ABSTRACT
In July of 1991, the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court held that the sale of a house was null and void because the vendor had not informed the purchaser that the property had a reputation for poltergeists. The words of the court’s ruling were: “as a matter of law, the house is haunted.” It may be helpful to begin with a parallel that was drawn by the Byzantines themselves, in the introductions to their Novels or in descriptions of legislation, namely, the parallel between law and medicine. The operations of justice were often obscure and capricious to those who were subject to them, just like the sudden onset of an illness. Byzantine literature provides many instances in which envy was held responsible for miscarriages of justice. Moving from the saints’ Lives to Byzantine secular literature, the best-known treatment of envy is the Belisarion, an anonymous poem that was probably composed in the late fourteenth century.
