These are two very different books on different aspects of Byzantine art. Anne Karahan's book is brilliant in conception, her intention being to explore the magnificent iconographic decoration, installed by Theodore Metochites in the church of the Chora in Constantinople, by drawing on Byzantine theology. The mosaic icons in the narthex and exonarthex, especially the sequence depicting the life of the Virgin, are justly famous, as are the frescos especially in the parekklesion. They are full of detail that begs interpretation drawing on the breadth of Byzantine theology. Karahan has done a lot of work and read widely, but never gives any sense of being confident in the twists and turns of Byzantine theology. She tries to do the theological context justice by pursuing various themes – the justification for icons in general, the dialectic between transcendence and immanence (which is particularly difficult to handle in Byzantine thought, as there is a danger of reducing the Incarnation to an example of a general theme, which betrays its significance), and then various broad accounts of Byzantine theology, not least in the last chapter where it appears as an appendix. There is a lot of misunderstanding (and indeed mistranslation: ‘steresis’ does not mean accident but privation). Some good points are made, but as a whole the treatment is disappointing.

Vikan's introduction to early Byzantine pilgrimage art is in rather a different category. Described as a ‘revised edition’, it is really a new work, based on the catalogue essay for an exhibition of early pilgrimage art held at Dumbarton Oaks in 1982. Most of the text is new, and it is abreast of the latest scholarship. Vikan has an overriding argument: viz, that there is a striking shift from early pilgrimage art, which focuses on touch and physical contact – with relics and the material of the place of pilgrimage – to later pilgrimage art, which is governed more by sight and the icon. But there is much more than this in this deceptively slight volume. With a host of illustrations, we are introduced to the nature of pilgrimage and the popular destinations in late antiquity and early Byzantium; the varying ways in which the sacred was conceived and conveyed or made accessible; the different kinds of ‘blessings’ (eulogiai) carried away by pilgrims, and the tokens (charisteria) left behind in thanksgiving; links with magic and pre-Christian devotion; and much else. It is a rich work, both textually and visually.