Tradition and Transformation

7 Acknowledgments8 List of Abbreviations11 List of Figures12 Introduction - Mihail Mitrea20 Tradition and Transformation in Ancient Jewish Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation - Nicholas J. Ellis40 Uses and Misuses of the Common Concepts Strategy in Emperor Julian's Contra Galilaeos - Máté Veres56 The Iconography of the Mithraic Tondo from Salona Revisited - Nirvana Silnovic76 Martyrdom and Episcopal Authority: The Bishop-Martyr in Pannonian Hagiography - Hajnalka Tamás92 Questioning Authority: Christian Education Leading to Lay Participation in Doctrinal Debates - Jessica I. O. van 't Westeinde115 Presenting a Practical Way of Life through Biographical Discourse: The Examples of Gregory of Nyssa and Marinus - Maël Goarzin 130 The Murder at Mount Kangar: The Oral Narratives of the Caucasian 'Schism' - Nikoloz Aleksidze149 Three Deaths in Nikephoros Blemmydes' Di g sis Merik II - Jonas J. H. Christensen163 Bad Luck and Divine Protection - Religion and Biography in the Peri g sisby Andrew Libadenos - Annika Asp-Talwar183 Rewriting Ecclesia Primitiva: Peter of John Olivi's Image of Early Christianity and the Formation of Dissent in the Western Mediterranean around 1300 - Christian Hoffarth212 South - East European Princesses, Christian Renegades and Early Ottoman Statehood in the Balkans: State of Research and New Perspectives - Mihailo St. Popovic226 Bibliography270 Contributors

Mihail Mitrea is doctoral candidate in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, working on the hagiographical oeuvre of Philotheos Kokkinos. He published articles with Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik and Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, and is junior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection for the 2016-2017 academic year. His research interests lie in the field of Byzantine literature, theology, hagiography, epistolography, Greek palaeography and manuscript studies.Nikoloz Aleksidze is a Research Associate at Faculty of History at the University of Oxford (The Cult of Saints research project) and a Junior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. He also worked as the Dean of Social Sciences at the Free University of Tbilisi (Georgia). In 2013 he defended his doctoral thesis at the Oriental Institute, Oxford. He has prepared a monograph, The Schism: An Interpretive Schema of Caucasian History, which is currently submitted for review. Meanwhile he is working on a monograph which examines various aspects of religion and political thought in medieval and nineteenth-century Caucasus.