3.1 Disentangling the Web between Classical Antiquity, the Medieval West, and Byzantium: Smaller Poetic Forms

The Greek school curriculum developed a stable form during the Hellenistic and late antique eras, when a canon of literary texts to be studied in school was established and the textbooks in use for the next millennium were composed or compiled. In this way, Greek texts from the classical and Hellenistic eras became a cultural resource available to everyone with more than an elementary education and shaped the literary production of the Byzantine authors both directly and indirectly. The southern Italian Greek poets followed suit.

Several authors directly engaged with rhetorical exercises known from rhetorical training. Eugenios of Palermo composed a rebuke of the fly (poem 15), a rhetorical showpiece that offers a correction of Lucian of Samosata’s paradoxical Praise of a Fly, which inspired similar compositions throughout the Byzantine period.⁴¹ Eugenios quite aptly describes the rhetorical character of Lucian’s work at the beginning of his poem, saying that the author aimed to prove the “dexterity of his words” (τὴν ἐν λόγοις δύναµιν, line 2) by composing an encomium of an entirely unworthy creature. With his poem, Eugenios aims to set things right by composing a refutation of Lucian’s encomium, reminiscent of the rhetorical exercise of anaskeuē (refutation), taught in rhetorical textbooks such as that of Aphthonios. Of course, the intention of this poem is not to correct Lucian’s judgment – everybody would have understood the ironic character of his piece – but to enter into dialogue with a famous ancient author and to showcase his own erudition and literary mastery to his audience (the composition of which, however, we cannot identify). That Eugenios does so in verse might be seen as a choice intended to enhance this claim.⁴²

The Salentine John Grassos, whose work has been preserved in the same manuscript (Laur. Plut. 5.10), wrote another rhetorical exercise: a lament written from the perspective of the Trojan Queen Hecuba, given after the fall of Troy.⁴³ The poem largely depends on ancient tragedy in terms of both structure and wording,⁴⁴ with Euripides’ Hecuba and The Trojan Women standing out as an inspiration.⁴⁵ The rubric of the poem informs us that it is a rhetorical exercise (µελέτη) and, more specifically, an example of a pathetic ethopoiia (impersonation), a school exercise used to teach prose composition.⁴⁶ In fact, in the most important textbook of prose composition, Aphthonios’s Progymnasmata (fourth or fifth century), we find as an example of the pathetic ethopoiia: τίνας ἂν εἴποι λόγους Ἑκάβη κειµένης τῆς Τροίας (What Hecuba would have said on the fall of Troy) – the exact wording of the rubric to Grassos’s poem.⁴⁷ On the textual level, too, we find direct references to Aphthonios’s own sample ethopoiia, treating Niobe’s loss of her children, for instance in the wordplay on ἄπαις (childless), εὔπαις (with good children), πολύπαις (with many children), and καλλίπαις (with beautiful children), or various (desperate) rhetorical questions.⁴⁸ At the same time, Grassos’s Hecuba is a creative retelling of a story from the Trojan War, where the author combines the historical events about the city of Troy with the feelings of the protagonist as a mother. The poem was prompted by one of the most common school exercises but was turned into an independent literary work.

Even more complex in their relationship with Greek poetry and education are three long poems by Grassos, which form dialogues between a stranger and various mythological figures (Aphrodite, Leandros and Hero, Apollo), pondering on the forces of love (Eros). However, they are not love poems as we know them from western literature, including the famous contemporary Scuola siciliana, but deal with Eros and his power rather theoretically. They include references not only to ancient, but also to twelfth-century Byzantine literature in general, and in particular to the novel Drosilla and Charikles by Niketas Eugenianos.⁴⁹ This text not only influenced the verbal and rhetorical structure of the poems, but their very theme – the power of eros – is a focal point in Eugenianos (who, for his part, is deeply involved in a love discourse prevalent in twelfth-century Constantinople).⁵⁰ The first poem is called στίχοι πεπλασµένοι (fictional verses) in the rubric,⁵¹ which should be understood as an equivalent to the phrase τίνας ἂν εἴποι λόγους (“what … would have said”), a common opening to the rhetorical exercise of ethopoiia. In a way, these dialogues are indeed dramatized ethopoiiai, while the “stranger” as a dialogue partner is well known from tomb epigrams.⁵² Interestingly enough, the myth of Daphne and Apollo is used as an example by Aphthonios for the progymnasmata of anaskeuē (refutation) and kataskeuē (confirmation).⁵³ The incorporation of the topic of love into rhetorical exercises, which can themselves be seen as literary achievements, resembles the work of Nikephoros Basilakes (ca. 1115–after 1182), who in his Progymnasmata gives Eros a prominent position in his treatments of ancient mythology, for instance the story of Myrrha.⁵⁴ John Grassos, activating the cultural resources of the classics and the literary trends that emerged in Constantinople some decades before his lifetime, makes ample use of rhetorical exercises and devices to produce mythological dialogues without parallel in Byzantine poetry.

On other occasions, our authors did not only reach back to the cultural resources of ancient Greek literature, but also to Latin literature, which was unavailable to most writers in the Byzantine empire. One of the best examples in this respect is Eugenios of Palermo’s Poem 1, a long text extending to 207 iambic verses. According to the rubric, the poem was written while the author was in prison (exiled in Germany) and laments the unstable nature of fate.⁵⁵ The text has mainly been discussed for its imagery at the beginning of the poem (lines 16–41), which draws both from the Greek and Latin literary traditions. To describe the perils of fate, Eugenios refers to the ancient Greek Moirai, who spun the thread of fate, as well as to the wheel of fortune, which changes unpredictably the fate of individuals.⁵⁶ The latter is a direct reference not only to iconographic trends of the time, but also to the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius (c.480–524), in which the personified Philosophy describes at length the unstable conditions of life as a wheel, where one could be up at one moment, but down at the next. De Consolatione was extremely popular in the Latin West and an archetype of the prosimetrum (which will concern us again later). Thus, we find in Poem 1 a combination of ancient Greek myth (and hence common cultural inheritance in Byzantine literature) with a reference to a Latin “bestseller,” which was, however, largely unknown in the Byzantine world until Eugenios’s time.

In other southern Italian poems (mainly from Salento), the influence of Greek or Latin literature is less clearly expressed. Roger of Otranto is the author of a dispute between the cities of Taranto and Otranto, in which the latter denigrates Taranto, who tries to defend herself with the use of various biblical examples.⁵⁷ While the personification of the cities can be understood as a mode of the rhetorical exercise prosopopoiia (corresponding to the other form of personification, ethopoiia, but concerned with inanimate subjects), its eristic character does not find parallels in Byzantine learned literature. The rhetorical genre of synkrisis (comparison) does not include personalized opponents, but is usually written from a third-person perspective.⁵⁸ The verses are called στίχοι … ἐριστικοί (debate verses) in the rubric, a notion without parallel in Byzantine poetry collections. Dialogical poems have a certain tradition in Byzantium, albeit there are only few examples, stemming from various centuries.⁵⁹ Debate or combat poems in which two (or more) opponents fight over their superiority are rare.⁶⁰ By contrast, they have a long tradition in western literature and enjoyed a particular heyday at the court of Frederick II and his Scuola siciliana in the guise of love combats.⁶¹ Direct influence of other linguistic traditions on Roger, however, cannot be proven. What is more, Roger of Otranto’s poem does not include a full fight between both cities, but only Otranto attacking and Taranto defending itself. Furthermore, there is no judge to decide over the case at the end of the text, so that, overall, the poem cannot be classified as a debate poem (or Rangstreitgedicht) proper but remains a remarkable piece of versified polemic.

