Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium [Illustrated] 9781107151512, 1107151511

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title page
Copyright information
Dedication
Table of contents
List of illustrations
List of color plates
Acknowledgments
Note to the reader
List of abbreviations
Introduction
I.
II.
III.
1 From composition to performance: epigrams in context
Why verse? Epigrams and the power of logos
Verses on the page: epigrams in the manuscript record
Patrons, poets, artists
Epigrams and the viewer/reader
2 The patron’s ‘‘I’’
Between praise and prayer: the patron in the dedicatory epigram
The patron says ‘‘I’’
Performed identities, crafted selves
3 Kosmos
What is kosmos?
Kosmos, matter, and the sacred
Cladding/clothing
4 Golden words
Script as ornament
Verses in space
Labyrinths and crosses: figured epigrams
Logikos kosmos
5 Devotional gifts
Toward a typology of devotional gifts
Gifts, prayers, and memory
Paradoxical exchange
6 The erotics of devotion
Of gifts and love
Defining pothos
Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos
7 Image of the beloved
Affective images
Adornment, desire, and the relational self
Epithets
Pothos portrayed
Conclusion
Bibliography
SourcesActes de Docheiariou, ed. N. Oikonomidès (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1984).Actes de Lavra, ed. P. Lemerle, A. Guillou, N. Svoronos, and D. Papachryssanthou, 4 vols. (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1970-82).Actes de Pantocrator, ed. V. Kravari (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1991).Actes de Vatopédi, ed. J. Bompaire, J. Lefort, V. Kravari, Ch. Giros, and K. Smyrlis, 2 vols. (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 2001-6).Actes de Xénophon, ed. D. Papachryssanthou (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1986).Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata, ed. M. Patillon, Aelius Théon: Progymnasmata (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997).Akindynos, Gregory, Letters, ed. A. Constantinides Hero, Letters of Gregory Akindynos (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1983).Akropolites, George...
Secondary WorksAbel, U. (1978) ‘‘An Icon’s Attire-On the Frames and Covers of Russian Icons,’’ Nationalmuseum Bulletin 2.3: 89-101.Abramovich, D. I. (1930) Kievo-Pecherski paterik (Kiev: Vseukraïnska akademiia nauk).Acheimastou-Potamianou, M. (ed.) (1988) Holy Image, Holy Space: Icons and Frescoes from Greece, exh. cat. (Athens: Greek Ministry of Culture, Byzantine Museum of Athens).Acheimastou-Potamianou, M. (1998) iotakappanuepsi tauupsi upsizetaanutauiotanu upsisigmaepsiupsi thetaetanunu (Athens: amuepsi rhochiaiotalambdagammaiotakappanu Pirhoomeganu kappaaiota pialambdalambdataurhoiotasigmaepsiomeganu).Acheimastou-Potamianou, M. (2002) ‘‘rhopiiota sigmaupsinutaurhoetasigmaeta epsiiotakappanuomeganu sigmatau upsizetanutauiota,’’ in Vassil...
Index
Color plates

Citation preview

Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium

This book explores the nexus of art, personal piety, and selfrepresentation in the last centuries of Byzantium. Spanning the period from around 1100 to around 1450, it focuses upon the evidence of verse inscriptions, or epigrams, on works of art. Epigrammatic poetry, Professor Drpić argues, constitutes a critical, if largely neglected, source for reconstructing aesthetic and socio-cultural discourses that informed the making, use, and perception of art in the Byzantine world. Bringing together art-historical and literary modes of analysis, the book examines epigrams and other related texts alongside an array of objects, including icons, reliquaries, ecclesiastical textiles, mosaics, and entire church buildings. By attending to such diverse topics as devotional self-fashioning, the aesthetics of adornment, sacred giving, and the erotics of the icon, this study offers a penetrating and highly original account of Byzantine art and its place in Byzantine society and religious life. ivan drpic´ is Assistant Professor of Byzantine and Western Medieval Art History at the University of Washington. His articles have appeared in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Speculum, Word & Image, and Zograf. His research interests include the nexus of aesthetics, anthropology, and religion; the relationship between the verbal and the visual; the materiality and agency of art; and the cultural interactions between Byzantium and the Slavic world.

Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium i va n d r p i c´

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107151512 © Ivan Drpić 2016 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2016 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Names: Drpić, Ivan, author. Title: Epigram, art, and devotion in later Byzantium / Ivan Drpić. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016001238 | ISBN 9781107151512 (Hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Arts and society–Byzantine Empire. | Arts and religion–Byzantine Empire. | Identity (Psychology) in art. | Epigrams, Byzantine. | BISAC: HISTORY / Europe / General. Classification: LCC NX180.S6 D77 2016 | DDC 701/.03–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016001238 ISBN 978-1-107-15151-2 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. This publication is made possible in part by the International Centre of Medieval Art and the Samuel H Kress Foundation.

MM

To Aleksandra and Filip and in memory of Nana

Contents

List of illustrations [page viii] List of color plates [xvii] Acknowledgments [xix] Note to the reader [xxi] Abbreviations [xxii]

Introduction [1] 1 From composition to performance: epigrams in context

[18]

2 The patron’s “I” [67] 3 Kosmos [118] 4 Golden words [186] 5 Devotional gifts [244] 6 The erotics of devotion [296] 7 Image of the beloved [332] Conclusion [396] Bibliography [403] Index [475]

vii

Illustrations

0.1 Icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, third quarter of the fourteenth century, Diözesanmuseum, Freising (photo: Diözesanmuseum, Freising). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [page 2] 1.1 Icon of the Last Judgment, c. 1260–80, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Kharbine-Tapabor / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY) [20] 1.2a–b Ring, fourteenth century, National Archaeological Museum, Athens (photo: Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs – National Archaeological Museum, Athens) [22] 1.3 Archangel Gabriel, 1294/95, church of the Virgin Peribleptos, Ohrid (photo: author) [30] 1.4 Pectoral cross-reliquary, ninth or tenth century, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai) [40] 1.5a–d Details of the epigram on the pectoral cross-reliquary, ninth or tenth century, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai) [41] 1.6 Ivory diptych, tenth/eleventh or thirteenth century, cathedral treasury, Chambéry (photo: Damien Lachas / Direction régionale des affaires culturelles Rhône-Alpes, Conservation régionale des monuments historiques). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [43] 1.7 Porphyry column of Constantine, Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Pascal Sébah, c. 1870 / Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Photograph Collection) [50] 1.8 Detail of the porphyry column of Constantine with the dedicatory epigram of Manuel I Komnenos, Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Robert Ousterhout) [51] 1.9 Sanctuary apse with the Deēsis and a section of the dedicatory epigram of the tzaousios Constantine Spanes, 1337/38, church of Saint Nicholas, Platsa in the Mani (photo: Michalis Kappas) [53] viii

Illustrations

1.10 Detail of the dedicatory epigram of the tzaousios Constantine Spanes, 1337/38, church of Saint Nicholas, Platsa in the Mani (photo: Michalis Kappas) [53] 1.11 Detail of the dedicatory epigram of Justinian I and Theodora, mid520s, church of Saints Sergios and Bakchos, Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: author) [55] 1.12 Steatite panagiarion of Alexios Komnenos Angelos, fourteenth century, formerly in the Panteleimon monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Kondakov 1902, pl. XXXI) [59] 1.13 Mosaic of the Striding Lion, fifth century, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (photo: Mitro Hood / The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore) [64] 2.1 Embroidered podea(?) with the archangel Michael and the supplicant Manuel, fourteenth or early fifteenth century, Museo di Palazzo Ducale, Urbino (photo: Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici Artistici ed Etnoantropologici delle Marche, Urbino). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [68] 2.2 Dedicatory epigram, 1314/15, church of the Anastasis, Berroia (photo: Εφορεία Αρχαιοτήτων Ημαθίας, Berroia) [73] 2.3 Exonarthex of the cathedral church of Hagia Sophia, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra) [76] 2.4 Dedicatory epigram of the archbishop Gregory, 1313/14, cathedral church of Hagia Sophia, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra) [76] 2.5 Church of the Dormition of the Virgin, Skripou in Boeotia (photo: Amy Papalexandrou) [77] 2.6 Dedicatory epigram of the prōtospatharios Leo, 873/74, church of the Dormition of the Virgin, Skripou in Boeotia (photo: Εφορεία Αρχαιοτήτων Βοιωτίας, Thebes) [78] 2.7 Church of the Hagia Monē, Areia (photo: Christina Pinatsi) [81] 2.8 Dedicatory epigram of the bishop Leo, 1149, church of the Hagia Monē, Areia (photo: Christina Pinatsi) [82] 2.9 Dedicatory mosaic panel with the Virgin, Christ, and George of Antioch, c. 1143–51, Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, Palermo (photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY) [83] 2.10 Medallion with the Virgin and Child and the dedicatory epigram of the prōtostratōr John Phrangopoulos, c. 1430, church of the Virgin Pantanassa, Mistra (photo: Εφορεία Αρχαιοτήτων Λακωνίας, Sparta) [84]

ix

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Illustrations

2.11a–b Seal of Basil, metropolitan of Thessalonike, middle of the twelfth century, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC (photo: Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, DC) [106] 2.12 Icon of Saint Irene with the supplicant Nicholas, eighth or ninth century, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai) [109] 2.13 Joshua before the archangel and the entombment of Joshua, so-called Mēnologion of Basil II, Ms. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 3, c. 1000, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) [110] 2.14 Embroidered paten veil with the Communion of the Apostles, twelfth century, cathedral treasury, Halberstadt (photo: Juraj Lipták / Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie SachsenAnhalt) [112] 2.15 Embroidered chalice veil with the Communion of the Apostles, twelfth century, cathedral treasury, Halberstadt (photo: Juraj Lipták / Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie SachsenAnhalt) [113] 3.1 Icon of Christ with the silver frame dedicated by the archbishop Demetrios Chomatenos, 1216/17–c. 1236, formerly in the church of the Virgin Peribleptos, Ohrid (photo: after Filov 1922) [119] 3.2 Personification of Ktisis from the basilica at Ras al-Hilal, sixth century, Apollonia Museum, Souza/Sozousa (photo: Jane Chick) [122] 3.3 Personification of Kosmēsis from the basilica at Ras al-Hilal, sixth century, Apollonia Museum, Souza/Sozousa (photo: Jane Chick) [123] 3.4 Metropolis of Saints Theodores, Serres (photo: author) [126] 3.5 The Ascension of Christ, middle of the eleventh century, cathedral church of Hagia Sophia, Ohrid (photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY) [128] 3.6 Front cover of the so-called Phokas or Skeuophylakion Lectionary, tenth or eleventh century, Great Lavra, Mount Athos (photo: Kurt Weitzmann Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University) [131] 3.7 Icon of Saint John the Theologian, twelfth century (with fifteenthand nineteenth-century repainting), monastery of Saint John the Theologian, Patmos (photo: Monastery of Saint John the Theologian, Patmos) [133]

Illustrations

3.8 Icon of Saint Nicholas, c. 1390, monastery of the Great Meteoron in Thessaly (photo: after M. Chatzedakes and D. Sophianos, Το Μεγάλο Μετέωρο: Ιστορία και Τέχνη [Athens: Interamerican, 1990], p. 61) [134] 3.9 Precious-metal appliqués of the icon of Saint Nicholas, c. 1390, monastery of the Great Meteoron in Thessaly (photo: after Subotić 1992, fig. 11) [135] 3.10 Icon of the Virgin Akatamachētos, fourteenth century, Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens (photo: Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens) [137] 3.11 Icon of the Transfiguration of Christ, 886, from the Zarzma monastery, Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi (photo: Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi) [138] 3.12 Front cover of Codex gr. I, 53 (= 966), fourteenth century, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice (photo: Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo – Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana) [151] 3.13 Back cover of Codex gr. I, 53 (= 966), fourteenth century, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice (photo: Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo – Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana) [152] 3.14 Staurothēkē, twelfth century (central field) and late thirteenth or early fourteenth century (frame), cathedral treasury, Esztergom (photo: Attila Mudrák / Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Adalbert Cathedral Treasury, Esztergom). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [159] 3.15 Croce degli Zaccaria (obverse), restored 1278–83, cathedral treasury, Genoa (photo: D. Vinco / Comune di Genova, Archivio fotografico dei Musei di Strada Nuova) [162] 3.16 Croce degli Zaccaria (reverse), restored 1278–83, cathedral treasury, Genoa (photo: D. Vinco / Comune di Genova, Archivio fotografico dei Musei di Strada Nuova) [163] 3.17 Theodore Rallis, The Booty, c. 1905, National Gallery – Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens (photo: Stavros Psiroukis / National Gallery – Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Collection of the E. Koutlidis Foundation, Athens). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [168] 3.18 Saint Onouphrios, 1270/71, church of Saint Nicholas at Manastir near Prilep (photo: Giorgos Fousteris) [171]

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3.19 Portrait of Michael Philanthropenos and his wife Anna, Typikon of the convent of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, Ms. Lincoln College gr. 35, fol. 4r, c. 1330s, Bodleian Library, Oxford (photo: Rector and Fellows of Lincoln College, Oxford) [176] 3.20 Khludov Psalter, Ms. gr. 129d, fol. 67r, ninth century, State Historical Museum, Moscow (photo: State Historical Museum, Moscow) [183] 4.1 Saint James the Persian, back of a double-sided icon, late twelfth century, Holy Bishopric of Paphos, Paphos (photo: Giorgos Philotheu / Holy Bishopric of Paphos, Paphos) [190] 4.2 Saint Nestor, 1294/95, church of the Virgin Peribleptos, Ohrid (photo: author). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [192] 4.3 Inscription of Leo III and Constantine V, c. 727–40, walls of Nicaea/ Iznik (photo: K. O. Dalman, 1930 / Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Istanbul) [193] 4.4 Plaster cast copy of a section of the edict issued by Manuel I Komnenos in 1166, Hagia Sophia, Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Cyril Mango) [194] 4.5 Icon of the Virgin and Child, late fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and LoberdouTsigarida 2006, fig. 127) [196] 4.6 Epigram, icon of the Virgin and Child, late fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 130) [197] 4.7 Reliquary-enkolpion (obverse), twelfth century, Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow (photo: S. V. Baranov / Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow) [199] 4.8 Reliquary-enkolpion (reverse), twelfth century, Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow (photo: S. V. Baranov / Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow) [200] 4.9 South parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: author) [203] 4.10 Detail of the epigram on the exterior, c. 1310, south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Cyril Mango / Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC) [204]

Illustrations

4.11 Interior of the south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Vasileios Marinis) [207] 4.12 Plan showing the two inscribed interior cornices (marked grey), south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (drawing: Nataša Žugić) [208] 4.13 Mosaic decoration of the sanctuary with Christ Hyperagathos in the apse, the Virgin and John the Baptist on the side walls, and the four great archangels in the vault, c. 1310, south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [210] 4.14 Interior looking north with the restored arcosolium tomb of the prōtostratōr Michael Doukas Glabas Tarchaneiotes, south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Vasileios Marinis) [214] 4.15 Cross-section and plan showing the layout of the dedicatory epigram of the tzaousios Constantine Spanes (marked grey), church of Saint Nicholas, Platsa in the Mani (drawing: Nataša Žugić) [216] 4.16 Melismos and a section of the dedicatory epigram of the tzaousios Constantine Spanes, 1337/38, church of Saint Nicholas, Platsa in the Mani (photo: Michalis Kappas) [219] 4.17 Page with a section of the reading for Pentecost Sunday (John 7:37–52), New York Cruciform Lectionary, Ms. M. 692, fol. 56r, middle of the twelfth century, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (photo: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York) [221] 4.18 Page with a marginal scholion in the form of a bird, The Heavenly Ladder of John Klimax, Ms. Coislin 88, fol. 107v, second half of the eleventh century, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris) [222] 4.19 Labyrinth poem, Liturgical Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos, Ms. gr. D. 282 (olim Prodromos P. A. 14), fol. 3v, middle of the thirteenth century, Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies “Prof. Ivan Dujčev,” Sofia (photo: Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies “Prof. Ivan Dujčev,” Sofia). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [223]

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4.20 Figured dedicatory epigram of the panhypersebastos Andrew, Ms. Med. gr. 43, fol. 142v, second half of the sixteenth century, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (photo: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [228] 4.21 Icon of Christ, middle of the fourteenth century, Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra) [231] 4.22 Two plaques with the dedicatory epigram of the sebastokratōr Isaakios Doukas (drawing: Dalibor Novak, after Kissas 2003, p. 451) [232] 4.23 Icon of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 143) [240] 5.1 Embroidered icon veil with the Crucifixion, c. 1295, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [245] 5.2 Mosaic with Theodore Metochites presenting the church of the Chōra to Christ, c. 1316–21, former church of the Chōra monastery (Kariye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY) [248] 5.3 Fresco of Saint George on horseback, late twelfth century, church of the Virgin Phorbiōtissa, Asinou (photo: Gerald L. Carr). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [270] 5.4 Embroidered aēr-epitaphios of Andronikos II Palaiologos, early fourteenth century, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [272] 5.5 Embroidered aēr with the Virgin and Child, c. 1215–25/26, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia) [277] 5.6 Icon of the archangel Gabriel from the pair of icons showing the Annunciation, eleventh or twelfth century(?), Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra) [286] 5.7 Icon of the Virgin from the pair of icons showing the Annunciation, eleventh or twelfth century(?), Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra) [287] 5.8 Detail of the icon of the Virgin from the pair of icons showing the Annunciation, eleventh or twelfth century(?), Icon Gallery, Ohrid

Illustrations

6.1 6.2

6.3

6.4

6.5

6.6 6.7 6.8

7.1

7.2 7.3 7.4

7.5

7.6

(photo: Zoran Letra). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [288] Icon of the Virgin and Child, thirteenth century, Benaki Museum, Athens (photo: Benaki Museum, Athens) [297] Revetment of the icon of the Virgin and Child, early fourteenth century, Benaki Museum, Athens (photo: Benaki Museum, Athens) [298] Icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, early fourteenth century (revetment) and eighteenth century (painted panel), Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 234). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [304] Vita icon of Saint George with portrait of the hieromonk John, early thirteenth century, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai) [309] Portrait of the princess Juliana Anicia, Vienna Dioskorides, Ms. Med. gr. 1, fol. 6v, early sixth century, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (photo: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna) [317] Scene of the Deēsis, 1383/84, church of Saint Athanasios tou Mouzakē, Kastoria (photo: Michalis Kappas) [325] Saint Alexander from the Deēsis, 1383/84, church of Saint Athanasios tou Mouzakē, Kastoria (photo: Michalis Kappas) [326] Icon of the Virgin Phobera Prostasia, sixteenth century(?), Koutloumousiou monastery, Mount Athos (photo: Koutloumousiou monastery, Mount Athos) [330] Icon of Christ, sixth century with thirteenth-century(?) retouching, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Kharbine-Tapabor / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY) [354] Icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, c. 1370, Museum of Macedonia, Skopje (photo: Zoran Letra) [357] Epithet ἡ Ὁδηγήτρια, detail of the icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, c. 1370, Museum of Macedonia, Skopje (photo: Zoran Letra) [358] Virgin Oxeia Antilēpsis pulling the monk Kaloeidas out of sarcophagus, Psalter, Ms. gr. 61, fol. 102v, shortly after 1391, Christ Church, Oxford (photo: Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford) [362] Christ Eleēmōn, Psalter, Ms. gr. 61, fol. 103r, shortly after 1391, Christ Church, Oxford (photo: Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford) [363] Icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, middle of the fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas

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7.7

7.8

7.9

7.10

7.11

7.12

7.13

7.14

and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 314). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [371] Portrait of Anna Philanthropene on the icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, middle of the fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and LoberdouTsigarida 2006, fig. 210) [373] Drawing of the portrait of Anna Philanthropene on the icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, middle of the fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 211) [374] Icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria with portraits of Constantine Akropolites and his wife Maria, late thirteenth or early fourteenth century (revetment) and last quarter of the fifteenth century (painting), State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (photo: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) [376] Icon of the Virgin Psychosōstria with portrait of the archbishop Nicholas of Ohrid, middle of the fourteenth century, Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra) [377] Detail of the icon of the Virgin Psychosōstria with portrait of the archbishop Nicholas of Ohrid, middle of the fourteenth century, Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra) [378] Icon of the Martyrdom of Saint Demetrios, fifteenth or sixteenth century, Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini, Venice (photo: Icon Museum, Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini, Venice) [383] Icon of Christ Pantokratōr, c. 1363, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (photo: Vladimir Terebenin / State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section. [391] Portrait of the megas primikērios John on the icon of Christ Pantokratōr, c. 1363, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (photo: Vladimir Terebenin / State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg) [392]

Color plates

Color plates can be found between pages 264 and 265. Plate 1 (= Figure 0.1) Icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, third quarter of the fourteenth century, Diözesanmuseum, Freising (photo: Dioezesanmuseum, Freising) Plate 2 (= Figure 1.6) Ivory diptych, tenth/eleventh or thirteenth century, cathedral treasury, Chambéry (photo: Damien Lachas / Direction régionale des affaires culturelles Rhône-Alpes, Conservation régionale des monuments historiques) Plate 3 (= Figure 2.1) Embroidered podea(?) with the archangel Michael and the supplicant Manuel, fourteenth or early fifteenth century, Museo di Palazzo Ducale, Urbino (photo: Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici Artistici ed Etnoantropologici delle Marche, Urbino) Plate 4 (= Figure 3.14) Staurothēkē, twelfth century (central field) and late thirteenth or early fourteenth century (frame), cathedral treasury, Esztergom (photo: Attila Mudrák / Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Adalbert Cathedral Treasury, Esztergom) Plate 5 (= Figure 3.17) Theodore Rallis, The Booty, c. 1905, National Gallery – Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens (photo: Stavros Psiroukis / National Gallery – Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Collection of the E. Koutlidis Foundation, Athens) Plate 6 (= Figure 4.2) Saint Nestor, 1294/95, church of the Virgin Peribleptos, Ohrid (photo: author) Plate 7 (= Figure 4.13) Mosaic decoration of the sanctuary with Christ Hyperagathos in the apse, the Virgin and John the Baptist on the side walls, and the four great archangels in the vault, c. 1310, south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY)

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Color plates

Plate 8 (= Figure 4.19) Labyrinth poem, Liturgical Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos, Ms. gr. D. 282 (olim Prodromos P. A. 14), fol. 3v, middle of the thirteenth century, Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies “Prof. Ivan Dujčev,” Sofia (photo: Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies “Prof. Ivan Dujčev,” Sofia) Plate 9 (= Figure 4.20) Figured dedicatory epigram of the panhypersebastos Andrew, Ms. Med. gr. 43, fol. 142v, second half of the sixteenth century, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (photo: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna) Plate 10 (= Figure 5.1) Embroidered icon veil with the Crucifixion, c. 1295, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia) Plate 11 (= Figure 5.3) Fresco of Saint George on horseback, late twelfth century, church of the Virgin Phorbiōtissa, Asinou (photo: Gerald L. Carr) Plate 12 (= Figure 5.4) Embroidered aēr-epitaphios of Andronikos II Palaiologos, early fourteenth century, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia) Plate 13 (= Figure 5.8) Detail of the icon of the Virgin from the pair of icons showing the Annunciation, eleventh or twelfth century(?), Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra) Plate 14 (= Figure 6.3) Icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, early fourteenth century (revetment) and eighteenth century (painted panel), Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and LoberdouTsigarida 2006, fig. 234) Plate 15 (= Figure 7.6) Icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, middle of the fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 314) Plate 16 (= Figure 7.13) Icon of Christ Pantokratōr, c. 1363, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (photo: Vladimir Terebenin / State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg)

Acknowledgments

Over the years of work on this book, I have incurred many debts, and I can only begin to acknowledge them here. I am deeply grateful to Ioli Kalavrezou, my mentor at Harvard, for her unflagging support in matters big and small, academic and personal. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Jeffrey Hamburger and John Duffy. Their formidable erudition, intellectual generosity, and exemplary dedication to teaching continue to inspire me. The book has profited tremendously from the critical input of Stratis Papaioannou. Ever since the unbearably hot Athenian summer of 2005, when, behind the marble-clad walls of the Gennadeion, I made my first forays into the poetry of Manuel Philes under his guidance, Stratis has been closely involved in this project, and many ideas presented in the pages below bear his imprint. Foteini Spingou has been a godsend. In addition to many fruitful exchanges about Byzantine epigrammatic verse, I am indebted to her for allowing me to use her unpublished edition of the anonymous epigrams from the Anthologia Marciana and for reading the entire manuscript with a critical eye and astonishing attention to detail. Special thanks are also due to Andreas Rhoby who provided meticulous comments on an earlier version of the text, as well as to the late and much-lamented Titos Papamastorakis who generously shared his expertise in epigrams and other things Byzantine over memorable conversations in late spring 2009. At various stages in this project I have benefited from the help and advice of colleagues and friends, among them Dimiter Angelov, Elka Bakalova, Jelena Bogdanović, Emmanuel Bourbouhakis, Annemarie Weyl Carr, Jane Chick, Ioanna Christoforaki, Joachim (John) Cotsonis, Dejan Dželebdžić, Maria Evangelatou, Giorgos Fousteris, Leonela Fundić, Julian Gardner, Maria Georgopoulou, Kathryn Gerry, David J. Getsy, Sarah Insley, Catherine JolivetLévy, Michalis Kappas, Dina Kefala, Nikos Kontogiannis, Gojko Lalić, Bogdan-Petru Maleon, Vasileios Marinis, Miodrag Marković, Tommaso Migliorini, Benedetta Montevecchi, Robert Ousterhout, Maria Parani, Christina Pinatsi, Andrei Pop, Milan Radujko, Ljubinko Ranković, Alexander Riehle, David Roxburgh, Rossitza B. Schroeder, Kosta Simić, Cristina Stancioiu, Gojko Subotić, Ben Tilghman, Ayça Tiryaki, Marka Tomić Djurić, Alice-Mary Talbot, Alexandra Trifonova, Tolga Uyar, Konstantinos

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Vafeiadis, Hugo van der Velden, Maria Vassilaki, Elena Velkova Velkovska, Alicia Walker, Diana Wright, Nektarios Zarras, and Nataša Žugić. My colleagues at the University of Washington, especially Estelle Lingo, Stuart Lingo, Sonal Khullar, Marek Wieczorek, and Haicheng Wang, have provided steady encouragement and collegial advice. I am also grateful to the School of Art, Art History, and Design and its director, Jamie Walker, for their support. Several institutions contributed generous funding for this project, including the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, the University of Washington, and in particular, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. A David E. Finley Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery allowed me to conduct extensive fieldwork across the Mediterranean and Western Europe, from Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum to the monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, from the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino to the Byzantine churches of Messenia and the Mani. A Fellowship in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in 2013–14 afforded me the necessary time and resources to give the manuscript its final shape. Daily interactions and exchanges with a splendid group of scholars in that enchanting library on a hill in Georgetown – the Byzantinist’s paradise – have enriched my thinking and expanded my knowledge in manifold ways. I am particularly grateful to Margaret Mullett, then Director of Byzantine Studies, for her insight, unstinting support, and good cheer. At Cambridge University Press I would like to thank Michael Sharp and Marianna Prizio for their interest in this project and their patience and oversight during the publication process. I would also like to acknowledge the perceptive comments and suggestions made by the manuscript’s two anonymous reviewers. Gill Cloke copy-edited the manuscript with precision and finesse. To underwrite the costs of publication, I am honored to have received a Millard Meiss Publication Grant from the College Art Association and a Samuel H. Kress Publication Grant from the International Center of Medieval Art. For the strength and comfort they have given me, I thank my parents, Ljubomir and Ljiljana, my sister, Aleksandra, and my nephew, Filip. While they have never quite understood all the fuss about epigrams, they will be thrilled to hold this book in their hands. David Young Kim witnessed and participated in countless discoveries, joys, and frustrations that accompanied the making of the book, and on more than one occasion came to my rescue and saved the day. For this and much else I owe him more than gratitude.

Note to the reader

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. Scripture quotations in English follow the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. In a few instances however, all signaled in the notes, I have provided my own rendering of the scriptural text in English. As any attempt at consistency in the transliteration of Greek is bound to yield cumbersome results, I have used several systems. Long vowels are marked with a macron in Greek terms that appear in italics: hence eikōn rather than eikon. For the names of historical personages and locales, I have mostly adopted the spellings in A. P. Kazhdan (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (hereafter ODB). The names of modern Greek scholars, when encountered in bibliographical references in Greek, are latinized, but without the application of macrons. The system of the Library of Congress has been employed for transliterating references to scholarly works in Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Russian. All bibliographical references in Serbian are rendered in the Latin alphabet. When citing S. Lampros’ incomplete edition of the poems preserved in the Anthologia Marciana (“Ὁ Μαρκιανὸς κῶδιξ 524,” Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων 8 [1911] 2–59, 123–92, abbreviated as Anthologia Marciana), I have included a second number in parenthesis: e.g., Anthologia Marciana, no. 88 (B145). This second number refers to the new enumeration of the poems adopted in F. Spingou’s forthcoming Poetry for the Komnenoi. The Anthologia Marciana: Syllogae B & C. When I use the term ‘cat. no.’, I am referring to the numbered catalog entry on a particular object within the catalog, the full reference to which is given in the Bibliography; when I give a name in brackets afterwards, this always refers to the author of the numbered entry, who is often not identical with the editor of the catalog. Lastly, Chapter 2 of the present book incorporates and expands upon parts of my article, “The Patron’s ‘I’: Art, Selfhood, and the Later Byzantine Dedicatory Epigram,” Speculum 89.4 (2014) 895–935. I am grateful to Cambridge University Press for granting me permission to reproduce this material.

xxi

Abbreviations

AASS AB AP ArtBull BEIÜ I

BEIÜ II

BEIÜ III

BF BMFD

BMGS BSl ByzAD

xxii

Acta sanctorum, 71 vols. (3rd edn.; Paris, Rome, Brussels: Victor Palmé, 1863–1940) Analecta Bollandiana Anthologia Palatina The Art Bulletin A. Rhoby, Byzantinische Epigramme in inschriftlicher Überlieferung, vol. I: Byzantinische Epigramme auf Fresken und Mosaiken (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2009) A. Rhoby, Byzantinische Epigramme in inschriftlicher Überlieferung, vol. II: Byzantinische Epigramme auf Ikonen und Objekten der Kleinkunst. Nebst Addenda zu Band 1 ‘Byzantinische Epigramme auf Fresken und Mosaiken’ (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010) A. Rhoby, Byzantinische Epigramme in inschriftlicher Überlieferung, vol. III: Byzantinische Epigramme auf Stein. Nebst Addenda zu den Bänden 1 und 2 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014) Byzantinische Forschungen J. Thomas and A. Constantinides Hero (eds.), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: a Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders’ Typika and Testaments, 5 vols. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2000) Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies Byzantinoslavica L. Bender, M. Parani, B. Pitarakis, J.-M. Spieser, and A. Vuilloud, Artefacts and Raw Materials in Byzantine Archival Documents / Objets et matériaux dans les documents d’archives byzantins, URL: www.unifr.ch/go/ typika

Abbreviations

BZ CA DACL

ΔΧΑΕ Demetrakos DOP EAM ΕΕΒΣ GRBS HSCPh IRAIK JÖB Lampe LBG

LSJ Mansi MEG MM

MSpätAByz NE NRh OCP ODB OED

Byzantinische Zeitschrift Cahiers archéologiques F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq (eds.), Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, 15 vols. (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907–53) Δελτίον τῆς Χριστιανικῆς Ἀρχαιολογικῆς Ἑταιρείας D. Demetrakos, Μέγα λεξικὸν ὅλης τῆς ἑλληνικῆς γλώσσης (Athens: Δ. Δημητράκος, 1936–50) Dumbarton Oaks Papers Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1991–2002) Ἐπετηρὶς Ἑταιρείας Βυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Izvestiia Russkago arkheologicheskago instituta v Konstantinopole Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961) E. Trapp (ed.), Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität, besonders des 9.–12. Jahrhunderts (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1994–) H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) G. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 53 vols. (Paris: H. Welter, 1901–27) Medioevo Greco F. Miklosich and J. Müller (eds.), Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana, 6 vols. (Vienna: C. Gerold, 1860–90) Mitteilungen zur spätantiken Archäologie und byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων Νέα Ῥώμη: Rivista di ricerche bizantinistiche Orientalia Christiana Periodica A. P. Kazhdan (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) J. A. Simpson and E. S. C Weiner (eds.), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)

xxiii

xxiv

Abbreviations

PG PLP

RbK RE

REB REG RSBN ΘΗΕ TM VizVrem WSt ZLUMS ZRVI

J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completes. Series graeca, 161 vols. (Paris: Petit-Montrouge, 1857–66) E. Trapp (ed.), Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1976–96) K. Wessel (ed.), Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1963–) G. Wissowa and W. Kroll (eds.), Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (rev. edn.; Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1894–1980) Revue des études byzantines Revue des études grecques Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici Θρησκευτικὴ καὶ Ἠθικὴ Ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία, 12 vols. (Athens: Ἀθανάσιος Μαρτίνος, 1962–68) Travaux et mémoires Vizantiĭskiĭ vremennik Wiener Studien Zbornik za likovne umetnosti Matice srpske Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta

Introduction

I. Among the select number of Byzantine images of the Virgin that, upon their transfer to Western Europe, came to be attributed to the paintbrush of the evangelist Luke is a delicate, small icon now housed in the Diözesanmuseum at Freising (Plate 1, Figure 0.1).1 Measuring no more than 27.8  21.5 cm, the icon shows a half-length figure of Mary turned slightly to the right, with her hands raised in prayer, gently gazing out at the spectator. The figure’s halo and background are covered by a silver-gilt revetment that, apart from the standard abbreviated appellation Μήτηρ Θεοῦ (“Mother of God”), bears an additional label identifying the compassionate mediatrix as ἡ Ἐλπὶς τῶν Ἀπελπισμένων (“the Hope of the Hopeless”). A series of ten enamel medallions, symmetrically and hierarchically arranged, adorn the icon’s broad frame, also made of gilded silver. Those at the top depict the Hetoimasia, the throne prepared for the Second Coming of Christ, flanked by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. The apostles Peter and Paul and the great martyrs George and Demetrios are at the sides, while the doctor saints Cosmas, Panteleimon, and Damian – the latter’s figure now missing – occupy the bottom. Alternating with the medallions are ten plaques containing a poetic inscription lettered in enamel.

5

1

Ψυχῆς πόθος, ἄργυρος καὶ χρυσὸς τρίτος σοὶ τῇ καθαρᾷ προσφέρονται παρθένῳ· ἄργυρος μέντοι καὶ χρυσοῦ φύσις ὄντως δέξαιντο ῥύπον ὡς ἐν φθαρτῇ οὐσίᾳ· ἐκ δὲ ψυχῆς ὁ πόθος ὢν ἀθανάτου οὔτ’ ἂν σπίλον δέξαιτο οὔτε μὴν τέλος· κἂν γὰρ λυθῇ τὸ σῶμα τοῦτ’ Ἅιδου τόπῳ,

The icon is still displayed as a centerpiece of an elaborate seventeenth-century Altarbühne, originally installed in the cathedral at Freising. On the Freising Lukasbild, see Kalligas 1937; Wolters 1964; Grabar 1975b, 41–43 (no. 16); Baumstark 1998, cat. no. 84 (M. Restle); Buckton 2000, esp. 97–99; Vassilaki 2005b; BEIÜ II, no. Ik12.

1

2

Introduction

Figure 0.1 Icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, third quarter of the fourteenth century, Diözesanmuseum, Freising (photo: Diözesanmuseum, Freising). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

10

τοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς οἴκτου σὲ δυσωπῶν μένει. κανστρίσιος ταῦτά σοι προσφέρων λέγει Μανουὴλ Δισύπατος τάξει λεβίτης· καὶ ταῦτα δέξαι συμπαθῶς, ὦ παρθένε, τὸν ῥευστὸν τοῦτον ἀντιδιδοῦσα βίον ταῖ[ς σαῖ]ς διελθεῖν ἀνώδυνον πρεσβείαις ὡς ἡμέρας δείξειας καὶ φωτὸς τέ[κνον].

Introduction The desire of my soul, and silver, and thirdly gold are offered to you, the pure Virgin. However, silver and gold could be stained since they are of perishable material, whereas the desire, coming from the immortal soul, could not be stained nor come to an end. For even if this body should dissolve in Hades, it [i.e., desire] will continue to entreat you for the mercy of my soul. Thus speaks the kanstrisios Manuel Dishypatos of the order of Levites [i.e., deacon] offering these to you. Receive them compassionately, O Virgin, and grant in return that through your entreaties I may traverse this ephemeral life free from pain, so that you may show me as a child of the day and light.2

As revealed by X-radiography, underneath the paint surface of the Freising Lukasbild lies an earlier image of the Virgin which, hardly a product of the apostolic age, seems to be the work of an eleventh- or twelfth-century artist.3 The sensitive, painterly brushwork of the second, visible layer, most evident in the manner in which expressive highlights are applied to Mary’s face, suggests a mid- to late fourteenth-century date for the overpainting, a chronology that well accords with the formal, technical, and paleographic features of the revetment. As it would appear, the kanstrisios and deacon Manuel Dishypatos – probably to be identified with an official of the metropolis of Serres of the same name and rank, mentioned in a document of 13654 – had an older icon of the Virgin restored and further enhanced with the addition of a luxury adornment.5 Given its intimate scale, the icon most likely served as Dishypatos’ personal devotional image. The enameled verses encircling Mary’s figure pass over the restoration of the original painted panel in silence, drawing attention instead to the much more substantial gift of costly vermeil for the icon’s revetment, if only to decry its worth. For silver and gold, valuable as they may appear, are found lacking when compared with pothos – love in the sense of desire, longing, or yearning – which the donor brings forth as an offering to the Virgin in 2

3 5

Trans. Talbot 1999, 82 modifed. Following Andreas Rhoby’s proposal, presented at the conference, Das Lukasbild – Strahlkraft ȕber tausend Jahre in Freising (21 April 2016), I read the final, damaged word of the inscription as τέ[κνον]. The concluding line echoes 1 Thessalonians 5:5. 4 Wolters 1964, esp. 87–88, 90. Actes de Lavra, 3: 90–92 (no. 143). See also Laiou 1998, 209. In this, I follow the argument advanced by the late Titos Papamastorakis at the Twenty-Eighth Symposium of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Archaeology and Art of the Society for Christian Archaeology in Athens on May 17, 2008. Most previous discussions of the Freising Lukasbild unquestioningly accept the identification of the donor with Manuel Opsaras Dishypatos, a midthirteenth-century metropolitan of Thessalonike (PLP, no. 5544), first proposed by Kalligas 1937, 506. Attempts to reconcile the chronology resulting from this identification with that suggested by the stylistic features of the icon’s metalwork, enamels, and overpainting have led to several erroneous reconstructions of the icon’s history. See above n. 1.

3

4

Introduction

its own right.6 Unlike these precious yet perishable metals, Dishypatos’ gift of pothos is as pure and immortal as his own soul. Aligned with this emphasis upon the constancy of desire is the motif of the perpetuity of prayer. Not even death, the verses declare, could silence the donor’s pothos and put an end to its pleas for salvation. The voice of this pothos that will continue to pray even after the physical dissolution of the donor’s body is, of course, that of the inscription – quite literally, I should add, as the verses record Dishypatos’ address to the Virgin spoken in the first person. Perpetually enacted through the medium of text, this petition complements the silent intercession of the Mother of God continually praying on the donor’s behalf through the medium of painting. The kind of cohabitation and synergy between inscribed verses and visual forms that we see at work in the Freising Lukasbild was common in the Byzantine world. Countless objects, pictures, and monumental structures – things that we nowadays consider under the rubric of “Byzantine art” – featured poetic inscriptions, what the Byzantines would call epigrammata, or epigrams. In modern usage, the term epigram refers to “a short poem ending in a witty or ingenious turn of thought.”7 Yet neither brevity nor witticism is a defining feature of a Byzantine epigram. Derived from the preposition ἐπί (“on” or “upon”) and the verb γράφω (“to write”), epigramma in Greek literally means “inscription.” Perfectly in accordance with this etymology, the epigram in Byzantine usage is defined primarily by its real or potential inscriptional use. It denotes a poetic text either written on an object or attached to another text as an introduction, dedication, colophon, or title.8 Despite irretrievable losses of monuments and artifacts, the number of Byzantine epigrams that can still be seen in situ is considerable. A recent assessment gives the figure of some twelve hundred verse inscriptions preserved from the period between 600 and 1500.9 Complementing this sizable corpus are hundreds of epigrams that have been transmitted in manuscripts. Taken together, the inscriptional and manuscript evidence leaves no doubt that inscribed verse was a common, if not ubiquitous, sight in Byzantium. The range of objects that the Byzantines deemed worthy of poetic amplification is vast. Epigrams appear on icons and reliquaries, frame book illuminations, ornament sacred vessels and ecclesiastical

6

7 9

To distinguish it from other kinds of love, I translate pothos as “desire.” The term’s semantics are discussed in detail in Chapter 6. 8 OED, s.v. ‘epigram’. Lauxtermann 2003, 26–34, 131–32; BEIÜ I, 37–45. BEIÜ I, 51. This figure does not include epigrams on seals.

Introduction

textiles, run along church façades and punctuate monumental cycles of mosaic and fresco decoration. They are found on city walls, gates, and bridges. In the form of epitaphs, they grace tombs and funerary portraits.10 Within a more intimate sphere of personal accouterments, they are displayed on headgear, staffs, articles of clothing, and especially on rings. An inkwell11 may bear a verse inscription as well as a sword,12 an astrolabe,13 or a flask with antidote against a poisonous bite.14 And a great many lead seals disclose the names of their owners in compressed poetic statements and invocations.15 Depending on the setting and the materials used, epigrams may be executed in a range of techniques – painted or worked in mosaic, nielloed, incised, enameled, cast, hammered, carved in relief, or embroidered. Their length also varies. While couplets and quatrains are fairly common, poems running to more than fifty lines are not unattested.16 Depending on the context and occasion, epigrams assume a variety of roles. Some function simply as identifying labels. Dedicatory epigrams, of which the poem on the Freising icon is an example, record acts of piety and munificence, mark ownership, praise the commissioner or the recipient of the dedication, or vocalize prayers to divine and saintly figures. Epitaphs commemorate the dead while giving solace to the living. Epigrams that come closest to a form of art criticism avant la lettre typically dramatize the act of viewing or describe, interpret, and evaluate the works they accompany. Others may offer moral exhortation, provide spiritual instruction, emotionally stir, or simply entertain.

10

11 12

13 14

15

16

On Byzantine epitaphs, see especially Papadogiannakis 1984; Mango 1995; Lauxtermann 2003, 213–40; Rhoby 2011b. See also Brooks 2006. Grassi 1995; BEIÜ II, nos. Me71–Me72. BEIÜ II, nos. Me78, Me103, Me104, Me107; Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. LII, with De Gregorio 2010b; Philes, Carmina I, 114–15 (nos. CCXIV–CCXVI). See also van Opstall 2008b, 57–58. BEIÜ II, no. Me52. Philes, Carmina I, 370–71 (nos. CCIII–CCV); Carmina II, 186–87 (nos. CL–CLV); Carmina inedita, no. 4. For epigrams on seals, see Wassiliou-Seibt 2011; Feind 2012–13. See also Hunger 1988; Seibt and Wassiliou 2005. The expansive surfaces of buildings were, naturally, best suited to accommodate these lengthier poems. The well-known epigram (AP 1.10) carved around the walls of the sixth-century church of Saint Polyeuktos in Constantinople was 76 lines long. See Connor 1999; Whitby 2006 with earlier bibliography. Still longer, comprising 87 verses, was an epigram of c. 1389 in praise of Theodore I Palaiologos, despot of the Morea, inscribed on five pillars of the now destroyed church of the Virgin at Parori near Mistra. See Millet 1899, 150–54; Loenertz 1955; BEIÜ III, no. GR99. In all likelihood, an epigram encompassing no fewer than 145 verses was once displayed at the monastery of Christ Pantokratōr in Constantinople. See Chapter 1.

5

6

Introduction

This book explores the multifaceted relationship between art and epigrammatic poetry in Byzantine culture, taking as its focus the realm of personal piety and its artistic and literary manifestations. The book examines the corpus of epigrams produced during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire, roughly from the rise of the Komnenian dynasty in the late eleventh century to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. For the sake of convenience, I shall refer to this period as “Later Byzantium.”17 My investigation engages with a wealth of visual and textual material. I explore an array of works – icons and icon veils, reliquaries, liturgical textiles, church buildings, and others – that still feature verse inscriptions. Aside from epigrams preserved in situ, I also examine a number of poems transmitted in manuscripts. These include the collections of epigrams by Byzantine literati such as Nicholas Kallikles, Theodore Prodromos, the so-called Manganeios Prodromos, Theodore Balsamon, Maximos Planoudes, Manuel Philes, and Nikephoros Kallistou Xanthopoulos. In addition, I examine poems transmitted anonymously, most notably the impressive collection of unattributed epigrams, primarily dating from the twelfth century, which is preserved in the Anthologia Marciana (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Ms. Marc. gr. 524).18 The book’s geographical framework is equally broad. While Constantinople as the uncontested center of power and cultural production claims the lion’s share of the material discussed, I also investigate artifacts, monuments, and texts created in or associated with other locales and regions, from Ohrid and Mistra to Cyprus. In attending to a vast corpus of poems composed to mark, enhance, comment upon, or complement an object, this book is to a large extent concerned with the perennial questions of the relationship between image and word, art and text, the visual and the verbal. Yet the purview of my inquiry is much broader. Proceeding from close readings of later Byzantine epigrammatic poetry and from a detailed analysis of objects still bearing inscriptions in verse, this study aims to offer a fresh account of the interplay between art and devotion in the last centuries of Byzantium.

17

18

The qualifier “Later” highlights the difference from “Late Byzantium,” a designation commonly used in scholarship in reference to the final period of Byzantine history, whether that period is taken to begin with the conquest of Constantinople by the forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 or with the reconquest of the city by the Byzantines in 1261. This anthology – arguably our key source on the artistic patronage of the twelfth-century aristocracy – was compiled by an anonymous scholar-scribe probably in the years between 1280 and 1290. See Spingou 2012, 8–71; Spingou 2014. See also Odorico and Messis 2003; Rhoby 2010c, 199–201.

Introduction

Recent years have witnessed a veritable surge of interest in Byzantine epigrammatic poetry, especially among philologists and literary historians. Following the fundamental contributions of scholars such as Wolfram Hörandner,19 Marc Lauxtermann,20 and Andreas Rhoby,21 the study of this important, yet long-neglected, genre of Byzantine literature is now on a secure footing.22 The monumental Byzantinische Epigramme in inschriftlicher Überlieferung, a corpus of Byzantine verse inscription published under the direction of Rhoby, has made a huge amount of material easily accessible to researchers.23 The much-needed work on critical editions of individual authors and manuscript anthologies of epigrammatic verse is also gaining momentum.24 Yet, despite these significant advances, the symbiosis of art and poetry and its broader socio-cultural ramifications in Byzantium still remain insufficiently explored. We have yet to fully integrate the evidence of epigrams in the study of Byzantine art and, more broadly, Byzantine material and religious culture. The present book takes a step in this direction.

II. Verse inscriptions displayed on the surfaces of Byzantine artifacts and edifices are not self-contained literary texts, and their semantic and communicative potential cannot be reduced to their verbal message. Like all 19

20 21

22

23

24

See especially Hörandner 1987; Hörandner 1989; Hörandner 1990; Hörandner 1994; Hörandner 1996; Hörandner 2003; Hörandner 2007b. See especially Lauxtermann 1994; Lauxtermann 2002; Lauxtermann 2003. See especially Rhoby 2010a; Rhoby 2010b; Rhoby 2010d; Rhoby 2011a; Rhoby 2011b; Rhoby 2011c; Rhoby 2011d; Rhoby 2012a; Rhoby 2015. In addition to the publications cited above nn. 19–21, the relevant bibliography includes Talbot 1994; Maguire 1996b; Talbot 1999; Papalexandrou 2001; Papamastorakis 2002; Paul 2007; Pietsch-Braounou 2007; van Opstall 2008a; Stefec 2009; Braounou-Pietsch 2010; Stefec 2011; De Gregorio 2010a; Spingou 2012; Belcheva 2013; Bernard 2014; Zagklas 2014; and the studies collected in Hörandner and Rhoby 2008. James 2007a and Bernard and Demoen 2012 include several important studies dealing with epigrams. To this select bibliography must be added Vassis 2005. The first systematic work on Byzantine epigrammatic poetry by Komines 1966 retains its significance. Three volumes have appeared thus far: the first is devoted to epigrams on frescoes and mosaics, the second to epigrams on icons and objects of the so-called minor arts, and the third to epigrams on stone: BEIÜ I–III. A final fourth volume featuring epigrams found in manuscripts, either as poetic captions attached to miniatures or as carmina figurata, is in preparation. Particularly welcome are the forthcoming editions of Manganeios Prodromos by Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys and the anonymous poetry from the Anthologia Marciana by Foteini Spingou. Also noteworthy is the on-line database of Byzantine book epigrams developed at the University of Ghent (URL: www.dbbe.ugent.be).

7

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Introduction

inscriptions, epigrams have a strong, if not always recognized, visual and tactile dimension. Their textual content is inseparable from the material form in which it is embodied – witness the blue enamel letters on the Freising icon that make Dishypatos’ poetic petition so powerfully present. On a fundamental level, then, the Byzantine epigram is a twofold entity, at once a literary composition and a material artifact. My inquiry engages with both of these aspects. Simply stated, I explore not only what epigrams talk about, but also how they appear and how they are experienced sensorially. Paying close attention to epigrams as material artifacts prompts us to consider several important questions: What role does the visual presentation of a poetic text – the scale and shape of the letters, their material support, the physical arrangement of the lines and, in the case of architecture, their disposition in space – play in communicating or inflecting its message? How does the displayed text interact with its physical context – its spatial setting or the neighboring imagery, for instance? How does the act of reading structure in corporeal terms the viewer’s handling of an inscribed object or his or her movement through an inscribed space? How might extralinguistic cues help an illiterate audience fathom the message of an epigram? Finally, which visual strategies, if any, did the Byzantines employ to differentiate epigrams from other kinds of inscriptions? The material embodiment of writing, however, is not the only means by which the text of an epigram acquires a forceful presence. In Byzantium, the viewer’s experience of the inscribed verse often incorporated yet another dimension, that of performed speech. As will be discussed in Chapter 1, the Byzantines commonly read inscriptions and other kinds of texts aloud. Such oral delivery was particularly well suited to verse inscriptions due to their poetic form. On occasion, as we shall see, the recitation of an epigram might be staged as a more or less formalized performative event, whether this event involved a single viewer-performer or a group of participants listening to a reader. The voicing of the inscribed metrical lines does more than activate their message; it brings the written word to life and endows it with a powerful aural presence. In view of the performative dimension of epigrams, further questions emerge: How does the experience of reading audibly or listening to a poem affect the viewer’s interaction with the object that bears it? Do epigrams exhibit a degree of self-consciousness by drawing attention to or engaging with their potential embodiment in speech? How might the oral performance of an epigram relate to its material form? And what might be the effect or contribution of such a performance in the context of the devotional and ritual use of the inscribed object?

Introduction

While I acknowledge and interrogate epigrams as material and aural presences, the bulk of my inquiry considers them as texts and, more specifically, as an abundant resource – a category of what we might call Byzantine art literature. To put it metaphorically, just as the verses on the Freising Lukasbild frame the painted figure of the Virgin, so too in this study does epigrammatic poetry serve as a conceptual frame within which to examine Byzantine art and its place in Byzantine society. Taken as a whole, the epigrammatic genre constitutes a rich field of discourse that can be profitably mined to assess how the Byzantines, notably members of the elite, conceived of and experienced the works of art that surrounded them. Based upon this premise, the first step in my investigation is to identify key concepts, themes, perspectives, and attitudes articulated in epigrams, paying particular attention to the language, imagery, and rhetorical structure of these texts. To contextualize my findings, I rely upon the testimony of numerous other sources, from inventories and monastic foundation documents to theological treatises, chronicles, saints’ vitae, and letters. In pursuing this mode of analysis, I attempt to reconstruct an historically and culturally specific frame of reference and thus to approach Byzantine art in terms that would have been familiar to its original audience. It must be stressed from the outset that my discussion will be selective, as many issues in regard to which epigrammatic poetry provides ample evidence will not be treated at any length. Thus, I will not address such fundamental topics as vision and sensory perception, animation and empathy, or the materiality of art.25 My focus is upon a specific cluster of issues converging at the point where art, personal piety, and self-representation intersect. As a result of this focus, I will be concerned mainly with dedicatory epigrams designed to accompany religious objects. Modern scholars have not always read dedicatory epigrams with a sympathetic eye. Poems of this type have traditionally been regarded as insipid and uninventive, full of topoi, stock motifs, and rhetorical clichés, and hence of limited interest to art history. The value of dedicatory verses has been seen to reside primarily in the factual data they may provide on past events, historical personages, or artifacts and monuments that no longer exist.26 In contrast to this negative assessment, the present study 25

26

For scholarly engagements with such topics, based on the evidence of epigrammatic poetry, see Kalavrezou-Maxeiner 1985, 79–85; Maguire 1996b; Pentcheva 2007; Pietsch-Braounou 2007; Pentcheva 2008; Pietsch-Braounou 2008; Braounou-Pietsch 2010; Pentcheva 2010, esp. 155–82; Pizzone 2013b. A pertinent example is Cyril Mango’s assessment of Manuel Philes, the most prolific poet of the Palaiologan period, in his anthology of primary sources on Byzantine art in English

9

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Introduction

argues that dedicatory epigrams provide a critical source of information for elucidating the aesthetic and devotional parameters that conditioned the patronage, production, and reception of religious art in Byzantine society. Rather than trying to remove the veil of “convention” in order to uncover the core of historical “truth,” this study embraces the tropes of dedicatory poetry insofar as they reflect and reinforce shared cultural values, assumptions, and attitudes. At this juncture, it would be instructive to return for a moment to the epigram running around the frame of the Freising icon. This is a typical dedicatory poem composed to commemorate a religious offering, in this instance the gift of a precious-metal icon revetment to the Mother of God. At first blush, the epigram seems to be of little art-historical import. With a mere allusion to the use of silver and gold for the revetment, its ekphrastic elements are minimal. There is no reference to the image or the experience of looking at it. But before we dismiss the enameled verses on account of their limited value as an art-historical source, let us consider what it is that the verses actually tell us, but also what they fail to mention, imply, or take for granted. To begin with, what does it mean to make a gift to a holy figure? How could Dishypatos possibly expect to receive Mary’s intercessory prayers in return for his offering? What is the logic behind such a startling exchange that brings together heaven and earth? Besides, why do the verses make no mention of the icon being repainted, but call attention instead to its adornment with silver and gold? Is it simply because of the related financial outlay, the fact that the donated bullion was more expensive than pigments? As will be demonstrated, many affluent Byzantines of

translation – a work that, not only in the English-speaking world, came to define the canon of Byzantine art literature: “Our chief literary source for the artistic production of the early 14th century, the poet Manuel Philes, poured out a stream of doggerel verse concerned with icons, liturgical and secular vessels, funerary portraits, etc., practically all of them commissioned by members of the aristocracy. The content of his poems is, however, seldom interesting to the arthistorian, consisting as it does either of clichés or the praises and lineage of his noble patrons” (Mango 1972, 244). Note, however, that elsewhere in the same book Mango is more charitable. Writing about the revival of the epigrammatic genre in the centuries following Iconoclasm, he remarks: “They [i.e., epigrams devoted to works of art] are admittedly rather tedious, and many of them are buried in inaccessible publications; yet, starting with the poems of Christophoros Mitylenaios and John Mavropous, and continuing until those of Manuel Philes and Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopoulos in the 14th century, they provide an abundant and almost unexplored source of information for art historians” (ibid., 183). Cf. also Lauxtermann 1994, 26–27: “Dedicatory epigrams are strikingly monotonous. It is not the type of poetry one reads with much pleasure. Its value is merely historical; on occasions it provides some new facts – pieces and shreds of information that may complete the art historian’s discourse of a fragmentated reality.”

Introduction

Dishypatos’ time chose to exhibit their wealth and piety precisely by furnishing icons with precious-metal revetments and other forms of costly ornamentation. What might be the reason for this pervasive interest in the adornment of icons? Furthermore, why is there so much emphasis in the verses on the donor’s pothos – his abiding desire for the Virgin? Why does Dishypatos speak of himself as though he were in love with Mary? What does it mean to be in love with a holy figure? More generally, what might be the significance of the suggested link between adornment, desire, and the icon? To grapple with such questions is to venture into many different areas, some of them far beyond the domain of art narrowly defined; it is to delve into the practice of religious donation, trace developments in icon veneration, confront an entire culture of adornment, engage with the erotics of devotion, and investigate personal piety as a form of self-fashioning; but it is also to explore the concerns and attitudes that informed the making of an object such as the Freising Lukasbild. Three themes prominently featured in dedicatory epigrams frame my inquiry. The first of these is adornment, or kosmos in Greek, one of the key categories in Byzantine aesthetic discourse. In Byzantine sources, kosmos is a common designation for various forms of ornamentation, embellishment, and amplification. A sumptuously embroidered altar cloth or wall paintings in a church, for instance, may be described as kosmos. Most commonly, however, the term is used to denote precious-metal and/or bejeweled mounts, facings, and various forms of appliqués attached to icons, reliquaries, biblical codices, sacred vessels, and the like. Drawing upon the evidence of dedicatory epigrams and other period sources, this book explores the later Byzantine culture of adornment. I argue that, beginning in the twelfth century, the act of furnishing a sacred object – especially an icon – with kosmos acquired a critical importance in the realm of personal piety. Rather than creating an object ex novo, the preferred way to exercise artistic patronage among the elite was to enhance and amplify a pre-existing object. One corollary of this unprecedented importance attached to the gesture of adornment was the emergence of a new conceptualization of poetic inscriptions as a form of kosmos – a kosmos made of verse. The notion of epigram-as-kosmos is crucial for understanding how the Byzantines approached and perceived the inscribed verse. It is by taking this notion as a point of departure that this study engages with the interplay between the material, literary, and performative dimensions of the Byzantine epigram. Gift-giving is the second guiding theme of the book. Dedicatory verses adorning the surfaces of religious artifacts and architectural spaces are for

11

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Introduction

the most part concerned with what might be described as devotional transactions. Like the poem on the Freising icon, they typically document and accompany a pious gift offered by the patron to Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint in gratitude for benefactions received in the past or in anticipation of future spiritual rewards. Through a detailed examination of the epigrammatic language of gift-giving as well as the rhetorical strategies at work in the epigrammatic representations of the process of spiritual exchange, this study seeks to uncover a larger discourse that informed and animated the practice of religious donation in Byzantium. Special consideration will be given to the critical link between donation and memory, specifically, the ritual commemoration of the patron-donor through liturgical celebrations and private prayers offered on his or her behalf. As we shall see, dedicatory verse inscriptions and their oral performance could play a significant role in the context of ritual remembrance. The third guiding theme of the book is pothos. Desire and devotion were closely aligned in Byzantium, and their overlap is perhaps nowhere more evident than in epigrams designed to escort gifts to holy figures. In epigrammatic poetry, the act of donation is typically characterized as being motivated by the donor’s emotional attachment to the sacred recipient, an attachment that occasionally assumes the guise of erotic passion. The key term used to describe this intense affective state is pothos. It is my contention that pothos represents a pivotal, if hitherto neglected, concept in the discursive arsenal of Byzantine religiosity. As the name for loving desire generated by a feeling of lack and separation, pothos captures the central predicament of the devotion that the Byzantines cultivated toward holy figures, namely, the need for intimacy with a superior being that remains frustratingly elusive, distant from the devotee’s earthly existence yet ostensibly involved in his or her life, simultaneously absent and present. Since one of the basic functions of Byzantine religious art was to pull the sacred into the human sphere and render the absent present, the concept of pothos can be productively brought to bear on how personal piety was articulated through material objects. My interest in this regard lies primarily with the icon – the pre-eminent vehicle of devotional desire. Using pothos as a conceptual lens, I investigate the icon as an instrument and locus of personal piety in Later Byzantium. I examine, more specifically, the various ways in which elite Byzantines manipulated sacred images to claim and assert their intimate rapport with the person depicted. With its shimmering silver-gilt kosmos inscribed with an emotionally suffused poetic prayer, the Freising Lukasbild exemplifies this crucial facet of later Byzantine religious culture. In this small panel, the very scale of which

Introduction

bespeaks a degree of intimacy, words and precious metals work together not only to honor the Mother of God, but also to insert the donor, as it were, into the icon. The inscribed kosmos inflects and personalizes the image of the praying Virgin, turning it into a portrait of the donor’s heavenly beloved and, as the appended epithet describes her, the hope of those without hope. In exploring the nexus of art and devotion, this book is in large measure concerned with the problematics of artistic patronage. Indeed, while several actors will take the stage in the following pages, including the self-assertive poet, the anonymous artist, the inquisitive viewer, and the elusive saint, the book’s true protagonist is the patron. Patronage has traditionally been considered a key aspect in the production of art during the Middle Ages.27 Since Byzantine art is by and large what in German is called Auftragskunst, a great deal of scholarly energy has been devoted to attempts to connect individual works of art with the personalities, aspirations, and interests of those who paid for the manufacture of these works. Yet beyond the provision of funds to build and decorate a church, adorn an icon, or copy a manuscript, the patron’s agency is often impossible to assess. We know next to nothing about Manuel Dishypatos, and the nature of his personal involvement in the repainting and adornment of the Freising icon is simply inaccessible to us.28 The problem, however, is not simply with identifying the patron’s share. In a seminal essay, Anthony Cutler has argued that cultural and social norms rather than personal choices played a decisive role in the production of art in Byzantium, and that the term patron, with its connotations of an overriding force that not only orders but conceives of works of art, is to be avoided as anachronistic.29 Medieval Greek, to be sure, lacks an equivalent to the modern concept of patron, and I hasten to add that I use this term simply out of convenience. In this book,

27

28

29

For general discussions of the role of patronage in Byzantine art, see Cutler 1981; Cormack 1984; Cormack 1986; Kitzinger 1992; A. Cutler in EAM, s.v. ‘Committenza. Area Bizantina’, 5:218–26; Iacobini 2006; Kalopissi-Verti 2006; Iacobini 2007; Cormack 2013. See also Papamastorakis 2004; Bevilacqua 2014 with a helpful overview of the scholarship on artistic patronage in Byzantium at pp. 35–53; Theis et al. 2014; Grünbart 2015, 131–70, 207–11; and the relevant studies collected in Panagiotide-Kesisoglou 2012 and Spieser and Yota 2012. For the medieval West, see especially Bergmann 1985; Brenk 2003; Caskey 2006; and the studies collected in Committenti e produzione; Meier, Jäggi, and Büttner 1995; Quintavalle 2011; Hourihane 2013. For the problematic identification of the patron with a mid-thirteenth-century metropolitan of Thessalonike, see above n. 5. Cutler 1994, 299.

13

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Introduction

the term denotes the initiator of art-making in the broadest sense and thus covers a range of activities and roles that Byzantine sources variously identify by designations such as κτήτωρ (“founder” but also “possessor”), δοτήρ (“donor”), ὁ τεύξας (“maker” or “producer”), and so forth.30 Moving beyond the questions of agency and intentionality, we could approach artistic patronage from a different vantage point, however. We could ask – to paraphrase Aden Kumler – what would happen were we to think of Manuel Dishypatos as the effect, rather than the cause of the Freising Lukasbild?31 What sort of image of an historical individual by the name of Manuel Dishypatos, a cleric who ostensibly paid for the refurbishment of this icon and may or may not have had an impact on its artistic form and epigraphic enhancement, emerges from the Freising Lukasbild? What does this “other” Manuel Dishypatos, constituted through and within the icon, look like? Embracing this alternative perspective, the present study engages with artistic patronage primarily as a question of self-representation. My interest lies not so much in how art reflects the circumstances of its production, but rather in how material objects, acting in concert with verses displayed upon them, construct and project an identity for the patron. Western medievalists have long challenged the Burckhardtian account of the discovery of the individual in the Renaissance, a teleological narrative in which the Middle Ages figure as a negative foil for the triumphant rise of the modern self. Diverse and wide-ranging interpretations of how personal identity, individuality, and subjectivity were conceptualized, fashioned, represented, and performed in the medieval era have been advanced.32 In the wake of Alexander Kazhdan’s influential, if contested, work on what he saw as a new sense of the individual in the Byzantine culture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries,33 Byzantinists have increasingly turned to this field of inquiry. The making of Byzantine selves has been explored in several contexts, among them autobiography, rhetoric

30

31 32

33

See Iacobini 2007, 153. For ktētōr, the key among these terms, see Krumbacher 1909; Rhoby 2007, 14–15; Kambourova 2008. Kumler 2013, 304. The relevant contributions include C. Morris 1972; Benton 1982; Bynum 1982; Schmitt 1989; Patterson 1990; Hamburger 1998; Bredekamp 2000; Schlotheuber 2004; Rosenwein 2005; Bedos-Rezak 2011; and the studies collected in Aertsen and Speer 1996; Melville and Schürer 2002; von Moos 2004; and Bedos-Rezak and Iogna-Prat 2005. For a useful overview of the literature, see Pohl 2010. Kazhdan and Wharton Epstein 1985. For a critique, see Mullett 2004.

Introduction

and letter-writing, and the liturgy.34 This book seeks to expand such discussions by calling attention to the vital role played by religious art and its epigraphic apparatus in the formation and representation of premodern subjectivities. Dedicatory epigrams, and the artifacts and edifices they accompanied, did more than declare spiritual allegiances or participate in the traffic of gifts and countergifts connecting earth and heaven; these texts also served to negotiate social and devotional identities, and hence constituted an important medium for elite self-fashioning. This is especially the case with epigrams that, like the verses on the Freising Lukasbild, take the form of a prayer uttered in the voice of the patron. Such poems provided the patron with an opportunity to speak about himor herself, albeit behind and through an idealized mask. With their personal tone, affective diction, and the frequent use of an autobiographical mode, dedicatory prayers represent a significant, if completely overlooked, genre of the self in Byzantium. As this brief overview of the scope and parameters of the present investigation makes clear, this book deals with a number of interrelated topics and issues that will emerge and come together at various points in the narrative that follows. For this reason, it is imperative to lay out clearly, if succinctly, the structure of the book. Chapters 1 and 2 set the stage – the former by contextualizing the writing and reading of epigrammatic poetry in Later Byzantium, the latter by introducing the generic features of dedicatory epigrams, a subcategory with which, as noted above, this study is mostly concerned. Chapter 2, in addition, offers a detailed examination of dedicatory epigrams in the form of a personal prayer as a literature of the self. Chapter 3 maps the later Byzantine culture of adornment, with emphasis upon the adornment of icons. This line of inquiry is continued in Chapter 4, which broaches the notion of epigram-as-kosmos. Sacred giving is the focus of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 attends to the discourse of pothos and its significance for understanding the dynamics of devotion to holy figures in Byzantium. The subject is taken up again in Chapter 7, the last chapter of the book, where pothos serves as a heuristic tool for exploring the place of the icon in personal piety.

34

For autobiography, see Angold 1998; Angold 1999; Hinterberger 1999; Hinterberger 2000; Pietsch 2005; Messis 2006. For rhetoric and letter-writing, see Papaioannou 2000; Papaioannou 2003; Riehle 2012; Papaioannou 2013. For the liturgy, see Frank 2005; Giannouli 2009; and especially Krueger 2014. See also Papaioannou 2010a and the relevant studies in Angelide 2004 and Pizzone 2014a. Several of the studies in Brakke, Satlow, and Weitzman 2005 deal with the early Byzantine material.

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Introduction

III. A final word about chronology and history: a reader familiar with the traditional periodization of Byzantine history may find it surprising that in this study the momentous events of 1204 – the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade and the subsequent disintegration of the Byzantine Empire – hardly figure as a meaningful chronological break. If I have chosen to treat as a whole the period from the accession of the Komnenoi to power in the late eleventh century to the demise of the Empire in 1453, it is because this period witnessed a notable continuity in the literary and artistic trends under examination. During the last centuries of the Empire, epigrammatic poetry flourished. Members of the Byzantine upper classes embraced the practice of adorning objects with poetic texts to an unprecedented degree. How widespread was the vogue for poetic inscriptions in Later Byzantium is indicated not only by the spate of epigrammatic verse produced by poets such as Manuel Philes35 or the anonymous authors of the Anthologia Marciana, but also by the proliferation of metrical legends on seals. Beginning in the second half of the eleventh century, it became increasingly common for a seal to bear one or several verses that typically identify the owner, often highlighting his or her piety (see, e.g., Figure 2.11a–b).36 To the extent that seals functioned as signs and disseminators of personal identity,37 the presence of poetry on these objects may be taken as an indicator of the degree to which the later Byzantine elite adopted inscribed verse as a medium of public display, a means of proclaiming one’s status and cultural ascendancy. The flourishing of epigrammatic poetry in Later Byzantium accompanied and responded to the rise of a distinct artistic and religious culture. In this culture, icons held a central place. They focused and sustained devotional life with a singular force, unparalleled before. In both public and private settings, the Byzantines came to express their piety primarily around and through sacred images. Closely related to this development was a growing preoccupation with kosmos. Adornment as an aesthetic category and a religious gesture took on new significance under the Komnenoi. Elite artistic patronage came to reflect an aesthetic sensibility

35 36

37

On Philes, see Chapter 1. Wassiliou-Seibt 2011, 33–35. For the affinity between verses on seals and verses on religious artworks, see Rhoby 2011a. See Bedos-Rezak 2011.

Introduction

that delights in embellishment and amplification, attends to the frame, the margin, and the ornamental detail, and values visual and material splendor, even excess. Within the discourse of kosmos, poetic inscriptions gained new relevance as verbal and material artifacts capable of adorning the objects to which they were attached. But the inscribed verse also acquired an added significance as a vehicle of self-representation. As we shall see, from the twelfth century onward, dedicatory epigrams increasingly give voice to the patron, often turning into dramatic and intensely emotional “I”-speeches. Propelling this shift to a more personal form of dedicatory address was a heightened concern with the self and its traces and manifestations. A new kind of devotional subjectivity emerged, and along with it came a growing self-assertiveness in the expressions and representations of one’s piety. More than ever before, the inscribed object carried the imprint of the patron’s self.

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From composition to performance: epigrams in context

In the winter of 1293–94, the celebrated scholar and monk Maximos Planoudes sent a letter to a friend, the monk Melchisedek, son of the statesman and historian George Akropolites.1 The letter opens with a complaint. Writing from Constantinople, Planoudes confesses how much he longs to visit the addressee, who was in Asia Minor at the time, but winter with its harsh weather does not allow him to set sail. Despite the fact that he praised this season abundantly in his writing, it is ungrateful and responds with threats; truly, he points out with regret, winter is deserving of invective rather than encomium. Spring, on the other hand, is benevolent and sweet. Although he judged it inferior to winter, it bears no malice.2 It will bring fair weather, calm sea, and winds favorable to navigation. After this epistolary jeu d’esprit, Planoudes turns to the main subject of the letter. He had been commissioned by Melchisedek to compose verse inscriptions for an icon of the Last Judgment, most likely a panel intended for the addressee’s private devotions, as well as to write some sort of commentary on them. Planoudes now presents the products of his verbal artistry and informs Melchisedek that he has failed to respond to the second task. Ἅς γε μὴν κελεύετε τῆς εἰκόνος ἐπιγραφάς, πεπόμφαμεν ἤδη ποιήσαντες· αὗται δ’ ἔπη λέγοιντ’ ἄν, εἴτ’ οὖν ἡρῷά τε καὶ ἑξάμετρα, οἴκτου μεστὰ τὰ πλείω· τούτων γὰρ ὑμῖν ὡς πρὸς τὴν μέλλουσαν κρίσιν (ἧς δῆτα καὶ ἡ εἰκὼν δεῖ) γράφειν τι καὶ τῶν πεμφθέντων ἕνεκεν, ὃ καὶ ἀπαιτούμενον ἦν, ἠβουλόμην· συνιδὼν δὲ κινδυνεύοντα τὸν λόγον ἐξενεχθῆναι πρὸς τὸ ψυχρότερον ἐμαυτὸν αὖθις ἐπέσχον.3

1

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3

Planoudes, Letters, no. 73. For the date, see Beyer 1993, 118. On the letter, see Wendel 1940, 431–32; the commentary in Pascale 2007, 30–34; Taxides 2012, 45–46. On Planoudes, see C. Wendel in RE, s.v. ‘Planudes, Maximos’, 20.2: cols. 2202–53; PLP, no. 23308; C. Constantinides 1982, 66–89; Wilson 1996, 230–41; Fryde 2000, 226–67; Taxides 2012, esp. 17–29. On the monk Melchisedek, see PLP, no. 523; Pascale 2007, 6–9; Taxides 2012, 43–58. The allusion here is to Planoudes, Comparison between Winter and Spring, a playful rhetorical exercise in which the author lays out a series of arguments in favor of the superiority of winter over spring. Planoudes, Letters, 111.21–112.2.

