Customer Reviews

Byzantine Magic (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & collection)

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First off, it is important to state that this is not really a book. It is a collection of conference papers on Byzantine magic from a symposium at Dumbarton Oaks in 1993. If you are looking for a general book on Byzantine magic, this is not the place to go. Being academic papers, these are mostly specialist works. Since they are varied, I am going to review each of them individually, because it is impossible to give a review of the book as a whole when it is really just a collection of conference papers.

The first paper is Matthew Dickie's 'The Church Fathers and the Evil Eye'. It outlines the reactions of the various church fathers to the power of the evil eye. Although it may not be able to be called "Byzantine", this paper presents some important insights into the early church, its leaders, and the relationship between paganism and Christianity, as well as the attitude of elites over time towards magic.

The second paper is James Russell's 'The Archaeological Context of Magic in the Early Byzantine Period'. Noting that most of what we know about late Roman magic is from Egypt, he asks the question regarding how representative that is of the entire Roman and Byzantine worlds. The answer is explored through archaeology, notably the site at Anemurion. This article also includes a large section of plates. Unfortunately, the question is never answered, but the results at Anemurion are very interesting nonetheless.

The third article is Henry Maguire's 'Magic and the Christian Image', a paper largely concerned with the magical connotations of figures and symbols on textiles, and how they changed over time especially in regard to iconoclasm. This article is one of the best in the volume, and also has a large selection of plates.

The fourth article is Alexander Kazhdan's 'Holy and Unholy Miracle Workers'. It is a little disappointing, especially since it is from such a renowned name in the field. He asks the question how one can tell the difference between holy and unholy miracles, and determines that it is ultimately impossible. However, this article does lay out some groundwork for further study.

John Duffy wrote the next article on the attitudes of two Byzantine intellectuals towards magic: Michael Psellos and Michael Italikos. It is a fascinating, if somewhat unfinished article that tries to explore what they thought of it. Considering that we have personal letters of both men, we can view their ideas within that context, as well as the more literary, in the case of Psellos. The article also includes a discussion on the empress Zoe (in book 6, when she was married to Constantine IX) and her ideas on magic, as related by Psellos. It feels unfinished, but it goes a long way towards understanding Hellenism and literary motif in regards to magic in the 11th and 12th centuries.

The sixth article is by Marie Theres Fogen and supposedly on Balsamon and the relation of Roman secular law and Byzantine canon law in regard to magic. The historiographical context is badly lacking here, and it is really rather difficult to determine exactly what she is getting at, and how Balsamon plays into this. This article fails to tell us anything about Balsamon, secular law or canon law, and was a rather unnecessary addition to this volume

There are two more articles, neither of which I read due to a lack of interest in the respective periods. Greenfield writes on Palaiologan magic, and Mathiesen writes on the written tradition of magic in Slavic lands.

In sum, this is a good, affordable package of conference papers. Unfortunately, the field is rather undeveloped, and some of these papers reflect that, but on a whole they are quite good. Four stars on account of Fogen and Kazhdan's worthless and lacklustre articles, respectively.