While the examples discussed so far especially demonstrate knowledge of the Byzantine school curriculum with all its connections to classical and late antique texts, as well as a certain explicit or implicit appropriation of Latin texts, we also find direct textual connections with (near) contemporary Constantinopolitan literature. In the twelfth century, we know of one poem written by a Byzantine poet who traveled all the way to Sicily. It is a short dedicatory epigram of six verses, written in honor of the Theotokos. The epigram was likely given as a gift to George of Antioch, to be inscribed on an icon. The author of the epigram is Theodore Prodromos, the chief poet in Constantinople in the second quarter of the twelfth century:

The poem is transmitted in a single manuscript (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Suppl. Gr. 125), which does not provide us with any hints about the original circumstances of its composition. Most probably, it was presented as a gift to George of Antioch sometime before 1147, when Corfu was seized by the Norman fleet.⁶³ In the epigram, the Virgin is asked to intercede with her son and set George free from his sins. What is interesting is that this short epigram resembles two anonymous dedicatory epigrams written for the Martorana church founded by George of Antioch, still extant as an inscription on a mosaic that includes a donor portrait.⁶⁴ Compare the dedicatory epigram inscribed next to the image of George bending his knees before the Mother of God:

This dedicatory epigram revolves around the same idea as the one by Prodromos, perfectly in line with the centuries-long tradition of epigrammatic writing. The Mother of God intercedes with her son to grant George and his family the remission of their sins. This is a good example of how two authors active around the same time in two different regions of the eastern Mediterranean wrote poetry which follows the same conventions (and even for the same addressee).

A number of Salentine epigrams are even directly modelled on poems by famous Byzantine authors, most importantly Christopher Mitylenaios and Theodore Prodromos.⁶⁶ Some epigrams on saints by Nicholas of Otranto rely entirely on the metrical calendar by Christopher Mitylenaios.⁶⁷ In fact, these tetrasticha can be seen as an amplification of the latter’s distichs.⁶⁸ Compare, for instance, the epigrams on the Dormition of the Theotokos by Nicholas and Christopher:⁶⁹

One of the manuscript witnesses of these epigrams, the codex Vat. gr. 1276, also contains parts of an epigram cycle by Theodore Prodromos, namely the Tetrasticha on the Old and New Testament (ff. 1–4 and 30–31).⁷² These were already enormously popular during the author’s lifetime and are extant in about 140 manuscripts. In a rubric of the Vatican manuscript, one learns that the exemplar of the Tetrasticha for this manuscript was incomplete. To solve this problem, Nicholas of Otranto penned substitute verses: Οὗτοι δὲ ἔλιπον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀντιγράφου, ἤτοι τοῦ λογχεύµατος καὶ τῆς ἀποκαθηλώσεως, οὓς ἀνεπλήρωσε Νικόλαος Ὑδροῦντος (These [verses] were missing from the exemplar, namely those on the thrust of the lance [of Longinus] and on the descent from the Cross, which Nicholas of Otranto filled in).⁷³ In accordance with this note, two epigrams in Prodromos’s style follow. There is no doubt that these epigrams are decidedly oriented towards Constantinople, where the composition of epigrams had flourished for centuries.

Although not as closely connected to other poems as these epigrams by Nicholas, a dialogical epitaph by his compatriot Theodotos of Gallipoli clearly took inspiration from the twelfth-century poet Nicholas Kallikles.⁷⁴ Not only did he imitate the dialogue form (of which earlier examples survive, especially from the Palatine Anthology), but he also repeats entire phrases.⁷⁵ In other poems, Theodotos’s verses are also highly dependent on other Salentine poets in terms of wording and rhetorical style.⁷⁶ George of Gallipoli was a special point of reference for him. Compare the close verbal parallels in Theodotos’s first epitaph, lines 41–42 (ὤφθη καταγώγιον εὔµουσον πάσης | τῆς ἑρµαϊκῆς πανσόφου ⟨τεχνουργίας⟩ [He was seen as a graceful lodging of every all-wise work of Hermes’ art]) and George of Gallipoli’s propemptikon (a poem expressing good wishes for a journey) for John Komnenos Batatzes, an official from Kerkyra (Corfu; Poem 1, lines 15 and 19: µαίευµα Μουσῶν, ἑρµοκίνητε λύρα | … | ὤφθης καταγώγιον ἀρετῆς πάσης [A child of Muses, a lyre struck by Hermes, …, you were seen as a lodging of every virtue]).⁷⁷ We find here two individuals working in the same city, Theodotos probably slightly younger than George, with close literary links.

Taking the diverse evidence from Sicily and Salento together, we find a complex and interwoven literary culture, where, in varying degrees, resources from classical antiquity, the Latin West, and Byzantium were activated. However, the Sicilian and Salentine poets do not always activate the same cultural resources, or when they do it is not manifested in the same way. In twelfth-century Sicily, the influence from the Latin tradition is expressed more explicitly than in Salento in the following two centuries. On the other hand, the importing of Constantinopolitan middle Byzantine poetry is documented to a much greater degree in Salento in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In Salento, there is a rather unusual degree of direct references to poets from the middle Byzantine period, suggesting that Byzantium, especially in terms of devotion and cult (as is the case with most epigrams), as well as education, was the most important point of reference for the southern Italian Greek culture of this time.

3.2 Storytelling in Verse: Sicilian Innovations

While in the case of smaller poetic forms disentangling the web of intertextual connections is a matter of close reading of single passages, the long narrative by Anonymous Malta offers a special case, where intertextuality and innovation are already visible on a structural level. As we have said, this mammoth supplicatory poem, addressed to George of Antioch, is one of the longest texts in dodecasyllables extant from the Byzantine period. However, more than sheer length, the compositional method stands out for its creativity and learned connections to literary tradition and trends. The bulk of the verses revolve around various independent stories, which are embedded in its framing narrative.