From composition to performance: epigrams in context

I have composed the inscriptions for the icon, which you indeed requested, and now I am sending . These may be called epic verses, that is, heroic hexameters; for the most part they are full of compassion. For this reason and with regard to what has been sent, as was your demand, I wished to write to you something in anticipation of the future judgment (which, certainly, the icon is in need of as well!). However, noticing that my discourse was at risk of becoming too insipid, I restrained myself immediately.

Enclosed with the letter were three epigrams in hexameters composed to accompany different parts of the icon, which – in iconographic terms at least – must have resembled a roughly contemporary icon of the Last Judgment at Sinai (Figure 1.1).4 The first epigram is devoted to the portrayal of Christ in glory, surrounded by the apostles and angels and the interceding Virgin and John the Baptist. The verses confront the viewer with the terrifying vision of the eschatological tribunal and, in a series of rhetorical questions, urge him to repent. Ὦ κρίσις, ὦ στάσις, ὦ φοβερώτατον αὖ τὸ θέατρον, ἔνθα θεὸς προκάθηται, ὃς ἔργματα πάντα δικάζει. οὐ φρίξεις ὁρόων; οὐ δάκρυα θερμὰ κατάξεις; οὐ ῥυθμιεῖς, ἄνθρωπε, τεὸν βίον; ὧδε γὰρ ἥξει. Judgment! Assembly! This formidable spectacle! Here presides God who judges every deed. Will you not tremble while gazing ? Will you not shed warm tears? Man, will you not set your life straight? For this is how it will happen.

In the second epigram on the depiction of the damned in Hell, the viewer, now overcome with fear, asks Christ: Οἵας μοι κολάσεις ἐπταικότι, σῶτερ, ἀπειλεῖς; αἵ με καταπλήττουσι καὶ ἐν πινάκεσσι γραφεῖσαι· ὧν πεῖραν τρομέω γάρ, τῶνδε δέδοικα καὶ ὄψιν. With what kind of punishments, O Savior, do you threaten me, the sinner? Even the ones painted on panels terrify me. I tremble at the prospect of experiencing them; the very sight of them frightens me. 4

The text of the epigrams reproduced below incorporates the emendations proposed by Pascale 2006, 516–17. For the Sinai icon, see Parpulov 2010a, 389 (no. XIII.69), fig. 118. On the iconography of the Last Judgment in Byzantine art, see Brenk 1966; Angheben 2002; Patterson Ševčenko 2009, 251–68.

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From composition to performance: epigrams in context

Figure 1.1 Icon of the Last Judgment, c. 1260–80, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Kharbine-Tapabor / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)

The final epigram concerns the representation of the righteous. Turning to the choirs of saints and to the scene of Paradise, which, as in the Sinai icon, featured the enthroned Virgin, Abraham with the souls of the righteous, and the Good Thief, the viewer exclaims:

Why verse? Epigrams and the power of logos

5

Μή ποτε μή τι γένοιτο, τὸ δή με δυνήσεται οἰκτρῶς, λήξιος ὑμετέρης, ἁγίων ἀγέλη, διορίσσαι. χαίροις, ὦ βασίλεια, καὶ σύ, πάτερ Ἀβραάμ, αὕτως· καὶ τὸν μειλίχιον λῃστὴν λέγω, εἰ θέμις ἐστί· δέξασθ’ ἐνναέτην με παρ’ ἐσχατιαῖς παραδείσου. May nothing ever happen to separate me lamentably from your lot, O flock of saints! Rejoice, O Queen [i.e., Virgin], and you, father Abraham, and I also address the penitent thief: if it is right, allow me to inhabit the farthest quarters of Paradise.

Elegant, interactive, suffused with dramatic pathos and appropriately admonitory in intent, Planoudes’ hexameters offered themselves as an apt poetic accompaniment to a personal devotional image of the Last Judgment. Nonetheless, they were to be scrutinized and evaluated by the addressee and, presumably, by his circle of friends – those to whom, in keeping with the protocols of Byzantine epistolary culture, Melchisedek would read the letter at a small literary gathering, the so-called theatron.5 In a playful allusion to the icon’s subject, the writer anticipates the future judgment of his verses and also recommends the icon itself for critical appraisal. Planoudes’ letter affords us a precious glimpse into the social and intellectual context in which epigrams were commissioned, written, read, circulated, and commented upon in Later Byzantium, the context in which art and poetry, devotion and aesthetic appreciation converged. The present chapter sets out to illuminate this context. In what follows, I shall first offer some brief remarks on the notion of epigram as logos, introduce the meters used in Byzantine epigrammatic poetry, and highlight some of the challenges one encounters when dealing with epigrams preserved only in manuscripts. Then, turning to the issues of artistic and literary patronage and production, I shall locate the process of creating objects inscribed with poetic texts within a broader social arena and examine the roles played by the patron, the poet, and the artist – the key figures in this process. The final section of the chapter shifts focus to the questions of reception and considers different modalities of engagement with the inscribed verse, with an emphasis upon the oral performance of epigrams.

Why verse? Epigrams and the power of logos Melchisedek’s decision to commission Planoudes to compose verses for the icon of the Last Judgment followed what Paul Magdalino has aptly termed 5

See Hunger 1978, 1: 210–11. On Byzantine literary theatra, see pp. 65–66.

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From composition to performance: epigrams in context

(a) (b)

Figure 1.2a–b Ring, fourteenth century, National Archaeological Museum, Athens (photo: Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs – National Archaeological Museum, Athens)

the “epigrammatic habit.”6 Many elite Byzantines had their personal icons and other devotional artifacts inscribed with poetic texts. This was by no means a routine element of artistic patronage. In fact, the vast majority of Byzantine artifacts that have come down to us have no inscriptions attached to them, apart from the ones required by the iconographic tradition – identifying labels, for instance. Besides, the commissioner of an object could choose to have it inscribed with a much more pedestrian kind of text. A mid-fourteenth-century icon of the Last Judgment in the Kanellopoulos collection at Athens features a short run-of-the-mill dedicatory note, which reads Δ[έη]σις τοῦ [δούλου τ]οῦ Θεοῦ Ἰωά[ννου καὶ τῆ]ς σ[υμ]βίου α[ὐ]τοῦ Μαρίας (“Prayer of the servant of God John and of his wife Maria”), strategically displayed next to the image of the Hetoimasia with the praying figures of Adam and Eve at its foot.7 Despite the ubiquity of the epigrammatic habit, verse inscriptions always represented but a fraction of the entire epigraphic production in Byzantium, with prose being by far the more common, if less elevated, medium of written display. For the Byzantines, however, the choice of poetic form carried a distinct charge. To attach a set of verses to an object was not simply to inscribe it with a text, but to furnish it with a piece of logos. Χρυσὸς κοσμεῖ δάκτυλον καὶ ψυχὴν λόγος (“Gold adorns the finger and logos the soul”). Thus reads a poetic motto carved in relief around the hoop on a fourteenth-century gold ring with a crowned eagle on its bezel, now in the National Archaeological Museum at Athens (Figure 1.2a–b).8 If a piece 6 7 8

Magdalino 2012, 32. Skampabias and Chatzedake 2007, 120–22 (no. 105) (K. Skampabias). Picard and Sodini 1971, 92; Spier 2013, 36 (no. 18); BEIÜ III, 824, no. AddII7.

Why verse? Epigrams and the power of logos

of jewelry enhances the body, what ornaments the soul – so the motto self-referentially proclaims – is logos, that is, the epigram displayed upon it. Elegantly and rather playfully, this monostich encapsulates a view on the rapport between the physical artifact and inscribed verse that was common in Byzantium. To be sure, the opposition that the motto sets up between chrysos (“gold”) and logos – note that the two words are placed at a remove from each other, occupying the extremities of the verse – has an unmistakably moralizing undertone. The care for the external appearance is here opposed to the care for the inner self. But implicit in this juxtaposition of the outer and the inner is the idea that the gold ring and the verse inscribed upon it are bound together and, not unlike body and soul, locked in a symbiotic existence. Their cohabitation, however, is organized on a hierarchical principle, structured along the lines that separate the material from the spiritual and the sensible from the intelligible. Both the ring and the monostich are identified as valuable possessions, articles of personal adornment. Yet, whereas the precious metal signals sensual beauty and material affluence, the string of words carved around the ring’s hoop points to the wearer’s intellectual refinement and his dedication to what the Byzantines referred to as logoi, a term that probably comes closest to the modern notion of literature.9 The choice of poetic form for an inscription should not be reduced to a declaration of literary interests, however. It bears emphasizing that in Byzantine culture logos was a pregnant concept invested with a profound spiritual and even mystical significance. The term covered a vast semantic field. It could be translated as “word,” “speech,” “discourse,” “reason,” “commandment,” and “law,” among other things, but it could also signify Christ as the Divine Logos, the Word made flesh.10 The understanding of epigram as an instantiation of logos partook of the term’s rich polysemy and its many religious and intellectual connotations. The notion of epigram-as-logos endowed the act of placing a poetic text upon an object with solemnity, force, and spiritual luster, and rendered it a potent gesture. In epigrams, logos manifests itself in poetic form and is structured according to the principle of metron, or meter. Planoudes’ choice of hexameter for the inscriptions on Melchisedek’s icon is notable because 9

10

For the Byzantine concept of logoi, see especially Papaioannou 2013, 20–21; Bernard 2014, 38–43, 49–52. Cf. also Lauxtermann 2003, 69: “The word λόγος denotes any text that appears to be structured according to the rules of rhetoric and that appears to have a certain literary quality. And hence it does not matter whether a λόγος is in prose or in verse, as long as it is worth reading.” LSJ, s.v.; Lampe, s.v.

23

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From composition to performance: epigrams in context

this meter is rarely used in Byzantine epigrams. The elegiac distich, the usual meter of ancient epigrams, is equally rare, while the fifteen-syllable “political” verse is encountered only exceptionally, despite its great popularity in Byzantine poetry from the eleventh century onward.11 The vast majority of Byzantine epigrams make use of the dodecasyllable, the medieval Greek equivalent of the ancient iambic trimeter.12 Reflecting the disappearance of the distinction between long and short syllables in Greek that had happened well before the advent of the Byzantine millennium, unlike the iambic trimeter, the dodecasyllable is essentially an accentual rather than prosodic meter. Its characteristics include the prescribed linelength of twelve syllables, a strong caesura – the so-called Binnenschluss – after the fifth or the seventh syllable, and an obligatory stress on the penult. To these characteristics should be added a general avoidance of enjambment, which accounts for the fact that most poetic pieces in the dodecasyllable consist of a succession of short phrases, with each line forming a logical and syntactical unit. The dominant use of paratactic syntax, coupled with the increasing emphasis on rhythm, made this kind of poetry easy to comprehend and absorb. The Byzantines appreciated the dynamic structure, rhythm, and rapid movement of dodecasyllables, which they simply called ἴαμβοι (“iambs”). Michael Psellos, for example, declared that the verses of George Pisides, one of the supreme models of iambic poetry in Byzantium, “leap forth as if shot from a sling.”13 The thirteenth-century treatise On the Four Parts of the Perfect Speech singles out “rhythmical harmony” (εὐρυθμία) as the foremost quality of the dodecasyllable. This quality, as the anonymous author explains, is achieved by the compact intertwining of words and the absence of hiatus, as well as by stress regulation.14 Hexameters lacked the vividness and acoustic immediacy of accentual dodecasyllables, because their prosodic patterns could not be comprehended aurally. Their appeal, however, lay elsewhere. Poetry composed in this “heroic” meter possessed a distinctly antique flavor, bringing to 11

12

13 14

Lauxtermann 2003, 31; BEIÜ I, 62–64. It must be stressed, however, that the politikos stichos – a medieval invention without an ancient pedigree, most akin to rhythmical prose – was not considered a proper meter by the Byzantines. See Hörandner 1995, 280–85; Bernard 2014, 243–45, with further bibliography. On the dodecasyllable, see Maas 1903; Lampsides 1972; Hörandner 1995, 285–89; Lauxtermann 1998; Rhoby 2011d. See also Sarriu 2006; Valiavitcharska 2013, esp. 76–89. Psellos, Who Versified Better, Euripides or Pisides?, 50.131. Anonymous, On the Four Parts of the Perfect Speech, 106.124–107.131. On this treatise, see also Conley 2006. The section on “iambic verses” in the treatise is reproduced verbatim in Joseph Rhakendytes’ Synopsis of Rhetoric, 559–62.

Verses on the page: epigrams in the manuscript record

mind the great Homeric epics. Besides, the mastery and correct application of the rules of hexameter required considerable linguistic expertise.15 The very fact that Planoudes chose this difficult ancient metron for the epigrams sent to Melchisedek must have enhanced their literary value in the eyes of an informed reader. Regardless of their content, the verses of the learned monk shone with an antiquarian luster that would have appealed in particular to those initiated in the more subtle mysteries of logos.

Verses on the page: epigrams in the manuscript record Melchisedek’s icon of the Last Judgment has not survived, and we have no way of knowing whether Planoudes’ verses were actually inscribed upon it. The three poems have come down to us in the manuscript record, as part of the learned monk’s epistolary corpus. Countless Byzantine epigrams had a similar fate. Divorced from their original setting and the circumstances that prompted their creation, they have been preserved for posterity on account of their literary merit as autonomous, self-contained poetic compositions. Instead of the surfaces of artifacts and buildings, they came to inhabit manuscript pages, typically embedded either in single-author collections or in anthologies of epigrams written by different authors at different times, often combined with texts of other genres. Since this study makes copious use of epigrams transmitted in manuscripts, a few words about some difficulties inherent in dealing with the manuscript record are in order. Very few Byzantine epigrams preserved in manuscripts can be also found as verse inscriptions in situ.16 The rest are available to us solely as poetic pieces committed to paper or parchment. In the absence of direct evidence, we can never be sure whether an epigram found only on a manuscript page once existed as an actual inscription, or whether it was a literary composition never intended to be inscribed. Internal indicators such as the use of verbs of perception and deictic adverbs and pronouns, the inclusion of specific references to the iconographic, material, or technical aspects of an object, or the naming of the commissioner may imply that the epigram in question was indeed originally inscribed.17 The titles 15

16 17

For Byzantine hexameters, see ODB, s.v. ‘hexameter’; Hunger 1978, 2:91; Lauxtermann 1999b, esp. 69–74; van Opstall 2008a, esp. 67–69. On the use of hexameter in the Palaiologan era, see also Turyn 1972, 1: 88–89. Lauxtermann 2003, 31–32; BEIÜ I, 53–55. See also Paul 2007. For these and other indicators, see van Opstall 2008b. Cf. also Bernard 2014, 112–15.

25

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From composition to performance: epigrams in context

added to epigrams in manuscripts are usually of little help in this regard.18 They often consist of nothing more than the rather ambiguous preposition εἰς (“on”) followed by the subject of the epigram, as in Εἰς τὴν σταύρωσιν, which can mean either “ on the Crucifixion” or “ on the Crucifixion.” Occasionally, a title can be more informative and can even provide details that are otherwise missing from the poem itself. A case in point is an epigram copied in the Anthologia Marciana with the following title:19 Εἰς τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ ἁγίου Γεωργίου, γραφέντος ἄνωθεν τοῦ πυλῶνος τῆς τοῦ ποιήσαντος τοὺς παρόντας στίχους οἰκίας· ὅτε ἐμπρησμοῦ γεγονότος καὶ καυθέντων πάντων τῶν ἑταιρικῶν οἰκημάτων τῶν πλησιαζόντων τῷ ναῷ τοῦ ῥηθέντος ἁγίου τῷ συνηνωμένῳ τῇ τοιαύτῃ κατοικίᾳ, διεφυλάχθη αὕτη παντελῶς ἀβλαβής. On the image of Saint George depicted above the entrance to the house of the one who wrote the present verses; when the house remained completely untouched by a fire that broke out and burnt all the brothels near the church of the said saint, which is adjoining this house.

Attributing, expectedly enough, the fire’s outbreak to the saint’s miraculous intervention, the epigram recounts the incident in somewhat vague terms, without providing any information on the location of the image. The concluding lines voicing the plea of the owner of the spared house, who also happens to be the author of the epigram, simply state:

20

ὼς γοῦν τὸ θαῦμα μὴ μακρῷ λάθῃ χρόνῳ, Γεώργιόν σε τὸν πυροσβέστην γράφω, αἰτῶν σε καὶ πῦρ τῆς γεέννης μοι σβέσαι. Thus, so that this miracle may not be forgotten due to the passage of time, I depict you, George the firefighter, asking you to put out the fire of Hell for me too.

It is probable that the verses were inscribed above the entrance to the house, next to the image of the saintly “firefighter,” but again, we cannot be certain. The problem of determining whether an epigram copied in a manuscript was ever attached to an object is further complicated if we consider the 18

19

Talbot 1999, 76; Lauxtermann 2003, 151–52; Bernard 2014, 119–20; Spingou 2012, esp. 131, 173–74. Anthologia Marciana, no. 47 (B9). See also Spingou 2012, 125.

Verses on the page: epigrams in the manuscript record

epigraphic record. Many of the epigrams found in situ do not “look like” inscriptions at all; had they been transmitted in manuscripts, we would have hardly classified them as potential inscriptions. Similarly, poems that had been written with no inscriptional use in mind could end up as inscriptions. A good example is Psellos’ allegorical interpretation of the enigmatic parable of the leaven in Matthew 13:33 and Luke 13:21.20 There is nothing about this poem that makes it particularly suitable for an inscription; yet it turns up, in abridged form (vv. 1–5, 10–11), in the apse of the late thirteenth-century cave church of Saint Andrew the Hermit near the village of Chalkiopouloi in Acarnania.21 This example alone suffices to alert us that we should not be too reluctant to accept the possibility that an epigram with no overt inscriptional features could have been inscribed once. A separate problem when dealing with the manuscript record concerns the length of certain epigrams. The Anthologia Marciana contains a poem on a precious belt, which Maria of Antioch, the second wife of Manuel I Komnenos, presented to the emperor, probably on the occasion of their wedding in 1161.22

5

10

Ἐκ μαργαριτῶν, ἐκ λίθων, ἐκ χρυσίου σοὶ τήνδε συμπλέξασα τὴν ζώνην νέμω, αὐτοκράτορ μου, τῆς ζωῆς πλουτισμέ μου, συναυτάνασσα ῥηγόβλαστος Mαρία. ἔνδειγμα φίλτρου καθαροῦ τὸ χρυσίον, συννεύσεως δὲ τῆς πρὸς ἕν, σὲ καὶ μόνον, τὸ σφαιροειδὲς τῶν φεραυγῶν μαργάρων, τὸ δ’ ἀρραγὲς κράζουσιν οἱ στερροὶ λίθοι. εἴη Θεός δε δύναμιν σου ζωννύων κράτει δὲ τῷ σῷ γῆς περιγράφων γύρον. I, co-empress and royal offspring Maria, offer you this belt, which I have fashioned with pearls, precious stones, and gold, my emperor, treasure of my life. The gold is a token of my pure love; the spherical form of the luminous pearls my union with one person, with you and only you; and the solid precious stones proclaim the unbreakable . May God gird up your strength and surround the earth with your power.

20 21

22

Psellos, Poems, no. 10. Katsaros 1992, 521 (no. III); BEIÜ I, no. 62. On the cave church of Saint Andrew the Hermit, see especially Kissas 1992. Anthologia Marciana, no. 336 (C22), with emendations by Spingou (forthcoming). On this poem, see also Rhoby 2010c, 183–85, where the verses are attributed to George Skylitzes; Spingou 2012, 160.

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From composition to performance: epigrams in context

Portraying the costly materials used for manufacturing the belt as expressions of Maria’s affection and unreserved loyalty to her imperial husband, the verses were perfectly suited to accompany a conjugal gift. But was the epigram actually inscribed on the belt? Byzantine belts were typically made of leather or cloth and supplied with a range of metal fittings.23 Judging by portraits of aristocrats and officials from the Palaiologan era, they could be quite long (see, e.g., Figure 3.19). But could the buckle of the emperor’s belt, a logical place for an inscription, accommodate ten lines in the dodecasyllable? Or should we perhaps imagine the text being divided into smaller units, each placed on a separate ornamental attachment? However, if the epigram was not inscribed, then what was its function? Was it perhaps recited at the formal presentation of the gift? This is certainly a possibility. In her study of the Anthologia Marciana, Foteini Spingou has suggested that a sizable portion of the epigrams included in this collection – as much as twenty percent of Syllogae B and C, in her estimation – consists of poems that were designed specifically to be orally delivered, rather than to be inscribed.24 The length of the epigram relative to the available space on the object is only one of several indicators of this original function. The omission of the patron’s name, the emphasis on a specific occasion and a specific moment in time, strengthened by the use of such telltale words as νῦν (“now”), and the nature of the occasion itself (e.g., gift-giving), may equally point to the epigram’s performative function. Spingou has identified several possible contexts in which the recitation of such performative epigrams, as she calls them, could take place, including the ceremonial presentation of a gift by the donor or his or her representative; the reception of a gift along with a letter containing a set of verses composed to accompany the gift; and the reading and discussion of literary works, epigrams among them, in a theatron. We shall revisit some of Spingou’s propositions below in this chapter, where the performative character of epigrams in general – both poems ostensibly intended for oral delivery and inscriptions displayed on objects – will be addressed. For now, it suffices to stress that, as her analysis indicates, it is possible that quite a few among the epigrams transmitted in manuscripts were written primarily for vocal recitation. The manuscript record thus presents us with a rich and complex textual landscape that is very difficult to chart. Actual verse inscriptions 23

24

ODB, s.v. ‘belt’ and ‘belt fittings’. See also Koukoules 1948–57, 2.2:50–55; Kovačević 1953, 174–79; Maneva 1992, 28–34; Schulze-Dörrlamm 2002–9; Parani 2015, 420–22. Spingou 2012, esp. 124–25, 159–77.

Patrons, poets, artists

here mingle with probable performative epigrams and purely literary compositions with many gray areas between them. While in a number of instances the original function of a poem can be established with a greater or lesser degree of certainty, in many others we cannot do much else than guess.

Patrons, poets, artists Maximos Planoudes’ letter to Melchisedek Akropolites documents one moment in the long history of interactions between art patrons and men of letters that made possible the creation of artifacts, spaces, and monuments furnished with verse inscriptions.25 To be sure, not every epigram was the result of a commission issued by a patron. In the former monastic church of the Virgin Peribleptos at Ohrid, the archangel Gabriel is depicted in the narthex, next to the north entrance, with a pen and an inscribed scroll in his hands (Figure 1.3). The poetic message on the scroll, spoken in Gabriel’s voice, informs the visitor of the formidable task with which the archangel has been entrusted.26 Ὀξυγράφου κάλαμον τῇ χειρὶ φέρων τῶν εἰσιόντων συνταγὰς ἀπογράφω· φρουρῶ στέργοντας, [εἰ] δὲ μή, φθεί[ρ]ω τάχει. Holding the fast writer’s pen in my hand, I write down the promises of those entering. I protect the ones who keep them, but those who do not I swiftly destroy.

The possibility that the megas hetaireiarchēs Progonos Sgouros and his wife Eudokia Komnene, the founders of the Peribleptos monastery, commissioned these verses from a poet should be excluded. A more likely scenario is that Eutychios and Michael Astrapas, the two painters from Thessalonike who decorated the church with frescoes in 1294/95, lifted the verses from a painter’s guide or a model book.27 Not only do the verses reappear some fifteen years later in a church at Spelies on the island of 25

26 27

For the questions of patronage and agency in the production of inscribed objects, see the important remarks in Spingou 2014, 148–52. BEIÜ I, no. 17; Marković 2011, 132 n. 250. On the church of the Virgin Peribleptos, now dedicated to Saint Clement, see Miljković-Pepek 1967, esp. 43–51; Korunovski and Dimitrova 2006, 100–6, 150–61; Marković 2011. On the founders on the church, see also PLP, nos. 25060 and 91889; Zarov 2007. On the painters Eutychios and Michael Astrapas, see Miljković-Pepek 1967; Todić 2001; Marković 2010; Drpić 2013.

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From composition to performance: epigrams in context

Figure 1.3 Archangel Gabriel, 1294/95, church of the Virgin Peribleptos, Ohrid (photo: author)

Patrons, poets, artists

Euboea, again as a message uttered by Gabriel,28 but the same text is recommended for the scroll of the archangel, when he is portrayed as a guardian next to a church entrance, in two post-Byzantine painter’s manuals.29 As a matter of fact, most of the poetic inscriptions on scrolls held by holy figures in the Ohrid church are attested elsewhere.30 The poetic motto displayed on the ring in Athens (Figure 1.2a–b) presents a similar case. This dodecasyllable monostich turns up on three other gold rings dated to the Palaiologan period.31 It has been argued that the four pieces come from the same workshop based in Constantinople, which produced jewelry for an elite clientele with ties to the imperial court. The monostich was likely part of the workshop’s catalog of ready-made verse inscriptions, from which a prospective commissioner with a literary bent could choose one to have engraved on his or her ring.32 On occasion, the patron and the poet may be the same person. This was the case with the above-mentioned anonymous writer who, following a miraculous fire that razed brothels in his neighborhood, set up an image of Saint George above the entrance to his house and wrote an epigram to accompany it. Planoudes, to give another example, penned a quatrain that was probably inscribed on his personal enkolpion.33 In the majority of instances, however, the creation of an object inscribed with an epigram necessitated a degree of collaboration between the object’s commissioner, its maker, and the poet employed to compose the epigram. The Byzantine poet, as Floris Bernard has pointed out, is a problematic notion.34 Poetry hardly existed as a separate intellectual activity, let alone a profession, in Byzantium. Instead, the writing of verse was subsumed within the larger domain of logoi. Educated men – and, exceptionally, women too – engaged in composing texts in metrical form, epigrams included, in addition to their other intellectual activities. Planoudes, for example, was primarily a scholar, teacher, translator, and scribe.35 His epigrammatic opus is relatively small, and his principal engagement with this genre of poetry was in his capacity as a compiler and editor rather than

28 29 30 31

32

33 35

Emmanuel 1990, 461–62; BEIÜ I, no. 73. Papadopoulos-Kerameus 1909, 219, 283; Medić 2002, 334; Medić 2005, 534. For these inscriptions, see BEIÜ I, nos. 15–17; BEIÜ III, nos. AddI3–AddI11. Byzance 1992, 446 (no. 341) (J. Durand); Spier 2013, 34 (no. 9), 35–37 (nos. 17 and 22); BEIÜ III, no. AddII4. On this workshop and other epigrams found on the rings manufactured in it, see Spier 2013, 33–52. 34 Gallavotti 1985–86, 206. Bernard 2014, 31–57. For the bibliography on Planoudes, see above n. 1.

31

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author. To him we owe the monumental edition of about 2,400 ancient and Byzantine epigrams known today as the Anthologia Planudea.36 Manuel Philes, a younger contemporary of Planoudes, was an intellectual of a different kind. Philes comes much closer to being a poet in the modern sense, as versifying was clearly his area of expertise and the basis of his reputation and livelihood. Since his epigrams will be of major concern to us, we must take a closer look at this intriguing figure.37 Few Byzantine poets were as prolific, versatile, and sought after as Philes. Catering to an elite audience, his indefatigable pen produced a plethora of occasional verse, ranging from panegyrics and funeral laments to poems for feast days and ceremonial gatherings, accounts of historical events, and ekphraseis, in addition to over five hundred epigrams, a few of which can still be seen inscribed on objects.38 Despite the 36 37

38

Cameron 1993, esp. 75–77, 351–62; Fryde 2000, 244–46. On Philes, see PLP, no. 29817; Krumbacher 1897, 774–80; Stickler 1992. See also Loparev 1891; Papadogiannakis 1984; Talbot 1994; Anagnostakes 1995, 117–38, 220–36; Antonopoulou 2004; Lauxtermann 2004, 336–39; Braounou-Pietsch 2010; Bazzani 2011. It must be stressed that, without a full critical edition of his works, any assessment of Philes remains provisional. Philes, Carmina I, 117–18 (no. CCXXIII) is carved on the cornice running along the west and south façades of the south parekklēsion of the church of the Virgin Pammakaristos in Constantinople: van Millingen 1912, 157–60; BEIÜ III, no. TR76. Carmina II, 58 (no. XVII) is inscribed on two rings from the so-called Chalcis treasure in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, as well as on the ring of one Theodore Silibritzianos, now in a private collection: Spier 2013, 34 (no. 12), 35 (no. 13), 36 (no. 19), 39; BEIÜ III, no. AddII12. Carmina I, 354–55 (no. CLXXXIV) appears on a sixteenth-century icon of the Aspasmos of Saints Peter and Paul in the Great Lavra on Mount Athos: Vassilaki 1990, 419. Carmina I, 354 (nos. CLXXVIII and CLXXXII) turn up combined into one poem in the narthex of the church of the Virgin Pantanassa at Mistra, in the part of the decoration that seems to date from the early eighteenth century: Zesios 1909, 441 (no. 149); Rhoby 2010a, 102–3. A variant of Carmina II, 85–86 (no. XLV) was inscribed on the now-lost staurothēkē from Nevers: Frolov 1941, 239–42; BEIÜ II, no. Me18. A number of epigrams preserved in situ have been attributed to Philes. These include two verse inscriptions in the interior of the parekklēsion of the Virgin Pammakaristos, one painted in gold on two cornices in the nave and the other lettered in mosaic around the figure of Christ in the apse (BEIÜ I, nos. 215 and M15); the epitaph engraved on the tomb of Michael Tornikes and his wife in the Chōra monastery in Constantinople (Ševčenko 1975, 21 n. 14; BEIÜ III, no. TR68); the couplet gracing the arcosolium that likely belonged to the despot Demetrios Palaiologos, also in the Chōra monastery (BEIÜ I, no. M8); the epitaph on the funerary stele of a nun Maria Palaiologina, possibly from the monastery tou Libos in Constantinople (Buckler 1924, 525; BEIÜ III, no. TR62); the epigram from the basilica of Saint Demetrios in Thessalonike commemorating the renovation of its roof by Michael VIII Palaiologos (Laskaris 1953–54, 8–10; BEIÜ I, no. 111; Phoskolou 2013 with arguments against the identification, prevalent in earlier scholarship, of the instigator of the project with Michael IX); the dedicatory inscription in the parekklēsion of Saint Euthymios attached to the basilica of Saint Demetrios as well as the verses on the scroll of Saint Stephen the Younger in the same parekklēsion (BEIÜ I, nos. 112 and 113); the epitaph on the cover of the sarcophagus of George Kapandrites in the monastery tōn Blatadōn in Thessalonike (Xyngopoulos 1935, 347–49; Th.

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fact that members of the imperial family of the Palaiologoi, including the emperors Andronikos II, Michael IX, and Andronikos III, were among the commissioners or recipients of his verses, Philes was never a court poet stricto sensu. And even though he is known to have participated in several diplomatic missions to the Golden Horde, Crimea, the Turkishruled Anatolia, and possibly elsewhere, he never held a salaried office in the imperial administration. Essentially, his livelihood depended on the generosity of his patrons. A host of aristocrats, military commanders, and civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries patronized Philes at various moments over his long career that lasted more than forty years, including the megas domestikos John Kantakouzenos (future emperor John VI),39 the prōtostratōr Michael Doukas Glabas Tarchaneiotes and his wife Maria,40 the sebastos Theodore Patrikiotes,41 the prōtobestiarios Andronikos Palaiologos,42 the megas stratopedarchēs Senachereim Angelos,43 the domestikos of the Eastern themes Michael Atzymes,44 the pinkernēs Syrgiannes,45 and many others. A sizable portion of Philes’ oeuvre consists of petitions addressed to these illustrious individuals, in which the poet complains about his dire poverty. Fairly typical in this regard are the following verses sent to Senachereim Angelos.46 Ὁρῶν με γυμνὸν ὁ χρυσοῦς εὐεργέτης οὐκ ἀπομετρεῖς τὰς λαβὰς τῶν ἀμφίων; καὶ τίς τὸ ῥιγοῦν θερμανεῖ μοι σαρκίον, ὦ ζῶν ἀτεχνῶς ζωτικῆς φῶς αἰθρίας;

39 40

41 45

Pazaras 1988, 35 [no. 36], 148; cf. BEIÜ III, no. GR127); the epigram on the silver-gilt revetment affixed to an icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria in the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos (Rhoby and Hörandner 2007, 157–62); the epigram on the silver-gilt revetment of an icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, also in the Vatopedi monastery (BEIÜ II, no. Ik26); the dedicatory verses in the Gospel book of the princess Maria-Melane Palaiologina, now in Sofia (Ivan Dujčev Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies, Ms. 177, fols. 246r–v) (Ševčenko 1975, 37 n. 141); the dedicatory verses in the Mēnologion of the despot Demetrios Palaiologos in Oxford (Bodleian Library, Ms. gr. th. f. 1, fols. 55v–56r) (Hutter 2007, 214). To this list may be added a group of verse inscriptions from Berroia, which show affinities with Philes’ poetry: BEIÜ III, nos. GR40, GR45–GR48. Finally, it has been argued that three dedicatory epigrams, once displayed at the Pammakaristos church in Constantinople and now preserved in a sixteenth-century manuscript in Cambridge (Trinity College, Ms. O.2.36, fols. 160v–161r), may have also been penned by the poet: BEIÜ III, nos. TR73–TR75. For attributions to Philes, see also Paul 2007, 257–61; BEIÜ II, 37; BEIÜ III, 96–97. PLP, no. 10973. PLP, nos. 27504 and 27511 (= 4202); Leontiades 1998, nos. 32 and 38. On Philes’ relationship with this couple, see especially Belting et al. 1978, 11–19. See also Chapter 4. 42 43 44 PLP, no. 22077. PLP, no. 21435. PLP, no. 25146. PLP, no. 1633. 46 PLP, no. 27167. Philes, Carmina I, 99 (no. CCII).

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Although you see me naked, my golden benefactor, you do not spread out the folds of your garments? But who shall warm my shivering body, O you who are truly the living light of life-giving serenity?

The poet’s obsequious appeals to his patrons often concerned food. Here is one addressed to a Palaiologan prince.47 Κύων ἐγὼ σός, καὶ γλυκὺς σὺ δεσπότης· οὐκοῦν ὑλακτῶ, καὶ φαγεῖν ζητῶ κρέα. λεοντόθυμε σκύμνε, τὸν κύνα τρέφε. (vv. 1–3) I am your dog, and you are my sweet master.48 I bark, therefore, and beg to eat meat. O lion-hearted cub, feed your dog.

These and other similar requests for barley, fish, cheese, wine, and clothing leave the impression that the poet was a penniless savant reduced to destitution. As a matter of fact, Philes was no pauper. Born into a known aristocratic family,49 he owned a landed estate, had a “Scythian” servant,50 and was extravagant enough to request a male buffalo from the prōtostratōr Glabas to match the female one he already possessed.51 Moreover, the kinds of rewards he received from his patrons – a silver-sheathed sword,52 a gold-woven robe,53 a goose-egg filled with silver coins,54 horses55 – evidently point to a lifestyle befitting a wealthy man, not a famished wretch. If, despite this, Philes never tired of moaning about his indigence, it was because he deliberately cultivated the persona of a begging poet following the example of the twelfth-century literati.56 The begging poet is a phenomenon of later Byzantine literary culture. As several scholars have argued, the emergence of this figure in the twelfth century reflects the anxiety of Byzantine men of letters regarding their ambiguous position in a shifting social landscape.57 With the accession of the Komnenoi to the imperial throne, a new political regime was 47 48

49 51 52 54 56 57

Philes, Carmina I, 124 (no. CCXXXVI). Note the pun here. The addressee, Constantine Palaiologos (PLP, no. 21499), second son of Andronikos II and Anna of Hungary, held the title of despot. 50 Ševčenko 1974, 75. Philes, Carmina I, 296–97 (no. CIX). Philes, Carmina I, 93–94 (no. CXCI); Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 59. 53 Philes, Carmina I, 313 (no. CXXII). Philes, Carmina II, 83–84 (no. XLIV). 55 Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 80. Philes, Carmina I, 298 (no. CX), 312–13 (no. CXXII). Cf. Rosenthal-Kamarinea 1975. Kazhdan 1984, 105–14; Kazhdan and Wharton Epstein 1985, 130–33; Alexiou 1986; Beaton 1987; Dyck 1990; Magdalino 1993, esp. 320–22, 339–52; Lauxtermann 2003, 34–45. Cf. also Kyriakis 1974. For the Homeric overtones in the twelfth-century “rhetoric of poverty,” see Cullhed 2014. On the Byzantine Betteldichtung, see in addition Kulhánková 2008; Kulhánková

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ushered in: a handful of aristocratic clans related to each other by blood and marriage effectively monopolized access to the sources of power and wealth. In the absence of an impersonal mechanism of promotion and demotion within the state apparatus and ecclesiastical hierarchy, the distribution of offices, titles, grants, and privileges came to depend increasingly upon a system of personal patronage. For many educated men of relatively modest origins, who were neither office-holders, nor clerics, entering the service of a powerful patron was the only route to social advancement. The status of these professional literati was, naturally, precarious. They did not belong to the ranks of the Komnenian elite; yet they shared its ideals of urbanity and learning, a cultural baggage that set them apart from merchants and artisans, practitioners of lesser trades whom the Byzantine upper classes traditionally held in disdain. In the twelfth century, however, a despised tradesman could fare better economically that a man of letters constantly in search of patronage. Education may have been one of the more potent instruments of social distinction in Byzantium, but it was also a “career investment”58 fraught with risk. The tenuous social position of professional literati and their dependence on the patronage of the court and the aristocracy prompted them, in a sense, to cultivate a tone of exaggerated self-abasement. Thus, when Theodore Prodromos, one of the foremost literary figures of the Komnenian era, acknowledges his total reliance on the generosity of the emperor John II by saying, “If he gives me to eat, I live again, but if he does not, I am undone, I descend into Hades,”59 the bluntness of his language is intentional. (Incidentally, we know that, like Philes, Prodromos enjoyed a fairly comfortable existence.)60 What looms behind such crass declarations of poverty and complete submission is, in fact, an enhanced sense of personal merit and professional self-confidence. For, by giving vent to their plight, Prodromos and other “begging” poets implicitly advertised the value of their literary craft. As Roderick Beaton has aptly noted, “it is precisely because the poet is so indispensable as a singer of praises, or entertainer, or both, that his abject personal circumstances cry out to be remedied by a grateful benefactor.”61 In short, self-abasement was a form of self-assertiveness.

58 59 61

2010. For the new system of literary patronage and the heightened profile of the professional author in the twelfth century, see also Lauxtermann 2004, 305–306; Magdalino 2012, 22–23. The phrase is borrowed from Magdalino 1993, 340. 60 Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. LXXI, vv. 90–91. Kazhdan 1984, 105. Beaton 1987, 3.

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In the social world inhabited by the Empire’s elite, occasions and venues that called for literary celebration were numerous. The poet’s skill was needed to enhance the glamour of court ceremonial, add verbal luster to religious festivals, immortalize military exploits, celebrate public inaugurations, and commemorate more private moments such as births, weddings, and funerals. It was also required to furnish buildings and artifacts commissioned by the notables with appropriate inscriptions in verse. The limited evidence at our disposal makes it very difficult to ascertain the nature of the patron’s involvement in the composition of an epigram. How often did this involvement go beyond rewarding the poet for his service? Was it common for the patron to give specific instructions to the poet or to suggest some general ideas, sentiments, or themes, which the poet would then develop and dress in verse form? A letter by the Late Palaiologan scholar John Chortasmenos shows that some patrons felt the need to be quite directly involved. The letter is addressed to a patriarchal official, Michael Balsamon, who mocked the verses Chortasmenos had composed for the newly built palace of the senator Theodore Palaiologos Kantakouzenos in Constantinople.62 Concerning the words I wrote for the entrance of the most noble Kantakouzenos, which you find uncouth, he is to be blamed, not me. For this man is not easily persuaded to accept anything that appears to contradict whatever he may have said; rather, he believes that he is entirely capable of understanding the nature of everything in and of itself by using his innate intelligence, without the help of technical expertise [καὶ μὴ παρούσης τῆς τέχνης]. Should someone perchance try to discuss the matter at hand with him based on the principles of technical knowledge [κατὰ νόμους τεχνικούς], he acquiesces, albeit unwillingly, out of respect for the manifest truth, but nonetheless, does not give up his initial resolution. Hence, even to engage in an intense debate with him does not seem to help much.63

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Chortasmenos, Works, 165–66 (Letter 15). On Michael Balsamon, see PLP, no. 2121. On Theodore Palaiologos Kantakouzenos, see PLP, no. 10966. Peschlow (1995; 2001) has attempted to identify the palace with the so-called Mermer-Kule, or Marble Tower, a structure at the southwestern extremity of the walls along the Sea of Marmara, close to the Golden Gate. For a critique of this identification, see Asutay 2002; Asutay-Effenberger 2007, 110–17. On the palace of Theodore Palaiologos Kantakouzenos, see in addition Kioussopoulou 2014. Chortasmenos, Works, 165.2–11: Τῆς περὶ τὰ ἔπη σοι δοκούσης ἰδιωτείας, ἅπερ ἡμῖν ἐν προθύροις τοῦ εὐγενεστάτου Καντακουζηνοῦ καταγέγραπται, οὐκ ἐμοὶ μᾶλλον ἢ ἐκείνῳ τὴν αἰτίαν λογιστέον. ὁ γὰρ ἀνὴρ οὗτος οὐκ ἐθέλει, περὶ ὧν ἂν εἰρηκὼς τύχοι, ἑτέρῳ τἀναντία δοκοῦντι λέγειν εὐχερῶς πείθεσθαι, ἀλλὰ φύσεως ὀξύτητι κεχρημένος ἐν ἅπασιν οἴεται πάντα δύνασθαι τὴν φύσιν καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ἐξευρίσκειν καὶ μὴ παρούσης τῆς τέχνης, κἄν τις αὐτῷ πολλάκις ἐπιχειρήσειε κατὰ νόμους τεχνικοὺς διαλέγεσθαι περὶ τῶν προκειμένων, συγχωρεῖ μὲν καὶ ἄκων τὴν ἐνάργειαν τῆς ἀληθείας αἰδούμενος, οὐ μὴν τῆς γε ἐξαρχῆς ἐνστάσεως ὑφίησιν, ὥστε ὁ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον πέρα τοῦ μέτρου φιλονεικίᾳ χρώμενος οὐδέν τι πλέον ἀνύτειν δοκεῖ.

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Kantakouzenos’ hands-on approach was not limited to the poetic embellishment of his palace. As Chortasmenos hastens to add, “That this man supervises every work that is being done at his residence is confirmed by the builders of the residence. They took extreme care of the construction just to obey his orders; for, without his opinion, they were not allowed even to plaster a wall on their own.ˮ64 Kantakouzenos’ lack of technē did not prevent him from interfering with the work of his skilled employees, whether their expertise lay in the art of poetry or in the art of building. It was only appropriate, therefore, that Chortasmenos should ascribe the beauty of the palace to its owner in an epigram in which the palace itself sets out to applaud Kantakouzenos.65

5

Τῷ μὲν δοκεῖν χεῖρες με τεκτόνων ἴσως οὕτως ἐτεχνούργησαν, ὡς ὁρᾷς, ξένε, τρυφὴν ἀτεχνῶς ὀμμάτων ἀνθρωπίνων· ὅστις δὲ γνῶναι τὴν ἀλήθειαν θέλει, ἐκεῖνον αὐτὸν αἰτιάσθω τοῦ κάλλους, ὃν εὐτυχῶς νῦν δεσπότην πεπλούτηκα. It may appear, perhaps, that the masons’ hands constructed me so skillfully that, as you can see, O stranger, I am truly a delight for human eyes. Yet, if anyone wants to learn the truth, let it be known that the one responsible for my beauty is that man himself, whom I am now fortunate to have as a master.

The strained syntax of these unwieldy lines may well have provoked ridicule.66 It is not known, however, whether the poem was actually inscribed at the palace entrance. In addition to these verses, Chortasmenos composed four longer epigrams on Kantakouzenos’ residence, two in the dodecasyllable and two in hexameter, which could equally serve as inscriptions.67 In fact, it was quite common for a poet to present his patron with a series of epigrams on the same subject, from which the latter could choose 64

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Chortasmenos, Works, 166.22–25: ὅτι δὲ πᾶσιν οὗτος τοῖς κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτῷ δημιουργουμένοις ἐπιστατεῖ, μαρτυροῦσι σαφῶς οἱ δημιουργοὶ τῆς οἰκίας, οἷς τοσοῦτον ἐμέλησε τῆς οἰκοδομίας, ὅσον ὑπουργεῖν ἐκείνῳ προστάττοντι, ἐπεὶ οὐδὲ κονιᾶσαι τὸν τοῖχον καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς [ἄνευ τῆς ἐκείνου γνώμης] συγκεχώρηνται. Chortasmenos, Works, 191–92 (Poem d). For a comparable example, see John Mauropous’ poem entitled Πρὸς τὸν ἐπιλαβόμενον τοῦ ἰάμβου τοῦ «ἀνθ’ οὗ πραθείς» ὡς τῆς προθέσεως οὐ καλῶς προσκειμένης (“Against the man who criticized the verse ἀνθ’ οὗ πραθείς, because the preposition is not rightly construed”) (Poems and Other Works, 18–19 [no. 33]), a riposte to a hairsplitter who criticized the poet’s epigram on a golden image of the Crucifixion (Poems and Other Works, 17–18 [no. 32]) on grammatical grounds. See also Anastasi 1971; Bernard 2009, 153–54; Bernard 2014, 87–90, 269–72. Chortasmenos, Works, 190–92 (Poems b and e), 194–95 (Poems g and g1).

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the most fitting to be inscribed.68 Philes’ oeuvre provides ample evidence for this practice. To give but one example, in response to a commission from the statesman Michael Senachereim Monomachos to pen some verses on a gold ring, the poet produced six iambic couplets.69 Ὁ χοῦς φέρει χοῦν (καὶ τίς ἐντεῦθεν τύφος τῷ Σεναχηρεὶμ Μιχαὴλ Μονομάχῳ;). Dust bears dust – what source of pride could this be for Michael Senachereim Monomachos? Ὁ Σεναχηρεὶμ Μιχαὴλ τὴν σφενδόνην, ἡ σφενδόνη κοσμεῖ δὲ τὸν Μονομάχον. Michael Senachereim the ring, and the ring adorns Monomachos. Ὁ Μονομάχος οὐκ ἐπαινῶν τὸν Γύγην ἄτυφός ἐστι τῇ στροφῇ τῆς σφενδόνης. Having no praise for Gyges, Monomachos does not take pride in the turn of the ring. Χρυσῆ κόνις θέλγουσα τοὺς ἁπλουστέρους τῷ Σεναχηρεὶμ σωφρονίζει τὸν βίον. Gold dust, which enchants the simple-minded, teaches Senachereim to live in moderation. Σός εἰμι καὶ πρὸς ἄλλον αὐτίκα ῥέω· καὶ γὰρ ὅλως μόνιμον οὐδὲν ἐν βίῳ. I am yours, but in a moment I will become somebody else’s; for nothing is entirely stable in life. Ὁρῶντι νεκρὸν τὸν χρυσὸν τῆς σφενδόνης πρὸ τῆς τελευτῆς ὠχριᾶν ἔπεισί μοι. To turn pale before death is what threatens me, for I see that this ring’s gold is dead. 68 69

Maguire 1996b, 8–9; Lauxtermann 2003, 42–44. In E. Miller’s edition of Philes (Carmina II, 141–42 [no. LXXXIII]), the couplets are published as a single poem with the title Εἰς δακτύλιον (“On a ring”). On the commissioner, see PLP, no. 19306.

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With a sententiousness reminiscent of gnomic poetry, Philes’ verses dwell upon the familiar themes of the brevity and uncertainty of human life and the transience of material riches, while simultaneously offering praise to his patron’s moral rectitude. Each couplet, however, is distinct. In allusion to Genesis 2:7, the first pithily reminds Monomachos that both he and the gold ring on his finger are nothing but dust. The second implicitly extols the patron’s excellence and virtue by claiming that he is an ornament to the ring as much as the ring is an ornament to him. In the third couplet, Philes introduces a learned reference to the story of Gyges, king of Lydia, and his magical ring which, when turned, made its wearer invisible.70 Unlike this ancient villain, who succumbed to the temptation to abuse the power of his precious possession, Monomachos in his detachment from earthly concerns remains wholly impervious to the charms of the shiny trinket placed on his finger. The patron’s selfmastery is further celebrated in the fourth couplet, which draws attention to the perishable nature of gold. In the fifth, the ring itself is imagined speaking, reminding the wearer of the impermanence of human affairs. In the sixth and final couplet, the speaking voice is that of the wearer who cannot help but think of the morally corrupting sway of gold while looking at the ring. Given that Philes’ couplets are admittedly generic in their themes and imagery, it does not seem necessary to postulate that the poet had an actual ring before him when he was composing these verses or that he was required to consult with the goldsmith in Monomachos’ employ. In all likelihood, he was simply asked to write a few lines suitable to be engraved on a ring made of gold. Presumably, when Philes presented Monomachos with a series of six poetic vignettes, the latter picked one and had it sent to the goldsmith. This appears to have been quite a common scenario. That the process of manufacturing an inscribed object did not necessarily involve a close and extended collaboration between the poet and the artist is indicated by curious mistakes encountered at times in the epigraphic record. A pectoral cross-reliquary of a ninth- or tenth-century date at Sinai provides a telling example (Figures 1.4 and 1.5a–d).71 Made of copper alloy and

70

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The story is famously recorded in Plato’s Republic II, 359c–360b. Cf. Geometres, Iambic Poems, 228 (no. 272). Galavaris 1999; Pitarakis 2006, 63–65, 113–14, 251 (no. 206); Hörandner 2007a, 123–25; BEIÜ II, nos. Me1–Me2.

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Figure 1.4 Pectoral cross-reliquary, ninth or tenth century, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)

adorned with scenes from the life of Christ and figures of saints rendered in niello and inlaid silver, this object consists of two crosses hinged together, which, thus combined, formed a receptacle for one or perhaps several now-lost fragments of the True Cross. A pair of poetic

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(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Figure 1.5a–d Details of the epigram on the pectoral cross-reliquary, ninth or tenth century, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan–Princeton– Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)

inscriptions runs in parallel along the narrow sides of the two crosses. The inscription on the front cross reads: Ἐν τῇ δυνάμει τῶν σ[ε]βασμίων ξύλων φύλαττε, Χριστέ, Θωμᾶν τὸν σὸν οἰκέτην. In the power of the venerable wood, protect, Christ, your servant Thomas.

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The second inscription on the back cross contains a very similar petition followed by an odd phrase in prose: Κύριε, ἄναξ, δημ[ι]ουργὲ τῶν ὅλων, φρούρει, φύλαττε Θωμᾶ τὸν σὸ[ν οἰκ]έτη. καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ἐν τῇ γραφῇ αὐτοῦ. Lord, Ruler, Creator of all, guard, protect your servant Thomas. And the rest in his drawing.

As Wolfram Hörandner has rightly pointed out, the puzzling phrase tucked onto the second inscription must have been a technical instruction to the artist, which he mistakenly engraved on the reliquary.72 According to Hörandner’s hypothetical reconstruction of the sequence of events that led to the creation of this precious pendant, Thomas, the reliquary’s owner and presumably commissioner, made some sort of sketch detailing the images and identifying labels he wished to have placed on the pendant’s two faces. He then engaged a poet to compose a set of dedicatory verses to be inscribed on the object’s narrow sides. The poet produced two couplets and wrote them down on a piece of paper along with the note καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ἐν τῇ γραφῇ αὐτοῦ (“and the rest in his [i.e., Thomas’] drawing”), an instruction for the artist to decorate the object according to the patron’s design. Assuming that the note was part of the poetic text, the artist engraved it. This may not have been the only mistake on his part. The fact that the two couplets share an identical hemistich – Θωμᾶν τὸν σὸν οἰκέτην (“your servant Thomas”) – suggests that they were composed as two alternative versions, only one of which was meant to be inscribed. Be that as it may, it is clear that the Sinai cross-reliquary did not receive its poetic embellishment under the poet’s watchful eye.73 Sometimes, however, inscribed artifacts present such a neat interlocking of text, image, and design that one must assume that the artist and the poet collaborated quite closely. This is the case with the ivory diptych in the treasury of the cathedral at Chambéry (Plate 2, Figure 1.6).74 72 73

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Hörandner 2007a, 124–25. The reliquary of Saint Marina in the Museo Correr in Venice presents a comparable example. As misspellings in the dedicatory epigram on the reliquary indicate, the artist had trouble interpreting abbreviation signs in the text he had been asked to engrave. See Ševčenko 1998, 251; D’Aiuto 2007, 437–38; BEIÜ II, no. Me81. Goldschmidt and Weitzmann1930–34, 78–79 (no. 222a–d); Byzance 1992, 266–67 (no. 174) (J. Durand); Kiourtzian 2005; Jolivet-Lévy 2007; Cutler 2008; Kiourtzian 2009–10. For the epigram on the diptych, see also BEIÜ II, no. El20.

Patrons, poets, artists

Figure 1.6 Ivory diptych, tenth/eleventh or thirteenth century, cathedral treasury, Chambéry (photo: Damien Lachas / Direction régionale des affaires culturelles RhôneAlpes, Conservation régionale des monuments historiques). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

Variously attributed to tenth- or eleventh-century Constantinople or to the thirteenth-century Latin Levant in recent scholarship, the diptych is a remarkable object, not least because of its sheer size. A large elephant tusk was needed to yield its two leaves that measure 28.1 x 12.7 cm and have a thickness of no less than 1.5 cm. This fact alone clearly attests to the considerable financial resources available to the object’s commissioner. The diptych features a dense visual program, with figures and

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architectural and other details rendered in high relief or completely detached from the ground, the resulting effect being one of rich chiaroscuro. The centerpiece of the left leaf is an enthroned Mother of God with the Infant Jesus flanked by the princes of the apostles, Peter and Paul, and two attendant angels. The selection of narrative scenes above focuses upon the miracles and ministry of Christ: the Transfiguration is in the semicircular field at the top, while Christ teaching in the Temple, the Healing of the Blind Man, and the Healing of Peter’s Mother-in-Law occupy the horizontal zone below it. By contrast, the narrative scenes on the right leaf foreground the Passion and Resurrection of Christ: the badly damaged Crucifixion is at the top; the Entry into Jerusalem, the Anastasis, and Christ’s appearance to the holy women in the garden – the so-called Chairete – are arranged in the zone below; and a large and busy scene of the Ascension occupies the center of the leaf. Assembled in the lowest section of the diptych, on both leaves, is a file of saints. Eight of them – John the Baptist, Nicholas, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, Panteleimon, Demetrios, George, and Theodore – are depicted as standing figures underneath an arcade. The remaining saints are portrayed en buste in a series of intertwined medallions at the very bottom. In addition to the four evangelists, they include Akindynos, Patapios, Cosmas, Damian, and Niketas. All scenes and figures on the diptych are neatly labeled. Contributing to this profusion of texts is a dedicatory epigram incised around the two leaves.

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Ἐν ἀγκάλαις σε μητρὸς ὡς ἐπὶ θρόνου χερουβικοῦ, παντουργὲ Δέσποτα, γράφω τὰ πάντα τῆς σῆς ἱστορῶν παρουσίας δι’ ὧν βροτοὺς ἔσωσας ἐκ πάσης βλάβης λόγῳ διώκων τὰς νόσους, Θεοῦ Λόγε, καὶ τοῦ πάθους τὰ φρικτὰ καὶ πλήρη δέους σταύρωσιν, ἐξέγερσιν αὐτεξούσιον, εἰς οὐρανοὺς ἔπαρσιν ἀλλ’ ὑπὲρ λόγον αἰτῶν δι’ ὧν ἔγραψα πρεσβεύειν χάρν ῥαίκτωρ ὁ πιστὸς οἰκέτης πολλῷ πόθῳ. I depict you, O Lord, Creator of all things, in the arms of your Mother, as if upon the throne of the cherubim, representing all the events of your coming , through which you saved mortals from every harm, driving the ailments away, O Word of God, with your word, and the terrors of the Passion and the Crucifixion full of dread, the self-effected Resurrection, the Ascension into heaven that is beyond comprehension. I, rhaiktōr, your faithful servant, beseech

Patrons, poets, artists

through those whom I have depicted for the sake of intercession with much desire.75

The epigram represents a prayer addressed to Christ by the commissioner of the diptychs, who is identified only by the office of rhaiktōr he held. Depending on the date assigned to the diptych, this information can be interpreted in two different ways. If a tenth- or eleventh-century date is accepted, the commissioner must have been a high-ranking courtier in Constantinople. Should we subscribe to the view that the diptych dates from the thirteenth century, the commissioner was most likely a Westerner living in Outremer, either an ecclesiastical official in charge of a Latin religious or charitable house or a civil administrator in the service of the Venetian Republic.76 For the purpose at hand, the questions of chronology and the patron’s identity are less relevant than the fact that the length, content, and physical layout of the epigram perfectly match the shape and iconography of the diptych. Each of the poem’s ten lines occupies the length of one clearly defined section of the frame. The epigram begins on the left leaf, with the first line running along the semicircular border of the arched top. The verses continue around the leaf’s rectangular frame, with each side of the frame accommodating exactly one line, in a sequence that was typical for Byzantine inscriptions displayed around rectangular fields: top–right–left–bottom.77 The same arrangement is then repeated on the right leaf. In terms of their content, not only do the verses make direct reference to the imagery of the diptych, but they do so in a way that neatly corresponds to the distribution of individual scenes and figures on the object. Incised on the left leaf, the first half of the epigram points to the images carved on this leaf: the Virgin and Child (vv. 1–2) and the scenes of Christ’s miracles and ministry (vv. 3–5). Similarly, the second part of the epigram (vv. 6–8) on the right leaf highlights the themes of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection depicted there. The epigram ends with a reference to the saints assembled in the lowest section of the diptych (v. 9), whom the patron has introduced as his personal intercessors before Christ. It seems that, in

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It should be noted that my translation of line 9 significantly differs from the translations found in the scholarly works cited in the previous note. I take this line to refer specifically to the saints in the lowest section of the diptych (see p. 46). For the earlier date, see Cutler 2008; BEIÜ II, no. El20. For the later date, see Kiourtzian 2005; Jolivet-Lévy 2007; Kiourtzian 2009–10. On the Byzantine office of rhaiktōr, which seems to have disappeared after the eleventh century, see ODB, s.v. ‘rhaiktor’ with further bibliography. On this sequence, see Follieri 1964; Papamastorakis 2007, 59–60; Bernard 2014, 83.

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laying out the verses on the frames of the two leaves, considerable care has been taken to physically juxtapose, wherever possible, specific words and phrases and the images to which they refer. Note how the words σταύρωσιν (“Crucifixion”), ἐξέγερσιν (“Resurrection”), and εἰς οὐρανοὺς ἔπαρσιν (“Ascension into heaven”) are placed right next to the relevant scenes, or how the phrase δι’ ὧν ἔγραψα πρεσβεύειν χάριν (“through those whom I have depicted for the sake of intercession”) on the left border of the right leaf descends toward the solemn file of these very intercessors. Overall, the synergy of text and image in the Chambéry diptych is such that the poet and the ivory carver employed by the anonymous rhaiktōr must have worked quite closely on this object. As it would appear, the composition of the verses and the design of the diptych went hand in hand. We know too little about the processes and mechanisms of artistic patronage in Byzantium to reconstruct in any detail the exact nature of interactions and negotiations that took place within the triangle patron– poet–artist. Was the patron always the engine behind the creation of an inscribed object? Or could the poet play a more fundamental role in this enterprise, beyond providing appropriate verses for the object or even collaborating with the artist on its design? Our sources are silent on this account, but it is possible that, in some instances, the poet could act as a liaison between the object’s commissioner and its maker. Byzantine artists and intellectuals often moved in the same circles. The fourteenthcentury scholar and bureaucrat Michael Gabras, for instance, wrote letters to a monk-painter by the name of Gabriel.78 Gabras’ younger contemporary, the writer Manuel Raoul, seems to have shared a decades-long acquaintance, if not friendship, with Gastreas, a painter active in the Byzantine Peloponnese. Raoul commissioned an icon of the Dormition of the Virgin from the painter in a letter tentatively dated to c. 1360, in which he recalled how diligently Gastreas had studied and copied ancient icons, including those showing the Dormition, twenty-six years before.79 Particularly revealing in regard to the intermediary role that intellectuals could play in the field of artistic patronage and production is the correspondence of Maximos Planoudes. Several among Planoudes’ letters

78 79

Gabras, Letters, nos. 263, 264, and 277. Raoul, Letters, no. 12. For an English translation of the letter and its date, see Mango 1972, 249–50.

Patrons, poets, artists

allow us to trace the contours of an intriguing network that connected artists and men of letters with powerful aristocratic patrons through personal ties of friendship and service. A key figure in this network was Melchisedek Akropolites’ relative by marriage, the pinkernēs Alexios Doukas Philanthropenos.80 In 1293, this dashing young general was sent by Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos to Western Asia Minor to fight the Turks. His meteoric success on the battlefield accorded him a heroic status among the local Greek populace, oppressed by the enemy, and eventually led him to stage an abortive coup that ended with his arrest and blinding on Christmas in 1295. The exigencies of warfare with the Turks did not prevent Philanthropenos from commissioning artworks in Constantinople. With the assistance of Planoudes, who resided in the capital, the pinkernēs employed a certain goldsmith to manufacture precious-metal revetments for some icons. As Planoudes reported in a letter, this proved to be a bad choice.81 After receiving one-third of the promised reward – which, unfortunately, went unspecified in the letter – the goldsmith had mysteriously disappeared without a trace; his whereabouts were unknown even to his wife. Planoudes was, therefore, forced to ship the unadorned icons off to Philanthropenos. “Should it be God’s will,” he wrote, “when we see each other, you yourself will show me furnished with adornment [κόσμον] as a sign of your reverence for the divine.”82 It is tempting to speculate whether the icons in question were works of the monk-painter Isaiah, another member of the network emerging from Planoudes’ correspondence.83 An acquaintance of Melchisedek and the pinkernēs Alexios, Isaiah was a man of some eminence, as can be deduced from the fact that the title kyr, meaning “lord” or “master,” was accorded to him.84 He appears to have been an amicable person, willing to pull strings on behalf of his fellow artists. One of Planoudes’ letters to Philanthropenos is essentially a recommendation letter for a friend of Isaiah’s.85 I write in regard to a monk-painter, a man excellent in art, irreproachable in character, moderate in spirit, someone who knows how to spread the word about a benefaction . Although I had formerly been acquainted with this man, Lord Isaiah, who knows how to show affection

80 81 83 85

On this figure, see PLP, no. 29752; Radić 1998; Taxides 2012, 97–116. 82 Planoudes, Letters, no. 103. Planoudes, Letters, 164.21–23. 84 On Isaiah, see PLP, no. 6730; Pallas 1952. Kontogiannopoulou 2012. Planoudes, Letters, no. 101.

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From composition to performance: epigrams in context to a fellow artist [φιλεῖν εἰδὼς τὸν ὁμότεχνον], introduced him and urged me to write to you on his behalf.86

Planoudes then proceeds to explain the matter at hand. Some of the relatives of the unnamed monk-painter were forced to leave their home in the otherwise unidentified area of Tempsis (περὶ τὴν Τέμψιν) and settle in the Maeander valley, which, in the wake of his spectacular victories, Philanthropenos set out to repopulate with Greeks. Planoudes asks that these people be allowed to return to their home. Whether the monkpainter was given an opportunity to demonstrate his artistic prowess to the general is not known. Thanks to their proximity to members of the Empire’s elite, Byzantine men of letters could and, as Planoudes’ correspondence demonstrates, did act as intermediaries between artists and high-placed patrons. Hence it is not inconceivable that, at times, they could also take care of artistic commissions on behalf of their powerful protectors and friends. In the above-mentioned triangle of actors that took part in the process of creating inscribed artifacts, the poet may occasionally have been the man in charge.

Epigrams and the viewer/reader So far we have been concerned with the patronage and production of epigrams. Now we must turn to the questions of reception. Indeed, what kind of audiences did verses displayed on artifacts, monuments, and buildings address? How were such inscriptions read? Were there any specific occasions that called for the reading of epigrams? Were verse inscriptions necessarily read or could they engage their audiences in other ways? On the most basic level, the readership of an epigram was determined by its setting. The verses displayed on the walls of great public churches could have been scrutinized by many, while those found, for instance, on a personal devotional object such as the Chambéry diptych or the crossreliquary at Sinai spoke only to the chosen few who had the privilege of handling it. Written in an archaizing language, a form of Greek fairly

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Planoudes, Letters, 162.14–19: γράφω περὶ ζωγράφου τινὸς μοναχοῦ, ἀνδρὸς τὴν τέχνην ἀρίστου, τὸν τρόπον οὐ φαύλου, μετρίου τὸ φρόνημα, κηρύττειν εἰδότος εὐεργεσίαν. τοῦτον ἥκοντα καὶ πρότερον εἰς γνῶσιν ἐμοὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον καὶ ὁ κυρὸς Ἠσαΐας συνέστησε φιλεῖν εἰδὼς τὸν ὁμότεχνον καί σοί με ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ γράφειν προὐτρέψατο. I have adopted the emendation τὸν ὁμότεχνον (l. 18) proposed by Wendel 1940, 432.

Epigrams and the viewer/reader

removed from the spoken idiom, and often embroidered with scriptural quotations, references to classical and patristic authors, and borrowings from hymnography, Byzantine epigrams were addressed primarily to an educated audience. Their reach, however, was much broader, as the communicative potential of epigrams was not limited to the linguistic register. To begin with, not all verse inscriptions were meant to be actually read. The famous porphyry column of Constantine still bears an elegant dodecasyllable couplet commemorating its restoration at the behest of Manuel I Komnenos.87 [Τὸ θ]εῖον ἔργον ἐνθάδε φθαρὲν χρόνῳ καινοῖ Μανουήλ, [ε]ὐσεβὴς αὐτοκράτω[ρ]. Manuel, the pious emperor, restored this divine work, which time had defaced.

Inscribed on the column’s capital, at a height of over 30 m above the street level, the couplet is illegible from the ground (Figures 1.7 and 1.8). Even though inlaid lead originally enhanced the visibility of the inscription, an inquisitive passerby would hardly have been able to decipher the letters. If this is the case, then, what was the purpose of the inscription? Was this pithy proclamation of imperial munificence designed for divine rather than human eyes?88 Or did the inscription have a prophylactic function, ensuring the stability of the restored column?89 Confronted with such inscrutable inscriptions, one should bear in mind that in Byzantium publicly displayed texts had a powerful visual presence. Their significance and impact extended beyond basic linguistic communication. Several factors contributed to this. As a religion of the Incarnate Word of God propagated through a set of sacred texts, Christianity ensured that the Byzantines assigned a special place to the written word in their culture. Writing was associated with the sacred and perceived as a vehicle of truth and knowledge.90 Besides, since the Empire of the New Rome was to a large extent a bureaucratic state, the proper functioning of which was predicated upon the production and circulation 87

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BEIÜ III, no. TR55. See also Mango 1951, 62; Janin 1964, 77–80; Müller-Wiener 1977, 255–57; Ousterhout 2014, esp. 314–17. On God as the ideal reader, see Lassus 1947, 260; James 2007b, 199. As suggested by Rhoby 2012a, 747. For different perspectives on inaccessible or concealed inscriptions, see Frese, Keil, and Krüger 2014. See, e.g., Cavallo 1994, esp. 54–62; Kessler 2006; Rapp 2007. Cf. also Wenzel 2000. For the role of books in Byzantine society and the related mentalità libresca, see also Cavallo 2007, esp. 176–83.

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Figure 1.7 Porphyry column of Constantine, Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Pascal Sébah, c. 1870 / Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Photograph Collection)

of large quantities of written documents, writing was a quintessential index of power and authority in the Byzantine mentalité.91 But the prestige enjoyed by the written word had another, no less significant facet. Writing was also connected with magic. Byzantine magical amulets commonly feature texts of different kind, including spells, invocations, 91

The classic study remains Hunger 1984. See also Déroche 2006a.

Epigrams and the viewer/reader

Figure 1.8 Detail of the porphyry column of Constantine with the dedicatory epigram of Manuel I Komnenos, Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Robert Ousterhout)

and divine names, but also mysterious inscriptions in the form of clusters of unintelligible figures and letter-like signs known as charaktēres.92 Such texts were considered inherently potent, capable of exerting a tangible impact in one’s life by driving away demons, effecting cures, or securing protection from sorcery and other harms. Monumental epigraphy, too, harbored supernatural forces. In the so-called Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, a compilation of stories, datable to the eighth century, about the monuments of Constantinople, ancient inscriptions figure not so much as epigraphic traces of the past, but as conveyors of cryptic and potentially dangerous messages.93 The deeply ingrained belief in the symbolic and mystical significance of the letters of the Greek alphabet further contributed the status and power of the written word. Bringing together several strands of pagan, Jewish, and Early Christian thought, this belief held that the letters were not simple conventional signs, but symbols pregnant with religious, cosmological, and other meanings, which may be uncovered by analyzing their visual form,

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The bibliography is extensive, but see Bonner 1950; Greenfield 1988, esp. 268–85; Spier 1993; Frankfurter 1994; Kotansky 1994; Foskolou 2014. On magic and the written word, see also Franklin 2002, 255–74. Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, 84–86 (chap. 24), 88–90 (chap. 28), 140–46 (chaps. 64 and 65). See also Dagron 1984, 150–56; James 2007b, 198.

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their place in the alphabet, and their numerical value.94 Thus, according to the anonymous sixth-century treatise On the Mystery of the Letters, the letter Δ, for example, stands for the totality of the created world.95 The hierarchy of the universe is encoded in the closed triangular form of this letter; its broad horizontal base represents the lower parts of the world – the earth and the waters above and below it – while its tent-like top points to the heavenly realm. The letter’s triangular form moreover evokes the Holy Trinity, and its numerical value – four – signifies the four elements, the four cardinal points, the four winds, the four seasons, the four great rivers, the four humors of the body, as well as the four evangelists. Verse inscriptions displayed on Byzantine artifacts and buildings partook of the multifaceted power of the written word. For an illiterate or semi-literate audience, incapable of grasping the message of an epigram, the extralinguistic connotations of writing would provide a basic frame of reference for accessing the inscribed text.96 In a sense, to fathom the message of an epigram, the viewer did not necessarily have to read it. Byzantine verse inscriptions possessed what Brigitte Bedos-Rezak has called in a different context “non-literate legibility.”97 Their communicative potential resided not only in their verbal message, but also in their letterforms, graphic structure and material fabric, the placement and spatial arrangement of the text, as well as in the interplay between the text and its physical context. We shall explore these aspects in greater detail in Chapter 4. For the moment, one example should suffice to illustrate the crucial role played by the visual presentation of epigrams in the construal of their meaning. The church of Saint Nicholas near the village of Platsa in the Mani in the Peloponnese preserves a long dedicatory inscription in verse (Figures 1.9 and 1.10; see also Figures 4.15 and 4.16).98 The inscription informs us that this unassuming three-aisled basilica with a dome was restored and decorated with frescoes in 1337/38 by the tzaousios Constantine Spanes, the military governor of the highland region around Mount Taygetos, at 94

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Drucker 1995, 49–92; Ierodiakonou 2006; Bandt 2007; Maayan-Fanar 2011, 113–25; Kalvesmaki 2013; Lauritzen 2013. Bandt 2007, 116–24. See Lauxtermann 2003, 271–84. On literacy in Byzantium, see Browning 1978; Mullett 1990; Oikonomides 1995a; Cavallo 2007; and the studies collected in Holmes and Waring 2002 and Mondrain 2006. Bedos-Rezak 2011, 22. On the church of Saint Nicholas, see Mouriki 1975. For the inscription, see Feissel and Philippidis-Braat 1985, no. 70; BEIÜ I, no. 135, with further bibliography. We shall revisit this inscription in Chapter 4.

