably a construct of inter-storyness. Inter-storyness also concerns the dialogue and interrelations between different tales or tale collections and previous texts. A systematic examination of the inter-storyness of ancient and Byzantine tales, such as those of Aristides and the hagiographer of Thekla mentioned above, will not only illuminate the latter’s literary techniques, but will also reveal hidden aspects of the first, thus providing a better understanding of both works.

3 Story-Effect

Tales, like any other literary form, are addressed to different audiences. The complex and multifaceted audiences of ancient and early Byzantine tales may be divided into four large categories: the embedded audience, the implied audience, the intended audience, and the real audience. The embedded or inscribed audience is part of the storytelling situations that are created within the tales reflecting their oral transmission, which is revived each time they are read. The embedded audience consists of three types of inscribed listeners: storytellers, a group of mostly anonymous auditors, and characters who listen to stories-within-the-story. Each of these types has its own internal categories and characteristics that prove the dynamic and sophisticated nature of the tale.

To the group of the storyteller-listeners belong the authors of the texts and the storytellers of a storytelling chain or a frame tale. The authors of tale collections or other texts including tales appear as listeners of stories, as suggested, for example, by the said tale from the Spiritual Meadow where Moschos presents himself as the reteller of a tale he has heard from Gregory, the abbot of Choziba monastery and later Bishop of Caesarea. With the exception of autobiographical stories and stories reporting their personal experiences with other protagonists, authors renounce the authorship of their works’ tales, highlighting instead their roles as listeners and compilators. They continuously remark that they retell, collect, and pass on in a written form what they have heard from others. Moschos writes, for instance, in the prologue of the Spiritual Meadow: ‘as I have put together a copious and accurate collection, so I have emulated the most wise bee, gathering up the spiritually beneficial deeds of the fathers’ (ὡς πολλὴν καὶ ἀληθῆ συλλογὴν ἐποιησάμην· ὡς ἐπὶ τῆς σοφωτάτης μελίττης τὰ ψυχωφελῆ τῶν Πατέρων ἀρυσάμενος κατορθώματα).⁴⁵ Using the conventional topos of the bee simile, Moschos presents in the most graphical way his roles as a selective listener of ascetics’ stories and as an accurate compilator who creates a collection of these stories by remaining faithful to their original forms and contents.

The storyteller-listeners of a storytelling chain or a frame tale are mainly pious pilgrims and monastics, both eponymous and anonymous, who pass on the stories they hear from each other until these stories reach the author- storyteller-listener – the last participant in the chain or the one who closes the initial frame. As is mostly the case with the author-storyteller-listener,⁴⁶ the chain and frame storyteller-listeners are commonly embedded in the tale at the outset. Thus we read, for instance, at the beginning of the third tale of the Lausiac History: ‘the aforementioned blessed Isidore had met Antony of sacred memory and told me of an incident well worth recording which he had heard from him’ (Ὁ μακάριος οὗτος Ἰσίδωρος συντετυχηκὼς Ἀντωνίῳ τῷ μακαρίτῃ γραφῆς ἄξιον διηγήσατό μοι πρᾶγμα, ἀκηκοὼς παρ’ αὐτοῦ).⁴⁷ In this storytelling chain, there are two listeners: Isidore and Palladios, the author, who listen to the same story at different points in time.

The first listener that is of interest here, Isidore, is also the protagonist of the Lausiac History’s first tale (ch. 1). Isidore is the first holy man whom Palladios meets when he goes for the first time to Alexandria, that is during the emperorship of Theodosios I (379–395). In the first tale, Palladios describes Isidore as a ‘wonderful man’ and as a man ‘with completely beautiful character and knowledge’ (ἀνδρὶ θαυμασίῳ παντόθεν κεκοσμημένῳ ἔν τε ἤθει καὶ γνώσει).⁴⁸ In other words, Isidore has all the qualities of an exemplary storyteller-listener. Impressed by Isidore’s holiness, Palladios asks him to become his ascetic instructor. Even though Isidore refuses to undertake this role and sends Palladios to another ascetic – Dorotheos, the protagonist of the next tale (ch. 2) – he teaches the author through his storytelling acts. He tells Palladios tales he has heard from other equally pious storytellers, such as Antony the Great, who is the first storyteller of the third tale.