After the end of the prologue, the poet begins with a long excursus from Roman history which extends for approximately the next 160 verses (lines 50–197). Lines 50–175 recount how Julius Caesar rose to power thanks to his excellent military skills, and they even include the story that Rome appeared in his dreams asking him not to attack the city.⁷⁸ The poet then seeks to explain the origin of the name “Caesar” by referring to the story of his alleged birth by caesarean section (lines 176–87). In the final part of the story (lines 188–97), he speaks about the bronze statue in the temple of Divus Iulius, to which the people in Rome fled when they needed asylum. The digression about Julius Caesar, which actually consists of three different stories without strong links to each other, is only one of the many stories in the poem. The author makes use of a large number of such lengthy stories relating to various celebrated historical, mythological, and biblical figures, ranging from Julius Caesar and Justinian to Phaethon and Tantalos and Abraham and Moses. Dozens and dozens of names and stories of varying length make their appearance throughout the narrative. However, there is a thread weaving all these stories together: the strong self-referential nature of the poem as expressed through the ubiquitous appearances of the first-person narrator.⁷⁹

A story is frequently a starting point for the author to complain about his current situation, put forward a request, and argue for his innocence and devotion to the Norman power. Take, for example, lines 1809–24, which recount the tale of Tantalos, who, when a guest at a banquet held by the Olympian gods, stole nectar and ambrosia in order to offer it to the people. As a result of his wicked act, the poet says, Tantalos was punished by being made to stand in a river in India, completely unable to drink or reap fruits and eat.⁸⁰ Using this story as a point of departure, the speaker goes on to assert that he never did such a bad thing. Even so, his punishment was even more severe than that of Tantalos. Unlike Tantalos, who was thrown into a river, he was exiled to a place in the middle of the boundless sea. Although he had been completely devoted to Roger II, following him in all the battles the latter waged, he was nevertheless mistreated by his emperor. He was first sent into exile in Djerba⁸¹ and then to a place on the open sea (probably Malta). The anonymous author even introduces some descriptive passages about his situation during his exile, all of which are intended to underscore the intensity of his sufferings (lines 1877–96). There he was insulted and humiliated beyond bearing by barbarian foreigners; he was not even allowed to speak or sing any hymn;⁸² he was locked up hungry, thirsty, and completely naked in a tower; he had to sleep on the floor of his prison cell, which was full of red fleas, wild lice, bed bugs, and cockroaches. In addition to the story of Tantalos, this part of the poem (lines 1809–2178) teems with various other mythological stories (involving Phaethon, Thereus and Prokne, Syrinx and Pan), all of which aim to emphasize the poet’s guiltlessness and his full devotion to Roger II and George of Antioch.

The poem frequently includes themes which are popular in works written in Constantinople around the same time. Lines 2112–20 ponder the destructive power of envy (phthonos), a motif that permeates the narrative of many texts written in Constantinople around the same time.⁸³ By quoting John Chrysostom, the poet asserts that envy gives birth to murder.⁸⁴ To illustrate this maxim for his addressee he goes on to recount the entire story of the Thracian king Tereus, who caused the envy in his wife Procne when she learned that he had raped her own sister (lines 2126–72): a borrowing from the opening of book 5 of Achilles Tatius’s novel Leucippe and Clitophon and thus another example of the complex intertextual interconnections of this text.

Furthermore, throughout the poem there is a strong interest in local history and mythological tales associated with Sicily. In lines 1188–328 the anonymous poet recounts the story of the region. He starts with a brief reference to the king Italos born in Sicily, but then the narrative switches abruptly to the mythological background of the region, referring to Scylla and Charybdis as well as the sirens and the cyclops.⁸⁵ The poet even mentions the story of Empedocles who threw himself into Mount Etna to prove his immortality.⁸⁶ He then refers to the provinces of Italy and says that Sicily is the sixteenth.⁸⁷ This emphasis on the history of the author’s (and the addressee’s) place of dwelling, taken together with the many motifs and stories which are commonplace in Byzantine literature, mirror on the level of content what we have discerned on a structural level: the combination of ancient and medieval Greek literature and learning with references to specific Latin texts and more general trends in the medieval West.

The narrative structure of the poem and the use of so many embedded tales have been the subject of some scholarly discussion in recent years. Marc Lauxtermann has described most of these tales as exempla (παραδείγµατα), arguing for a strong relationship between the Greek poem and the Latin literary tradition because of the popularity of exempla in medieval Latin texts.⁸⁸ According to the same scholar, the use of exempla along with the use of Latin sources (mainly Ovid and Boethius), the occasional use of Latin-like grammatical constructions, and the inclusion of entire verses in Latin sets the work of this anonymous poet apart from the works of contemporary Constantinopolitan peers and indicates his position at the intersections of the two traditions.⁸⁹ Carolina Cupane has followed Lauxtermann’s suggestion about the relationship between the poem and the western Latin tradition of exempla, although she has also pointed out some differences from the Latin tradition. For example, unlike western texts, the poem makes little use of hagiographies.⁹⁰ At the same time, it should be emphasized that not all the references to stories of the past are so lengthy. Some of them are shorter digressions resembling techniques typical of poetry written in Constantinople.⁹¹ For example, the story of Rahab, who helped the Israelites to conquer Jericho by hiding two spies, is told in just three verses (lines 3226–29).⁹²

Other scholars have been harsh in their appraisals of the poem’s narrative structure, maintaining that the text lacks a narrative coherence, since the ties between the various stories are not particularly strong and the transitions from one story to another are not always smooth.⁹³ When compared to works of Theodore Prodromos, it has been argued that it is void of any coherence.⁹⁴ However, one must underline that most of Prodromos’s works are much shorter than the anonymous poem and very different in character. Furthermore, in a medieval text, coherence and narrative follow rules that are very different from what some modern readers would expect.⁹⁵ Another factor might be that the episodic structure is inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which are composed of various narrative units. Finally, the author stays in control of the narrative of his work by inserting various metapoetic statements. For example, in line 2636 he addresses himself saying: “Μᾶλλον µέµνησαι σοῦ προγεγραφηκότο” (Rather, remember what I have written before), which is a reference to lines 693-1063, which include the story of the tabernacle and a comparison of Roger to the Holy of Holies and George of Antioch to the Holy Place.

Even so, the wealth of information and stories as well as the labyrinthine character of the narrative are likely to have posed various challenges both for the initial recipient of the poem (George of Antioch) and its later readers. To cope with this challenge and facilitate the reading, the scribe of Matrit. 4577 added, approximately one hundred years later, a large number of marginal notes (226 in total) to various sections of the poems.⁹⁶ These notes aim to inform the reader about the theme treated in a particular section of the poem. For example, in the second line of the section about Julius Caesar (line 51) the scribe notes: Καίσαρος ὄντως: περὶ [τοῦ Ἰουλ]ίου [Κ]αί[σαρος] (Caesar verily: about Julius Caesar). On the one hand, this would have offered the reader the possibility of deriving benefit from these stories without reading the entire text. On the other hand, even when reading the poem from beginning to end, these notes would help the reader to keep track of the narrative.

The pragmatic aim of Anonymous Malta was to persuade George of Antioch of the innocence of the author, but the author’s literary and aesthetic ambitions are clearly visible from the elaboration and the richness of his text, presumably seeking to instruct and amuse the recipient of the poem. We must therefore infer that the poet and his addressee shared a vivid interest in storytelling and the use of poetry as its medium. Around the same time, textual production in Constantinople experienced the emergence of a close relationship between storytelling and verse form. Many authors started writing and telling various kinds of stories in a metrical form. This fashion was not limited to the Komnenian novels, most of which prove to be long narrative poems – though with a very different narrative structure and thematic focus than the anonymous Sicilian poem.⁹⁷ Two other long narrative poems from mid-twelfth-century authors lend themselves as comparative texts.