Epigrams and the viewer/reader

Figure 1.9 Sanctuary apse with the Deēsis and a section of the dedicatory epigram of the tzaousios Constantine Spanes, 1337/38, church of Saint Nicholas, Platsa in the Mani (photo: Michalis Kappas)

Figure 1.10 Detail of the dedicatory epigram of the tzaousios Constantine Spanes, 1337/38, church of Saint Nicholas, Platsa in the Mani (photo: Michalis Kappas)

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that time inhabited by a Hellenized Slavic tribe known as the Melingoi.99 Painted in black in accented capital letters, the inscription runs in a horizontal band around the nave. It starts on the north wall, at a height of about 2.60 m above the ground, continues into the sanctuary, and ends on the south wall. In all likelihood, few of the worshippers flocking to this remote provincial shrine would have been able to read the verses, which in an elevated and rather tortuous language celebrate Spanes’ renovation of the church. But to an illiterate audience, the inscription’s visual dimension effectively compensated for the lack of legibility. The expressiveness of the lettering, with its concatenation of strong vertical strokes, does not fail to impress the eye. Besides, the very manner in which the verses are displayed on the walls would have allowed the viewer to set them apart from countless prose dedications encountered in other churches of the Mani and elsewhere, which are typically located either above the main entrance or in the sanctuary apse.100 What is more, the verses are not simply arranged in a linear fashion. The horizontal band they occupy represents a painted imitation of a cornice carved in stone. The slightly darker strip in the band’s upper part is meant to create the illusion that the letters of the inscription are inserted, if not carved, between two protruding horizontal moldings, so that the one above them casts a shadow. Carved marble cornices of this kind, bearing poetic inscriptions, were a feature of great Constantinopolitan churches such as those of Saint Polyeuktos and Saints Sergios and Bakchos (Figure 1.11).101 In the provincial Peloponnese, the painted rendition of such a cornice must have been something of a curiosity evoking associations with the splendor of metropolitan monuments. Thus the communicative power of the dedicatory epigram in the church of Saint Nicholas was not limited to its verbal content, but also embraced the visual presentation of the text. A visitor to Spanes’ foundation did not have to actually read the verses encircling the church interior in order to grasp their message. The tzaousios – it was evident – was a man of means, ambition, and refined taste. If a literate viewer examining an edifice or artifact was curious enough to read the verses inscribed upon it, he or she would most likely do it aloud. As has been convincingly argued, silent reading was not a standard practice

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On Constantine Spanes, see PLP, no. 26449; Avramea 1974, 296–300. On the Melingoi, see also Kougeas 1950. See, e.g., Kalopissi-Verti 1992, esp. 24. For Saint Polyeuktos, see Harrison 1989; Connor 1999 with further bibliography. For Saints Sergios and Bakchos, see Croke 2006 with further bibliography.

Epigrams and the viewer/reader

Figure 1.11 Detail of the dedicatory epigram of Justinian I and Theodora, mid-520s, church of Saints Sergios and Bakchos, Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: author)

in Byzantium. From monumental epigraphy to books and letters, the written word was often, if not normally, read viva voce.102 In the case of verse inscriptions, oral delivery is virtually a function of their poetic form. To comprehend and fully appreciate the rhythmical structure of an accentual meter such as the dodecasyllable, one has to hear it. Thus it is no accident that, in a poem addressed to a patron, Manuel Philes should call attention to his poetic skill in the following manner:103 ἐγὼ δέ σοι πρέποντας ἀθροίσας μίτους χλαμύδα λαμπρὰν τεχνικῶν πλέξω κρότων, ἣν οὐδ’ ὁ πᾶς δήπουθεν ἐκτρίψει χρόνος. (vv. 6–8) Having strung together threads fitting for you, I shall skillfully knit a splendid cloak of beats/rhythms, which not even all of time could destroy.

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Hunger 1989, esp. 125–29; Papalexandrou 2001; Lauxtermann 2003, 55–57; Cavallo 2007, esp. 61–72; Papalexandrou 2007; Reinsch 2008; Agosti 2010b; Cavallo 2012, 12–16. For an illuminating account of the socio-cultural embeddedness of reading practices in the ancient world that moves beyond the long-standing debate over silent vs. audible reading, see Johnson 2010. Philes, Carmina I, 195 (no. XV).

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Based on the trope of text as textile, Philes’ comparison of his verses to a garment fashioned from krotoi, meaning “beats” or “rhythms,” undoubtedly alludes to their vocal recitation.104 In Byzantium, poetry was typically written with a view to oral delivery and experienced as performed speech. The same holds true for metrical inscriptions. Seemingly mute in their material fixity, inscribed verses would have been, quite literally, given a voice each time an inquisitive viewer took the trouble to recite them. Hence, numerous references to the ear, mouth, lips, and hearing in Byzantine epigrams should not be understood as merely figurative. They are indicators of the actual reading practice.105 At times, epigrams make explicit reference to oral performance. A case in point is an epitaph composed by Philes to accompany a funerary portrait of a certain prōtoïerakaria Melane.106 Following a device common in funerary inscriptions, the poet presents the dead woman directly addressing the viewer.

10

ἵνα δὲ πᾶς ἄνθρωπος ἐντεῦθεν μάθῃ σκιὰν θεωρῶν μὴ πτοεῖσθαι τὸν βίον, τὰ κατ’ ἐμαυτὴν ζωγραφῶ δή σοι, ξένε. δανείσομαι γὰρ ἀπὸ τῶν ζώντων λόγον, μικροῦ πνοῆς δύναμιν ἐγχέαντά μοι. So that, by beholding a shadow [i.e., Melane’s portrait], everyone may learn from this not to be desirous of the life, I paint for you, O stranger, a portrait of myself; for I shall borrow speech from the living, which nearly endows me with the power of breathing.

In an extended memento mori, Melane then proceeds to recount the facts of her bygone life to the viewer standing at her tomb. Her monologue constitutes a verbal self-portrait. It is notable that, in the quoted excerpt, Philes uses the verb ζωγραφέω – literally meaning “to paint from life” – in reference to Melane’s depiction of herself. This discursive painting “from life” is implicitly contrasted with the pictorial portrait of the

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For the trope of text as textile in the Greek tradition, see Bergren 1983; Assaël 2002; WagnerHasel 2006. On this trope in Philes, see Caramico 2013. For the use of the word krotos in the sense of “rhythm” in Byzantine rhetoric, see Lauxtermann 1998, 24–25. See, e.g., Kallikles, Poems, no. 26, v. 8; Philes, Carmina I, 317 (no. CXXV, v. 17); Philes, Carmina II, 239 (no. CCXXXIV, vv. 7–8); Xanthopoulos, Poems, no. 8, vv. 6–7; BEIÜ II, no. Te9, v. 1; BEIÜ III, no. GR20, vv. 2–3. Philes, Carmina I, 87–88 (no. CLXXX).

Epigrams and the viewer/reader

deceased, which the poet disparages as a mere shadow. What breathes life into Melane’s verbal self-portrait is the voice borrowed from the viewer. By reading aloud Melane’s monologue, he or she would literally lend voice to the dead woman and, by implication, animate the speechless image displayed at her tomb.107 The oral delivery of epigrams could take place at any given moment, essentially whenever a literate viewer approaching an artifact or a monument was sufficiently intrigued to read the verses inscribed upon it. Certain occasions and venues, however, seem to have been particularly well suited for the recital of epigrams. To reconstruct such performative situations is no easy task, as the available evidence is sparse and for the most part circumstantial. Nonetheless, some general propositions can be advanced. To identify the moments when an epigram was likely to have been read aloud, one must, of course, consider its function and physical setting. In the case of epitaphs, for instance, it is reasonable to assume that their vocal performance was tied to the ritual commemoration of the dead.108 Byzantine custom dictated that, following the burial of a person and the forty-day postmortem period during which, according to tradition, the soul would gradually separate from the body, relatives and friends of the deceased would regularly assemble at his or her tomb in remembrance, most notably on the anniversary of the person’s death.109 These commemorative gatherings furnished an ideal context for the recitation of the verses displayed at the tomb. Assuming that Philes’ epitaph on Melane was inscribed next to her funerary portrait, which is by no means certain, the performative animation of this mute image by the voice borrowed from the viewer is likely to have coincided with and was an aspect of the commemoration of the departed prōtoïerakaria. The solemn performance of epigrams appears to have taken place in conjunction with annual commemorative rites in other contexts too. The manuscript record preserves an anonymous poem, 145 dodecasyllable lines in length, on the monastery of Christ Pantokratōr in Constantinople founded by the emperor John II Komnenos and his wife Irene-Piroska.110 Dwelling upon the physical structure and organization of this imperial

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108 109 110

For the epitaph as λαλιά (“speech”) and logos of the portrayed grave-dweller, cf. Kallikles, Poems, no. 19, vv. 6–8. Cf. Rhoby 2012a, 741. Koukoules 1948–57, 4:208–11; Velkovska 2001, 39–42; Brooks 2002, 182–243. Moravcsik 1923, 43–47; Vassis 2013, 203–20. See also Hörandner 2006.

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establishment, the poem describes in considerable detail its splendidly appointed churches, the monks’ quarters, its lush garden and circuit of walls, its hospital and old-age home. The verses lavish praise upon the imperial couple, highlighting in particular the role of the empress – already dead at the time – in founding the monastery. The poem’s title indicates that this lengthy text was recited annually on August 4, the day when the official inauguration of the Pantokratōr was commemorated.111 Thanks to a sixteenth-century source, we know that at least the beginning of the poem, and most likely all of its 145 verses, once adorned a wall in the monastic complex.112 This inscription must have served as a focal point in the course of the festivities marking the monastery’s inauguration day. We may assume that every year, on August 4, a group of monks and visitors would congregate in front of the inscribed verses to listen to their recitation. Similar ceremonial readings of dedicatory epigrams could have taken place in other monastic houses and ecclesiastical institutions in commemoration of their founders and benefactors.113 Different contexts could generate different performative situations. Turning to epigrams inscribed on objects intended for liturgical or paraliturgical use, one may reasonably ask whether their oral delivery was occasionally integrated into the ritual. Consider, for instance, the nowlost steatite panagiarion of Alexios Komnenos Angelos from the Panteleimon monastery on Mount Athos (Figure 1.12).114 This intricately carved dish was used for the so-called Elevation of the Panagia, a paraliturgical rite in honor of the Virgin, which involved the sanctification of a piece of bread known as παναγία (“all-holy”) after one of the more common Marian appellations in Greek.115 The core elements of the rite were quite simple. To sanctify the bread, the celebrant invoked the name of the Holy Trinity and appealed to the help and intercession of the Mother of God while lifting – and hence, “elevating” – the bread on his fingertips. Believed

111

112 113

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The title reads: Τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ τελοῦνται τὰ ἐγκαίνια τοῦ περικαλλοῦς καὶ θείου ναοῦ τῆς βασιλικῆς καὶ παντοκρατορικῆς μονῆς τοῦ Παντοκράτορος Σωτῆρος Χριστοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν (“On the same day [i.e., August 4] is celebrated the feast of the consecration of the very beautiful and divine church of the imperial and almighty monastery of the Pantokratōr, Christ the Savior, our God”). Rhoby 2003b; BEIÜ I, no. 214. The subject of commemoration and the reading of dedicatory epigrams will receive a more sustained treatment in Chapter 5. Kondakov 1902, 222–25; Kalavrezou-Maxeiner 1985, 83–85, 87, 206–8 (no. 132); Piatnitsky 2000; BEIÜ II, nos. St2–St3. On this rite and the vessels used for its celebration, see von der Goltz 1905, 57–65; Yiannias 1972; Ryndina 1994; Sterligova 2008b; Drpić 2011.

Epigrams and the viewer/reader

Figure 1.12 Steatite panagiarion of Alexios Komnenos Angelos, fourteenth century, formerly in the Panteleimon monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Kondakov 1902, pl. XXXI)

to secure the Virgin’s protection, the sanctified panagia was consumed just like the Eucharist. Indeed, partaking of the panagia could even serve as a substitute for the Holy Communion. Significantly, the rite of the Elevation was not a prerogative of the clergy, as even the laity could perform it. During the Palaiologan era in particular, special containers, or panagiaria, used for the celebration of the rite appear to have become quite popular as personal devotional instruments among members of the lay elite. The steatite dish from the Panteleimon monastery is one of the more exquisite representatives of this category of objects. The panagiarion features a medallion with the Virgin and Child in the center surrounded by a row of prophets, each with an unfurled scroll in his hands, in an arrangement that curiously recalls the decoration of a church dome. Complementing the figural imagery of the dish are two metrical

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inscriptions, both meticulously and painstakingly carved rather than incised – a feature that in and of itself contributes to the object’s preciousness. The epigram encircling the central medallion voices a plea on behalf of one Alexios Komnenos Angelos, the original owner or possibly donor of the panagiarion. Ἄνανδρε μῆτερ, παρθένε βρεφοτρόφε Κομνηνὸν Ἀλέξιον Ἄγγελον σκέποις. O Mother without a husband, O Virgin nourishing an infant, may you protect Alexios Komnenos Angelos.

The second epigram running along the lobed border evokes the imagery, materiality, and ritual function of the object.

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Λειμὼν φυτά τε καὶ τρισάκτινος σέλας· λειμὼν ὁ λίθος, φυτὰ κηρύκων φάλαγξ, τρία τρισαυγῆ Χριστός, ἄρτος, παρθένος· κόρη δανείζει σάρκα τῷ Θεοῦ λόγῳ, ἄρτῳ δ’ ὁ Χριστὸς προσνέμει σωτηρίαν Κομνηναγγέλῳ καὶ ῥῶσιν Ἀλεξίῳ. A meadow and plants and light with three rays. The stone is the meadow, the phalanx of prophets are the plants, the three beams are Christ, the bread, and the Virgin. The Maiden lends flesh to the Logos of God, and Christ by means of bread distributes salvation and strength to Alexios Komnenos Angelos.

Prompted by the green color of steatite, the anonymous poet has transformed the panagiarion into a vision of a verdant meadow bathed in a mysterious light. Presenting the carved dish as a visual enigma, the verses encourage the viewer to approach it with feelings of wonder and awe. What is significant for our purpose is that this encounter with the object is explicitly envisioned as taking place within the ritual context. The verses assume that the viewer sees a piece of bread, the panagia, inside the dish. This indicates that the optimal moment for the reading of the epigram was during or immediately after a performance of the Elevation. Of course, it could be argued that the reference to bread in the text is a generic one, intended simply to highlight the object’s function. But the insistence on the presence of the panagia inside the dish could also be taken to signal that the two inscriptions were integrated into the ritual. The recitation of these verses would not only enhance the solemnity of the Elevation; it would also personalize the rite by adding to it poetic pronouncements on behalf of

Epigrams and the viewer/reader

Alexios Komnenos Angelos. If this individual was the first user of the panagiarion, as seems reasonable to assume, then the message of the inscriptions would have been sounded in his own voice. Inscribed devotional artifacts designed for personal use seem to have invited such privately staged performances. It is easy to imagine, for instance, the anonymous owner of the Chambéry diptych addressing his prayer to Christ in the words of the epigram incised on the frames of the diptych’s ivory leaves (Plate 2, Figure 1.6). But what about artifacts – icons, reliquaries, textile hangings, and the like – donated to religious houses? Did any particular occasion call for the reading of metrical texts placed upon them? One obvious possibility is the moment of the presentation of the gift. Although no such presentation is described in the sources, it stands to reason that this event could have been staged as a small ceremony in which the donor or his or her representative would read the inscription before an audience. Alternatively, the presentation of the gift could have been a more private affair, conducted in front of an icon of the holy figure to whom the gift was offered. Since dedicatory epigrams often take the form of a personal prayer addressed to Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint, their recitation may well have been staged for the eyes and ears of the gift’s sacred recipient, who would attend the ceremony through the medium of his or her image. As Foteini Spingou has argued, performative epigrams in the narrow sense – that is, epigrams that appear to have been composed to be recited rather than inscribed – were likely delivered following the same or similar scenarios.116 If they accompanied gifts, be they religious or secular, they could have been performed at the moment of the formal presentation of the gift. In cases when the donor was unable to present the gift in person, the performative epigram escorting the gift could be sent in a letter and recited upon its receipt. Spingou tentatively suggests that, in some instances, the recited text may even have been copied on a piece of paper and placed next to or inside the donated object. Thereby, the text’s link with the object would acquire a more permanent, material form. An important parallel for the ceremonial performances of epigrams – both inscriptional and performative in the narrow sense – postulated here is provided by the genre of recited metrical prologues to homilies. This genre of Byzantine poetry encompasses poems composed to introduce the

116

Spingou 2012, esp. 124–25, 159–77.

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public reading of homilies and occasionally hagiographical texts, too, in the course of religious services and feast-day celebrations in churches and monasteries.117 The performative function of these poems is clearly indicated by characteristic apostrophes to the officiating priest – σὺ δ’ ἐπευλόγει, θύτα (“And you, priest, give blessing!”) is a common formula – with which many of them end. Following the delivery of such a poetic introduction, the priest would give his blessing, and the recitation of the main text could begin. Metrical prologues are strikingly similar to performative epigrams, as defined by Spingou. Not only were these two categories of texts written specifically for oral presentation, but they also functioned as poetic parerga. Rather than being autonomous literary pieces, they accompanied other entities – physical objects in the case of performative epigrams, texts in the case of metrical prologues. The manuscript record yields considerable evidence that, on certain occasions, the composition and performance of epigrams coincided. Philes’ poetic corpus contains a poem devoted to a ring that voices the same kind of sternly moralizing view of gold jewelry as the couplets the poet penned for the ring of Michael Senachereim Monomachos.118 What is unusual about this poem is that each of its twenty-five dodecasyllable verses represents a complete, self-contained poetic statement which could readily serve as a one-line metrical inscription on a ring; in only one instance are two consecutive verses combined to form a couplet (vv. 7–8). This oddly disjunctive concatenation of what are essentially independent epigrams did not originate as an extensive set of trial pieces, written to order and subsequently strung together, but rather as a demonstration of the poet’s virtuosity. This is indicated by the title attached to the poem, which reads: Εἰς δακτύλιον αὐθωρόν, literally meaning “ on a ring on the spot” or “instantaneously.” The poem, in other words, was improvised.119

117 118 119

Komines 1966, 42–44; Antonopoulou 2010. Philes, Carmina II, 191–92 (no. CLXVIII). For the use of the term αὐθωρόν to signal literary improvisation, cf. the title of a poem by John Tzetzes published by Pétridès 1903, 569: Στίχοι αὐθωροὶ καὶ πάντη ἀμελέτητοι γεγονότες κατά τε τοῦ Σκυλίτζη καὶ Γρηγορίου τοῦ βασιλικοῦ γραμματικοῦ ἐκείνου, εἰπόντων ἐκείνων μὴ δύνασθαι τὸν Τζέτζην στιχίζειν τι γενναῖον καὶ ἀξιέπαινον· οὓς ἅμα τῷ ἀκοῦσαι τῇ ὀρθοπνοίᾳ καίτοι συνεχόμενος ἐσχεδίασε, γράψαντος τούτους τοῦ καὶ τὸ μήνυμα εἰπόντος τοῦ ψόγου (“Verses composed on the spot and completely without preparation against Skylitzes and the late imperial secretary Gregory, when they said that Tzetzes was unable to produce anything noble and praiseworthy in verse. As soon as he heard this, he improvised them even while continuing to breathe normally, while the messenger who had spoken the insult wrote them down” [trans. Magdalino 2012, 31, with minor modifications]). Cf. also the title of a poem improvised by a contemporary writer, Leo Megistos, cited below n. 123.

Epigrams and the viewer/reader

The ability to produce elevated discourse extemporaneously, either in verse or in prose, was a skill highly valued by the Byzantines.120 Judging by the number of his poems that are described in the appended titles as having been delivered authōron, Philes was a master of improvisation. Most of these literary works were recited in religious and ceremonial contexts and include metrical prologues to sermons and commentaries on scriptural passages as well as solemn addresses to the emperor on the occasion of feast-day celebrations.121 Whether they were truly improvised on the spot or drafted beforehand, in anticipation of their public delivery, and to what extent their present form is the result of the subsequent reworking of the original offhand compositions is ultimately less important than the fact that Philes was given to parading his dazzling literary skill in impromptu performances. It is significant that the poet’s improvisations occasionally concerned works of art. One was, for instance, inspired by an image of a lion depicted ἐν τῇ γῇ, that is, “on the ground,” most likely a late antique floor mosaic, perhaps similar to the mosaic of the Striding Lion from Antioch (Figure 1.13).122

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Ψυχὴν σταθηρὰν εὐτυχῶν ὁ ζωγράφος ἔγραψε καὶ λέοντα μὴ δειλιάσας· καινὸν μὲν οὖν καὶ τοῦτο, πλὴν τό γε πλέον, ὅτι πνοὴν τίθησι μικροῦ τῷ τύπῳ τὸν θῆρα κινῶν τῇ γραφῇ πεπηγμένον. Being fortunate to have a steadfast spirit, the painter has depicted a lion without fear. This is, indeed, strange; but what is even stranger is that he almost endows the image with life [literally, ‘breath’], stirring up the beast held fast by means of painting.

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122

Literary improvisation in Byzantium has yet to receive the attention it warrants. See Hunger 1989, 127; Cavallo 2007, 78; Magdalino 2012, 31, 34–35; Pizzone 2014b, 10–12. Philes, Carmina I, 118–19 (no. CCXXIV), 379–80 (no. CCX); Carmina II, 27–34 (no. XIII), 71–72 (no. XXIX), 136 (no. LXXI), 154 (no. CXI), 158 (no. CXVII), 195–96 (no. CLXXIV), 204–205 (no. CXCIII), 209–10 (no. CXCVIII), 212–16 (no. CCIII), 235 (no. CCXXII), 235–36 (no. CCXXIV), 236 (no. CCXXV), 236 (no. CCXXVI), 349–51 (no. VII.43). Carmina II, 210–11 (no. CXCIX) is a satirical poem on the Georgian military leader Chatzikes (PLP, no. 30721), improvised in the presence of the emperor Andronikos II. Braounou-Pietsch 2010, 107–108 (no. 48). The indication that the poem was improvised by Philes occurs in a fourteenth-century codex from the library of the Metochion of the Holy Sepulcher in Athens (Ms. 351, fol. 178v), now in the National Library of Greece; here the title attached to the poem reads: Εἰς λέοντα ἐζωγραφημένον αὐθωρόν (“ on the depiction of a lion on the spot”). The same title is found in a seventeenth-century manuscript from Bucharest (Biblioteca Academiei Române, Ms. 410, fol. 18r). See Karathanases 1980, 390. Another poem by Philes on the same subject (Braounou-Pietsch 2010, 121–22 [no. 59]) was also improvised. For the mosaic of the Striding Lion, see Levi 1947, 1: 321–23, 2: pl. LXXIV a; Campbell 1988, 29 (no. IV A 11), pls. 84–85.

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Figure 1.13 Mosaic of the Striding Lion, fifth century, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (photo: Mitro Hood / The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore)

This playful poetic variation on the theme of the lifelikeness of art could easily pass as a verse inscription attached to a naturalistic representation of a lion as much as the individual lines of the authōron-composed poem on a ring could be imagined displayed on actual pieces of jewelry; in both instances, Philes was improvising epigrams. But what was the context for such epigrammatic exercises? Did they, perhaps, take place in the presence of a prospective patron as a vivid proof of the poet’s mastery of the genre? This is certainly a possibility. When an aspiring writer by the name of Leo Megistos made obeisance to the megas hetaireiarchēs George Palaiologos with a view to entering this magnate’s service, he was subjected to a test: to demonstrate his credentials, Leo was ordered to improvise a poem on a stone relief with a depiction of the Muses, presumably a piece of ancient

Epigrams and the viewer/reader

sculpture in Palaiologos’ possession.123 The epigrams improvised by Philes may well have served a similar purpose as a kind of examination essays. It is equally possible, however, that the poet’s extemporaneous versifying took place before a small audience of discerning patrons, fellow-writers, or friends. It is not difficult to imagine a group of art lovers, gathered to admire a tessellated pavement in an aristocratic residence or, perhaps, in the imperial palace, which the poet would regale by reciting a few offthe-cuff verses on the mosaic image of a ferocious lion displayed under their feet. Such an impromptu performance would have resembled those literary recitals to which Byzantine authors refer as theatra.124 This rather flexible term designates a range of performative events and venues, from solemn declamations held at court or delivered in a church to more private literary gatherings in the houses of the aristocracy, presided over by a sophisticated patron of letters, to informal reading circles of intellectuals and schoolmates. As a social institution, theatron played a key role in the production and reception of highbrow literature in medieval Byzantium. While, in essence, the recitation and discussion of literary texts was their primary purpose, Byzantine rhetorical theatra were not reading clubs in the modern sense. Rather, they were quite vivacious, colorful assemblies with a great deal of shouting and booing, clapping of hands and stamping of feet, sometimes accompanied by songs and music. With an affectation befitting the cultural exclusivity of these gatherings, some authors even compared them to Bacchic orgies and Corybantic mysteries.125 Rhetorical “theater” was a natural setting for the performance of improvised discourse. We know, for example, that Michael Italikos made a show of his

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Lampsidis 1997. The circumstances that led to the composition of the poem are spelled out in the title: Στίχοι τοῦ αὐτοῦ Λέοντος γεγονότες αὐθωροὶ κατὰ πρόσταξιν τοῦ πανσεβάστου ἐκείνου λόγῳ δοκιμῆς, ὅτε προσεκύνησεν ἐκεῖνον ἐπὶ τῷ δουλεύειν, ἐν λίθῳ φερούσῃ τὴν τῶν μουσῶν στήλωσιν λαξευτικῶς καὶ τὴν τῆς Καλλιόπης γύμνωσιν, θαυμαστὴν οὖσαν τῇ τοῦ τεχνίτου λαξεύσει (“Verses of the same Leo composed on the spot at the command of the late pansebastos as a test, when Leo made obeisance to that man in the hope of entering his service, in front of a stone relief with a depiction of the Muses and the denudement of Calliope, a marvelous work on account of the artist’s carving”). Leo evidently passed the test, since we know that he later served as secretary to George Palaiologos. As Magdalino 1993, 355–56, has noted, Leo’s aristocratic employer is probably to be identified with the art lover and patron of letters from the Palaiologos family whose house was frequented by Constantine Manasses and several other literati. On Leo Megistos and George Palaiologos, see also Lampsidis 1999. On theatra or syllogoi, as they are also called, in Byzantium, see Hunger 1978, 1: 210–11; Mullett 1984; Magdalino 1993, 335–56; Medvedev 1993; Cavallo 2007, 73–86; Marciniak 2007; Toth 2007; Stone 2010; Gaul 2011, esp. 17–53. Medvedev 1993, 233.

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eloquence by extemporaneously delivering a speech in honor of his patroness, Irene Doukaina, widow of Alexios I Komnenos, in a theatron held by the empress.126 The improvisation of epigrams would be perfectly at home at such a venue. Indeed, one could go a step further and argue that the recitation of epigrams in general, not just improvised verses, may occasionally have been staged in a theatron. Spingou has already made this suggestion with regard to specifically performative pieces.127 Granted, no Byzantine source that I am aware of mentions the recitation of epigrams in a theatron. But this scenario seems plausible. As we have seen, Maximos Planoudes in his letter to Melchisedek Akropolites makes an allusion to the future critical assessment of his hexameters on the icon of the Last Judgment, which may well have been pronounced in a theatron frequented by the addressee. It is perhaps not accidental that in the opening line of the first epigram on the icon, the one devoted to the vision of the heavenly tribunal presided over by Christ, Planoudes uses the word theatron: Ὦ κρίσις, ὦ στάσις, ὦ φοβερώτατον αὖ τὸ θέατρον (“Judgment! Assembly! Formidable spectacle [literally, ‘theater’]!”). By the choice of this word, Planoudes quite possibly implies in a playful fashion that, just as every human soul will be judged at the eschatological theatron, so will his hexameters on the icon receive critical appraisal at a no less terrifying tribunal consisting of Melchisedek’s learned friends. The evidence regarding the specific performative situations in which epigrams were or could have been recited is admittedly too sparse to allow for much certainty. The foregoing discussion has accordingly yielded hypotheses rather than firm conclusions. What seems certain, however, is that the act of reading an epigram was often a performative event, sometimes communal in nature, in which a text inscribed on an object or written on a page would come alive as speech, a dynamic flow of sounded rhythmical lines. Whether written in ink or carved, hammered, embroidered, or painted, epigrammatic verse was experienced both visually and aurally. It appealed to the eye and the ear alike.

126

Italikos, Orations, no. 15.

127

Spingou 2012, 170–73.

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The patron’s “I”

The Palazzo Ducale at Urbino houses a splendid, if partly damaged, silk cloth of a Palaiologan date (Plate 3, Figure 2.1).1 Embroidered with gold and tiny seed pearls, the cloth features a scene of supplication. Kneeling at the feet of a tall, slender figure of Saint Michael dressed in military garb is a blond-haired nobleman by the name of Manuel, his body wrapped in a richly patterned mantle.2 A sense of intimacy and mutual involvement suffuses the depiction of Manuel’s encounter with the heavenly warrior. Lifting his upper body with a hopeful resolve, the prostrate supplicant reaches out toward the object of his veneration. With his hands raised in prayer and his head thrown sharply backwards, he looks up, fixing his eyes directly upon the archangel’s face. This bodily appeal has evidently elicited a benevolent response from Saint Michael who, aptly labeled as Φύλαξ (“Guardian”), is shown sheltering his devotee underneath the ample span of his wings. Visually articulated through gestures, the interaction between the supplicant and the saint is further dramatized in the epigram embroidered on the cloth, which, significantly, takes the form of a dialogue. Running along the frame, the first part of the epigram comprises Manuel’s petition to the archangel, while the second part, displayed within the picture field, immediately above Manuel’s head, contains the archangel’s reply.3 Ὡς πρὶν Ἰησοῦς τοῦ Ναυῆ κάμψας γόνυ τῶν σῶν ποδῶν ἔμπροσθεν αὑτὸν ἐρρίφη αἰτῶν παρὰ σοῦ δύναμιν εἰληφέναι

1

2

3

Cozza-Luzi 1890; Serra 1919; Mercati 1970, 2:242–48; Furlan 1974, cat. no. 119 (I. Furlan); Carile 1975; Guillou 1998, 174–76; Fiaccadori 2007, 386–93; Petrov 2009; BEIÜ II, nos. Te8–Te9. The identity of the portrayed supplicant has yet to be established. In the inscription on the frame, which I quote below, Manuel takes pride in the illustrious ancestry of his mother Eudokia, whose parents were a kaisar and a princess born in the purple. Most scholars, following Cozza-Luzi 1890, identify him with Manuel, an illegitimate son of John V Palaiologos who won a minor naval victory over the Ottoman Turks in 1411, but there is no evidence to support this identification. See PLP, nos. 91885 and 92618. I reproduce the reading of the verses in BEIÜ II, nos. Te8–Te9.

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Figure 2.1 Embroidered podea(?) with the archangel Michael and the supplicant Manuel, fourteenth or early fifteenth century, Museo di Palazzo Ducale, Urbino (photo: Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici Artistici ed Etnoantropologici delle Marche, Urbino). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

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ὡς ἀλλοφύλων ὑποτάξῃ τὰ στίφη, οὕτως ἔγωγε Μανουὴλ σὸς οἰκέτης, Εὐδοκίας παῖς εὐκλεοῦς τρισολβίου, φυτοσπόρον μὲν καίσαρα κεκτημένης, γεννητρίαν δὲ πορφυράνθητον κλάδον, τανῦν ἐμαυτὸν ἱκετικῷ τῷ τρόπῳ ῥίπτω ποσί σου καὶ λιτάζομαι δέ σε ὡς σαῖς σκέπῃς πτέρυξι κεχρυσωμέναις καὶ προφθάνων ῥύῃς με παντὸς κινδύνου· καὶ προστάτην ἔχω σε καὶ φύλακά μου ψυχῆς τε καὶ σώματος ὢν ἐν τῷ βίῳ·

The patron’s “I”

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κἀν τῇ τελευταίᾳ δὲ καὶ φρικτῇ κρίσει εὕρω προσηνῆ διὰ σοῦ τὸν δεσπότην· ἐκ κοιλίας γὰρ μητρικῆς ἐπερρίφην ἐπὶ σε, ταξίαρχε τῶν ἀσωμάτων. As once Joshua, the son of Nun, falling on his knees threw himself at your feet, begging you power to subdue the hordes of foreign tribes, so I, your servant Manuel, son of the illustrious and thrice-blessed Eudokia, whose father was a kaisar, and whose mother was a purple-blossoming branch [i.e., imperial offspring], now I throw myself in a supplicatory manner at your feet and beseech you to protect me with your golden wings and deliver me in advance from every danger; be the protector and guardian of my soul and my body, as long as I live; and at the last and dreadful judgment may I find, thanks to you, the Lord merciful. For, since my mother’s womb, I have been entrusted to you,4 O commander of the incorporeal ones.

To Manuel’s prayer the archangel responds with the following: Οὖς μου προσέσχε σῇ δεήσει καὶ σκέπω σε μὲν πτέρυξιν ἰδίαις ὡς οἰκέτην· ἐχθροὺς δὲ τοὺς σοὺς ἀνελῶ μου τῇ σπάθῃ. My ear gave heed to your petition and I protect you with my own wings as my servant. With my sword I shall destroy your enemies.

In the Urbino textile, the image and the accompanying logos work in concert to enact a personal plea and, strikingly, its positive outcome too. Seeking the protection of Saint Michael in the present life, as well as his advocacy at the throne of the Lord on the Day of Judgment, Manuel falls on the ground just like the Old Testament Joshua did in the presence of the general of the heavenly army at the walls of Jericho (Joshua 5:13–15). He acknowledges the archangel as his lifelong protector and, in reiteration of the latter’s epithet on the cloth, also as his guardian. The archangel, on his part, favorably responds to this emphatic declaration of loyalty and, recognizing Manuel as his servant, spreads out his enormous gold-embroidered wings and brandishes his pearl-lined sword to protect him. The Urbino textile has often been mistaken for a banner, but its precious materials, format, iconography, and verse inscriptions militate against this

4

Cf. Psalm 21(22):11.

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identification. Originally, it most likely served as a podea, a cloth hanging suspended from the lower edge of a particularly venerated cult image – in this instance, probably an icon showing Saint Michael.5 Acting like cartoon-like speech bubbles emanating from the supplicant and the archangel, the embroidered verses enliven the scene depicted on the textile. But they also perform another, more fundamental, role by indicating the purpose of this precious object, specifically, its status as a religious dedication aimed at negotiating the relationship between Manuel, the dedicator, and Saint Michael, the dedicatee. This chapter takes a closer look at poetic inscriptions designed to accompany such religious dedications. In doing so, it sets the stage for the remainder of this study, which is for the most part concerned with dedicatory verses. The first section of the chapter offers a brief overview of the varieties of dedicatory epigrams, taking as its focus the figure of the patron. The discussion then moves to the most common type of dedicatory epigram in Later Byzantium, namely, the epigram in the form of a personal prayer spoken in the voice of the patron. The inscription on the Urbino textile exemplifies this type, but with a twist, for it also gives voice to the patron’s sacred protector. I shall identify some generic features of the dedicatory prayer and highlight its affinities with other genres and types of discourse in the first person singular. The final section of the chapter explores the patron’s prayer as a vehicle of self-representation. Insofar as the dedicatory verses endow the patron with a voice, they also allow him or her to inhabit a dramatic persona, a discursively crafted “I.” To return to the example of the Urbino textile, Manuel’s poetic address to the archangel, with its multiple points of self-reference, does more than articulate his plea for spiritual protection; it also creates and projects an image of this individual, a verbal portrait no less vivid than his visual likeness embroidered on the cloth. This chapter identifies the key principles and parameters that govern the crafting of such verbal portraits. Special consideration will be given to what I should like to call the patron’s devotional self. The larger argument that the following investigation seeks to advance is that personal piety and its artistic and epigraphic manifestations constituted a

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A. Carile 1975, 137, was the first to identify the cloth as a podea, although by podea he understood “un drappo usato per ricoprire, in segno di onore e riverenza, una icona,” that is to say, an encheirion. On podea, encheirion, and the practice of adorning icons with textile hangings, see Frolov 1938; Nunn 1986; Sterligova 2000, esp. 47–52; Sterligova 2008a; Petrov 2010.

Between praise and prayer: the dedicatory epigram

pivotal setting for the construction, staging, and performance of personal identity in Byzantium.

Between praise and prayer: the patron in the dedicatory epigram Broadly speaking, a dedicatory epigram adds specificity to an object by providing information about the circumstances of its creation, embellishment, or restoration, and/or by indicating its purpose.6 It typically identifies the person at whose behest the work on the object has been undertaken, that is, the patron, as well as the person – be it a holy figure or, less frequently, another mortal – to whom the object has been dedicated. If the epigram specifically designates the object as a gift – and most of the poems with which we shall be concerned belong to this category – then the dedicatee is normally identified as the object’s intended recipient. The epigram may further call the reader’s attention to the object by highlighting some of its aspects. It may also indicate what motivated the patron to engage in the act of dedication or giving and what he or she hopes to obtain in return. Who? What? To whom? And why? These are the basic questions to some or all of which a dedicatory epigram may provide an answer. Of course, within such guidelines, there is room for a great deal of variety. As we shall see, depending on the occasion and setting, let alone on the specific choices made by the patron or the poet in his or her employ, dedicatory epigrams can take many different forms. One piece of information, however, that these poetic compositions hardly ever provide is the name of the artist. While epigrams often refer to the processes and results of art-making, they almost invariably ascribe artistic agency to the commissioner of a work rather than to its actual maker.7 Ἔφθασα μὲν γράψαι σε πρὶν ἐν καρδίᾳ, πολύτλα μάρτυ, μυστικαῖς β[αφαῖς] πόθου· τανῦν δὲ καὶ [χρώμασιν ὑλι]κωτέ[ροις] τῶν θαυμάτων σου ζωγραφῶ τὰς εἰκόνας. (vv. 1–4)

6

7

On Byzantine dedicatory epigrams, see Lauxtermann 2003, esp. 158–66; BEIÜ I, 55–56; Rhoby 2010b; Spingou 2012; Belcheva 2013; Bernard 2014, 311–22. I am not concerned here with dedicatory epigrams accompanying pieces of literature, on which, see especially Hörandner 2007b. For a rare instance in which the dedicator and the artist are the same person, see Philes, Carmina I, 131 (no. CCLIX).

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First I depicted you in my heart, O much-suffering martyr, with the mystical dyes of desire; now I paint the images of your miracles, too, with more material colors.

Thus Theodore Lemniotes introduces his poetic appeal to the great martyr George in one of several inscriptions that commemorate his restoration of the church of the Holy Anargyroi at Kastoria sometime in the closing decades of the twelfth century.8 As in countless dedicatory epigrams, the patron’s involvement in furnishing the church with a new layer of frescoes is expressed with a verb in the active voice: ζωγραφῶ (“I paint”).9 In reality, of course, Lemniotes commissioned a local workshop to decorate the church, but the inscription nonetheless gives him all the credit.10 The labor of the fresco-painters in his employ has been subsumed, as it were, into his own work as a patron. Exceptional among the later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams for the prominence it accords to the artist is the inscription found in the small Palaiologan church of the Anastasis at Berroia (Figure 2.2).11 The inscription, painted in fresco on the interior west wall, above the entrance to the nave, reads as follows:

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Ξένος Ψαλιδᾶς ναὸν Θεοῦ ἐγείρει ἄφεσιν ζητῶν τῶν πολλῶ[ν ἐγκλ]ημάτων τῆς Ἀναστάσεως Χριστοῦ ὄνομα θέμενος· [Εὐ]φροσύνη σύνευνος τοῦτον ἐκπληρεῖ· ἱστοριογράφος ὄνομα [Καλιέργης] τοὺς καλοὺς καὶ κοσμίους αὐταδέλφους μου ὅλης Θεταλίας ἄριστος ζωγράφος· πατριαρχικὴ χεὶρ καθιστᾷ τὸν ναὸν [ἐπὶ] τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως Ἀνδρονίκου Κομνηνοῦ τοῦ Παλαιολόγου ἐν ἔ[τει ͵ϛ]ωκγʹ. Xenos Psalidas erects church of God, seeking the remission of his many sins, and gives it the name of Christ’s Anastasis. His wife Euphrosyne brings it to completion. The painter’s name is Kalierges; among my good and decent brothers, the best painter of all

8

9

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11

Drakopoulou 1997, 47–49 (no. 6); BEIÜ I, no. 84, with further bibliography. On Theodore Lemniotes, see Kyriakoudes 1981. This is the reason why many scholars confuse patrons and artists. See Lauxtermann 2003, 159. See also Bianconi 2012, 161–70; Bernard 2014, 316–18. For the twelfth-century paintings at the Holy Anargyroi, see Malmquist 1979; Pelekanides and Chatzidakis 1985, 22–49. BEIÜ I, no. 81; Pitsakes 2014 with further bibliography. On the church of the Anastasis, see Pelekanides 1973; Papazotos 1994, 100–103, 172–74, 253–57.

Between praise and prayer: the dedicatory epigram

Figure 2.2 Dedicatory epigram, 1314/15, church of the Anastasis, Berroia (photo: Εφορεία Αρχαιοτήτων Ημαθίας, Berroia)

Thessaly. A patriarch’s hand consecrates the church during the reign of the great emperor Andronikos Komnenos Palaiologos, in the year 6823 (= 1314/15).

With an attention to factual data rarely seen in epigrammatic poetry, these strikingly incompetent dodecasyllables, replete with metrical irregularities,12 chronicle the history of the construction and dedication of the church. Thus we learn that the church was begun by one Xenos Psalidas, perhaps a member of the local gentry, in atonement for his sins, and that his wife Euphrosyne, presumably after Psalidas’ death, completed the work.13 Based on the date at the end of the inscription, it can be deduced 12

13

Lines 3, 5, and 9 have more than twelve syllables; in lines 3, 4, 6, and 8 the obligatory stress on the penult is not observed; and in lines 3, 5, and 7–10 the caesura is misplaced or absent. As A. Rhoby has pointed out (BEIÜ I, 159), it is possible that lines 8–10 in fact do not belong to the epigram, but represent a prose addendum giving the date of the consecration of the church. See also Pitsakes 2014. The church is known to have served as the katholikon of a stauropegial monastery dedicated to Christ Sōtēr. In a chrysobull of February 1314, Andronikos II Palaiologos confirmed the transfer of ownership of the monastery to the hieromonk Ignatios Kalothetos: Actes de Lavra, 2:159–61 (no. 103). The relationship of this important monastic figure with the Psalidas couple is not clear. Kalothetos is probably to be identified with the monk portrayed in proskynēsis on the south wall of the church, addressing his prayers to Saint Arsenios. See Papazotos 1979; Papazotos 1994, 102–103; BEIÜ I, no. 82. On Kalothetos, see also PLP, no. 10610.

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that the patriarch John XIII Glykys officiated at the consecration ceremony.14 Lines 5–7, in which the painter’s identity is revealed, are somewhat difficult to interpret. The pendant accusative in line 6 lacks a verb or a preposition to govern it. Moreover, it is not clear who the painter’s “good and decent brothers” are, his real brothers or – what seems more likely – his colleagues. What is clear, however, is that, speaking in the first person, the painter here proclaims his artistic prowess with an unabashed selfassurance exceptional by Byzantine standards: he declares himself “the best painter of all Thessaly” (by which is meant the city of Thessalonike and its hinterland). The outstanding quality of Kalierges’ frescoes, which rank among the highest achievements of the so-called “Palaiologan Renaissance,” makes this boastful claim sound less jarring. Tentatively identified with the painter George Kallierges, who in 1322 witnessed the sale of some houses in Thessalonike, the creator of the Berroia murals must have been a renowned artist – and, perhaps, one with a literary bent.15 As Andreas Rhoby has noted, the sheer crudeness of the dedicatory verses in the Anastasis church suggests that their author was not a professionally trained poet, which leaves us with the possibility that Kalierges may have composed them himself.16 This intriguing possibility would explain why the speaking voice of the epigram is that of the painter. Yet, whoever the author of the verses, it would be a mistake to read them as a testament to the emergence of a proto-modern sense of artistic individuality in Palaiologan Byzantium. For the flattering designation “the best painter of all Thessaly” is about Kalierges as much as it is about those whose church he decorated with frescoes. There can be no doubt that Euphrosyne, who most likely commissioned the painter to work on the church, had a say in the content of the dedicatory inscription, which could not have been set up without her approval.17 As Sophia Kalopissi-Verti has rightly pointed out, the prominence accorded to Kalierges is best explained by Euphrosyne’s

14

15

16 17

Glykys’ predecessor, the patriarch Niphon I, who hailed from Berroia, is commonly assumed to have consecrated the church, but, as A. Rhoby has rightly pointed out (BEIÜ I, 159), he had already been deposed in April 1314. For the argument that Niphon may have officiated at the consecration ceremony after his removal from the patriarchal throne, see Pitsakes 2014, 676–77. For the identification of the painter of the Anastasis church with George Kallierges, see Theocharides 1955–60. For the attribution of several other works to him, see Tsigaridas 2010 with references to earlier scholarly opinions. BEIÜ I, 160. Cf. Pitsakes 2014, 679–80. I do not agree with the suggestion put forth by Papazotos 1994, 172, that Ignatios Kalothetos (on whom, see above n. 13) rather than Euphrosyne was responsible for the painted decoration of the church.

Between praise and prayer: the dedicatory epigram

intention to gain prestige through the skill and reputation of the artist in her employ.18 The choice of the best painter of the Empire’s second city was a demonstration of her sophisticated taste and, presumably, of the financial means at her disposal. The artist’s self-aggrandizement was ultimately an expression of the patroness’s pride. Dedicatory epigrams, especially those adorning public monuments and buildings, often focus upon the praise of the patron. When Theodore I Palaiologos, despot of the Morea, restored the Byzantine rule over Corinth in the fall of 1395 or the winter of 1396, he had his portrait – now lost – set up above the city gate, accompanied by an epigram.19

10

καί γε θεσπίσας ἐξ ὕψους διανοίας τὸ σφὸν οὕτως ὕπερθεν ἐγράφη βρέτας λόγοις ἀφθέγκτοις θεαταῖς πᾶσι λέγον ἄληστον αὐτοῦ μνήμην εἰς μακροὺς χρόνους· σκοπεῖτε λοιπὸν ὅσον οὗτος ἐν βίῳ λαμπρὸν ἀπηνέγκατο πάμμεγα κλέος. And having decided from the height of his intellect, he had his own image depicted in this way above ; with voiceless words, it proclaims his unforgettable memory to every spectator for many years. Behold, therefore, what splendid and immense glory he has obtained in his life.

The praise of the patron is also the focus of an early fourteenth-century epigram from Ohrid. In 1313/14, Gregory, archbishop of Ohrid, added an elegant two-storied exonarthex to the city’s cathedral, the church of Hagia Sophia, and had this accomplishment commemorated in a brick inscription on the building’s main façade (Figures 2.3 and 2.4).20 Μωσῆς ὁ Γρηγόριο[ς Ἰσρα]ὴλ νέῳ σκηνὴν ἐγείρας, τὸν θεόγραφον νόμον ἔθνη τὰ Μυσῶν ἐκδιδάσκει πανσόφως. Having erected a tabernacle for the New Israel, like Moses, Gregory teaches the Mysian peoples the divinely written Law in an all-wise fashion.

18 19 20

Kalopissi-Verti 1994, 146. Feissel and Philippidis-Braat 1985, no. 80; BEIÜ III, no. GR73, with further bibliography. Ivanov 1931, 34–35 (no. 1); Grozdanov 1969, 37–42, with a drawing of the inscription after p. 50; Ševčenko and Featherstone 1981, 8 n. 18; BEIÜ III, no. FY1. On the archbishop Gregory, see PLP, no. 91716. On the exonarthex, see Schellewald 1986, 168–83; Čipan 1996, esp. 122–24.

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Figure 2.3 Exonarthex of the cathedral church of Hagia Sophia, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra)

Figure 2.4 Dedicatory epigram of the archbishop Gregory, 1313/14, cathedral church of Hagia Sophia, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra)

A confidant of the emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, Gregory was sent from Constantinople to administer the see of Ohrid with its predominantly Slavic population, to which the verses refer using the archaism Mysoi.21 Perfectly in accordance with its prominent display on the city’s most important church, the inscription reads like a public proclamation and, indeed, a piece of versified propaganda addressed to the populace at large. Built around a flattering comparison between Gregory and Moses, the

21

For the use of the archaizing ethnonym Mysos, see Papadopoulou 2008.

Between praise and prayer: the dedicatory epigram

Figure 2.5 Church of the Dormition of the Virgin, Skripou in Boeotia (photo: Amy Papalexandrou)

inscription celebrates the archbishop’s munificence, learning, and, most notably, his pastoral care for his “Mysian” flock. Few dedicatory epigrams eulogize the patron as profusely as the poetic inscription immured in the west façade of the church of the Dormition of the Virgin at Skripou in Boeotia (Figures 2.5 and 2.6). This large domed building, completed in 873/74, was the foundation of an imperial prōtospatharios by the name of Leo, who had his endeavor commemorated in four inscriptions on the exterior of the church.22 Three of these inscriptions, written in prose and displayed on the eastern, more sacred part of the building, present the patron as a humble supplicant who erected the church in the hope of obtaining pardon of his many sins. The inscription on the west façade is of a completely different kind. Composed in nearly flawless hexameters, it is essentially a panegyric addressed to Leo.23

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23

On the church at Skripou and its inscriptions, see M. Soteriou 1931; Oikonomidès 1994; Papalexandrou 1998; Papalexandrou 2001, 264–67, 277–79; Prieto-Domínguez 2013; BEIÜ III, no. GR98. On the patron, see also Bevilacqua 2014, 133–54. I reproduce the reading of the inscription in BEIÜ III, 321.

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Figure 2.6 Dedicatory epigram of the prōtospatharios Leo, 873/74, church of the Dormition of the Virgin, Skripou in Boeotia (photo: Εφορεία Αρχαιοτήτων Βοιωτίας, Thebes)

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Οὐ φθόνος οὐδὲ χρόνος περιμήκετος ἔργα καλύψει σῶν καμάτων, πανάριστε, βυθῷ πολυχανδέϊ λήθης ἔργα ἐπεὶ βοόωσι καὶ οὐ λαλέοντά περ ἔμπης· καὶ τόδε γὰρ τέμενος παναοίδιμον ἐξετέλεσας μητρὸς ἀπειρογάμου, θεοδέγμονος ἰφιανάσσης, τερπνόν ἀποστίλβον περικαλλέα πάντοθεν αἴγλην· Χριστοῦ δ’ ἑκατέρωθεν ἀποστόλω ἕστατον ἄμφω, ὧν Ῥώμης βῶλαξ ἱερὴν κόνιν ἀμφικαλύπτει· ζώοις ἐν θαλίῃσι χρόνων ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα κύκλα, ὦ πολύαινε Λέον πρωτοσπαθάριε μέγιστε, γηθόμενος κτεάτεσσι καὶ ἐν τεκέεσσιν ἀρίστοις χῶρον ἐπικρατέων τε παλαιφάτου Ὀρχομενοῖο. Neither envy, nor time eternal will obscure the works of your efforts, O most excellent one, in the vast depths of oblivion, for your works roar out, even though they are mute. You have brought to completion this famous precinct of the virgin Mother, the mighty queen who received God, a delightful thing, gleaming all around with lovely radiance. And on either side stand the apostles of Christ, whose hallowed dust the earth of Rome covers. May you live in abundance through the endless cycles of time, O highly praised Leo, the greatest prōtospatharios, rejoicing in your

Between praise and prayer: the dedicatory epigram

property and in your excellent offspring, while you rule over the area of the legendary Orchomenos.24

Nothing in this poetic memorial shows concern for the fate of Leo’s soul in the hereafter. Apart from the reference to the dedications of the three altars within the church – the central altar being dedicated to the Virgin, and the two side ones to Saints Peter and Paul – the inscription hardly reflects its religious setting. The overall tone is secular, and more specifically, antiquarian. The verses not only celebrate Leo’s accomplishments and his worldly status and fame; they do so using the “heroic” meter with its unmistakably antique associations and in a language that, as several scholars have observed, is peppered with Homeric words and phrases, as well as with allusions to the Greek Anthology.25 The verses, moreover, associate the prōtospatharios with the local past by evoking Orchomenos, an ancient Greek city on the site of which the church has been built. Numerous spolia from the city’s ruins embedded in the masonry fabric of the church make this association all the more palpable.26 Thus, while praising the prōtospatharios, the inscription simultaneously surrounds him with an air of learnedness and cultural exclusivity. But perhaps the most remarkable feature of this poetic eulogy is that it is addressed directly to Leo. In Byzantine dedicatory epigrams, such an apostrophe to the patron is unusual in the extreme.27 Regarding the use of the second person, Nikolaos Oikonomides has wondered whether the inscription may have been presented to Leo as a gift from a high-placed friend in Constantinople – hence the peculiarly direct address.28 While this is probably too literal a way to explain the unusual format, it is beyond doubt that the inscription reflects the tastes and preoccupations of elite intellectual circles in the capital.29 The sheer quality of the verses, coupled with their antiquarian frame of reference, makes it likely that the poet who penned them belonged to or was associated with the Constantinopolitan intelligentsia.

24 25 26 27

28 29

The translation substantially modifies the one by Papalexandrou 2001, 279. See especially, Lauxtermann 2003, 119–20; Prieto-Domínguez 2013, 172–73. Papalexandrou 1998, esp. 313–24; Papalexandrou 2003. See, e.g., the dedicatory epigram in the Naumachika commissioned by the notorious parakoimōmenos Basil Lakapenos, datable to 958–59 (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Ms. Ambr. B 119 sup., fol. 339r): Pryor and Jeffreys 2006, 522. Cf. also BEIÜ III, no. TR114. Oikonomidès 1994, 491. On the vogue for classicizing poetry in the second half of the ninth century, see Lauxtermann 1999a; Lauxtermann 2003, esp. 98–114, 118–23; D’Ambrosi 2006. For the possibility that the prōtospatharios Leo was a friend of Photios, see Prieto-Domínguez 2013, 176–91.

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In dedicatory epigrams commemorating the patronage of religious artifacts and buildings, spiritual concerns rather than praise are typically in the foreground. The vast majority of these texts, in fact, take the form of a prayer. Such a prayer may be addressed to a divine or saintly beneficiary of the dedication on the patron’s behalf by an impersonal voice. Ἔπηξε βάθρα τῷ ναῷ σου, παρθένε, Λέων Ἀργείων ἀλιτρὸς θυηπόλος· ᾧπερ παράσχοις λύτρον ἀμπλακημάτων εἰς ἀντάμειψιν, εὐλογημένη κόρη. Leo, the sinful priest of the Argives, laid the foundations of your church, O Virgin. May you, blessed Maiden, grant him in repayment the remission of his sins.

These verses, accompanied by the date of April 1149, are incised in marble on the west façade of the monastic church at Areia in the Argolid, founded by Leo, bishop of Argos and Nauplia (Figures 2.7 and 2.8).30 Unlike the celebratory inscriptions gracing the west façades of the churches at Ohrid and Skripou, this epigram is concerned not so much with praising the patron for his accomplishment, but rather with presenting his personal request for salvation. This request, however, is not delivered by the bishop Leo himself, but by an impersonal voice, which, significantly, any reader of the epigram comes to inhabit. By uttering the incised verses, he or she makes an appeal to the Virgin on the bishop’s behalf and thus takes on the role of an intercessor. In rare instances, a dedicatory prayer may be spoken by a holy figure. This scenario has been adopted in the famous dedicatory mosaic panel from the church of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio at Palermo. The panel, datable to c. 1143–51, shows George of Antioch, the founder of the church and chief minister of the Norman king Roger II of Sicily, prostrate before the Virgin (Figure 2.9).31 Pointing to the devotee at her feet with her right hand, the Virgin turns in supplication toward a figure of Christ emerging

30

31

Feissel and Philippidis-Braat 1985, no. 51; BEIÜ III, no. GR93, with further bibliography. On this inscription, see also Papalexandrou 2007, 174–76. On the monastery at Areia and its founder, see Choras 1975. For the architecture of the church, see Bouras and Bouras 2002, 81–85, with further bibliography. Kitzinger 1991, esp. 197–206, 316–18 (no. 72); Patterson Ševčenko 1994, 267–68. On George of Antioch and his foundation, see also Lavagnini 1987; Lavagnini 1994; and the relevant studies in Re and Rognoni 2009.

Between praise and prayer: the dedicatory epigram

Figure 2.7 Church of the Hagia Monē, Areia (photo: Christina Pinatsi)

from a segment of heaven in the upper right corner. The unfurled scroll in her left hand records the words of her prayer.32

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Τὸν ἐκ βάθρων δείμαντα τόνδε μοι δόμον Γεώργιον πρώτιστον ἀρχόντων ὅλων, τέκνον, φυλάττοις πανγενεὶ πάσης βλάβης νέμοις τε τὴν λύτρωσιν ἁμαρτημάτων· ἔχεις γὰρ ἰσχὺν ὡς Θεὸς μόνος, Λόγε.

For this inscription, see especially BEIÜ I, no. M5, with further bibliography.

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Figure 2.8 Dedicatory epigram of the bishop Leo, 1149, church of the Hagia Monē, Areia (photo: Christina Pinatsi)

Him, who has built me this house from the foundations, George, the first and foremost of all archons, may you, O Child, shield from every harm along with his entire family, and may you grant him the remission of his sins, for you alone, O Logos, as God, have the power.

If in the inscription of the bishop Leo at Areia the Virgin is asked to absolve the patron’s transgressions herself, in the Palermitan mosaic she appears more properly as a mediatrix. The mosaic makes clear that, by founding a church dedicated to her, George has earned her advocacy before the Lord. Mary acknowledges the archon’s pious deed and recommends him and his family to the care of her Divine Son. In response, Christ reaches out of his heavenly abode and makes a reassuring gesture of blessing. The Virgin’s plea has evidently been heard. In Later Byzantium, the patron usually does not remain silent, but delivers the dedicatory prayer in propria voce. Indeed, beginning with the Komnenian era, most dedicatory epigrams take the form of a personal prayer: the patron, speaking in his or her own voice, offers a pious gift to Christ, the Virgin, or a saint, and gives thanks for favors received in the past or asks for future favors or for the eternal repose of his or her soul in the hereafter. To be sure, such personal prayers are encountered with some frequency even before the Komnenian era, but it is only in the twelfth century that they become the dominant form of dedicatory address. Depending on the context, dedicatory epigrams spoken in the voice of the patron can be quite laconic. Such is, for example, an inscription in the monastic church of the Virgin Pantanassa at Mistra, founded around

Between praise and prayer: the dedicatory epigram

Figure 2.9 Dedicatory mosaic panel with the Virgin, Christ, and George of Antioch, c. 1143–51, Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, Palermo (photo: Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY)

1430 by the prōtostratōr John Phrangopoulos, a high dignitary of the Despotate of the Morea.33 The inscription encircles a medallion with 33

On the Pantanassa, see Aspra-Bardabake and Emmanouel 2005; Sinos 2012 with further bibliography. On Phrangopoulos, see PLP, no. 30100.

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Figure 2.10 Medallion with the Virgin and Child and the dedicatory epigram of the prōtostratōr John Phrangopoulos, c. 1430, church of the Virgin Pantanassa, Mistra (photo: Εφορεία Αρχαιοτήτων Λακωνίας, Sparta)

a depiction of the Virgin orans with the Child on her breast, displayed in the central dome of the western gallery above the narthex (Figure 2.10).34 [Πολλῶν τυχών σου τῶν χαρίτων, παρθένε, μικρὸν] κομίζω σοι δῶρον νεὼν τ[όνδε Ἰωάννης Φραγγόπουλος πρωτοστράτωρ θεοπρόβλητος {ἐν} δεξιοῦ τυχεῖν θέλων]. Having obtained many favors from you, O Virgin, I, prōtostratōr John Phrangopoulos, offer this church to you as a small gift, for I wish to be chosen by God35 and obtain a place at his right-hand side.

Packed into four dodecasyllable lines – the circular band surrounding the medallion could hardly accommodate more – Phrangopoulos’ poetic 34

35

Aspra-Bardabake and Emmanouel 2005, 29–31; BEIÜ I, no. 152, with references to earlier editions. A. Rhoby (BEIÜ I, 243), following Aspra-Bardabake and Emmanouel 2005, 31, takes θεοπρόβλητος to be an epithet of the founder. I find it difficult to accept that Phrangopoulos could refer to himself as “von Gott eingesetzt.”

Between praise and prayer: the dedicatory epigram

address is reduced to the essentials: the presentation of a gift accompanied by a plea for salvation. A dedicatory prayer, however, can be much more verbose and incorporate extensive praise of the dedicatee, repeated invocations studded with sparkling epithets, references to dogmatic precepts, expressions of affection and loyalty, and even a certain amount of autobiographical detail. Elaborate dedicatory epigrams of this kind became popular in the twelfth century, especially in the realm of icon piety. Some of the best examples are to be found in the epigrammatic opus of Nicholas Kallikles, a physician and poet at the courts of Alexios I and John II Komnenos. Here is a poem composed for a gold-woven purple encheirion, or icon veil, dedicated to the celebrated icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria by the sebastos John Arbantenos.36

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Ἐμαυτὸν αὐτὸς δῶρον, ἁγνή, σοὶ φέρω, οὐ δῶρα μικρά, χρυσίον καὶ πορφύραν· ἐν τοῖς κλόνοις γὰρ καὶ ζάλαις ταῖς ἐκ τύχης εὔρουν σε ῥεῖθρον εὗρον ἀταραξίας, εὗρον ἀνίκητόν σε φάρμακον νόσων, ἀπαλλαγὴν κατεῖδον ἐν ταῖς φροντίσι· δόξης ἐρῶ· παρέσχες ἄφθονον κλέος· κήδους χρόνος· συνῆψας ὀλβίῳ γένει, χρυσῇ πλατάνῳ, τῇ βασιλέως τύχῃ, ὅλον κατεσκίασας ἡμῖν τὸν βίον. δάκνει φθόνος τίς· θλάσον αὐτοῦ τὰς γνάθους· λυπεῖ δόλος· σύντριψον αὐτοῦ τὰς μύλας· ἄνοιγέ μοι τὰ σπλάγχνα τοῦ βασιλέως· σχοίνισμα λαμπρόν, κλῆρον ὀλβίου βίου δὸς καὶ τέκνα βράβευε καὶ ζωῆς πλάτος, δὸς πραέων γῆν καὶ τόπον σωτηρίας, δὸς παγγενῆ μοι τὴν Ἐδὲμ κατοικίαν διαδραμούσης τῆς κάτω παροικίας. Ἀρβαντηνός σοι ταῦτα, σεμνὴ παρθένε, πιστός, δέσποινα, σὸς λάτρης Ἰωάννης. I bring my very self to you as a gift, O chaste one, not small gifts, gold and purple. For, in the turmoil and distresses of fate, I found you as a fair-flowing stream of calm; I found you as an invincible cure against

36

Kallikles, Poems, no. 1. On Arbantenos, see Gautier 1969, 260–62; Varzos 1984, no. 86. The bibliography on the icon of the Hodēgētria is extensive, but see Angelidi and Papamastorakis 2000; Pentcheva 2006a, 109–43.

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afflictions, and I saw a deliverance from my cares. I desire fame; you gave me abundant glory. When it was time to marry, you united me with a noble family, a golden plane tree, with imperial connections. You have watched over my whole life. If someone’s envy should bite, smash its jaws! If deceit should cause me pain, break its molars!37 Open the emperor’s heart to me, grant me a glorious lot, an inheritance of prosperous life, and children, too, and reward me with fullness of life. And when this earthly sojourn has passed, grant me the land of the meek and the place of salvation, grant me Paradise, the dwelling-place of every species. Arbantenos these to you, holy Virgin, your faithful servant, O Mistress, John.38

In Kallikles’ poem, Arbantenos delivers a dramatically vivid petition to the Mother of God. Appealing to her presence and attention, he calls her by her epithet “chaste” and further praises her as a “fair-flowing stream of calm,” “invincible cure,” and “deliverance.” As in the dedicatory inscription at the Pantanassa, there is an emphasis on direct exchange between the human and the divine spheres. The ostensible aim of Kallikles’ verses was to negotiate the presentation of the sumptuous encheirion, which Arbantenos donated to the Virgin as a thank-offering, a small repayment for the benefactions she had bestowed upon him. The most significant among these was his elevation into the highest echelon of the Komnenian elite, sealed by his marriage to Anna, niece of the emperor John II Komnenos. Aside from acknowledging the sebastos’ debt to the Virgin, the gift of a costly icon veil was also meant to buttress his request for further benefactions, including defense against his enemies, imperial favor, the capacity to produce offspring, and a place in Paradise. The relationship between the donor and the sacred recipient is portrayed as intrinsically personal. Arbantenos – so we are told – has enjoyed the Mother of God’s protection throughout his life. As her “faithful servant,” he truly belongs to her. Indeed, no gift could better express his intense emotional attachment to her than the gift of his own self. The string of imperatives laced through his petition – “smash,” “break,” “open,” “reward,” and thrice repeated “grant” – only underscores the privileged nature of his access to the Virgin. The forcefully stated “I” here implies a “you,” and even though the Virgin has not been brought into the text to converse with her devotee in the way that the archangel Michael has in the Urbino textile, her presence is nonetheless linguistically signaled.

37

Cf. Job 29:17.

38

Trans. Nunn 1986, 99, substantially modified.

The patron says “I”

Kallikles’ poem ends with a disclosure of the donor’s identity. The two concluding lines are not, in fact, spoken in the voice of the donor. The poem here switches to an impersonal voice, which, in an apostrophe to the Virgin, explains that it is John Arbantenos who has addressed the preceding lines – ταῦτα (“these ”) – to her. Later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams often end with such a coda. Before we examine more closely how the patron’s “I” is articulated in dedicatory prayers, it is necessary to consider the discursive and sociocultural environment in which epigrams in the first person developed and gained popularity. In the following, my aim is to contextualize the emergence of personal prayer as the dominant form of dedicatory address. As we shall see, the increasing emphasis on this kind of selfreference in later Byzantine epigrammatic poetry was part of a broader cultural trend.

The patron says “I” A dedicatory epigram in the form of a personal prayer is essentially a speech, an orchestrated first-person address, in which the poet endows the patron not only with a voice, but also with a dramatic persona, an “I.” The staged, mediated nature of this speech is occasionally highlighted in titles attached to epigrams in manuscripts, which may use expressions such as ἐκ προσώπου (“ in the person of”), ὡς ἀπό (“ as if by”), ὡς ἀπὸ στόματος (“ as if from the mouth of”), and the like, followed by the patron’s name.39 As we have seen in Chapter 1, the exact nature of the patron’s involvement in the creation of an epigram is difficult to ascertain. While in many, if not most, instances it probably did not go beyond rewarding the poet for his labor, it is reasonable to assume that the commissioner often specified the ideas or sentiments that the epigram was expected to convey. Yet, regardless of the degree to which the patron may have collaborated with the poet in formulating the prayer put into his or

39

To limit myself to the Philean corpus, see Carmina I, 70 (no. CLIX), 72 (no. CLXI), 74 (no. CLXIV), 76 (no. CLXVI), 77 (no. CLXVIII), 116 (no. CCXX), 117 (no. CCXXIII), 122 (no. CCXXXI), 129 (no. CCLIV), 131 (no. CCLIX), 240 (no. LXVI), 244 (no. LXXI), 432 (no. CCXXIV); Carmina II, 144 (no. XCII), 153 (no. CIX), 154 (no. CX), 161 (no. CXXVI), 187 (no. CLVI), 194 (no. CLXXII), 198 (no. CLXXX), 354 (no. IX); Historika poiēmata, 658 (Ἐκ προσώπου τοῦ μητροπολίτου Μιτυλήνης Θεοδοσίου τῷ μεγάλῳ λογοθέτῃ διὰ βιβλίον, ὃ προσήνεξε τῇ αὐτοῦ μονῇ τῆς Χώρας). For the use of the ὡς ἐκ (ἀπὸ) προσώπου formula in other contexts, see Tomadakes 1960, 8–11.

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her mouth, the “real” and the poetic voice of the patron must be kept distinct. For dedicatory epigrams are by no means direct reflections of biographical reality, much less revelations of interiority, a view onto one’s personal emotions and experiences. Rather, they are highly stylized discursive constructions of identity, idealized projections shaped by individual choices as much as by literary conventions and social norms and institutions. To understand and appreciate the logic behind the construction of identity in dedicatory epigrams in the form of a personal prayer, we should begin with their essential feature. The patron in these poetic statements plays an active role and, assuming the “I” of the epigram, speaks about him- or herself. This kind of self-assertiveness should not be taken lightly. To say “I” was a charged gesture in Byzantium. Both Christian morality and rhetorical tradition imposed severe restrictions on self-reference. Periautologia, literally “speaking about oneself,” carried negative connotation and was often equated with “boasting.”40 In Byzantine rhetorical practice, to speak about oneself was considered acceptable or necessary only in specific situations, for instance, when the speaker is forced to reveal the truth, defend him- or herself, or morally edify others by setting a personal example of virtuous conduct.41 Religious contexts provided another venue for admissible yet restrained self-reference. In dedicatory epigrams spoken in the voice of the patron, periautologia was framed and thus justified, on the one hand, by the religiously significant and socially commendable gesture of donation, and on the other, by the praise of the sacred recipient and his or her benefactions bestowed upon the speaker. In their articulation of the patron’s voice, dedicatory epigrams show affinities with other genres and types of discourse that dramatize the “I,” including first-person passages in liturgical hymns,42 communion prayers,43 catanyctic poems,44 poems eis heauton (“to oneself”),45 and epitaphs spoken

40

41

42

43 44 45

On periautologia, see Hinterberger 1999, 132–49; Hinterberger 2000, 150–51; Papaioannou 2013, 132–35. An authoritative statement in this regard was Plutarch’s treatise On Praising Oneself Inoffensively: Hinterberger 1999, 138–39; Hinterberger 2000, 150–51. Notable examples include the Great Paraklētikos Kanōn and the Small Paraklētikos Kanōn to the Virgin, and the Great Kanōn of Andrew of Crete: PG 140, cols. 772–80; Koutloumousianos 1832, 467–79; PG 97, cols. 1329–85. See also the celebrated hymn on the sinful woman by the poetess Cassia: Christ and Paranikas 1871, 104, with Dyck 1986. For a detailed treatment of the dramatization of the “I” in liturgical poetry, see Krueger 2014. Alexopoulos and van den Hoek 2006. Anastasijewić 1907; Lauxtermann 1999b, 31–35; Ciccolella 2000, esp. xlix–liv; Giannouli 2013. Hunger 1978, 2:158–62; Hinterberger 1999, 71–74; van Opstall 2008a, 31–32.

