ABSTRACT
The so-called Byzantine 'dark ages', that is, the period which runs from the later seventh to the ninth century, are characterised both by profound social change and by a striking concern for texts and their authority. Texts not only carried authority; they could also be, and indeed were, used as weapons. The religious polemic of the period is worth studying in itself in terms of the attitudes displayed towards textual authority, and the techniques used–in terms, in fact, of its contribution to the sociology of knowledge; but it may also illumine a dark period of Byzantine history. A high proportion of the surviving works, as also of those known only indirectly, consists of material written with a polemical purpose. Individual 'wandering monks' like Maximus, Sophronius, John Moschus, Anastasius of Sinai, crossed political boundaries and carried culture with them, engaging in polemics as they did so.
