A REPERTOIRE OF BYZANTINE

"BENEFICIAL TALES"

[διηγήσεις ψυχωφελε_ς]

 [ Table of Contents ] [ Preface ] [ Introduction ] [ Abbreviations ] [ Bibliography ]

The inevitable starting-point for research in this area (hence, the foundation stone of the present Répertoire) is two sections in the appendices of François Halkin's Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca  [BHG] and of its Novum Auctarium [NA][1]: Appendix IV, entitled Narrationes animae utiles, and Appendix VI:  Patrum vitae, Πατερικά, Γερovτικά.[2] Halkin himself freely admitted that the difference between the contents of the two was scarcely perceptible. The only real distinction is in context; i.e., the fourth Appendix lists detached tales, whilst the sixth identifies the names under which tales have traditionally been assembled in collections. In fact, however, there is a considerable amount of interchange between the contents of the two and not a little confusion between them.

Halkin did not submit the contents of these two appendices to the same rigorous analysis he applied to the vast corpus of Greek hagiography. The present project is an attempt to do what he would undoubtedly have done much better, had he been given time. It was undertaken and will be published as a token of gratitude for the kindness he showed and the encouragement he gave to the present writer over many years.

This Répertoire  consists of two main sections: [1] the précis [2] the indices.

Part one: the précis

The core of the Répertoire consists, basically, of about nine hundred précis (in English,) representing all the tales that have yet come to light which seem to be related to the Byzantine tradition. As the tales themselves vary considerably in length, so do the précis: from three to as many as thirty lines, with ten to twelve as an average. At the moment of writing there are about nine hundred précis in the répertoire and the number is still gowing.

The question frequently arises: why précis ? -- for there are alternative methods of dealing with this kind of material, and a ten-twelve line précis is not without disadvantages. It is scarcely adaptable to a data-base (for instance.) The answer is simply that, after a great deal of investigation, the précis seemed to be the least un-satisfactory method available, given the peculiar nature of the material.[3] BHG (for instance) functions on two alphabetical coordinates: nomen and incipit. It is a system which works fairly well for vitae, but it works hardly at all for tales, and much the same goes for any other of the traditional methods of categorisation and classification. The reason for this; a reason  which renders the tales unique in Byzantine literature, is very curious indeed.

There was a time when copyists, even copyists who are known to have been capable of rendering a tollerably accurate copy of other kinds of texts, granted themselves the most generous licence when transcribing tales. Names (both of places and people) could be freely exchanged; details omitted or inserted, passages rewritten, abbreviated or amplified; stories conflated or divided. In short, there seems to have been no end to the diversity of modification which was allowed and often (though not always) indulged. Furthermore, from about the eleventh century onwards, this scribal licence was beginning to be overtaken by yet another self-conferred freedom: either to make an elegant "Metaphrastic" version, or to translate the text into one or another of the vernacular Greek dialects of the people. All of which of course means that where tales are concerned, the texts can be of a most alarmingly unstable nature. This is why neither the BHG- nor any other of the traditional means of cataloguing and classifying texts is much use when dealing with them.

The reason for this unusually high incidence of variation has not yet been clearly demonstrated, but it may not be hard to guess what it was. The tales originated as an oral tradition. There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that they promptly ceased to circulate by hearsay as soon as they were written down somewhere. On the contrary, one can be reasonably sure that they continued to be passed around, both in and among the monastic communities whose lore they were. Which means that when a copyist sat down to copy tales, there would be some tales of which he had both a written version before his eyes, and also an oral version (perhaps a well-developed oral version) in his head. It is hardly surprising if, in certain circumstances, he preferred the version he had received directly and verbally from his own spiritual fathers to the one in the exemplar, or if he synthesised the two. This would also explain the otherwise incomprehensible phenomenon of those manuscripts in which certain tales closely follow a recognisable written tradition whilst, interspersed among them, are others which seem to follow nothing but the copyist's own devices.[4]

So we not only have textual variation due to copyists to cope with, but also the normal evolutionary processess of oral transmission. Now this is the sort of thing with which the folklorists are familiar, so it was from them that guidance was saught in dealing with the tales. This is not the place to rehearse all the efforts which they have made to catalogue elusive corpora of unstable texts (although it might not be inappropriate to observe that it would take only a very small space to list the successes which have crowned these efforts.) In brief, the folklorists' experience suggested that it were better to abandon any attempt to identify the tales by textual characteristics, and to look for something else.