This exchange between Isidore and Palladios seems to last for fifteen years: from the first time the two men meet – at that point Isidore is seventy years old – until the time of Isidore’s death that takes place when he is eighty-five years old. In fact, Isidore proves an exemplary storyteller-listener not only for Palladios, but also for his other distinguished visitors. In the tenth tale, we are informed that Melania the Elder (350–c.410) hears stories from Isidore about another ascetic, Pambo, who is the protagonist of this tale. Melania, in turn, the only female storyteller of the collection, is another frequent chain storyteller-listener. She appears listening to and telling stories in at least four different tales (chs. 5, 9, 10, 46).

The groups of chiefly nameless auditors that are inscribed in the examined tales are either small and private or large and public. An ascetic’s visitors seem to form small groups not larger than ten people. For example, in the Spiritual Meadow it is reported that when visiting ascetics’ cells and monasteries Moschos is accompanied by his friend, the aforementioned Sophronios who later becomes Patriarch of Jerusalem and writes another tale collection, the Miracles of Kyros and John. The author of the History of the Monks in Egypt, to mention a second example, belongs to a group of seven individuals, possibly also monks, meeting Egyptian monastics. These small groups are homogeneous: they consist of religious men, co-travelers who desire to be edified through encountering exemplary ascetics and listening to their stories.

As for the large and public groups of listeners, these are mainly mixed audiences, yet homogeneous to a great extent. They might be the inhabitants of a whole city, such as Thessalonike, participating in a liturgical assembly celebrating the holiness of Saint Demetrios and listening to his miracle accounts (Miracles of Demetrios). They might be the patients populating a shrine that listen to the stories of other people’s miraculous healings while waiting to receive their own cures (e.g. Miracles of Kosmas and Damian). Finally, they might be the members of a monastic community listening to their abbot’s tales (e.g. Anastasios of Sinai’s Edifying Tales).

As for the characters who listen to stories-within-the-story, they can be either eponymous or anonymous men who might be related to the protagonist and storyteller. To my knowledge, these characters form two antithetical types of listeners: the nosy and eager listener and the incredulous and bored listener that offer a humorous version of the practice of story-listening.⁴⁹ The nosy and eager listener is mostly exemplified in the Narrations of Daniel of Sketis. This listener is always embodied by the same character, Daniel’s nameless disciple, who is present in almost all eight tales edited together by Britt Dahlman.⁵⁰ This disciple is not only Daniel’s most devoted follower, but also the most dedicated listener of his stories, also asking for information that might not initially be provided by Daniel. The tale in which the disciple’s curiosity and desire for a particular story reach their highest point, however, is that of Eulogios (ch. 6), where Daniel, contrary to his common custom, does not behave as an eager storyteller because, as he insists, this is a confidential story that must remain untold.⁵¹

The disciple, however, takes Daniel’s reluctance to share Eulogios’ story personally and thus becomes so angry that he stops speaking with his master. He even refrains from preparing Daniel’s daily meal as was customary. The hungry master then goes to the disciple’s cell asking for explanations. During this meeting, which takes the form of an exchange between a father and a son, the disciple informs Daniel that he no longer does consider him a father, suggesting that he will stop being his follower. Taking the disciple’s words at face value, Daniel is about to leave. He is, however, prevented by the disciple, who states that he will not let him go unless he reveals Eulogios’ story.