The first of these is a chronicle by the well-known author Constantine Manasses (ca. 1115–1175),⁹⁸ a work addressed to Eirene the Sevastokratorissa, comprising a narrative history from the creation of the world through the year 1081, when the Komnenian dynasty acceded to the Byzantine throne. The second work is the so-called Histories by John Tzetzes (ca. 1110–1180), an extensive commentary (over 12,000 lines in political verse) written for his own letter collection. Both texts are structured around a large number of different stories. Unlike most of the Byzantine chronicles, in which the description of events is arranged year by year or according to reigns, Manasses’s work is divided into self-contained episodes which aim to retain the interest of his addressee.⁹⁹ Tzetzes’s work mainly consists of numerous episodes describing in detail a wide array of historical, mythological, and biblical events. However, it should be emphasized that the Histories were not meant to be a coherent self-contained text, although they are represented as such in their modern edition. All these tales were meant to be read in conjunction with the letters and to be used as explanatory accounts for the complicated references included in these texts.

The Sicilian poem shares some characteristics (mainly the accumulation of knowledge and the element of instruction) with these two contemporary Constantinopolitan narrative poems, but it also exhibits many major differences regarding method and structure. Unlike Manasses and Tzetzes, the anonymous poet narrates the majority of his stories through the use of exempla. We noted that the poet was well versed in Latin and was probably influenced by the Latin literary tradition and language in many respects. However, the background of the creation of this work might be even more complicated. A certain text from a third tradition (beyond the Latin and the Byzantine ones) may have inspired the anonymous author in the way he structured the narrative of his text: that is, the Arabic work Kalīla wa-Dimna, which was translated into Greek in Byzantium under the new title Stephanites and Ichnelates. This text became fully accessible to the Greek-speaking communities of Sicily much later, through the so-called Eugenian version,¹⁰⁰ but it was known in this region as well as in the Byzantine empire long before Eugenios’s time. Firstly, the first Greek translation survives in fragments in a southern Italian manuscript of the early eleventh century: New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Ms. M 397.¹⁰¹ And secondly, Symeon Seth, sometime towards the end of the eleventh century, produced a Greek adaptation of Kalīla wa-Dimna in Constantinople. It is even possible that the original Kalīla wa-Dimna was circulating in Sicily, since Arabic featured prominently in the multi-cultural environment of the court.

It is not certain that the author had direct knowledge of this work either in the Arabic original or via a Greek adaptation. What is certain is that the general narrative structure of this eastern work and the anonymous poem is very similar. Both works consist of an overarching narrative framework filled with numerous exempla. In Kalīla wa-Dimna/Stephanites and Ichnelates, the narrative framework is a dialogue between the king of the Indians and a philosopher, mainly revolving around the concept of friendship. All the embedded stories assume the form of exempla, in which the protagonists are animals. In the Sicilian poem by Anonymous Malta, the narrative frame is the supplication addressed to George of Antioch to prove the author’s innocence, while the exempla include myths, as well as historical and biblical tales. Even the manuscript transmission of the anonymous poem and Stephanites and Ichnelates in southern Italian circles in the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries has some similarities. Like the manuscript transmitting the anonymous poem, the Eugenian version of Stephanites and Ichnelates includes many rubrics which guide the reader through the wealth of stories.¹⁰² This is an example of how two texts which include so many narrative layers and embedded stories in the form of exempla were copied and read in southern Italy.

Anonymous Malta was the first Greek-speaking author to make use of this type of narrative in southern Italy, approximately fifty years before the translation of Eugenios of Palermo. Presumably, this type of narrative would have satisfied George of Antioch, the addressee of the poem, who knew Arabic and was possibly familiar with Kalīla wa-Dimna. As we will see, in the opening lines of the poems the author even calls for the attention of the addressee, since he frequently pays heed to the barbarians (presumably the Arabic-speaking Muslims) and their stories.

Be that as it may, the anonymous poem, with its double narrative structure (narrative framework and exempla), represents a new development in the history of Greek narrative in verse in the medieval period. Even though it is not the only narrative Greek poem in the twelfth century to be based on an agglomeration of various single episodes, it is very different from the projects undertaken by Constantine Manasses and John Tzetzes in Constantinople. It is a paramount example of a Sicilian innovation resulting from the activation of various cultural resources (Greek, Latin, and possibly Arabic).

4.1 Patronage and Politics at and around the Court

Aristocratic patronage, both by the emperor and larger aristocratic circles, has been amply demonstrated to have been a driving force behind the production of Byzantine poetry, especially from the eleventh century onwards, when more and more authors tried to make their living, at least partially, from writing (and selling) rhetorical texts.¹⁰³ In addition, poets used their literary products to foster their social position and strengthen their relationship with the highest echelons of society. Patronage could thus take different forms: direct financial remuneration, lifting (or lowering) a poet’s social position, or fulfilling (or denying) an author’s pleas.

However unusual the text of Anonymous Malta might be, its direct social environment is very familiar from Byzantine supplicatory poetry. Unfortunately, the poem lacks its title and the opening lines in its single manuscript. What survives from the prologue are thirty-nine verses,¹⁰⁴ which constitute a typical captatio benevolentiae directed to the poem’s addressee, George of Antioch. The following verses, however, demonstrate its profound embeddedness in the multilingual and multiethnic Sicilian society:

The request to an addressee to heed the speaker’s words is commonplace in supplicatory poems. Yet, to undergird his argument, the anonymous poet claims that George even lends an attentive ear to “barbarians,” presumably Arabic-speaking Muslims, thus implying that as part of the Greek community the author was in a higher position and should thus all the more be heard.¹⁰⁶ As explained above, the primary aim of Anonymous Malta was to convince his addressee that he did not do any harm. Hence, he asks George to convince the emperor forgive him. The poet further asks the addressee to forgive him in advance for all the shortcomings of his composition. If some parts of his work make no sense and seem to be inappropriate, it is, the poet claims, because he has been overcome with grief. Despite the difficulty of his current situation, he wishes, with the help of the divine Logos, to be able to reach his final destination, comparing his endeavor to that of a ship that strives to reach a secure harbor while seeking protection from the perils of the sea – a common metaphor in Byzantine panegyric and supplicatory poetry.

It is difficult to reconstruct all the details of the original occasion and the exact circumstances of how the poem was performed. Was it read in the Norman court upon the return of the anonymous poet, or in Malta during a visit by George of Antioch? Due to its length, further questions arise such as whether it was read without interruption or with breaks, and whether the poet in fact experienced hardships in Malta as severe as described, or whether the situation recorded by the literary persona differed widely from the actual events.¹⁰⁷ In any case, the poem amply demonstrates how the desire to elicit help from George was the reason behind the composition of this innovative narrative poem, which contains many encomiastic sections dedicated to both George of Antioch and Roger II.