The patron says “I”

in the voice of the deceased.46 A constant point of reference is the language of the Psalms – the paradigmatic poetry of prayer, contrition, praise, and thanksgiving in the first person singular.47 Two genres, however, deserve special attention: ēthopoiia, or character study, and the autobiographical preface to a monastic typikon, or foundation charter. Ēthopoiia is a rhetorical genre widely practiced in Byzantium both as a classroom exercise, one of the progymnasmata, and as a literary composition, either autonomous or inserted into a larger narrative.48 Ēthopoiia, as the rhetorician Aphthonios (late fourth and early fifth century CE) defines it, represents “an imitation of the character of a proposed speaker” (ἠθοποιία ἐστὶ μίμησις ἤθους ὑποκειμένου προσώπου).49 The writer’s task in composing it was to imagine what a particular person would say in a given situation, typically a critical moment in his or her life. Hence, many free-standing ēthopoiiai are introduced by the formulaic question Τίνας ἂν εἴποι λόγους;, or “What words would so-and-so say?” – for example, “What words would Medea say when she is about to murder her children?” The writer could either focus on the speaker’s emotions (pathetical ēthopoiia) or foreground his or her character, will, and moral disposition (ethical ēthopoiia), or combine the presentation of character with the portrayal of emotional pathos (mixed ēthopoiia). In terms of its narrative structure, the properly constructed speech was to unfold along a prescribed temporal sequence: the speaker should first dwell upon his or her present situation, then recall past events and experiences, and finally turn to the future. Central to effective characterization was the observance of the principle of prepon, that is, the choice of appropriate diction depending on the speaker’s age, occupation, social status, and so forth, as well as on the specific circumstances in which the delivery of the speech was imagined to take place. Dedicatory epigrams are, of course, not ēthopoiiai in the strict sense. Rather, in their verbal staging of the patron’s persona, they draw in a 46 47

48

49

Papadogiannakis 1984, esp. 76–79; Lauxtermann 2003, 215–18. On the language of the Psalms as a model and a mirror for the Christian reader, see Athanasios of Alexandria’s famous Epistola ad Marcellinum 11–12, PG 27, cols. 21B–24D. On the role of the Psalms in personal piety, see Parpulov 2010b. Hunger 1978, 1:108–16. On ēthopoiia as a rhetorical genre more broadly, see Hagen 1966; Amato and Schamp 2005. Aphthonios, Progymnasmata 11.1. It is interesting to note that the thirteenth-century Lexicon of Pseudo-Zonaras uses the expression ὡς ἐκ προσώπου in its definition of prosōpopoiia, i.e., ēthopoiia: προσωποποιΐα. ὅτάν τις πρόσωπον ὑποθέμενος ἕτερον ἢ ὑποδύς, ὡς ἐκ προσώπου τινὸς εἴπῃ (“Prosōpopoiia: When, having assumed or put on another character, someone speaks as if in the person of another”) (Lexicon, 2: col. 1578).

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varying degree upon the patterns of rhetorical characterization. To illustrate how a dedicatory epigram can be read as an ēthopoiia, we may turn to a set of verses composed by Manuel Philes at the behest of the sebastos Manuel Atzymes.50 The verses were meant to accompany an icon, which Atzymes dedicated to the Mother of God, following the cure of his paralyzed hand at the famed miraculous spring in the monastery of the Virgin tēs Pēgēs (“of the Source”) outside the walls of Constantinople.51 In Emmanuel Miller’s edition of Philes, the title attached to the verses reads: Πρὸς τὴν θεομήτορα χαριστήριος (“ thanksgiving to the Mother of God”). It would not be out of place, however, to introduce them with the question Τίνας ἂν εἴποι λόγους ὁ σεβαστὸς Μανουὴλ Ἀτζύμης ἰαθεὶς παρὰ τῆς Θεοτόκου τῆς Πηγῆς; (“What words would the sebastos Manuel Atzymes say after having been cured by the Mother of God of the Source?”).

5

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15

20

50

51

Ὁ σὸς μὲν υἱὸς θαυματουργῶν, παρθένε, καὶ τῇ λογικῇ πρακτικὴν συνεισφέρων, ἄνικμον ἐψύχωσε χειρὸς ὀστέον, ῥήματος αὐτῷ ζωτικὴν δοὺς ἰκμάδα· καὶ γὰρ ἰατρὸς κοσμοσώστης εὑρέθη, προπατορικῆς ἐκτεμὼν χειρὸς πάθος. σὺ δ’, ὦ Μαριάμ, τῆς ἐμῆς ψυχῆς δρόσε, τῆς σῆς με πηγῆς ταῖς ῥοαῖς ἀναψύχεις, καὶ τὸν πρὶν ἡμίξηρον ἐξ ἁμαρτίας χλωροῖς πάλιν, σώτειρα, κοσμεῖς ὀργάνοις, καὶ τῶν ἰατρῶν τὴν σοφὴν ψῆφον λύεις τῇ πρὸς τὸ λυποῦν μυστικῇ χειρουργίᾳ. ῥάβδος γὰρ ἐν σοὶ γλυκερὸν θάλος φύει, καὶ πῦρ ὑπελθὸν οὐ καταφλέγει βάτον, καὶ ῥοῦς διαστάς, ὡς φυγὰς ὑποστρέφει. χειρί σε λοιπὸν ζωγραφῶ σκιαγράφου, σμικρᾶς ἀμοιβῆς οὐ καταλλήλου χάριν. τείνω δέ σοι τὴν χεῖρα τὴν σεσωσμένην, ὁ χθὲς θανατῶν ἄρτι φανεὶς ἀρτίπους· ἐμοὶ γὰρ αὐτὴ καὶ ψυχῆς λύσεις πόνους παρειμένης πόρρωθεν ἐκ τῶν πρακτέων, εὐσπλαγχνίας ἄβυσσε καὶ τεραστίων.

Philes, Carmina I, 66–67 (no. CLVI). To my knowledge, Manuel Atzymes is not attested in other sources. On the Pēgē monastery and its miraculous spring, see Talbot 1994 with further bibliography. The epigram on Atzymes’ icon is discussed in ibid., 148–50.

The patron says “I” Ὁ σὸς Μανουὴλ ταῦτά φησιν Ἀτζύμης, ὃν καὶ σεβαστὸν τὴν τιμὴν σὺ δεικνύεις. O Virgin, your Son, working miracles and joining action with word, restored life to the dry bone of a hand,52 giving it the living moisture of his word; for he proved to be a world-saving doctor, excising the affliction of the hand of our forefathers.53 But you, O Mary, dew of my soul, you refresh me with the streams of your spring, and, O savior, you adorn again with fresh limbs the one who was formerly half-withered because of his sins, and you repeal the “wise” judgment of the doctors with the mystical surgery of the painful . For in you the rod brings forth a sweet shoot,54 and descending fire does not burn the bush,55 and the waters divide, and turn back like a fugitive.56 Therefore I paint you with the hand of a painter, as an unsuitably small recompense. And I extend to you the hand which you have saved, I, who only yesterday was on the point of death, but now am revealed sound of limb; for you shall also dissolve the suffering of my soul, which has for long been paralyzed on account of its deeds, O bottomless source of compassion and miracles. Your Manuel Atzymes, who, thanks to you, holds the dignity of sebastos, says these .57

This versified speech deals with a critical moment in the speaker’s life: the cure of his hand miraculously effected at a healing shrine. To use rhetorical terminology, the poem is akin to a “double” (διπλή) ēthopoiia insofar as Atzymes is not delivering a monologue by himself – this would be a “simple” (ἁπλή) ēthopoiia – but speaks to an addressee, the Mother of God.58 The presentation roughly follows the temporal sequence prescribed for an ēthopoiia. Rejoicing in the miracle, Atzymes first contrasts his present good health with the misery of his past suffering – note the reference in line 11 to the incompetence of the physicians who were unable to treat his condition – and then turns to the future, full of hope that the Virgin will put an end to his spiritual anguish too. The speaker’s character rather than his emotions is in the foreground. In acknowledging the grace bestowed upon him by the Virgin, the sebastos adopts the persona of a repentant sinner, painfully aware of the burden of his past deeds that caused the paralysis in the first place. As befits the solemnity of the occasion and the exalted status of the addressee, the diction of the 52 54 57 58

53 Cf. Matthew 12:9–14; Mark 3:1–6; Luke 6:6–11. Cf. Genesis 3:22. 55 56 Cf. Numbers 17:8. Cf. Exodus 3:1–6. Cf. Exodus 14:15–30. Trans. Talbot 1994, 148–49, with modifications. For the distinction between “simple” and “double” ēthopoiiai, see Pseudo-Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 9.4.

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speech is lofty. The greater part of the poem is, in fact, devoted to the speaker’s praise of his heavenly protectress. Drawing a comparison between Mary and her Divine Son, Atzymes likens the miracle at the Pēgē with Christ’s healing of the man with the withered hand. He appeals to the Virgin with a series of epithets in the vocative – “dew,” “savior,” “bottomless source of compassion and miracles” – and, in addition, extols her by invoking her Old Testament prefigurations: the flowering rod of Aaron, the burning bush, and the crossing of the Red Sea. Allusions to the doctrine of redemption and Mary’s role in the economy of salvation further enhance the speech’s elevated tone. The epigram ends with a customary coda, which, by shifting to an impersonal voice, creates a kind of frame that only underscores the staged nature of Atzymes’ speechin-character. It is no accident, I believe, that the genre of ēthopoiia gained increasing popularity in the Komnenian era, which is precisely the time when the “I”-speech emerged as the most common form of dedicatory epigram. Authors as diverse as Michael Italikos and John Kinnamos occasionally engaged in composing free-standing ēthopoiiai,59 while Nikephoros Basilakes, the foremost among the twelfth-century practitioners of the genre, left more than two dozen character studies of biblical heroes and personages from pagan mythology and ancient history.60 In the twelfth century, it should be pointed out, contemporary figures, too, were considered a suitable subject for such rhetorical exercises.61 Eustathios, future archbishop of Thessalonike, wrote an ēthopoiia of the metropolitan Neophytos of Mokessos who, having been robbed of his clothes in a bathhouse, found himself naked, much to the amusement of the crowd that gathered to mock him.62 And when the son of the epi tou kanikleiou Theodore Styppeiotes, a high official at the court of Manuel I Komnenos, survived a fall from an upper floor of their family residence, an anonymous writer penned a poem in the fifteen-syllable political verse, entitled Τίνας ἂν εἴπῃ λόγους ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἐπὶ τοῦ κανικλείου ἀβλαβὴς διαφυλαχθείς;

59 60 61

62

Italikos, Orations, no. 41; Kinnamos, Ēthopoiia, 6–10. Basilakes, Progymnasmata and Monodies, 139–232. Exceptionally, before the twelfth century free-standing ēthopoiiai may feature contemporary imperial figures. Examples include John Geometres’ ēthopoiia of Nikephoros II Phokas (r. 963–969) and an anonymous ēthopoiia of Michael V Kalaphates (r. 1041–1042): van Opstall 2008a, 281–88 (no. 80); Walz 1832–36, 2:508–509, with Gibson 2009, 91–92. See also Cresci 2012. Eustathios of Thessalonike, Opuscula, 328–32, with emendations in Wirth 1960.

The patron says “I”

(“What words would the son of the epi tou kanikleiou say after having been saved unharmed?”).63 Another contemporary ēthopoiia written in verse is worth singling out, for it has several features in common with dedicatory epigrams. The protagonist of this poem that runs to 201 lines is Irene Dokeiane Komnene, daughter of Sophia Komnene, a niece of the emperor Alexios I Komnenos. The anonymous author imagines the words that Irene would say “concerning the things that have happened to her” (περὶ τῶν εἰς αὐτὴν συμβεβηκότων).64 Like the vast majority of Byzantine epigrams, the ēthopoiia is composed in the dodecasyllable. It is structured as a personal prayer addressed to Christ, in which the speaker moves from thanksgiving to confession to petition.65 In a trope that frequently introduces the patron’s appeal to a holy figure in dedicatory epigrams, Irene begins her prayer by declaring her inability to properly thank Christ for his benefactions.

5

Οὐκ ἔστι μοι μὲν εὐχαριστίας λόγος ἐπάξιός σοι τῶν καλῶν, πλαστουργέ μοι, ὧν δέδρακάς μοι καὶ παρ’ αὐτὴν τὴν πλάσιν. πλὴν ἀλλὰ πύλας ἐξανοίγω χειλέων καὶ τὸν χαριστήριον ἐκ ψυχῆς φέρω θαρροῦσα τῇ σῇ συμπαθεστάτη φύσει. I have no words of gratitude worthy of the good things that you, my creator, have bestowed upon me, apart from creating me. Nonetheless, I open the gates of my lips66 and bring forth this thanksgiving from my soul, emboldened by your most compassionate nature.

Irene then proceeds to explain how fortunate she was from the moment she came into this world. She was not born into a low-class family and thus reduced to a life of hard toil, poverty, and servitude. Her mother was of imperial stock and her father a scion of the illustrious family of the Dokeianoi. Amidst the wealth and luxury of her parent’s household, Irene had a comfortable upbringing: she speaks of golden garments and jewelry, of a host of servants attending to her needs, of instructors and 63

64

65

66

Anthologia Marciana, no. 262 (B95), published in full by Kouphopoulou 1989, 362–65. On Theodore Styppeiotes and his son’s accident, see also Chapter 3. Anthologia Marciana, no. 246 (B80), with emendations by Spingou (forthcoming). On Irene Dokeiane Komnene, see Varzos 1984, no. 61. This was a common sequence in a prayer. See, e.g., Theodore of Stoudios, Letters, 1:123.26–29 (no. 42). Cf. Psalm 50(51):17.

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teachers. When she reached the age to marry, a suitable husband was found for her, a man of noble ancestry – his name is not stated – to whom she bore a child. But Irene’s happiness did not last for too long. Her husband and child suddenly passed away. Their deaths left her utterly devastated. Instead of sweet honey, she now tasted bitterness; instead of the bright light of joy, she found herself surrounded by the darkness of grief; a glorious spring abruptly gave way to winter frosts, snows of despondency, hails of distress; and so forth – the sequence of such contrasting images continues. Irene, however, has not succumbed to despair. She has accepted the loss of her loved ones as a well-deserved retribution for her countless sins. She is, in fact, grateful to the Lord for his generous forbearance. For, having transgressed all the divine commandments, she should have been punished even more severely. She should have died not one, but multiple deaths. In the final section of the poem, Irene turns her thoughts to the afterlife. Appealing to Christ’s compassion, she begs him to have pity on her on the Day of Judgment and grant her a place in Paradise. She hopes that her suffering in this life may suffice to deliver her from further punishments in the next. The language and imagery in which the poet couches Irene’s plea for salvation are strongly reminiscent of similar petitions included in dedicatory epigrams. The same applies to the concluding lines of the ēthopoiia, which read like a typical epigrammatic coda.

200

κατωδύνου σοι ταῦτα καρδίας λόγοι Κομνηνοβλάστου λάτριδος σῆς Εἰρήνης κούφισμα μικρὸν δυσπραγημάτων βάρους καὶ λύσεως αἴτησις ἀμπλακημάτων. These are words from the deeply distressed heart of your servant Irene, an offshoot of the Komnenoi, a small relief from the burden of misfortunes and a request for the remission of sins.

Had this character study in the prayer format been more condensed, it could easily pass for a dedicatory epigram written to accompany a gift offered to Christ by the bereaved woman. Highly indicative in this regard is that, writing in the first half of the fourteenth century, Nikephoros Kallistou Xanthopoulos echoes the ēthopoiia of Irene Dokeiane Komnene in one of his epigrams. The poem in question was composed for a church dedicated to Christ Plērophorētēs, which Theodore Palaiologos, marquis of Montferrat and second son of Andronikos II and Irene-Yolanda of Montferrat, built in gratitude for a

The patron says “I”

miraculous cure.67 The epigram, spoken in the voice of the patron and addressed to Christ, opens with a familiar declaration: Theodore confesses that it is beyond his power to fittingly acknowledge the Lord’s matchless generosity. Yet, repeating almost verbatim the above-quoted lines 4–5 from Irene’s sorrowful recitation, he continues: ἐγὼ δὲ πύλας ἐξανοίγων χειλέων τὸν εὐχαριστήριον ἐκ ψυχῆς φέρω, εὐεργεσιῶν τὴν ἀπείριτον χάριν λαλῶν ἐναργῶς ἐν περιτράνῳ λόγῳ. (vv. 6–9) Opening the gates of my lips, I bring forth this thanksgiving from my soul, speaking vividly and truthfully of the boundless grace of benefactions in a lucid speech.

That Xanthopoulos should borrow a phrase from a twelfth-century ēthopoiia is symptomatic. His reuse of the phrase gestures not only to the esteem with which early Palaiologan scholars approached the precious remains of Komnenian literature, but also to a deeper generic affinity between dedicatory prayers in the first person and rhetorical speeches-incharacter. By the time the dedicatory epigram in the form of a prayer gained currency, the “I”-speech had already become a type of discourse associated with religious donation, albeit in a different context. Beginning in the eleventh century, if not earlier, it became common to introduce a monastic foundation charter with an autobiographical preface, in which the founder gives an account of his or her life and explains the motives that guided him or her in setting up or restoring a monastic house.68 Notable examples 67

68

Xanthopoulos, Poems, no. 8. The motif of doors that reverberates through the poem suggests that it may have been inscribed above the church’s entrance. The church of the Plērophorētēs is not attested in other sources, and its location cannot be inferred from the poem. It may have been built in Montferrat, the North Italian principality that Theodore inherited through his mother. Sent off to Italy at the age of fourteen, he became a Roman Catholic and a naturalized Westerner. He is known to have returned to Constantinople on two occasions, in 1316–18 and 1326–28. Could the miraculous cure and the foundation of the church have taken place in Constantinople, during one of these visits? The fact that the marquis commissioned Xanthopoulos to commemorate his thank-offering in verse seems to support the latter possibility. It is also worth noting that the highly unusual epithet Plērophorētēs – literally meaning the “One Who Fulfills” or the “One Who Gives Assurance” – appears on a fourteenthcentury icon of an indisputably Constantinopolitan provenance, on which, see Chapter 7. On Theodore Palaiologos, see PLP, no. 21465; Zakythinos 1935; Laiou 1968; Knowles 1983, 1–4. Angold 1993; Angold 1998; Hinterberger 1999, esp. 183–201; Hinterberger 2000, 142–47. See also Galatariotou 1987; R. Morris 1995, 120–42; Mullett 2004, 129–33; Mullett 2007.

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composed by or for lay founders include the prefaces to the Diataxis of Michael Attaleiates for the monastery of Christ Panoiktirmōn in Constantinople and a poorhouse at Rhaidestos on the Black Sea (1077);69 the Typikon of Gregory Pakourianos for the monastery of the Virgin Petritzonitissa at Bačkovo in Bulgaria (1083);70 the Typikon of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos for the monastery of Saint Demetrios in Constantinople (1282);71 the Typikon of Theodora Palaiologina Synadene for the convent of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis in Constantinople (c. 1300);72 and the testamentary Logos of Constantine Akropolites for the monastery of the Anastasis, also in Constantinople (c. 1320).73 Granted, these autobiographical prefaces are complex documents with important legal and institutional ramifications, but to the extent that they contain first-person narratives of individual quests for salvation, developed around the theme of religious donation, they come close to dedicatory epigrams. Although full-fledged autobiographies were hardly ever written in Byzantium, the autobiographical impulse was strong and left its imprint on a wide variety of writings, from histories and saints’ vitae to travel reports and letters of resignation.74 As evidenced, among other things, by the emergence and relative popularity of the genre of the autobiographical preface to a monastic charter, this impulse seems to have gained in momentum in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.75 Its impact, I would argue, may be identified, too, in the rise of the “I”-speech as the dominant form of dedicatory address. Despite a marked distaste for factual detail that is characteristic of the epigrammatic genre as a whole, one can often detect autobiographical elements in dedicatory epigrams. Kallikles’ epigram on the encheirion dedicated to the icon of the Hodēgētria by the sebastos John Arbantenos is a good example. In the first half of this poem, one recalls, John reflects on his past experiences making oblique reference to his rise to eminence and his crowning achievement – his marriage to the emperor’s niece. An epigram preserved in the Anthologia Marciana, to give another example, includes autobiographical details of a different kind, albeit without much specificity. As we learn from the title, this poem was composed to commemorate the dedication of a triple lamp (τρικάνδηλον) at the church tōn 69 71 73 74 75

70 Attaleiates, Diataxis, 17–25. Typikon of the Virgin Petritzonitissa, 19–23, 29–35. 72 Typikon of Saint Demetrios, 447–65. Typikon of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, 20–27. Delehaye 1933, 279–82. On autobiography in Byzantium, see the references cited in Introduction, n. 34. See especially Angold 1998. See also Kazhdan and Wharton Epstein 1985, esp. 220–30; Lauxtermann 2003, 37–38; Magdalino 2012, 29–30.

The patron says “I”

Bērou, almost certainly the monastic church of the Virgin Kosmosōteira near Bera in Thrace, founded by the sebastokratōr Isaac Komnenos in the middle of the twelfth century.76 The triple lamp was dedicated by a certain prōtonotarios, whose name went unrecorded in the poem. As Foteini Spingou has suggested, he may be identical with the secretary of the sebastokratōr Isaac by the name of Michael, whom he frequently mentions in his Typikon for the Kosmosōteira.77 The verses present the patron’s prayer addressed to an unnamed saint.

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Πολλὰς ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς μέχρι καὶ νῦν μοι, μάκαρ, πηγὰς ἀνεστόμωσας εὐπραγημάτων· παντὸς φύλαξ ἄγρυπνος εὑρέθης βίου. τὸν παῖδα πρὶν ἥρπασας ἐξ Ἅιδου πύλης, ἤγειρας ἐκ λίθων με νῦν τὸν πατέρα, ἔθραυσας ἐχθρὸν ὃς πέτραν μοι σκανδάλου ἐν ταῖς τρίβοις τέθεικεν ἢ μᾶλλον φόνου. κἂν πταισμάτων κύημα τὰ θλίβοντά με, τῶν γοῦν φθασάντων ὑπεραίρων τὴν χάριν (ὁ πρωτονοτάριος αἰτῶ καὶ πάλιν) μυροβλύτα, φρούρει με, παῖδας, ἐγγόνους, τέλος δὲ πᾶσι τῆς Ἐδὲμ κλῆρον νέμοις. From the beginning until now you, O blessed one, have opened for me many sources of prosperity; you have proven to be a watchful guardian of my entire life. Formerly, you snatched my son away from the gate of Hades; now you have raised me, the father, from the stones,78 smashing the enemy who placed a rock of scandal79 in my way, or rather, a rock of murder. Although my troubles are a progeny of my sins, surpassing your past favors – I, the prōtonotarios, beg you again – protect me, O myroblytēs, and my children and grandchildren, and in the end grant us all the inheritance of Eden.

Judging by the epithet myroblytēs – literally, “myrrh-gusher” – the holy addressee of the patron’s prayer was most likely Saint Nicholas, for this famous miracle-worker and, along with Saint Demetrios, the greatest myroblytēs in the Christian pantheon of Byzantium received special veneration at the Kosmosōteira.80 Acknowledging his indebtedness to the saint, 76

77 78 80

Anthologia Marciana, no. 279 (B112) (full text in Spingou 2012, 93). On this epigram, see Spingou 2012, 165–67. For the term τρικάνδηλον, see the relevant entry in ByzAD. On the Kosmosōteira, see Sinos 1985; BMFD, 2:782–98. Spingou 2012, 167. See Typikon of the Virgin Kosmosōteira, esp. 141–43 (chap. 107). 79 Cf. Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8. Cf. Romans 9:33; 1 Peter 2:8. Spingou 2012, 165 n. 172.

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whose guardianship he has enjoyed throughout his life, the prōtonotarios singles out two personal crises that ended thanks to the addressee’s supernatural intervention: in the past, the saint had saved the patron’s son, presumably from a life-threatening illness, while more recently he intervened on the patron’s own behalf, saving the prōtonotarios from what appears to have been an attempt on his life. This last event evidently occasioned the dedication of the triple lamp. Couched in scriptural phraseology, the reference to the saint’s rescue of the patron from danger lacks any specificity, much to the frustration of the modern reader. We are not told who wanted to see the prōtonotarios dead and why. Yet the absence of such details – which, I should add, were probably known to the original audience of the epigram – by no means detracts from the overriding concern with self-reference that runs through this text. As is many other later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams, the prayer put into the prōtonotarios’ mouth is framed in autobiographical terms.

Performed identities, crafted selves The dedicatory epigram in the form of a personal prayer is essentially a special kind of what has been termed “ego-document.”81 With its dramatization of the patron’s “I,” it provides an account of his or her self. As noted above, the “I” that speaks in the epigram is less an historical person than a dramatic persona performing on the stage of the inscribed object. Congenial to my understanding of performance and selfhood in this context is the notion of the performative self formulated by the sociologist Erving Goffman, most notably in his seminal The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman employs the metaphor of theater to describe and analyze everyday encounters. He conceives of face-to-face interactions as a series of performances in which individuals present themselves to different audiences, attempting to manage and control the impressions they make. In Goffman’s view, personal identity may be construed as a product of such performances. “A correctly staged and performed scene,” as he puts it, “leads the audience to impute a self to a performed character.”82 The self, therefore, “is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.”83 The epigrammatic staging of the patron’s “I” is, of course, 81 82

For this term, first coined by the Dutch historian Jacob Presser, see especially Schulze 1992. 83 Goffman 1959, 252. Goffman 1959, 252–53.

Performed identities, crafted selves

very different from the kind of performances explored by Goffman, but his dramaturgical framework may be brought to bear on the construction of identity in devotional artifacts and buildings inscribed with dedicatory verses. The ēthopoietic dimension of the dedicatory prayer makes this framework all the more pertinent, as rhetorical speeches-in-character are inherently theatrical in nature. One aspect of the epigrammatic performance that needs to be emphasized here is that it is addressed to two distinct audiences, one divine and the other human. In Byzantium, as in other medieval cultures, the practice of religious donation responded to both devotional and social concerns. To claim proximity to the sacred by commissioning icons, liturgical textiles, church buildings, and the like was a way to raise one’s social profile. Accordingly, objects bearing dedicatory inscriptions were instrumental in negotiating simultaneously the patron’s relationship with the divine realm – a host of heavenly protectors and intercessors – and with his or her broader community on earth. Indeed, put schematically, dedicatory epigrams may be said to construct an identity for the patron along two axes: the horizontal axis of social positioning and the vertical axis of devotion. In social terms, the patron’s identity is typically defined through title, occupation, and lineage. These markers of status serve to locate the patron in a network of social relations and hierarchies. They declare, above all, his or her membership in one or several groups, be they an aristocratic clan, a monastic community, the highest echelon of the state apparatus or the military, or the emperor’s entourage. Such emphasis on collective identities – all of which, to be sure, are marked by a greater or lesser degree of exclusivity – points to a mode of self-representation that privileges conformity over individuality. The epigram on the encheirion dedicated by the sebastos John Arbantenos is characteristic in this regard. The sole concrete autobiographical detail mentioned in the donor’s dutiful acknowledgment of the Virgin’s benefactions on his behalf concerns his marriage with the emperor’s niece. This matrimonial bond, which united him with “a noble family, a golden plane tree, with imperial connections,” confirmed his inclusion in the small privileged circle around the emperor. It is as a proud and self-conscious member of this circle that Arbantenos acquires a social profile in the epigram. While the preoccupation with the patron’s social standing is a regular feature in dedicatory epigrams, certain status indicators may be accentuated or downplayed depending on the occasion and the individual involved. Monastic patrons, for instance, are frequently presented

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without any reference to their family background. This pointed omission undoubtedly reflects the monastic ideal of the renunciation of the world and, along with it, of all worldly affiliations.84 By contrast, the stress on family ties is almost de rigueur in the presentation of lay patrons. Good birth had always been a sign of social distinction in Byzantium, but following the accession of the Komnenoi to the throne, eugeneia, or nobility, was positively identified as a virtue and, moreover, a requisite attribute of the elite – a notion that persisted until the fall of the Empire.85 No wonder, then, that references to lineage should abound in later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams. At times, the patron’s ancestry is the only overt status indicator present in the text. Consider, for example, the inscription on the Urbino textile. In the poetic prayer that frames the embroidered scene, Manuel, the kneeling supplicant, introduces himself to the archangel Michael and, of course, to anyone reading the inscription by stating his name. He does not mention his title or occupation. Instead, he explains who he is by detailing the noble parentage of his mother Eudokia, who, judging by the adjective τρισόλβιος (“thrice-blessed”) applied to her in line 6, was dead at the time. Eudokia, he proudly states, was the daughter of a kaisar and a princess born in the purple. Given the date assigned to the embroidery, Manuel’s grandmother was surely a Palaiologina, but we are not told from which family his grandfather descended. Also missing from this brief genealogical exposition is a reference to Manuel’s father. The absence of this figure is curious and suggests that the man who sired Manuel was probably of a less-thanexalted extraction and, therefore, undeserving of notice.86 A telling, if extreme, testament to the later Byzantine obsession with eugeneia can be found in a set of epigrams composed by Maximos Planoudes for the church of Saint Andrew en tē Krisei in Constantinople, which Theodora Raoulaina, a niece of the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, restored sometime between 1282 and 1289.87 One of Planoudes’ poems, presumably 84

85

86

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However, based on the evidence of the Anthologia Marciana, Spingou 2012, 202–203, has noted that dedicatory epigrams written for what appears to have been entrance gifts to monasteries usually state the surname of the newly tonsured monk or nun. On eugeneia and the importance of lineage in Byzantium, see Laiou 1973; Magdalino 1984; Cheynet 2000; Angelov 2007, 105–9, 226–34; Frankopan 2007; Grünbart 2015, esp. 28–32. For the problematic argument that Manuel was an illegitimate son of John V Palaiologos, see above n. 2. The epigrams are published in Lampros 1916, 415–18 (nos. 1–3). The second and third epigrams in the series are two versions of the same composition. On Theodora Raoulaina, see PLP, no. 10943; Riehle 2014, with further bibliography. On the Church of Saint Andrew en tē Krisei, see Kidonopoulos 1994, 9–10; Marinis 2014, 119–22 (no. I).

Performed identities, crafted selves

intended to accompany a donor portrait of Theodora, opens with a programmatic statement, a kind of definition of what an epigram is supposed to do. Spoken in the voice of the patroness, but addressed to a visitor to her church rather than to the church’s patron saint, the verses state:88 Ἐπιγραφαὶ δηλοῦσι τὰς τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ τῶν προσώπων ἐν γραφαῖς παραστάσεις. ἐπιγραφῇ δίδωμι κἀγὼ μανθάνειν τίς καὶ τίνων πέφυκα καὶ τίνος τύχης. (vv. 1–4) Inscriptions explain the things and persons depicted in images; and I make known by means of inscription who I am, from whom I descend, and what my fortune89 is.

What follows is a remarkably detailed account of Theodora’s genealogy, laced with titles and strings of family names, which deserves to be quoted in full. 5

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25 88 89

ἡ κλῆσις οὖν μοι τυγχάνει Θεοδώρα Καντακουζηνὴ καὶ Παλαιολογῖνα Κομνηνὴ Ῥαούλαινα· πρὸς δὲ τοῖς ἔφυν Καντακουζηνοῦ θυγάτηρ Ἰωάννου Κομνηνοφυοῦς ἀγγελωνυμουμένου, ὃς Ἰωαννίκιος ἐκ μονοτρόπων στολῆς ἐκλήθη, πάντα συμμεθαρμόσας. ἦν δ’ οὗτος αὐτὸς υἱιδοῦς Ἰωάννου σεβαστοκράτορός τε φυλῆς τ’ Ἀγγέλων. πορφυρογεννήτου δὲ παῖς Θεοδώρας ἦν οὗτος αὖθις, ἡ δὲ παῖς Ἀλεξίου τοῦ καὶ μεγάλου Κομνηνοῦ βασιλέως. μήτηρ δέ μοι καύχημα πασῶν μητέρων ἦν ἡ Κομνηνὴ καὶ Παλαιολογῖνα εἰρηνική τις Εἰρήνη φερωνύμως. ὅμαιμος οὖσα Μιχαὴλ βασιλέως Παλαιολόγου τοῦ Κομνηνοῦ γνησία, ἣν Εὐλογίαν ἐκ στολῆς μονοτρόπων μετωνόμασαν, οὐδὲ τοῦτ’ ἀπεικότως. ἦν δ’ ἄρ’ ἐκείνη διάσημος ἐγγόνη Παλαιολόγου δεσπότου τ’ Ἀλεξίου

Lampros 1916, 416–17 (no. 2). The word τύχη in this particular context carries the additional meaning of “marriage”: cf. the word τυχερό in Modern Greek.

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καὶ βασιλίσσης Εἰρήνης τῆς τ’ Ἀγγέλου, θυγατρὸς Ἀλεξίου τοῦ βασιλέως. καὶ σύζυγός μοι Κομνηνὸς Ἰωάννης Ῥαοὺλ ὁ Δούκας Ἄγγελος Πετραλίφης, πρωτοβεστιάριος ἐκ τῆς ἀξίας, ἐκεῖθεν ἕλκων πατρόθεν καὶ μητρόθεν τὸ τοῦ γένους ῥίζωμα, σειρὰν χρυσέαν, ὅθεν κατῆγον καὶ γονεῖς ἐμοὶ γένος. ἀδελφιδοῦς δ’ ἦν οὗτος υἱὸς τοῦ Δούκα ἄνακτος Ἰωάννου τοῦ καὶ Βατάτζη. My name is Theodora Kantakouzene Palaiologina Komnene Raoulaina. As for my ancestry, I am a daughter of John Kantakouzenos, of the lineage of the Komnenoi, an Angelos, who, having completely changed his way of life, took the monk’s habit and the name Ioannikios. He himself was a grandson of the sebastokratōr John of the family of the Angeloi. This man, in turn, was a son of the purple-born Theodora, daughter of the great emperor Alexios Komnenos. My mother, the pride of every mother, was a Komnene and a Palaiologina; as a peaceful person, she was appropriately named Irene [meaning ‘Peace’]. She was a legitimate sister of the emperor Michael Palaiologos Komnenos. If, when she took the veil, they named her Eulogia, neither this was without reason [i.e., the name Eulogia, meaning ‘Blessing,’ was appropriate for her because she was a blessing]. This illustrious woman was a granddaughter of the despot Alexios Palaiologos and the basilissa Irene Angelina, daughter of the emperor Alexios. My husband was John Komnenos Raoul Doukas Angelos Petraliphas, who held the dignity of prōtobestiarios. He traced his family roots, a golden chain,90 on both his father’s and his mother’s side, from where my parents, too, derived their pedigree. He was the son of a niece of the emperor John Doukas Batatzes.

Ιn this verbal exposition of who the patroness is, lineage is not simply a mark of social distinction, but a crucial aspect of one’s identity. Here, as in the inscription on the Urbino textile, “who I am” is virtually tantamount to “from whom I descend.”91 Before moving from the horizontal axis of social positioning to the vertical axis of devotion, we must briefly consider how gender inflects 90

91

For the use of this Homeric expression in reference to noble ancestry, see Angelov 2007, 108 n. 120. Theodora’s pride in her eugeneia is also reflected in two books of epigrams that she may have authored herself, one in a manuscript of Ailios Aristeides in the Vatican (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Vat. gr. 1899) and the other in a manuscript of Simplikios’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics in Moscow (State Historical Museum, Ms. 3649). See Turyn 1964, 63–65; Fonkich 1974, 134–35.

Performed identities, crafted selves

the epigrammatic construction of identity. The subject cannot receive a thorough investigation here, but one particular aspect of the interplay between gender and identity needs to be stressed. While on the whole male and female patrons follow the same patterns and strategies of selfrepresentation, certain differences between the two groups can be detected. These differences concern for the most part normative, culturally prescribed gender roles. Responding to societal expectations, lay patronesses typically present themselves as devoted wives and caring mothers in dedicatory epigrams. They tend to identify with the interests and wellbeing of their family far more strongly than their male counterparts do.92 To illustrate this point, it is instructive to compare the dedicatory prayer of John Arbantenos with the prayer spoken by his wife Anna in another epigram penned by Kallikles.93 At the time when John dedicated a veil to the icon of the Hodēgētria, the couple was childless; one recalls that in the verses that accompanied this offering the sebastos asks the Virgin to grant him – among other things – offspring. His request appears to have been heeded, for his wife eventually conceived a child. At one point during her pregnancy, Anna honored the icon of the Hodēgētria with another encheirion, a sumptuous purple-dyed cloth embellished with gold, pearls, and precious stones, which almost certainly featured a woven or embroidered replica of the icon.94 In the epigram composed by Kallikles for that occasion, Anna delivers an urgent petition to the Virgin. She begins her prayer by calling Mary’s attention to the preciousness and beauty of the encheirion. Then, imploring the Virgin to lend her a compassionate ear, she proceeds to explain what is troubling her. 10

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τὸν σύζυγόν μοι κἀμὲ σὺν τῷ συζύγῳ Ἀρβαντηνῷ, νοσοῦντι νῦν, Ἰωάννῃ φλέγουσιν, ἰδού, πυρετοῦ λάβροι φλόγες· ἀκατάφλεκτε βάτε, τὴν φλόγα σβέσον· ἐν γαστρί μοι παρέσχες ἔμβρυον φέρειν, Ἄννῃ σεβαστῇ, Κομνηνῶν ῥίζης κλάδῳ· δός μοι κατιδεῖν τὸν τόκον τελεσφόρον, διαδραμούσῃ τοῦ κύειν τὰς ἡμέρας, τὴν ἐννεαμηνοῦσαν, ἐμβρυηφόρον· ἀντ’ ἐμβρύου μοι παῖδα πάγκαλον δίδου,

See Papamastorakis 2012, 237. Kallikles, Poems, no. 26. On Anna, see Varzos 1984, no. 86. See Kallikles, Poems, no. 26, v. 5: τερπνὸν γάρ ἐστι δῶρον εἰκὼν εἰκόνος (“for an icon of an icon is a delightful gift”).

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ἡ συλλαβοῦσα τὴν ἐμὴν σωτηρίαν· βραχίονας καὶ στέρνα καὶ τοὺς δακτύλους τῷ συζύγῳ χάλκευε, ῥῶσον ἐν μάχαις, ἐξ αἱμάτων δὲ τοῦτον ἐξαιρουμένη τῷ βασιλεῖ φύλαττε πιστὸν οἰκέτην καὶ θραῦε πειρασμούς τε καὶ ζάλην βίου. ὄλβου πλατυσμόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δόξης νέμοις καὶ τὴν Ἐδὲμ σχοίνισμα καὶ θεῖον λάχος. Behold how the violent flames of fever consume my husband – and me with him – John Arbantenos, who is now ailing. O bush unconsumed by fire,95 quench the flame! You enabled me to carry an embryo in my womb, me, the sebastē Anna, a branch of the Komnenian stock. Grant that I may see the birth accomplished, when I have passed through the days of pregnancy, the nine months of carrying. In place of the embryo, grant me a most beautiful child, you who have conceived my salvation. Steel the arms, chest, and fingers of my husband, and strengthen him in battle! And having rescued him from bloody struggles, guard the emperor’s faithful servant, and shatter temptations and the turmoil of life! Grant him an abundance of prosperity, and of glory, too, and Eden as an allotment and divine share.96

By adorning the icon of the Hodēgētria with a splendid veil, Anna echoed, as it were, the pious gesture of her husband. But her motivation for draping the charismatic image was very different from his. While the sebastos John sought to express his personal gratitude to the Virgin and secure her continuous protection on his own behalf, Anna acted out of concern for her spouse and their unborn child. She approached the icon in a moment of acute anxiety, during her pregnancy, at the time when John was suffering from a raging fever. She prayed to the Virgin to rescue the ailing sebastos and, in addition, to watch over her, while pregnant, and grant her safe delivery in the end. In a society that considered barrenness a dreadful misfortune and even a sign of God’s displeasure, married women were under enormous pressure to produce offspring, and Anna, like countless Byzantine expectant mothers, appealed to the Mother of God for help.97 To dedicate a luxury veil furnished with dedicatory verses to one of the most revered cult images in twelfthcentury Constantinople – an icon that was, moreover, associated with the imperial family of the Komnenoi – was a highly visible and a highly public

95 97

96 Cf. Exodus 3:1–6. Trans. Nunn 1986, 100, substantially modified. On infertility, childbirth, and female devotion to the Virgin, see Nikolaou 2005, 29–31; Pitarakis 2005; Congourdeau 2009; Kalavrezou 2011, 88–91.

Performed identities, crafted selves

gesture.98 But whereas John basked in the limelight of piety surrounding the Hodēgētria alone, Anna partook of its glow from within the fold of her marriage. Entering the public stage of the cult of the great Marian icon, she performed the normative, socially commendable role of a faithful wife concerned for the physical and spiritual well-being of her husband, his worldly success, and the continuation of his family line. To look for less conventional, more diverse and imaginative, and at times quite idiosyncratic forms of self-representation, one needs to turn to the vertical axis of devotion. It is in the realm of personal piety that the patron’s “I” truly emerges as the bearer of a distinct self – a devotional self. The performative forging of this self is governed by two operational principles: relationality and resemblance. At the most fundamental level, dedicatory epigrams in the form of a personal prayer posit an intersubjective bond. They seek to establish, affirm, or maintain an intimate yet hierarchical rapport between the patron and the dedicatee. Hence the devotional identity that the patron assumes through the medium of the inscribed object is profoundly relational. If the self, in Goffman’s terms, is a “dramatic effect,” the product of a performance, then the patron’s devotional self emerges from his or her performance of an intense and deeply personal attachment to a sacred Other. The “I” in this context is constituted by its association with and essential dependence upon the supremely exalted “you.”99 John Arbantenos’ rise to eminence and his inclusion among the imperial sebastoi may have defined his persona in social terms, but Kallikles’ verses portray him primarily as a “faithful servant” of the Virgin, whose unfailing protection he has enjoyed his entire life.100 It is this special, privileged relationship with the Mother of God that invests Arbantenos with an alternative devotional identity. The purpose of a dedicatory prayer and the object it accompanies is ultimately to create such an identity for the patron by placing him or her in a direct relationship with the dedicatee.

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The Hodēgētria famously took part in the memorial services for the emperor John II Komnenos, his wife Irene-Piroska, and their son Alexios at the Pantokratōr monastery: Typikon of Christ Pantokratōr, 81.883–83.900. See also Pentcheva 2006a, 165–87. It should be noted that John II granted Arbantenos the right to be buried at the Pantokratōr in return for the latter’s donation of some landed property to this monastic house, a gift that proved to be highly profitable: Typikon of Christ Pantokratōr, 45.270–47.288. For the notion of the relational self in prayer, albeit in a different context, see Menn 2005. For a theological perspective on the self as emerging through relationship, see Zizioulas 1985; Zizioulas 2006. Angelidi and Papamastorakis 2000, 379, have suggested that Arbantenos may have been a member of a special confraternity dedicated to the service of the Hodēgētria. There is no direct evidence, however, to support this hypothesis.

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(a)

(b)

Figure 2.11a–b Seal of Basil, metropolitan of Thessalonike, middle of the twelfth century, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC (photo: Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, DC)

Regarding the principle of relationality, an instructive parallel to dedicatory epigrams is provided by seals – the paradigmatic markers of personal identity in Byzantium. A seal commonly identifies its owner not only by spelling out his or her name, titles, and – increasingly from the late eleventh century onward – lineage, but also by revealing the owner’s spiritual allegiances. The seal of Basil, a mid-twelfth-century metropolitan of Thessalonike, in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection is a typical example (Figure 2.11a–b).101 The obverse of the seal shows an image of Saint Basil the Great, while the reverse bears an inscription, a dodecasyllable monostich in the form of an invocation addressed to the saint: Ὁμώνυμόν σοι Θετταλῶν θύτην σκέπε (“Protect your namesake, the metropolitan [literally, ‘sacrificer’] of the Thessalians”). Clearly, the seal identifies the metropolitan first and foremost as a devotee of his saintly namesake and protector. That Basil’s choice of Saint Basil was highly personal is indicated by the fact that most of his predecessors and successors on the metropolitan throne of Thessalonike placed an image of the great martyr Demetrios, the city’s patron saint, on their seals.102 The emphasis on the owner’s piety is characteristic of the Byzantine sphragistic practice.103 Much like 101

102 103

Nesbitt and Oikonomides 1991–2009, 1: 78 (no. 18.80). See also Feind 2012–13, 1: 438 (no. 1128). On the metropolitan Basil, see Pitsakes 2006. See especially Cotsonis 2003, 15–16. Oikonomidès 1985, esp. 10–15, 19; Hunger 1992, 123–28; Cheynet and Morrisson 1995; Oikonomides 1995b, 162–68; Cotsonis 2005; Cotsonis 2008; Cotsonis 2009; Wassiliou-Seibt 2011, esp. 35–45, 57–59.

Performed identities, crafted selves

dedicatory epigrams featuring the patron’s prayer, personal seals with religious themes – and they, I should add, constitute the majority in the post-iconoclastic era – posit a relational model of selfhood. In both of these media of self-representation available to elite Byzantines, the self emerges through submission to a sacred Other. Aside from being relational, the patron’s devotional self is fashioned in accordance with the principle of resemblance. Modern thinking typically conceives of personal identity in terms of singularity, autonomy, and freedom. For us, the self is something unique, something that differentiates us from others. In the Christian Middle Ages, however, any consideration of the questions of identity and selfhood inevitably returned to Genesis 1:26–27 and the notion of man being created in the image of God. Within the framework of biblical anthropology, one’s true inner self was ultimately this likeness of the Divine Creator and thus something shared by all humans.104 Even beyond this fundamental theological premise, resemblance was a key mechanism for the formation of medieval identities.105 To borrow a felicitous phrase from Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, “to be was to be alike.”106 The principle of resemblance is clearly at work in dedicatory epigrams spoken in the voice of the patron. In these rhetorical prayers, subjectivity is produced by mapping historical individuals onto exemplary types and models of behavior. Assuming the “I” of the epigram, the patron comes to inhabit and re-enact a set of paradigmatic roles, often simultaneously. The most basic of these roles is that of the servant of a holy figure – the standard terms used in this context are δοῦλος, λάτρις, and οἰκέτης, all meaning “servant.”107 What a dedicatory epigram declares is first and

104

105

106 107

The following remark by Benton 1982, 285, sums up eloquently this basic difference between the modern and the medieval notions of selfhood: “[T]he conceptualization of the nature of self and of what we call ‘personality’ differed from our own. To state the matter in a metaphor of direction, in the Middle Ages the journey inward was a journey toward self for the sake of God; today it is commonly for the sake of self alone. In the modern secular world, when a person sets out to ‘find himself,’ his quest is usually conceived of as a stripping away of the layers of conformity and contrived artifice and the psychological defenses which encrust, hide, and even smother the ‘true self.’ It is as if each wondrously unique infant were wrapped by its social environment in thick swaddling clothes which must be broken or cut away in order for the individual ‘personality’ to appear most fully. In medieval thought the persona was not inner but outer, and looking behind the individualized mask eventually brought one closer to the uniqueness, not of self, but of God.” See especially Bedos-Rezak 2011, passim. On resemblance and self-representation in the Byzantine rhetorical tradition, see Papaioannou 2013, esp. 135–36. On resemblance in the context of the liturgical formation of a sense of self, see Krueger 2014, passim. Bedos-Rezak 2011, 6, 227. For these terms, see Spingou 2012, 212. See also below n. 113.

107

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The patron’s “I”

foremost the patron’s personal submission to the dedicatee. To make a dedication to a sacred personage is to place oneself in that personage’s service. The epigram typically mediates the patron’s appeal to the holy figure by presenting him or her in the role of a humble sinner seeking spiritual protection and assistance. This kind of self-abasement is indispensable in epigrams in the form of a personal prayer. If the patron’s says “I,” it is primarily to confess his or her sins. In the course of this study we shall examine in some detail these and other paradigmatic roles performed by the patron. We shall dissect in particular the roles of the adorner, the grateful and generous giver, and the affectionate lover as part of a broader inquiry into the themes of adornment, gift-giving, and desire. At times, the epigrammatic staging of the patron’s encounter with the holy figure involves the re-enactment of a narrative, an episode usually taken from the Scriptures. In such instances, the patron’s devotional identity is constructed on the basis of typology and emerges through mimetic identification with an exemplar from the biblical past. The Urbino textile provides an excellent example of this strategy. In the prayer running around the frame, Manuel, the portrayed devotee, declares that he falls on his knees at the feet of Saint Michael just as Joshua, the son of Nun, once did. His encounter with the archangel is envisioned, in other words, as a kind of devotional restaging of the Old Testament episode described in Joshua 5:13–15. It bears emphasizing that this episode is evoked not only in the verses spoken by Manuel, but also in the scene of supplication embroidered on the cloth (Plate 3, Figure 2.1). At first glance, this scene may appear utterly familiar: a kneeling supplicant at the feet of a holy figure – this is the sort of iconography that one often sees in Byzantine religious imagery. One of the earliest examples is an icon at Sinai, tentatively dated to the eighth or ninth centuries, in which a certain layman by the name of Nicholas is portrayed crouching at the feet of Saint Irene (Figure 2.12).108 In contrast to this and other similar images, however, in the Urbino textile the supplicant and the holy figure are not merely juxtaposed, brought into physical proximity, but actually interact with each other. Unlike Saint Irene, whose strictly frontal and impassive stance leaves the impression that she is hardly aware of the diminutive figure to her right, Saint Michael acknowledges Manuel’s presence by turning toward him. Besides, Manuel is not

108

Weitzmann 1976, no. B.39.

Performed identities, crafted selves

Figure 2.12 Icon of Saint Irene with the supplicant Nicholas, eighth or ninth century, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)

109

110

The patron’s “I”

Figure 2.13 Joshua before the archangel and the entombment of Joshua, so-called Mēnologion of Basil II, Ms. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 3, c. 1000, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

dwarfed by the object of his veneration, but assumes a size and pictorial presence equivalent to that of the archangel. We shall explore the subject of devotional portraits embedded in sacred images at length in Chapter 7. For now, it suffices to say that the degree of intimacy between the supplicant and the holy figure displayed in the Urbino textile is rather unusual. What accounts for the directness of Manuel’s interaction with the archangel is the fact that he is impersonating Joshua. For, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the entire composition of the textile, not just Manuel’s prostration, is modeled after the scene of the archangel’s appearance to Joshua near Jericho.109 A miniature in the so-called Mēnologion of Basil II of c. 1000 in the Vatican (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 3) provides a good parallel (Figure 2.13). Here the encounter at the walls of Jericho is represented on the left, with Joshua’s figure depicted twice to convey two consecutive moments in the narrative: his vision of the angelic warrior and his prostration at the latter’s feet. The similarity between this composition and the one seen in 109

For the iconography and examples of the scene, see Koukiares 1989, 75, 126–31; Gabelić 1991, 73–82. The embroidery’s dependence on the iconography of Joshua’s encounter with the archangel near Jericho has already been noted by Serra 1919, 156.

Performed identities, crafted selves

the textile is evident. Note that, in both instances, the archangel is rendered in a three-quarter stance, with his right hand holding a sword and his left placed on a scabbard.110 In Byzantium, Joshua was a common paradigm of rulership and military prowess,111 but we rarely find him invoked as an exemplar of personal piety.112 This makes the Urbino textile all the more remarkable, for here Joshua provides a scriptural model for articulating the patron’s relationship with his heavenly protector and guardian. In a sense, it is this mimetic identification with the Israelite leader that enables Manuel to claim intimacy with Saint Michael. Not only is the archangel brought into dialogue with his oiketēs, but, lending a benevolent ear to Manuel’s petition, he shields him from harm with his awesome outstretched wings and his raised sword.113 The same strategy of aligning the patron with models and paradigmatic narratives from the Scriptures is adopted to great effect in the dedicatory verses embroidered on a pair of liturgical cloths – a diskokalymma, or paten veil, and a potērokalymma, or chalice veil – now kept in the cathedral treasury at Halberstadt (Figures 2.14 and 2.15).114 Before they reached the West as part of the booty of the Fourth Crusade, these precious textiles had been used for the celebration of the Eucharist most likely in a Constantinopolitan church, perpetuating the name of their commissioner, a sebastos Alexios Palaiologos, whom Franz Dölger has identified with the son of the megas hetaireiarchēs George Palaiologos and the future son-in-law of the emperor Alexios III Angelos.115 Mirroring their liturgical function, both 110

111 112 113

114

115

While undoubtedly based on the scene of the angelic apparition at Jericho, it is not inconceivable that the Urbino textile also echoes a now–lost bronze statuary composition showing Michael VIII Palaiologos in proskynēsis, with a model of the city of Constantinople in his hands, at the feet of the archangel Michael. This celebrated sculpture group stood on a column erected by the emperor in front of the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. See Talbot 1993, 258–60; Durand 2007; Hilsdale 2014, 109–51. Djurić 1983; Jolivet-Lévy 1987, 465–66; Magdalino and Nelson 2010b, 23. Cf. Peers 1997, 178–82. The term oiketēs occurs in the second line of the archangel’s response. While the use of this term is by no means unusual in dedicatory epigrams – as noted above, this is one of the standard words for “servant” – the fact that it is encountered in Joshua 5:14 makes its use in the verses embroidered on the Urbino textile particularly apposite. For the term oiketēs, see Rotman 2004, 123–38, 230–31. Dölger 1935; Flemming, Lehmann, and Schubert 1974, 236–37; Bednarz et al. 2001, 54–56; Meller, Mundt, and Schmuhl 2008, 282–84 (no. 81) (B. Pregla, C. Sode, and A. Stauffer); BEIÜ II, nos. Te4 and Te5. Dölger 1935, 1358–59. On this figure, see Cheynet and Vannier 1986, 170–72 (no. 29). For other possible candidates, see BEIÜ II, 377. The two kalymmata entered the cathedral treasury along with a contingent of relics and sacred vessels donated by Konrad von Krosigk, bishop of

111

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The patron’s “I”

Figure 2.14 Embroidered paten veil with the Communion of the Apostles, twelfth century, cathedral treasury, Halberstadt (photo: Juraj Lipták / Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt)

kalymmata bear an image of Christ administering communion to his disciples, with six of them receiving bread on the paten veil and the other

Halberstadt and one of the illustrious participants in the crusade. The cloths are probably referred to as “duo corporalia cum receptaculis eorundem” in the bishop’s act of donation of 1208: Schmidt 1883–89, 1: 401 (no. 449). See Meller, Mundt, and Schmuhl 2008, 284 (no. 81) (B. Pregla, C. Sode, and A. Stauffer). Divorced from their original liturgical function, the cloths were subsequently put to secondary use as centerpieces of two processional banners.

Performed identities, crafted selves

Figure 2.15 Embroidered chalice veil with the Communion of the Apostles, twelfth century, cathedral treasury, Halberstadt (photo: Juraj Lipták / Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt)

six partaking of wine on the chalice veil. The considerable damage suffered by the cloths is painfully obvious. The delicate purple silk embroidered with silver-gilt thread is all but reduced to shreds, while strings of tiny seed pearls outlining Christ’s halo on the paten veil indicate that at least their counterparts on the chalice veil are now missing. Surrounding the two sacramental scenes on the cloths and partly encroaching upon them are two densely lettered dedicatory inscriptions,

113

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The patron’s “I”

each consisting of ten dodecasyllable lines.116 The verses embroidered on the paten veil build upon the themes of vision and covering. Just like the Israelites, who were unable to bear the shining countenance of Moses, when he descended from Mount Sinai (Exodus 34:29–35), the sebastos Alexios fears to gaze directly upon the body of the Lord – here in the form of the consecrated bread – hastening instead to veil it with the dedicated diskokalymma.

5

10

Εἰ Μωσέως πρόσωπον ἰδεῖν ἀμέσως ἴσχυσεν οὐδεὶς Ἰσραηλίτης τότε ὅταν κατῆλθεν ἐξ ὄρους θεοπτίας, πῶς ἀπαρακάλυπτον αὐτὸς ἀνίδ[ω] τὸ [...]σ[...]μ[......] σῶμα, πῶς ἐντρανίσω; δέδοικα τούτῳ λοιπ εἰσφέρω μέσον, ῷ [ὑ]πὲρ [π]ά[ντων] τα[γ]μάτω[ν οὐρανίων, σεβαστὸς] Ἀλέξιος εὐσ[ε]βὴς λ[άτρη]ς Παλαιολόγος· ἀλά μοι νέμοις, Λόγε, ἰδεῖ τὸ σὸν πρόσωπον ἐν κρίσει τότε. If no Israelite might look directly upon the countenance of Moses, when he came down from the mountain of divine contemplation, how shall I look upon the [. . .] body unveiled, how to gaze at it? Thus, with fear I offer a covering [literally, ‘intermediary’] to it, to the that is superior to all heavenly hosts, I, sebastos Alexios Palaiologos, pious servant. And you, Logos, grant that I may look upon your countenance on the Day of Judgment.

In the inscription on the chalice veil, the key sense is that of touch rather than sight, while the patron’s scriptural counterpart is not a blinded Israelite but the sinful woman from Luke’s account of the feast in the house of Simon the Pharisee, who bathed Christ’s feet in her tears, wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with sweet oil (Luke 7:36–50).

5 116

Πόρνη προσῆξε δάκρυά σοι καὶ μύρον· θριξὶ δὲ τοὺς οὺς ἀπομάξασα [π]όδας εὐθὺς ἔλαβε λύτρον ἁμαρτημάτων· ἐγὼ δέ τι τοιοῦτον οὐκ ἔ[χω]ν [ὅ]λως ἀντὶ δακρύων μαρ[γ]άρου[ς] σοι προσφέρω·

The inscriptions run in the usual order, that is, top–right–left–bottom (see Chapter 1, n. 77), but in either case the concluding lines are embroidered within the picture field. The verses are unfortunately riddled with lacunae. The readings given below follow the edition in BEIÜ II, nos. Te4 and Te5.

Performed identities, crafted selves

10

ἀντὶ δὲ μύ[ρου] χ[ρ]υσὸν εἰσάγω, Λόγε, [...]ε [...] τοῦ [......................................] μυστηρίων σῶν εὐλαβῶς θίγειν θέλων σεβαστὸς Ἀλέξιος αἰτῶν τὴν λύσιν Παλαιολόγος ἀμετρήτων πταισμάτων. A harlot brought tears and ointment to you; having dried your feet with her hair, she received at once the remission of her sins. But since I have nothing of this kind, instead of tears I offer you pearls, instead of ointment I present gold, O Logos, [. . .] of [. . .], for I wish to reverently touch your mysteries. I, sebastos Alexios Palaiologos, ask for the remission of my countless sins.

Casting himself in an image of the Gospel sinner, the donor confesses his inability to match her humble yet praiseworthy gifts. The materials of the potērokalymma’s manufacture are mere substitutes for or symbols of the harlot’s offerings: the pearls stand for her tears,117 the gold embroidery for her ointment, and, presumably – the lacuna in line 7 allows us only to speculate – the silk fabric of the veil for her hair with which she wiped the feet of the Lord.118 It is only on account of their symbolic status that Christ may favorably receive these ostensibly precious substances as an acceptable donation. This emphasis on materiality complements the key role assigned to the sense of touch in the epigram. By presenting a chalice veil to Christ, the donor hopes to bodily engage with the “mysteries” of the Logos, i.e., the sacrament of the Eucharist. However, unlike the sinful woman who wetted, wiped, kissed, and anointed the Lord’s feet, the sebastos Alexios can achieve such a haptic experience only by proxy, though the medium of his dedication.119

117

118

119

The association of pearls with tears is a topos. For epigrammatic poetry, see, e.g., Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 37 (Ἕτεροι εἰς ἅγιον ἐγχείριον γεγονὸς παρὰ τῆς αὐτῆς σεβαστοκρατορίσσης ἐν τῇ ὑπεραγίᾳ Θεοτόκῳ τῆς Πηγῆς, v. 13). Pearls bring tears in Byzantine manuals of dream interpretation. See Mavroudi 2002, 95 n. 14, 437; Oberhelman 2008, 125, 150, 159, 179. Closer to the domain of art, the link is also attested in legends about miracleworking images. According to an anonymous Russian pilgrim who visited Constantinople in the late fourteenth century, an icon of the Mother of God venerated at Hagia Sophia had wept during the Latin occupation of the city, and her tears could still be seen affixed to the image “like pearls.” See Majeska 1984, 132–33, 212–13, 215–16. Dölger 1935, 1356, reconstructs the lacuna as follows: ἀντὶ τριχῶν δὲ τοῦτό σοι φέρω μάκτρον (“instead of hair I bring this cloth to you”). Cf. μέσον (“intermediary”) in line 6 of the inscription on the paten veil. On the gift as an extension of the donor, see Chapter 7.

115

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The devotional self-dramatization of the sebastos Alexios in the epigram on the chalice veil is particularly notable, since it unfolds around a pointed gender reversal: the male patron approaches Christ by imitating a female character. This kind of role-playing with a gender twist is not frequently encountered in Byzantine epigrammatic poetry and, more broadly, Byzantine writing.120 One parallel to our epigram that comes to mind in found in the History of George Akropolites, specifically, in his account of the last days of Theodore II Laskaris. Incurably ill, the emperor took monastic vows shortly before his death in August 1258. To unburden his sins, he summoned Gregory, metropolitan of Mitylene, and, throwing himself at this prelate’s feet “in imitation of the harlot of the Gospels” (τὴν . . . εὐαγγελικὴν μιμησάμενος πόρνην), he shed veritable streams of tears so profusely that, as eyewitnesses consulted by the historian claimed, the surrounding ground turned into mud.121 In Akropolites’ account, however, the portrayal of Theodore II’s repentance and confession through a comparison with the sinful woman indirectly draws attention to the emperor’s weakness and perhaps also conceals an allusion to his promiscuity.122 By contrast, the comparison with the same biblical figure in the epigram on the Halberstadt chalice veil serves to highlight the patron’s piety. Just as the harlot’s faith saved her (Luke 7:50) and her many sins were forgiven, “for she loved much” (Luke 7:47), so does the sebastos Alexios hope that his own faith and loving heart might find favor in heaven. Aside from emphasizing and enhancing these attributes, the element of gender-bending in the epigram also produces an added sense of humility. By associating himself with femininity – which in predominantly androcentric Byzantium was, of course, marked inferior – the male patron amplifies the depth of his selfabasement before the Lord. To sum up, the devotional self produced by the epigrammatic performance of identity shows two characteristics. First, this self is not monadic, autonomous, or, to borrow Charles Taylor’s term, “buffered,”123 but relational. It emerges in the act of submission to a morally and ontologically superior subject. To be oneself, one must enter into a relationship with another; one must forge a bond that is constitutive of one’s own existence. 120

121 123

On Xanthopoulos, Poems, no. 9, a dedicatory epigram that presents a comparable gender reversal, see Chapter 7. For a masterful discussion of Michael Psellos’ strategy of rhetorical self-representation through the adoption of a female voice, see Papaioannou 2013, 192–231. On the Gospel harlot as a paradigmatic penitent sinner in Byzantine liturgical poetry, a character with whom both women and men could identify, see Krueger 2014, esp. 152–58. 122 Akropolites, History 74.12–20. See Macrides 2007, 336–37. Taylor 2007, 27 et passim.

Performed identities, crafted selves

Second, this self is not a singular inimitable sum of personal experiences and attitudes, the luminous core of individuality in the modern sense, but a replicable likeness. To be oneself is to be like another, that is, to align oneself with model subjects, to adopt one or several paradigmatic personae. Modern – or better put, post-Enlightenment – thinking about subjectivity has tended to locate the “discovery” of the self in the secular rather than the sacred realm. In pre-modern Christian cultures, however, religious devotion was a critical setting for both the expression and formation of identity. Asceticism, prayers and meditation, acts of confession and penitence, and the liturgical rite itself variously provided what Michel Foucault has called “technologies of the self,”124 that is, procedures and instruments by which individuals might define, produce, and enact identity. Dedicatory epigrams accompanying religious artifacts and buildings also provided a forum for the fashioning of the self, although this process was not a matter of praxis, of effecting bodies and souls, thoughts and conduct, but rather a matter of representation, of discursively and artistically shaping a self for display. The devotional selves that inscribed objects such as the Urbino textile or the Halberstadt kalymmata put on display are no less crafted than the objects themselves. They are products of carefully orchestrated performances of identity. As much as these performances were structured and governed by the conventions of the epigrammatic genre, rhetorical and visual topoi, and the culturally sanctioned norms of religious decorum, they also opened up a space for individual choices, for imagination and playfulness, and even for what we would now call originality.

124

Foucault 1988.

117

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Kosmos

Sometime between 1216/17 and c. 1236, the years of his tenure as archbishop of Ohrid, the clergyman and canonist Demetrios Chomatenos had an icon of Christ sheathed with silver, commemorating his pious gesture in a playful quatrain written upon it.1 Κόσμος, κοσμῆτορ τοῦ κόσμου, σῆς εἰκόνος ἐκ Δημητρίου ποιμενάρχου Βουλγάρων· σὺ δὲ βράβευσον τῷ κατ’ εἰκόνα κόσμον δύσμορφον αἶσχος τῶν παθῶν μου καθάρας. The adornment of your image, O Adorner of the world, is of Demetrios, the archshepherd of the Bulgars. May you adorn me, who am created in your image,2 by cleansing the misshapen ugliness of my passions.

The archbishop’s gift has been lost. A photograph from 1916 records one of its subsequent incarnations (Figure 3.1).3 The original silver revetment is here seen reused framing a panel with a distinctly non-Byzantine Ecce Homo, which at that time hung on the templon screen of the church of the Virgin Peribleptos at Ohrid.4 Ornamented with lozenge patterning, the revetment features smaller images of holy figures who undoubtedly acted as the archbishop’s saintly intercessors, displayed in a hierarchical arrangement that had become customary by the first half of the thirteenth century: the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist are at the top, turned in prayer 1

2 4

118

Filov 1922; Kissas 1987; BEIÜ II, no. Ik16. On Chomatenos, see the editor’s introduction in Chomatenos, Various Works, 3*–45*. 3 Cf. Genesis 1:26–27. The photograph is published as a preface to Filov 1922. Filov 1922, 2. When the Russian archimandrite Antonin visited Ohrid in 1865, the silver revetment was used as a frame of another icon of Christ, described as seated on a throne and blessing, in the iconographic format of the Great Archpriest. The icon was in the same church, displayed on the sixteenth-century wooden throne of the archbishop Prochoros. See Filov 1922, 7. Whether this was the original icon of the archbishop Chomatenos, as suggested by Kissas 1987, 171–72, cannot be ascertained because this panel has not been preserved. The iconography, however, seems to militate against Kissas’ suggestion, since depictions of Christ as the Great Archpriest do not appear before the early Palaiologan period. See Papamastorakis 1993–94. It should be added that the Peribleptos church was certainly not the original home of Chomatenos’ gift, as it was founded as the katholikon of a monastery shortly before 1294/95. See Chapter 1, n. 27.

Kosmos

Figure 3.1 Icon of Christ with the silver frame dedicated by the archbishop Demetrios Chomatenos, 1216/17–c. 1236, formerly in the church of the Virgin Peribleptos, Ohrid (photo: after Filov 1922)

toward a Hetoimasia; Saint Demetrios, Chomatenos’ namesake, and Saint George, depicted as standing figures in military garb, are at the sides; and two doctor saints Cosmas and Damian – perhaps initially accompanied by Saint Panteleimon in the by-then lost central medallion between

119

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Kosmos

them – are at the bottom. Chomatenos’ dedicatory epigram occupies the vertical narrow strips that flanked the original image of Christ. The epigram constructs a relational devotional identity for the patron by initiating a startling exchange. The transaction that the verses seek to orchestrate between the archbishop and Christ takes the form of mutual beautifying and adorning. The conceit is articulated through a pun on the term kosmos, compressed in a polyptoton in the opening line and then resumed in line 3. The epigram makes full use of the term’s semantic multivalence by mobilizing most of its key meanings, from “adornment” and “decoration” to “order,” “beauty,” and “world-order” or “universe.”5 The dense punning is, moreover, enhanced by bringing into play another semantically pregnant term – eikōn, or image.6 Chomatenos presents the silver frame as an adornment, kosmos, to the eikōn of Christ – Christ who is invoked in his capacity of the kosmētōr of kosmos, or the created world, that is, the One who adorns the world and arranges it in harmonious order, or kosmos. Being himself an eikōn of God, according to Genesis 1:26–27, the epigram’s point of reference, Chomatenos asks to be adorned in return. He implores Christ to wipe clean his moral deformity and restore the beauty, or kosmos, of God’s image in him, the primordial beauty once bestowed upon mankind through Adam.7 Thus, two kinds of adornment, one material and the other spiritual, embellishing two kinds of images, one painted by a mortal artist and the other impressed upon human nature by the Divine Creator,8 are set side by side and, to pick up on the epigram’s wordplay, traded in a kind of kosmetic exchange.9 The analogy, however, does not end here. As the world’s kosmētōr, Christ offers an ultimate paradigm for the archbishop’s act of artistic patronage. The dedication of the precious revetment embellished with figural imagery and further enhanced by the addition of a metrical 5

6 7

8

9

For the history and meaning of the word kosmos, see Diller 1956; Kerschensteiner 1962; Finkelberg 1998. See also Chantraine 2009, s.v. κόσμος. On which, see especially Ladner 1953. As noted by Kissas 1987, 169, the reference to the Genesis account is probably echoed in the choice of the word αἶσχος in line 4, which I have translated as “ugliness,” but which can also mean “shame.” In this case, it would refer to the shame felt by Adam and Eve after they sinned and consequently tarnished God’s image in them. Cf. Genesis 2:25 and 3:7ff. For the analogy between the creation of man in God’s image and the manufacturing of a painting, see, e.g., Origen, In Genesim homilia XIII, PG 12, col. 234D; Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis, PG 44, col. 137A. Puns on the multiple meanings of kosmos are common in Byzantine literature. See, e.g., John Geometres’ poem On Spring: van Opstall 2008a, 514 (no. 300, v. 5). For epigrammatic poetry, see, e.g., the dedicatory verses of the princess Irene Palaiologina on the famous staurothēkē donated by the cardinal Bessarion to the Scuola della Carità in Venice: BEIÜ II, no. Me79.

Kosmos

inscription is implicitly aligned with and, by extension, justified by God’s originary gesture of adorning the world. The notion that adornment was a separate exploit, subsequent to the creative fiat, was current in Byzantium. In his commentary on the Hexaēmeron, Chomatenos’ slightly older contemporary Neophytos the Recluse maintains that, having created the earth, God left it without form and void, covered by the waters shrouded in darkness, in order that “he may adorn (κατακοσμήσειε) its bareness (ἀκοσμία) as a kosmētōr.”10 The narrative of the creation in Constantine Manasses’ Synopsis Chronikē of the early 1140s, a popular verse chronicle covering world history from the inception of time until 1081, reads like an ekphrasis of an artwork crafted and then embellished by the Supreme Artifex.11 At first, the created heaven was without stars and the earth, an invisible wasteland without ornament (ἀπερικόσμητος), lay in darkness.12 Then, as an artist (καλλιτέχνης) and a wise and versatile craftsman (παντοτέκτων σοφός, τεχνίτης, παντεργάτης),13 God clothed the earth in a fine robe of plants, sweet-scented flowers, luxuriant trees, and fruits, so that its beauty surpassed that of a young bride in her wedding gown.14 Turning to heaven, he decked it out with stars like a cloth set with pearls, a gold-embroidered cloak, a woven robe adorned with gleaming precious stones. Further embellished with the Sun, Moon, and planets, heaven resembled a flowery meadow full of delights.15 And so forth. God’s artistry, that manifested itself in perfecting the raw material of the creation, in a sense sanctioned for the Byzantines the notion that creation and adornment are complementary gestures, the proverbial two sides of the same coin. The notion is spelled out with remarkable clarity in the floor mosaics of the Justinianic basilica at Ras al-Hilal in Cyrenaica.16 Here two female personifications depicted as standing orantes and framed by columns and scalloped niches flank the entrance to the sanctuary at the end of the nave (Figures 3.2 and 3.3). They are labeled as Κτίσις (“Creation” or “Foundation”) and Κόσμησις (“Adornment”) and, as one scholar has observed, must represent “the personified acts of donors.”17 They stand for 10 11

12 14 16

17

Neophytos the Recluse, Commentary on the Hexaēmeron 1.61–62. Manasses, Synopsis Chronikē, vv. 27–230. The ekphrastic elements of the passage in question have been analyzed by Nilsson 2005. 13 Manasses, Synopsis Chronikē, vv. 27–32. Manasses, Synopsis Chronikē, vv. 41, 50, 63. 15 Manasses, Synopsis Chronikē, vv. 57–99. Manasses, Synopsis Chronikē, vv. 100–41. Harrison, Reynolds, and Stern 1964; Alföldi-Rosenbaum and Ward-Perkins 1980, esp. 40–41, 140–41. Harrison, Reynolds, and Stern 1964, 17. In two other Cyrenaican mosaic pavements dated to the sixth century, one in the basilica at Qasr-el-Lebia and the other in a chapel at Tokra, the personifications of Ktisis and Kosmēsis are accompanied by that of Ananeōsis, or “Renewal.” See

121

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Figure 3.2 Personification of Ktisis from the basilica at Ras al-Hilal, sixth century, Apollonia Museum, Souza/Sozousa (photo: Jane Chick)

activities associated with the construction and embellishment of a church, deeds that constituted a major expression of public munificence in a

Alföldi-Rosenbaum and Ward-Perkins 1980, 33–40, 121–33; Stucchi 1975, 427–28. For the meaning of these personifications, see also Grabar 1969; Maguire 1987, 44–55. For the concepts of ktisis, kosmēsis, and ananeōsis in relation to imperial patronage under Justinian, see Mathew 1963, 84–92.

