ABSTRACT
A leading anthropologist had defined acculturation as comprehending those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups. The impact of Byzantine civilisation upon the peoples of Eastern Europe was also, in Dupront's terms, a kind of education. In the realms of religion and law, literature and art, these peoples were the pupils of Byzantium, and, in addition to the Empire's cultural exports, products of luxury and technological skill were avidly borrowed by their ruling classes from the Empire. The concept of acculturation can thus be usefully applied to the study of the impact of Byzantium upon the medieval Slav countries. This chapter considers Hesychasm primarily as a factor in the process of acculturation in late medieval Eastern Europe, and shows that it acted as a cultural intermediary between Byzantium and the Slav world.