The disciple’s final act and words provide the scene with a humorous dimension, as it is clearly manifested that his ‘anger’ and avenging stance are playacted. The disciple uses them as tricks to push Daniel to satisfy his curiosity by telling the tale of Eulogios. In fact, the disciple would never renounce his beloved master. As the author-storyteller remarks, ‘the brother could not bear seeing the elder afflicted at any time, for he loved him very much’ (οὐκ ἠδύνατο γὰρ ὁ ἀδελφὸς ἰδεῖν τὸν γέροντα θλιβόμενόν ποτε· ἠγάπα γὰρ αὐτὸν πάνυ).⁵² Daniel, in turn, prolongs the amusement of the scene by agreeing to tell Eulogios’ tale provided that the disciple prepares his meal. Eventually, both men return to their usual roles that are designed for each other: the storyteller and the story-listener.

An instance of the bored and incredulous listener can be found in the History of the Monks in Egypt – in the frame tale that involves Kopres (ch. 10), a monastic who is another great listener and teller of tales.⁵³ While Kopres tells one of his long stories, one of the listeners that belongs to the author-storyteller’s group is ‘overcome with incredulity’ (ἀπιστίᾳ) and falls asleep.⁵⁴ The incredulous listener then receives a divine dream which recreates the scene of the actual hearing of Kopres’ stories. In the dream, he sees himself and the others listening to Kopres, who reads from a magnificent book with gold letters. The scene also includes an otherworldly figure saying to the dreamer in a frightening way ‘are you dozing instead of listening attentively to the reading?’ (Οὐκ ἀκούεις προσεχῶς τοῦ ἀναγνώσματος, ἀλλὰ νυστάζεις;).⁵⁵ At these words, the man wakes up and becomes a storyteller in his turn, sharing his supernatural experience, which becomes a lesson on the act of story-listening. It teaches how to become an exemplary listener for one’s spiritual benefit.

The implied audiences of the tales under discussion are their ideal listeners or readers. Like the embedded audiences, implied audiences are also constructed within the texts through the storytellers’ words and behavior. First, storytellers directly address their implied audiences by using cajoling words and phrases, such as ‘most faithful’ (πιστότατοι),⁵⁶ ‘lovers of Christ’ (φιλόχριστοι),⁵⁷ ‘your fondness for listening’ (ὑμετέρα φιληκοΐα),⁵⁸ and ‘God-loving and dear brothers’ (φιλόθεοι καὶ ἀγαπητοὶ ἀδελφοί).⁵⁹ This flattering rhetoric is found in the prologues of tale collections and miscellanies and in different parts of individual tales: at the beginning of a tale, where they function as captatio benevolentiae; at various points during storytelling to direct the audience’s attention to particular parts of the tale, thus guiding its perception; and at the end of the tale, to point to the tale’s moral message.

The ideal audiences are those behaving like the exemplary embedded audiences that find the storyteller’s tales true, admirable, inspiring, edifying, and imitable. In addition to flattering their audiences, storytellers declare how they work to find tales with these characteristics. The author-storyteller of Thekla’s miracle tales, for instance, writes in the prologue of the collection: ‘I have made mention of people, places, and names, so that the audience has no doubts about these events, but rather can consider them from close up and examine the truth of what I have said’ (Διὰ τοῦτο δὲ προσώπων καὶ τόπων καὶ ὀνομάτων ἐμνημονεύσαμεν, ὥστε μηδὲ περὶ αὐτῶν τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας ἀμφιβάλλειν, ἀλλ’ ἐγγύθεν ἔχειν καὶ ποιεῖσθαι τὴν περὶ ὧν εἰρήκαμεν ἐξέτασιν τῆς ἀληθείας).⁶⁰ Even though, as the hagiographer remarks a little earlier, he has collected great numbers of Thekla’s miracles, he chooses to include in the collection only those miracles whose beneficiaries are contemporary or lived recently. All the miracles of the anthology derive from exclusively truthful sources which, as also manifested in Modestos, the source of Bassiane’s story analyzed above, he names and locates so that his audiences can at any time prove their veracity. As well as in prologues, the tales’ truthfulness is a recurrent theme also in individual tales and particularly in those that might seem too strange to be true.⁶¹

Concerning the tales’ admirable, imitable, and edifying character, we read in the prologue of the alphabetical collection of the Apophthegmata Patrum:

In this book, the virtuous asceticism and the admirable way of life and words of the holy and blessed fathers are written. They are meant to inspire and teach the ones who wish to imitate their heavenly conduct, so that they may make progress on the way leading to the kingdom of heaven.

