On one level they serve to validate a transformation of behaviour by the recipient. For Nikolaos this entails he not only desist in his slanderous activities, but that he actively engage in protecting Niketas from others who continued to attack him. For the reluctant Hymnographer the transformation moves him from disbelieving inactivity to enthusiastic authorship about Theophano. On another level they validate the saintliness of Niketas and Theophano, while on a third level they validate the cult that was to grow around them. Rather, syntax and content are used in such a way as to blur these distinctions, creating a tension between theoretical hypothesis and practical application.
Authors use dream vocabulary within contexts that are clearly vision narratives.
These episode are elevated above the value of the everyday dream. In doing so the distinction between the dream and vision becomes so blurred as to be lost altogether. The ultimate result of this technique is that the personal internalized experience, that is, the dream, is displaced. The vision has not merely become the more important, it has become the prevailing experience in its relation to the saint. This paper was given as a communication at the thirtieth Spring Symposium 'Byzantium dead or alive' at Birmingham in March 1996.