Kosmos

Figure 3.3 Personification of Kosmēsis from the basilica at Ras al-Hilal, sixth century, Apollonia Museum, Souza/Sozousa (photo: Jane Chick)

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Christian society implicitly sanctioned by the analogy with God’s role as the ktistēs and kosmētōr of the world.18 The chronological span that separates the Cyrenaican floor mosaics from the silver revetment of the archbishop Chomatenos witnessed not only the rise of icons as privileged foci of devotional attention in Byzantium. It also saw a change in attitude toward the function and meaning of adornment. In this chapter, I wish to propose that, by the later Byzantine era, kosmos evolved from a companion to ktisis into a pivotal concept in devotional practice and aesthetics discourse. To furnish a sacred object with kosmos became a culturally significant gesture, a paradigmatic expression of piety and munificence among the powerful and wealthy. To be sure, precious metals, silks, gems, pearls, and the like were lavished by elite patrons on the adornment of icons, books, relics, liturgical objects and utensils, and church furnishings throughout the Byzantine millennium, but it was in the last centuries of the Empire that such acts acquired an unprecedented urgency and personal charge. This increasing preoccupation with adornment among elite Byzantines is richly documented in epigrammatic poetry. Taking the evidence of dedicatory epigrams as a point of departure, this chapter sets out to recover the concept of kosmos and reinstate it as a fundamental category in later Byzantine religious and artistic culture. The chapter interrogates the status, meaning, and agency of kosmos, in particular as it relates to the veneration of icons. In doing so, it broaches a subject that will concern us for the greater part of this study. Thus, in Chapter 4, we shall consider epigrams through the prism of kosmos and explore how and why verses inscribed upon artifacts and buildings came to be understood as a form of adornment in their own right. In Chapter 5, we shall revisit the act of adornment within the context of devotional gift-giving. We shall examine the role that material wealth invested and deposited in luxury dedications such as Chomatenos’ silver frame played in the spiritual exchange that brought together mortal donors and holy figures. Finally, in Chapter 7, we shall return to the practice of adorning icons. This time our focus will be upon the personal and

18

Although the two personifications refer to abstract concepts, generalized ideas rather than individual gestures, one cannot fail to wonder whether the figure of Kosmēsis may have self-referentially alluded to the embellishment of the church with the fine pavement worked in opus tessellatum that bore her image. Mosaic floors certainly fell under the rubric of kosmos as witnessed by the inscription from the early Byzantine basilica at Tegea, Arcadia, which praises the bishop Thyrsos for sponsoring the “well-arranged adornment of delicate tesserae” (λίθου λεπταλέης εὐσύνθετος κόσμος). See Feissel and Philippidis-Braat 1985, no. 137, with further bibliography.

What is kosmos?

emotional valence of this gesture. We shall investigate icon kosmos as a materialization of desire, a means of inserting oneself into the space of the sacred Other, and also as a quintessential figure of the relational self.

What is kosmos? Kosmos is a protean notion.19 A perusal of Byzantine textual sources dealing with art and architecture indicates that the term’s generic and hence expansive nature allowed for a remarkable flexibility in usage. Kosmos and its cognates could designate the most diverse forms and strategies of embellishment and amplification, virtually anything that lifted the work above the level of structural or functional necessity. Embracing a spectrum of connotations, from “order” – the term’s original meaning – to “surplus” and “excess,” kosmos was variously recognized in elegant and orderly arrangement, decorative detail, exquisite craftsmanship and technical virtuosity, costly materials and sensual splendor. In order to illustrate the term’s elasticity, let us consider the ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres composed by the fourteenth-century scholar Theodore Pediasimos. Ostensibly dealing with the glories of this venerable shrine dedicated to Saints Theodores, the ekphrasis reads like a catalogue of various types of kosmos. The Metropolis of Serres is a three-aisled basilica with a narthex and galleries above the side aisles, erected most likely in the eleventh century (Figure 3.4).20 The building, as it stands today, is the result of extensive restoration works following the fire of 1913, in which the basilica was badly damaged, including the beautiful mosaic of the Communion of the Apostles that once graced its sanctuary apse. The shrine described by Pediasimos was a larger complex, which, apart from the church proper, included an atrium and an open courtyard.21 The theme of kosmos is introduced in the very first sentence of the ekphrasis. The Metropolis, as Pediasimos is careful to point out, is only one of numerous monuments that adorn the city of Serres (πολλῶν ὄντων ἃ τὴν 19

20

21

Medieval Greek has other words that can convey the sense of adornment such as ἀγλάϊσμα, κάλλος, εὐπρέπεια, ἄνθος, ποικιλία, or στολισμός, but none of them is used as consistently as κόσμος. On the Metropolis of Serres, see Papageorgiou 1894, 247–51; Perdrizet and Chesnay 1903; Orlandos 1939–40; Strate 1985–86; and the studies collected in Penna 2013. For a detailed analysis of the archaeological data provided by Pediasimos’ account, see Orlandos 1949.

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Figure 3.4 Metropolis of Saints Theodores, Serres (photo: author)

τῶν Φερέων πόλιν κοσμεῖ).22 The church is approached through the open courtyard, in which a beautiful well has been set up, “adorned with fresh and clear water” (ὕδατι ποτίμῳ καὶ διειδῆ κοσμούμενον) sweeter than the waters of Enneakrounos and Kallirrhoe in ancient Athens.23 Leaving the courtyard behind and moving across the atrium, the author nears the main entrance to the church reached by a flight of steps, which are described in a convoluted phrase as being “adorned with the force of the first perfect number” (τῷ πρώτῳ ἐνεργείᾳ κοσμούμεναι τελείῳ ἀριθμῷ) – a roundabout way of saying that there were six of them.24 Once inside the church, the author first observes the columns of the two arcades separating the nave from the side aisles. He admires the coloration of their shafts made of the same kind of stone speckled with many different hues which all contribute to the beauty of the columns, so that the richness of their pale green color generates even greater adornment (ὁ τοῦ χλωροῦ πλεονασμὸς τὸν μείζονα

22 23 24

Pediasimos, Ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres, 133.1–4. Pediasimos, Ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres, 133.5–7. Pediasimos, Ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres, 133.7–9. (I have emended πρώτως to πρώτῳ in the quoted phrase). In Euclidean arithmetic, perfect numbers are those equal to the sum of their parts, that is, their proper divisors including 1 (Euclid, Elementa 7.23). The first such number is 6, since 6 = 1 + 2 + 3.

What is kosmos?

κόσμον προβάλλει).25 The discourse then moves to the galleries and clerestory, and further down the nave, toward the metropolitan’s throne and the cult image of the church’s saintly patrons, Theodore Stratēlatēs and Theodore Tērōn, clad in silver and displayed for veneration inside a canopy-like structure referred to as οἰκίσκος (literally, “small house”).26 The latter’s entrance (τὸ προπύλαιον τοῦ δωματίου) is specifically described as having two octagonal columns topped by capitals adorned with images of the “holy heralds” – presumably the evangelists or prophets (ταῖς κορυφαῖς δὲ τῶν κιόνων κόσμος εἰκόνες τῶν σεπτῶν ἱεροκηρύκων πεπήγασιν).27 The church is moreover furnished with a monumental ambo in the middle of the nave, surmounted by a canopy and connected with the area of the sanctuary by the raised walkway of a solea. Finding himself in the sanctuary, Pediasimos looks upon the main apse adorned (κατακεκόσμηται) with mosaic tesserae of dazzling gold and many other colors depicting a scene of Deēsis with Christ enthroned, flanked by the Virgin Mary and Saint Theodore Stratēlatēs in prayer.28 Then he lifts his eyes toward an image of the Ascension in the barrel vault of the sanctuary – apparently not unlike the one seen, for instance, in the sanctuary of Hagia Sophia at Ohrid29 (Figure 3.5) – with Christ in a mandorla escorted by angels and observed by two groups of the bewildered apostles portrayed on either side. Curiously enough, a detail that captures his fancy is the depiction of cypress trees in the background, an otherwise common ingredient in the iconography of the Ascension. Not only do these trees adorn the sides of the vault (τὸ τῆς στοᾶς δὲ πλάγιον κυπαρίττοις κατακοσμεῖται καλαῖς), but their height symbolizes the growth of the Church of the Gentiles from her modest beginnings to the present glory.30 Back in the nave, the author remarks how well the church is lit. The craftsmen have cunningly opened windows on every side to give light to the interior, so that no part of it is left unadorned and without abundant illumination (μὴ . . . κοσμεῖται καὶ καταφωτίζεται).31 On his way out, Pediasimos casts his gaze in admiration upon the west wall of the nave. While other walls of the nave are adorned with “paintings executed in color” (τοὺς . . . ἄλλους

25 26 27 28 29

30 31

Pediasimos, Ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres, 133.9–13. On this image and its architectural setting, see Drpić 2012. Pediasimos, Ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres, 133.19–22. Pediasimos, Ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres, 134.1–4. The sanctuary vault is a common place for the depiction of the Ascension of Christ in Byzantine church decoration. See K. Wessel in RbK, s.v. ‘Himmelfahrt’, esp. col. 1252. Pediasimos, Ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres, 134.4–11. Pediasimos, Ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres, 134.13–18.

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Figure 3.5 The Ascension of Christ, middle of the eleventh century, cathedral church of Hagia Sophia, Ohrid (photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY)

τοίχους ζωγραφίαι χρώμασι κεχρωματουργημέναι κοσμοῦσι) – that is, with frescoes – this one is adorned with brilliant gold tesserae that make it look as if it were entirely made of gold.32 The ekphrasis ends where it began, in the open courtyard, with the author confessing his impotence in face of the beauties of the church in a belated captatio benevolentiae.

32

Pediasimos, Ekphrasis of the Metropolis of Serres, 134.21–23.

What is kosmos?

In this rhetorical description of the Metropolis, kosmos is expansive and polymorphous. Pediasimos sees it everywhere, in light and water, glistening gold mosaic, colored stone, figural carvings, even in the number of steps at the main entrance to the church. There is, however, one particular category of adornment to which Byzantine textual sources consistently refer by using the word kosmos and its cognates. This category encompasses precious-metal, enamel, and/or bejeweled revetments, frames, mounts, and decorative appliqués attached to icons, relics and relic containers, books, liturgical utensils, and other kinds of objects.33 The use of kosmos in this particular sense had a long history. As early as the sixth century, for instance, the historian Prokopios of Caesarea speaks of a large fragment of the True Cross from Apameia in Syria, lodged in a wooden box that some pious men of olden times “adorned with much gold and precious stones” (χρυσῷ τε πολλῷ καὶ λίθοις ἐντίμοις ἐκόσμησαν).34 Similarly, the Vita of the patriarch Euthymios mentions a “delightful book in a purple binding adorned with silver and gold” (βίβλον τε πάντερπνον ἐξ ἐνδύματος ὀξέου καὶ διαργύρου καὶ διαχρύσου περικεκοσμημένην), which the protagonist received as a present from the emperor Leo VI.35 By the twelfth century, this specific meaning of kosmos became almost technical. Thus, when the sebastokratōr Isaac Komnenos in his Typikon of 1151/52 for the monastery of the Virgin Kosmosōteira near Bera in Thrace records that he had an icon of the Mother of God enveloped with a kosmos of gold and silver as much as he could, there can be no doubt that he talks about a massive precious-metal revetment or frame.36 The same usage, one recalls, is encountered in the epigram on the icon of Christ sheathed with silver by Demetrios Chomatenos. As a matter of fact, the term and its derivatives – kekosmēmenos, enkekosmēmenos, holokosmētos, kosmion, and others – eventually entered the vocabulary of Byzantine inventories, wills, 33

34 35 36

See especially the synthetic entry on kosmos in ByzAD. For the use of kosmos in reference to luxury book covers, see also Atsalos 2000, 447–48, 453–56. Prokopios, The Persian War 2.11.14–15. Anonymous, Life of the Patriarch Euthymios, 51.14–20. The icon was to be placed at the sebastokratōr’s tomb. Typikon of the Virgin Kosmosōteira, 126.1715–21: “Instead of any other kind of adornment of fantastic glory for my tomb, the icon from Rhaidestos of the Mother of God, truly the Kosmosōteira, sent down to me from heaven, and which I enveloped with an adornment of gold and silver as much as I could (κόσμον περιεθέμην χρυσοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου τὸν κατὰ δύναμιν). to be placed at one end of my tomb in its projected form. It should remain resting in that spot throughout all time, preserved without change, to mediate for my wretched soul”; trans. BMFD, 2:839 (N. Patterson Ševčenko), with minor modifications. The author’s toying with the multiple meanings of the word kosmos is akin to that deployed in the epigram on the archbishop Chomatenos’ silver frame.

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and acts of donation. From the late eleventh century at the latest, the terminology of kosmos was consistently employed in such documents to single out objects – icons in particular – adorned with gold, silver, gems, pearls, and the like, and to differentiate them from their less precious, unadorned counterparts.37 The earliest extant document to systematically use the lexicon of kosmos is an act of July 1089, issued by Paul, prōtos of Mount Athos, on behalf of Symeon the Sanctified, the second founder of the monastery of Xenophon.38 The document, which re-established Symeon as the head of this Athonite house, contains a detailed list of the monastery’s movable and immovable property. The list records five “new” icons (εἰκόνες καινούργιαι) commissioned by Symeon, each adorned with gilded silver (κόσμῳ ἀργυροχρύσῳ κοσμηθεῖσαι).39 One of the icons, depicting the great martyr George, the monastery’s patron saint, is described as small. The document specifies that this image was displayed for veneration (εἰς προσκύνησιν) on the saint’s feast day. The other four icons, depicting Christ, the Virgin, Saint Demetrios, and – again – Saint George, are listed without any additional information. The document further records that the monastery had 136 books in its possession. Two of them, both used in the liturgy, had a kosmos in the form of a luxury binding. One was a Gospel lectionary with a reduced selection of readings for the feasts (εὐαγγέλιον ἑορτολόγιον), donated to the monastery by an emperor, almost certainly Alexios I Komnenos. This was a sumptuous codex adorned with gilded silver (ἀργυροχρύσῳ κόσμῳ κεκοσμημένον), the front cover of which bore an image of Christ.40 In this respect, it may have resembled the celebrated Gospel lectionary in the Great Lavra on Mount Athos traditionally associated with Nikephoros II Phokas (Figure 3.6).41 The second book, a Gospel lectionary with readings for every day (εὐαγγέλιον καθημερινόν), is simply described as “adorned” (κοσμηθέν), with a further indication that its kosmos was sponsored by Symeon the Sanctified.42 In addition to these two luxury liturgical codices, the act of the prōtos Paul specifically mentions

37

38 39 41

42

What follows owes much to ByzAD, an indispensable tool for the study of the Byzantine inventories and other related documents. For other analyses of this material, see also Radošević and Subotić 1989; Stavros 2002, 34–88, 211–49; Parani, Pitarakis, and Spieser 2003; Hetherington 2009; Pitarakis 2009–10; Pentcheva 2010, 211–22. Actes de Xénophon, 59–75 (no. 1). On this document, see also R. Morris 2009. 40 Actes de Xénophon, 72.81–85. Actes de Xénophon, 72.86–87. Kondakov 1902, 195–98, pls. XXVI–XXVII; Pelekanides et al. 1973–91, 3:24, 217–19; Litsas 2000, 218–20. Actes de Xénophon, 72.87.

What is kosmos?

Figure 3.6 Front cover of the so-called Phokas or Skeuophylakion Lectionary, tenth or eleventh century, Great Lavra, Mount Athos (photo: Kurt Weitzmann Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University)

four manuscripts of the Gospels characterized as a group for their lack of precious bindings as ἄκοσμα (“unadorned”).43 For more specific yet hardly detailed descriptions of adorned objects, we may turn to the inventory of the monastery of Saint John the Theologian

43

Actes de Xénophon, 72.87–88.

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on the island of Patmos, drawn up in September 1200.44 Imperial protection, revenues from landed property, customs exemptions, as well as the fame of the relics of its founder, Saint Christodoulos, all contributed to the monastery’s prosperity, which is plainly reflected in the long list of icons, enkolpia, crosses, reliquaries, sacred vessels, textiles, and books itemized in its inventory.45 The first among the fifteen luxury icons listed at the beginning of the inventory is described as follows: εἰκὼν ἁγία μεγάλη ὁ Θεολόγος μετὰ περιφερείων ἁργυροδιαχρύσων καὶ στεφάνου καὶ εὐαγγελίου, τῶν ἀμφοτέρων χρυσοχειμεύτων ἁργυρῶν (“A large holy icon of the Theologian with a silver-gilt frame and a nimbus and Gospel book, both of which are silver enamel on gold”).46 This icon has tentatively been identified with a panel preserved in the monastery (Figure 3.7).47 Repainted twice, in the fifteenth and the nineteenth century, the panel still bears its medieval adornment: a silver-gilt frame populated with a series of holy figures in medallions worked in repoussé; a splendid convex halo surrounding the saint’s head, decorated with an undulating pattern of richly colored vegetal motifs in enamel; and a cover, also fashioned in enamel, for the Gospel in the saint’s hands, itself shaped as a luxury book with gilded clasps, opened at John 1:1–3. Six other icons in the Patmos inventory are described as having received partial revetting in the form of a periphereion (“frame”), a stephanos (“nimbus”), and/or another kind of precious appliqué.48 Thus, an icon of Saint John Chrysostom had, aside from the nimbus, several other elements highlighted in gilded silver: the Gospel book held by the saintly bishop; his epimanikia, or liturgical cuffs; and three crosses, undoubtedly the crosses adorning Chrysostom’s ōmophorion, another liturgical vestment, a broad stole reserved for members of the episcopate.49 Silver-gilt crosses of this kind originally covered the painted crosses on the ōmophorion of Saint Nicholas in an icon of c. 1390 in the monastery of the Great Meteoron (Figures 3.8 and 3.9).50 In the Patmos inventory, the terminology of kosmos is used in reference to three icons, all characterized by the adjective ὁλοκόσμητος, literally meaning “entirely adorned”: an icon of the apostles Peter and Paul,

44 45 46 47 48 49

50

Astruc 1981. On the monastery’s wealth, see Smyrlis 2006, esp. 73–83, with further bibliography. Astruc 1981, 20.4–5. Chatzedakes 1977, 45–48 (no. 2). See also Patterson Ševčenko 1992, 63–65. Astruc 1981, 20.6–10, 20.12–13. Astruc 1981, 20.6–7. On the epimanikia and ōmophorion, see Woodfin 2012, esp. 15–17, with further bibliography. Subotić 1992, 73, 86 fig. 11.

What is kosmos?

Figure 3.7 Icon of Saint John the Theologian, twelfth century (with fifteenth- and nineteenth-century repainting), monastery of Saint John the Theologian, Patmos (photo: Monastery of Saint John the Theologian, Patmos)

an icon of Saints Athanasios and Cyril of Alexandria, and an icon of Saints George and Demetrios containing a fragment of the True Cross.51 In addition, the same adjective describes an enkolpion with a 51

Astruc 1981, 20.6, 20.11–12, 21.16.

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Figure 3.8 Icon of Saint Nicholas, c. 1390, monastery of the Great Meteoron in Thessaly (photo: after M. Chatzedakes and D. Sophianos, Το Μεγάλο Μετέωρο: Ιστορία και Τέχνη [Athens: Interamerican, 1990], p. 61)

What is kosmos?

Figure 3.9 Precious-metal appliqués of the icon of Saint Nicholas, c. 1390, monastery of the Great Meteoron in Thessaly (photo: after Subotić 1992, fig. 11)

representation of the Virgin and Child made of enameled silver.52 It seems evident that the kosmos of a holokosmētos icon was not limited to a frame or nimbus. Rather, it probably spread across the icon’s background as well – as seen, for instance, in the fourteenth-century panel of the Virgin Akatamachētos in Athens53 (Figure 3.10) – or even

52 53

Astruc 1981, 21.15. Acheimastou-Potamianou 1998, 76–77 (no. 19); Baltoyanni 1998, cat. no. 13.

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across the entire surface of the icon, with the exception of the depicted faces, hands, and feet (see Figure 3.11). Such inferences cannot be made in regard to four icons added to the list sometime in the thirteenthcentury, each of them described as κοσμιμένη or κοσμημένη, another derivative of kosmos simply meaning “adorned.”54 In the wills, inventories, and lists of donations postdating the Patmos inventory, kosmos and its cognates regularly feature as a way of designating objects supplied with precious revetments, mounts, and appliqués.55 Occasionally these are the only objects that make it to the list. This is especially true of icons. The other side of the spectrum – the inconspicuous mass of plain wooden panels painted in tempera, humble bronze plaques without gilding, and the like – may be omitted entirely or listed under the separate heading of ἀκόσμηται εἰκόναι, or “unadorned icons,” as in the inventory of the monastery of the Virgin Eleousa near Stroumitza, in all likelihood drawn up in 1449.56 Like the four Gospels manuscripts in the act of the prōtos Paul, these “other” icons are negatively defined through their lack of kosmos. Such sharp distinction may appear prosaic, if not philistine. Yet, given the practical nature of the documents under examination, often endowed with legal force, it is only natural that the sheer material worth

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56

Astruc 1981, 21 (cited in the apparatus). The relevant documents include an act of donation concerning the monastery of the Holy Trinity in Thessalonike (1240): Actes de Lavra, 2:1–4 (no. 70), at 3.23–24; the inventory of the monastery of the Virgin Boreinē near Byzantine Philadelphia (1247, with additions shortly after 1258): Actes de Vatopédi, 1:136–62 (no. 15), at 157.149, 157.177–8, 161.301; the Typikon of the convent of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis in Constantinople (between c. 1285 and 1300, with revisions and additions from the 1330s and later): Typikon of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, 92.8, 92.31–33, 93.26–27, 94.10, 102.16–18; the will of the skouterios Theodore Sarantenos (1325): Actes de Vatopédi, 1:344–61 (no. 64), at 355.43–46, 355.48–49; the will of Philip-Philemon Arabantenos (1334): Bénou 1998, 123–25 (no. 60), at 124.10–12; the first inventory of the monastery of the Virgin Spēlaiōtissa at Melnik (1365): Actes de Vatopédi, 2:299–304 (no. 120), at 303.4–6; the inventory of the monastery of the Virgin Gabaliōtissa at Vodena (1375): Actes de Lavra, 3:105–7 (no. 147), at 106.1–107.9; the inventory of the property of Maria Deblitzene in an act of 1384: Actes de Docheiariou, 258–65 (no. 49), at 264.23–25; the second inventory of the monastery of the Virgin Spēlaiōtissa at Melnik (1395): Pitarakis 2009–10, 139–40; the inventory of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (1396): MM 2:566–70 (no. DCLXXXVI), at 567–68; the inventory of the monastery of the Virgin Eleousa near Stroumitza (most likely 1449): Petit 1900, 114–25, at 119.5–9, 120.5–6, 120.11–12, 120.13–121.1, 121.3–5, 121.15–17. See also MM 1:538–39 (no. CCLXXXVII); Actes de Lavra, 3:122–24 (no. 152), at 123.5–124.7. Petit 1900, 119–20. The date of the Eleousa inventory has been debated. The document was drawn up μηνὶ φεβρουαρίῳ δεκάτῃ, ἡμέρᾳ δευτέρᾳ, ἰνδικτιῶνι δωδεκάτῃ (“in the month of February, the tenth, on Monday, in the twelfth indiction”) (Petit 1900, 125.14–15), which may have happened in 1119, 1164, 1449, 1494, or 1539. I subscribe to the date of 1449 proposed by the editor (Petit 1900, 13) and accepted in BMFD, 4:1667. Cf. Kaplan 2013, 487–90.

What is kosmos?

Figure 3.10 Icon of the Virgin Akatamachētos, fourteenth century, Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens (photo: Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens)

of a piece is the governing taxonomic criterion. To be sure, although we know very little about the exact prices commanded by adorned icons, it is obvious that their pecuniary value varied considerably. Seven eikonismata enkekosmēmena recorded in a document of 1384, which enumerates the belongings of a well-to-do family in Thessalonike, were valued at two to

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Figure 3.11 Icon of the Transfiguration of Christ, 886, from the Zarzma monastery, Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi (photo: Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi)

What is kosmos?

seven hyperpyra.57 This may strike us as being relatively inexpensive when considered along with the price of two hyperpyra for a cooking pot or fourteen hyperpyra for a horse given in the same document.58 But specimens furnished with an exceptionally rich kosmos naturally commanded higher prices. The inventory of 1375 of the Virgin Gabaliōtissa at Vodena (Edessa), for instance, lists an adorned icon of Saint George given to this monastic house by a certain bishop Anthony (of Vodena?). The icon served as a deposit for the anticipated expenses of the bishop’s funeral and was valued at twenty-four “ounces of ducats,” that is, twenty-four hyperpyra.59 Many of the now-lost luxury icons documented in epigrammatic poetry must have cost even more. The apparent emphasis on the material value of icons in our documents makes one wonder whether aesthetic considerations played any role in their drafting.60 I should like to suggest that they did – indirectly. As Bissera Pentcheva has rightly pointed out, our modern post-Renaissance perception of the Byzantine icon has tended to privilege painting with its attendant qualities of composition, modeling, color, and expression, as opposed to the so-called minor arts, as the locus of principal aesthetic interest.61 It may be claimed, however, that the “true” arts of the icon in Byzantium were metalwork, enameling, and glyptic, that is, the arts of icon kosmos. It is no accident that roughly at the time when the use of the term kosmos in the “technical” sense gained currency, the notion of adornment – especially in relation to icons – emerged as a pivotal and pervasive theme in Byzantine dedicatory epigrams. While before the Komnenian era the language and imagery of kosmos were relatively rare in epigrammatic poetry,62 beginning in the twelfth century they became a staple. That this 57 58

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Actes de Docheiariou, 258–65 (no. 49), at 264.23–25. Actes de Docheiariou, 264.30 (cooking pot), 264.34 (horse). See also Oikonomides 1991, 38. For an illuminating survey of the prices of different objects and commodities in Byzantium, see Morrisson and Cheynet 2002. Actes de Lavra, 3:106.3–4. Cf. Oikonomides 1991, 37: “[N]othing in these lists indicates an aesthetic classification that could influence the price of the icons.” Pentcheva 2006–7, esp. 7. The argument is further developed in Pentcheva 2010. See, e.g., the verse inscriptions on the tenth-century staurothēkē of Montecassino (Willard 1976, 59; BEIÜ II, no. Me70), the reliquary cross inserted in the Limburg staurothēkē, dated to c. 945–59 (BEIÜ II, no. Me8), and the reliquary of the hand of Saint Marina in Venice, tentatively dated to the eleventh century (BEIÜ II, no. Me81); the inscription of c. 1000 at the church of Saints Jason and Sosipater on the island of Corfu (Vokotopoulos 1966–69, 155; BEIÜ III, no. GR67); the inscription incised on a templon architrave, datable to the tenth century, from a church near Selçikler (Sebaste) (BEIÜ III, no. TR110); one of the epigrams in the

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perceived shift is not merely an accident of survival, the misleading impression created by major lacunae in the manuscript and epigraphic record, is indicated by the epigrammatic oeuvre of the eleventh-century scholar and clergyman John Mauropous. Since the corpus of Mauropous’ writings preserved in the celebrated manuscript Vaticanus graecus 676 was compiled by the author himself, the series of epigrams included in this collection may be considered representative of the range of subjects Mauropous was called upon to treat in epigrammatic verse.63 Notably, the enhancement of sacred objects with kosmos is not one of them. The situation changes with the advent of the Komnenoi. Among the dedicatory epigrams composed by Nicholas Kallikles for a small circle of elite patrons, including members of the imperial family, seven – which is nearly one half – are devoted to precious-metal revetments attached to icons.64 Besides, Kallikles, as we have seen, penned verse inscriptions for two luxury encheiria dedicated to the icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, one by the sebastos John Arbantenos and the other by his wife Anna.65 In the latter epigram, the dedicated encheirion is explicitly referred to as the icon’s kosmos.66 Manganeios Prodromos was something of an expert on this kind of dedication as he wrote verses for at least eight textile hangings, six of which were commissioned by his patroness, the sebastokratorissa Irene, to be suspended over icons housed in the most celebrated Marian shrines of Constantinople.67 Precious-metal lamps hung before particularly

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so-called Bible of Niketas (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Laur. V 9, fol. 224v) from the second half of the tenth century (Stefec 2009, 207); and an epigram in a tenth-century manuscript of the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos in the Iviron monastery on Mount Athos (Ms. gr. 27 [nunc 19], fol. 87v) (Macé and Somers 2000, 57). On the collection of Mauropous’ works in the Vaticanus, see Karpozelos 1982, esp. 77–106; Lauxtermann 2003, 62–65; Bianconi 2011; Bernard 2014, esp. 128–48. Kallikles, Poems, nos. 2, 8, 11, 12, 15, 20, 23. Only the carmina genuina are here taken into consideration. Kallikles, Poems, nos. 1 and 26. Kallikles, Poems, no. 26, vv. 1–2: καινὸς γενοῦ σὺ κόσμος εἰς σέ, παρθένε / χρυσῷ διαγράφω σε καὶ τῇ πορφύρᾳ (“Do become a new adornment for yourself, O Virgin; I depict you with gold and purple”). The patroness here addresses the woven or embroidered image of the Virgin, that is, the Virgin represented on the dedicated encheirion, urging her to become an adornment for herself, that is, for the icon of the Hodēgētria. For the practice of adorning icons with various kinds of cloths, see the references cited in Chapter 2, n. 5. Miller 1875–81, 2:692; Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 33–40. One of Irene’s commissions is identified in the title as a σκέπη (literally, “covering”) offered to the icon of the Virgin Hagiosoritissa: Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 34–35. On skepē as a designation for a textile covering of an icon, see Theochare 1986, 29. Note that the sebastokratorissa Irene dedicated another luxury textile hanging to the same icon of the Hagiosoritissa, specifically designated as the holy encheirion hung in front of the icon on the Feast of the Presentation of the Virgin: Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 33–34. On the sebastokratorissa and her artistic and literary

What is kosmos?

venerated icons were another form of adornment that, judging by the evidence of contemporary epigrams, became fashionable in the twelfth century.68 In Syllogae B and C of the Anthologia Marciana, according to Foteini Spingou’s analysis, one-third of all dedicatory epigrams are devoted to various forms of icon kosmos, namely, encheiria, lamps, and above all precious-metal revetments, which outnumber any other category of objects.69 If we are to judge by the exceptionally rich poetic output of Manuel Philes, the same trend is discernible in the early Palaiologan period: nearly one-third of all dedications recorded in the Philean corpus consist of precious-metal revetments.70 To the extent that dedicatory epigrams reflect and register broader trends in the domain of elite artistic patronage in Byzantium, these statistics are significant. They indicate that, in the last centuries of the Empire, the luxury forms of kosmos associated with icon veneration held pride of place in the aesthetic and devotional purview of affluent patrons.71 The practice of adorning icons with precious-metal revetments, gems, and pearls was by no means an invention of the Komnenian era. In the Byzantine world, this manner of honoring sacred images can be traced back at least to the seventh century.72 One of the earliest extant examples is the icon of the Transfiguration of Christ from the Zarzma monastery in

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patronage, see especially E. Jeffreys 1982; E. Jeffreys and M. Jeffreys 1994; Rhoby 2009; Evangelatou 2014; Jeffreys 2014. For the possibility that Manganeios Prodromos was the author of two other anonymously transmitted epigrams on encheiria (Anthologia Marciana, nos. 58 [B20] and 70 [B126]), see Rhoby 2010c, 190–93. Rhoby 2010c, 196, has further suggested that an epigram on an encheirion dedicated to the icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, which W. Hörandner has attributed to Theodore Prodromos (Carmina historica, no. LXXIII), may have been composed, in fact, by the Mangana poet. See, e.g., Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 40; Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. XLVII; Anthologia Marciana, nos. 74 (B130) and 218 (B55). Cf. also Kallikles, Poems, no. 5; Anthologia Marciana, nos. 226 (B63), 266 (B99), 279 (B112). Spingou 2012, esp. 246 (fig. 37), 286–91. This figure must remain provisional, as a full critical edition of the Philean corpus is still a desideratum. Cf. Grünbart, 150–51, 167–70. On the revetted icon in the Byzantine world, see Grabar 1975b; Patterson Ševčenko 1992; Sterligova 2000; Papamastorakis 2002; Durand 2004; Peers 2004, 101–31; Sterligova 2005; Carr 2006; Pentcheva 2006b; Pitarakis 2009–10; Pentcheva 2010, esp. 198–208, 211–22. That the practice of adorning icons with precious-metal revetments and jewels was already current in the pre-iconoclastic era is confirmed by textual sources coming from the “periphery” of the Byzantine world. See, e.g., the story of an adorned icon of Saint Michael in a Coptic encomium on the archangel datable to the early seventh century: Wallis Budge 1894, 74*–108* (English translation), 93–135 (Coptic text), at 79*, 99. For early medieval Rome and the evidence provided by the Liber Pontificalis in particular, see Andaloro 1976; Sansterre 1997b, 113–15.

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Georgia (Figure 3.11).73 The only part of the icon that has come down to us is its heavily damaged silver-gilt revetment, dated by an inscription to 886. The painted panel itself showing the theophany on Mount Tabor has been lost. The revetment originally covered the entire painted surface, leaving only the faces of the participants in the theophany exposed. While such lavish embellishments continued to be affixed to icons in subsequent centuries, it was only under the Komnenoi that the dedication of precious-metal revetments and, to a lesser extant, other types of sumptuous icon kosmos became the favored expression of piety among the elite Byzantines, an act of devotion repeatedly celebrated in epigrammatic verse. The question is what accounts for this unprecedented preoccupation with the adornment of icons. Pentcheva has recently proposed that the rising popularity of icon revetments from the twelfth century onward should be seen as a result of imperial policy.74 In order to secure funds to mount a campaign against the Normans, during the early years of his reign Alexios I Komnenos resorted to the requisition and melting down of some of the ecclesiastical bullion. In Pentcheva’s account, these acts of appropriation and the theological dispute that ensued in response to them, brought about a new definition of the sacred image. As a way of theologically vindicating the emperor’s policy, the eikōn came to be defined primarily as homoiōma, or likeness, divorced from its material support. This, in turn, led to a decline in the production of relief multi-media icons in precious metal, which, according to Pentcheva, had constituted the dominant category of icons in middle Byzantine Constantinople, and stimulated the flourishing of panel paintings supplied with revetments made of gold, silver, and precious stones. Since these luxury covers were mere anathēmata, human gifts extraneous to the painted homoiōma, they could be taken down and recycled. The production of revetted icons thus secured “the continued state access to these metal deposits while preserving the inviolateness of the image.”75 While it is true that the debates surrounding Alexios I’s appropriation of ecclesiastical treasures brought the question of proper veneration accorded to icons to the foreground, the impact of this short-lived crisis was hardly such as to cause a change in the Byzantine conception of the sacred image, let alone to substantially influence and alter the dominant

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The Zarzma icon, which stands at the beginning of the long and rich tradition of Georgian metalwork, undoubtedly reflects contemporary Byzantine practice. On this icon, see Chubinashvili 1959, 27–42; Eastmond 2011 with further bibliography. 75 Pentcheva 2010, esp. 198–208. Pentcheva 2010, 208.

What is kosmos?

trend in icon production.76 Besides, Pentcheva’s view of precious-metal revetments as detachable accessories that lent themselves to recycling is not supported by the sources. In fact, the opposite was the case. As we shall see, items of adornment dedicated to icons were considered inalienable, and their removal was accordingly censured as an act of sacrilege. Moreover, far from being an unproblematic accessory, a supplement devoid of any intrinsic relation with the image, kosmos was understood to participate in the icon’s ontology. Before I offer a more detailed explication of this particular understanding of kosmos, a few general remarks are in order. Kosmos is by definition a relational entity; it does not exist by and for itself, but in relation to the object it adorns. Yet, despite its subordinate status, kosmos is not merely a dispensable add-on. Rather, it functions as the object’s constituent part, the addition of which brings about completion, perfection, and fulfillment.77 Occupying the paradoxical position of the essential inessential, kosmos is best conceptualized in terms of parergonality, as Jacques Derrida defines this condition in La vérité en peinture. Derrida’s point of reference is the distinction between ergon and parergon formulated by Immanuel Kant in his third Kritik. Commenting upon the primacy of form in constituting an aesthetic judgment, Kant briefly remarked: Even what one calls ornaments (parerga), i.e., that which is not internal to the entire representation of the object as a constituent, but only belongs to it externally as an addendum and augments the satisfaction of taste, still does this only through its form: like the borders of paintings, draperies on statues, or colonnades around magnificent buildings. But if the ornament itself does not consist in beautiful form, if it is, like a gilt frame, attached merely in order to recommend approval for the painting through its charm – then it is called decoration, and detracts from genuine beauty.78

Seizing upon two of Kant’s examples of parerga, a statue’s drapery and a building’s colonnade, Derrida observes, tongue-in-cheek, that neither of them can be detached without destroying the ergon. He writes,

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On the theological dispute provoked by the emperor’s policy of confiscation, with references to the sources and secondary literature, see pp. 154–56. In this and other respects, the account of kosmos advanced here resonates with the seminal discussions of ornament in the following works: Coomaraswamy 1939; Grabar 1992; Bonne 1996; Bonne 1997; Winter 2003. Kant 2000, 110–11.

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What constitutes them as parerga is not simply their exteriority as a surplus, it is the internal structural link which rivets them to the lack in the interior of the ergon. And this lack would be constitutive of the very unity of the ergon. Without this lack, the ergon would have no need of a parergon. The ergon’s lack is the lack of a parergon, of the garment or the column which nevertheless remains exterior to it.79

Despite obvious differences between Kant’s exemplary parerga and the forms of adornment discussed here, Derrida’s critique of the Kantian model of parergonality, as we shall see, is remarkably congenial to the ontology of kosmos in Byzantine culture. Just like the ergon and parergon, the object and its kosmos exist in a symbiotic relationship. The latter serves not simply to embellish and amplify the former, but to complete it. In the process, the object is constituted by that which is external to it, yet which, in Derrida’s words, “comes to play, abut onto, brush against, rub, press against”80 the object – its kosmos. To substantiate these propositions and gain a better understanding of the reasons behind the emergence of adornment as a critical category in later Byzantine aesthetics, artistic patronage, and devotional practice, we must first turn to some Byzantine responses to kosmos. These responses, as we shall see, share a common concern with the status of matter and its fraught relation to the sacred.

Kosmos, matter, and the sacred The Marcianus graecus 444, one of the books that reached Venice as part of Cardinal Bessarion’s baggage, contains a collection of progymnasmata dated to the period between the mid-twelfth and mid-fourteenth century.81 The anonymous author of the collection chose a sacrilegious man as the subject for koinos topos, or commonplace, an exercise in which a statement concerning something that is generally acknowledged to be either good or bad – in this case, the act of sacrilege – is amplified.82 The theme of sacrilege had already been proposed for the same exercise by ancient authors of progymnasmata and later by Nicholas the Sophist.83 However, 79 81

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80 Derrida 1987, 59–60. Derrida 1987, 56. Anonymous, Progymnasmata. For the date, see Flusin 2005, 164–67. On the manuscript, see Mioni 1981–85, 2:215–18. Anonymous, Progymnasmata, 614–19. Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata, 62–66; Pseudo-Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 6; Nicholas the Sophist, Progymnasmata, 35–47.

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unlike Nicholas, who speaks of the desecration of pagan temples, hardly an offense in the second half of the fifth century when his floruit is dated, our rhetorician treats a crime very much in evidence at his time, namely, the despoilment of icon kosmos.84 Staging his exercise within the setting of an imaginary court proceeding, the author has a prosecutor stress the gravity of the committed crime by fleshing out the religious significance of icon kosmos: We have received, O judges, as part of our heritage the ancient tradition first to honor and worship the divinity and to express this notion by a great many symbols; in particular, to adorn and enwreathe the holy icons with gold, silver, precious stones, and pearls, and to revere what is truly precious with that which, among us, appears to be precious. And rightly so; since we are unable to give back a worthy recompense to the divinity in return for the copious gifts it unceasingly showers upon us, we believe that we should do what is in our power. This is why, taking a tour of our churches, one may see them embellished with precious materials of this kind, shining brilliantly from afar.85

Two points are worth emphasizing in relation to this passage. First, the practice of adorning icons with bejeweled precious-metal revetments is portrayed as a venerable custom handed down from time immemorial. Moreover, since the temporal adverb ἄνωθεν, deployed to indicate the custom’s elusive antiquity, also has the spatial meaning “from above” or “from on high,” it indirectly points to the custom’s divinely sanctioned origins. Second, the spectacle of costly substances is understood as a way of paying honor to the divinity, which despite – or perhaps precisely because of – their material splendor is but a surrogate tribute in lieu of a more suitable one. The passage’s justification of the practice of supplying icons with kosmos must be read against the generally ambivalent attitude of the Byzantines toward material adornment. The display of lavish ornamentation and

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Several instances of desecration of luxury icons are cited in Oikonomides 1991, 38–39. For further examples, see pp. 179–84. Anonymous, Progymnasmata, 615.10–616.2: ἡμεῖς, ὦ ἄνδρες, ἄνωθεν, ὥσπερ τινὰ κλῆρον πρῶτον διεδεξάμεθα, τὸ θεῖον τιμᾷν μὲν καὶ σέβεσθαι· τῆς δὲ τοιαύτης ἐννοίας τεκμήρια καὶ ἄλλα μὲν πλεῖστα ἐνδείκνυσθαι, μετὰ δέ γε τῶν ἄλλων καὶ τῷ χρυσῷ καὶ ἀργύρῳ, λίθοις τε τῶν τιμίων καὶ μαργάροις τὰς θείας εἰκόνας κατακοσμεῖν τε καὶ περιστέφειν, καὶ τοῖς παρ’ ἡμῖν δοκοῦσι τιμίοις τὰ ὄντως τίμια δεξιοῦσθαι, καὶ εἰκότως, ἐπεὶ γὰρ τὰς ἀξίας ἡμεῖς ἀμοιβὰς ἀποδιδόναι τῷ θείῳ, ὧνπερ δωρεῶν ἀφθόνων παρ’ αὐτοῦ ὅσαι ὧραι καταπολαύομεν, οὐ δυνάμεθα, τῶν γοῦν δυνατῶν οὐκ ἀπολείπεσθαι δέον κρίνομεν· διὰ τοῦτο καὶ περιϊὼν ἴδοι τις τοὺς ἡμετέρους νεὼς ταῖς τοιαύταις τιμίαις ὕλαις κεκαλλωπισμένους, καὶ περιαστράπτοντας πόρρωθεν.

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costly or exotic materials delighted the senses, but it could also be seen as the sign of an undue and potentially corrupting attachment to the physical and the corporeal. In secular contexts, adornment often carried negative connotations. For Gregory of Nazianzos, to cite one authoritative voice, surrounding oneself with gold, sparkling gems, soft and flowing garments, and variegated colors was morally dangerous, a mark of pagan culture that Christians should avoid and seek “natural” unadorned beauty instead.86 Feminine adornment in particular was a common target of moralistic criticism.87 Paul’s injunction that “women should adorn themselves (κοσμεῖν ἑαυτάς) in decent clothing, with modesty and restraint, not with braided hair and gold, pearls, or costly attire, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God”88 (1 Timothy 2:9-10) provided an important point of reference. In keeping with Paul’s words, the saintly housewife Mary the Younger is said to have embraced akosmia, or absence of adornment, as the highest form of kosmos. Praising the philanthropy of this paragon of lay female piety, the author of her eleventh-century Vita remarks: In such a fashion she behaved toward others, while she neglected her own self, considering that the adornment was its absence [κόσμον μὲν ἡγεῖτο τὴν ἀκοσμίαν], and she rejected adorning herself with gold and attire, following the wise exhortation of the holy Paul. Through the hands of the poor, she deposited to her soul’s gold and translucent precious stones and bright garments.89

Ultimately, it is the soul rather than the body that one ought to adorn. In the realm of adornment attached to sacred objects and spaces, the anxiety about material kosmos often translated into an apologetic stance. Consider, for instance, a dedicatory poem found in the pocket-sized Psalter manuscript of 1077/78 in Oxford (Bodleian Library, Ms. E. D. Clarke 15, fols. 7v-9r) commissioned by a certain monk Mark for use in his private devotions.90 In view of the patron’s monastic profession, the book’s now-lost precious binding fashioned with gilded silver and purple silk, to which the verses refer, as well as its use of gold script, could easily 86 88 89

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87 Gregory of Nazianzos, In theophania, PG 36, 316B–C. Detorakes 1989; Walker 2003. The translation is mine. AASS, Novembris IV (1925), col. 694C–D; trans. A. E. Laiou in Talbot 1996, 260–61, with minor modifications. The author of the Vita here paraphrases John Chrysostom, In Genesim homilia XXI, PG 53, col. 185. Gaisford 1812, 59–60. On the manuscript, see Hutter 1977–97, 1:46–47 (no. 32), 3.1:330–31; Parpulov 2004, 183–87; Stefec 2011, 339–48; Lauxtermann 2012. On the dedicatory poem, see also Bentein and Demoen 2012, 84–87.

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give grounds for reproach. Mark in fact envisions a disapproving reader asking the following question:

10

τί γὰρ τυχὸν φράσειε χρυσὸν εἰς βίον καὶ λεπτότητες ὑμένων καὶ γραμμάτων καὶ χρυσομορφόγραφος αὐτῶν ἰδέα ἐξ ἀργύρου τε κλεῖθρα κεχρυσωμένα καὶ φαιδρόμορφον ἄμφιον τοῦ βιβλίου ὄνησιν εἰσφέροιεν εἰς ἀσκουμένους; “Of what use to ascetics,” he may declare, “in this life could possibly be gold, the finesse of vellum and lettering, characters of gold-wrought form, clasps made of gilded silver and book covers of bright appearance?”91

Predictably, the monk’s answer invokes a familiar argument in favor of the use of precious substances for manufacturing devotional objects predicated on the anagogical progression from the material to the spiritual. He calls upon a spiritually perfected reader who would transcend the contemplation of earthly things (ἡ κάτω θεωρία) and marvel at the costly materials first and foremost as God’s creations. For God creates everything, ἄργυρον ἐκ γῆς, ὑμένας δ’ ἐκ ποιμνίων, ἐκ δ’ αὖ γε σηρῶν καὶ βαφῆς θαλαττίας ὕφασμα λαμπρόμορφον ἠγλαϊσμένον (vv. 22–24) silver from the earth, vellum from sheep, and the splendidly adorned cloth from silkworm and purple dye.92

Most importantly, however, the reader should search for spiritual salvation in the soul-profiting words of the Psalms written inside the book. If a monk’s ownership of a lavishly crafted devotional Psalter called for a justification in the anagogical mode, the same is no less true of sumptuous Gospel lectionaries intended for ritual display in the context of communal worship.93 A case in point is an adorned Gospel lectionary donated to the monastery tou Philokalou in Thessalonike by its oikonomos, monk Ioannikios, for whom Manuel Philes composed an appropriate dedicatory epigram.94 Since this rather long poem presents one of the most elaborate

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Trans. Parpulov 2004, 183, slightly modified. Trans. Parpulov 2004, 183, slightly modified. On deluxe service books and ritual display, see Lowden 1990; Cavallo 2006, 346–55. Philes, Carmina I, 70–72 (no. CLIX). On this epigram, see Bianconi 2005b, 196–97; Bianconi 2009, 24–28.

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anagogical interpretations of the book in Byzantine culture, it deserves to be cited in extenso.

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Τὸν μὲν περισπούδαστον ἀνθρώποις βίον, οἷον λίθων ἔλλαμψιν, αὐγὴν μαργάρων, χρυσὸν καθαρὸν, ἄργυρον, πέπλων χάριν, καὶ πᾶν ὁτιοῦν εὐπρεπὲς φάσμα, ξένε, ἢ πραγμάτων κίνησις, ἢ δρᾶμα φθόνου, ἢ κλὼψ ἀφανὴς, ἢ τυραννὶς ἁρπάσει· τάχα δὲ καὶ σὴς εὐτελὴς ἐφερπύσας τὰ τῆς ὕλης εὔκοσμα βοσκηθήσεται· Θεοῦ δὲ φωνὰς οὐδ’ ὁ πᾶς κρύψει χρόνος, ἃς φιλοκάλως ὀργανώσας ἐνθάδε τοῦ Φιλοκάλου τῇ μονῇ παρεσχόμην. τὸν ἄργυρον γοῦν τῷ χρυσῷ πεπασμένον πρὸ τῶν πυλῶν τέθεικα τῶν ἀνακτόρων· ἐπίβασις γὰρ τῶν ποδῶν τοῦ δεσπότου σαφῶς τὸ παρὸν βιβλίον γινώσκεται· ἀμφοῖν δὲ τινὰς ἐσφυρηλατημένας ἀνεὶς ἑορτὰς προσφυεῖς τῇ πυκτίδι καὶ τῶν θεατῶν ἑστιῶ τὰς καρδίας. ὅρα μὲν οὖν τὸ κάλλος ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης, ὅρα δὲ καὶ τὸ σχῆμα τῶν ἔνδον τύπων, καὶ τὴν ἐμὴν, ἄνθρωπε, τεκμαίρου σχέσιν, καὶ μὴ θορυβῶν μηδὲ κομπάζων σκόπει. Χριστὸς γὰρ αὐτὸς μυστικόν τινα τρόπον ἐνταῦθα παρὼν ἀκροᾶται καὶ βλέπει· πλὴν συμβολικῶς καὶ σοφῶς τούτων ξύνες, ὡς δέρμα νεκρὸν ζωτικοὺς φέρον λόγους τὴν τοῦ λόγου σάρκωσιν ἐμφαίνει τάχα,95 δι’ ἧς τὸ νεκρὸν ἐψυχώθη σαρκίον, ζωῆς μετασχὸν καὶ φθορᾶς κρεῖσσον μένον. αἱ δὲ πρὸς ὀργάνωσιν ὀκταφυλλίδες τὴν ὀγδόην ἄντικρυς ᾐνίξαντό σοι, πρὸς ἣν ἀπαντᾷς ἐξιὼν τῆς ἑβδόμης· ἡ δὲ πρὸς εἱρμὸν συμβολικὴ κομψότης, ἣ τάσδε συνδεῖ τὰς τομὰς τοῦ βιβλίου, τὸν κοσμικὸν σύνδεσμον ἀποδεικνύει. τὸ γὰρ διεστὼς συγκρατεῖ καὶ συνδέει τὸ σῶμα Χριστοῦ τοῦ λαλοῦντος ἐνθάδε.

The published text reads τάχει, but τάχα is a better reading, as the editor himself suggests (Philes, Carmina I, 71 n. 3).

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τὸ δὲ στιβαρὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης βάρος μικροῦ τὸ βαρὺ ζωγραφεῖ τῶν δογμάτων, κἂν οὐκ ἐπαχθὴς ὁ ζυγὸς τοῦ δεσπότου. γένοιτο λοιπὸν ἀντὶ τῶν ὁρωμένων μετεγγραφῆναι τοῖς θεοῦ με δακτύλοις εἰς τὴν καλὴν πυκτίδα τῆς ἀφθαρσίας, καὶ τῶν παλαιῶν ἐξαλειφθέντων τύπων, τὰς τῆς νέας χάριτος ὀφθῆναι πλάκας, μήπως ὁ Σατὰν τοὺς ἐμοὺς τύπους φέρων ὠθῇ με πικρῶς πρὸς τὸ πῦρ τὸ παμφάγον. καὶ γὰρ ἀναιδὴς εὑρεθεὶς ὁ θὴρ λύκος, ἢ σκύμνος οἰκῶν εἰς ἀπόκρυφον τόπον καταπιεῖν ζητεῖ με πεπλανημένον, τὸν Ἰωαννίκιον ἐν μονοτρόποις. This life much desired by men, the brilliance of precious stones, the gleam of pearls, pure gold, silver, the finesse of textiles, and any delightful sight, O stranger, either a change of circumstances, or envy, or some invisible thief, or abuse of power will snatch away. Or else, the worthless moth might creep in and devour your material ornaments.96 Yet no passage of time will obliterate the words of God, which I have laid out here with love for beauty97 and donated to the monastery tou Philokalou. I have placed silver sprinkled with gold at the gates of the royal palace; for clearly through this book the Lord arrives on his feet. Having affixed some hammered images of the feasts upon the book covers on either side, I also regale the hearts of the spectators. Therefore, behold the beauty of the materials, behold the elegance of the miniatures inside, too, and evaluate my affection, O man, contemplating quietly and respectfully. For in some mystical way, Christ himself is present here, and listens and observes. Besides, you should understand these things symbolically and wisely, namely, how the dead skin that carries the life-giving words signifies the incarnation of the Logos, through which dead flesh was animated, partaking of life and remaining mightier than corruption. As for the book’s structure, the quires prefigure the eighth day, which you approach leaving behind the seventh. The manner in which the sections of the book are assembled and bound together with elegance symbolizes the harmony of the universe; for the body of Christ, who speaks here, holds together and unites what is divided. The heavy weight of the book’s

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Cf. Matthew 6:19–20; Luke 12:33. The adverb philokalōs is obviously a pun on the monastery’s name. On this monastic house, dedicated to Christ Pantokratōr, see Janin 1975, 418–19; Cituridu 1979; Theocharides 1981.

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materials virtually represents the gravity of dogmas, although the yoke of the Lord is by no means burdensome. Thus, in exchange for these visible things, may God register me with his finger in the beautiful book of immortality, and once the old images have been obliterated, may I be painted in the tablets of the new grace, lest Satan, armed with my images, cruelly thrust me into the all-devouring fire. For like a shameful wolf or a lion cub hiding in the den, the beast seeks to swallow me, sinful monk Ioannikios.

A luxury fourteenth-century book binding in Venice (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Ms. gr. I, 53 [= 966]) may give us some idea of the exterior adornment of Ioannikios’ Gospel lectionary (Figures 3.12 and 3.13).98 The binding consists of wooden boards sheathed with gilded silver (cf. ἄργυρος τῷ χρυσῷ πεπασμένος in line 12). The central zones of the front and back covers feature images of the Crucifixion and the Anastasis, respectively. These two scenes, as well as a series of smaller feast images that surround them, are worked in repoussé (cf. ἐσφυρηλατημέναι ἑορταί in lines 16-17). Alternating with the feast images are panels decorated with enamel medallions depicting the Hetoimasia, prophets, and saints. Such a precious book kosmos is, indeed, a delightful sight that regales the heart, but like any earthly treasure, it is transient. Hence Ioannikios invites the spectator to open his mind’s eye, contemplate the book symbolically (συμβολικῶς), and embark, as it were, on a spiritual journey for which the poem’s dense allegorizing serves as a guide. The verses, accordingly, assign symbolic meanings to various elements or aspects of the book. The covers are likened to royal gates open for the advent of Christ the King, whose life on earth is narrated on the pages behind. The parchment, whereupon Christ’s words (λόγοι) are transcribed, is compared to flesh and understood as a symbol of the incarnation of the Divine Logos. The number of folios gathered in a quire is seen as meaningful in itself, since it points to the eighth day, i.e., the eighth millennium – the eschatological fulfillment of the creation in the final resurrection and glory of the age to come.99 The graceful assembly of the quires signifies the harmony of the universe and, moreover, demonstrates the manner in which the two opposites, the divine 98

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The binding covers an eleventh-century illuminated Gospel lectionary. According to tradition, this precious book was donated to the basilica of San Marco by the emperor John VIII Palaiologos in 1438. See Hahnloser 1965–71, 2: cat. no. 38 (A. Grabar); Gentile 1998, cat. no. 11 (P. Eleuteri); Dell’Acqua 2004; Papamastorakis 2006, esp. 404–5 and 409, where the author quotes Philes’ epigram on the Gospel lectionary of the oikonomos Ioannikios as a literary parallel to the binding of the Marciana codex. On the idea of the eighth millennium, see Sharf 1988.

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Figure 3.12 Front cover of Codex gr. I, 53 (= 966), fourteenth century, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice (photo: Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo – Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana)

and human natures, are united in the body of Christ. Lastly, the heaviness of the book itself embodies the gravity of doctrines expounded in the Gospels. The verses conclude with Ioannikios’ personal plea for salvation, in which the themes of book manufacture, lettering, and illumination are rehearsed in a playful manner characteristic of Philes.

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Figure 3.13 Back cover of Codex gr. I, 53 (= 966), fourteenth century, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice (photo: Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo – Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana)

Like the dedicatory epigram in the Oxford Psalter, the poem on the Gospel lectionary of the monastery tou Philokalou locates the significance of the book’s kosmos beyond its tangible here-and-now. The alluring sensual presence of precious materials is admissible only insofar as it points to something outside itself, namely, to a higher spiritual realm that can be

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properly grasped only by intellection. The anagogical mode of interpretation mobilized in these texts, however, was not the only – and arguably not the most sophisticated – way of justifying the use of precious materials in the religious sphere. An alternative model, predicated on a different ontology of kosmos, emerged in response to the ever-increasing importance of the concept of adornment in devotional practice and artistic patronage. In the polemical Dialogues with a Persian, written by Manuel II Palaiologos in the closing years of the fourteenth century, one of the doctrinal issues addressed by the emperor and his Muslim interlocutor was the theological justification of icon veneration.100 Significantly, their discussion of the issue was in part concerned with icon kosmos, which, by the time the Dialogues were composed, had become inseparable from the notion of the icon itself. The idea of veneration paid to lifeless manufactured objects is, of course, entirely alien to Islam. Making an introductory concession, the emperor agrees with the Muslim’s remark that all images are inanimate and that the equally inanimate materials of their manufacture are worthless in comparison to either angels or humans. If some images are adorned with gold and precious stones, he adds, these substances, praised for their beauty and excellence, are nonetheless inferior not only to humans but also to any animate being whatsoever. And yet: Προσκυνεῖται μέντοι χρυσὸς καὶ ὅλως ὗλαι οὑτινοσοῦν ἀξίου προσκυνεῖσθαι εἶδος δεξάμεναι, ἄλλως δὲ οὐδαμῶς. πᾶς τις οὖν προσκυνησάτω οὐ τὴν καλήν τε καὶ ἀστράπτουσαν ὕλην οὐδὲ τὴν πολλοῦ τιμωμένην, ἀλλὰ τήν τινος ἐκείνων φέρουσαν εἶδος, ὅσοις τὸ τιμᾶσθαι δικαίως διὰ τὸ κοσμῆσαι τὴν φύσιν τοῖς τρόποις ἐγένετο, ὃ δὴ μόνον τῇ ψυχῇ γένοιτ’ ἂν κατάλληλος κόσμος.101 Gold and materials in general are venerated if they have assumed the form of a person deserving of veneration; otherwise they are not venerated at all. Thus one should not venerate a beautiful and lustrous material, nor that which is considered precious, but a material that bears the form of one of those individuals, who are rightly honored because they have adorned nature with their way of life, which is, indeed, the only appropriate adornment for the soul.

The key word in this passage is eidos. It is a fraught term, one with a venerable pedigree in Byzantine philosophy and, more importantly, in Byzantine theories of the sacred image. The critical distinction between

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Icon veneration is the subject of Manuel II Palaiologos, Dialogues with a Persian, no. 20. On this polemical work, see also Förstel 1993–96. Manuel II Palaiologos, Dialogues with a Persian, 244.34–39.

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eidos and hylē, form and matter, to which the emperor resorts, is decidedly Aristotelian, and it is from the same philosophical tradition that the term eidos entered the vocabulary of iconophile polemicists.102 In the writings of the patriarch Nikephoros and Theodore of Stoudios, eidos is one of the terms used to articulate the relationship between image and archetype. As in the quoted passage, it refers to the visual form or shape of a holy figure manifest in matter.103 However, unlike the iconophile theologians, Manuel is concerned not only with the image, but also with the kosmos that accompanies it. The proper veneration that he strives to legitimize is accorded to both. In the emperor’s account, the image and its precious adornment have a symbiotic existence and share the eidos of the holy figure depicted. This is an important extension of the iconophile argument, for it vindicates the practice of enhancing icons with the addition of costly materials. The holy figure’s eidos transforms the ontological status of kosmos and elevates it from the lowly realm of base matter to a higher form of materiality imbued with the presence of the sacred. It bears emphasizing that Manuel assigns an exceptionally prominent role to matter in his argument. For the kind of proskynēsis, or veneration, that the emperor advocates is not directed toward a holy figure’s eidos visibly manifest in a material, but rather to the material itself in its capacity as the bearer of the eidos.104 This understanding of form, matter, and veneration brings the emperor’s views very close to those expounded by Leo, metropolitan of Chalcedon, whose theology of the sacred image was officially condemned at the synod convened by Alexios I Komnenos at the Blachernai palace in Constantinople in 1094 or 1095. Leo developed his theology in response to the aforementioned expropriation and melting down of ecclesiastical treasures by Alexios I.105 The metropolitan branded the emperor’s policy of expropriation as sacrilege, 102

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On the Aristotelian strand in iconophile thought, most notably represented in the writings of the patriarch Nikephoros, see Αlexander 1958, 189–213; Baudinet 1978; Parry 1996, 52–63; Parry 2013. See, e.g., Nikephoros, Antirrheticus II, PG 100, col. 357C–D. At a later point in the dialogue, Manuel uses the term eidos to refer to the shape or form of a statue. Resorting to an admittedly anachronistic example, the emperor points out that, although gold is more valuable than bronze or stone, golden statues of pagan idols are destroyed, while a bronze or stone statue set up in memory of an individual is honored. This proves that a material is judged by its eidos: Manuel II Palaiologos, Dialogues with a Persian, 248.5–10. It should be noted that elsewhere in the same dialogue Manuel speaks of proskynēsis directed toward the holy figures depicted in images. See, e.g., Manuel II Palaiologos, Dialogues with a Persian, 243.11–16, 244.14–22. On Leo of Chalcedon’s affair, see especially Glabinas 1972; Barber 2007, 131–57, with further bibliography.

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arguing that matter, once impressed with the likeness of a holy figure, becomes itself endowed with sanctity and cannot be put to any other use. Underlying Leo’s argument was a definition of the icon as both the material object and the likeness it bears.106 Since a visible portrait of Christ is formally identical with its archetype, it partakes of Christ’s divinity and is, accordingly, deserving of latreia (“adoration”), or – in Leo’s words – it is “venerated in terms of adoration” (λατρευτικῶς προσκυνεῖται). The matter, on the other hand, as the vehicle through which the portrait is actualized and becomes visible, ought to be likewise venerated, but “relatively” (σχετικῶς προσκυνεῖται).107 The distinction between proskynēsis and latreia, or between relative veneration and veneration in terms of adoration, is critical and Leo is careful to affirm it. The problem is that, according to the orthodox iconophile position, it is misplaced. In the orthodox view, upheld by the synod at the Blachernai, latreia can be directed only to Christ himself, whereas an image of Christ – identified, it should be emphasized, with his likeness, not with the material icon – is available only for proskynēsis.108 The Fathers of the Second Council of Nicaea declared that “one may kiss and render to them [i.e., to holy icons] the veneration of honor, not the true adoration of our faith, which is due only to the divine nature”; and further: “he who venerates the icon venerates the hypostasis of the person depicted in it.”109 Strictly speaking, in this hierarchy of worship there is no place for matter.110

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See, e.g., the definition of the icon found in Leo’s letter to his nephew, Nicholas of Adrianople, which presents the most cogent exposition of the metropolitan’s theological position: εἰκὼν λέγεται ἐπί τε Χριστοῦ καὶ τῆς Θεοτόκου καὶ τῶν τιμίων ἀγγέλων καὶ πάντων τῶν ἁγίων καὶ ὁσίων ἀνδρῶν καὶ τὸ συναμφότερον· ἤτοι ἡ ὕλη τε καὶ ὁ ταύτῃ ἐγγραφεὶς χαρακτήρ (“An icon is said, in the case of Christ, the Mother of God, the venerable angels, and all the saints and holy men, to be both: the matter and the portrait inscribed in it”) (Lavriotes 1900, 415). Lavriotes 1900, 415: ἡ μὲν εἰκονικὴ ὕλη τιμητικῶς καὶ σχετικῶς προσκυνεῖται· τοὐτέστι διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸν θεοϋπόστατον Χριστοῦ χαρακτῆρα σχέσιν· ὁ δὲ ἐν αὐτῇ ὁρώμενος αὐτοῦ χαρακτήρ, οὐ δι’ ἄλλον τινά, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς δι’ ἑαυτὸν λατρευτικῶς προσκυνεῖται (“The iconic matter is venerated honorably and relatively, that is to say, through its relation to the theohypostatic portrait of Christ. As for his portrait visible in it [i.e., in the iconic matter], it is not through something else, but through itself that the portrait itself is venerated in terms of adoration”). See Sēmeiōma of Alexios I Komnenos, PG 127, cols. 980D–981A. On the synod at the Blachernai and its doctrinal definitions, see especially Glabinas 1972, 179–93. Mansi 13, col. 377D–E: καὶ ταύταις ἀσπασμὸν καὶ τιμητικὴν προσκύνησιν ἀπονέμειν, οὐ μὴν τὴν κατὰ πίστιν ἡμῶν ἀληθινὴν λατρείαν, ἣ πρέπει μόνῃ τῇ θείᾳ φύσει . . . ὁ προσκυνῶν τὴν εἰκόνα, προσκυνεῖ ἐν αὐτῇ τοῦ ἐγγραφομένου τὴν ὑπόστασιν. For a commentary on these pronouncements, see Uphus 2004, 322–37. See also Theodore of Stoudios, Letters, 1:167.85–90 (no. 57). On matter in iconophile thought, see especially Parry 1989; Olewiński 2004, 467–79.

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Leaving the question of the correct doctrine aside, Leo’s propositions should be seen neither as a misguided lapse into materialism, nor simply as a critique of lay control over consecrated church property clouded in abstruse theological speculations. As Annemarie Weyl Carr has astutely remarked, “his may be the most conscientiously observed and lucidly articulated explication of the relation of contemporary Byzantines to their icons.”111 Indeed, Leo’s emphasis on the icon as a physical thing, a material object imbued with the potency of the holy figure portrayed upon it, is consonant with the beliefs and practices surrounding image veneration in medieval Byzantium, most clearly epitomized in the rise of the cult of great charismatic icons from the eleventh century onward, with the Hodēgētria being the prime example. Invested with power and individuality, surrounded by rituals and gestures of piety, and often served by special confraternities of lay devotees, these icons operated not so much as sacred images but rather as sacred objects, repositories of tangible, particularized sanctity.112 The affirmation of the thingness of images is also evident in the practice of restoring icons. Careful to draw a distinction between the image as a material object and the likeness it bears, some iconophile theologians argued that, once an icon is damaged – and hence, its resemblance to the prototype lost – it ought to be destroyed.113 To what extent this dogmatic precept was applied in practice is difficult to say.114 By the Komnenian era, however, the repairing of old and venerable icons became not only common, but assumed such importance that it was deemed worthy of literary celebration. A series of twelfth-century dedicatory epigrams, for the most part preserved in the Anthologia Marciana, commemorate instances of icon restoration undertaken by patrons of varied social standing.115 Contemporary interest in preserving icons in their physical integrity is also attested in other sources. In the Typikon for the monastery of the 111 112

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Carr 1995, 584. The bibliography on the cult of great charismatic icons in medieval Byzantium is immense. See especially Belting 1994; Lidov 1996; Carr 2002; Pentcheva 2006a. On confraternities dedicated to the service of icons, see Nesbitt and Wiita 1975; Patterson Ševčenko 1995. See also Oikonomides 1995b, 163–65. See Parry 1989, 181. In some instances, icons damaged by wear or other causes were subjected to pious recycling. Antony of Novgorod, for example, reports that the wood of old icons, on which saints were no longer recognizable, was used for heating the holy myron at the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople: Kniga Palomnik, 9. Zagklas 2014, 271–75 (no. 9); Anthologia Marciana, nos. 43 (B5), 44 (B6), 64 (B26), 86 (B143), 94 (B151), 97 (B154), 99 (B156), 110 (B166); Balsamon, Poems, nos. XXIX, XXXIII, XXXV. See also Spingou 2012, 239–41. For the practice of restoring icons in Byzantium, see Chatzedakes 1986; Acheimastou-Potamianou 2002.

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Kosmosōteira, for instance, the sebastokratōr Isaak Komnenos provides specific instructions for the maintenance of the icons of Christ and the Virgin – the latter mentioned above as having been lavishly adorned with gold and silver – which were to be displayed at his tomb. As for the holy icons that have been dedicated to stand at my tomb, renowned as paintings, if ever over time their wooden parts should start to fall apart, the superior of the time must not fail to a first-rate craftsman to lay the images again on to other boards with skill out of elm wood, and must set the images back up where they were before, at my tomb.116

The technique to which Isaak refers in this passage was actually employed in the conservation of an icon of the Five Martyrs of Sebasteia, now in the Great Lavra on Mount Athos.117 A study of this icon has revealed that the figures of the saints were cut out of their original wooden support and transferred onto a new panel, which was subsequently gilded. This operation took place in 1197, the date recorded in an inscription on the back of the panel. When treated like a thing, a potent material object, the sacred image comes close to a relic.118 In a short epigram, penned for what appears to have been a personal devotional panel of an anonymous patroness, Philes exploits the icon-as-relic analogy to great effect.119 Ζωῆς σὺ καὶ τράπεζα καὶ κῆπος, κόρη· τῷ γὰρ ξύλῳ ζωοῖς με τῆς σῆς εἰκόνος θνήσκειν κατακριθεῖσαν ἡδονῆς ξύλῳ. You are both the table and garden of life, O Maiden. For you endow me with life by the wood of your icon, me, who was condemned to death by the wood of pleasure.

Significantly, the Virgin’s life-giving power, which the patroness invokes, is localized in the painting’s wooden support. Building upon the theme of wood, Philes ventures a bold antithesis between the “wood of pleasure”120 – that is, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, though which sin and 116

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Typikon of the Virgin Kosmosōteira, 145.1998–2003; trans. BMFD, 2:845 (N. Patterson Ševčenko). Chatzedakes 1986. Grabar 1943–46, 2:343–57, remains the classic treatment of the affinity between the ways in which icons and relics operate. See also Kitzinger 1954, 115–19; Belting 1994, esp. 59–62; Schmitt 1999; Shalina 2005, passim. Philes, Carmina II, 76 (no. XXXIV). For the expression ἡδονῆς ξύλον, see, e.g., Prodromos, Tetrasticha, no. 9a, v. 1.

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corruption were introduced into the world (cf. Genesis 2:9 and 3:1ff) – and the earthly wood used for the panel itself. Underlying the antithesis is the notion of Mary as the New Eve, a fitting gesture toward the role of the female sex in the economy of salvation and, by implication, toward the patroness’ own femininity. A Eucharistic allusion condensed in the metaphor of the Virgin as the “table of life”121 in line 1 brings into play a third wood, that of the Tree of Life identified with the Cross upon which Christ, the Life itself, was sacrificed. The implied association between the wooden panel and the wood of the Cross is neither far-fetched, nor accidental. In fact, the verses’ compressed charge and the use of arborescent imagery are strongly reminiscent of epigrams dedicated to reliquaries of the True Cross.122 The icon-as-relic in this case apparently mimics a staurothēkē. The opposite scenario is also possible. The staurothēkē in the cathedral treasury at Esztergom, Hungary, is an example of a reliquary turned into an icon (Plate 4, Figure 3.14).123 The object’s central field, dated to the twelfth century, displays a piece of the precious wood lodged into a recess in the form of a cross with two horizontal bars. The relic is surrounded by enameled figural imagery executed in Senkschmelz: a pair of lamenting angels in the upper zone, Saints Constantine and Helena in the middle, and two narrative scenes, Christ Helkomenos (Christ “drawn” to the Cross) and the Deposition, in the lower zone. The two scenes, in fact, function as a prologue and epilogue to the central episode in the story of the Passion, the Crucifixion of Christ, metonymically signified by the relic itself. The “narrativization” of the reliquary, otherwise unusual for Byzantine staurothēkai, inventively mobilizes the iconic potential of the embedded relic: the precious wood simultaneously is and represents the Cross. Note especially the downcast eyes and poses of the two grief-stricken angels, lifted directly from the Crucifixion iconography, or the gesture of the veiled figure in the lower left corner, striding in front of the Helkomenos. This emphasis upon narrative and representation rather than the mere “presentness” of the relic perhaps explains why sometime in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth 121 122

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Cf. the theotokion by Andrew of Crete cited below, Chapter 5, n. 109. Cf., e.g., the epigram composed by Nicholas Kallikles for a staurothēkē adorned by Eudokia Komnene, daughter of Alexios I: Poems, no. 27. For epigrams on staurothēkai, see Frolov 1961; Hörandner 2007a. On the Esztergom staurothēkē, see Hetherington 2003; Klein 2004, 134–37, with further bibliography. Prinzing 2001 has argued that the staurothēkē was sent by Isaac II Angelos as a gift to the archbishop Job of Esztergom. See also Prinzing 2012. However, as Hetherington 2003, esp. 91–93, has pointed out, the unmistakably Palaiologan workmanship of the frame indicates that the staurothēkē was in the Byzantine hands at least until c. 1300, when the frame was added.

