A Map of Food in the Byzantine XV Century (in Radoslav Petkovic’s Perfect Remembrance of Death)

This paper analyzes the motif of food in Radoslav Petković’s novel, The perfect remembrance of death (2008) which is set in the city of Byzantium and in the Peloponnese in the fifteenth century. The entire novel is filtered through a concept from St. John Climacus’ Ladder of Paradise, which identifies the necessity of bread with the memory of death. Descriptions of Byzantine cuisine accompany the complex reasoning of the protagonists, members of Plethon’s circle in Mistra.