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A sermon attributed to Theodore Syncellus (Theodoros Synkellos) is considered as one of the basic sources for the study of the Avar siege of Constantinople in AD 626. Therefore, the most historians paid more attention to the analysis of its historical background than to its ideological content. From the ideological point of view, the document serves as an evidence that a fear for the future of the Empire and its capital Constantinople began to rise within emerging Byzantine society. The Avar siege served its author mainly as a model for developing his polemics with imaginary Jewish opponents and their religion. It deserves to be included in a long succession of similar polemical treatises, which have existed in Christianity from its earliest times.

The anonymous report on the Avar siege of Constantinople in 626 preserved in the Historia Syntomos of patriarch Nikephoros from the 9 th century has long been considered as a kind of supplement to the contemporary sources about the siege. In this paper, I will try to analyze selected motives in this report and compare them not only with information from contemporary sources, but also with the conclusions I presented in my previous studies dedicated to the topography of the Avar siege of Constantinople.

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