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Figure 3.14 Staurothēkē, twelfth century (central field) and late thirteenth or early fourteenth century (frame), cathedral treasury, Esztergom (photo: Attila Mudrák / Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Adalbert Cathedral Treasury, Esztergom). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

century – a date suggested by style – the staurothēkē was enhanced by the addition of a silver-gilt frame worked in repoussé and partly enameled, the kind of kosmos commonly applied to icons. Originally, like most Byzantine staurothēkai with the relic embedded into a flat surface, the Esztergom specimen must have looked like a shallow box furnished with a sliding lid

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that would have covered the present central field.124 The addition of the frame along with the unobstructed display of the relic for the spectator’s gaze effectively transformed it into a devotional image. The Esztergom staurothēkē and Philes’ epigram demonstrate the extent to which the boundary between icon and relic could be permeable in Later Byzantium. The affirmation of matter as repository of the sacred, voiced in Manuel II’s Dialogues, may account in part for the sustained popularity of precious-metal revetments as a type of dedicatory offering from the twelfth century onward. Indeed, nowhere is the notion of icon-as-relic more evident than in the practice of encasing panel-painted icons with gold, silver, enamel, pearls, and precious stones. To compare an icon revetment to a reliquary container does not require a flight of imagination. One may go a step further and construe it as a kind of contact relic. Valerie Nunn has already ventured in this direction in her study of the Komnenian dedications of luxury encheiria arguing that icon veils were understood to function as brandea, pieces of cloth infused with power through contact with saints’ relics.125 Instances of miraculous cures effected by the application of encheiria are attested, the most notable example being that of the emperor Alexios I, who recovered from a serious illness after having himself wrapped in the veil suspended before the icon of Christ at the Chalke Gate of the Great Palace.126 The potency residing in an icon could be likewise transmitted to any article of its kosmos, be it a precious-metal appliqué or oil from the lamp burning in front of it.127 To adorn a sacred object, especially the one empowered by its antiquity or ritual use, let alone its miraculous capacity, was understandably a favored act of artistic patronage insofar as it provided a concrete, tangible way of accessing the object’s sanctity. The gesture of adorning creates a sense of physical proximity and contact, a kind of haptic engagement with the sacred, in which the object’s kosmos serves as a proxy for the patron. By being adorned, the object is personalized and its sacred potency, in a sense, harnessed for the benefit of a particular individual. In this respect, the increasing preoccupation with adornment represents another manifestation of the same shift in religious sensibility that gave rise to the “I”– speech as the dominant form of later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams. In Chapter 7, we shall examine in greater detail the intersection of adornment 124 126 127

125 As convincingly argued by Hetherington 2003, 90–91. Nunn 1986, 84–89. The episode is recorded in Zonaras, Epitome of Histories, 751.9–17. On the belief in charismatic and therapeutic properties of the oil from lamps suspended before cult images, see, e.g., Symeon of Thessalonike, De sacramentis, PG 155, col. 188C–D. For some examples of miracles performed by such oil, see Miljković 2011, 64, 100, 104.

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and personalization in the context of icon piety and explore how the icon’s kosmetic apparatus operated as an extension of the patron’s self. Of more pressing concern to us at the moment is to reconsider the agency of kosmos beyond its power to personalize the sacred by turning to one of its fundamental roles – the role of mediation. The adornment of a sacred object – be it an icon, a relic, or a Gospel book – may be said to function as a threshold. It defines a space of access and contact, a meeting ground of sorts.128 This applies not only to the capacity of the object’s kosmos to establish a connection between the patron and the numinous power imbuing the object, but also to its mediating role on behalf of the spectator. To the extent that the kosmos qualifies the object, organizes and stages its appearance, and communicates its significance, the kosmos is charged with an adjectival and representational force. The silver frame that the archbishop Demetrios Chomatenos affixed to his icon of Christ re-presented the Lord’s countenance in quite a literal sense (Figure 3.1). The shimmering precious metal brought out, externalized, and made visible the inherent sanctity of this image, and in doing so, it fundamentally shaped the viewer’s experience of the icon. The dedicated frame imparted an added expressive dimension to the portrayal of Christ and amplified its impact like an exclamation point. As if to complement and highlight the frame’s mediating role, the series of holy figures placed upon it were themselves invested with the task of mediation. Interceding on behalf of Chomatenos, but also of any other devotee approaching the icon in prayer, these figures implicitly marked the icon’s kosmos as a point of access, a permeable margin that both regulated and facilitated one’s approach to the image of Christ. In performing such a mediating operation, the articles of kosmos often worked in concert with inscribed words. In the case of Chomatenos’ icon, the dedicatory verses hammered into the frame called attention to the beautifying power of the archbishop’s offering and further enhanced its preciousness by imprinting it with the stamp of logos. The inscribed text, however, could qualify and stage the object for the spectator in a much more emphatic fashion. The staurothēkē in the shape of a silver-gilt cross, housed in the cathedral treasury at Genoa and commonly referred to after its former owners as the Croce degli Zaccaria, provides a particularly 128

For a congenial account of frames, margins, and transitional spaces in Byzantine art, see Peers 2004. Also relevant for the present discussion are various perspectives on frames and framing advanced in the essays collected in Duro 1996.

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Figure 3.15 Croce degli Zaccaria (obverse), restored 1278–83, cathedral treasury, Genoa (photo: D. Vinco / Comune di Genova, Archivio fotografico dei Musei di Strada Nuova)

eloquent example (Figures 3.15 and 3.16).129 Encrusted with gems and pearls, the obverse of this reliquary contains two fragments of the True Cross lodged in a cruciform cavity. The reverse, worked in repoussé, 129

On the Croce degli Zaccaria, see Wolf, Dufour Bozzo, and Calderoni Masetti 2004, 265–67 (F. De Cupis); Cavana and Calcagno 2013, with further bibliography. For the inscriptions on the cross and its lost container, see Mercati 1970, 2:520–33; Guillou 1996, nos. 20 and 21; BEIÜ II, no. Me68.

Kosmos, matter, and the sacred

Figure 3.16 Croce degli Zaccaria (reverse), restored 1278–83, cathedral treasury, Genoa (photo: D. Vinco / Comune di Genova, Archivio fotografico dei Musei di Strada Nuova)

displays five medallions with images of holy figures represented en buste: the medallion with the Virgin orans is placed at the intersection of the arms of the cross, while those with Christ, John the Evangelist, and two archangels, Michael and Gabriel, occupy its extremities. A dedicatory inscription in accentuated uncials running along the arms of the cross reads: Τοῦτο τὸ θεῖον ὅπλον Βάρδας μὲν ἐτεκτήνατο, Ἐφέσου δὲ ἀρχιθύτης Ἰσαὰκ παλαιωθὲν ἀνεκαίνισεν (“Bardas fashioned this divine weapon. Since it became timeworn, Isaac, metropolitan of Ephesos, restored it”). The same individuals are recorded in a longer poetic dedication in the

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dodecasyllable that once graced the now-lost reliquary container made of gold, wherein the cross was formerly enshrined.

5

Βάρδας ὁ καῖσαρ ὑπερέντιμον ξύλον κοσμεῖ χρυσῷ τε καὶ λίθοις καὶ μαργάροις κειμήλιον θεὶς ἑστίᾳ θεηγόρου. Κυριακὸς δὲ τὴν χρυσῆν αὐτῷ θίβην πρόεδρος εἰργάσατο τῆς ἐκκλησίας. θραυσθέντα δ’ αὐτὰ τῷ μακρῷ λίαν χρόνῳ ὁ Ἰσαὰκ ἤγαγεν εἰς κρείττω θέαν πρῶτος θύμασιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς πρακτέοις. The kaisar Bardas adorned the most venerable wood with gold, precious stones, and pearls, a treasure which he placed upon the altar of the Theologian [i.e., John the Evangelist]. Kyriakos, metropolitan of the church , made a gold container for it. Since these were damaged by the long passage of time, Isaac, foremost in sacrifices but also in his accomplishments, restored them to a better state.

Based on these dedicatory inscriptions, the history of the staurothēkē may be reconstructed as follows.130 The reliquary cross was originally furnished with a precious kosmos and dedicated to the basilica of Saint John the Evangelist in Ephesos by a certain kaisar Bardas, identifiable either with the powerful uncle of Michael III, who held this title between 862 and 866, or with the father of Nikephoros II, Bardas Phokas, kaisar between 963 and 968.131 The metropolitan Kyriakos of Ephesos, who lived in the first half of the eleventh century, commissioned a golden container (θίβη) for the cross. Over two centuries later, Kyriakos’ successor, the metropolitan Isaac (1278–1283) – a prelate who served as pneumatikos, or confessor, to Michael VIII Palaiologos – restored the cross and the container and had the two inscriptions written upon them. The purpose of these texts, which succinctly yet comprehensively chronicle the object’s history, was essentially twofold. On the one hand, the inscriptions were meant to commemorate the restoration of the staurothēkē and praise the metropolitan Isaac by inserting his name into a genealogy of devout and affluent patrons. On the other hand, they were mobilized to authenticate the relic by fleshing out the antiquity and 130

131

On the individuals mentioned in the inscriptions, see the references cited in the preceding note. On the metropolitan Isaac, see also PLP, no. 8253. For the subsequent, Genoese history of the staurothēkē, see especially Cavana and Calcagno 2013, 985–92. For the latter possibility, see L. Bouras 1979, 25, 30 n. 34.

Kosmos, matter, and the sacred

illustrious parentage of its kosmos. At a time when the sheer number of fragments of the True Cross in circulation must have given rise to suspicion even in the most zealous of worshipers, the inscriptions implicitly proclaimed that the particles lodged inside the reliquary truly belonged to the “most venerable wood” upon which the Lord had been crucified. The absence of any personal tone, affective language, or direct address in the metrical inscription – otherwise characteristic of most later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams – combined with the use of a distancing past tense132 only strengthened the effect of “objective” historical reportage. As if to complement the work of authentication performed by the inscribed words, the gem-studded kosmos translated the relic’s preciousness into a dazzling spectacle of costly materials. Gold, pearls, and precious stones figured for the viewer what the words intimated by recording the object’s history. A comparable task of authentication was assigned to the inscribed kosmos of a now-lost sacred image, known to us through an epigram in the Anthologia Marciana.133 Sometime in the middle of the twelfth century, the epi tou kanikleiou Theodore Styppeiotes set out to enlarge a private chapel dedicated to Saint Demetrios in his Constantinopolitan residence and to erect another sanctuary above it.134 As part of the rebuilding campaign, he planned to move an image of the saint – probably a painting showing the saint’s martyrdom by spears135 – to a higher position. After several terrifying visions, Styppeiotes realized that the saint was displeased with the proposed alterations. Abandoning his initial plan, Styppeiotes set up the image in its original place, had it adorned, and commissioned a poem in the form of a prayer to the saint, our epigram, to record these events for posterity.

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133 134

135

The only exception is the present κοσμεῖ in the second line of the metrical inscription, perhaps required metri causa. See Mercati 1970, 2:530. Anthologia Marciana, no. 65 (B27). This information is mainly provided in the title which reads: Εἰς τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ ἁγίου Δημητρίου ἥτις ἵστατο ἐν τῷ ναῷ τῷ ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ τοῦ πρώην ἐπὶ τοῦ κανικλείου, τοῦ Στυππειώτου Θεοδώρου, ὅτε ἐβούλετο οὗτος μεταθεῖναι ταύτην ἀπὸ τοῦ χθαμαλωτέρου εἰς τὸ ὑψηλότερον, ὥστε φυλαχθῆναι καὶ τὸ κάτω θυσιαστήριον, καὶ ἕτερον ἄνωθεν γενέσθαι (“On the image of Saint Demetrios, which stood in the church at the oikos of the former epi tou kanikleiou Theodore Styppeiotes, when he wished to move it from a lower to a higher level, so as to maintain the lower altar and construct another one above”). On Theodore Styppeiotes, see Kresten 1978; Varzos 1984, no. 146α. Note the reference to τῶν μαρτυρικῶν τοὺς τύπους λογχευμάτων (“the images of the martyr’s wounds by spears”) in line 31 as well as the opening line λόγχῃ πόθου σου καρδίαν τετρωμένος (“wounded in the heart by the spear of my desire for you”). On the iconography of the Martyrdom of Saint Demetrios, see Xyngopoulos 1970, esp. 28–29, 41–43; Xyngopoulos 1975–76; Kyriakoudes 2006–7.

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ὡς ἂν δὲ τοῦτο μὴ βυθὸς λήθης λάβῃ, ταὐτὸν δέ τις δράσειε τῶν ὀψιγόνων κἀντεῦθεν ἴσοις τοῖς φοβήτροις ἐντύχῃ κοσμῶν τύπον σὸν ταῦτα πρὸς μνήμην γράφω, Θεόδωρος γένος μὲν ὢν Στυπειώτης τὴν ἀξίαν δὲ νῦν κανικλείου φέρων In order that the depth of oblivion may not seize this , lest some of my descendants commit the same error and hence experience similar horrors, I, Theodore, a Styppeiotes by birth, presently holding the dignity of kanikleios, adorn your image and record these for memory.

Unlike the inscriptions of the metropolitan Isaac, which recapitulate the glorious past of the Ephesian staurothēkē in order to reassert its sanctity, the memorial commissioned by Styppeiotes seeks to construct a sacred history for his image by relating a revelation of the fearsome potency residing in it. This history is decidedly a personal one – a private miracle chronicled for a restricted audience of the patron’s household and his immediate social circle, the select few who had access to the patron’s domestic chapel.136 Its setting is an aristocratic oikos, not a venerable pilgrimage shrine such as the basilica of Saint John the Evangelist at Ephesos. Yet the underlying logic is the same. The precious materials and written words attached to a pre-existing object – be it an image or a relic – declare and make manifest its tangible, materially localized sanctity.

136

The painting of the Martyrdom of Saint Demetrios may not have been the only image credited with supernatural powers in the Styppeiotes household. Two poems in the Anthologia Marciana (nos. 261 [B94] and 262 [B95]) commemorate the miraculous escape from death of Theodore’s son Manuel who fell from a triklinos on an upper floor of the family residence and survived. One of the poems is the ēthopoiia of Manuel in political verse mentioned in Chapter 2. The other poem takes the form of a thank-offering in the dodecasyllable addressed to Christ by the grateful father. The poem bears the following title: Στίχοι γεγονότες ὅτε ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἐπὶ τοῦ κανικλείου πεσὼν ἀφ’ ὑψηλοῦ τρικλίνου ἐν ᾧ ἦν ὁ Χριστὸς εἰκονισμένος, οὐδόλως ἐβλάβη (“Verses composed when the son of the epi tou kanikleiou fell from a high triklinos, in which Christ was depicted, and remained completely unharmed”). Since this poem has all the characteristics of a dedicatory epigram, it is not inconceivable that the verses were commissioned to be inscribed upon the image of Christ in the triklinos, mentioned in the title, which may have been seen as the agent behind the miracle. Kouphopoulou 1989, who published the two poems in full and commented upon them, does not consider the possibility that the verses in the dodecasyllable may have served as an inscriptional epigram. In all likelihood, the miraculous rescue of the young Manuel Styppeiotes is also commemorated in an epigram attributed to Theodore Prodromos (Carmina historica, no. LXXIII) on a sumptuous encheirion that the boy’s mother, Eudokia Komnene, dedicated to the Virgin Hodēgētria.

Cladding/clothing

The case of Styppeiotes’ painting of Saint Demetrios is instructive insofar as it shows how transformative the mediation of kosmos could be. It seems evident that the material and textual re-presentation of this image in its original location did more than enhance it, organize its appearance, and communicate its sanctity. The inscribed kosmos effectively empowered the image. Granted, the portrayal of the great Thessalonian martyr in Styppeiotes’ household chapel showed its potency in a private revelation, but what ultimately transformed it into a charismatic icon for future audiences was its kosmetic apparatus. The transformative force of adornment makes itself felt in the most palpable of ways in the Esztergom staurothēkē (Plate 4, Figure 3.14). As we have seen, the piece of the True Cross enshrined in this reliquary received a twofold kosmos in the course of its later medieval history: the twelfthcentury container, only the central portion of which remains, and the late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century frame. This second layer of amplification circumscribes the reliquary like a periphereion, an article of adornment commonly affixed to icons. The addition of this frame – populated, as in the case of Chomatenos’ icon, with intercessory figures – did not serve merely to further augment and embellish the reliquary, but to transform it into an image. Reframing, as it were, the relic of the True Cross, the frame both marked and enacted this change in the object’s status. The capacity of kosmos to inflect and alter the nature, function, and meaning of the object it accompanies brings us back to the condition of parergonality, as theorized by Derrida. Similar to Derrida’s ergon and parergon, the object and its kosmos may be said to stand in a relationship of mutual dependence, in which the latter is not so much an adjunct, a sumptuous accessory, but rather an essential component of the former. As much as the kosmos affirms the object’s sanctity, it is also an agency that makes the object sacred. In what follows, I shall substantiate this claim by tracing the web of associations between adornment, dress, and nudity – a conceptual nexus that throws into relief the paradoxical status of kosmos in Byzantine culture.

Cladding/clothing The opus of Theodore Rallis, a Greek Orientalist painter and student of Gérôme, includes a painting entitled The Booty (Ἡ Λεία), exhibited at the Salon of 1906 (Plate 5, Figure 3.17).137 The painting shows the interior of a 137

Chrestou 1981, 77–79; Palioura 2008, esp. 201–2.

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Figure 3.17 Theodore Rallis, The Booty, c. 1905, National Gallery – Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens (photo: Stavros Psiroukis / National Gallery – Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Collection of the E. Koutlidis Foundation, Athens). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

Greek Orthodox church plundered by the infidel, presumably the Ottomans, whose menacing presence is metonymically suggested by a pair of muskets leaning against a nave pillar as well as by a banner rested in the pews and a bag of pistols hanging next to it. Roped to the pews is a captive,

Cladding/clothing

a beautiful young woman with bare breast, her hands tied behind her back, whose big dark eyes cast a disturbingly fixed piteous gaze upon the beholder. Further to the right, scattered on the church floor, lie candlesticks, chalices, censers, service books, and other liturgical objects. A templon screen topped by a broken cross closes off the scene in the background with three large panel-painted icons filling its intercolumniations: the icons of Christ and of the Virgin and Child flank the open royal doors in an arrangement typical of Orthodox churches, while that of Saint John the Baptist is placed on the far right. Underneath the latter icon, partly cut off by the picture frame, stands its detached silver revetment scintillating in the subdued soft light of the nave. The painting’s kitschy sentimentality aside, what is of interest to us here is the symptomatic, if not intentional, juxtaposition of an icon despoiled of its precious-metal revetment and a half-disrobed female body. By this juxtaposition, the painting visualizes, as it were, two tropes common in Byzantine writing: first, the comparison between kosmos and clothing; and second, the notion of sacrilege as forced denudement, the undressing of sacred objects by the removal of their kosmos. In Byzantine epigrammatic poetry, the language and imagery of clothing are associated in particular with the adornment of icons. Of course, the use of sartorial metaphors in reference to luxury icon textiles, encheiria and podeai, is hardly surprising,138 but they are deployed, too, to describe precious-metal revetments. Characteristic of the latter usage is an epigram composed by Manuel Philes for an icon of Saint Onouphrios.139

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Γυμνὸς μὲν Ἀδὰμ, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ αἰδοῦς ἐκρύβη· γυμνὸς δὲ καὶ σύ, πάτερ, ἀλλ’ οὐκ αἰσχύνῃ· ταῖς γὰρ φυσικαῖς ἡδοναῖς οὐκ ἐκλάπης. ἐγὼ δὲ γυμνὸς εὑρεθεὶς πρὸς αἰσχύνην (ἡ σὰρξ γὰρ ἡ σύνοικος ἠπάτησέ με), κυκλῶ σε φαιδρῶς τῇ στολῇ τῇ συνθέτῳ. τάχα με τὴν σὴν αὖθις ἐνδύσει σκέπην ὁ Βασίλειος οὗτος ἑστὼς ἐνθάδε· καὶ γὰρ ἀγαθὴν εὐτυχήσω τὴν τρύγην, φυτηκομῶν τὸν κῆπον ἐκ χρυσαργύρου. Adam was naked, but he hid himself out of shame. You are also naked, father, but you are not ashamed; for you have not been deceived by the

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139

See, e.g., Anthologia Marciana, nos. 59 (B21), 70 (B126), 86 (B143); Xanthopoulos, Poems, no. 9. Philes, Carmina II, 93 (no. LII).

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pleasures of nature. But since I have been stripped naked of any shame (for the cohabiting flesh beguiled me), I encircle you joyously with a composite robe. In turn, this Basil, who is standing here, shall clothe me quickly in your protection; for I shall also obtain a good crop by taking care of the garden made of gilded silver.

Philes penned two more epigrams on the same subject; without doubt, they were intended as trial pieces from which an anonymous patron could choose one in order to commemorate his adorning of the icon with a silver-gilt revetment.140 Regardless of the patron’s choice, the theme of nudity in the present verses is certainly well suited to the iconography of Saint Onouphrios. As seen in an early Palaiologan fresco from the church of Saint Nicholas at Manastir near Prilep (Figure 3.18), this celebrated ascetic from the heroic age of Egyptian monasticism is generally represented naked in Byzantine art, with his modesty protected only by a bundle of palm fronds or fig leaves, or by his prodigiously long white beard.141 The verses contrast the saint’s nudity, a sign of his apatheia, his freedom from passions and sin,142 with that of Adam, whose transgression ushered sin into the world, and also with the moral nudity of the patron, who selfdeprecatingly confesses that he is deprived of any sense of shame. Hoping to obtain, or literally, to be clothed in the saint’s skepē – “protection” but also “covering” – the patron clothes the naked ascetic with a preciousmetal revetment. The revetment is described as a “composite robe,” surely in reference to the mixed nature of gilded silver, and further compared with a garden in the concluding verses echoing the allusion to Paradise introduced through the figure of Adam in the opening line.143 Curiously, 140

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143

Philes, Carmina II, 94 (nos. LIII [= Braounou-Pietsch 2010, no. 67] and LIV). Another epigram on Saint Onouphrios by Philes (Carmina I, 214 [no. XXXVIII]), which does not belong to this series, similarly employs the motifs of clothing, nudity, and adornment, and thus may have been composed, too, for an icon revetment. Again, the name of the commissioner is not recorded. On these poems, see Talbot 1999, 87–88. It should be mentioned that a contemporary of Philes, the epi tou stratou Theodore Doukas Mouzakios (PLP, no. 19428), donated an “adorned icon” (εἰκόνισμα κεκοσμημένον) of Saint Onouphrios to the convent of the Bebaia Elpis in Constantinople, along with 100 hyperpyra, for the sake of his burial: Typikon of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, 94.4–14. On the cult and iconography of Saint Onouphrios, see Maladakes and Strate 2006, esp. 319–20, 323–27. For the fresco at Manastir, see Koco and Miljković-Pepek 1958, 70–71; Kostovska 2008, 361–62. On nudity and apatheia, see Maladakes and Strate 2006, 323; Maguire and Maguire 2007, 102–3. It is conceivable that the simile of garden was also inspired by the revetment’s floral ornamentation. Palmettes, undulating plant motifs, and more abstract vegetal interlace belong to the standard repertoire of ornamental forms found on Byzantine revetments, which may

Cladding/clothing

Figure 3.18 Saint Onouphrios, 1270/71, church of Saint Nicholas at Manastir near Prilep (photo: Giorgos Fousteris)

this exchange of garments is mediated by a third figure, Saint Basil the Younger, a tenth-century ascetic and miracle-worker, who is called upon to act as the patron’s intercessor with the great desert father. We should

account for Philes’ frequent invocation of garden and paradisiacal imagery in his epigrams devoted to icons mounted in precious metal. See Grabar 1975b, 16.

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imagine him portrayed either in the icon, alongside Saint Onouphrios, or upon the silver-gilt revetment encasing it.144 Philes’ comparison of the icon’s precious-metal cladding with an article of clothing is a felicitous, if somewhat obvious, conceit in view of Saint Onouphrios’ nudity. The same motif, however, is encountered in epigrams on luxury revetments affixed to images of fully clothed saints. In a poem composed by Theodore Balsamon to accompany the dedication of a silvergilt revetment to an icon of Saint Theodore Stratēlatēs, the manufacture of the icon’s kosmos is likened to weaving.145 The verses address the great warrior saint in the voice of an anonymous patron expressing his gratitude for the favors that the saint showered upon him. After making the usual disclaimer that no repayment is sufficient to counter the saint’s charis, the patron presents his gift declaring,

15

ὅθεν πρὸς ἀπόδειξιν εὐχαριστίας ἀργυροχρυσόμικτον ὑφάνας κρόκην τῷ μαρτυρικῷ προστίθημι μανδύᾳ, ὅν σοι Θεὸς δέδωκεν ὡς στρατηλάτῃ. Therefore, as a proof of my gratitude, I have woven a woof with threads of silver and gold, which I add to the martyr’s cloak that God presented to you as to a general.

The precious-metal mount is here understood as yet another outer garment, a sumptuous mantle worn over the saint’s mandyas.146

144

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146

The identity of the intercessor, simply referred to as Βασίλειος – Basil – in the first two epigrams of the series, is revealed in the third poem (Carmina II, 94 [no. LIV, v. 7]): νέον δὲ Βασίλειον ἐν χρῷ δεικνύων (“showing Basil the Younger nearby”). Talbot 1999, 87–88, has mistakenly identified this figure with the commissioner and argued that Basil was portrayed on the revetment as a “standing donor figure.” See also Braounou-Pietsch 2010, 133–35. On Saint Basil the Younger, see ODB, s.v. ‘Basil the Younger’; Magdalino 1999. Philes’ epigrams provide an important piece of evidence for the veneration of Basil, whose name, it should be pointed out, does not appear in any of the versions of the Synaxarion of Constantinople, and whose images, to the best of my knowledge, are otherwise unattested in the visual record. Balsamon, Poems, no. XXIV.A. The following poem in the same edition (no. XXIV.B) is dedicated to the same subject, but it does not feature clothing metaphors. It is not clear whether the saintly general was depicted in military or court dress. The word mandyas is not of much help, as, in this case, it seems to have been used in the generic sense. On military cloaks in Byzantium, see Grotowski 2010, 254–71. For special mandyai worn by monastics, bishops, and some church officials, including the emperor in his capacity of depotatos, see ODB, s.v. ‘Mandyas’; Parani 2003, 15–16. On the iconography of Saint Theodore Stratēlatēs, see especially Walter 2003, 44–66; Grotowski 2010, passim.

Cladding/clothing

The figural language used by Philes and Balsamon is by no means limited to poetry.147 The similarity between revetting and clothing appears to have been self-evident enough to leave its imprint on common parlance and make its way into lexica. It is noteworthy that, in Modern Greek usage, precious-metal covers affixed to icons are sometimes referred to as πουκάμισα (“shirts”) or ποδιές (“aprons” or “skirts”).148 Moreover, the standard term for icon revetment in Modern Greek is ἐπένδυση, a word that carries the connotation of “clothing” or “dressing,” as it derives from the verb ἐνδύω (“to put on” clothes).149 Not surprisingly, a similar vocabulary is attested in Church Slavonic as well. For instance, the word riza, meaning “garment,” may denote a preciousmetal revetment.150 If icons sheathed with gold and silver and studded with gems and pearls were seen as “clothed,” plain wooden panels covered by nothing but a coat of paint could accordingly be slighted as “underdressed.” In a letter to the metropolitan of Chalcedon, Michael Psellos confesses his penchant for simple, unadorned icons, which he was even prepared to shamelessly steal from churches, and which he praised above all “because they show the art of the painter.” Psellos amassed quite a number of these panels (σανίδια). “They are mostly without gold [ἄχρυσα] or silver [ἀνάργυρα],” he writes, “like some of the new senators, who have neither crosses nor purple garments [ἄσταυροί τε καὶ ἄβλαττοι].”151 Psellos’ point of reference – and the target of his sarcastic aside – are the civil servants and professionals for whom Constantine IX Monomachos opened up the Senate, parvenus of less noble origin and with presumably less cash in hand than the members of the old senatorial aristocracy.152 147

148 149

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Nor is the language of clothing used only in reference to luxury revetments encasing images of holy figures. See, e.g., the following entry in the inventory included in Typikon of the Virgin Petritzonitissa, 121.1682: σταυρὸς ξύλινος ἠμφιεσμένος μετὰ χρυσοῦ καὶ λίθων πέντε ὑακινθίνων μενεψῶν (“A wooden cross dressed with gold and precious stones, five bluishpurple hyacinths”). For the affinity between garments and luxury book covers, see Atsalos 2000, esp. 460–62. Oikonomake-Papadopoulou 1980, 23. Demetrakos, s.v. ἐπένδυσις. Pace Grabar 1975b, 16, who, among the terms used for icon revetment in Byzantine sources, lists ἐπένδυσις, without giving specific references, I have not been able to trace this usage in Medieval Greek. See also Rhoby 2012b, 122–23. Sterligova 2000, 46; Sterligova 2008a, 244. See also Abel 1978, 90. Psellos, Letters (K-D), no. 129. Psellos’ confession was prompted by the metropolitan’s refusal to accept some icons that the scholar had sent to him as a gift. On this letter, see Oikonomides 1991, 36; Cutler and Browning 1992, 28–29. Lemerle 1977, 287–93; Cheynet 2009.

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Sartorial metaphors can be employed in the opposite direction, namely, by comparing a sumptuously dressed individual to an artwork supplied with kosmos. Again, we may turn to Psellos for an illustration. In his account of the scandalous liaison between the empress Zoe and her young Paphlagonian lover, the future Michael IV, in the Chronographia, Psellos concedes, not without irony, “That she should adorn him, as if he were some statue [ἄγαλμα], cover him with gold, make him resplendent with rings and garments of woven gold cloth, I do not regard as anything remarkable, for what would an enamored empress not provide for her beloved?ˮ153 What scandalized Psellos and his contemporaries was that Zoe would let her lover sit on the throne and even don the imperial crown. Byzantine formal dress, in fact, presents a particularly felicitous point of comparison for luxury covers affixed to icons and other religious objects. With its dense layering of tunics and mantels, embroidered hems and collars, jewelry and insignia, with its rich fabrics lined with pearls and studded with gems, it bespeaks the same predilection for sumptuous display that is a distinguishing feature of sacred kosmos. It is indicative that, writing in the twelfth century, Eustathios of Thessalonike could apply the expression “to don a coat of stone” (λάϊνον χιτῶνα φορεῖν), a Homeric metaphor for being stoned to death (Iliad 3.57), to the contemporary fashion of wearing robes besprinkled with pearls and precious stones.154 Although the Byzantines wore trousers and other kinds of tight-fitting clothes, their formal dress rarely followed the natural lines of the body. Rather, notably in the case of female costume, it tended to deny the corporeality of the figure, enveloping the body as a kind of shell or screen for the display of precious substances, not unlike an icon revetment or a deluxe book binding.155 153

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Psellos, Chronographia 3.20; trans. Sewter 1953, 50, slightly modified. On the metaphor of animate statue in Byzantine literature, see Papaioannou 2006; Papaioannou 2013, esp. 179–91. Eustathios of Thessalonike, Parekbolai on Homer’s Iliad, 1:598.27–28. Cited after Kazhdan and Wharton Epstein 1985, 75–76. On official and aristocratic costume in medieval Byzantium, see Ebersolt 1923, 114–29; Piltz 1994; Parani 2003, 51–100; Ball 2005; Kalamara 2012; Macrides, Munitiz, and Angelov 2013, 319–58. On Byzantine dress in general, see also Koukoules 1948–57, 2.2:5–59, 6:267–94. Byzantine liturgical vestments show an even more pronounced emphasis on rich display and the flattening of the body. See Woodfin 2012, esp. 93–95. The most “revetment-like” of all formal costumes in Byzantium was naturally the one worn by the emperor. As has rightly been pointed out, “[t]he imperial garments were so stiffened with gold embroidery and weighed down with gems as to render the emperor . . . virtually immobile” (ODB, s.v. ‘Costume’, at 539). The literature on Byzantine imperial attire and insignia is vast, but see, e.g., K. Wessel, E. Piltz, and C. Nicolescu in RbK, s.v. ‘Insignien’; Parani 2003, 11–50.

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The portraits of aristocratic couples, dating from the 1330s, in the illuminated copy of the Typikon of the Constantinopolitan convent of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis in Oxford (Bodleian Library, Ms. Lincoln College gr. 35) clearly reveal a taste for closed, massive forms, rich patterning, and visual splendor in contemporary fashion.156 On folio 4r, Michael Philanthropenos and his wife Anna, granddaughter of the convent’s foundress, Theodora Palaiologina Synadene, are portrayed raising their hands in prayer toward a diminutive half-figure of Christ Emmanuel hovering above (Figure 3.19).157 Bareheaded, Michael wears a long orange caftanlike garment commonly referred to as kabbadion, the standard type of official male dress under the Palaiologoi.158 The garment, made of a costly fabric adorned with golden palmettes, is tied around the waist with a long gold-sheathed leather belt, into which is tucked a ceremonial handkerchief. Beneath the kabbadion’s elbow-length sleeves, a white tunic ornamented with gold thread is visible. Anna’s attire is still more impressive. She wears a gold diadem with hanging ornaments, or prependoulia, and large elaborate earrings. Her red two-piece robe with excessively wide pointed sleeves, trimmed with fur, cloaks her entire body from chin to toe. The robe consists of a blouse with a tasseled fringe worn over a long tunic. Its gold patterning is similar to that on Michael’s kabbadion, except that its palmettes are heart-shaped and slightly larger. At the upper arms, the robe is further adorned with sewn rectangular pieces of gold-embroidered cloth studded with pearls and precious stones. Looking at Anna’s sumptuous gown and jewelry in this miniature, one is reminded of Theodore Metochites’ description of feminine attire – or feminine kosmos (θηλυτεράων κόσμος), as he puts it – in effusive hexameters written after his political demise, in which the former prime minister laments the loss of his muchtreasured possessions, including articles of female clothing that belonged to the ladies of his household: lovely golden-bound works of pearls and gems as are by custom worn by women, upon all the body: upon the head, in the ears, wrapping around the neck and breast, on the arms, whatever custom prescribes; also rings and girdles and other finely wrought, variegated works of plentiful materials; mantles woven with golden knots, with beauteous golden stitchwork about the shoulders in front and then, when donned, what marvel to behold from 156

157

Spatharakis 1976, 190–206; Hutter 1977–97, 5.1:56–62 (no. 24), 5.2: figs. 209–10, 212–17. For the complicated chronology of the text of the Typikon and the Lincoln College manuscript, see Hutter 1995. On the manuscript and its miniatures, see also Belting 1970, 31–32, 76–77, 81–83; Brubaker 1996; Hennessy 2007. 158 On these figures, see PLP, nos. 29737 and 29778. See especially Parani 2007.

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Figure 3.19 Portrait of Michael Philanthropenos and his wife Anna, Typikon of the convent of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, Ms. Lincoln College gr. 35, fol. 4r, c. 1330s, Bodleian Library, Oxford (photo: Rector and Fellows of Lincoln College, Oxford)

Cladding/clothing behind the things skilled men have wrought – ingenious, elaborate adornments [περίκοσμα] are these works! – with fastening closures which bound them up, as with bolts, which had pearls and gems.159

The sheer plethora of verbal ornament produced by this obsessive enumeration conveys the spectacle of densely textured materials and fabrics that defined Byzantine aristocratic attire. As a matter of fact, the boundary between the two kinds of luxury kosmos – the adornment attached to religious objects, on the one hand, and personal items of clothing and jewelry, on the other – was not as strictly demarcated as one would assume. The Vita of Saint Mary the Younger provides a characteristic example. Upon the protagonist’s death, her husband discovered that, much to his surprise, her coffers were empty. The narrator tells us that he immediately called for a slave girl and asked her where Mary’s kosmos was – her earrings of precious stones and pearls, her gold rings, and her silk garments – to which the girl replied: “With some she freed captives, with others she redeemed the debts of those who could not pay, with others still she fed the poor, and her garments she dedicated (ἀνέθηκε) to the churches, some to cover the holy altar tables and others to adorn the rest of the church buildings.ˮ160 Evidently, the wardrobe of the pious could be used to drape the house of God. The overlap between sacred and secular kosmos was especially common in the realm of icon veneration. After the death of his wife Maria, the eldest daughter of John II Komnenos, the kaisar John Rogerios Dalassenos dedicated some of her jewelry to an icon of the Mother of God. The Anthologia Marciana preserves an epigram composed to celebrate this act of piety and conjugal love.161

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161

Ζυγοστατήσας παρ’ ἐμοὶ πόθους δύο, τὸν πρὸς τὰ ῥευστὰ καὶ τὸν εἰς σέ, παρθένε, ἔκλινα τὴν πλάστιγγα πρὸς τὸν σὸν πλέον καὶ χρύσεόν σοι κόσμον εἰσφέρειν θέλων τὸν φίλτερόν μοι κόσμον ἐν χρυσοῖς φέρω, ὃν εἶχεν εὐπρέπειαν εἰς τὸ σαρκίον, ἢ μᾶλλον αὐτὸν ἀντεκάλλυνε πλέον ... ἡ πορφυρανθὴς σύζυγός μου Μαρία

Metochites, Poems ‘To Himself’, 118.121–33 (no. XIX); trans. ibid., 119. AASS, Novembris IV (1925), col. 697B; trans. A. E. Laiou in Talbot 1996, 267, with minor modifications. Anthologia Marciana, no. 52 (B14). On the kaisar John Rogerios Dalassenos, see Stiernon 1964, 185–87; Nesbitt 2004, 211–13 (no. 3).

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Weighing two of my desires, one for transient things and the other for you, O Virgin, I tipped the scales in your favor, and wishing to present you with a gold adornment, I offer you the most beloved of my gold adornments, which lent beauty to the body of my purple-blossoming wife Maria . . . or rather, they took their beauty from her.162

Passing from the secular to the sacred sphere and from the princess’s body to the Virgin’s icon, the gold jewelry dedicated by the kaisar John essentially retained its function of personal adornment. Whether owned by Maria or Mary, it remained an article of feminine kosmos. It is not clear whether Maria’s jewelry was melted down and reworked into a gold revetment or whether it was simply attached to the icon. Be that as it may, the practice of adorning cult images with actual pieces of personal jewelry was customary in Byzantium.163 John Lazaropoulos’ fourteenth-century collection of miracles of Saint Eugenios narrates the story of a woman stricken by a severe disease, who, having spent a fortune on physicians to no avail, went to pray to the icon of the Virgin Chrysokephalos venerated at the cathedral church of Trebizond.164 Paying heed to her prayers, the Virgin appeared to the sick woman in a dream and told her to go to the monastery of Saint Eugenios in the same city, where she would obtain a cure. In gratitude, the woman adorned the icon. As Lazaropoulos relates, “at once she woke up as if in joy, indeed considering her vision to be of good omen. Some gold enkolpia and earrings, things she previously used to be so fond of, she took off and suspended at this holy image of the Virgin Mother Chrysokephalos.”165 In the end, the woman was cured by the saint, as predicted. Niketas Choniates’ account of the acts of sacrilege committed by the emperor Isaac II Angelos offers a striking example of the reverse transfer of

162 163

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Trans. Papamastorakis 2002, 45, with modifications. The same practice is well attested in the Orthodox world today. Witness, for example, the cult of the celebrated icon of the Virgin Megalocharē on the island of Tinos in the Aegean, on which see Dubisch 1995. Interestingly, the author notes that “[m]ost of the jewelry left as offerings is auctioned in Athens every year” (p. 174). On the adornment of icons with special necklaces and crowns, with particular reference to devotional practices characteristic of Russian Orthodoxy, see Sterligova 2000, esp. 53–54, 151–60. Lazaropoulos, Synopsis of the Miracles of Saint Eugenios, 306.1087–308.1140. On the icon of the Chrysokephalos, see the editor’s commentary in ibid., 432–33, 450, with further bibliography. Lazaropoulos, Synopsis of the Miracles of Saint Eugenios, 308.1115–1118; trans. ibid., 309, modified.

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kosmos from the sacred to the secular sphere. A passionate patron and collector of art, whose largesse and devotion Choniates elsewhere praises as incomparable, the emperor did not refrain from profaning ecclesiastical treasures.166 “Removing the precious adornments [κόσμους πολυτελεῖς] from the holy crosses and books of the undefiled sayings of Christ [i.e., from Gospel covers], he used these to fashion necklaces and collars, and reworking them as he pleased, he fastened them shamelessly to his imperial robes.ˮ167 Isaac II was neither the first nor the last Byzantine emperor to seize consecrated church property. What is remarkable, however, is that his acts of sacrilege were not motivated by a need to refill the exchequer, nor by hostility toward the Church, but rather by a flamboyant and frivolous philokosmia, or love of adornment, that led him, as Choniates reports, to luxuriate in the baths, sniffing perfumes and curling his hair, and never to wear the same garment twice.168 In the eyes of such an aesthete, the distinction between sacred and secular kosmos could hardly matter. As a complete reversal of the gesture of adornment, an act of violence whereby a sacred object is despoiled of its kosmos, sacrilege provides an ideal case for probing the Byzantine understanding of what kosmos is and how it operates. Literary representations of sacrilege, as we shall see, bring into sharp relief the vital link that binds adornment and the adorned, which, when severed, leaves the latter not merely deprived of its precious trappings, but violated and injured, with a gaping fracture within its sacred identity. In view of the analogy between kosmos and dress, it is not surprising that Byzantine descriptions of profanations and thefts of consecrated church treasures should draw on the imagery of denudement. If adorned objects are said to be “clothed,” then those divorced from their kosmos could be nothing but “naked.”169 Characteristic in this regard is the eyewitness account of the atrocities committed by the Normans on the occasion of

166

167 168

169

On Isaac II as a patron, see Papamastorakis 2004, esp. 120–23; Simpson 2015, 185–94, 197–205. Choniates, History, 1:443.78–82; trans. Magoulias 1984, 243, modified. Choniates, History, 1:441.9–17. The term philokosmia here alludes to the epithet φιλόκοσμος (“lover of adornment”), which Choniates applies to the emperor in this passage. It is worth mentioning that the chronicle “cycle” of Symeon Logothetes uses the same epithet to describe another extravagant art patron, the iconoclast emperor Theophilos: Leo the Grammarian, Chronographia, 215.12; Pseudo-Symeon, Annales, 627.10; Georgius Monachus Continuatus 793.7. This notion appears in other contexts too. For example, the inventory of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, drawn up in 1396, lists a purple aēr described as “stripped naked of the pearls it once had” (γεγυμνωμένος ὧν πρότερον εἶχε μαργάρων): MM 2:568 (no. DCLXXXVI).

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the capture of Thessalonike in 1185, left by the city’s archbishop Eustathios. Appalled by the barbarity of the captors, the learned prelate exclaims: Those who so insulted the sacred objects and split asunder some of the sacred images which had no intrinsic value sufficient to attract them, while stripping others of their adornment with blows, did nothing to make us speak well of them; and now, when any of them come to mind, they are an abomination to us. How could anyone, when he learns of men baring their nakedness in churches, refrain from bursting with rage on hearing that the sacred treasures were also stripped bare [γύμνωσιν κειμηλίων θείων ἐγνωκώς]?170

Unlike the captive beauty in Rallis’ painting The Booty, whose partial disrobing mirrors the removal of the silver revetment from the icon of Saint John Baptist on the templon screen, the Normans shamelessly baring their nudity in the Thessalonian churches represent an inverted image of the despoiled church treasures. The same trope of denudement figures in the aforementioned exercise of koinos topos on the subject of a sacrilegious man from the anonymous collection of progymnasmata preserved in the Marcianus graecus 444. Here the speaker, assuming a prosecutor’s role, imagines the plunderer devising a plan to snatch gold and silver plaques and gems and pearls from the icons venerated by the faithful, which he characteristically expresses in terms of their undressing. “Sneaking into by night,” says the plunderer, “I shall steal all these and strip naked the clothed in them [τοὺς ἐνδεδυμένους ταῦτα γυμνοὺς ποιήσομαι].”171 At times, building upon the equation of the despoilment of kosmos with forced disrobing, accounts of sacrilege take the form of dramatic narratives of abuse, violence, and destruction. One such narrative is included in an oration by Nikephoros Choumnos, which contains a long list of accusations brought against the patriarch Niphon I. The oration was delivered before a synod, convened in the spring of 1314, which ruled that the patriarch be deposed on the charge of simony.172 Niphon, whom Nikephoros Gregoras portrays as a greedy man, hungry for riches,173 allegedly committed 170

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Eustathios of Thessalonike, The Capture of Thessalonike, 114.29–35; trans. Melville Jones 1988, 115, slightly modified. Anonymous, Progymnasmata, 616.10–12. Choumnos, Indictment of the Patriarch Niphon. It is possible that the emperor Andronikos II commissioned the oration (cf. Indictment of the Patriarch Niphon, 283). On this text, see Verpeaux 1959, 100–2. See also Laurent 1969, 219–28. On the patriarch Niphon I, see PLP, no. 20679; Charalampides 1998; Agoritsas 2007–9. Gregoras, Roman History, 259.14–261.9.

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numerous acts of sacrilege. On one occasion, he purloined gems from a stephanos (“nimbus” or perhaps “crown”), which had been dedicated to an icon of the archangel Michael as a trophy by a victorious emperor.174 Offerings made to cult images by the faithful were not sacred to him and he appropriated them without qualm.175 The most grievous of his offences, however, concerned an icon of the Virgin Eleousa, whose trials and tribulations in Niphon’s hands Choumnos refers to tellingly as τὸ κατὰ τῆς Ἐλεούσης δρᾶμα (“the drama of the Eleousa”).176 The Eleousa hailed from Ionia, the southwestern coastal region of Asia Minor that was lost to the Turks by the end of the thirteenth century. Outfitted with an exceptionally rich kosmos, this holy émigrée naturally attracted the attention of the covetous prelate who then served as metropolitan of Kyzikos. This great and more than great, and, indeed, mighty and dreadful plunderer of sacred treasures waited for night and darkness to set upon the all-immaculate icon. Since it was heavily adorned with gold and silver (they say that this adornment weighed thirty talents177), he removed all of it and seized it, leaving the icon bare. Thus, those who saved the icon when it fled from Ionia, because the impious barbarians had set upon that region with their hands, were unable to save it again from the patriarch’s defiled hands. What happened next? Having stripped it naked [γυμνώσας], this man sent the icon under the darkness of night to the monks of the church of the Holy Trinity. When they lit the lights, the depicted figures shouted distinctly and made the theft known, and the monks started to cry out – Sacrilege! Having learned about this, during the same ungodly hours of that very night he banished the icon across the sea in an attempt to evade examination.178

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Choumnos, Indictment of the Patriarch Niphon, 267–69. Choumnos, Indictment of the Patriarch Niphon, 269. Choumnos, Indictment of the Patriarch Niphon, 270–72. This corresponds approximately to 9.6 kg. For the weight of the talanton in Byzantium, see Schilbach 1970, 171–75. Choumnos, Indictment of the Patriarch Niphon, 270: ἐπιτίθεται γὰρ ὁ μέγας οὗτος καὶ πάμμεγας καὶ πολὺς δή τις καὶ δεινὸς ἱερόσυλος τῇ παναχράντῳ εἰκόνι, νύκτα καὶ ἀωρίαν τηρήσας· καὶ πολλοῦ τοῦ κόσμου γεμούσης ἐκ χρυσοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου (ἐς τριάκοντα γὰρ ταλάντων ὁλκὸν τὸν κόσμον τοῦτον εἶναι φασὶ βαρυνόμενον), ἐκσπᾷ τὸν ὅλον, καὶ χωρὶς δείκνυσι τῆς εἰκόνος καὶ ὑφαιρεῖται. καὶ γοῦν ἐξ Ἰωνίας, χεῖρας ἀσεβῶν βαρβάρων ἐπιθεμένων τῷ τόπῳ, τὴν εἰκόνα φυγοῦσαν, οὔμενουν ταύτην οἱ σεσωκότες καὶ τῶν μιαρῶν πατριαρχικῶν ἠδυνήθησαν χειρῶν σεσωκέναι. ἀλλὰ τί; ταύτην οὗτος γυμνώσας, ὑπὸ ζόφῳ νυκτὸς παρὰ μοναχοὺς πέμπει ἐς ναὸν τῆς Τριάδος. οἱ δὲ φῶς ἀνάψαντες, τῶν τύπων διαρρήδην βοώντων καὶ τὴν κλοπὴν κηρυττόντων, ἀνεκράγεσαν τὴν ἱεροσυλίαν. καὶ ὃς ᾐσθημένος, τῆς αὐτῆς νυκτὸς ταῖς αὐταῖς ἀωρίαις ἐξόριστον διὰ πόντου τὴν εἰκόνα ποιεῖται, τὸν ἔλεγχον τάχα φεύγων.

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Admittedly, this text does not appear to be a matter-of-fact report on a despoiled object. Rather, it reads like a fairly sensationalist entrefilet about a violated and abused person: the scene is set; the crime is committed; the perpetrator tries to get rid of the victim, who nonetheless exposes him, only to be silenced and sent into exile. We read of night and darkness, of shouts and cries. Choumnos even endows the icon, albeit metaphorically, with the power of speech. Interestingly, Leo of Chalcedon deployed the same conceit in a letter to Alexios I Komnenos, in which he vehemently protested against the emperor’s expropriation of consecrated church treasures. “The tabernacles themselves,” raged Leo, “in which sacred vessels that contain God [i.e., patens and chalices] are stored, with their emptiness, as if with some sort of mouth (στόματι χρώμενα τῷ κενώματι), shout more clearly than ten thousand witnesses that they possess none of what used to be in their custody.”179 The “mouth” of the figures depicted in the icon was, of course, their nudity. Niphon’s cunning plan to silence the Eleousa by banishing her did not succeed, however, and we learn that the icon was actually present at the synod, where she was surely summoned as a witness. Instructing the audience to examine the panel, Choumnos points out that the head of the Infant Jesus in Mary’s hands was once adorned by a brilliant gem, which Niphon stole, replacing it with a cheap piece of glass. This outrage leads the author to compare the patriarch to Caiaphas and his theft of the gem to another crowning of Christ’s head with thorns, and moreover, to the Crucifixion itself.180 For Choumnos, the patriarch’s act of sacrilege is so horrid an insult that it falls nothing short of the Lord’s Passion. It should be noted that, in iconophile propaganda, the iconoclasts are equated in much the same way with the Jews who crucified Christ, a notion famously visualized in a miniature of the ninth-century Khludov Psalter (Moscow, State Historical Museum, Ms. gr. 129d, fol. 67r) (Figure 3.20).181 Here the verse “They gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Psalm 68[69]:22) is glossed by an image of the Crucifixion juxtaposed with a scene of two iconoclasts whitewashing an icon of Christ. Choumnos, in fact, proceeds to label the patriarch as χριστόμαχος (“fighter against Christ”) and “someone who, in his rage and madness, has evidently taken up the battle against the icon of

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180 Lavriotes 1900, 403. Choumnos, Indictment of the Patriarch Niphon, 271. On this miniature, see Corrigan 1992, esp. 30–32, 46–47. On the Jew as an archetypal iconoclast, see especially Speck 1990.

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Figure 3.20 Khludov Psalter, Ms. gr. 129d, fol. 67r, ninth century, State Historical Museum, Moscow (photo: State Historical Museum, Moscow)

Christ and his Mother and against other holy icons” – in other words, as an iconoclast.182 This same accusation, grave as it is, slips off the pen of Niphon’s predecessor, patriarch Athanasios I, in a letter of c. 1309 addressed to Andronikos II Palaiologos most likely concerning the

182

Choumnos, Indictment of the Patriarch Niphon, 271–72.

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Eleousa affair.183 Athanasios demands from the emperor that the charges of sacrilege brought against the metropolitan of Kyzikos be investigated, “for no one who desires salvation will endure either to be in communion with, or to be friends with, those who rage against the holy icons.”184 These harsh statements should not be taken at face value because their primary purpose was one of defamation. This is certainly true of Choumnos’ account. Athanasios, on his part, may well have used the affair as an excuse to discredit Niphon whose leniency toward the Arsenites, a breakaway faction in the Church that the emperor was striving to reconcile, recommended him as a potential successor to the intractable patriarch, someone who could – and eventually did! – put an end to the schism.185 Yet it is still astonishing that the removal of an icon’s kosmos – or rather, as it would appear, its replacement with a cheaper substitute – could be equated with an iconoclastic act.186 That such an equation was made is in and of itself a testament to the central importance accorded to the notion of adornment in contemporary Byzantine culture. Although external to the icon, the attached kosmos was nonetheless considered its intrinsic element, a constituent part that could not be removed without violating the icon itself. *** 183

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Athanasios I, Letters, no. 95. Another piece of the patriarch’s correspondence (Letters, no. 89) deals with the same subject. Athanasios I, Letters, 248.34–36; trans. ibid., 249. See the editor’s commentaries in Athanasios I, Letters, 418, 424–25. When, in 1265, the patriarch Arsenios Autoreianos was deposed by Michael VIII Palaiologos, his followers, the so-called Arsenites, broke away from the rest of the Church and refused to recognize the authority of the subsequent patriarchs, including Athanasios. Himself a staunch opponent of the Arsenites, Athanasios was, indeed, forced to vacate the patriarchal throne and, in 1310, Andronikos II had Niphon installed in his stead. Soon after the elevation of the new patriarch, the schism was ended. On the Arsenite schism, see especially Laurent 1945; Gounarides 1999; Tinnefeld 2012. Cf. Athanasios I, Letters, 230.9–17 (no. 87), another missive addressed to Andronikos II, in which the patriarch describes a state official’s attack on an icon of Christ: “Not too long ago one of our famous churches, to which belonged the theandric and venerable icon of the Savior and many other holy images, could be seen in a state of neglect and without a roof. And a state official was ordered to climb up in this for the purpose of smashing this image of God-Man with an adze, so as to destroy it – Oh, how great was Thy forbearance, my good Lord and God – while the people standing below cried out against the impious fellow and cursed him. And his punishment was not long delayed, since someone pushed him to the ground where he pitiably gave up the ghost”; trans. ibid., 231. As the editor in her commentary notes (p. 415), the ill-fated iconoclast was most likely a fiscal agent who was trying to collect church revenues by removing the icon’s precious-metal adornment. The patriarch, nonetheless, saw it fit to portray the incident as an iconoclastic act reminiscent – not accidentally – of the legendary destruction of the icon of Christ above the Chalke Gate in 726, the archetypal narrative of iconoclastic folly.

Cladding/clothing

Adornment is a companion to creation; it complements and adds luster to creation’s work, only to remain subservient to the latter’s originary thrust. Or, at least, this is how we tend to think of the relationship between the two. Yet in Later Byzantium, adornment as a practice and concept acquired an extraordinarily prominent cultural profile. Beginning with the Komnenian era, as the evidence of epigrammatic poetry makes abundantly clear, affluent patrons became increasingly preoccupied not only with creation, but also, if not primarily, with embellishment and amplification. To be sure, the reasons why the act of adornment emerged as a preferred manifestation of piety among the powerful and wealthy were manifold. No doubt, aesthetic attitudes and social norms played a significant role. The patrons’ predilection for lavish display – the accumulation and layering of precious substances upon or around sacred objects – was an index of contemporary tastes and sensibilities, as well as a clear demonstration of one’s elite status and financial resources. But what endowed the act of adornment with urgency and made it such a paradigmatic gesture ultimately had to do with devotional concerns. To encase or frame a sacred object with a lavish material kosmos was understood by the Byzantines as a way to gain access to and partake, as it were, of the object’s sanctity. It was a potent strategy of forging a personal, intimate relationship with the divine realm. The expediency of this gesture was predicated in part upon the affirmation of matter as repository of the sacred. Nowhere is this valuation of matter more evident than in the pre-eminence of icons as privileged foci of devotional and, by consequence, kosmetic attention. Considered against the background of the ontology of kosmos, however, the act of adornment was not only expedient but requisite. For, in addition to staging and inflecting the object and communicating its inner qualities, the surrounding kosmos had the capacity to empower it and also, paradoxically, to perfect the object and make it complete. In view of the unprecedented significance accorded to the concept of kosmos in later Byzantine artistic and devotional culture, it is hardly surprising that epigrams themselves came to be regarded as a form of adornment. This particular conceptualization of the inscribed verses is the subject that will engage us in the following chapter. For some Byzantine authors, as we shall see, epigrams constituted the highest category in the hierarchy of adornment, far above any material kosmos. What made them such an exceptional kosmetic medium was the fact that they were wrought not from earthly materials – gold, silver, gems, pearls, and the like – but from the supremely precious stuff of logos.

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Upon the death of Theodore Prodromos, a leading poet of the Komnenian era, his friend and most likely disciple, Niketas Eugeneianos, composed three monodies.1 In one of these laments, written in the dodecasyllable, the author delivers an impassioned eulogy of Prodromos’ literary works, dwelling at some length upon two genres in which the dead poet excelled. Eugeneianos first speaks of Prodromos’ panegyrics in hexameter celebrating imperial deeds and military exploits – such undertakings, as Eugeneianos puts it, have now been deprived of their “singer of praise” (ἐπαινέτης) – and then moves to Prodromos’ epigrams.2 150

155

καὶ κόσμον ἐκλέλοιπας σεπτῶν εἰκόνων κοσμούμεναι γὰρ ἐκ λίθων καὶ μαργάρων ὡς κόσμον εἶχον ἐντελῆ σου τοὺς στίχους, καὶ κόσμος ἦν ἄντικρυς ἡ στιχουργία τοῦ κοσμοποιοῦ μαργάρου τῶν εἰκόνων. ποῖον τὶ δυσθέατον ὑπὲρ τοὺς τάφους, ὧν ἐν πόνοις τίθησι καὶ κλήσις μόνη; ἠγαλλόμην δὲ τοῖς τάφοις ὡς νυμφίοις χιτῶνα χρυσόστικτον ἠμφιεσμένοις τὴν χρυσεπῆ σου καὶ σοφὴν στιχουργίαν. You have left behind the adornment of the holy icons. For, being adorned with precious stones and pearls, they also had your verses as a perfect adornment. Truly the poetry of the pearl that adorned the icons [i.e., Prodromos] was a adornment. What is more disagreeable to gaze upon than the tombs, the very mention of which causes pain? Yet I took great pleasure in the tombs, which, like bridegrooms, were clothed in the golden words of your learned poetry as if in a garment embroidered with gold.

1

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One of these monodies is in prose: Petit 1902, 452–63. The other two are verse monodies, one written in the dodecasyllable and the other in hexameter: Gallavotti 1935, 222–31. On Eugeneianos and his relationship with Prodromos, see Kazhdan 1967; Kyriakis 1973. Gallavotti 1935, 225.135–226.159. On the passage quoted immediately below, see Drpić (forthcoming).

Golden words

Prodromos was not only a “singer of praise,” but also an accomplished adorner. Comparing the dead poet to a pearl, a motif common in Byzantine funerary poetry,3 Eugeneianos declares that Prodromos’ epigrams placed upon jeweled icons, and his epitaphs inscribed at tombs, represent a form of adornment in their own right: the latter have transformed the dreary memorials into delightful sights, comparable to splendidly appointed bridegrooms, while the former have furnished the icons with a perfect adornment, in no wise inferior to precious stones and pearls. Prodromos’ chrysepēs stichourgia – literally, his “gold-worded” poetry – has the capacity to embellish, amplify, transform, and perfect, in short, to adorn, to act as kosmos. Eugeneianos is not alone among Byzantine authors in voicing the idea of the inscribed verse as a form of adornment. The same notion is expressed, for instance, by Michael Psellos in his funeral oration in honor of the patriarch Michael Keroularios. Presenting the literary preoccupations and endeavors of the young Keroularios and his brother, Psellos notes that, While he [i.e., Michael] was rather attached to prose, his elder brother devoted himself to rhythms and meters. Both also pronounced some orations for the deceased. And for those who had dedicated themselves to God, they not only made icons, but they also adorned these icons with words and epigrams [λόγοις ἐκόσμουν καὶ ἐπιγράμμασι].4

The Keroularios brothers had different inclinations when it came to the choice of literary medium, with one preferring prose and the other poetry, but they both engaged in an activity that occasionally occupied many Byzantines initiated in the art of logoi, namely, they wrote epigrams on icons, or rather, in Psellos’ phrasing, they adorned icons with their epigrams. This chapter seeks to unpack the conceptualization of verse inscriptions as a form of adornment. Indeed, what exactly do Eugeneianos and Psellos mean when they say that the metrical texts penned by Prodromos and the Keroularios brothers, respectively, adorn the icons and tombs that bear these texts? How does the Byzantine epigram function as kosmos? This chapter argues that the epigram’s kosmetic potential is essentially twofold. A verse inscription has the power to adorn the object 3 4

Papadogiannakis 1984, 134–35. Psellos, Funeral Orations, 9.4–9 (no. 1): ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν τοῦ πεζοῦ μᾶλλον εἴχετο λόγου, ὁ δέ γε πρεσβύτερος ἀδελφὸς ῥυθμοῖς ἑαυτὸν ἐπεδίδου καὶ μέτροις καὶ προσειρήκασί γε ἄμφω τῶν ἀποθανόντων ἐνίους καὶ τῶν γε καθοσιωσάντων ἑαυτοὺς τῷ Θεῷ οὐκ εἰκόνας ἐπεποίηντο μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ταύτας λόγοις ἐκόσμουν καὶ ἐπιγράμμασι. For a commentary on this passage, see Bernard 2014, 35–36.

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it accompanies, first, as a material artifact, a graphic constellation of letters, and second, as an instantiation of logos, a literary text skillfully crafted in accordance with the rules of rhetoric and prosody, and brought to life through oral recitation. Attending to these two aspects of the inscribed verse, we shall first explore epigrams as physical presences and consider the visual, material, and spatial dimensions of their lettering and display, both independent of, and in relation to, their verbal message. Then we shall turn to epigrams as literary compositions and performed speeches, and probe what, following one of the sources discussed below, we may call logikos kosmos, that is, verbal or discursive adornment. For the Byzantines, the visual and the verbal, the material and the noetic were two interrelated and mutually dependent facets of the inscribed verse. As pieces of logos, epigrams encouraged and even called for the use of elaborate, calligraphic scripts and, more broadly, the visual and material amplification of writing.5 Conversely, the aesthetically self-conscious presentation of the text of an epigram drew attention to and made manifest its poetic nature, and moreover, animated the “mute” written words, inviting the viewer/reader to recite them audibly and experience them in a performance.

Script as ornament The historian George Pachymeres relates a curious story concerning an Islamic artifact, probably a Mamluk platter with an inscription around its rim, whose use – or rather, misuse – in Byzantine hands appears to have been something of a cause célèbre in the last years of the reign of Michael VIII Palaiologos.6 In 1279, on the occasion of the Feast of the Hypapantē, or Presentation of Christ into the Temple, celebrated jointly by the emperor and the patriarch at the Blachernai church in Constantinople, a number of platters with kollyba – a dish made of sweetened boiled wheat mixed with dried fruits and nuts – were brought and laid out for ceremonial blessing, as the rite prescribed, before they were distributed to the assembled courtiers and clergy. The majority of these were rather plain bowls, made of bronze, but one platter stood out on account of its beauty 5

6

In what follows, I use the term calligraphy in the generic sense of “beautiful writing.” It must be stressed, however, that in Medieval Greek usage καλλιγραφία referred primarily to regular and legible writing. See Ronconi 2012, 634–38; Ronconi 2014, 385–87. Pachymeres, Syngraphikai historiai 6.12. The story is discussed at length in Nelson 2005.

Script as ornament

and was accordingly set aside for the emperor. “The platter was crafted with Egyptian letters as ornaments,” writes Pachymeres. “As was explained, it is a custom among the Egyptians to use letters instead of other kinds of ornamentation on textiles, lamps, and all sorts of objects.”7 Soon, however, the word went around that the inscription on the platter praised the name of the prophet Muhammad, and moreover, that John Bekkos, who was patriarch at the time, had personally picked out this deceptively beautiful yet defiled vessel as an appropriate receptacle for the emperor’s portion of the blessed kollyba. Finally, a dignitary well versed in Arabic, whom Michael VIII ordered to inspect the incriminated object, read the inscription and confirmed that it was indeed composed in praise of the “accursed” prophet. Shortly thereafter, this seemingly trivial incident was brought up against the patriarch and, along with other petty accusations, forced him to resign his office temporarily.8 The episode recounted by Pachymeres is notable insofar as it documents that the Byzantines were not only familiar with the importance attached to writing and calligraphy in Islamic cultures, but also aware that letters could function as ornaments. As a matter of fact, since at least the tenth century imitations of Arabic writing had been a common ornamental device in Byzantine architecture, wall painting, and portable objects, including icons, textiles, glass and ceramic vessels, weapons, and jewelry.9 In a late twelfthcentury icon from Cyprus, to give but one example, Saint James the Persian is depicted holding a round shield embellished with a decorative band reminiscent of Arabic writing, more specifically, the writing style known as floriated Kufic (Figure 4.1).10 The repetitiveness of this dense graphic pattern with its symmetrical arrangement of angular “letters” and elaborate curvilinear flourishes only underscores the decorative force of the design. It should be emphasized, however, that pseudo-Arabic is not the only nonsensical script encountered in medieval Byzantium. Strings of identifiable Greek letters combined with odd letter-like forms, which may variously 7

8

9

10

Pachymeres, Syngraphikai historiai 6.12, 2:575.4–6: ἣ δὴ καὶ γράμμασιν Αἰγυπτίοις ὡς ποικίλμασί τισιν ἐνεσκεύαστο· εἴθισται γάρ, ὡς ἐλέγετο, Αἰγυπτίοις ἀντ’ ἄλλων τινῶν ποικιλμάτων ἔν τε πέπλοις καὶ φωταγωγοῖς καὶ σκεύεσι παντοίοις τοῖς γράμμασι χρῆσθαι. The real reason for forcing the patriarch to resign was his lenient policy towards the opponents of the Union of Lyons. See Riebe 2005, 111–12. Soteriou 1933; Miles 1964, 20–32; Ettinghausen 1976; Walker 2008; Bouras 2013; Pedone and Cantone 2013; Walker 2015. Saint James the Persian is shown on the back of the icon, the front side of which features the Virgin and Child. On this piece, see Evans 2004, cat. no. 75 (R. W. Corrie), with further bibliography. See also Grotowski 2010, 243. On floriated Kufic, see Grohmann 1957; Tabbaa 1994.

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Figure 4.1 Saint James the Persian, back of a double-sided icon, late twelfth century, Holy Bishopric of Paphos, Paphos (photo: Giorgos Philotheu / Holy Bishopric of Paphos, Paphos)

recall Hebrew, Arabic, or Cyrillic writing, turn up as an ornamental feature with some frequency in later Byzantine painting, especially in its monumental variety. They appear primarily on articles of clothing, but one also finds them on various depicted objects such as vessels, pieces of furniture,

Script as ornament

or weaponry.11 In the church of the Virgin Peribleptos at Ohrid, frescoed some fifteen years after the incident related by Pachymeres, pseudoinscriptions of this kind abound, gracing in particular the garments and weapons of the warrior saints depicted in the lowest zone of the nave. In the figure of Saint Nestor, for instance, nonsensical lettering appears on the blade of his raised sword, as well as on his shield, where, rendered in what appears to be an imitation of a metalwork technique, one sees a series of large characters, some of them recognizable (Plate 6, Figure 4.2). To be sure, decoration, pure and simple, was hardly the only role assigned to such nonsensical lettering. Just as the imitation of floriated Kufic on the shield of Saint James served to highlight – along with the saint’s dark complexion, his red Phrygian cap, and his exotic single earring – the Eastern, Persian extraction of this celebrated martyr, so did the indecipherable writing in the portrayal of Saint Nestor function as an index of alterity. As such, it could be construed as pointing to the divine sphere or to the sacred past, a realm fundamentally different from that occupied by the worshipper. Of course, pseudo-inscriptions could bring to mind other associations as well.12 What is relevant for the present discussion, however, is not so much the range of their possible functions and meanings, but rather what these enigmatic configurations can tell us about the status and perception of writing in Byzantine culture. Like other forms of epigraphic display, pseudo-inscriptions are, in essence, representations of texts. However, because the texts they put on display are illegible, pseudo-inscriptions perpetually frustrate the spectator’s gaze, forcing it to linger about their impenetrable sequences of bizarre letterlike signs mixed with identifiable characters. In doing so, pseudo-inscriptions throw the visual aspect of writing into sharp relief and make palpable the inherent tension between verbal message and visible script shared by all inscriptions. They call attention to the fact that any script, whether nonsensical or legible, harbors an extralinguistic, ornamental force.13

11

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13

Kissas 1971–72, esp. 51–57; Popov 1980, esp. 282–90; Gabelić 2000; Drpić 2013, 344–47. See also Pavlović 1984. For a penetrating discussion of pseudo-inscriptions, albeit in a different context, see Nagel 2011. See also Bredehoft 2006. On script as a visual medium and material presence within a broad historical and theoretical perspective, see Greber, Ehlich, and Müller 2002; Kiening and Stercken 2008; Hilgert 2010; Meier, Ott, and Sauer 2015. On the ornamental, iconic, and other extralinguistic dimensions of writing in Byzantium, see Cavallo 1994, esp. 54–62; James 2007b; Kiilerich 2011, esp. 46–51; Maayan-Fanar 2011; Orsini 2013, esp. 59–79; and the relevant essays in Eastmond 2015. For further references, see pp. 219–20. The relevant bibliography pertaining to the medieval West is extensive, but see Kendrick 1999; Debiais 2009, esp. 93–161; Hamburger 2011; Hamburger 2014.

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Figure 4.2 Saint Nestor, 1294/95, church of the Virgin Peribleptos, Ohrid (photo: author). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

This ornamental force was exploited to great effect in Byzantine inscriptions across a variety of media, in particular after c. 1000. Around this time, a momentous shift occurred in Byzantine epigraphy. A veritable invasion of minuscule forms disrupted the former hegemony of the majuscule, the

Script as ornament

Figure 4.3 Inscription of Leo III and Constantine V, c. 727–40, walls of Nicaea/Iznik (photo: K. O. Dalman, 1930 / Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Istanbul)

addition of accents and breathings became a regular feature, and abbreviations and ligatures multiplied, the latter often constructed in such a manner that individual letterforms merge to create highly decorative clusters. As a consequence, the dominant writing style became increasingly intricate and ornate.14 The following comparison may serve to illustrate this shift. After the failed Arab siege of Nicaea in 727, the emperors Leo III and Constantine V restored a stretch of the city walls. An inscription, carved in a block of marble set high into a tower facing the city, commemorates this undertaking (Figure 4.3).15 The inscription features five lines of neat, uniform capital letters of a rectangular module. Tightly packed due to lateral compression, the letters nonetheless maintain their graphic integrity and are easily legible. Contributing to the overall effect of controlled, restrained elegance are a few decorative touches – the use of serifs or the slight variation in the thickness of the strokes, for instance. When, in 1166, following a series of theological disputes concerning the interpretation of the Gospel phrase “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), Manuel I Komnenos issued an edict and had it inscribed on five large slabs of Proconnesian marble, the emperor’s carvers employed a radically different epigraphic style. The slabs, once displayed in the church of Hagia Sophia, present the text of the edict in a decidely irregular script (Figure 4.4).16 The 14

15

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ODB, s.v. ‘epigraphy’; Mango 1991, esp. 1:246; Mango 2008, 148–49; Karagianne 2008; BEIÜ III, 75–79. See also Hunger 1989, 129; Toth 2015, 220–22. Schneider and Karnapp 1938, 49 (no. 29), pl. 50; Şahin 1979–87, 1: no. 450. See also Mango 2005, 29–30. The inscription additionally records the involvement of the patrician and kouropalatēs Artabasdos (ODB, s.v. ‘Artabasdos’) in the restoration work. The slabs were subsequently reused in the construction of the mausoleum of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. On these slabs and the inscription they bear, see Mango 1963.

