Miracles of Saint Demetrius

[1] The first book enumerates fifteen episodes of Saint Demetrius's intervention on behalf of Thessalonica, most of which occurred in the episcopate of John's predecessor, Eusebius, including outbreaks of plague and the siege of the city by the Sclaveni (proto-South Slavs) and Avars.

These episodes were written in the form of homilies or sermons, to be publicly read to the city's populace in order to demonstrate the Saint's active presence and intercession on their behalf.

As the eminent scholar of the medieval Balkans, Dimitri Obolensky, writes, "in no other contemporary work will he find so much precise and first-hand information on the military organization and topography of Thessalonica during one of the most dramatic centuries of its history; on the methods of warfare and the techniques of siege-craft used in the Balkan wars of the time; and on the strategy and tactics of the northern barbarians who, thrusting southward in successive waves down river valleys and across mountain passes, sought in the sixth and seventh centuries to gain a foothold on the warm Aegean coastland and to seize its commanding metropolis which always eluded their grasp.

And there can be few documents stemming from the Christian world of the Middle Ages in which the belief held by the citizens of a beleaguered city that they stand under the supernatural protection of a heavenly patron is so vividly and poignantly expressed.

The novel is based on the assumption that the miracles described did actually happen and that Saint Demetrius, as well as numerous other beings of the Christian as well as Classical Greek and Slavic mythologies, appeared and took part in the siege of Thessalonica.