Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 125 h Arabs and Arabia in the Byzantine Sources: Hagiographical Testimonies The Life of Theoktiste , a tenth-century hagiographical piece, has been called “the most interesting work of hagiography of its century”. 49 It should be noted that this Life has been highly controversial as far as the existence of the Saint is concerned. 50 In an effort to assess the diverting opinions and globally evaluate the Life , Katarzyna Jazdewaska denotes: “Niketas explores… tensions…inherent in Byzantine culture”; “The Life of Theoktiste , therefore, with its fascination with cultural heterogeneity, anticipates the vibrant literary culture of the subsequent centuries. 51 The case of Nikon Metanoite (ca. 930/35 — late tenth/early eleventh c.), 52 another Saint’s Life included in this data base, is different from those already commented. The narration of his Life , composed at the begging of the eleventh century, “sometimes functions as an introduction to an extensive account of miracles”. 53 Nikon’s main activity was deployed in the Peloponnese and in the course of his travels “divine will, called him to visit the island of Crete”. The author dates this visit after the restoration of Byzantine authority on the island and Arabs are mentioned only in digressions as occupiers of Crete, at a previous time, before Emperor Nikephoros reestablished Byzantine rule. The only interesting remark is perhaps the notice, that “the island still bore traces of the vile superstition of the Agarenes, since its inhabitants, by time and long fellowship with the Saracens, alas! were led astray to their customs and foul and unhallowed rites” 54 . No doubt, hagiography is extremely useful for historians, and in spite of its particular features, proper to the genre, preserves information, often from first hand knowledge of the every day life, or concerning contacts with foreign people, “information about the average people’s awareness of the foreigner 49 K. M. Setton, “On the Raids of the Moslems in the Aegean in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries,” AJA 58 (1954) 311–319, at 313–314 and n. 14. Setton apparently believed that the Life was com- posed in the ninth century (“the most interesting ninth-century life”). 50. H. Delehaye has argued that Theoktiste is a fictitious person, H. Delehaye, “La vie de sainte Théoctiste de Lesbos,” Byzantion 1 (1924) 191–200, at 197. 51 Katarzyna Jazdewaska, “Hagiographic Invention and Imitation: Niketas’ Life of Theoktiste and Its Literary Models”, GRBS 49(2009), 259–279, at 279. Cf. her reference to P. Roilos, Ibid. and n. 35: “Hellenism and Christianity, antiquity and ‘modernity’, tradition and experimentation, secular and sacred, ‘high’ and ‘low’, pleasure and asceticism, realism and fantasy, individuality and universality” finds at play in the twelfth-century novel”. 52 BHG 1366, 1367; ed. and English tr., D. Sullivan, The Life of Saint Nikon, Brookline, MA1987. 53 Martin Hinterberger, “Byzantine Hagiography and its Literary Genres. Some Critical Obser- vations”, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography , ed. Efthymiadis, vol. II, 25–60, here 43. 54. Life of Nikon Metanoeite, §20, 83–85.