As the folklorists well know, in material of this kind, when everything else changes, the one thing which remains constant in a story is its basic structure: a structure which can be stated in terms of themes [leitmotifs] and the relationship between them. The précis which make up the greater part of this book are precisely attempts to discern and describe that basic thematic structure.[5] (Anticipating a little, one might add here that the remainder of the book consists of indexes which attempt the far more difficult task of rendering the themes of the tales readily accessible to the researcher.)

The tales-tradition

The tales presented here in précis belong to a tradition  whose roots lie in the monastic communities of Egyptian and near-eastern deserts, which could well mean that although for the most part we know the tales in Greek, or in translations from Greek, many of them may first have been told in Coptic, Syriac or some other local language of the Empire. It has not yet been possible to trace the roots of this tradition back beyond christian monachism, other than to note that there is one tale here with recognisable jewish antecedants and another there which comes from India.[6] A future stage of the research must be a detailed search for a pre-existant tradition of which this is the continuation. Until it is shown to be otherwise, we can say that the "beneficial tale" is every bit as much a product of the Byzantine world as the hagiographical vita and that it ranks with the vita as an important relique de Byzance. But, unlike the vita, the tale is, more precisely, the product of the Byzantine monastic world. It was begotten and nurtured "in the cloister" (to employ a glaring anachronism) and throughout the six centuries of its florescence, it never lost its monastic imprint. This is not to say that secular elements did not intrude themselves; they certainly did, but never to the total exclusion of the monastic element.  This is unmistakeably clear (for instance) in  the tenth-century Paul of Monembasia's tales; they were written by a monk primarily (but not exclusively) about monks and for monks, and in all probability it was by monks that they were copied and reworked.

When one bears in mind the emphasis laid on silence, or at least on not chatting, in the monastic πoλιτεία, it may seem a little surprising that a tradition of tale-telling developed in such a context. We have less difficulty with that other great monastic genre with which the tale is very closely associated, the apophthegm. Indeed, in many ways it is easy to see how the apophthegm was a form developed precisely within the context of a community largely silent in its living. Several stories have survived in which brothers come to an elder, fall down before him and say: "Speak a word to us father." They may wait an hour, a day, even a week before the sage speaks. And when he does, it is to utter a brief, laconic apophthegm -- for the disciples to cherish and to meditate upon in their hearts. Hence the abundant literature of the apophthegmata patrum.

However, man cannot live by apophthegmata alone, and of this Saint Antony the Great was probably aware. He is reported to have said: "The holy scriptures are sufficient for our instruction, but it is good for us to exhort each other in the faith and to animate each other with discourses,"[7]  - and he goes on to advocate a verbal exchange between disciples and masters. It may well be that the older tales which have come down to us originated in such a context, as elder monks attempted to form their juniors in the tradition which they had learnt from their fathers, using the tales to pass on the lore.[8] It could also be that, in at least some instances, the tales originated as attempts to exemplify, explain or amplify an apophthegm which needed clarification, much as the parables in the gospels can sometimes be seen to illustrate some logion of Jesus. This of course is largely speculation; there are occasions when it is possible to see, or at least to suspect, a "pairing" between an apophthegm and a tale, but beyond that the evidence is slight.

