The Chronology of some Middle-Byzantine Churches

Millet has established that the Greek church-builders were in a large measure independent of their contemporaries in the imperial capital. The independent Greek School whose limits he sought to trace reached the peak of its achievement in the two centuries prior to the Latin occupation, and most of the Byzantine churches in Central Greece and the Peloponnesus belong to this period. Millet's approach to these Middle-Byzantine churches was retrospective, his starting-point being Mistra, capital of the restored imperial province. He was interested in the Greek tradition less for its own sake than for its contribution to the later architecture of the last Byzantine ‘Renaissance.’ While he has endeavoured to resolve the problems which the origins of certain of its characteristic features present, and to gauge its legacy to Arta and Mistra, he has treated more summarily the development within the limits of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.