This volume is dedicated to Professor Maciej Salamon, an outstanding historian and numismatist, an expert on the history of Byzantium and East Central Europe in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, whose broad interests, interdisciplinary research technique and knowledge of foreign alnguages are openly admired by anyone who has had pleasure to meet him. At present, of particular importance to the entire Polish academic milieu is Professor Salamon’s active involvement in Polish scientific institutions connected with Byzantine studies: the Byzantine Studies Section of the Comittee on Ancient Culture of the Polish Academy if Sciences and the Comission for Byzantine Studies of the Polish Historical Society.