ABSTRACT
In Nectar and Illusion, Henry Maguire examines Byzantium's ambiguous relationship with nature in both art and literature. This chapter builds upon Maguire's work by examining the ways in which nature was invoked, represented, and utilized through epigrams, images, and materials in personal devotional contexts in the Middle Byzantine period. It focuses on two reliquaries: one now in the treasury of the Protaton at Mount Athos, which contains a relic of the True Cross and four stones from the Holy Land, and another reliquary of the True Cross, now lost, formerly in the Grandmont Abbey in the Limousin region. The Protaton reliquary is a composite work, constructed in the eleventh–twelfth centuries and altered in the eighteenth. The twelfth-century Grandmont reliquary was, according to its dedicatory epigram, made for Alexios Doukas, grandson of Irene Doukaina and Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. The relic was also an instrument of healing.
