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In these studies Gary Vikan has opened new perspectives on the daily life and material culture of Late Antiquity - more specifically, on icons and relics, and on objects revealing of the world of pilgrimage, the early cult of saints, and marriage. He contextualizes these familiar categories of object in the patterns of belief and ritual extracted from contemporary texts and the objects themselves, in order to understand their meaning within the everyday lives of those by whom and for whom they were made. The studies give a nuanced delineation of the inherently ambiguous boundary between conventional religion and magic, noting repeatedly those instances wherein the two are invoked in the same breath (and by way of the same art object), toward the same end. From this historically constructed matrix of art, belief, and ritual, the author derives an anthropologically defined paradigm of charisma and pilgrimage (applied in one essay, as an intriguing parallel, to deconstructing the world of a contemporary secular "saint," Elvis Presley).

The twenty papers included in this volume were presented at an international symposium held in Baltimore and Washington in May, 1986. Planned to coincide with the exhibition of the two largest treasures of Early Byzantine church silver to survive from antiquity, the Kaper Koraon Treasure (found in Syria) and the Sion Treasure (found in Turkey), the symposium sought to place these and other church treasures in their broader contexts examining them from the point of view of economy, history, society, and manufacture. While a number of the papers focus on specific aspects of these two treasures--including six articles devoted to the Sion Treasure--others examine more general questions regarding silver mining, the manufacture of silver vessels, the state control of silver in Byzantium and the Sasanian Empire, the economic and cultural role of silver objects, and the financial power of the institutional church through its vast holdings of silver plate. The precedent offered by pagan cult treasures is also examined. To ensure a broad interdisciplinary approach, the eighteen authors are authorities in the fields of government administration, economic history, cultural history, art history, archaeology, epigraphy, science and conservation.

Inspired by a cache of photographs – dating from the late ’40s to the early ’60s – left to me by my father, who was the publisher, editor, and photographer of our local weekly, the Thirteen Towns. Join me on my journey back into the everyday life of Fosston, Minnesota – population 1,700 – in a simpler age, when men had odd nicknames and the threat of gossip guaranteed that we all got along. In those days, you could choose from among many family-owned eateries for the cheapest blue plate special, the best homemade pie, and the most refills of coffee. Ours was a world of Fourth of July and Homecoming Day parades, Christmas pageants, and church suppers, and of Santa Claus Day and an annual “community bean feed” downtown on First Street. We packed our Art Deco gym every February for the boy’s basketball tournament and, in July, thousands flocked to the East Polk County Fair for carnival rides, livestock judging, and performing dog acts. Our little town also had its share of tragedies – car crashes, house fires, robberies, and even murders – that Frank Vikan covered for the newspaper, with me tagging along as his “little helper.” And there was the mostly hidden story of my father’s struggle with alcohol and our family’s struggle to cope. Late one night my magical world was turned on its head by the sound of a gunshot – a signal that my father’s alcoholism had spiraled to the bottom. A few months later, and on the same day, he went off to the state mental hospital for drunks and I went off to college.