A new collected volume Cult, Devotion, and Aesthetics in Later Byzantine Poetry, co-edited by Maria-Lucia Goiana and Krystina Kubina for Brepols and exploring the aesthetics of the late Byzantine poetry in the context of religious practice and devotion, features two chapters by Retracing Connections programme members.

Stratis Papaioannou examines the history of the poetic form of kontakion after the turn of millennium, challenging the traditional narrative that kontakion gave way to the kanon in the later Byzantine period. Instead, Papaioannou finds ‘much aesthetic and ritual creativity and innovation’ in relation to the Byzantine kontakion after the year 1000.  

Dimitrios Skrekas presents the life and hymnographic activity of Neophytos, a fourteenth-century Bishop of Grevenou in Macedonia and a neglected poet. Focusing on his kanon ‘Οn the Cycles of Sun and Moon’, Skrekas underlines the importance of his oeuvre for understanding both the style and poetics of the time, as well as its turbulant historical context.