What is beyond doubt is that, together with the apophthegms (which were probably remembered verbatim,) the tales (which were "told," hence were more liable to modification in transition,) constituted for a long time, the "folklore" of the desert. They were a common heritage shared by the entire monastic community, binding it together and giving it a certain coherence. John Climacus, for instance, writing in the first half of the seventh century, need only make passing reference to "him who wound his hands in his garment" to recall a tale which had been written down well over a century earlier and which was obviously very well known.[9]  There are stories which clearly assume knowledge of other stories.[10]  It was clearly a living tradition, a shared "frame of reference," passed down from generation to generation of monks.

Obviously it was not an arcane tradition, for it was occasionally passed out to visitors, often monks from other monastic centres. Fortunately, some of them benefitted posterity by writing down what they learned, thus passing it on to the world at large. It should be added that, judging by the large number of extant manuscripts, their work was very popular with the world at large (which in all probability means "the monastic world at large.")

The earliest of those writers whose work has survived are not known to us by name. They were monks from Jerusalem who visited the monks of Egypt in 394-395. They composed a report of their experiences now known as The History of the Monks in Egypt [HME.] In addition to a considerable amount of other matter (e.g. apophthegms) this work contains about forty tales. A surprising number of them are about animals: fifteen cubit serpents, a hippopotamus put to flight by prayer, serpents set to guard property and so forth. Several are naïve miracle stories, but beneficial tales are rarely so naïve as they appear at first glance. There are also some examples of more complex stories. It is here that we find the Tale of Paphnutius[11] with its underlying message that not only monks are holy men. It is the kernel of one of the most sophisticated stories the Byzantine tales-tradition would ever produce: the Tale of Sergius, the dêmotês of Alexandria.[12]

The next work is not anonymous: it is by Palladius and it was written in about 419 for Lausus, an imperial chamberlain at the court of the Emperor Theodosios II [408-450] in Constantinople. Hence it is known as The Lausiac History [HL]. It contains, in addition to other matter, almost exactly the same number of stories as HME (forty,) and their are some interesting coincidences between the two series which need to be more thoroughly explored. On the other hand, there are two important differences, both of which might be attributed to the fact that this book was written, not for Jerusalem monks, but for an imperial court over which the Blessed Pulcheria, the emperor's older sister, exercised her pious sway. On the whole, the HL stories are somewhat more sophisticated than those of the former collection; they also contain some important non-monastic elements.  Witness the tale of Valens the proud Corinthian who became involved with demons and received a great fright.[13]

One might note in passing a somewhat similar work to Palladius', written in this case about the monks of Syria, at most not thirty years later: the Religious History  [Φιλόθεoς _Iστoρία, HR] of Theodoret of Cyrrh. This work contains a great deal about monks, but very few sayings and almost no tales whatsoever. Whether this demonstrates a different interest on the part of Theodoret, or another kind of monasticism in Syria remains to be seen.

It was in all probability towards the end of the fifth century that there appeared two works of capital importance for the history of the tale, the two major collections of apophthegmata: the Alphabetikon  [A/B] and the Systematikon [Sys].

The Alphabetikon is a collection of sayings of the fathers, arranged, as its name suggests, in alphabetic order of father (abba.)[14] Today, it is far the best known collection of sayings, as the text and translations of it have been in circulation for many years. It consists primairly of sayings, most of them very short. The tales are very few and far between; there are only about fifty in the entire book.