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Figure 4.4 Plaster cast copy of a section of the edict issued by Manuel I Komnenos in 1166, Hagia Sophia, Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Cyril Mango)

Script as ornament

kind of epigraphic sobriety seen in the Nicaean inscription has been abandoned in favor of decorative effects produced by a liberating disregard for the uniformity of letterforms, the abundance of abbreviations and writing marks, the drastic variation in the size of the letters, and the profusion of complex ligatures that push above and below the ruling lines, as if driven by a horror vacui. If, as a result, the legibility of the text has been diminished, the writing has gained in visual interest, morphing into an intricate, richly textured mesh. The corpus of Byzantine verse inscriptions shares the basic features of the Byzantine epigraphic production at large. With very few exceptions, verse inscriptions make use of capital letters, with or without the addition of occasional minuscule forms.17 The majuscule was, of course, the script of choice for epigraphic display in Byzantium, as the minuscule, following its introduction in the ninth century, remained primarily a book script.18 Large capital letters, typically unconnected and of equal height, endowed the written text with solemnity, authority, and force. But they also – implicitly – connoted antiquity, since the majuscule was not only the older of the two scripts, but also the graphic medium of countless ancient inscriptions that dotted the physical environment in which the Byzantines lived, worked, and prayed. Verse inscriptions abundantly document the shift toward greater ornamentality in Byzantine epigraphy after c. 1000. From monumental mosaics to pectoral pendants, numerous inscribed poems strive to attain a level of calligraphic complexity comparable to that exhibited in the lapidary edition of Manuel I’s edict. A characteristic, if somewhat modest, example is provided by the epigram inscribed on a late fourteenth-century icon preserved in the Athonite monastery of Vatopedi (Figure 4.5).19 This rather curious, elongated panel, 151 cm in height, shows a standing figure of the Virgin, her arms raised in prayer, with the Christ Child in a medallion on her chest. A rectangular field at the top of the panel bear a dodecasyllable quatrain painted in tempera (Figure 4.6). Σοὶ τῇ νοητοῦ χρηματισάσῃ μύρου σκεῦος καθαρὸν καὶ δοχεῖον, παρθένε, καὶ τῶνδε σεπτῶν φυλακὴν σκευῶν μόνην νῦν ἐμπεπιστεύκαμεν ὧν εἴης φύλαξ.

17 18

19

BEIÜ I, 72. See also Karagianne 2008. ODB, s.v. ‘minuscule’ and ‘uncial’; Crisci and Degni 2011; Perria 2011, with further bibliography. Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, 170–74 (no. 37); Chazal et al. 2009, cat. no. 117 (E. N. Tsigaridas). For the epigram, see BEIÜ III, no. AddII25.

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Figure 4.5 Icon of the Virgin and Child, late fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 127)

Script as ornament

Figure 4.6 Epigram, icon of the Virgin and Child, late fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 130)

To you, O Virgin, who have been called a pure vessel and receptacle of the spiritual perfume, we now entrust the sole guardianship of these sacred vessels, too; may you be their guard.

Judging by the content of the inscription, as well as by the size and proportions of the panel, it seems likely that this icon was originally attached to or served as a door of some sort of cabinet used for the safekeeping of sacred vessel and other liturgical utensils in a sanctuary, perhaps that of the monastery’s main church. Evoking the metaphors of the Virgin as the vessel and receptacle of the noēton myron, that is, Christ – the source of these metaphors is to be found in Byzantine hymnography20 – the painted dodecasyllables call upon her protection of the precious containers stored inside the cabinet. The visual presentation of the text clearly bespeaks a taste for ornamental elaboration. Introduced and ended by a star-shaped motif, the verses unfold along two lines of writing in a sequence that shows great variation in terms of the form, size, and combination of letters. Capitals here freely mingle with minuscule forms providing the dominant visual theme, which the addition of accents and numerous abbreviations, the latter evidently borrowed from the scribal practice, further enriches and modulates.21 Consider, for instance, the vocative παρθένε (“O Virgin”) at the very end of the upper line. Perched on top of the capital pi is a minuscule alpha, the tail of which extends downward to form the loop of a rhō that shares its vertical stroke with the pi. To the right of this playful combination stands a solitary capital thēta, after which comes another combination consisting of a capital nu fused with a minuscule epsilon. Hovering above this ligature is a diagonal stroke of the acute accent. The string of letters ends with a capital epsilon, which in its graphic structure almost mirrors the thēta on the other side of the nu. A still closer internal 20 21

Eustratiades 1930, 18–19 (δοχεῖον), 71 (σκεῦος). For the cross-pollination between epigraphic and manuscript writing, see Rhoby 2015.

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mirroring is achieved by framing the thēta with the loop of the rhō and the curved body of the epsilon. Such self-consciously calligraphic treatment of text is somewhat rare, as the majority of Byzantine epigrams preserved in situ are rendered in more “sober” epigraphic styles. In one respect, however, the verses on the Vatopedi icon do stand for the entire genre. They show that epigrams were not only highly visible, that is, a common ingredient of Byzantine material culture and daily life, but also – typically – highly visual, a form of written display intended to please the eye.22 To begin with, the very structure of the dodecasyllable, the standard meter of Byzantine epigrammatic poetry, is conducive to crafting visually attractive inscriptions. With the prescribed number of twelve syllables, this meter allows for little variation in the length of individual lines. This means that the verses can be easily arranged in neat shapely blocks of text.23 The epigram inscribed on a twelfth-century reliquary-enkolpion in the Moscow Kremlin furnishes a splendid example of such an arrangement. The front side of this precious pectoral container in the shape of a flat, nearly square box features an image of the Anastasis in gold enamel (Figure 4.7), while its back accommodates an eight-line poem in the dodecasyllable, lettered in niello on a now-damaged plate of gilded silver (Figure 4.8).24

5

Χιτών, χλαμύς, λέντιον, ἔνδυμα Λόγου, σινδών, λύθρον, στέφανος ἠκανθωμένος, ὀστοῦν, ξύλον, θρίξ, διδύμου, σταυροῦ, λύχνου, ζώνης πανάγνου τμῆμα, μανδύου μέρος, [Εὐστρα]τίου λείψανον, ὀστοῦν Προδρόμου, Εὐφημίας θρίξ, λείψανον Νικολάου, ὀστᾶ Στεφάνου τοῦ νέου, Θεοδώρου [κα]ὶ Παντελεήμονος ἐκ τριῶν τρία. Tunic, mantle, towel, garment of the Logos, shroud, blood, crown of thorns, bone, wood, hair, of the Twin [i.e., apostle Thomas],25 of the Cross, of the Lamp [i.e., John the Baptist],26 fragment of the girdle of the All-Chaste [i.e., Virgin], part of mantle, relic of Eustratios, bone

22

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24

25 26

Here I allude to Magdalino’s characterization of poetry as a “highly visual and visible medium in Byzantium” (Magdalino 2012, 32). For the correlation between the poetic form and physical layout of inscriptions more broadly, see BEIÜ III, 80–82. See also Agosti 2010a. On the Moscow reliquary-enkolpion, see Sterligova 2003, 72–76; Kappas 2004; Sterligova 2013, 185–89 (no. 25) (I. A. Sterligova), with further bibliography. For the epigram on the back, see Ševčenko 1998, 246; BEIÜ II, no. Me98. Cf. John 11:16, 20:24, 21:2. For λύχνος (“lamp”) as a metaphor of John the Baptist, see Lampe, s.v. B.

Script as ornament

Figure 4.7 Reliquary-enkolpion (obverse), twelfth century, Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow (photo: S. V. Baranov / Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow)

of the Forerunner, hair of Euphemia, relic of Nicholas, bones of Stephen the Younger, of Theodore, and of Panteleimon, three from the three.

The poem evidently represents an inventory of the relics lodged inside the enkolpion. This was by all means an outstanding collection.27 The

27

For a detailed discussion of the relics listed in the epigram, see Kappas 2004, 416–26, where the author unfortunately misinterprets line 3. The interior of the enkolpion is divided into thirty roughly square compartments, nearly all of which are practically filled with relics. See Sterligova 2003, fig. 12. These relics may well be the original ones itemized in the epigram.

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Figure 4.8 Reliquary-enkolpion (reverse), twelfth century, Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow (photo: S. V. Baranov / Moscow Kremlin Museums, Moscow)

enkolpion housed, most notably, a range of relics associated with Christ, all listed at the beginning of the poem. These included pieces of Christ’s garments, specifically, his tunic, his mantle, and his lention, or towel, the latter probably referring to the cloth the Lord used during the washing of the apostles’ feet at the Last Supper; pieces of Christ’s burial shroud and the crown of thorns; remains of his blood; and finally, recorded in line 3, one or more fragments of the True Cross.28 The enkolpion further housed two

28

Line 3 is structured in such a way that each of the nominatives in the first hemistich governs one of the genitives in the second hemistich. Thus ὀστοῦν (“bone”) goes with διδύμου (“of the Twin”), ξύλον (“wood”) with σταυροῦ (“of the Cross”), and θρίξ (“hair”) with λύχνου (“of the Lamp”).

Script as ornament

Marian relics, namely, pieces of the Virgin’s girdle and mantle, and an assortment of saints’ relics, among them remains of the hair and a bone of Saint John the Baptist, the hair of Saint Euphemia, bones of the apostle Thomas, Saint Stephen the Younger, Saint Panteleimon, and one of the Saint Theodores, as well as some unspecified relics of Saint Nicholas and Saint Eustratios. Simply judging by the content of this list, it is clear that the Moscow enkolpion belonged to or was commissioned by an individual from the highest echelon of Byzantine society, perhaps a member of the imperial family. At first blush, the verses on the enkolpion’s back might appear disappointingly plain, offering nothing more than a catalogue of the priceless treasures deposited in this pectoral container. This impression is, however, misleading. The anonymous author skillfully employs the technique of the so-called “verse-filling asyndeton,” a rhetorical device that consists of the piling up of words with the omission of conjunctions.29 This device allows the author not only to create a poetic equivalent of an inventory list, but also to produce an effect of abundance through a hurried rhythm and the quick succession of words and short phrases, and thus to convey the sheer quantity of the relics kept inside the enkolpion. What is more, the extreme condensation of a fairly large amount of information into eight dodecasyllable lines provides a fitting literary counterpart to the accumulation of so many bits and pieces of cloth, bone, hair, and other sacred materials in a container of only 9.5 cm in height. Small scale and poetic brevity here go hand in hand. The visual presentation and materiality of the text of the epigram aptly communicate its literary sophistication. Resembling a manuscript page, the entire back surface of the enkolpion is occupied by a neat block of calligraphic writing, with each of the epigram’s eight verses running the width of the object. The accented majuscule letters with their elongated forms, either rounded or rectangular, have a powerful presence. Their bodies are filled with niello, a blackish enamel-like compound of metallic sulphides, which sets them off sharply against the gilded background and, moreover, gives them a haptic quality. Complementing this material aspect of the inscription is an epigraphic style that embraces playfulness and variation, and strives after decorative effects of the kind already encountered in the edict of Manuel I and the Vatopedi icon. Note, for instance, how the tau in χιτών (v. 1) grows out of a dwarfed ōmega, or how the open ōmega in

29

Curtius 1948, 287. For the use of this technique in Byzantine writing, see Hörandner 2001, 120.

201

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ζώνης (v. 4) differs from other examples of this letter, which feature two joined elongated ovals. Punctuation marks further enhance the ornamental force of the script, even as they facilitate reading. Thus three dots appear at the end of each verse, while single dots identify nearly all caesurae and, on occasion, also serve as word dividers. Additional dots hover in pairs above every iōta and almost every upsilon, with the exclusion, of course, of the occurrences of these letters in diphthongs. These double dots have no practical purpose. The same is true of the wave-like marks placed above σταυροῦ (v. 3) and the names [Εὐστρα]τίου (v. 5), Νικολάου (v. 6), Στεφάνου (v. 7), Θεοδώρου (v. 7), and Παντελεήμονος (v. 8). Such marks normally signal abbreviations, but in this case they accompany fully spelled-out words. Overall, the nielloed verses on the Moscow enkolpion present themselves as a self-consciously aesthetic creation, a material artifact that not merely transcribes, but truly embodies the text of the epigram. The text and its material embodiment here work in concert. As the inscribed words inventory the relics assembled inside the enkolpion, the elegant calligraphic script in which these words have assumed material form effectively communicates the power and sanctity of the relics through nonverbal means. The lettering itself has been mobilized to contribute to the appropriate presentation of the enkolpion’s priceless content. Just like the object’s precious materials and figural imagery, it has been invested with a kosmetic function.

Verses in space The aesthetic appeal of the nielloed verses stems in no small part from their arrangement in a compact block of text. This was one of the two standard ways of displaying epigrams on the surfaces of Byzantine artifacts and buildings, the other being the linear arrangement. In objects such as the Chambéry diptych (Plate 2, Figure 1.6) or the lost steatite panagiarion from the Panteleimon monastery (Figure 1.12), for example, streams of letters run along frames, perimeters, and rims. They create boundaries, demarcate units and zones of figural imagery, connect separate elements, and help organize the appearance of the object. The inscribed words achieve this solely by means of the visual form and layout of their lettering. In these instances, script performs a structuring role typically assigned to ornamental borders and frames.30 30

On the structuring role of ornament, see the classic study by Gombrich 1979.

Verses in space

Figure 4.9 South parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: author)

Verse inscriptions arranged in linear fashion acquire a particularly compelling presence in architecture. Their structuring role is here expanded to create a framework for a dynamic interaction between the spectator and the building, with the inscribed text guiding the spectator in his or her circumambulation through and around the building.31 The inscriptional program of the parekklēsion, or side chapel, attached of the south flank of the former monastic church of the Virgin Pammakaristos in Constantinople exemplifies this interactive aspect of monumental epigraphy (Figure 4.9). The parekklēsion, an elegant domed structure of the cross-in-square type, preceded by a twin-domed narthex, was erected at the beginning of the fourteenth century by the prōtostratōr Michael Doukas Glabas Tarchaneiotes and his wife Maria.32 In the decades following the recapture of Constantinople by the Byzantines in 1261, this 31 32

On this aspect of monumental inscriptions, see the seminal discussion by Papalexandrou 2001. Hallensleben 1963–64; Belting, Mango, and Mouriki 1978; Effenberger 2006–7; Marinis 2014, 191–98 (no. XXIV). See also Kidonopoulos 1994, 80–86.

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Figure 4.10 Detail of the epigram on the exterior, c. 1310, south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Cyril Mango / Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC)

aristocratic couple undertook the restoration of the Pammakaristos monastery, an eleventh- or twelfth-century foundation, which appears to have suffered damage and neglect during the Latin occupation. The parekklēsion served as the prōtostratōr’s mausoleum. At the time of his death sometime between 1305 and 1308, the building was still unfinished. It was under the sponsorship of his widow Maria – who, in the meantime, took the veil under the name of Martha – that the prōtostratōr’s monumental burial place received its mosaic decoration as well as a set of poetic inscriptions. The visitor approaching the parekklēsion first encounters an inscription carved along the marble cornice that runs around the west and south façades of the building at the level of the lower windows (Figure 4.10).33 Penned by Manuel Philes, the inscription presents a rare instance of an epigram preserved both in situ and in the manuscript

33

On this inscription, see especially van Millingen 1912, 157–60; Papalexandrou 2001, 276–77; BEIÜ III, no. TR76. It has been argued that the heavily abbreviated, monogrammatic tile inscription recording the prōtostratōr’s name, which can be seen on the south façade of the parekklēsion, below the eaves, represents a dodecasyllable couplet. See BEIÜ III, no. TR77. I do not discuss this tile inscription below.

Verses in space

record.34 The prōtostratōr Glabas and his wife were among the most important patrons of Philes. The poet composed a number of poems for the couple, some of them directly connected with the Pammakaristos monastery.35 The epigram on the marble cornice was evidently commissioned by Maria-Martha after the prōtostratōr’s death. The verses take the form of a lament in which the bereft widow addresses the deceased in her own voice. 15

20

ὡς ὄστρεον δ’ οὖν ὀργανῶ σοι τὴν στέγην,36 ἢ κόχλον ἢ κάλυκα κεντρώδους βάτου· μάργαρέ μου, πορφύρα, γῆς ἄλλης ῥόδον, εἰ καὶ τρυγηθὲν ἐκπιέζῃ τοῖς λίθοις ὡς καὶ σταλαγμοὺς προξενεῖν μοι δακρύων, αὐτὸς δὲ καὶ ζῶν καὶ θεὸν ζῶντα βλέπων ὡς νοῦς καθαρὸς τῶν παθῶν τῶν ἐξ ὕλης τὸν σὸν πάλιν θάλαμον εὐτρέπιζέ μοι. I construct this roofed structure for you like a pearl oyster shell, or a shell of the purple dye, or a bud upon a thorny brier. O my pearl, my purple, my rose of another land, even though, being plucked, you are pressed by the stones, so as to cause me sheddings of tears, you yourself, both living and beholding the living God, as a spirit pure from material passions, prepare again for me your chamber.37

34 35

36

37

Philes, Carmina I, 117–18 (no. CCXXIII). Philes’ supplicatory and occasional poems addressed to the prōtostratōr Glabas or his wife include: Carmina I, 91–95 (no. CXCI); Carmina II, 14–16 (no. 7), 103–107 (no. LVII), 139–40 (no. LXXIX), 413–14 (no. XLII); Carmina inedita, nos. 18, 59. The following epigrams and poems are associated with the Pammakaristos monastery: Carmina I, 115–16 (no. CCXIX); Carmina II, 144–45 (no. XCIII), 240–55 (no. CCXXXVII); Carmina inedita, no. 42; BraounouPietsch 2010, 57–59 (no. 1). The hospital founded by Glabas, which the poet celebrates in Carmina I, 280–82 (no. XCVIII), may have been attached to the monastery. Two verse inscriptions preserved inside the parekklēsion can be attributed to Philes (see pp. 206–10). For the possibility that the poet may have composed three other verse inscriptions once exhibited at the Pammakaristos, see BEIÜ III, nos. TR73–TR75. Several icons or icon revetments commissioned by the couple bore epigrams penned by the poet: Carmina I, 36 (no. LXXXII) (= Carmina I, 432 [no. CCXXIV]), 74–76 (nos. CLXIV–CLXV), 209 (nos. XXXII–XXXII.A); Braounou-Pietsch 2010, 182–84 (no. 107). Philes also wrote epigrams on two works compiled by the prōtostratōr, a book on military tactics and a commentary on the Scriptures in the form of a catena made up of excerpts from the writings of various patristic and Byzantine authors: Martini 1896, 470–71; Carmina II, 230–33 (no. CCXIX). Two epigrams in the parekklēsion of Saint Euthymios at the basilica of Saint Demetrios in Thessalonike, a small structure restored and decorated with frescoes by Glabas and his wife in 1302/3, have been attributed to the poet: BEIÜ I, nos. 112 and 113. To this list may be added an unpublished epigram by Philes on a church of Saint Nicholas tou Glaba in Constantinople, which appears to have been founded by the prōtostratōr: Kidonopoulos 1994, 112, with further bibliography. In E. Miller’s edition of Philes (Carmina I, 118), line 14 reads slightly differently: ὡς ὄστρεον γοῦν ὀργανῶ σοι τὸν τάφον (“I construct this tomb for you like a pearl oyster shell”). Trans. van Millingen 1912, 159, with modifications.

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The quoted excerpt comes from the thirteen lines (vv. 10–22) of the original twenty-three-line epigram that can still be read on the south façade. Upon entering the parekklēsion, the visitor encounters a second fragmentarily preserved poetic inscription, which unfolds along two marble cornices girding the nave, one at the level of the lower windows and the other at the level of the springing of the vaults (Figures 4.11 and 4.12).38 Unlike the verses on the exterior cornice, this inscription is not carved. Rather, the marble surface has been coated with a thin layer of gesso to receive letters painted in gold on a blue background. The inscription begins on the lower cornice, at the east end of the south wall, next to the entrance to the south chamber of the tripartite sanctuary. The first ten lines, which run along the south (vv. 1–5) and west walls (vv. 6–10), are the only part of the epigram to have survived reasonably well. Multiple parallels with poems preserved in the Philean corpus make the attribution of these verses to the poet all but certain.39 The epigram represents a prayer on behalf of the dead prōtostratōr addressed to Christ. As in the case of the exterior inscription, the speaking voice seems to be that of the grieving widow.40 Evoking the high positions in the military to which the emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos elevated Glabas during his lifetime, the verses beseech Christ to reward the deceased with still greater honors in the afterlife.

5

10

Πρὶν μὲν βασιλεὺς ὁ κρατῶν γῆς Αὐσόνω[ν] [ᾧ] τὸ στέ[φ]ος δέδωκας αὐτὸς ὑψόθεν καὶ Σολομῶντος [.................................] τιμαῖς ἐδεξιοῦτο τὸν σὸν οἰκέτην στρατηγικ[αῖς ......................................]· αὐτὸς δὲ καὶ νῦν ὡς Θεὸς πάντων μόνος, ὦ Σῶτερ, ὦ φῶς, ὦ γλυκασμέ, Δεσπότα, τιμαῖς ἀ[μ]είβου τοῦτον ὀλβιωτέραις τὴν πίστιν ἀθρῶν κ[αὶ τ]ὸν ἔνθεον δόμον ὃν ἀντὶ λεπτῶ[ν ..................................] Formerly the emperor, ruler of the land of the Ausones [i.e., Romans], to whom you yourself give the crown from above, and [. . .] of Solomon, bestowed upon your servant [i.e., the deceased] military honors [. . .]. But now you yourself, as the one God of all, O Savior, O Light, O Sweet Lord, do reward him with more blessed honors, observing his faith and this divine house, which in place of insignificant [. . .].41

38 39 40

41

Megaw 1963, 368–71; Papalexandrou 2001, 269–71; BEIÜ I, no. 215. For the parallels, see the apparatus in BEIÜ I, 309. This is indicated by the feminine participle [. . .]ῶσα in what has been identified as line 23: Megaw 1963, 371. Trans. Megaw 1963, 371, with modifications.

Verses in space

Figure 4.11 Interior of the south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Vasileios Marinis)

Although the section of the lower cornice running the width of the north wall was destroyed during the Ottoman era, it seems clear that this section once accommodated the following five lines of the poem (vv. 11–15). The inscription continues on the upper cornice, snaking around the base of the cruciform superstructure of the nave. Too little remains to

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Figure 4.12 Plan showing the two inscribed interior cornices (marked grey), south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (drawing: Nataša Žugić)

reconstruct the original arrangement of the verses, but it is likely that this part of the poem started on the east wall of the east cross arm, that is, on the section of the upper cornice directly above the bema. The artists, perhaps in collaboration with Philes, evidently took great care to distribute

Verses in space

the verses on the two cornices in an orderly fashion. If, in the lower zone, each wall provided space for five lines, each of the twelve sections of the upper cornice appears to have accommodated a single line. One consequence of such a neat display of poetry is that the letters on the upper cornice are more comfortably spaced and slightly wider in comparison with their densely packed and somewhat more elongated counterparts on the lower cornice. To these differences in the spacing and proportions of letters one should add the fact that, in contrast to the frequent use of ligatures on the lower cornice, the surviving fragments of the inscription on the upper cornice feature no ligatures at all. It stands to reason that these slight changes in the epigraphic style were intentional, designed to make the portions of the epigram placed high above the ground more legible. A third poetic inscription in the parekklēsion is preserved in the apse mosaic in the sanctuary, where it surrounds a seated figure of Christ accompanied by the epithet Ὑπεράγαθος (“Supremely Good”) (Plate 7, Figure 4.13).42 The verses, in all likelihood also penned by Philes, read as follows: Ὑπὲρ Μιχαὴλ τοῦ Γλαβᾶ τοῦ συζύγου ὃς ἦν ἀριστεύς, [τὴ]ν τιμὴν πρωτοστράτωρ, Μάρθας μοναχῆς τῷ Θεῷ σῶστρον τόδε. On behalf of her husband, Michael Glabas, who accomplished great deeds and held the office of prōtostratōr, Martha the nun this pledge of salvation to God.

The sōstron in line 3 – which, following Cyril Mango, I have translated as “pledge of salvation” rather than “thank-offering,” the usual meaning of the term43 – refers to the parekklēsion itself. The splendidly appointed chapel is here designated as the widowed nun’s gift to Christ for the salvation of her departed husband. The epigram’s verbal message is perfectly suited to the visual program of the sanctuary, which, reflecting the funerary function on the parekklēsion, focuses upon the themes of prayer, intercession, and the anticipated future judgment. Flanking the figure of Christ, whose benevolence is invoked by the attached epithet Hyperagathos, the Virgin and John the Baptist are depicted on the side walls of the sanctuary with their hands raised in supplication. The verse inscription personalizes their intercessory prayer, tying it specifically to the fate of 42 43

BEIÜ I, no. M15. Belting, Mango, and Mouriki 1978, 21. For the terminology used in relation to religious donations in Byzantine dedicatory epigrams, see Chapter 5.

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Figure 4.13 Mosaic decoration of the sanctuary with Christ Hyperagathos in the apse, the Virgin and John the Baptist on the side walls, and the four great archangels in the vault, c. 1310, south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

Glabas’ soul in the hereafter. The eschatological connotations of this Deēsis composition are further underscored by the presence of the four great archangels, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, depicted en buste in the groin vault above.44 All three epigrams displayed at the parekklēsion are rendered in a highly calligraphic majuscule script and compel the visitor to pause and admire them. Artfully crafted in an elevated style, these poetic texts have received a no less artful material embodiment in mosaic, gold paint, and marble. The epigram placed in the apse takes the form of an ornamental string of graphic marks fully integrated into the fabric of the surrounding figural imagery. Before its elegant letters fashioned with black tesserae yield their

44

On the funerary and eschatological aspects of the decoration of the parekklēsion’s sanctuary apse, see Belting, Mango, and Mouriki 1978, 54–58, 69–73. For the tetrad of the great archangels, see also Valéva 1986.

Verses in space

message by coalescing into meaningful words and phrases, the epigram presents itself to the viewer as a framing device, the only such element in an expense of gold mosaic that virtually denies the structure of its architectural support. The inscribed dodecasyllables add further visual emphasis to the figure of Christ by forming an arch around him, even as they verbally proclaim that it is to this figure that Maria-Martha has dedicated the parekklēsion. In the epigram on the two interior cornices, writing assumes a particularly powerful presence by being dressed in gold. The lamentable state of preservation of this inscription does not allow us to fully appreciate its impact, but one may imagine the original effect of golden lettering in a church interior dimly lit by the flickering light of candles and oil lamps. The displayed script must have glittered and glinted like a gigantic gold chain wound around the nave, as different strokes, letters, words, and phrases caught and reflected light with an ever-changing luster. The presence of a gold-lettered epigram in a burial chamber brings to mind Niketas Eugeneianos’ monody on Theodore Prodromos and the vivid reference to the dead poet’s chrysepēs stichourgia, or “gold-worded” poetry, which had the ability to turn gloomy tombs into sites full of visual and literary delight. Eugeneianos’ metaphorical language finds a concrete, visually striking parallel in the epigraphic embellishment of the parekklēsion. Such a lavish use of gold as a writing material would not have failed to impress any visitor to the prōtostratōr’s mausoleum, regardless of the verbal message that the inscription on the two cornices had to convey. In comparison with the two epigrams in the interior of the parekklēsion, the one displayed on the building’s façades has been given a sturdier, more robust material form, in part, no doubt, because of its exposure to the elements. As though emerging from the surface of the marble cornice, the letters of Philes’ poetic text assume shapely stone bodies that, carved in low relief, occupy real, physical space. Were they placed at a slightly lower level, many a visitor would want to touch them. The fact that these letters are sculpted in marble, rather than incised, in and of itself enhances the impact of the epigram. For, aside from allowing for a lively interplay of light and shade, it also points to the sheer amount of work invested in carving each individual letter, a procedure far more labor-intensive than incision. Much like calligraphy and the choice of expensive marble, the toil of crafting is here an index of aristocratic affluence and taste, and a fitting way to communicate the value of Philes’ versifying. The aesthetically self-conscious display of writing on the walls of the parekklēsion opens poetry to sensual apprehension. The visual and

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material enhancement of the inscribed verse not only appeals to the eye, but also encourages the viewer to animate the carved, gilded, and tessellated letters by reading them audibly. An inquisitive and sufficiently educated visitor to Glabas’ burial chapel would not have had much trouble deciphering the text of the three epigrams. The verses in the sanctuary apse are plainly visible from the nave, while the two other epigrams are placed at an angle, that is, facing the spectator on the ground, as they run along cornices with bevelled profiles that project into space. The exterior cornice and the lower of the two interior cornices stand at the height of approximately 3.20 m and 3.40 m, respectively, above the ground, in other words, not much above the eye level. To read the verses on the upper interior cornice, set at the height of approximately 5.50 m, does require some straining of sight, but, as noted above, the lettering of this inscription, with its slightly plump, unconnected, widely spaced capitals, takes into account the position of the spectator. Insofar as the linearity of writing may be said to translate into visual terms the sequentiality of speech, the bands of text on the walls of the parekklēsion virtually encode their oral delivery.45 But they also structure the visitor’s reading experience as one involving physical movement. To recite the two long epigrams, one was forced to walk along the façades of the parekklēsion and perambulate its nave. The movement of the body accompanied the movement of the lips. In this sense, the inscribed verses controlled to a certain degree the visitor’s interaction with the building, prescribing a sort of route that he or she could choose to follow. This is particularly relevant for the epigram on the two interior cornices. By following its string of golden letters, the visitor would move twice around the nave in a clockwise direction. Not accidentally, this direction corresponds to the standard way in which the cycle of feast images and other narrative cycles unfold in a typical, centrally planned Byzantine church, namely, from the east to the south, to the west, to the north, and then back to the east, sometimes in two or three circles. Most of the parekklēsion’s mosaic decoration has unfortunately perished, but the panel with a depiction of Christ’s Baptism on the east wall of the south cross arm as well as the remains of an Ascension on the east wall of the north cross arm indicate that the arrangement of the feast cycle in the chapel followed the same system.46 The flow of the verses thus paralleled the flow of the visual narrative around the nave. What is more, the fact that the upper cornice, which runs

45

Cf. Papalexandrou 2001, 272.

46

Belting, Mango, and Mouriki 1978, 47–48, 64–67.

Verses in space

immediately below the feast images, traces the cruciform outline of the nave’s superstructure would have invested the visitor’s movement with a particular charge. As Amy Papalexandrou has pointed out, in the process of reading the verses displayed upon this cornice, the visitor was compelled to recreate the sign of the cross in space with his or her own body.47 The cruciform disposition of these verses exemplifies how the spatial arrangement and setting of an inscription can inflect its meaning and impact upon the reader, independent of its content or the material fabric and epigraphic style of its lettering. The artists employed to decorate the parekklēsion, presumably assisted by Philes, seem to have been intrigued by the possibilities of the interplay between an inscribed text and its physical context. Consider, for instance, the arrangement of the first ten verses of the inscription on the lower nave cornice, quoted above. Lines 1–5 are displayed on the south wall and lines 6–10 on the west wall. The inscription skirts the corner precisely at the point where there is a shift in the poetic apostrophe to Christ from πρίν (“formerly”) to νῦν (“now”). While the sequence on the south wall evokes the military honors that Glabas received from the emperor during his lifetime, the one on the west wall appeals to Christ to reward the deceased with still “more blessed honors” in the afterlife. The physical transition in the unfolding of the inscription at the corner emphasizes the contrast between past and present, life and death, and renders it almost palpable. An equally subtle interaction between content and context is at work in the epigram surrounding the figure of Christ Hyperagathos in the sanctuary apse. Quite unusually for the Deēsis iconography, Christ in this mosaic gives his blessing by holding his right arm outstretched.48 It is hardly an accident that this raised arm points directly to the name Μιχαὴλ τοῦ Γλαβᾶ (“of Michael Glabas”) in the first verse of the epigram. Moreover, if the line connecting Christ’s blessing hand and the inscribed name of the deceased were to be extended, it would reach the monumental arcosolium tomb installed against the north wall, which almost certainly belonged to the prōtostratōr (Figure 4.14).49 This strategic alignment of the hand, name, and tomb amplifies the hopeful message of the epigram in spatial and visual terms. The Supremely Good Lord has evidently heard the plea of the grieving widow and now responds with a reassuring gesture of blessing.

47 48

49

Papalexandrou 2001, 271. Mouriki has argued that this detail was borrowed from the iconography of the Ascension: Belting, Mango, and Mouriki 1978, 55. Belting, Mango, and Mouriki 1978, 21, fig. 9.

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Figure 4.14 Interior looking north with the restored arcosolium tomb of the prōtostratōr Michael Doukas Glabas Tarchaneiotes, south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Vasileios Marinis)

His benevolent response must have been elicited, in part, by the supplications of his Mother, who stands next to the section of the epigram containing the deceased’s name, with the arcosolium tomb behind her back, as she intercedes on behalf of the prōtostratōr.

Verses in space

The care with which the verses adorning the funerary parekklēsion of the former Pammakaristos monastery were arranged to interact with their spatial setting is by no means exceptional. The dedicatory epigram of the tzaousios Constantine Spanes in the church of Saint Nicholas near Platsa in the Mani provides a comparable example (Figures 1.9, 1.10, 4.15). Enveloping the nave of the church, this inscription, as we have seen in Chapter 1, runs along a horizontal band that imitates in paint a three-dimensional cornice carved in stone. This kind of visual inflection, however, is not the only manner in which the verbal content of the epigram has been enhanced and modulated through extralinguistic means. A closer look at the epigram reveals that the poetic structure of the text, on the one hand, and the spatial and liturgical structure of the church interior, on the other, have been coordinated in the disposition of the verses along the walls. The epigram, riddled with lacunae due to subsequent alterations of the building, reads as follows:50

5

10

15

Τόνδ᾽ εὑρὼν ναὸν ἀγνοούμενον τίνος, ὃν ὁ φ[...............................]ρας χρόνος, {τοῦτον} ἀνεκαίνισεν ὁ πανευγενέστατος {παν}σέβαστος τζαούσιος δρόγγου Μελιγῶν, Κωνσταντῖ[νος................]ος ὁ Σπάνης, ἅμα συμ[βίας τζα]ουσίνης Μαρίας· Μωσῇ θεόπτῃ προσκιαγραφουμένη, ἣν ἀρχιτέκτων Βεσελεὴλ πανσόφως εἰς κτίσεως ἔπηξεν εἰκονουργίαν, τῆς σῆς λοχείας ἱστορεῖ, παντοκράτορ· ἐγὼ δὲ τοῦτον τὸν ναὸν, παντεπό[πτα, .............]ς γὰρ δόξης, ὤφθης κτισμάτων οὐκ ἐνδεὴς πλὴν τῶν ἐμῶν πονημάτων· σὺ δ᾽ ἀντιδιδοῖς μοι λύσιν σφαλμάτων σκι[.................................] σκηνωμάτων. Having found this church of an unknown dedication, which time [. . .] Constantine Spanes, the most noble pansebastos and tzaousios of the district of the Melings, restored it together with his wife, the tzaousina Maria. , foreshadowed to the God-seer Moses, which the architect Bezalel constructed most wisely as an image of the created world, represents of your birth, O Pantokratōr. And I this church , All-Seeing One, for [. . .] of glory, you were not deemed needful of created things, except for my efforts. May you grant me in return the remission of sins [. . .] of dwelling places.

50

Here I reproduce the reading of the verses in BEIÜ I, no. 135.

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Figure 4.15 Cross-section and plan showing the layout of the dedicatory epigram of the tzaousios Constantine Spanes (marked grey), church of Saint Nicholas, Platsa in the Mani (drawing: Nataša Žugić)

Verses in space

In addition to being incompletely preserved, the verses are marred with metrical irregularities, replete with misspellings, and probably corrupt, which is why they are not always easy to comprehend.51 Yet the basic message of the epigram is clear: Constantine Spanes has restored an old church building together with his wife, hoping that, in return for his “efforts,” Christ may pardon his sins. The greater part of the poem develops a comparison between the church restored by Spanes and the Old Testament Tabernacle constructed by the divinely inspired architect Bezalel on the basis of a plan that had been revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 25:8–40). Such a comparison is not uncommon in Byzantine writing, including epigrammatic poetry,52 but here this motif has been given a particular twist. The inscription, one recalls, begins on the north wall of the nave, continues in the sanctuary, and ends on the south wall. Roughly at the point where the train of painted letters reaches the curvature of the sanctuary apse, the tone of the epigram changes. Most notably, there is a shift in the speaking voice. While in the preceding section (vv. 1–6) Spanes is referred to in the third person, in the remainder of the inscription (vv. 7–15) he speaks in his own voice. Having assumed the “I” of the epigram at the entrance to the most sacred area of the church, the tzaousios starts his appeal to Christ. His words are addressed, more specifically, to a monumental figure of the Lord portrayed in the conch as part of a Deēsis composition. This Christ is inscribed with the epithet Pantokratōr, and the same appellation recurs, not accidentally, in line 10, at the point where the inscription exits the sanctuary. The portion of the poem displayed within the sanctuary (vv. 7–10) is distinguished by its elevated content, as it introduces and briefly elaborates upon the theme of the Tabernacle and its symbolic meanings. Invoking the commonplace notion that this movable desert shrine represented a microcosm, an image of the created world,53 the anonymous poet highlights its typological significance and interprets it as a foreshadowing of the incarnation of Christ. Patristic and Byzantine authors usually associate the Tabernacle with the Virgin: just like 51 52

53

See the detailed analysis in BEIÜ I, 231–33. The comparison was already employed by Eusebios of Caesarea in his speech delivered on the occasion of the inauguration of the church at Tyre, in which he praises the emperor Constantine, the builder of the church, as a New Bezalel: Eusebios of Caesarea, Church History 10.4.3. For epigrammatic poetry, see, e.g., the dedicatory verses of the archbishop Gregory on the main façade of the Ohrid cathedral, briefly discussed in Chapter 2. See, e.g., Pseudo-Athanasios of Alexandria, In Assumptionem Domini, PG 28, col. 1097C; John Chrysostom, In diem natalem Christi, PG 49, col. 355; Kosmas Indikopleustes, Christian Topography 5.20. For a detailed discussion of the cosmological interpretations of the Tabernacle in the Judeo-Christian tradition, see Laderman 2013. See also Kominko 2013, esp. 130–32.

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this tent-like shrine served as a dwelling place of God among the ancient Israelites, so did Mary bear the Divine Logos in her womb.54 In the Byzantine exegetical tradition, however, the Tabernacle is also linked with Christ. This line of interpretation derives from the apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, where the “greater and more perfect Tabernacle, not made with hands” (9:11), that is, the Tabernacle of the New Covenant, is conceived in relation to the body of the Logos Incarnate.55 This body, which contained the divinity like a shrine, died on the Cross in a redemptive sacrifice that superseded the sacrifices formerly performed at the Tabernacle of the Old Covenant. The sanctuary of a church is a uniquely appropriate place for an epigrammatic evocation of these ideas, as the Eucharist celebrated at its altar represents a ritual re-enactment of Christ’s death on the Cross. In the church of Saint Nicholas, as in countless other Byzantine places of worship, the notion that the Eucharistic sacrifice re-enacts Christ’s sacrifice is stressed by the depiction of a scene showing the Infant Jesus as a Eucharistic offering on an altar, the so-called Melismos, in the lower zone of the apse, immediately below the band with the dedicatory epigram (Figure 4.16).56 The content of the verses running along the curvature of the apse is thus perfectly suited to the function and symbolic significance of their spatial setting. Once the epigram leaves the sanctuary, its tone changes again. Spanes, still speaking in his own voice, moves away from the lofty realm of theology and scriptural exegesis, and sets about a more pressing task, namely, the presentation of his church to Christ. Placed on the south wall of the nave, this final portion of the inscription, in other words, returns to the subject of the tzaousios’ pious restoration of the church introduced on the north wall. Clearly, within the overall structure of the poem, the lines devoted to the theme of the Tabernacle stand apart in terms of both their content and their physical location. From a purely literary point of view, the dedicatory epigram in the church of Saint Nicholas is unlikely to impress the reader as great poetry. Yet, when experienced in its material form and spatial context, as a linear sequence of painted words unfolding around the church interior, the epigram gains in appeal. If the visual presentation of the verses, with the

54

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See, e.g., Proklos of Constantinople, Encomium on the Virgin, 323; Pseudo-Anastasios of Sinai, In Hexaemeron, PG 89, col. 1053B; Pseudo-John of Damascus, In Nativitatem Mariae, PG 96, col. 689C. For liturgical poetry, see Eustratiades 1930, 71–72 (σκηνή). See also Bêljaev 1930; Gligorijević-Maksimović 1989. See, e.g., John Chrysostom, In Epistulam ad Hebraeos, PG 63, col. 119; Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Interpretatio Epistulae ad Hebraeos, PG 82, col. 741B–C; Symeon of Thessalonike, De sacro templo, PG 155, col. 325B–C. On the Melismos, see Gerstel 1999, esp. 37–47; Konstantinide 2008.

Labyrinths and crosses: figured epigrams

Figure 4.16 Melismos and a section of the dedicatory epigram of the tzaousios Constantine Spanes, 1337/38, church of Saint Nicholas, Platsa in the Mani (photo: Michalis Kappas)

use of calligraphy and the imitation of a stone-carved cornice, transforms the text of the epigram into a material artifact, the spatial layout of the verses intensifies their verbal message. Considered by itself, the evocation of the Tabernacle in lines 7–10 may strike the reader as a clever, if somewhat inflated, way to justify and present the work of restoration undertaken by Spanes. But when seen in its location in the sanctuary, where it provides a poetic backdrop for the celebration of the Eucharist, this statement acquires resonance and becomes truly forceful.

Labyrinths and crosses: figured epigrams The epigrams gracing the funerary parekklēsion of the Pammakaristos monastery and the church of Saint Nicholas rely for their effect upon the manipulation of the inscribed text within an architectural space. A different kind of manipulation is at work in the case of epigrams in the form of carmina figurata.57 In medieval Byzantium, texts explicitly conceived as visual compositions, figures, or patterns were not an 57

On carmina figurata in general, see Pozzi 1981; Higgins 1987; Ernst 1991. For this type of poetry in Byzantium, see Hörandner 1990; Hörandner 2009. See also Gardthausen 1913, 58–68. For the ancient tradition of Greek carmina figurata, see especially Luz 2010.

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uncommon element of the graphic repertoire. Byzantine manuscripts provide numerous instances of such shaped texts. An example that perhaps most readily comes to mind is that of the cruciform lectionaries, a class of extraordinarily ostentatious liturgical books, in which the Gospel pericopes are written in the form of a cross (Figure 4.17).58 Within the space of a manuscript, figured writing is frequently reserved for the paratextual material. The more proficient among Byzantine scribes delighted in rendering prefaces, marginal scholia, commentaries, and annotations in a variety of geometric shapes, including triangles, rhomboids, circles, and crosses, often combined into highly decorative formations. At times, these paratexts even morph into cypress trees and birds, also chalices, columns, arches, gabled houses, and other architectural structures (Figure 4.18).59 Besides, some among the educated Byzantines evidently took interest in the ancient Greek genre of technopaignia – poems that assume the shape of the object they describe, be it an egg, an altar, or a pair of wings. Apart from the fact that examples of this genre can be found in the Anthologia Palatina,60 it is noteworthy that Manuel Holobolos, a scholar of the early Palaiologan era, prepared an illustrated edition of technopaignia supplied with a commentary.61 The Byzantines themselves do not seem to have practiced this kind of figured poetry. Their own poésie visuelle followed a different tradition, that of labyrinth poems and the so-called carmina cancellata. A fine example of a labyrinth poem – in this case, a labyrinth monostich – is preserved in an eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscript of the Liturgical Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos, now in the Dujčev Center at Sofia (Ms. gr. D. 282 [olim Prodromos P. A. 14]) (Plate 8, Figure 4.19).62 The poem is displayed on folio 3v, facing the beginning of Gregory’s first homily On Easter.63 Surrounded by a decorative frame is a square block of text, thirty-one by thirty-one letters, which cannot be read in “normal,” linear fashion, from left to right, starting from the upper left corner and then proceeding downward line by line. To decipher the text, the reader must begin with the letter omikron, which, visually emphasized by being

58 59 60 61

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Anderson 1992. Belting and Cavallo 1979, 21–22; Ernst 1991, 739–43; Hutter 2010; Linardou 2013. AP 15, nos. 21, 22, 24–27. Wendel 1907; Wendel 1910; Strodel 2002, esp. 108–56; Ferreri 2006. See also Bernabò and Magnelli 2011. Džurova 1997, esp. 187–88; Hörandner 2009, 291–92. On labyrinth poems, see Hörandner 1990, 18–22; Ernst 1991, 388–427. PG 35, cols. 396–401.

Labyrinths and crosses: figured epigrams

Figure 4.17 Page with a section of the reading for Pentecost Sunday (John 7:37–52), New York Cruciform Lectionary, Ms. M. 692, fol. 56r, middle of the twelfth century, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (photo: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York)

enclosed within a small square, occupies the very center of the textual block. Starting from this letter and moving horizontally and vertically – but not diagonally – either up or down, left or right, the reader can read the text in multiple ways. Whichever path he or she chooses to follow through

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Figure 4.18 Page with a marginal scholion in the form of a bird, The Heavenly Ladder of John Klimax, Ms. Coislin 88, fol. 107v, second half of the eleventh century, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris)

this textual labyrinth in order to reach one of the four corners, the resulting sequence of letters is the same and yields one dodecasyllable line: Ὁρῶν τὰ λαμπρὰ καὶ τὰ μὴ λαμπρὰ σκόπει (“As you behold what is splendid, consider also what is not splendid”). The exact meaning of this terse gnomic statement must be sought in its relation with the corpus of Gregory’s homilies, copied on the pages that follow. A codicological examination has revealed that the first three folios of the manuscript. containing a pinax, or table of contents, and the labyrinth poem, were added at a later

Labyrinths and crosses: figured epigrams

Figure 4.19 Labyrinth poem, Liturgical Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos, Ms. gr. D. 282 (olim Prodromos P. A. 14), fol. 3v, middle of the thirteenth century, Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies “Prof. Ivan Dujčev,” Sofia (photo: Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies “Prof. Ivan Dujčev,” Sofia). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

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date, probably around the middle of the thirteenth century.64 The monostich was evidently appended to serve as a kind of poetic preface, a book epigram introducing the works of the great Cappadocian Father. More specifically, its purpose seems to have been to prepare the reader by indicating the proper way to approach the manuscript. In this sense, the reference to τὰ λαμπρά (“the splendid things”) may be understood as an allusion to the manuscript’s calligraphy and rich decoration, including the use of gold for titles, initial letters, and ornamental headpieces. The monostich encouraged the reader to move beyond these visual delights and explore the spiritual content that lay behind them. It is worth pointing out that the presentation of the monostich in the form of a labyrinth poem in and of itself encapsulates the tension between what is manifest and pleasing to the eye and what is hidden. Floating against the off-white expense of a parchment page, the framed carpet-like field of neatly written letters does not fail to attract the reader’s attention. Although structured as a grid, the square block of text is not static, but appears quite vibrant. The repetition of the same letters along the oblique lines perpendicular to the main diagonals of the square, as well as the alternate use of two different inks, red and blue, collaborate to produce a pattern of concentric rhombi. As though emanating from the central omikron, these rhombi generate a sense of movement within the overall structure of the design. Despite its aesthetic appeal, the play of forms and colors ultimately disorients the reader. To uncover the message hidden among the letters, one must leave ta lampra aside and look for the logic behind the construction of the textual block. The graphic form of the monostich thus appears to have been carefully chosen to match its verbal content. One could argue that both cued the reader as to how to approach the manuscript. What the maze made of letters offered to those privileged enough to leaf through the Sofia codex was more than a lighthearted divertissement; it was also a metaphor for the depth and complexity of Gregory’s thought. Another type of figured poetry practiced by the Byzantines comprises what is known as carmina cancellata.65 Like labyrinth poems, carmina cancellata are structured as textual grids, whether square or rectangular, frequently with the equal number of letters per line. Unlike labyrinth poems, however, they can be read in linear fashion. What makes them distinct is that certain letters within the grid, normally singled out through

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Džurova 1997, 187–88. On carmina cancellata, see Hörandner 1990, passim; Ernst 1991, passim.

Labyrinths and crosses: figured epigrams

the use of a different color or material, can be aligned to form legible words or phrases, or sometimes entire poems. These intexts, which are “cancelled out” from the background text – hence the name of the genre – can, moreover, coalesce to create recognizable figures or patterns. In Byzantium, grid poems with intexts were not encountered only in manuscripts, but could be seen in monumental epigraphy as well. The most famous example of monumental epigrams in the form of carmina cancellata comes from the iconoclastic era. In the wake of the synod held at the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in the spring of 815, an ecclesiastical assembly that officially reinstituted the ban on religious images, the emperor Leo V had a figure of the cross placed above the Chalke Gate of the Great Palace. Thanks to the writings of Theodore of Stoudios, we know that this cross was surrounded by five iambic poems, four of which were structured as figured grids.66 Each of these four epigrams consisted of seven verses and featured a triple acrostic formed by the initial, middle, and final letters. In addition, in each case, a word in the middle of the third line intersected with the mesostic to create the shape of a cross. To illustrate the visual form assumed by these epigrams, let us consider the verses composed by a certain John, most likely John the Grammarian, one of the leading iconoclasts and future patriarch of Constantinople.67

5

Χρυσογραφοῦσι ΧρισΤὸν οἱ θεηγόροΙ Ῥήσει προφητῶν, μὴ βλέπΟντες τοῖς κάτΩ. Ἰσηγόρων γὰρ ΕΛΠΙΣ ἡ θεοπιστίΑ. Σκιογράφων δὲ τὴν πΑλίνδρομον πλάνηΝ Τρανῶς πατοῦσιν ὡς Θεῷ μισουμένηΝ. Οἷς συμπνέοντες οἱ φΟροῦντες τὰ στέφΗ Ὑψοῦσι φαιδρῶς Σταυρὸν εὐσεβεῖ κρίσεΙ. They who speak of God write/depict Christ in gold and contemplate not with the material but rather through the speech of the prophets; for faith in God is the hope of those who speak in like manner. They trample openly upon the resurgent error of those who make images, as it is an abomination to God. In agreement with them,

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The poems are preserved in Theodore’s treatise Refutatio et subversio, PG 99, cols. 436B–477A. Aside from offering a detailed refutation of the theology behind these epigrams, the treatise includes a series of counter-epigrams in the form of carmina cancellata composed by Theodore himself, which not only articulate the iconophile position, but also surpass the works of his iconoclast opponents in terms of their formal perfection. See also Theodore of Stoudios, Letters, no. 356. On the iconoclastic epigrams at the Chalke Gate, see Speck 1974; Bakos 1992, esp. 107–34; Speck 1995; Barber 2002, 91–104; Lauxtermann 2003, 274–84; Pentcheva 2010, 77–83. PG 99, col. 436B.

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they who wear the crown gloriously raise the cross high with pious resolve.68

The intext, which seems to be an attempt at a dodecasyllable one-liner, gives the name of the author: Χριστοῦ τὸ πάθος ἐλπὶς Ἰωάννῃ (“The Passion of Christ is the hope of John”). This is no place to tackle all the theological and philological complexities of this rather convoluted poetic statement.69 Suffice it to identify a few salient points. The verses emphatically oppose the truth and authority of verbal discourse and the deceitfulness of manmade images. The divinity, they claim, cannot be represented in material form. The only way to ascend toward God is through spiritual contemplation based upon the verbal testimony of the Scriptures. The true theologians, as the author posits in the opening line, “write” or “depict” Christ “in gold” – the verb χρυσογραφέω can mean both. Given the author’s position on the question of images, chrysography in this particular case can hardly refer to figural depiction in gold. The term, to be sure, can be understood in a metaphorical sense. The writings of those who concern themselves with the divine are akin to chrysography; for, when they write about Christ, their words are golden. It is in this sense, one should recall, that the epigrammatic poetry of Theodore Prodromos is said to be “goldworded” in Niketas Eugeneianos’ monody. But in John’s epigram, chrysography also refers to the actual practice of writing in gold ink, which the Byzantines commonly applied to sacred and authoritative texts, the Scriptures in particular.70 Gold-lettered biblical codices not only communicated the holiness of the copied text in the most overt of ways; they also declared and made palpable the presence and, indeed, embodiment of the Divine Logos in the very words of the Scriptures.71 It is likely, in addition, that the invocation of chrysography was a self-referential gesture. The five iconoclastic poems at the Chalke Gate were probably inscribed on bronze plates. It stands to reason that the secondary texts embedded in the four carmina cancellata were highlighted in gold. If this was the case, then the introductory verse of John’s epigram called attention to the inserted golden letters. Since the acrostic formed by the initial letters of each of the poem’s seven lines spells out the name of Christ in the genitive case (Χριστοῦ), the phrase χρυσογραφοῦσι Χριστόν – they “write/depict Christ” – can be taken

68 69 70 71

Trans. Lauxtermann 2003, 279, with modifications. On John’s epigram, see especially Lauxtermann 2003, 278–84. Burnam 1911. See also Atsalos 2000, 484–94. On writing in gold as a vehicle of divine presence, see Thunø 2011.

Labyrinths and crosses: figured epigrams

in a literal sense as well. Being a theologian himself, one of those who speak of God, John literally writes the word “Christ” in gold. Displayed around a monumental cross gracing the entrance to the imperial palace, each of the four carmina cancellata featured a cross made of letters. The inclusion of this visual element was a powerful statement. Texts, it was implied, were not only vastly superior to images; they themselves could function as images – in this instance, images of the cross. A visitor approaching the Chalke Gate did not have to read the inscribed poems to grasp the basic message that Leo V and his iconoclast followers wished to convey. Even the illiterate could “read” the visual form assumed by these inscriptions. As Marc Lauxtermann has put it, “They saw goldenlettered crosses – what more did they need to understand that iconoclasm was back in town?”72 Beyond the realm of manuscripts, epigrams in the form of carmina cancellata appear to have been extremely rare in Byzantium.73 It is notable, however, that dedicatory verse inscriptions of a more personal kind could adopt the grid format. One such poem accompanied an image of the Virgin, probably a fresco or wall mosaic icon, in the south church of the monastery of Christ Pantokratōr in Constantinople.74 The image and the poem were commissioned by the otherwise unknown panhypersebastos Andrew, probably sometime during the Palaiologan era. The verses have come down to us in two manuscripts, one in Vienna (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ms. Med. gr. 43, fol. 142v) (Plate 9, Figure 4.20) and the other in Cambridge (Trinity College, Ms. O.2.36, fol. 166r), both copied by a well-known Greek scribe, John Malaxos, in the second half of the sixteenth century.75 Like the iconoclastic poems at the Chalke Gate, the epigram of the panhypersebastos Andrew is seven lines long and features a triple acrostic, although without a cross in the center. The middle acrostic is composed of the letters following the caesura, which in each line falls after the fifth syllable.

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Lauxtermann 2003, 284. One curious example of an object inscribed with a carmen cancellatum is recorded in Eustathios of Thessalonike’s commentary on the iambic kanōn for Pentecost by John of Damascus. Eustathios relates how his former protector, the late patriarch Luke Chrysoberges, saw a shield at the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople. The shield bore a poetic inscription in hexameter, which was marvelously arranged in such a manner that the verses resembled a spider’s web: Eustathios of Thessalonike, Commentary on the Iambic Kanōn for Pentecost, 149*–53*, Prooem. 146–56. De Gregorio 1998; Vassis 2013, 225–26; BEIÜ III, no. AddI25. On Malaxos, see De Gregorio 1996, 190–241; Schreiner 2001.

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Figure 4.20 Figured dedicatory epigram of the panhypersebastos Andrew, Ms. Med. gr. 43, fol. 142v, second half of the sixteenth century, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (photo: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

5

Αἴγλης παμφαοῦς Θῶκος τῆς γε ἐνθέοΥ, Νύμφη νέος περ Ἐξ ἧς ἐτέχθη ἈδάΜ, Δαυὶδ ἐκ ῥίζης Ὅρον δεχθεῖσα θεῖοΝ, Ῥάβδος Ἀαρών, Τοῦ μάννα θεία στάμνΕ, Εὔκλειαν ἡμῖν Οἳ πόθῳ δὴ καὶ πίστεΙ Ἀεὶ παράσχου Καὶ κράτος ἐν σοῖς ὕμνοιΣ Σῴζουσα θ’ ἅμα Ἐχθροῦ πείρας, παρθένΕ. O seat of all-shining divine splendor, bride, from whom a New Adam [i.e., Christ] was born, from the stock of David, you who received a divine decree,76 O rod of Aaron,77 divine jar of manna,78 may you always grant glory and might to us, who with desire and faith in the hymns in your honor, and at the same time save us from the temptation of the enemy, O Virgin.

76 77

As noted by De Gregorio 1998, 177, this must be an allusion to the Annunciation. Cf. Luke 1:38. 78 Cf. Numbers 17:8; Hebrews 9:4. Cf. Exodus 16:33; Hebrews 9:4.

Labyrinths and crosses: figured epigrams

The triple acrostic reads: Ἀνδρέας, Θεοτόκε, ὑμνεῖ σε (“Andrew, O Mother of God, sings a hymn to you”).79 Aside from recording the patron’s name, this intext succinctly identifies the nature of the dedicatory verses. For in essence, the epigram represents a hymn addressed to the Mother of God. The lexicon and imagery of the poem, with its piling up of Marian epithets and symbols – the seat, the bride, the rod of Aaron, the jar of manna – seem to be borrowed directly from liturgical poetry.80 The same applies to the use of the first person plural in the concluding lines, the generic allencompassing “we” of hymnographic discourse. The visual presentation of this epigrammatic hymn must have compensated for its prosodic and grammatical shortcomings, for instance, the lack of a verb in the dependent clause in line 5.81 In the Vienna and Cambridge manuscripts, the letters of the triple acrostic are picked out in red. In the south church of the Pantokratōr monastery, the same letters must have been highlighted in a comparable fashion, transforming the inscribed verses into a pictorial composition. Epigrams shaped as carmina figurata are extreme examples of the concern for the visual and material aspects of inscriptional poetry. In these poems, the written text truly becomes iconic – an image made of words. In a number of instances, however, aesthetic considerations played little or no role in the lettering, graphic structure, and display of an epigram. Indeed, quite a few among the extant Byzantine verse inscriptions are rendered in a strikingly careless or incompetent fashion. What is more, poor execution is not necessarily an indication of a low literary quality of the inscribed text.82 Consider, for instance, the dedicatory epigram on the west façade of the church at Skripou in Boeotia (Figure 2.6). As has been pointed out in Chapter 2, this poetic eulogy of the founder of the church, the prōtospatharios Leo, is an exquisite manifestation of ninth-century verbal artistry and devotion to the antiquarian Muse. Written in superb hexameters, the epigram is replete with allusions to Homer and the Greek Anthology. Yet, despite the use of marble rather than the local grey limestone for the inscription, the physical shape that the verses take on the façade is no match to their elevated style. The incised letters exhibit a remarkable lack of calligraphic control, the spacing is inconsistent, and, with no

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82

For a poem featuring a nearly identical triple acrostic, see Hörandner 1990, 42. For some parallels, see Eustratiades 1930, 49–50 (νύμφη), 68–69 (ῥάβδος), 73 (στάμνος). For another example of the use of θῶκος (“seat”) in reference to Mary, see Pseudo-John of Damascus, In Nativitatem Mariae, PG 96, col. 692A. On these shortcomings, see De Gregorio 1998, 174, 177–78. For a different reading of line 5, see BEIÜ III, 798. Rhoby 2012a, 739–41.

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justification on the right-hand side, the text as a whole appears rather untidy. Surely, the craftsman entrusted with executing the inscription was incompetent, and may have even worked in haste. Even though calligraphy and poetry did not always coincide in practice, the very nature of epigrams as literary compositions called for an aesthetically appealing presentation of writing. “Letters depict the word,” declares John of Damascus in regard to texts written in books.83 Inscriptions placed upon artifacts and edifices can be characterized, too, as depictions rather than mere recordings of words. They dress a verbal content into a material form. Every inscription is thus marked by a fundamental duality: it is simultaneously a text and an object. To the extent that epigrams represent instantiations of logos, a particular category of rhetorically shaped, metrical texts, their physical manifestation in stone, paint, gold, niello, and other materials was expected to communicate, at least in theory, this discursive quality. The literary nature of the epigram-as-text encouraged the graphic, material, and spatial elaboration of the epigram-as-object.

Logikos kosmos To return to the question with which we have begun, namely, in what sense the Byzantine epigram may be said to function as kosmos, it should be clear by now that part of the answer lies in the aesthetic force exerted by the inscribed text as a material artifact. Yet the kosmetic capacity of an epigram is by no means limited to calligraphy. A set of verses can also adorn the object it accompanies as a literary artifact, a precious piece of logos, which pleases the spectator’s mind as much as its visual aspect appeals to his or her sensory perception. This notion of epigram as a noetic form of adornment underlies the dedicatory verses on a large mid-fourteenth-century icon of Christ, previously housed in the church of the Virgin Peribleptos at Ohrid (Figure 4.21).84 The beautifully painted panel shows a bust-length image of Christ blessing with his right hand and holding a Gospel book opened at John 10:27–28 in his left. While Christ’s precious-metal nimbus is missing, the frame and background of the panel are still sheathed with a silver-gilt revetment composed of a huge number of miniature plaques bearing 83 84

John of Damascus, De imaginibus III.23.8–9: εἰκονίζει γὰρ τὸ γράμμα τὸν λόγον. The icon is now housed in the Icon Gallery in the same city. See Balabanov 1995, 130–44, 200–1 (no. 30); Evans 2004, cat. no. 154 (M. Georgievski), with further bibliography. For the dedicatory epigram, see Kissas 2003, esp. 450–52; BEIÜ II, no. Ik15.

Logikos kosmos

Figure 4.21 Icon of Christ, middle of the fourteenth century, Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra)

images of the Hetoimasia, figures of saints and angels, scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin, and floral motifs, all produced en masse using the same matrices, and repetitively and rather carelessly attached to the icon. Among these plaques, two, affixed to the lower edge of the icon, bear a dedication of the sebastokratōr Isaakios Doukas, governor of Ohrid (Figure 4.22).85 The coarsely executed inscription is damaged and, as one

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Figure 4.22 Two plaques with the dedicatory epigram of the sebastokratōr Isaakios Doukas (drawing: Dalibor Novak, after Kissas 2003, p. 451)

scholar has suggested, originally may have belonged to another icon.86 Of its eight dodecasyllable verses, the first is entirely lost and the remainder contains lacunae.

5

[...........................................................] ὕμνον ἐπινίκον ὡς Θεῷ φέρει· αὐτὸς δ’ ἔνυλος καὶ χοϊκὸς τυγχάνων Δούκας Ἰσαάκιος σεβαστοκράτωρ [.....................] ἔπλασεν εἰκόν[α ἐξ ἀρ]γύρου χρυσοῦ τε τεχνουργημένην· ἥν καὶ δέχοιο, παμμέδον Θεοῦ γ[όνε, .................] ἐξίλασμα τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων. [. . .] bring the triumphal hymn as to God. Yet, since he is material, made of earth, the sebastokratōr Isaakios Doukas [. . .] made this icon, which is skillfully wrought of silver and gold. Accept it, all-ruling Son of God, [. . .] atonement of the sins.

As Sotirios Kissas has noted, the opening line must have mentioned angelic beings.87 This is indicated by the reference to the epinikios hymnos in line 2. This “triumphal hymn” is, of course, the biblical

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On Isaakios Doukas, see especially Grozdanov 1980, 15–16, 36–37. Balabanov 1995, 138–44. Kissas 2003, 451, has proposed two tentative reconstructions: ἀΰλων νόων σύμπαν σοὶ μὲν ἀπαύστως (“All the immaterial spirits incessantly to you”) and πᾶσα τάξις ἀγγέλων

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Trisagion – “Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth, heaven and earth are filled with your glory” (ἅγιος, ἅγιος, ἅγιος, Κύριος Σαβαώθ, πλήρης ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ τῆς δόξης σου) – a song chanted by the heavenly hosts in praise of God (cf. Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8). Whatever the exact wording of the opening line, the epigram clearly contrasts two realms, one angelic and the other human, and two offerings, one spiritual and the other material. Although the icon revetted with silver gilt, which the sebastokratōr Isaakios dedicated to Christ, is described as “skillfully wrought,”88 it is nonetheless inferior to the “triumphal hymn.” It is worth recalling that this doxological refrain was incorporated in the anaphora, or Eucharistic Prayer, of the Byzantine liturgy.89 Intoned in perpetuity, both in heaven and on earth, by the faithful assembled for the celebration of the Eucharist, the angelic song represents not only a contrast to the icon’s precious-metal kosmos – the transience of which is, ironically, all too obvious in its present garbled state – but also, implicitly, a point of reference for the epigram itself. Each time a viewer/reader, the implied “I” of the epigram, recites the verses, the sebastokratōr Isaakios’ gift is remembered and his plea activated and brought to the attention of Christ. The sinful patron, bound as he is by base matter, may not be able to offer spiritual gifts, but his dedication is recorded in a poem made of the immaterial stuff of words and, like the angelic song, addressed to the Lord of Hosts. Skillfully wrought according to the rules of versification, the poem is a worthy complement to the silver-gilt cladding that bears it and, indeed, a kosmos its own right. It is highly indicative in this connection that, in a letter to George Mouzalon, a high official at the court of Nicaea and his personal friend and favorite, Theodore II Laskaris describes a hymn which he composed in honor of an icon of the Virgin – or rather, the Virgin herself portrayed in it – as the icon’s λογικὸς κόσμος, that is, the icon’s “verbal” or “discursive adornment.” The icon in question was Mouzalon’s gift to the emperor. Since the giver was suffering from ill health at the time, as a token of affection the emperor set out to adorn the icon and thereby invoke the Virgin’s aid on his friend’s behalf.

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σοὶ μὲν ἀπαύστως (“Every order of angels incessantly to you”). While plausible in terms of their content, these reconstructions can be challenged on the grounds of prosody: BEIÜ II, 73. Note that the verses conflate the icon and its precious kosmos. Brightman 1896, 385, 403.

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Golden words Μουζάλων μου, τὴν εἰκόνα τῆς ὑπεραγίας Θεοτόκου ὁ Δισύπατος πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἐκ σῆς διακομίσας ἀποστολῆς, ηὔφρανεν ὅτι πολλά· ἐπεί γε ἡ εἰς ταύτην ἡμετέρα πεποίθησις τελείαν ἡμῖν τὴν αἴτησιν ἔχειν ἐκ ταύτης ἔπεισε· διὸ κόσμον μὲν ὑλικὸν ὡς οὐθὲν διεκρίναμεν ταύτῃ προσάξαι, εἴπερ καὶ προσήξαμεν καὶ προσάξομεν καὶ ταῦτα διὰ τὸ τῆς σῆς δωρεᾶς μέγεθος· λογικὸν δὲ καὶ ὅσον ὑπερκείμενον τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς δογμάτων, καλλίστῳ μέλει μελίσαντες ἢ καὶ τάξαντες ὡς οἰκτρότατοι δοῦλοι ταύτης, ταύτῃ προσήξαμεν, καί σοι τοῦτο πεπόμφαμεν. ῥύθμισον γοῦν τοῦτο κατὰ τὸν ῥυθμὸν τοῦτον αὐτὸς σὺ τοῖς ψάλλουσι, καὶ εἶθ’ οὕτως ὑμνείσθω δι’ αὐτοῦ παρ’ ἡμῶν ἡ ὑπέραγνος τοῦ Θεοῦ μήτηρ, ὑμνουμένη δὲ σοὶ μὲν τὴν ὑγείαν δωρήσαιτο, ἡμῖν δὲ ὑπὲρ σοῦ τὴν εὐλογίαν φιλοτιμήσαιτο καὶ ἐρρωμένον παραστήσαιτο πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὦ τέκνον ἐμὸν καλὸν κἀγαθόν, τὴν ταύτης ὑπερεκπληττομένους ἰσχύν.90 My dear Mouzalon, the icon of the most holy Mother of God, which you had sent through Dishypatos,91 delighted me greatly, since my faith in her convinced me that she would respond to my petition . Thus I considered it a trifle to offer a material adornment to her, even though I offered it before and shall offer it too on account of the greatness of your gift. Yet, considering that a verbal adornment surpasses earthly things, as her most humble servant, I composed and arranged a very beautiful hymn, and I offered it to her. I send this hymn to you as well. Perform it yourself with the cantors according to this rhythmic pattern, and thereby let the most pure Mother of God be praised with this hymn on my part.92 Thus being praised, may she grant you health and make me blessed , and astonishing me greatly with her power, may she bring you to my side in good health, my handsome and brave child.

Theodore composed several hymnographic works dedicated to the Mother of God, including the Great Paraklētikos Kanōn, which is still in use in the Orthodox Church.93 One is tempted to speculate whether the hymn mentioned in the letter – or part of it – was actually inscribed upon the 90 91

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Theodore II Laskaris, Letters, no. 186. Dishypatos is here a family name common in the late Byzantine period, rather than a title, which seems to have disappeared by the twelfth century. See Guilland 1967, 2:79–81. The word is accordingly capitalized in the Greek text quoted above. The reference to a “rhythmic pattern” indicates that enclosed in the letter along with the text of the hymn was most likely a verse indicating the melody to which the hymn was supposed to be sung. Tomadakes 1993, 108. For the text of the Great Paraklētikos Kanōn, see PG 140, cols. 772–80. On the emperor’s literary oeuvre, see also Georgiopoulou 1990; Angelov 2011–12. For the emperor’s penchant for composing hymns, see Pachymeres, Syngraphikai historiai 1.13, 1:59.14–20.

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icon or its material kosmos, with which the emperor promised to adorn it, as hymnographic texts commonly appear on Byzantine artifacts.94 To enhance an icon received as a gift with the addition of a luxury revetment was de rigueur, a gesture required of any affluent patron, let alone an emperor. What is notable, however, is that Theodore should judge such a material adornment insufficient for the purpose at hand and, moreover, worthless in comparison to the logikos kosmos of poetry.95 Adornment and literature are not infrequently coupled in the Byzantine tradition. To praise the value of a writer’s literary compositions, some commentators resort to the language of kosmos. To give but one example, the anonymous author of one of the Vitae of Saint Kosmas the Hymnographer states that, “instead of gold, pearls, and precious stones,” his hero “adorned the church with his own divinely inspired logoi.”96 Literary works, moreover, could be likened directly to pieces of jewelry. In a letter to the kaisar John Doukas, Michael Psellos employs this simile to highlight the varied nature of his logoi. Having described to the addressee a beautiful and splendidly adorned bride, whom he supposedly observed changing her finery day after day, Psellos declares: I also possess, my kaisar, discursive earrings and intellectual collars and ornaments for the neck and bosom [ἐλλόβια λογικὰ καὶ περιδέραια γνωστικὰ καὶ περιτραχήλιοι κόσμοι καὶ ἐπιστήθιοι]. And when you are sated with gold, I will show you something made of electrum. Should you have your fill of this, too, I have sapphires, hyacinths, and other precious stones of all kinds in regard to both their color and power, and so it seems that neither you will ever cease loving , nor shall I ever be short of beauty and ostentation.97

The products of Psellos’ verbal artistry gleam and sparkle, change their facture, shape, and color, and have the capacity to seduce their audience with an allure that borders on the erotic. To be sure, some of the authorial self-assertiveness that underlies Psellos’ portrayal of his infinitely varied logoi can be detected, too, in Theodore II’s enthusiastic appraisal of the supreme value of poetry. Looming behind the emperor’s dissatisfaction with a mere material gift to the icon is the

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For an icon inscribed with liturgical texts, see Nelson and Collins 2006, cat. no. 53 (G. R. Parpulov). For another occasion on which the emperor honored holy figures with both material and poetic gifts, see Drpić 2012, 672–83. Anonymous, Life of Saints Kosmas and John of Damascus, 271.2–4. Psellos, Letters (G), 135.39–136.45 (no. 7). On this letter, see Papaioannou 2010b.

