Non-exposed Funerary Inscriptions and the Cult of the Cross between Italy and Byzantium, 6th - 9th centuries

Some funerary graffiti found in Early Medieval Apulia, just as other contemporary inscriptions in Northern and Southern Italy, were scratched or painted inside the tombs: they do not seem to have been inscribed with the intention of ever being read or seen after their initial execution. This practice is commonly explained by the perception of epigraphic writing in the Early Western Middle Ages (7th-8th c.) which stood in stark contrast to the classical idea of inscriptions as publicly displayed writing. Examples of this practice appear in some funerary inscriptions from Byzantine territories, such as Sicily and the Southern Balkans, dating from an even earlier period (the end of the 5th – 6th c). This indicates that the notion of using non-displayed writing in the funerary sphere, so different from any known classical epigraphic habit, may have come to the West from Byzantium.