ИСТИНА

On our way to form a theory of the ancient and Byzantine tale, we should include in our journey the 7 th -century Miracle Collection of Artemios. This text is well known as a unique historical source, yet its important literariness and its different functions remain unexplored. This paper has a double aim: first, to determine the tales’ essential narrative features; second, to trace the possible functions of this kind of narratives in Byzantine culture. To begin with, the textual tissue of the collection is rather uneven. Traditionally, its forty-five stories are divided into two or three clusters according to a row of shared similarities. Mainly, these concern the size of the tales and their stylistic peculiarities. In terms of creativity and entertainment capacity, however, all parts of the collection have a liveliness and unexpectedness that is expressed in different ways depending on the stories’ length. As for the stories’ possible functions, as is shown, they had both therapeutic and entertainment effects on their audiences.