I have tried in the course of this book to describe not only how Byzantine Things in the World happened and meant in 2013, but also the ways (for me, at least) Byzantine Things (with and without italics) have kept inserting itself/themselves into the world, that is, their ongoing work on me, their incessant, gentle teaching and formation. I was guilty of a certain pride at the opening of the show in May 2013; maybe I can be forgiven: it was a wonderful team project. But I was patiently corrected in my overweeningly human- centred stance by the things, Byzantine and other, who showed me a silent, surplussing richness. I was fortunate to have the time and resources to watch, consider, and accept some (never all) of what they could reveal to me. I felt I had become related—in the sense of entering into a relational communion that now only exists in my memory, but that is, in/after the event, no less vivid in its effects.

My memory is deeply imprinted by the now-gone Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum. Even the body memory of hot, bright humidity changed to cool, luminous intensity is constantly with me. Leading students into that revelation of peerless Cypriot beauty was a deeply satisfying experience every time. But now it is gone, as I’ve described in the chapters above, and I have only that body memory—that skin-depth of knowing, a depth so much more profound than the sense we habitually use our “skin deep” to mean.