By contrast, the Systematikon contains about one hundred and twenty stories, some of them quite substantial ones. Here the sayings and stories -- which are anonymous -- are all arranged according to subject (obedience, humility etc.) A curious feature of the tales in this collection is their anonymity. "A certain father living in a distant place asked his disciple to go to the city . . ." It is almost as though these were meant to be proforma tales, so that the narrator (or the listener) could fill in the blanks for himself.  The question of the original contents and order of this collection is a very complicated one; it will doubtless be considerably elucidated with the appearance of the edition on which J.C. Guy was working and which is being completed by Bernard Flusin. Meanwhile,  one has to rely on the Greek text of the venerable Codex Paris. Coislin 126, partially edited by Nau,[15]  or on the sixth-century Latin translation of Pelagius and John.[16] 

A little after 512, John Rufus, Bishop of Maïouma, wrote in Greek a work he called Plerophoria, "Information," [Pl.] This is now only known in a Syriac translation, made possibly a little before 572.[17] The sixty or so stories of this collection are particularly interesting because they reflect a strongly anti-Chalcedonian mentality before and after (mainly after) 451. The monastic element here is significantly less than in the other collections.

We come now to the best known and the largest collection of tales in the Greek collection, of which as yet there is neither an adequte Greek text nor an English translation: the "Spiritual Meadow [Pratum Spirituale, PS] of John Moschos. John and his colleague (we should probably say his disciple, but the relationship is not clear;)  he and Sophronios the Sophist, the future patriarch of Jerusalem, travelled around the monastic centres of the Near East at the end of the sixth century and the beginning of the seventh, gleaning monastic lore. This, John faithfully write down and subsequently published as The Spiritual Meadow, which he dedicated to Sophronios. Interspersed with sayings and some exhortations, are over a hundred and twenty five tales in the printed text of this collection. There are however reasons for believing that a complete dossier would be far more substantial. We have therefore included in the Répertoire about twenty tales publised, some by Nissen, some by Mioni, which will probably be included in a future edition of the Pratum.

Roughly contemporary with the Pratum are the twenty-or-so  (Latin) tales in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great which are connected in some way with the main corpus of Byzantine tales, as indeed they are with the corpus of the exempla.

The next major collection is the sixty nine tales of Anastasios the Sinaïte. Born and raised in Cyprus before it was conquered (in 650,) Anastasios probably died a little before 700 A.D. Much of his life was spent under Moslem rule, first in Cyprus, then in Syria and Palestine. This collection, or rather these collections, for there are two distinct series discernible,[18] are significantly different from anything noted so far, in a variety of ways. For one thing, the collection consists exclusively of tales: there is no admixture of sayings or other material. Secondly, the author himself plays a significant role in some of the tales. It may even be that he is the hero of yet other tales, in which he attributes the action to another.[19]  Even when he is reporting second-hand information, he is at pains to emphasise the proximity of his informant to the event. This is a long step from the "Somebody once said" of the Apophthegmata, or even from John Moschos' slightly less cavalier attributions. Thirdly: whereas the first (A01-A42) series of tales is a conventional set of monastic stories for monks, the other tales, series B-C (twenty-seven tales,) is strictly and manifestly conceived as a tract for the times and for the world. It is to strengthen and to encourage the Christian laity, especially the prisoners, to persevere in the faith and not to give in to their Moslem oppressors.

After Anastasios, a great silence seems to have descended so far as tales are concerned. It is not that the old ones were forgotten; otherwise, we would not know of them. It is that for almost two centuries, no new ones seem to have been created. Which is hardly surprising; literature itself came almost to a standstill at that crucial stage of the empire's existence. But literature eventually revived, and so too did the writing of tales, characteristically in the tenth century. These récits tardifs however are of a different stamp from the earlier ones. That they are deeply rooted in them and draw heavily on their constituent parts there is no doubt; but these later tales are literary compositions rather than spontaneous oral creations subsequently committed to writing. This can be said with some confidence because ten at least, and possibly more of them, are the work of a known author: Paul, Bishop of Monembasia, who worked in the second third of the tenth century.[20]  The characteristics of the récit tardif  are easily recognised: whilst the form of the traditional tale is carefully preserved and traditional elements frequently worked into the stories, these leave behind the traditional simplicity of action, sometimes far behind. Some of them even leave the supposedly spiritually-beneficial element aside, or at least rather hard to find, whilst in others one suspects elements which in another millenium would be labelled "anti-clerical."[21] It seems as though these rather sophisticated tales (of which W716, de Sergio demota Alexandrino is by far the finest example) were about to break out of the monastic tradition in which Paul of Monembasia firmly stood, and blaze the path to some new and secular literary genre. It is not difficult to imagine how a Byzantine Boccaccio might have emerged from these latter-day tale-makers, but, alas, it was not to be. For reasons which have yet to be discovered, the tales-tradition of Byzantium appears to have come to a sudden end, probably not long after the year 1000 AD. It was certainly not that the tales had ceased to be appreciated; the continued copying and transformation of them proves that. It is simply that possibly no new tales, and certainly no yet more adventurous ones, have survived from beyond the beginning of the eleventh century. The silence is so sudden and so profound that it is difficult not to suspect the intervention of the heavy hand of authority.

