The Medieval Church · c. 860–867
The Homilies
Photius of Constantinople · c. 815 – c. 893
What it is
Includes the two sermons preached while a Rus fleet lay off the city in 860 — an obscure nation, unreckoned, become famous, he says, and the whole city expecting to die — and the homily at the unveiling of the apse mosaic in Hagia Sophia after iconoclasm.
Why it lasted
The earliest datable notice of the Rus in any source, preached by an eyewitness with the ships in view. The mosaic homily is the fullest ancient statement of what a Byzantine thought an image was doing.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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