The usefulness of the Psalms: Byzantine manuals for the ritual exploitation of the Psalter

The Psalms, it would be no exaggeration to say, were a treasured inheritance in Byzantine civilization. Here I hope to offer a contribution to the study of a somewhat obscure corner of that inheritance, uses of the Psalms for what can conveniently be termedmagic. That is, ritualized and goal-oriented use, beyond the realm of private devotion and the liturgy prescribed by the Orthodox Church. My main focus will be written recipes for such an approach to the Psalms inmedieval and early modern Greek manuscripts, a genre that has received little attention from Byzantinists.1 These I will also examine in light of the comparable and much better studied Jewish tradition of shimmush tehillim, known from the medieval Cairo Geniza and traced in some form as far back as the Talmud, but most voluminously attested in a dedicated treatise, the late medieval and early modern Sefer shimmush tehillim elucidated by Bill Rebiger.2 Finally I will attempt to set the Greek material in its contemporary context and comment on the social position of its users. But first it will be useful to introduce the career of the Psalms in the Byzantine and later Greek tradition more broadly.