Byzantine Zaba: A Case Study of the Mail Coat from the Iviron Monastery (Athos / GR)

Abstract

Byzantine Zaba: A Case Study of the Mail Coat from the Iviron Monastery (Athos / GR)

The present scientific article studies the chain-mail cuirasses that are kept at the Iviron, Hilandar and Dionysiou Monasteries, following the monasteries’ kind permission to document and study the objects in question. To our knowledge, these are the only mail coats known from the Byzantine period in Greece. The study focuses on the Iviron chain-mail cuirass with the aim of studying its typological characteristics, information that will facilitate the identification and dating of the object. In addition, the study also makes use of historical references to objects of this kind and their representations in art as comparative means, with an emphasis mainly on the archaeological evidence. According to tradition, the Iviron chain-mail cuirass is associated with the Byzantine general Ioannes Tornikios, who founded the Iviron Monastery in the late 10th century. The general was a scion of the great Tornikios family of Iberia, whose members, from the 10^th century onwards, occupied high offices. Though already a monk, Ioannes Tornikios served in Basil II’s successful military campaign against the rebel Bardas Skleros and the emperor gave him permission to keep some of the booty and to establish the Monastery of Iviron in about the year 980.