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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors of medieval translatio narratives wrote with a profound sense of the community in which they were operating. The community provided these authors with inspiration, audience, guidance, and even funding. As I bring my work on this book to a close, I find myself deeply aware of the debts that I owe to my family, friends, colleagues, mentors, and institutions.

The project owes much to the comments and advice from Alfred Andrea, Bernard Bachrach, Cecilia Gaposchkin, Michael Lower, Susan Noakes, Thomas Madden, Kathryn Reyerson, Jay Rubenstein, Susanna Throop, John Watkins, Brett Whalen, and Diana Wright. I am deeply grateful to the anonymous readers for the Pennsylvania State University Press, as well as to my editor, Ellie Goodman, and to my copyeditor, Julie Schoelles, for their many useful suggestions. In the final stages of compiling the manuscript, I benefited from the assistance of an extraordinarily competent research assistant, Breeanna Watral. Special thanks go to my parents, Lewis and Elisabeth Israels Perry, who by now have become quite expert in medieval Venetian studies.

Funding for research trips to Italy and elsewhere was provided by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Center for Early Modern History at the University of Minnesota, the History Department at the University of Minnesota, and the Faculty Development Committee at Dominican University. The provost’s office and the Department of History at Dominican University provided support for image rights, maps, and indexing.

I am exceptionally grateful to Kathleen Rhoades, the interlibrary loan librarian at Dominican University, who made it possible for me to access books from libraries across North America and Europe. I am also grateful to the staffs at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidese in Milan, and the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Photograph and Fieldwork Archives for their assistance. The Procuratoria of the Basilica of San Marco, the Patriarchate of Venice, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople all opened many doors for me along the way and periodically allowed me to photograph sacred objects.

Last, I would like to thank my family. The research and writing of this book has overlapped with my marriage to Shannon Leslie and the birth of my two children, Nicholas and Elisabeth. Miracles fill the medieval narratives that I study, but none seem as amazing as my family’s enduring love and support.