The question inevitably arises of what is and what is not  a tale ? More precisely, what did it take to merit a précis in this Répertoire ?  Why, for instance, have a good third of the items in Pratum Spirituale been left aside  when certain sayings from the Lausiac History were admitted ?  What criterion was used ? When Monsieur Blangez was asked what criterion he used to decide when an exemplum was really an exemplum, his reply was precise and definite: a tale ranks as an exemplum when it occurs in a collection of exempla. One would gladly have applied a similar criterion to the tales, but it was impracticable. There undoubtedly are collections of tales -- are they not all written in Appendix VI of BHG ? But, as noted above, these are mostly mixed collections, in which apophthegmata and other material alternate with the tales. Moreover, the collections themselves are almost as unstable as the texts of the stories. Witness Butler's classic introduction to Historia Lausiaca; the other collections have yet more tortuous histories, even to such an extent that some have been tempted to suspect that these names, Pratum Spirituale, Paradise of the Fathers and so forth, were not so much books in the sense in which we understand the word, but rather loose-leaf dossiers in which this or that material was included, very much at the whim of the copyist. In other words, it is suspected that he allowed himself the same licence in assembling, as he did in transcribing the tales. One should add the further consideration that by no means all the tales are found in collections; there are (for instance) all the "independent" stories listed in Appendix IV of BHG. These occur in a wide variety of texts extending from (predictably, but not very often) homilies to chronicles, or, far more often, as independent items floating freely like specks of dust in the air, sometimes casually grouping like seeds on water.

So there was no possibility of applying the criterion of literary context. There remained, however, the possibility of applying the criterion of the genre-title which those who propagated the tales used. They fairly consistently describe the tales as διηγήσεις ψυχωφελε_ς. The root meaning of διήγησις is fairly straightforward: it is a narrative. For this reason, nothing has been admitted into the Répertoire which is not a narrative. In short, if nothing happens in a text; i.e. if there is no action, it is not a tale and it is not be listed as one. It might be added that according to Lampe, in the patristic era (in which the earlier tales originated) the word διήγησις had taken on an additional meaning: a declaration or proclamation of something. This is not irrelevant to what comes next.

The word ψυχωφελής simply means "beneficial to the soul," and it is found in relationship to a much wider area of literature than that of the tales; witness for instance the heading of Vita Constantini 1.10:  περ_ τo_ _vαγκαίov ε_vαι κα_ ψυχωφελ_ τ_v _στoρίαv ταύτηv.[22] Now it is much more difficult to decide whether a text is "spiritually beneficial" than whether it is a narrative. There are many tales which undoubtedly are, to quote Delehaye's definition, "nouvelles destinées à mettre en lumière une doctrine religieuse,"[23] especially in the light of the two meanings of the word religieux. But there are others which leave one in considerable doubt as to what the religious lesson (if any) might be. In these cases, there is to hand a definition of Halkin, who said that the tales are "des sortes de paraboles développées. . . qui incarnent pour ainsi dire en un exemple frappant, voire paradoxal, un enseignement théorique difficile et transcendant."[24] These are deep waters to be sure; it would be a very brave man -- or a very foolish one -- who presumed to judge when a story does or does not conceal within itself "un enseignement théorique difficile et transcendant."

