Abstract EN:

This study aims at showing the role and the importance of different kinds of magical and divinatory arts in the middle Byzantine era, from the first iconoclasm up to 1204. It focuses on two main approaches, based on two different readings of the literary evidence.First, using the evidence of normative and narrative sources, along with archaeological artefacts, this work shows the importance, in response to specific needs, of beneficent and maleficent magic and divinatory arts in the everyday life of the Byzantines. The popularity of phylacteries and magical treatments is examined along with the conflicted nature of the relationship which existed between these practices and Byzantine orthodoxy. The different forms of maleficent magic are then explored and the services that they alone could offer. This section concludes with a discussion of Byzantines’ fascination for a great number of unorthodox divinatory arts which, in spite of their illicit nature, continued to be practiced.Second, this study emphasises the role of magicians and soothsayers in the political and religious propaganda. An attempt is first made to demonstrate how some hagiographers employed these useful opponents of saints as tools in their writings. Then, this work seeks to show how some heresiarchs, perhaps deemed too popular, were demonized, in an attempt to put an end to disruptive religious movements. Finally, particular attention is paid to iconoclasm, showing how heterodox emperors such as Leo III and his son Constantine V, and patriarchs such as John the Grammarian, were subjected to a violent damnatio memoriae by iconophile authors, something which could involve accusations of witchcraft.