Ἐν τῇδε τῇ βίβλῳ ἀναγέγραπται ἐνάρετος ἄσκησις καὶ θαυμαστὴ βίου διαγωγὴ καὶ ῥήσεις ἁγίων καὶ μακαρίων πατέρων πρὸς ζῆλον καὶ παιδείαν καὶ μίμησιν τῶν τὴν οὐράνιον πολιτείαν ἐθελόντων κατορθοῦν καὶ τὴν εἰς βασιλείαν οὐρανῶν βουλομένων ὁδεύειν ὁδόν.⁶²

As the criterion for choosing the miscellany’s contents – the virtuous ascetic lives and words of the holy desert fathers – their ability to provoke admiration is proclaimed. The implied audiences are prospective or current ascetics that through reading or listening to the book’s admirable, and therefore attractive, contents will acquire the needed knowledge and human examples leading them to the acquisition of their own holiness. As is the case with the tales’ veracity, so also their admirability and didacticism are repeatedly mentioned within individual tales of the examined corpus.⁶³

In contrast to the previous two audience categories (embedded and implied audiences), the intended audience is discernible in the prologues and epilogues of collections and miscellanies and not in individual tales. The intended audience might be the same as the implied audience, as suggested in the aforementioned prologue of the alphabetical collection of the Apophthegmata Patrum. In that case, groups of ascetics are both the implied and the intended audience of the text – they might, in fact, also be part of the work’s actual audiences, which are described in some detail below. As well as a group of persons (i.e. monastic communities, pilgrims, inhabitants of a city, sufferers seeking miraculous cures), the intended audience of a tale collection might be represented by just one individual, the person that inspires its creation, to whom the author devotes his work. A case in point is Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow, which is written for and devoted to the author’s most beloved friend and co-traveler Sophronios:⁶⁴

Think of the present work in the same way [as someone entering a meadow in spring] Sophronios, my sacred and faithful child. For in it, you will discover the virtues of holy men who have distinguished themselves in our own times […]. From among these I have plucked the finest flowers of the unmown meadow and worked them into a crown which I now offer to you, most faithful child; and through you, to all its readers and listeners. I have called this work meadow on account of the delight, the fragrance and the benefit which it will afford those who come across it […]. So I have striven to complete this composition to inform your love, oh child.

Τοιοῦτον δὲ καὶ τὸ παρὸν πόνημα ὑπολάμβανε, ἱερὸν καὶ πιστὸν τέκνον Σωφρόνιε. Εὑρήσεις γὰρ ἐν αὐτῷ ἀρετὰς ἁγίων ἀνδρῶν ἐν τοῖς χρόνοις ἡμῶν διαλαμψάντων· […] ἐξ ὧν τὰ καλὰ δρεψάμενος ἄνθη πλεκτὸν στέφανον ἀκηράτου λειμῶνος λαβὼν, προσφέρω σοι, τέκνον πιστότατον, καὶ διὰ σοῦ τοῖς πᾶσι. Διὸ καὶ τὸ παρὸν τοῦτο τὸ πόνημα Λειμῶνα ἀπεκαλέσαμεν, διὰ τὴν ἐν αὐτῷ τέρψιν τε καὶ εὐωδίαν, καὶ ὠφέλειαν τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσιν […]. Διὸ πρὸς τὸ παρὸν ἐλήλακα σύνταγμα, πληροφορῶν τὴν ὑμετέραν, τέκνον, ἀγάπην.⁶⁵

