The historiography of dreaming in medieval Byzantium

Abstract

This chapter explores the dream narratives and mentions of dreams occupy very little space in the voluminous pages of Byzantine historical literature. It concentrates on the medieval period, and concerned only with those texts that contain original material; that is, which do not simply derive all their dream narratives from earlier histories. Nikephoros Gregoras is also exceptional in that neither this nor the other dream narrative in his history is of the hagiographical-iconic variety. Other historians record symbolic dreams only in addition to the hagiographical-iconic dreams which, one may conclude, formed the backbone of dream historiography in medieval Byzantium. The lengthy Roman History of Nikephoros Gregoras contains only two original dream narratives, which is remarkable for a writer who also wrote a commentary on Synesios' treatise on dreams and thus presumably had a more than average interest in the subject.