ABSTRACT
The genesis of this article was a series of conversations with Tim Gregory over the course of archaeological fieldwork on the island of Kythera.1 Tim introduced me to the island and to its saint, St. Theodore, and initiated a period of convergent research on the relationship between Middle Byzantine hagiography and the landscapes of the Peloponnese. For me, this was new ground; for Tim, this represented an ongoing interest in the relationship between Post-Classical texts and the material culture of southern Greece.2 The following study draws largely upon the 10thcentury Life of St. Theodore of Kythera and places that life at the intersection of the literary, political, archaeological, and sacred landscapes of the Peloponnese. In particular, I consider the way that the Life of St. Theodore, and other examples of Middle Byzantine hagiography from southern Greece, sought to exploit the interplay
between continuity and discontinuity, as a means of understanding the changes in the ecclesiastical and political map of the Peloponnese following the disruptions of the Early Byzantine period.
