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The article is focusing on a small metal medallion engraved with the scene “Descent into Hell” and the Greek inscription from the Hermitage Museum collection. This item has been published several times by Hermitage researcher Vera Zalessk as “lid from a piksidy brought by a pilgrim from Jerusalem, which could also be used as a matrix for making Eulogy copies”. This fantastic interpretation was repeated in several publications; she also wanted to publish it again in the catalog of the exhibition dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Academician Nikolai Likhachev. The later prompted me to write in 2011 a special article with another interpretation of this object and two other similar ones. Studying Greek documents in the Archives of Ancient Acts in Moscow, I noticed that the stamps from the documents issued by the Jerusalem Patriarchate are extremely similar to the object from Hermitage Museum by the typology, iconography and inscriptions. Continuing research in this direction, I found strong arguments for the identification of this object as a stamp of the Jerusalem Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre Temple of the 17th century. Comparison with the document of the first quarter of the 17th century by Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophanes, made us believe that manufacturing of this stamp was commissioned in Constantinople by the patriarch before his trip to Russia to appoint the Moscow Patriarch Filaret Nikitich, father of Tsar Mikhail Romanov. The time it was made may be considered as in the first quarter of 17th century through analogy with the personal seal of Patriarch Theophanes.

At least three fragments places in Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos‘ narrative of the Avar wars have no parallels either in Theophylakt Simokatta or in Theophanes. The nature of the evidence cited in these passages cannot be a logical reconstruction based on the texts of either of the mentioned authors. This means that Xanthopoulos, the Church historian of the 14th century, had at his disposal a source on the 6th century which has not come down to us.

The paper analyzes the paragraph of the Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor in which the Byzantine Chronicler describes the contract made between Bulgaria and Byzantium in 716, and above all the mention of the Bulgarian ruler Kormesios in it.

In a reply to a previous article published in Byzantion Nea Hellás, the Greek historian Andreas Gkoutzioukostas has claimed that in a passage in Book VIII of Theophylact Simocatta's History, the word Sklavinia was used as an adjective, not as a noun, and that the Byzantine historian frequently used adjectives derived from ethnic names. This article is a demonstration that both claims are in fact wrong, as Theophylact had very precise reasons for avoiding adjectives derived from ethnic names. Such reasons have much more to do with the narrative strategies that he employed than with the norms of the Greek language. His usage of Sklavinia is also mirrored by Hugeburc of Heidenheim's transcription of St. Willbald's account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]