George of Antioch also seems to have fostered the increase in the production of verse in Sicily in the second quarter of the twelfth century, not only in the case of Anonymous Malta. In the beginning of the 1140s, he finished the building of the Martorana church in Palermo (now called Santa Maria dell’ Ammiraglio), which manifests the apex of his socio-political position in the Norman capital.¹⁰⁸ On this occasion he commissioned an anonymous author to write metrical inscriptions and even epitaphs for him, his wife, and his mother.¹⁰⁹ As we have mentioned earlier, Theodore Prodromos penned an epigram for George, thus proving his popularity and activity as literary patron far beyond the borders of the Norman kingdom. On a broader level of literary patronage, George might even have been the person who commissioned the well-known manuscript Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS Vitr. 26–2 [hereafter Madrid Vitr. 26–2], copied in the scriptorium of the monastery of San Salvatore in Messina (not for Roger II, as has recently been argued),¹¹⁰ the famous illuminated copy of the historical account by the eleventh-century Byzantine author John Scylitzes.¹¹¹ The text of the History is accompanied by eleven poems added in various places across the manuscript.¹¹² Two of the poems seem to be of southern Italian provenance, probably by a Sicilian copyist,¹¹³ while the remaining nine poems are of Constantinopolitan origin, which is another example of how poetry from the capital was imported into southern Italy. Even though the textual remnants of Sicilian poetry are much fewer in number than those from Constantinople, we can discern that the general pattern of patronage by high-ranking officials is similar to that of Byzantium.

In contrast, we know of only one Greek poem which was directly addressed to a Norman king: a panegyric by Eugenios of Palermo to King William (most likely William II, 1153–1189, r. 1166–1189). As suggested by Carolina Cupane, the poem might have been performed during William’s second enthronement, held on the day of his second marriage in 1177. This is further supported by poem 21, a text of essayistic nature about the political system of kingship, written for a newly crowned king.¹¹⁴ One could argue that poem 22 was given as gift together with poem 24 to William, to impart political knowledge to the king. In general, poem 24 follows the rules of the imperial oration: King William was chosen by God (lines 3–7), he is of imperial birth (lines 29–35), he performed deeds of war (vv. 36–55) and deeds of peace (lines 56–80).¹¹⁵ Eugenios even makes use of imagery from Constantinopolitan imperial panegyrics that were especially popular during the reign of William’s slightly older contemporary, Manuel I Komnenos (1118–1180, r. 1143–1180), fostered, among others, by Theodore Prodromos. For example, the king shines even more brightly than the sun (lines 8–9), or he is compared to a lion, whose sharp claws and roaring make all his enemies tremble with fear (lines 41–42). However, images such as the ruler as a master over time or the victor over fate might also link the text to Arabic encomiastic poems.¹¹⁶

The strong connection to the highest court circles in the case of Anonymous Malta and Eugenios do not come as a surprise when looking at their position. In many places in his work the anonymous poet claims that he was in the service of George of Antioch,¹¹⁷ while Eugenios of Palermo was an official holding the titles of magister and director of the duana baronum and ἀµηρᾶς (admiral). However, there must have been a larger Greek-speaking local elite with an interest in poetry.¹¹⁸ Again, epigrammatic poetry provides us with some apt evidence. Take Messina, Biblioteca Regionale Universitaria ‘Giacomo Longo’, S.S. San Salvatore, MS 20 [hereafter Mess. S. Salv. 20], a twelfth-century manuscript transmitting John Chrysostom’s homilies on the four gospels, which on fol. 222v includes a short poem of seventeen lines that offers more details about the circumstances of the production of the book and its content.¹¹⁹ The poem is a book epigram, a very popular type of metrical text in Byzantium.¹²⁰ According to the text, the book was commissioned by a logothetes called Leo and his wife Anna.¹²¹ Leo also had the title of protoproedros, a middle-ranking court title created during the time of the emperor Alexios I (1048–1118, r. 1081– 1118). He was also listed next to Norman rulers in the will of Gregory (1105), the abbot of the monastery St. Philip of Fragalà, which might have been the original place of the manuscript’s production.¹²²

In the thirteenth century, the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II became a focal point of poetic production, first and foremost in the Italian vernacular.¹²³ The famous Scuola siciliana, a group of poets inspired by the Occitan troubadours, wrote poems about courtly love in Italian and were to become some of the main models of later Italian poetry and literary language.¹²⁴ Additionally, we possess numerous Latin poems from Frederick’s lifetime and connected to his court, as well as Greek poems which are connected to the Hohenstaufen regime in their polemical and political tone (and entirely different from the Italian poetry).¹²⁵ The Salentine poets leave no doubt about their support of the crown and, maybe because of the (more ideological than merely geographical) distance from the Byzantine empire, their texts show a special degree of literary freedom and experimentation. Yet patterns of patronage and literary readership changed dramatically.

Deeply entangled with the politics of its day is a poem by John Grassos, who served as an imperial notary at the Hohenstaufen court and fully supported the emperor and the Ghibelline party. As a court official, he was responsible for the translation of Frederick II’s letters to Epiros and Nikaia into Greek, and hence would have been intimately familiar with the court and its political affairs.¹²⁶ From a letter of George Bardanes (d. c.1240), metropolitan of Kerkyra, dated to early 1230, we know that John wrote encomiastic texts, possibly poems, in favor of Frederick II, for which the letter writer praises him with regard to his accurate language and script.¹²⁷ While no (verse) panegyrics by John survive, we possess one metrical pamphlet, written during the siege of the city of Parma under Frederick II in 1247/48, when the emperor fought against the papal party (and ultimately experienced a bitter defeat). The rubric explains the events in detail and mentions that John composed the verses “on the spot” (αὐθωρί), documenting that John was an eyewitness. In the text, Parma itself is addressed and dispraised for her infidelity.¹²⁸ In an etymological wordplay, John explains that the city was built out of mud on a swamp (πάλµα), but was later called Parma (Πάρµα).¹²⁹ Yet, he argues, in reprisal for the city’s renunciation of the emperor in favor of the pope, Frederick will once again turn her into mud. Noteworthy for its content in itself, the reception of this poem tells us even more about the circulation of Greek political poetry in southern Italy. John’s pupil George, chartophylax of Gallipoli and as such responsible for the archive of the church, wrote a poem on the same occasion intimately related to John’s poem in thought and wording.¹³⁰ George too plays with etymology (slightly less skillfully than John), stating that instead of the palm of the hand (παλάµη), Parma should now be translated as the sole of the foot (πέλµα), and would soon be trampled down by the imperial troops, as it was experiencing unbearable throbbing (παλµός) and pain of the heart.

