The Conclusion raises the question of how the study of the literature and visual cultural of non-Greek-speaking, non-Constantinopolitan communities in the East Roman empire should relate to Byzantine studies. It further asks how the literature and visual culture of these communities should be seen as relating to Byzantine studies after these communities came under Muslim political control. A cultural, “Big Tent,” understanding of Byzantium is advocated for, one which de-privileges the state and which recognizes the importance of Christianity and its literary and visual manifestations for defining Byzantium as an object of study. This exapanded view of Byzantium includes in Byzantine studies the broader eastern Mediterranean world, Greek-speaking and non-, Chalcedonian and non-, Christian and non-.

The Introduction explicates the rationale behind and structure of the book, its thematic and chronological purview and methodological premises, and its take on the Byzantine phenomenon.

This chapter seeks to locate and elucidate the philosophical precedents and mechanisms in late-antique and Byzantine Christian thought that inform the tension between the rigorous affirmation of autonomous moral determination, on the one hand, and the self-effacing quality of ecclesiastical and monastic life, on the other. Though expressed with some variance and terminological inconsistency, the majority of Christian writers affirm some version of 'free will' and universally attribute the capacity for moral development to all humankind, developing and altering paradigms from the mélange of philosophical concepts present in Middle- and Neoplatonism. No less prominent, however, is the assertion—both tacitly and explicitly—that private moral judgment and individual conscience are unreliable. Each human being not only requires a pedagogical process for proper moral development but also depends upon the presence and guidance of a heteronomous 'other', whether human or divine. This chapter will accordingly seek to demonstrate that, while Christians of late antiquity and Byzantium considered free will and moral determination to be an inextricable aspect of moral psychology, they did not have the same understanding of autonomy that emerged so forcefully during the Enlightenment and in its wake.