January news round-up

On 17 December Efthymios Rizos participated in the 8th Meeting of Greek Byzantinists in Athens, where he presented the activities and objectives of the Cult of Saints project. We are grateful to our colleagues from Greece and Cyprus for their encouraging feedback and constructive suggestions on the Cult of Saints Database.

On 13 and 14 January, Efthymios Rizos was invited to give lectures at seminars held by the History Institutes of the Universities of Krakow and Warsaw, where he presented his recent research on the iconography of martyrs in the late antique mosaics of Thessalonike. Efthymis discussed the mosaics of the Rotunda and Saint Demetrius, two of the most important iconographic ensembles to survive from the Early Christian World. We are grateful to our Polish colleagues for their warm hospitality and participation in these lectures!

On 19 January, the ‘Cult of Saints in the First Millennium’ seminar held its first lecture for Hilary Term 2016, which was given by our epigraphy specialist, Paweł Nowakowski. Paweł discussed the problems of recognising epitaphs of martyrs in the Greek Christian epigraphy of Anatolia, which is part of his broader research on saint-related inscriptions from that part of the late antique world.