As suggested by the encomiastic phrases that Moschos uses to address Sophronios (‘my sacred and faithful child’ and ‘most faithful child’), the author considers the latter as both the ideal and the intended reader of his work, which he himself names leimōn (‘meadow’). Moschos uses the image of the meadow that flourishes in spring to achieve a triple purpose: to present his work method; to describe the nature of his text; and to explain its use. Moschos sees himself as a gardener entering a spring meadow that has beauties arresting the eyes and nostrils and charming the senses. Being an experienced gardener, Moschos can tell the flowers with the finest quality, which he plucks and turns into the most dazzling flower garland.

The creation of the floral crown (ἄνθη πλεκτὸν στέφανον) functions as a meta-poetic image of the anthologist’s workshop. The word ‘anthology’, deriving from the Greek work anthologia (ἀνθολογία), literally means flower-gathering. Just as the garland is created by flowers that are the best of the best, the collection consists of tales that are the best of the best. Moschos undertook this pleasant, yet difficult, task because he wanted to produce the most valuable work that he could offer as a powerful gift of love and friendship to Sophronios and through his friend to wider audiences. What is thus originally designed as a gift of friendship turns into a gift of philanthropy aspiring to provide delight and edification to the world at large. The fact that the Spiritual Meadow has been such a popular text throughout the ages constitutes the strongest indication of its use as both an entertaining and edifying text.⁶⁶

One important role of the first three audiences (fictional, implied, and intended) is to influence the perceptions of the final audience, that is, the actual (real) audience, either contemporary (primary) or posterior (secondary). Like the previous audiences, the actual reader or listener of the discussed works is also invited to find the tales similarly true, admirable, imitable, and edifying. As the preceding discussion has made clear, the tales appear as performances that are designed to have positive and edifying effects on all their audiences – inscribed, implied, intended, and real – that at times coexist, at times correspond, and at other times are inconsistent. It should be pointed out, however, that the three textually constructed audiences (inscribed, implied, and intended) cannot be taken as witnesses of actual audiences’ behaviors, since an author’s audience, to use the title of Walter Ong’s often-cited article, ‘is always a fiction’.⁶⁷ Being fictions, these audiences, as mentioned earlier, could be examined also from the point of view of storyness. Yet their possible impact on the texts’ actual audiences renders them inseparable from story-effect.

Through the storyteller and storyness all audiences are meant to be directed, while their thoughts and emotions are expected to be evoked and transformed. The audiences’ mental and emotive responses are particularly important, as they effect their immersion in the texts’ storyworlds, by means of which they may appreciate the stories as true or believable, admirable, inspiring, edifying, and even imitable.

Being used to describe the work of special people (e.g. monastics, pious laypeople), mirabilia (products of magic and oddities of nature and culture) and miracula (events of divine origin), as well as the feeling they evoke, it is not surprising that the word ‘wonder’, as both verb and noun, and its various derivatives and synonyms (e.g. thaumazō, thauma, thaumastos, thaumasios, thaumasmos, thaumasiourgēma, thaumasiourgia; paradoxos; semeion; teras; dynamis), are the most repeated words in early tales. People’s deeds are wonder-ful because they are beyond bodily pleasure and desire. Marvels are wonder-ful because they exceed human knowledge and expectations about nature and culture. Lastly, miracles are wonder-ful because they are produced by divine power and attest to its presence in the human world.

The tripartite tale theory (storyteller, storyness, and story-effect) that has been outlined here provides medievalists, short story scholars, and narratologists with a useful theoretical model, as it includes all the elements that exist for the sake of the story: its origin and circulation through retelling (storyteller and listeners who appear as potential storytellers), its form and characteristics (storyness and its relationship with that of other texts), and its power and impact on both intra-textual and extra-textual audiences (story-effect, both emotional and intellectual).