While the importance of the siege of Parma for Frederick’s war against the papacy explains why John and, following him, George commemorated the event, the audience of their poems is not completely clear. It has been suggested that John found his audience amongst the Greek troops present at Parma in Frederick’s service.¹³¹ Leaving aside the question of the historicity of this account, it is unlikely (and would be highly unusual) for John to have penned his rhetorical, high-register verses for soldiers, whose classical education (if existent) would not have been very advanced. More telling is the information from the poem’s rubric stating that he sent it to his son, Nicholas of Casole (πρὸς τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐκεῖθεν τούτους ἀπέστειλεν). Seen in this light, it seems that, while triggered by the political situation, the poem was primarily written for the Salentine literati and not for Frederick’s court. Presumably circulated in Salento by Nicholas of Casole, the poem inspired a poetic response from George, who, as a chartophylax of Otranto, was part of the local elite. Thus, despite the obvious ideological connection to the Hohenstaufen regime, there is no evidence that the text would have circulated outside the Greek Salentine community.

Another poem by George of Gallipoli is for the most part a prosopopoeia (personification) of the city of Rome, who laments her current state, praises Frederick abundantly, and expresses her highest hopes of regaining her ancient splendor when he arrives and introduces a new pope.¹³² The text is a Ghibelline propaganda piece, wholeheartedly supporting Frederick in his war against the papacy after Pope Gregory IX had excommunicated him when his attempt to start a new crusade had failed. Literarily, however, the inspiration for this poem may have come from a poem by Theodore Prodromos, in which the personified city of Constantinople speaks and welcomes the emperor back on the occasion of a triumphal entry into the city.¹³³ Despite some attempts by other scholars, it is not possible to draw direct connections to the literary tradition of the Hohenstaufen court.¹³⁴ For instance, the expression “τὸ θαῦµα τῆς οἰκουµένης” (marvel of the inhabited world, line 21), cited as a proof of western influence, appears in several Greek poems, among them texts by Theodore Prodromos and Eugenios of Palermo, and does not echo similar motifs in the Latin tradition (in particular Frederick as the stupor mundi).¹³⁵ The description of the emperor and the ideal of a new pope, too, is rooted in Greek traditions of imperial and ecclesiastical virtues.¹³⁶ In sum, George wrote a perfect political pamphlet in favor of the Hohenstaufen court, which was, however, entirely couched in Greek (Constantinopolitan and Sicilian) literary expression.¹³⁷

Yet the concluding lines of the poem offer further insights into its intended reception. George, calling himself a humble servant and chartophylax, offers the text to Frederick as a tribute (φόρος) (lines 101–3), suggesting that the author tried to use the piece to get closer to the emperor. This is confirmed by a short epigram following the text and directed to John Grassos, in which George asks the latter to use his verses to gain Frederick’s goodwill.¹³⁸ However, there is no evidence that George substantially advanced his career, as the only office that is mentioned in the text and rubrics of his poems remains chartophylax. His poem is the only one from Salento directed to the emperor to gain patronage – a marked difference to the poetry from the Byzantine Empire, where this was among the most important aims of poets. Moreover, this endeavor seems to have borne little fruit.

George’s political standing is further elucidated by two poems dealing with the doors of the episcopal palace and the church respectively. The first one was written on the occasion of the (re-)building of the palace.¹³⁹ The personified door (πύλη) reports that no bars or bolts were necessary for the church’s protection; instead, the artist had put an eagle on the top and two lions on each side of the door, representing the imperial protection of Frederick II (thus offering the terminus ante quem of the poem, namely Frederick’s death in 1250). It ends with the statement that bishop Pantoleon had erected this gate.¹⁴⁰ George wrote a second poem considerably later, when the political winds had changed. The occasion was the plundering of the church by some unnamed priests, who had broken in through the doors (πύλαι), by the order of their bishop.¹⁴¹ The unspecified speaker expresses bitter hatred for the invaders and their leader, whom he calls Ahab (line 3), an Israelite king, who is presented in the Bible as a wicked worshipper of Baal who, supporting his wife, suppressed the Jews and destroyed their temples (see 1 Kings 16:29–34). As demonstrated by Acconcia Longo, George here refers to Charles I of Anjou’s siege and plundering of Gallipoli in 1268–69.¹⁴² In his contempt for Charles, George proves his lasting Ghibelline attitude, strongly condemning the new Angevin dynasty. But the texts are also noteworthy from a non-political perspective, as a poem by Nicholas of Otranto should be placed in largely the same historical context. It is written from the perspective of a mansion (παλάτιον) and bemoans the threats posed to it by jealous Otrantines, presumably followers of Charles of Anjou.¹⁴³ The similarities between these poems (speaking buildings, external threats, etc.) are too obvious to be a mere coincidence. It is reasonable to suggest that these poems were written in a literary exchange between George and Nicholas, with Nicholas referring back to George’s poem written some two decades earlier, and both responding to each other’s works in dramatically changed political circumstances.

The political poems from Salento are extraordinary in their multiformity. Ideologically in strong support of the Hohenstaufen regime, but literarily couched in the Byzantine tradition, these texts exhibit an enormous degree of literary freedom and (idiosyncratic) creativity. However, although they were partially written in proximity to Frederick, unlike the poetry of the Scuola siciliana, his court was not the nucleus of their literary activities. John Grassos is the only poet who was evidently close to Frederick, in his position as a secretary, while the other poems were without doubt penned in Salento. The question who the audience for these political poems was remains partially unanswered. George of Gallipoli’s poem on Rome is the only one directly addressed to a non-Greek member of the court, namely to Frederick himself, but even so it is mediated through John Grassos, who is asked to deliver it to the emperor. Since the evidence as to whether Frederick knew Greek is inconclusive, it seems unlikely that he would have understood a difficult high-register Greek poem.¹⁴⁴ Even Grassos’s Parma poem is not addressed to the court but was sent to his son in Salento. In the case of the two Parma poems, as well as that of the three poems written from the perspective of a building, it is obvious that the poets wrote their verses in dialogue with each other.

Overall, it seems that these poems were written for the Greek-speaking community in Salento: an Orthodox group with a strong cultural background in Byzantine literature, but indisputably Hohenstaufen subjects. When compared to twelfth-century Sicily, one important difference can be spotted: while Sicilian poetry, with all its peculiarities, resembles contemporary Constantinopolitan poetry in terms of patronage mechanisms – including the relationship with the court of bureaucrats –, patronage played a minor role in poetry writing in Salento. Political events, and not persons belonging to the court and its circle, triggered the composition of poetry, which would then circulate within the learned community of the area.

4.2 Education and Verse Writing

Schools were another hotspot of both composition and consumption of poetry throughout the Byzantine era, including the continual preoccupation with ancient poetry and the composition of new poems for classroom use. As in Constantinople, rhetorical theory and training were essential to verse writing in southern Italy, and traces of it can be found in the corpus of every author. Just think of Anonymous Malta and the wealth of mythological and historical stories he tells, inconceivable without a solid education.