So, in practice, this is what was done. If a narratio occurs in a series of what are said to to be spiritually beneficial tales, it has been accepted. If a narratio  is said in the text to be ψυχωφελής (e.g. by a preacher insertin a tale,) the claim was taken at face value. Then, by extension, when a tale came to light which was nowhere ever said to be ψυχωφελής (other, that is, than in BHG, which tended to be rather all-inclusive;) if that tale manifested characteristics which suggested that it could or should have borne it, it too would be included. It is not easy, indeed it may not be possible in the end, to state precisely what those characteristics are; other than in terms of general similarity, that is. Inevitably this has led to some arbitary choices and not everybody will be satisfied. However, this is not by any means the final edition of the Répertoire; reasoned suggestions of items which ought to be included or deleted will be welcomed by the author.

It will readily be observed that the forgoing paragraph leaves to be resolved the question of the historical legends, some of which undoubtedly bear the title "beneficial tale" in certain contexts,[25] and have already been admitted e.g. W513, de poma: the story of Theodosios II, Athenaïs-Eudocia and Paulinus. Since there is so obvious an overlap between historical legends and beneficial tales, and since the mechanism is already set up to list and refer to them in the Répertoire, common sense seems to suggest that the opportunity should now be siezed of including as many historical legends as possible in the present work (in a special section of their own,)  even when they are of the least edifying nature, such as the tale of Leo VI suspended on the brothel wall.

In practice, or how the répertoire actually works.

The items are numbered successively from 001 -->, with the prefix W. This W-number is printed on both left and right of the page merely to facilitate consultation. The order of the items, hence the W-number, has no intrinsic significance whatsover.

After the W-number comes the BHG number if there is one, which is by no means always the case. This is followed by other references, for instance in W015: a tale which is found in both the systematic [Sys] and the alphabetic [A/B] collections of apophthegmata; it is 18.3 in the first, and the seventh saying of Abba Daniel in the second. This would have been followed by a Nau-number [N] had there been one.

In the case of an unpublished text, the coordonées of the MS in which it was read are given, but for other known MSS, one must consult BHG and NA. This is also the case for most published tales, other than those in the well-recognised collections. It is perhaps a weakness of the Répertoire in its present form that it can only be used efficiently in combination with BHG and its NA, but to correct it would mean a large increase in volume and probably some protests from Brussels.

In this Répertoire, every tale now has a title. Where Père Halkin had established a title, it has been retained: partly because his titles so accurately describe the tale, partly because they are not unknown to conceal a gem of humour. In the case of Pratum Spirituale, the Latin titles of Fra Ambroggio have been translated, because it is more than likely that these represent titles which were present in his Greek manuscript(s) even though they are absent from the edition of the Greek text in PG. Whenever a Greek title was found, e.g. in the Tales of Monembasia, it was translated; where there was no title at all, one has been provided in English. The aim has been to create an accurate reflection of the contents of the story.

The title is followed by the précis to which reference has already been made; here the object was to capture the main themes of each story and to present them in a way which allows the structure of the whole to be seen. Inevitably, there are many features which had to be ommitted, but every effort has been made to preserve key data. It has also been possible to include in the précis items of particular interest, curiosities and pungent quotations, verbatim.

At the end of many of the précis there will be found  what might well be the most interesting part of the work: certain references with the prefix cf, compare. Here are mentioned all the known cognates and agnates of the story in question. Users will note that in some instances, quite a family of related tales is noted under the cf rubric. Not all the tales can be assigned to such families, but a surprisingly large number can.[26] There are several stories showing affinities with two or more famlies.

