Julie Van Pelt, Ph.D. (2019), Ghent University, is a postdoctoral fellow of the Flemish Research Council (F.W.O.). She has published various articles on Greek hagiography. Her monograph Saints in Disguise. Performance, Illusion and Truth in Early Byzantine Hagiography is forthcoming.Koen De Temmerman (PhD 2006) is Professor of Classics at Ghent University.

• AcknowledgementsNote on Editorial Choices and AbbreviationsPart 1 Concepts and Contexts1 Narratives of Imagination and Fiction in Late Antique Hagiography: Scholarship and Ways ForwardKoen De Temmerman and Julie Van Pelt2 The Cultural Politics of ImaginationOn Fictionality in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Christian Contexts (Origen, the Apocryphal Acts, Hagiography)Panagiotis Roilos3 From Cyclops to Unicorn: Fiction and the New Communitas of Middle Byzantine HagiographyChristian HøgelPart 2 Reality and Representation4 The Fictionality of Literary History in Syriac: Thomas of Marga and Abdisho Bar BrikhaScott Fitzgerald Johnson5 At the Margins of the WorldThe Desert as a Fictionalized Space in Pseudo-Neilos’ Narrations and the History of the Great Deeds of Bishop Paul of Qentos and Priest John of EdessaAndré Binggeli6 The Literary Construction of a Post-Iconoclast Saint: Gregorios Dekapolites between Biography and FictionalizationOscar Prieto DomínguezPart 3 Invention and Truth7 Thinking Characters: Fictionalization and Claims of Truth in Syriac HagiographyFlavia Ruani8 Focalization, Immersion and Fictionality: Shifts between Female and Male Pronouns in Greek Lives of Cross-DressersJulie Van Pelt9 Truth, Authentication and History-Writing in the History of the Armenians by AgathangelosValentina CalzolariPart 4 Models and Intertexts10 Malchus, the Not So Good Shepherd: Biblical Stylization, Generic and Moral Ambiguity in Jerome’s Vita MalchiDanny Praet11 Ritual Fictions, Liturgical Truths in the Hymns of Romanos the MelodistDerek Krueger12 Modelling Prophets: Alexander the Great as a Proto-Sufi Saint-King in Thaʿlabi’s Lives of the ProphetsGhazzal Dabiri13 A Scene Played Out Again: Ardashir and Constantine, Sargon and CyrusMatthew O’FarrellIndex