In the Salentine poetic corpus, however, education plays a much more vital role, and its importance can be traced back to the very “founder” of the Salentine poetic community, Nektarios of Casole. His pupil Palaganos, for instance, penned a metrical rewriting of the first half of a letter by Aristainetos (c. fifth to sixth c.), likely produced in an educational setting, and added it in the margins of the prose letter in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS phil. gr. 310.¹⁴⁵ The mythological dialogues and the ethopoiia by John Grassos that we discussed above might likewise have a school context, but there is insufficient evidence to prove this hypothesis. Most important, however, are the numerous southern Italian manuscripts including schede, composed by both Constantinopolitan and Salentine authors.¹⁴⁶

Schedography emerged in eleventh-century Constantinople and then took off as a school, and even literary, practice in the twelfth century.¹⁴⁷ Schede often consisted of two parts – one in prose and one in verse – and were designed to teach orthography and grammar. Salentine schoolmasters wrote schede themselves, among them the twelfth- or thirteenth-century teacher Nicholas of Soleto and his colleague Stephanos of Nardò, who must be dated to between the second half of the twelfth and the fourteenth century.¹⁴⁸ Stephanos of Nardò, for example, wrote a schedos in the form of a hagiographical account of the martyrdom of Blaise of Sebaste. The text opens with the teacher asking his student to pay heed to his tale, before the former starts narrating the story of the martyr and how he was persecuted and beheaded. The schedos concludes with verses addressing the twelve apostles, asking them to accept Blaise as a new apostle.

Schedography also connects teachers from the early thirteenth century to their colleagues one hundred years later. In fact, the codex Vat. gr. 1276 (cited above) was produced in Aradeo in the context of the school led by Drosos of Aradeo around the year 1300, as was Laur. Plut. 5.10.¹⁴⁹ This schoolmaster, preacher, and philosopher, expert in Aristotle and liturgical theory,¹⁵⁰ wrote an epigram addressed to the Theotokos, in which he asks the Theotokos herself to help him master schedography.¹⁵¹ Other poems by him can be placed with ease into a classroom context. Among them is a tetrastichon designed to help students memorize the aorist of φαγεῖν (to eat) and πιεῖν (to drink).¹⁵² More sophisticated is an epigram that he wrote for the entrance of a school where two dogs were depicted and warns those wanting to enter that the dogs would “secretly bite” (λαθροδάκνης) every disrespectful person. The pun is that the text refers to an epigram by Antiphanes (first c. BC), which is transmitted in the Greek Anthology.¹⁵³ This latter text vituperates teachers as enemies of true poeticality, who afflict their pupils with their quibbles, and the author describes them as “bitter and dry dogs” and “bugs that secretly bite (λαθροδάκνης) the eloquent.”¹⁵⁴ Drosos inverts this image, since his secretly- biting dogs are the watchdogs of the school, who help to humble the haughty.¹⁵⁵ Whether the epigram was in fact inscribed at a school entrance cannot be proven and might be doubted, in view of the lack of comparative examples; it might just as well have been used in the classroom. The one, of course, does not exclude the other.

Coincidence or not, the picture which emerges from the school context is quite the opposite from the one relating to patronage. Education was a major background for poetry composition in Salento, whereas we do not possess a single poem from Sicily that can be ascribed with certainty to an educational context.¹⁵⁶ While Sicilian poets partook of patronage relationships not unlike those in Constantinople, Salentine poets were closer to the capital when it came to the use of poetry in a teaching setting.

4.3 Church and Monasticism

Practical needs in churches and monasteries inspired the literary production of Byzantium. Likewise, although extremely diversified, the southern Italian Greek poetic corpus was highly shaped by devotional and liturgical practices, reflected in the production of religious epigrams, metrical vitae, and even liturgical hymns.

Most of the liturgical poetry from twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern Italy seems to have been written by Eugenios of Palermo. A group of unedited canons addressed to the Mother of God and St. Demetrios is attributed to him. These hymns are not transmitted together with his “secular” poems or religious epigrams in the Salentine manuscript Laur. Plut. 5.10. Instead, they were included in Escorial, Biblioteca Real, MS X.IV.8, a liturgical manuscript copied in Messina in the thirteenth century.¹⁵⁷ The particularity of these hymns is that they were written in iambic meter (some of them have even a hexametric acrostich), which is a rather uncommon type of hymnography in Byzantium.¹⁵⁸ It has been suggested that these hymns are addressed to the Mother of God and St. Demetrios in Palermo, two popular religious figures in many iconographic programs in Norman churches, also serving the Sicilian imperial propaganda machine.¹⁵⁹

Throughout the Middle Ages, hagiography was highly popular in southern Italy, both in the reception of earlier texts and in the production of new texts.¹⁶⁰ Hagiography being perhaps the most popular narrative form in Byzantium, this is hardly surprising. However, in Sicily, hagiography is in several cases connected with poetry – a rather rare nexus. For, unlike the medieval Latin literary tradition, which saw an immense popularity in the use of verse for the composition of vitae,¹⁶¹ in Byzantium writing hagiographic works in verse form was not a widespread practice.¹⁶² Two poems by Eugenios of Palermo give us information about such compositions. Eugenios’s poems 17–19 are addressed to an Apulian priest called Kalos, who was based in the region of Brindisi, and poems 17 and 18 in particular seem to be one part of a correspondence of these two. In poem 17, Eugenios addresses the priest by calling him a friend of logoi, saying that he will respond to his request to compose an account of the life of St. Agatha because the one composed by the priest Kalos did not live up to the standards of good metrical writing. Poem 18 is once again addressed to the priest Kalos, asking him to accept the verses he asked for. While poem 17 was sent to Kalos before the production of the metrical vita by Eugenios, poem 18 seems to have been sent together with the vita after its composition. The first poem seems to have been sent after Kalos had sent a poem to Eugenios together with the metrical vita of Agatha. While this is an indirect witness of the innovative features of Sicilian hagiography, luckily we possess some texts that confirm this practice.

The codex Mess. San Salv. 30, written in the monastery of San Salvatore in Messina in the year 1307 by the scribe Daniel, is the first part of a menologion in two volumes, the second of which survives in the same library, Mess. San Salv. 29. A menologion, a book that contains hagiographical texts in the order of the liturgical year, was used for readings in church or in the monastic refectory. The special value of the volumes in Messina lies in their content, for they contain not only metaphrastic and pre-metaphrastic texts, but also various vitae of local saints, for which they provide the codex unicus. What is more, in southern Italy the Greek liturgical practice, although very close to the Byzantine one, included the veneration of some western saints, which of course necessitated the production of Greek texts for these figures. One way to solve this challenge was to translate western vitae, and indeed our manuscripts include a number of Greek translations from Latin vitae.¹⁶³ Most importantly in the present context, however, Mess. San Salv. 30 preserves several metrical texts, namely two anonymous verse vitae or miracle stories and two prosimetric vitae by Leo the grammarian.

