Christine Muron

University of California Los Angeles

William and Suzanne Murray Research Fellow

Research Topic: Networks of Healing: The Visual and Material Culture of the Cult of St. Demetrios in Late Byzantium

Christine Muron is a PhD candidate specializing in Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the University of California-Los Angeles. She has participated in archaeological projects in both Greece and Turkey. Her dissertation investigates the cult of St. Demetrios, patron saint of the Palaiologoi, from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Drawing on written, visual, and archaeological evidence, she examines how imperial veneration of the saint, reflected in the expansion of his cult across Byzantine cities, resonated among communities in the Byzantine provinces and rural villages of Lakonia. By conducting on-site analyses of rural churches decorated with scenes of his Life and Martyrdom or dedicated in his name, she aims to draw meaningful connections between provincial and local healing cults, whose veneration contributed to the consolidation of Byzantine authority in the Peloponnese.