“The Treasure of Lady Cercira” by Konstantinos Theotokis. Necromancy, martyrs, and ruins in late nineteenth-century Corfu

The contribution aims at examining the novella, or poème en prose, by Konstantinos Theotokis Το βιο της κυράς Κερκύρας (The Treasure of Lady Cercira, 1898), which, rarely studied by scholars, presents interesting levels of interpretation. Among these, the presence of the supernatural in popular religiosity will be analyzed. The motif of the hidden treasure, of necromancy and of the pact with the devil, the ghost of the Corfiot Saint Cercira in the crypt below the isolated and crumbling Basilica, built in turn on the ruins of a second-century CE odeion, the words of the dark and gloomy magician, almost a larva of ancient times, allow Theotokis to face that custom of credulity, nourished by Byzantine demonological works that were inspired by the Hellenistic religious syncretism, on the suggestion of the Odyssean nekya and the ancient historiolae that survived in the oral folklore.