The first is the Life and Miracles of Saint Nicholas (BHG 1350m),¹⁶⁴ which in fact focusses on a single miracle: the story of the three generals who were saved by the saint after having been accused of treachery by the city eparch Ablabius, who had been bribed.¹⁶⁵ Unfortunately, the composition of the text cannot be dated, but the copying of the codex in 1307 provides us with a (very tentative) terminus ante quem. Interestingly enough, from the synaxarion of the monastery of S. Salvatore, founded in 1131, we learn that the metaphrastic vita would have been read during orthros of December 6, Nicholas’s feast day, while the story of his miracles would have been read later in the refectory.¹⁶⁶ We are even told that one should look for the miracles in “the great panegyrikon” (ζήτει αὐτὰ εἰς τὸ πανηγυρικὸν µέγα βιβλίον). Some later additions in the synaxarion confirm the use of Mess. San Salv. 30 and 29 in the liturgy, as they specify that the readings of certain texts come from the book “by our brother Daniel,” that is the scribe of our menologion.¹⁶⁷ Although it is not entirely clear if the menologion Mess. San Salv. 30 and 29 is the “great panegyrikon” mentioned in the synaxarion, we would expect the meal time in the refectory to be the place where our verse vita would have been read.

The second metrical work is the vita of Leo of Catania in 407 political verses (BHG 981c), intended to be read out loud in a monastic context, as suggested by the manuscript that transmits the text and the rubric, which includes a request to the priest to pronounce the blessing (εὐλόγησον πάτερ).¹⁶⁸ As with the prose versions, it mainly recounts the wicked deeds of the mighty sorcerer Heliodorus, the antihero of the story. Unfortunately, we do not know the exact relationship of the metrical life to the prose vita of Leo of Catania and whether it is a later rewriting of the prose account. If this is the case, not only the choice of meter in general, but also the specific choice of the political verse is surprising, given that no other such hagiographical text exists.

The last two works were written by Leo the Grammarian sometime in the twelfth century. The first is devoted to the life of St. Nektarios (BHG 2284), the other to James the Great (BHG 768d). Unlike the two anonymous Vitae and the two lost Vitae on St. Agatha by Eugenios and the priest Kalos, which are exclusively written in verse, these two works have a mixed form. Some parts of both texts are written in prose, others in verse. Unfortunately, only the vita of St. Nektarios has been edited so far, providing us with some evidence about the composition method of the author and the way poetry and prose coexist within a single textual entity. Leo used iambics in different places throughout the work, without causing an interruption to the narrative of his text. The vita concludes with a verse coda of twenty-eight iambic verses which acquire the form of an epigram praising the saint. Nektarios is praised for his deeds, which have “prevailed over wit and reason and every measure.”¹⁶⁹ The verse part even includes an image of paradise, in which Nektarios stands next to God and all the angels.

The composition of such hagiographic works in prosimetrum was particularly popular in Latin from the ninth to fourteenth centuries.¹⁷⁰ In fact, Leo the Grammarian was not the only author writing prosimetric hagiography in this region. In the second quarter of the twelfth century, on the occasion of the translation of the relics of the Sicilian St. Agatha (the very saint who was venerated in verse by Kalos and Eugenios) from Constantinople back to Catania, the local Latin-speaking bishop Maurikios wrote a prosimetric vita.¹⁷¹ Hence, two contemporary authors in Sicily wrote prosimetric hagiography: one in Greek, the other in Latin. Leo here appropriated Latin traditions to produce works without equal in medieval Greek literature.

It is not a coincidence that the MSS Mess. San Salv. 30 and 29 contain both metrical and prosimetric vitae, since both genres were highly popular in western hagiography. Taken together with the translations from Latin, we here find an important witness to how Greek Orthodox traditions were enriched with western elements, resulting in a creative and innovative collection of texts that mirrors the multifaceted engagement with various local (textual) communities.

In Salento, the only case where liturgical practice fostered the production of new poems in a significant way was the tetrasticha penned for the synaxarial cycles by Nicholas of Casole (on which see above). They, however, lead us to another poetic genre (indeed one of the most important poetic genres in Byzantium), namely epigrams (metrical inscriptions, transmitted either in manuscripts or actually inscribed on objects). Without doubt, epigrams were produced in Sicily in the same way as in all Greek-speaking areas. For example, poem 11 by Eugenios of Palermo was written for an image of John Chrysostom; poems 12 and 13 are concerned with the themes of last supper and crucifixion, respectively; poem 14 celebrates the creation of a cemetery in the Monastery of the Holy Saviour by Onouphrios, the abbot of the monastery.¹⁷² Even so, the corpus is rather small (probably because of the vagaries of transmission). By contrast, textual evidence from Salento is rich and further elucidates the unique culture of this area.

Epigrams, mainly votive and dedicatory epigrams as well as epitaphs, make up about two thirds of the Greek verses surviving from Salento. The content as well as the form of the Salentine epigrams are deeply rooted in the Byzantine tradition, while there are only a few local characteristics, including, most importantly, the recurring phenomenon of including an exact date in metrical form in dedicatory epigrams.¹⁷³ This practice, however, is more often than not witnessed by epigrams transmitted in situ, and only occasionally in manuscripts. We find such an example in two anonymous epigrams transmitted alongside some works by Drosos of Aradeo, dedicatory epigrams for a church dedicated to All Saints and another for John the Baptist, written at the behest (παρακλήσει) of two priests, John and Petros respectively.¹⁷⁴ These texts not only exhibit Salentine poetic traits, but also show the mechanism of commissioning poems for specific objects, well-known from the Byzantine world.

The epigrams by Nektarios of Otranto in particular must have sparked interest in the genre. He wrote a cycle of eight epigrams on the seven abbots of the monastery St. Nicholas of Casole, including himself as the seventh abbot and one dedicated to his successor.¹⁷⁵ His epigrams each consist of four verses and are designed as inscriptions, probably written next to depictions of the abbots in the church, as various deictic elements demonstrate.¹⁷⁶ It is not unlikely that the epigram he wrote for himself was also written next to an image of him, just as other people who supported monasteries (such as, for instance, founders, re-founders, or other patrons) perpetuated themselves in dedicatory epigrams and depictions. His activity as a patron is further evidenced in an epigram that John Grassos dedicated to him, in which Grassos stresses Nektarios’s efforts to restore the monastery and his gifts of golden vessels, books, and precious cloths.¹⁷⁷

Yet Nektarios’s impact transcended Salento. On one of his voyages to Constantinople, he wrote an epigram for the fountain of the Evergetis monastery in Constantinople, which was, in fact, inscribed on this monument.¹⁷⁸ He praised the painter who had decorated the fountain, a certain Paul, who was also of Otrantine origin. The epigram thus combines the admiration for a Constantinopolitan monument with a reference to the artist’s Otrantine origin. In turn, a monk of the Evergetis monastery, Markos, penned a second epigram, praising Nektarios for his skills and the composition of this epigram.¹⁷⁹ Its inscription at this monument gives proof to the high esteem in which Nektarios must have been held, as an epigram on the author of another epigram is truly extraordinary. The interdependence of these texts and their object offer a final example for the strong connection between Salento and the Byzantine Empire.