Part two: the indexes

The General Index

A répertoire without indexes is of limited value; this is the great shortcoming of Frederic Tubach's otherwise admirable Index exemplorum (Helsinki 1969.) On the other hand, the indexing of tales, of themes that is, of the structural items of a story, is a problem which has greatly exercised the folklorists for some decades and which is still by no means solved. It was originally intended to index the beneficial tales using the categories of Stith Thompson but, in the event, these turned out not only to be inappropriate, but even tended to be misleading. So the General Index is a compromise: it lists (chiefly) those words which seem to characterise the themes in the stories. Users may have to try two or three lines of enquiry when searching for a tale, but there is a good chance that by the third try they will be successful. The form in which the indexes appear here is not by any means final. One of the great advantages of the computer age is that it allows for the constant revision of the text; thus the indexes will continue to grow and to incorporate every intelligent suggestion the author receives.

Supplements to the General Index

As the number of references under the cf-rubric at the end of each précis multiplied, "families" of related tales began to emerge. As these could not be adequately set out either in the text or in the indexes, the information concerning each "family" has been gathered together in a separate dossier, located in a section of Supplements to the General Index, signalled of course in the Index.

Index of Proper Names

The Index of Proper Names only contains those names which survive in the précis, so it will be in a sense incomplete. As names are often the first things to change when a text is worked over, this index might not be of great usefulness so far as persons are concerned, but it might not be without value for place-names. It will also have value for the student who is bold enough to attempt a Prosopography of Early Christian Monachism.

Index of Scriptural quotations

The list of scriptural citations reveals that they are remarkably few in number. In fact, one is somewhat surprised by the lack of familiarity with the bible they display, for instance with almost any selection of homiletic material.

Index Graecitatis

Every attempt has been made to display here not only curious and unusual words, but also interesting combinations of words and some remarkable turns of phrase.

Index of Authors and Sources

This section is designed mainly to guide the reader to the areas of the Répertoire where the stories from a particular source are concentrated. It is supplemented by a series of tables:

i:   the correlation between BHG- and W-numbers (and others)

ii:  the tales of Anastasios the Sinaïte

iii: the correlation between PS- and W-numbers

iv:

v:

 Bibliography.

In conclusion:  this work is -- and must always be -- incomplete. It will always be need of addition and modification. New tales are coming to light all the time and new aspects of the tradition being discovered. For instance, a student recently brought to light two undoubtedly spiritually beneficial tales of Neophytos the Enkleistos, who wrote them long after the tradition is thought to have died. If these are original (and they seem to have no recognisable antecedents) some re-thinking will have to happen. M. Flusin also has signalled the existence of some 9th tales in and Arabic MS at Rome, which calls into question the previous statement that no tales were produced in the Byzantine "dark age," at least not after ca 700. In other words, the final verdict is far from in on the Byzantine tales tradition. There are undoubtedly still many tales to be processed and many new things yet to be learnt about the tradition to which they belong. This Répertoire will not cease to grow and to be revised as long as the present writer is capable of working at it. What he requests of all who encounter it is their contributions to its improvement, in any form they might care to make them. It is his most earnest wish that it might be of some use to them in their researches, and that they will help him to make it even more useful for those who come after.

Finally a word of profound appreciation: for Father Joseph Paramelle s.j., former Head of the Section Grecque at the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes in Paris, who first encouraged the idea of this Répertoire and consistently supported it throughout the ten years of its gestation; for Monsieur Bernard Flusin, now Professor of Greek at the Sorbonne, who proved to be a stalwart and in valuable colleague; for Monsieur Gilbert Dagron, the distinguished present holder of the Chair of Byzantine studies at the Collège de France, whose generous moral support and the more than adequate physical facilities he made available rendered the completion of this draft a most agreeable experience; and for those authorities without whose financial support this work could not have been undertaken: The University of Manitoba in Canada; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Government of France and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Collège de France

May 1991

[ Table of Contents ] [ Preface ] [ Introduction ] [ Abbreviations ] [ Bibliography ]