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confidence of an accomplished writer, a learned monarch whose pen’s fame equaled the fame of his sword. Yet the idea that a literary composition may be a worthy offering in and of itself falls squarely within the long-established tradition of presenting logoi as gifts.98 John Mauropous, for instance, offered his oration on the Dormition of the Virgin as a gift to Mary.99 In a metrical prologue that introduced the oration, the author likens his logos to a garland. “Having adorned this garland woven from an unmown meadow, I bring it to you, O Mistress.”100 Gifts of logoi also played a role in the celebration of imperial rule. In medieval Byzantium, as in late antiquity, writers of imperial encomia often declare that their orations are offerings to the emperors whom they praise.101 One of the luminaries of Laskarid Nicaea and Theodore’s personal tutor, Nikephoros Blemmydes, begins his Basilikos Andrias – a mirror of princes for his imperial student – by stating that it is an ancient custom that an emperor should be honored with gifts by his subjects. Each individual makes an offering according to his station and means: a manual laborer, whose occupation involves working with matter (περὶ τὰς ὕλας), offers a share of his products or a suitable equivalent, whereas a man of letters presents his logos, an offering superior to any other tribute.102 It is noteworthy that the dedicatee of Blemmydes’ treatise, though not exactly a subject, did precisely this by composing an encomium for his father, the emperor John III Batatzes, which he himself describes as a “verbal” or “discursive tribute” (φόρος λογικός), using the same adjective that, in his letter to Mouzalon, qualifies the hymn-as-kosmos with which he adorned the icon of the Mother of God.103 Theodore’s choice of poetry over metalwork and jewelry as the best way to appeal to the Virgin’s compassion must have been informed in part by the notion that a text, as opposed to a material object, is endowed with speech and thus could directly vocalize the emperor’s petition on behalf of his ailing friend. The same notion explains why, in his epitaph to the logothetēs Gregory Kamateros, Nicholas Kallikles claims that, in contrast to the inert kosmos of luxury materials, logoi constitute an animate or living kosmos.104

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Bernard 2012. See also Bernard 2011. Mauropous, Poems and Other Works, 147–60 (no. 183). See Bernard 2012, 44–45. 101 Mauropous, Poems and Other Works, 12 (no. 27, vv. 1–2). Macrides 1980, 28–31. Blemmydes, Basilikos Andrias 1–5. Theodore II Laskaris, Encomium for John III Batatzes, 48.32–34. Kallikles, Poems, no. 21.

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Λίθοι πλακέντες χρυσίῳ καὶ μαργάροις ἐκ τοῦ τάφου φεύγοιτε, φεῦγε πᾶν πέπλον, ὃ κατεπορφύρωσεν αἷμα πορφύρας· τῷ κειμένῳ γὰρ κόσμος ἔμπνους οἱ λόγοι καὶ ζῶντι τὸ πρίν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τεθνηκότι· κοσμῶν γὰρ αὐτοὺς ἀντεκοσμεῖτο πλέον· ἔμπνους δὲ κόσμος ἄλλος Εἰρήνη πάλιν, ἡ συζυγεῖν λαχοῦσα, Δουκῶν ὁ κλάδος, μελενδυτοῦσα, τῇ κόνει πεφυρμένη καὶ δακρύων λούουσα λουτροῖς τὸν τάφον καὶ τὸν λίθον κρατοῦσα καὶ λαλοῦσά σοι. O stones intermingled with gold and pearls, flee from the tomb! May every textile hanging dyed with the blood of the purple take flight! The logoi have been a living adornment for the one who lies , both while he was alive, and now that he is dead. For by adorning them, he was adorned even more in return. And another living adornment is Irene, his wife, scion of the Doukai. Clothed in black and sprinkled with ashes, she bathes the tomb with the bath of her tears and, taking hold of the tombstone, she speaks to you [i.e., the deceased].

What follows is a twenty-line lament of the logothetēs’ widow Irene, spoken in the first person and addressed directly to the deceased. That Irene, as Kallikles asserts, was a living adornment to her husband is due in no small part to the fact that Gregory Kamateros married a lady of higher social standing than his own, who brought with her a much-coveted alliance with the aristocratic clan of the Doukai and, indirectly, with the imperial family of the Komnenoi.105 The logoi, which the poet also describes as living adornment, opposing them to gems and pearls, gold, and purple veils, the epitome of material kosmos, must refer to literary works patronized by Kamateros.106 By generously remunerating their authors, including presumably Kallikles,107 he became the adorner of these works and, in turn,

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Cf. the characterization of Kamateros in Choniates, History, 1:9.17–22. Kamateros’ wife was a niece of the empress Irene Doukaina, wife of Alexios I Komnenos. On the couple, see Polemis 1968, 78–79 (no. 32); Skoulatos 1980, 109–11 (no. 76); Gautier 1980–86, 2:73–79 (no. 17). The motif of logoi also accommodates a playful allusion to Kamateros’ office of logothetēs. In addition to the present epitaph, which was evidently commissioned by Irene, Kallikles composed an epigram on an icon of Christ with portraits of Kamateros and his wife in monastic garb (Kallikles, Poems, no. 18). As we learn from the title, the icon was placed at their tomb. There is no indication, however, that either of them was dead at the time. The verses articulate a prayer for salvation addressed to Christ in the first person plural, ὡς ἐκ προσώπου of both spouses. It stands to reason, therefore, that Kallikles was commissioned to write the epigram while Kamateros was still alive, presumably by the logothetēs-turned-monk himself.

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was adorned himself, surely by acquiring the name of an enlightened patron of letters.108 What animates these logoi and endows them with life is the faculty of speech. Unlike the stuff of gold, pearls, and other materials, texts are not mute, but speak through voices residing in their words. Kallikles, in fact, draws attention to his own poetry as living logos by using direct speech in the rest of the epitaph. His verses speak, as it were, with the voice of Kamateros’ widow. Moreover, since they were likely to have been inscribed at the tomb, they would have been animated each time a curious passerby paused to recite them. Clearly, the poet’s image of animate kosmos ultimately refers to the epitaph itself. The conceptualization of epigram as a “life-giving” form of adornment is predicated upon the practice of audible reading. Oral delivery activates the force of animation inherent in the inscribed verse. Such performative acts are particularly effective in the case of epigrams accompanying images. Philes’ epitaph to the prōtoïerakaria Melane, discussed in Chapter 1, provides a characteristic example. In this poem, one recalls, Philes implicitly contrasts the funerary portrait of the dead woman with her verbal selfportrait articulated in the epitaph. The former is described as lifeless, a mere shadow, while the latter proves to be a true painting from life, animated by the viewer/reader reciting the epitaph. Like countless other epigrams, Philes’ poem self-reflexively thematizes the cohabitation of the image and the accompanying logos, and in doing so, it establishes a hierarchical relationship between the two. Melane’s painted portrait is deficient, as it lacks speech. What furnishes it with voice is the performed epitaph. Byzantine poets deftly exploited the notion that the epigram could compensate for the lack of speech in an image by assuming the function of its absent voice. We may turn again to Philes for an illustration.109 In a witty quatrain composed for an icon of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, the poet imagines the viewer addressing the infant’s father, the priest Zachariah.110 108

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None of the literary works patronized by Kamateros can be identified. For a possible exception, see preceding note. It is beyond doubt, however, that he enjoyed the reputation of a man of great erudition. Niketas Choniates, for instance, describes him as logios (Niketas Choniates, History, 1:9.17), while in a monody dedicated to his memory, Theodore Prodromos states that his learning embraced virtually the entire field of knowledge (Prodromos, Monody on the Logothetēs Gregory Kamateros, 532.18–21). For a reference to literary gatherings at the Kamateros household, see John Tzetzes, Letters, no. 89, with Grünbart 1996, 216–17. For the topos of the silent image in Philes, see Pietsch-Braounou 2007. Braounou-Pietsch 2010, 132–33 (no. 66). As indicated by the title attached to the quatrain in a manuscript from the Escorial (Ms. X.IV.20, fol. 33v: Εἰς τὴν γέννησιν τοῦ Προδρόμου, ἔχουσαν περὶ αὐτὴν ἐζωγραφημένους τοὺς συνωνύμους αὐτοῦ [“On of the Birth of the

Logikos kosmos Τί δῆτα σιγᾷς, εἰπέ μοι, Ζαχαρία; τεκὼν τὸν υἱὸν ἆρα διστάσεις πάλιν; ἥκιστα, φησίν, ἀλλ’ ὁ τῆς τέχνης νόμος σιγῶντας ἡμᾶς οὐ θορυβοῦντας γράφει. Why are you silent, Zachariah, tell me? Your son is born, and you still hesitate ? Not at all, says he, but the law of art depicts me silent, not shouting cheers.

As recounted in the first chapter of Luke, the birth of a son was announced to Zachariah while he was offering incense at the Temple. Since the priest doubted that his barren wife Elizabeth could conceive a child, especially given that they were both advanced in years, he was struck dumb, only to regain the power of speech upon their son’s birth. Philes thus toys with the idea that, although Zachariah seen in the image must have recovered his voice, he remains speechless, silenced by the very medium of painting. Obviously, it is the medium of poetry – the epigram itself – that allows Zachariah to vocalize his predicament.111 The paradox of speaking while remaining silent serves to stage a paragone between verbal and visual representation, which is the true subject of Philes’ quatrain. This self-referential dramatization of the power of poetry, however, is more subtle than it appears at first. The iconography of the image, for which Philes composed the quatrain, was probably not unlike the one seen in a fourteenth-century icon from the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos (Figure 4.23).112 The busy scene includes Elizabeth reclined on a draped couch; a maidservant waving a peacock-feather fan behind her back, and another one peeping through a drawn curtain; a group of women bringing gifts; two midwives washing the newborn infant; as well as a diminutive figure observing the scene from a tower-like structure. Seated at the left, the priest Zachariah is portrayed writing the words Ἰωάννης ἐστὶν ὄνομα αὐτοῦ (“His name is John”) on a tablet or piece of paper. With these words, according to Luke’s account (1:63), Zachariah disclosed the name given to his future son during the Annunciation at the Temple. It was only after the old priest had written this sentence that his speech was restored

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Prodromos, with his namesakes depicted around it”]), the icon included the Baptist’s saintly namesakes in the frame. For each of these figures – John the Theologian, John Chrysostom, John the Merciful, John the Faster, John of Damascus, John Klimax, and John Kalybites – Philes composed a quatrain: Carmina I, 58–60 (nos. CXXXIV–CXL). Cf. Braounou-Pietsch 2010, 167–68 (no. 93). Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, 188–91 (no. 43). For the iconography of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist in Byzantine art, see Katsiote 1998, esp. 48–60.

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Figure 4.23 Icon of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 143)

and he gave praise to the Lord. Writing is what triggers speech in the story. Writing in the form of inscribed verses – and here lies the thrust of Philes’ conceit – is what opens up the mute image for elocution and lends it a voice. Within the parameters of the Byzantine epigrammatic discourse on art, muteness is a defining characteristic of painting, while the notion of

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animation and liveliness is inextricably linked with speech, performance, logos. A tenth-century poet, referred to as the Anonymous Patrician, enjoins the viewer scrutinizing the image of an emperor in prayer to be forgiving:113 εἰ δ’ οὐκ ἀκούσεις, τὴν τέχνην μὴ φαυλίσῃ· ψυχοῦν γὰρ οὐ δίδωσιν αὕτη ζωγράφοις. (vv. 5–6) If you do not hear , do not blame the art, for it is beyond the capacity of painters to give soul .114

Art lacks logos, and silence is its medium. Here is Philes again:115 Ἴσως ἐπαινεῖς τόνδε τὸν τύπον, ξένε· δοκεῖ γὰρ ἐμπνεῖν ὑπὸ τῆς εὐτεχνίας. ἐθαύμασας δ’ ἂν ἐκπλαγεὶς καὶ τὴν φύσιν, ἂν ἦν δυνατὸν ζωγραφεῖν καὶ τοὺς λόγους. Perhaps you praise this image, stranger, for, thanks to artistic skill, it appears to be alive. Astonished, you would have also marveled at the nature , had it been possible to depict speech too.

It is in the capacity of art to create lifelike representation, but, as Philes reminds us, to endow it with speech – that is, with true life – remains beyond its power. Underlying these poetic musings is the idea that an epigram is not merely a literary appendage, an elegant versified tag attached to an image, but rather its essential component. As a vehicle and instantiation of logos, it has the potential to perfect the image and rectify its inherent deficiency by supplying it with voice, animation, and, indeed, with life. Ever since antiquity, the inherent tension between verbal and visual representation had been conceptualized and interrogated through the motif of voiceless art.116 In Later Byzantium, however, this commonplace motif acquired a particular relevance. Due to their precarious social position, in particular their dependence upon the patronage of the wealthy and

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Anonymous Patrician, Epigrams, no. 5. The quote comes from a cycle of epigrams on a picture showing Christ, the Virgin, and the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennētos. On the Anonymous Patrician, see Lauxtermann 2003, 320–24. 115 Trans. Lauxtermann 2003, 169. Braounou-Pietsch 2010, 73–74 (no. 11). On this subject, see Gutzwiller 2002, 104–9; Kaldellis 2007, 362–72; and especially MännleinRobert 2007.

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powerful, it became increasingly imperative for poets such as Philes to advertise the importance and value of their literary expertise. If, set against the muteness of art, epigrams resounded ever so loudly, it was because, in a bid for personal recognition, the poets needed them to do so. The same concern may be detected in Kallikles’ epitaph to Gregory Kamateros. For, when Kallikles chases away jewelry and embroidery from the logothetēs’ tomb in order to make room for his own verses as a more fitting form of sepulchral adornment, his is a gesture of a self-assured poet who confidently advertises the preciousness of his literary artifacts. This gesture is emblematic of two phenomena of later Byzantine culture: first, the central importance of the concept of kosmos in the aesthetics, artistic patronage, and devotional practice of the period; and second, the urgency with which professional literati strived to assert themselves in a social arena in which personal patronage was the key mechanism of social advancement. In this intensely agonistic milieu, a poet’s weapon, with which he could force his way into a patron’s service, was his ability to compose verses as intricate as needlework and as brilliant as jewels.117 For Kallikles, Philes, and their fellow poets, epigrams were precious not only because it took learning, skill, and sensitivity to craft them. The value of these literary creations also stemmed from the prestige they could impart to those commissioning them. Educated patrons such as Gregory Kamateros were “adorned” by the literary works produced at their behest. As a mark of initiation into or, at least, familiarity with the sublime art of logoi, the investment and interest in epigrams ultimately served to demarcate the boundaries of cultural exclusivity, which the Byzantine educated elite was careful to maintain. As much as the notion of epigram as discursive kosmos was an invention of the literati, it spoke to the ideals of urbanity and learning that throughout the Empire’s existence remained fundamental to the self-image of those who ruled it. Wrought from the stuff of logos, the “gold-worded” poetry of Byzantine epigrams, to return to the metaphorical language of Eugeneianos’ monody on Prodromos, had always functioned as a form of adornment. The unprecedented preoccupation with kosmos in the artistic and devotional culture of the Byzantine elite beginning with the Komnenian era only threw this aspect of the inscribed verse into a sharper focus. Like kosmos, the epigram is relational, representational, and adjectival. Like kosmos, it 117

Incidentally, Kallikles himself does not seem to have depended on the patronage of the aristocracy, as he occupied the comfortable post of court physician. See the editor’s introduction in Kallikles, Poems, 55–69.

Logikos kosmos

has the capacity to perfect and complete the object to which it is attached. The kosmetic force harbored by a poetic text is released in two ways: first, through its materialization into a concrete, physical artifact, a set of graphic signs inscribed upon a surface; and second, through its enunciation in a performance. These two procedures of activating the text are interrelated. To the extent that an aesthetically compelling presentation of the text makes manifest its literary nature, it also lifts the inscribed verse from the domain of written communication and endows it with some of the persuasiveness and immediacy of speech. In this sense, the visual impact and materiality of writing may be said to complement, if not mirror, the effects of oral recitation. To adorn the object with a piece of logos, calligraphy and performance work in tandem.

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The National History Museum in Sofia houses a fine example of early Palaiologan needlework – a silk cloth featuring an image of the Crucifixion embroidered with gold and silver thread (Plate 10, Figure 5.1).1 The cloth’s iconography is fairly standard. Consumed with grief, the Virgin Mary and John the Theologian flank an imposing Cross with the slumped body of the dead Christ, while two additional angelic mourners hover above, with their faces covered, unable to bear the fearsomeness of the sight. Beneath the outstretched arms of the Crucified is a set of rather crudely executed verses, replete with spelling mistakes, which give voice to the patron.

5

Δῶρόν σοι κλεινὸς μέγας ἑταιρειάρχης τύπον σῆς σταυρώσεως ἀνατυπῶ σοι ἐκ τῆς δοκούσης τάχα τιμίας ὕλης σὺν Εὐδοκίᾳ τῇ ὁμοζύγῳ, Λόγε, οὔσῃ Κομνηνῇ μητροπαπποπατρόθεν ἵνα λύσιν λάβωμεν ἀμπλακημάτων. I, illustrious megas hetaireiarchēs, make the image of your Crucifixion for you with a material that is allegedly precious, O Logos, as a gift together with my wife Eudokia, who is a Komnene through her maternal and paternal grandfather, so that our sins may be pardoned.

We have already encountered the two individuals mentioned in this poem – the megas hetaireiarchēs Progonos Sgouros and his wife Eudokia, whose illustrious Komnenian lineage the anonymous poet spells out using the monstrous and otherwise unattested adverb μητροπαπποπατρόθεν in line 5. This aristocratic couple, one recalls, founded the monastery of the Virgin Peribleptos at Ohrid.2 Since the cloth was kept in the treasury of the Peribleptos church until the early twentieth century, it is safe to assume that the silk embroidery had been donated by the couple to their foundation along with other items – panel-painted icons, service books, sacramental 1

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2

Kondakov 1909, 273–74; Boǐcheva 1998; Lozanova 2002, cat. no. 75 (R. Lozanova). For the dedicatory epigram on the cloth, see also BEIÜ II, no. Te1. See Chapter 1.

Devotional gifts

Figure 5.1 Embroidered icon veil with the Crucifixion, c. 1295, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

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utensils, and the like – required for the proper liturgical functioning of a house of worship. The dimensions (122 x 68 cm) and iconography of the cloth, coupled with Sgouros’ appeal to the Divine Logos in the embroidered verses, suggest that this piece originally served as an encheirion or, more likely, a podea attached to a particularly venerated icon with a depiction of Christ. If the prefix ἀνά in the verb ἀνατυπόω (“to represent”) in line 2 is to be understood as adding the sense of “again” or “anew,” then this must have been an icon of the Crucifixion. In any case, it was not uncommon for icon veils to replicate the imagery of the panels to which they were attached.3 Skillfully crafted with a generous use of gold and silver thread, the cloth was a splendid dōron, or gift, as the introductory line identifies it. That Sgouros should adopt a posture of humility and describe the materials used for the embroidery as precious only in appearance is hardly surprising; for the purpose of the gift that he and his wife offered to the Divine Logos was nothing less than to obtain the pardon of their sins. The majority of Byzantine dedicatory epigrams were written to commemorate similar acts of offering artifacts and edifices to Christ, the Virgin Mary, or saints. Like the Crucifixion cloth, these consecrated material goods, to which I refer as devotional gifts, were aimed at obtaining spiritual benefits for the givers. The notion that by founding a monastery, adorning an icon, or donating a sacred vessel to a church one may atone for his or her sins, redeem a debt to a holy figure, or secure a place in heaven is a common aspect of Byzantine religious mentalité. This notion is voiced with remarkable forthrightness in Michael Attaleiates’ Diataxis of 1077. Addressing Christ, the divine patron of his foundation, which included a monastery in Constantinople and a poorhouse at Rhaidestos, Attaleiates characteristically states: To you, O Lord, I make this offering, because it is through your generosity that I have accumulated all , so that it may be at the service of your loving precept.4 For in your kindness you have given to those who wish to be pious the manner of their salvation, by declaring that the wealth of each man can serve as a ransom for his soul [λύτρον ψυχῆς].5

3

4 5

Frolov 1938, esp. 484–89; Petrov 2010, 77–78. In the epigram on the encheirion presented to the icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria by Anna, wife of the sebastos John Arbantenos, Nicholas Kallikles characterizes the dedicated veil as εἰκὼν εἰκόνος (“an icon of an icon”): Kallikles, Poems, no. 26, v. 5. Cf. Luke 16:1–13. Attaleiates, Diataxis, 31.214–217; trans. BMFD, 1:337 (A.-M. Talbot), with minor modifications.

Devotional gifts

Similarly, in a letter to the monks of the Chōra, Theodore Metochites describes his restoration of this ancient Constantinopolitan monastic house as an enterprise undertaken in the hope of amassing spiritual riches and ultimately securing the eternal salvation of his wretched soul. This monastery has meant more than anything in the world to me; it is so now and will be in the time to come. It was a work of noble love for things good and beautiful, the fruit of a prudent mind, and assured a truly secure profit [κέρδος] and wealth [πλοῦτος] for the soul; it was not so much a preparation as a safe pledge [ἐχέγγυον] for a happy life without end and an investment [ὑπόθεσις] in future good hopes.6

Profit, wealth, pledge, investment – this is a language of the marketplace that might sound blatantly philistine to a modern ear when used in reference to one’s motives for restoring a religious institution. Granted, Metochites deploys it figuratively, but the assumption looming behind his toying with mercantile metaphors is that a donation made to God somehow entails a transaction of sorts, in which material goods are exchanged for spiritual ones. Metochites’ restoration of the Chōra is commemorated visually in a splendid mosaic image of donation that still graces the lunette above the main entrance to the nave of the former monastery church (Figure 5.2).7 Portrayed as a kneeling supplicant, the donor presents his oblation, the church of the Chōra, to the enthroned Christ labeled ἡ Χώρα τῶν Ζώντων (“the Land of the Living”), a poetic epithet alluding to the monastery’s name. In response, Christ reassuringly raises his hand in a gesture of blessing. Couched in a laconic visual language, the mosaic depicts a process of exchange that brings together a mortal donor and a sacred recipient, earth and heaven.8 Focusing upon the evidence of epigrammatic poetry, the present chapter sets out to explore textual representations of this process of exchange. Since dedicatory epigrams did not merely record acts of donation, but also accompanied and, as we shall see, negotiated such acts, this body of texts provides a critical resource for elucidating a larger discourse behind the practice of devotional gift-giving in Byzantium. By scrutinizing the language and imagery of the devotional gift in dedicatory epigrams, this 6 7 8

Ševčenko 1975, 58–60; trans. ibid., 59–61. Underwood 1966–75, 1:42–43; Patterson Ševčenko 2012b with further bibliography. On visual representations of gift-giving in Byzantium, see especially Kalopissi-Verti 1992; Patterson Ševčenko 1994; Kambourova 2008; Brubaker 2010; Yota 2012. See also Marinković 2007.

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Figure 5.2 Mosaic with Theodore Metochites presenting the church of the Chōra to Christ, c. 1316–21, former church of the Chōra monastery (Kariye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY)

chapter seeks to shed new light on the ways in which religious donation was perceived and understood by the Byzantines.9 Before proceeding in medias res, however, it is helpful to situate the discussion that follows by briefly introducing the problem of reciprocity in gift exchange, a notion that seems to have informed much of the scholarship on the phenomenon of the devotional gift.10 Central to scholarly debates about the mechanisms, nature, and efficacy of devotional gift-giving has been Marcel Mauss’ anthropological theory of 9

10

For two assessments of the evidence of dedicatory epigrams on the subject of the devotional gift, see Papamastorakis 2002; Bernard 2014, 311–24. For a pertinent analysis of the rhetoric of gift-giving in preambles of legal documents, specifically, acts of donations to monasteries, see Giros 2012, esp. 98–101. On sacred giving in Byzantium, see Franses 1992; Déroche 2006b; Stathakopoulos 2007; Dimitropoulou 2010; Morris 2010; Spieser and Yota 2012; Caner 2013; Grünbart 2015, 131–70; and the relevant studies collected in Mullett 2007, Panagiotide-Kesisoglou 2012, and Theis et al. 2014. See also the references cited above, nn. 8 and 9. For a useful overview of the literature that pertains to the medieval West, see Bijsterveld 2007, 17–50. For the anthropology of gift-giving and medieval art history, see Hilsdale 2012.

Devotional gifts

the gift laid out in his seminal Essai sur le don.11 For Mauss, whose goal was to unearth the universal logic of gift-giving that transcends cultural and historical boundaries, the presentation of a gift presupposes a two-way relationship of exchange which, unlike the impersonal and instantaneous commercial exchange, generates an enduring personal bond between the giver and the recipient. The fundamental paradox of the gift, according to Mauss, consists in the fact that, without being compelled to do so, the recipient feels obliged to accept the gift and, moreover, to give something in return. Thus, in his view, reciprocity is a defining characteristic of gift exchange. Scholars have recognized the heuristic potential of the principle of reciprocity for the study of religious donation in medieval Christian cultures, including Byzantium. The Maussian concept of the gift has proven a particularly useful tool for exploring property transactions linking lay donors and religious institutions.12 Donations of land, money, and other material goods are accordingly interpreted as gifts exchanged for clerical countergifts in the form of prayers and liturgical commemorations performed on behalf of the donors.13 Alms distributed to the poor and needy and offerings made to holy figures are seen as further examples of reciprocal exchange, a form of investment in the hereafter of the kind envisioned by Metochites.14 The conceptualization of religious donation in terms of reciprocal exchange has not been without its critics.15 In her study of gifts pro anima in the medieval West, for instance, Eliana Magnani has pointed out that, since offerings for the salvation of one’s soul entail an exchange with God, they cannot be circumscribed within the binary of gift and countergift. Rather than soliciting an automatic divine compensation, donations to religious institutions were meant to set in motion the mechanism of exchange linking the present and the hereafter, in which the presentation of the gift was as important as the spiritual transformation of the giver effected through the mediation of the clergy.16 Bernhard Jussen’s semantic 11

12 14

15

16

Mauss 1923–24. It should be added, however, that the subject of devotional gift-giving plays a marginal role in the Essai. See Godelier 1999, esp. 29–31. For an assessment of Mauss’ legacy for the study of gift-giving practices in general, see Osteen 2002, 2–11. For the reception of Mauss among medievalists, see also Magnani 2007. 13 White 1988; Rosenwein 1989. See also Silber 1995. See especially Oexle 1976, 87–95. Jobert 1977; Angenendt et al. 1995. For the Byzantine context, see especially Stathakopoulos 2007. See also Déroche 2006b. In addition to the studies cited immediately below, see also Guerreau-Jalabert 2000; Steckel 2011; Papaconstantinou 2012. Magnani S.-Christen 2003. See also Magnani 2009a; Magnani 2009b.

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analysis of the language of gift-giving in Western medieval sources similarly calls into question the reciprocal figure of gift–countergift. In medieval thinking, as Jussen’s study indicates, gifts to God are primarily understood as “offerings” and “tribute” resulting from man’s duty to honor his Creator without making any claims to divine remuneration. God does not receive the gift but regards and accepts the giver; he does not reciprocate but rewards the giver in accordance with the latter’s moral disposition.17 Among Byzantinists, Henri Franses has maintained that religious donation is inscribed in a relationship of power, in which gifts represent signs of respect due to holy figures – the donors’ sacred potentates. As respect cannot be considered an item of exchange or purchase, “gifts can be given, potentates can respond with favors, and yet to neither party does it appear as though they are engaging in exchange or purchase.” In other words, the exchange of material goods for spiritual ones is not perceived as an exchange at all, while the principle of reciprocity is effectively rewritten as a form of causality ensconced within the power structure of religion.18 Writing about the concept of ktētōr in the Byzantine world, Tania Kambourova has stressed the fundamentally asymmetrical nature of transactions with the heavenly realm. In her view, the consecration of material goods to God is akin to restitution. Since all material wealth stems from the divinity, every human gift to God is nothing but a countergift, or, as Kambourova puts it, “un don en retour.”19 The debate over whether or not the principle of reciprocity encapsulated in the ancient adage do ut des – “I give so that you may give” – sufficiently explains the logic behind religious donation points to a certain uneasiness on the part of modern scholars with the very idea of the commutation of material wealth into spiritual capital. As we shall see, the Byzantines themselves were by no means immune to this kind of uneasiness. In what follows, I shall first identify the types of devotional gifts encountered in dedicatory epigrams. Since church buildings, items of icon kosmos, ecclesiastical textiles, and other kinds of sacred objects entering the process of spiritual exchange were meant to serve several purposes, it is important to differentiate between them. A survey of gift terminology employed in later Byzantine epigrammatic poetry will complement this exercise. The discussion will then move to the redemptive power of gift-giving in the context of liturgical commemorations and, more broadly, the medieval culture of remembrance. The final section of the chapter is devoted to

17

Jussen 2003.

18

Franses 1992 with the quotation at p. 175.

19

Kambourova 2008.

Toward a typology of devotional gifts

charting the dominant paradigms at work in the epigrammatic negotiations of devotional gifts. The plurality of and contradictions inherent in these paradigms, it will be argued, are highly significant. For what they ultimately reveal is a deep-seated anxiety of the Byzantines regarding the possibility of joining earth and heaven in a process of exchange enacted through material offerings.

Toward a typology of devotional gifts It is important to stress from the outset that the act of giving is charged with a strongly personal valence in epigrammatic discourse. To return to the example with which we have begun, even though Progonos Sgouros and his wife almost certainly donated the Crucifixion cloth to their Ohrid foundation, the monastery of the Virgin Peribleptos, where it would have been registered in an inventory of movable property, the verses embroidered on the cloth unambiguously identify the Divine Logos, Christ himself, as its recipient. The monastery, in a sense, served merely as a custodian of the donation, the real proprietor of which was God Almighty. Of course, not all devotional gifts are mediated through religious institutions. A precious-metal revetment dedicated to a private icon, an object in the possession of the donor, would be an example of an “unmediated” gift. But even in the case of institutional mediation, the devotion gift is inherently personal. As a vehicle of the relational self, its purpose is to forge a direct, individualized rapport between the earthly giver and the heavenly recipient. Instances in which an ecclesiastical establishment rather than a sacred personage is identified as the beneficiary of the gift are rare in epigrammatic poetry. The dedicatory verses penned by Manuel Philes for the Gospel book of the oikonomos Ioannikios, which we have examined in Chapter 3, specify that the patron donated this precious object to the monastery tou Philokalou in Thessalonike. Nonetheless, even in this instance it can be assumed that the “true” recipient of the donation was Christ Pantokratōr, the divine patron of the monastery. To make a donation directly to Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint, rather than to a religious institution was, in fact, quite common in Byzantium. The notion that a holy figure may inherit property like any other individual was even acknowledged by law. By the sixth century, wills in which the testator identified Christ or a saint as an heir, without any mention of a specific church, became sufficiently common that the emperor Justinian I was compelled to legislate on the subject and lay out guidelines as to how

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to determine which institution would be the actual beneficiary in such cases.20 According to his Diataxis, Michael Attaleiates consecrated his foundation to no one else but the “all-merciful” God, whom he appointed “heir [κληρονόμος], guardian [προνοητής], and master [κύριος] of this offering of mine.”21 Holy figures, it should be further noted, could also act as legal persons through their icons. Several documents issued by the patriarchal tribunal in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries demonstrate that charismatic cult images could receive substantial donations in land, money, and kind from their worshipers.22 Irrespective of the manner in which they were appealed to – whether in person or through their icons – holy figures were expected to engage directly in devotional transactions with lesser humans. The transaction documented in the verse inscription on the Crucifixion cloth was a customary one – the exchange of a lavish donation for the remission of the donors’ sins and the eternal repose of their souls in Paradise. For the sake of convenience, I shall refer to the broad category of devotional gifts made in the hope of earning salvation for the donors or other individuals as gifts hyper sōtērias (“for salvation”).23 Other transactions recorded in dedicatory epigrams typically involve supplication or thanksgiving, and accordingly, two other categories of devotional gifts can be singled out: petitionary gifts made in prayer for favors anticipated and thank-offerings presented in gratitude for favors received. The nature of these favors is rarely revealed, but when it is, ones related to health predominate. In most cases, however, divine or saintly protection is invoked or recognized in more general terms. Besides, petitionary gifts presented to the Virgin or saints often seek their intercession for the givers at the throne of Christ. Needless to say, the boundaries between these three categories are fluid and may considerably overlap. Virtually any gift could be simultaneously made hyper sōtērias, and a thank-offering acknowledging one’s debt to a holy figure may be accompanied by a request for further benefactions. The rich, if at times inconsistent, gift terminology employed in later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams captures some of the roles assigned to

20 21 22

23

Codex Iustinianus 1.2.25; Novellae 131.9 (= Basilika 5.3.10). Attaleiates, Diataxis, 25.131–33. Oikonomides 1991; Kraus 2013. For the same phenomenon in the medieval West, see Sansterre 1997a with further bibliography. This venerable formula, which came to be incorporated in the liturgy (cf. Trembelas 1935, 25, 162, 201), is admittedly rare in dedicatory epigrams. See, e.g., Bassi 1898, nos. III, VI. On its use in antiquity, in pagan, Christian, and Jewish contexts, see the extensive discussion in Moralee 2004.

Toward a typology of devotional gifts

devotional gifts as well as the assumptions and expectations underlying the act of donation.24 The word δῶρον (“gift”), which introduces the inscription on the Crucifixion cloth, is by far the most common term for any kind of devotional gift in epigrammatic poetry. Its cognates and synonyms such as δώρημα, δόμα, and δόσις are encountered only exceptionally.25 The words προσφορά (“offering”) and ἀνάθημα (“dedication”) are equally rare.26 Despite the ubiquity of gifts made in atonement for sins, there does not seem to have existed a special term for them, although in an epigram composed by Philes for a Gospel manuscript that one George Komnenos Makrenos adorned with luxury covers in order to expiate his transgressions, the book is referred to as the sinner’s ἱλασμός, or “means of atonement,” fashioned with gilded silver.27 By contrast, there are several terms for gifts presented in gratitude for favors received.28 The word most often encountered is ἀμοιβή, meaning “recompense” or “reward.”29 Σῶστρον (“thank-offering”) is a rare alternative found mainly in Philes.30 In one of his poems, an anonymous donor, 24

25

26

27 28

29

30

For the typology and terminology of religious donations in other contexts, with a focus on Early Byzantium, see Mundell Mango 1986, 4–5; Vikan 1995; Caner 2013. For the language of the gift in the historiography of the Komnenian era, see Reinsch 2005. For δώρημα and δόμα, see, e.g., Anthologia Marciana, no. 334 (C20), v. 8; Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 35 (Εἰς ἐγχείριον τῆς ὑπεραγίας Θεοτόκου τῆς Βαστωτίας [sic], γεγονὸς παρὰ τῆς σεβαστοκρατορίσσης, v. 13). For δόσις, see, e.g., the dedicatory epigram on the staurothēkē of the empress Irene Doukaina, wife of Alexios I Komnenos, in the treasury of San Marco (BEIÜ II, no. Me90, v. 8); and the dedicatory epigram on the icon of George Sarabares in the Benaki Museum at Athens (BEIÜ III, no. AddII24, v. 3). For προσφορά, see, e.g., Philes, Carmina II, 94 (no. LIII, v. 3), 94 (no. LIV, v. 1). For ἀνάθημα, see, e.g., the inscription on the staurothēkē cited in the preceding note: BEIÜ II, no. Me90, v. 3. The word ἀνάθημα and its verbal form ἀνατίθημι (“to dedicate”) are more commonly employed in titles. See, e.g., Kallikles, Poems, no. 2; Philes, Carmina I, 65 (no. CLIV), 67 (no. CLVII), 129 (no. CCLIV); Bassi 1898, nos. III, IV, VII; Lampros 1912–30, 3:281. Philes, Carmina II, 193 (no. CLXX). Curiously, χαριστήριον (“thank-offering”) is not one of them. The term occasionally appears in titles, where it qualifies the verses rather than the offering. See, e.g., Philes, Carmina I, 66 (no. CLVI), 73 (no. CLXIII); Carmina II, 194 (no. CLXXII), 216 (no. CCIV). Likewise, the εὐχαριστήριος that the donor presents to Christ, “opening the gates of my lips” (πύλας ἐξανοίγων χειλέων), in an epigram by Nikephoros Kallistou Xanthopoulos (Xanthopoulos, Poems, no. 8, vv. 6–7) refers to the poem itself. See, e.g., Anthologia Marciana, no. 50 (B12), v. 7, no. 63 (B25), v. 7, no. 86 (B143), v. 4, no. 234 (B71), v. 5 (the epigram is published in full in Nunn 1986, 102), no. 277 (B110), v. 12; Philes, Carmina I, 37 (no. LXXXIII, v. 6), 67 (no. CLVI, v. 17), 77 (no. CLXVI, v. 11); Carmina II, 144 (no. XCII, v. 14); Philes, Historika poiēmata, 658 (Ἐκ προσώπου τοῦ μητροπολίτου Μιτυλήνης Θεοδοσίου τῷ μεγάλῳ λογοθέτῃ διὰ βιβλίον, ὃ προσήνεξε τῇ αὐτοῦ μονῇ τῆς Χώρας, v. 6); Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 34, v. 29; Xanthopoulos, Poems, no. 9, v. 1; Mamones 1954, 575 (no. 14, v. 3). See also Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. XXXIV, v. 8; and the epigram in the deluxe Psalter manuscript of 1346 (Iviron monastery, Ms. 1384, fol. 262v), commissioned by Anna of Savoy,

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who was released from prison with the help of the miracle-worker Nicholas, the celebrated protector of captives, honors the saint with a sōstron in the form of an icon bearing the saint’s likeness.31 ἐπεί με λοιπὸν τῆς φυλακῆς ἐρρύσω, καὶ τῆς φυλακῆς τῶν παθῶν ἐλευθέρου, αὐτὸς δὲ σαυτὸν ἀντὶ σώστρου νῦν δέχου (vv. 6–8) Since you rescued me from prison, also release me from the prison of passions, and accept yourself as a thank-offering.

In another epigram, Michael Kallikrenites, an important court eunuch under Andronikos II and Andronikos III, dedicates an adorned Gospel book to Christ as a sōstron in thanksgiving for unspecified benefactions he received from an emperor.32 Philes twice refers to a precious-metal icon revetment presented in gratitude to the Mother of God as σῶστρον ἐκ χρυσαργύρου (“thank-offering made of gilded silver”).33 But the word could also stand for a gift hyper sōtērias. It is used in this sense in the verse inscription surrounding the figure of Christ Hyperagathos in the sanctuary apse of the south parekklēsion of the church of the Virgin Pammakaristos in Constantinople (Plate 7, Figure 4.13).34 Some of the terms for a thank-offering convey a sense of obligation involved in the gesture of giving. They stress the fact that the giver is indebted to the holy recipient and that the primary purpose of the gift is to discharge this debt. Λύτρον is one of these terms. In a soteriological context, the word denotes “redemption for sins,” but when it is used for a thank-offering, it is better translated as “ransom.” In this latter sense lytron is attested only twice in Philes. In one of his poems, a certain Constantine Tarchaneiotes offers a “compound ransom” (σύνθετον λύτρον) to the Mother of God in thanksgiving for the cessation of hemorrhage in

31

32 33

34

the widow of Andronikos III Palaiologos: Pelekanides et al. 1973–91, 2:328, v. 4. Cf. in addition Balsamon, Poems, no. XIV, v. 9. Philes, Carmina II, 199 (no. CLXXXI). Antonopoulou 2009, 34, argues that the released captive is to be identified with Philes himself whose special veneration for Saint Nicholas is attested elsewhere in his poetic oeuvre. Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 34, v. 8. On Kallikrenites, see PLP, no. 10371. Philes, Carmina I, 73 (no. CLXII, v. 6), 78 (no. CLXVIII, v. 13). The sōstron that one Maria Kasiane Raoulaina dedicated most likely to the Virgin tēs Pēgēs in thanksgiving for the salvation of her newborn child may well have been, too, a luxury icon revetment: Philes, Carmina I, 72 (no. CLXI, v. 4). Cf. Talbot 1994, 153. See Chapter 4. The word seems to be used in the same sense in Philes, Carmina I, 79 (no. CLXIX, v. 17).

Toward a typology of devotional gifts

his intestines.35 Given the adjective synthetos, the gift was most likely in the form of a silver-gilt icon revetment.36 The word occurs for a second time – in the plural form – in a long epigram in which the statesman and general Andronikos Asanes implores the Mother of God, whose icon he reverently adorned with gilded silver, to accept “this ransom” (ταῦτα τὰ λύτρα) in return for the cure of his daughter Helena.37 When used in reference to gifts, the semantically multivalent term χάρις – with its meanings ranging from “beauty” and “elegance” to “grace,” “favor,” and “gratitude” – also carries the connotation of mutuality and obligation. It is a gift that obliges one to reciprocate or a gift made in return for another gift.38 Charis is, accordingly, a common synonym for a thankoffering.39 A characteristic example of this usage is found in a poem attributed to Theodore Prodromos, written for a gold-woven encheirion which Eudokia Komnene, wife of Theodore Styppeiotes, dedicated to the Virgin Hodēgētria.40 Confessing her inability to offer a fitting repayment for all the benefactions she was granted by the Mother of God, including the rescue of her son from the “jaws of Hades,”41 the donor presents the sumptuous cloth with the following question: πλὴν ἀλλὰ τί δράσειεν εὔνους καρδία πίστει ζέουσα, σῶν δὲ μεστὴ χαρίτων, ἢ δῆλον ἐνδέουσα τῶν πρὸς ἀξίαν κἂν τὴν πρὸς ἰσχὺν εἰσενέγκῃ σοι χάριν; (vv. 6–9) 35 36

37

38 39

40

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Philes, Carmina I, 37 (no. LXXXIII, v. 5). On the patron, see Leontiades 1998, no. 43. In several instances in which Philes deploys the adjective synthetos to allude to the composite nature of vermeil, the reference is to icon mounts. See Carmina I, 139 (no. CCLXXXVII, v. 5: ὁ σύνθετος τοῦ χρυσαργύρου φόρος); Carmina II, 93 (no. LII, v. 6: στολὴ σύνθετος); Carmina inedita, no. 35, v. 13 (τὸ σύνθετον σχῆμα τοῦ χρυσαργύρου). Cf. also Carmina II, 278 (no. XIX, v. 8: φραγμὸν δὲ συνθεὶς ἐκ χρυσαργύρου πέριξ). The only exception is Carmina I, 70 (no. CLVIII, v. 37), where ἡ σύνθετος τοῦ χρυσαργύρου χάρις refers to the sumptuous covers of a Gospel book. Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 67, v. 43. The word does not appear in the shorter version of this poem in Philes, Carmina I, 307–8 (no. CXIV). On Andronikos Asanes, see PLP, no. 1489. On charis and reciprocity in ancient Greece, see MacLachlan 1993; Parker 1998. See, e.g., Anthologia Marciana, no. 70 (B126), v. 9, no. 109 (B165), v. 11; Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. XXI, v. 11; Balsamon, Poems, no. XXIV.A, v. 7; and the example cited immediately below. Cf. also Philes, Carmina I, 70 (no. CLVIII, v. 37), 75 (no. CLXV, v. 7); Mamones 1954, 572 (no. 5, v. 11); and the now lost dedicatory epigram of Alexios Maniakes from Drama: BEIÜ III, no. GR53, v. 1. Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. LXXIII. For the possibility that the poem was composed by Manganeios Prodromos, see Rhoby 2010c, 196. Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. LXXIII, vv. 14–16. This is most likely an allusion to the young Manuel Styppeiotes’ miraculous survival of a fall from a great height. See Kouphopoulou 1989. See also Chapter 3, n. 136.

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What could a well-disposed heart do, bursting with faith, full of your charites, yet clearly lacking anything worthy of you, but to offer you a charis in accordance with its power?

The mutuality and obligation underlying the exchange of charites between holy figures and mortal donors are further stressed in a few epigrams that feature an alternative term ἀντίχαρις (literally, “counter-charis”).42 For instance, the church of Christ Plērophorētēs, which Theodore Palaiologos, one of the sons of Andronikos II, founded in gratitude for a miraculous cure, is called “a very poor anticharis” in the dedicatory poem penned by Nikephoros Kallistou Xanthopoulos for that occasion.43 The donor’s obligation to give in return is occasionally expressed by comparing the gift to a φόρος, meaning “tribute” or “tax.” To be sure, the word could be applied to petitionary gifts. In an epigram by Philes, for instance, an anonymous donor pays a tribute to the two Saint Theodores by adorning their icon with a precious-metal kosmos and asks for a double reward – both material and spiritual – in return.44 5

ὁ σύνθετος γοῦν τοῦ χρυσαργύρου φόρος διπλοῦν ἀγαθὸν ἐξ ὑμῶν γένοιτό μοι. May this tribute compounded from gold and silver bring me a twofold benefit from you!45

But the metaphor of phoros is ideally suited to thank-offerings.46 This is how Prodromos employs it in an epigram that accompanied a dedication made by the empress Irene-Bertha, the first wife of Manuel I Komnenos, to the Mother of God in gratitude for a cure. The thank-offering consisted of a dove made of gilded silver, most likely intended to be hung above an altar, which the “Queen of the New Rome” brought to the “Queen of All”

42

43 45

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The term appears in a poem accompanying the adorned Gospel book which the princess MariaMelane Palaiologina presented to the Virgin Chōrinē: Papageorgiou 1894, 326, v. 5. See also Anthologia Marciana, no. 74 (B130), v. 2, and the example cited immediately below. Cf. also Papageorgiu 1899, 677, v. 75. 44 Xanthopoulos, Poems, no. 8, vv. 17–18. Philes, Carmina I, 138–39 (no. CCLXXXVII). I translate χρυσάργυρος as “gold and silver” rather than “gilded silver” – the meaning of the term in Philes and other late Byzantine epigrammatists – in order to stress the theme of duality, uniquely suited to an icon of the two Theodores, around which the epigram is structured. See, e.g., Kallikles, Poems, no. 2, v. 13; Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. XXI, v. 12; Philes, Carmina II, 75 (no. XXXIII, v. 15); Philes, Historika poiēmata, 659 (Ἐκ προσώπου τοῦ μητροπολίτου Μιτυλήνης Θεοδοσίου τῷ μεγάλῳ λογοθέτῃ διὰ βιβλίον, ὃ προσήνεξε τῇ αὐτοῦ μονῇ τῆς Χώρας, v. 19); and the two examples cited immediately below. Cf. also Carmina I, 241 (no. LXVI, v. 19).

Toward a typology of devotional gifts

just like a servant would bring a phoros.47 In an epigram from the Anthologia Marciana composed for a gold-woven encheirion dedicated to a silver icon of Christ, the motif of phoros is introduced by reference to the episode of the tribute money in Matthew 17:24–27. Having been cured of an unnamed disease, the donor, John Doukas Bryennios, presents the encheirion as a thank-offering to the Savior, comparing it with the tax paid by the prince of the apostles.48

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Ἰχθὺν ἀγρεύσας ὡς ἐπετράπη Πέτρος χρυσοῦν στατῆρα τοῦ στόματος ἐξάγει, διπλοῦν δὲ τῷ καίσαρι τὸν φόρον φέρει, δοὺς ἀνθ’ ἑαυτοῦ τόνδε καὶ σοῦ, παντάναξ. Ἅιδου δ’ ἐγὼ στόματος ἀφηρπασμένος, νόσων δὲ ῥωσθεὶς βαθέων ἐξ ὑδάτων καὶ τὴν ἀμοιβὴν ὡς φόρον σοι προσφέρω κατάργυρόν σου πρὶν τύπον χρυσῷ στέφω Catching a fish, as he was ordered to, Peter takes a gold coin out of its mouth and renders a double tribute to Caesar, giving the coin for himself and for you, King of All. And I, snatched from the mouth of Hades and recovered from the deep waters of sickness, offer this recompense to you as a tribute and wreathe your formerly silver image in gold.

In view of such language of indebtedness and obligation, one cannot help but wonder whether some of the thank-offerings recorded in the corpus of later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams were, in fact, composed to accompany a particular category of devotional gifts, namely, votives or exvotos.49 A votive, as the Latin formula ex voto (“from a vow”) indicates, is an offering made in fulfillment of a vow. It is a conditional gift, the result of a devotional transaction played out according to a precise scenario. Seeking to obtain a favor from a holy figure – the cure of an affliction or victory in a battle, for instance – the votary solemnly pledges to make an offering on the condition that the holy figure grants him or her the requested favor. Should the holy figure respond favorably and intervene on the votary’s 47

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Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. XXXIV. The epigram builds upon the comparison between the empress and the three Magi-Kings. For the function of the empress’s dove, see Hörandner 1987, 245. Anthologia Marciana, no. 63 (B25). On John Doukas Bryennios, see Polemis 1968, 113 (no. 78); Rajković 2003, 116–17. On Christian ex-votos, see H. Leclercq in DACL, s.v. ‘Ex-voto’, 5.1: cols. 1037–49; KrissRettenbeck 1972; Bronzini 1979; Bacci 2000, 147–226; van der Velden 2000, 191–285. For the practice of offering precious-metal icon revetments as votive gifts in Byzantium, see Drpić 2012, 672–80. On votives in more recent Greek religious culture, see Phlorakes 1982; Chandaka 2006.

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behalf, the latter has to reciprocate and fulfill the vow. It bears emphasizing that votive offerings are not necessarily physical objects, much less works of art. They can equally consist of cash and property donations or take the form of pious acts such as pilgrimage, the liberation of a slave, or the renunciation of the world and the embracing of the monastic life. Anything undertaken to redeem a vow is an ex-voto. In the early Byzantine period, objects and monuments dedicated as exvotos were often inscribed with standard votive formulae such as ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς (“in fulfillment of a vow”) or εὐξάμενος προσήνεγκεν (“having vowed, he presented”), handed down from classical antiquity, but these formulae were rarely used during the medieval centuries.50 There is practically no explicit reference to a vow made or redeemed in the entire corpus of later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams. A single exception to this curious silence is provided by an epigram preserved in the Anthologia Marciana, which documents a votive transaction between one Gerasimos and Saint Panteleimon.51

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Ἀναργύρως μὲν πρὶν παρεῖχες τὴν χάριν· νῦν δ’ οὐ ποθῶν ἄργυρον, οὐδὲ χρυσίον, δίκην δὲ μὴ δοῦναί με τοῦ ψεύδους θέλων, νυκτὸς θροεῖς δοκοῦντα σὸν φιλεῖν τύπον πέπλον δὲ δεσμῷ συγκατίσχεσθαι ξένῳ, μνήμην ἕως ἔσχηκα τριχρόνου χρέους, ὃ νῦν περατῶ, Παντελεῆμον μάκαρ, Γεράσιμος σὸς τόνδε σοι κόσμον φέρων. In the past, you conferred your grace for free; and now, not because you long for silver or gold, but because you do not want to see me punished for lying to you, you disturb me during the night when I appear to kiss your icon and to hold a veil together with a special bond, until I remember the debt which I have had for the past three years, and which I, your Gerasimos, now settle by bringing this adornment to you, O blessed Panteleimon.52

The story behind the dedication recorded in this poem is not difficult to reconstruct. Gerasimos evidently made a vow to adorn an icon of the saint with a textile hanging – either an encheirion or a podea – in exchange for

50

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L. Jalabert and R. Mouterde in DACL, s.v. ‘Inscriptions grecques chrétiennes’, 7.1: cols. 688–89; Ševčenko 1992, 41–42; Baumann 1999, 294–95; Scheibelreiter 2006, 13. For ancient precedents, see Rouse 1902, 329–31; van Straten 1981, 70–71. For a different reading of these votive formulae in reference to dedicatory inscriptions in Syrian churches, see Lassus 1947, 255. Anthologia Marciana, no. 329 (C15) (full text in Spingou 2012, 96). Trans. Spingou 2012, 123, with minor modifications.

Toward a typology of devotional gifts

some sort of favor. Since Panteleimon was one of the most expert holy doctors in Byzantium, it is likely that the votary was suffering from ill health and that he asked for a cure. The saint obligingly responded to the petition and extended his supernatural assistance to Gerasimos, but the latter failed to reciprocate and redeem his debt in a timely fashion. Failure to fulfill a vow was considered not merely an act of irreverence but a grave sin. Hence, three years later the saint paid a nocturnal visit to his forgetful devotee and reminded him of the promise made in a frightening dream vision.53 Gerasimos then hastened to settle his debt and had the saint’s icon adorned with a textile hanging, which, judging by the reference to silver and gold in line 2, seems to have been woven or embroidered with precious-metal threads.54 The case of Gerasimos’ ex-voto is unique. To the best of my knowledge, no other later Byzantine dedicatory epigram gives any direct indication that the gift it accompanied resulted from the fulfillment of a vow. In rare instances where the identification of the dedicated object as a votive is probable, if not certain, the evidence is circumstantial. One such object is a golden lamp sent by Manuel I Komnenos to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The epigram that escorted this imperial gift is included in the Anthologia Marciana.55

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Χριστοῦ μὲν ἐν σοὶ πρὶν καλυφθέντος, τάφε, σμύρνα προσήχθη συμπλακεῖσα σινδόσι καὶ λιβανωτὸς ἐγκατερράνθη κύκλῳ μυρορροούσαις ὀρθρίαις μαθητρίαις. ὁ χρυσὸς οὐκ ἦν ὡς βασιλέως τάφῳ καὶ τοῦτον ἡτοίμαζε σοὶ δῶρον φέρειν Κομνηνὸς ὅρπηξ πορφύρας Ἰωάννης σκοπῶν ἀνάψειν χρυσέαν σοι λυχνία. ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ προῆλθεν εἰς τέλος, παῖς πορφυρανθὴς Μανουὴλ αὐτοκράτωρ ταύτην ἀναρτᾷ σοί, τάφε ζωηφόρε, πληρῶν πατρὸς βούλησιν, ὡς υἱοῖς νόμος, θέλων καθάπερ πατρικὸν κλῆρον μέγαν καὶ τὴν δι’ αὐτὸ συμμερίσασθαι χάριν.

A similar story concerning a negligent votary, who redeemed his debt only after having experienced a terrifying vision, is recorded in the Vita of Saint Theodosios of the Kievan Caves: Abramovich 1930, 53–54. Cf. also Papaconstantinou 2012, 84–86, 89–91, for two examples of “punitive miracles” occasioned by unfulfilled vows. See in addition Phlorakes 1982, 74–75. According to Spingou 2012, 123, 159, 242, Gerasimos’ offering consisted of a set of preciousmetal clasps for the textile hanging attached to the icon. Anthologia Marciana, no. 266 (B99), with emendations by Spingou (forthcoming).

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Once, when Christ was hidden inside you, O Tomb, his female disciples, who came at dawn to anoint him, brought myrrh with winding-sheets and sprinkled frankincense on all sides. As there was no gold at the tomb of the King, John Komnenos, scion of the purple, set out to bring this to you as well, as a gift, planning to light a golden lamp at your side. But since he could not accomplish this, his purple-blossoming son, the emperor Manuel, hangs up this at your side, O Life-Bringing Tomb, fulfilling his father’s wish – as is the custom that sons ought to obey – and hoping that, on account of this, he may enjoy a share of your grace like some great paternal legacy.

The epigram tells us that John II Komnenos wished to present a golden lamp as a dōron to Christ’s tomb in emulation of the myrrh-bearing women, but since he could not carry out this plan in person, obeying a filial nomos, the emperor’s son and successor Manuel dedicated the lamp in his stead.56 John II’s plan to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and dedicate a lamp at the Holy Sepulcher is mentioned in other sources. While an oration delivered by Michael Italikos in honor of Manuel I speaks vaguely of τιμαί (“honors”) which John II set aside for Jerusalem’s most venerated locus sanctus,57 John Kinnamos’ account of the emperor’s death during a wild-boar hunt on Mount Taurus in the spring of 1143 offers slightly more detailed information on the subject. Lethally infected by a poisoned arrow and feeling that his end was approaching, the emperor was greatly distressed because he had not brought to completion his plan to visit Palestine. As Kinnamos relates, On this account he had fashioned a lamp of twenty talents of gold, which he had prepared as a dedication [ἀνάθημα] for the church there. Since he was in a helpless situation, he sent for a holy man, a monk from Pamphylia, and asked him to propitiate the Divinity in an all-night prayer. Allegedly, as the monk was praying, he heard the sound of voices singing. A lamp raised on high was seen, and a Divine Youth who checked their tumult of spirit.58

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It should be noted that, as we learn from an epigram by Prodromos (Carmina historica, no. XXII), John II dedicated a golden replica of the Holy Sepulcher accompanied by a golden lamp most likely at his foundation, the Pantokratōr monastery in Constantinople, following a successful military campaign. Italikos, Orations, 290.1–3 (no. 44). Cf. also William of Tyre, Chronicon 15.21. Kinnamos, Epitomē, 25.17–26.2: οὗ δὴ ἕνεκα καὶ εἴκοσι ταλάντων ἀπὸ χρυσοῦ λυχνίαν εἰργασμένος ἔτυχεν, ἀνάθημα τῷ τῇδε ναῷ κατασκευαζόμενος. ἐπειδὴ γοῦν ἐν ἀμηχάνοις ἦν, μοναχόν τινα ἐκ Παμφυλίας ἄνδρα μεταπεμψάμενος ἱερὸν παννύχῳ δεήσει τὸ θεῖον ἱλάσκεσθαι ἠξίου. τὸν δὲ τῇ δεήσει προσεσχηκότα φωνῶν ἀκοῦσαι λέγεται ᾀδόντων τινῶν. ὡράθη ὁ λυχνὸς

Toward a typology of devotional gifts

Nowhere in his account does the historian state that the golden lamp was an ex-voto, but the fact that the emperor was so terrified at the prospect of not dedicating it at the Holy Sepulcher, to the effect that the mediation of a holy man was deemed necessary, strongly suggests that this was indeed the case. An unfulfilled vow was a mighty spiritual burden. Hence, despite the monk’s vision, which must have been interpreted as reassuringly auspicious, the emperor’s debt had to be discharged. And since upon a votary’s demise the responsibility to fulfill the vow passed onto his or her descendants – a custom perhaps alluded to by the phrase ὡς υἱοῖς νόμος (“as is the custom that sons ought to obey”) in line 12 – the emperor’s son Manuel saw to it that the lamp reached its destination. The absence of direct references to vows in dedicatory epigrams is rather puzzling.59 To be sure, the genre’s overall allusiveness and distaste for factual detail may account in part for this silence. But one suspects that the main reason why vows went unrecorded is because of the overtly transactional nature of votive exchange. The poets and their patrons must have been somewhat uncomfortable, if nor embarrassed, with the idea that one could strike a deal with a holy figure on explicit quid-pro-quo terms. It is indicative that the epigram on the textile hanging dedicated by Gerasimos is primarily concerned with recording the miraculous dream vision that reminded the negligent votary of what he owed. We learn about Gerasimos’ vow because of his failure to fulfill it. Had he settled his debt in time, the verses would have probably made no allusion to the binding promise that had initiated his transaction with Saint Panteleimon. If, as Hugo van der Velden has pointed out, the mechanism underlying every votive gift includes three elements – vow, divine or saintly action, and reciprocation – later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams leave out the first.60 Without any mention of or allusion to the promise made, it is impossible to distinguish ex-votos from other gifts presented in gratitude for favors received. The language of indebtedness and obligation might indicate a votive context, but, in the absence of external evidence, no thank-offering can be positively identified as an ex-voto.

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μετηρμένος καὶ θεῖος νεανίας καταστέλλων τὸν θόρυβον αὐτῶν τῆς ψυχῆς. Trans. Brand 1976, 28–29, modified. It should be pointed out, however, that direct references to vows are extremely rare in Byzantine writing in general. See Sansterre 2000, 537. van der Velden 2000, 193.

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Gifts, prayers, and memory Thus far, I have identified three broad, overlapping categories of devotional gifts attested in dedicatory epigrams, namely, gifts hyper sōtērias, petitionary gifts, and thank-offerings, with ex-votos constituting an elusive subcategory of the latter. I have also emphasized the fact that, even in instances where the presentation of the gift is mediated through a religious institution, the relationship between the earthly giver and the heavenly recipient is fundamentally a personal one. Now we must take a closer look at the question of mediation, because, in order to yield further spiritual profit, devotional gifts often seek the involvement of a third party. The physician and writer Constantine Amanteianos, active in Mistra in the 1360s, composed several epigrams for luxury objects – all of them now lost – commissioned by Nikephoros Kanabes and his wife Maria, an aristocratic couple from the Byzantine Morea.61 Two of these poems commemorate Maria’s dedication of a pair of silver-gilt censers for the salvation of her father, Demetrios Kasandrenos, who died as the monk Daniel.62 Maria donated one of the censers to the Brontochion monastery in Mistra, a large and prosperous foundation dedicated to the Virgin Hodēgētria, to whom Amanteianos’ terse dodecasyllables appeal.63

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The epigrams are preserved in the manuscript of Plutarch’s Lives (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Ms. D 538 inf.) commissioned by Maria’s father, Demetrios Kasandrenos, and copied “in the city of Mistra” (ἐν τῷ κάστρῳ Μιζιθρᾶ), as stated in the colophon (fol. 305v), by the famous scribe Manuel Tzykandyles who completed his work on 7 April 1362. The epigrams, along with two funerary poems composed in Kasandrenos’ honor, an epitaph by Amanteianos and an epikēdeion by the philosopher George Kydones Gabrielopoulos, were subsequently inserted at the end of the manuscript (fols. 305v–306v). The epigrams and the funerary poems are published in Bassi 1898. For the manuscript, see Turyn 1972, 1:229–31, with further bibliography. Maria Kasandrene Kanabina is known only from Amanteianos’ epigrams. The name of her husband Nikephoros turns up again in the colophon of a New Testament and Psalter manuscript, dated to 1363/64, on which, see p. 264. Could this couple be identified with the monk Neilos Kanabes and the nun Martha Kanabina, his former wife, mentioned in a patriarchal document of June 1400 (MM 2:394–95 [no. DLXXVIII])? Bassi 1898, nos. III and IV. On Demetrios-Daniel Kasandrenos, see PLP, no. 11315. Another epigram in the series (Bassi 1898, no. VI) was composed for a silver-gilt censer-katzion that Nikephoros Kanabes sent to a monastery of the Virgin Pantanassa ὑπὲρ ψυχικῆς πατέρων σωτηρίας (“for the salvation of the soul of his ancestors”). For Late Byzantine censers, see Barmparitsa 2010. This information is provided in the title. Bassi 1898, no. III: τοῦ αὐτοῦ Ἀμαντειανοῦ στίχοι εἰς θυμιατήριον ἀργυροδιάχρυσον, ὃ κατασκευάσας [sic] ἐν τῇ Πελοποννήσῳ οἰκείᾳ δαπάνῃ Μαρία Κασανδρηνὴ ἡ Καναβίνα ἀνέθηκε ἐν τῇ τοῦ Μυζιθρᾶ σεβασμίᾳ μονῇ τῆς ὑπεραγίας Θεοτόκου τοῦ Βροντοχίου (“Verses by the same Amanteianos on a silver gilt censer that Maria Kasandrene Kanabina fashioned in the Peloponnese at her own expense and dedicated in the venerable monastery of the most-holy Mother of God of the Brontochion at Mistra”). On the Brontochion

Gifts, prayers, and memory Δῶρον Μαρίας σοί, κόρη, Καναβίνης ὑπὲρ ψυχικῆς τοῦ πατρὸς σωτηρίας Κασανδρηνοῦ Δανιὴλ ῥακενδύτου. Maria Kanabina this gift to you, O Maiden, for the salvation of the soul of her father, monk Daniel Kasandrenos.

The celebrated imperial monastery of the Mangana in Constantinople – or rather, the monastery’s saintly patron, the great martyr George – was the recipient of the second censer.64 Addressed to the spectator, the verses accompanying this gift specify that it was made not only on behalf of Maria’s father, but also in atonement for her own transgressions. Ἡ Καναβίνα δῶρον ἀθλητῇ φέρει πρὸς ῥύψιν αὑτῆς ψυχικῶν ῥυπασμάτων καὶ Κασανδρηνοῦ τοῦ πατρὸς τόδε, ξένε. Kanabina brings this gift to the martyr, O stranger, for the cleansing of the dirt of her own soul and of the soul of Kasandrenos, her father.

It seems that the reason why Maria donated one of the censers to the Brontochion monastery was because, upon his tonsure, her father had in all likelihood retired to this monastic house. A nobleman from Thessalonike, Kasandrenos belonged to the entourage of John VI Kantakouzenos. In 1361, seven years after the emperor’s abdication, we find him in Kantakouzenos’ retinue on a journey from Constantinople to Mistra, where he died shortly afterwards at the age of seventy.65 While in Mistra, like many aged aristocrats of his time, Kasandrenos embraced the monk’s habit. This may well have happened at the Brontochion. The choice of the Mangana monastery is explained by a family connection too. Among the precious objects commissioned by Nikephoros Kanabes and his wife and furnished with Amanteianos’ dedicatory verses were silver-gilt rhipidia, or liturgical fans, which the couple sent to the Mangana as a kosmos and

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monastery, see Millet 1899, 98–121; Zakythinos 1932–53, esp. 2:196–97, 2:296–98; S. Sinos in RbK, s.v. ‘Mistras’, cols. 422–30, 450–52, 504–10; Etzeoglou 2013. Again, the information comes from the title. Bassi 1898, no. IV: ἕτεροι στίχοι τοῦ αὐτοῦ εἰς θυμιατήριον ἀργυροδιάχρυσον, ὃ κατασκευάσας [sic] ἐν τῇ Πελοποννήσῳ ἡ αὐτὴ Καναβίνα ἔπεμψε καὶ ἀνέθηκε τῷ ἐν ἁγίοις μεγαλομάρτυρι Γεωργίῳ ἐν τῇ πανσέπτῳ αὐτοῦ μονῇ τῶν Μαγγάνων (“Other verses by the same on a silver gilt censer that the same Kanabina fashioned in the Peloponnese and sent and dedicated to George, the great martyr among saints, in his all-holy monastery of the Mangana”). On the Mangana monastery, see Janin 1969, 70–76; Majeska 1984, 366–71. See Amanteianos’ epitaph to Kasandrenos in Bassi 1898, no. I, vv. 16–22. For the date of the journey, see Nicol 1968, 87–88 n. 129.

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charis for the great martyr George.66 In 1363/64, a New Testament and Psalter manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. gr. 47) was copied at the same monastery under Kanabes’ sponsorship. As stated in the colophon (fol. 444r), the patron dedicated the book to the monastery of Christ Zōodotēs at Mistra, recently founded by Manuel Kantakouzenos, despot of the Morea and John VI’s second son.67 The couple’s connection with the monastic house of the Mangana was most likely established through Kasandrenos. As John VI’s faithful servant and companion, he must have been an habitué of the old Constantinopolitan foundation, to which, having abdicated the throne, his imperial master had withdrawn.68 Thus it would appear that both the Brontochion and the Mangana were places of special significance to the family. In both monasteries Kasandrenos’ memory must have remained alive and could, moreover, be perpetuated for the benefit of his soul. The maintenance and perpetuation of the memory of the departed was a vital concern for people in the Middle Ages. Students of the culture of remembrance in the medieval West have amply demonstrated that memoria was a pervasive phenomenon informing nearly every aspect of social life.69 As a means of overcoming death and oblivion, memoria did not pertain only to the mental faculty of memory, the process of remembering in the cognitive and emotional sense. Rather, it embraced a range of material forms and social practices through which memory was preserved and a community of the living and the dead established and sustained. Tombs, monuments, and commemorative inscriptions, portrait likenesses and objects associated with the departed, prayers and funeral processions, endowments to monastic houses, alms, and charitable gifts, historiography and poetry were all variously mobilized in the service of remembrance. Central among the diverse vehicles of memoria was the liturgical 66 67

68

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Bassi 1898, no. VII. Euangelatou-Notara 2000, 242–43 (no. 269). On the Zōodotēs monastery, the katholikon of which is identified with the church of Hagia Sophia at Mistra, see Millet 1899, 142–46; Zakythinos 1932–53, esp. 2:197, 2:298; S. Sinos in RbK, s.v. ‘Mistras’, cols. 430–33, 452–53, 512–15. Nicol 1996, 135. Bassi 1898, 390, hypothesized that Kasandrenos may have been a monk at the Mangana, in other words, that he had been already tonsured before his trip to the Morea. However, the colophon of the Plutarch manuscript completed on 7 April 1362 mentions him under his lay name Demetrios, which suggests that he was tonsured after this date. See above, n. 61. Oexle 1976; Oexle 1983; Schmid and Wollasch 1984; Lauwers 1997; Horch 2001; Bueren, Ragetli, and Bijsterveld 2011. For the culture of remembrance in the Byzantine world, see Steindorff 1994, esp. 119–35; Grünbart 2012. On ritual remembrance, see below, n. 74. On memory in Byzantium, see also Papalexandrou 2010; Schreiner 2011; Papaioannou 2014.

Plate 1 (= Figure 0.1) Icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, third quarter of the fourteenth century, Diözesanmuseum, Freising (photo: Diözesanmuseum, Freising)

Plate 2 (= Figure 1.6) Ivory diptych, tenth/eleventh or thirteenth century, cathedral treasury, Chambéry (photo: Damien Lachas / Direction régionale des affaires culturelles Rhône-Alpes, Conservation régionale des monuments historiques)

Plate 3 (= Figure 2.1) Embroidered podea(?) with the archangel Michael and the supplicant Manuel, fourteenth or early fifteenth century, Museo di Palazzo Ducale, Urbino (photo: Soprintendenza per i Beni Storici Artistici ed Etnoantropologici delle Marche, Urbino)

Plate 4 (= Figure 3.14) Staurothēkē, twelfth century (central field) and late thirteenth or early fourteenth century (frame), cathedral treasury, Esztergom (photo: Attila Mudrák / Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Adalbert Cathedral Treasury, Esztergom)

Plate 5 (= Figure 3.17) Theodore Rallis, The Booty, c. 1905, National Gallery – Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens (photo: Stavros Psiroukis / National Gallery – Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Collection of the E. Koutlidis Foundation, Athens)

Plate 6 (= Figure 4.2) Saint Nestor, 1294/95, church of the Virgin Peribleptos, Ohrid (photo: author)

Plate 7 (= Figure 4.13) Mosaic decoration of the sanctuary with Christ Hyperagathos in the apse, the Virgin and John the Baptist on the side walls, and the four great archangels in the vault, c. 1310, south parekklēsion of the former church of the Virgin Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii), Constantinople/Istanbul (photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY)

Plate 8 (= Figure 4.19) Labyrinth poem, Liturgical Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos, Ms. gr. D. 282 (olim Prodromos P. A. 14), fol. 3v, middle of the thirteenth century, Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies “Prof. Ivan Dujčev,” Sofia (photo: Center for SlavoByzantine Studies “Prof. Ivan Dujčev,” Sofia)

Plate 9 (= Figure 4.20) Figured dedicatory epigram of the panhypersebastos Andrew, Ms. Med. gr. 43, fol. 142v, second half of the sixteenth century, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (photo: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna)

Plate 10 (= Figure 5.1) Embroidered icon veil with the Crucifixion, c. 1295, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia)

Plate 11 (= Figure 5.3) Fresco of Saint George on horseback, late twelfth century, church of the Virgin Phorbiōtissa, Asinou (photo: Gerald L. Carr)

Plate 12 (= Figure 5.4) Embroidered aēr-epitaphios of Andronikos II Palaiologos, early fourteenth century, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia)

Plate 13 (= Figure 5.8) Detail of the icon of the Virgin from the pair of icons showing the Annunciation, eleventh or twelfth century(?), Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra)

Plate 14 (= Figure 6.3) Icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, early fourteenth century (revetment) and eighteenth century (painted panel), Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 234)

Plate 15 (= Figure 7.6) Icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, middle of the fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 314)

Plate 16 (= Figure 7.13) Icon of Christ Pantokratōr, c. 1363, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (photo: Vladimir Terebenin / State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg)

Gifts, prayers, and memory

commemoration of the dead, which was understood as an act of redemptive efficacy and, moreover, a way of realizing what Otto Gerhard Oexle has called “die Gegenwart der Toten,” the presence of the dead among the living.70 In Byzantium as in the medieval West, religious donation and memory were closely associated. Gifts hyper sōtērias presented to religious communities were normally exchanged for prayers and commemorative services performed by the clergy for the salvation of the donors or other individuals in whose name the gifts had been offered.71 Characteristic in this regard is a specification included in the Typikon of the convent tou Libos in Constantinople, which the empress Theodora, widow of Michael VIII Palaiologos, restored in the 1280s.72 Writing about the acceptance of donations to her foundation, the empress spells out two reasons for making devotional gifts: “It is my will that gifts offered by anyone whosoever with pious intentions be accepted, property and money, vessels and liturgical cloths, for the adornment (εἰς εὐπρέπειαν) of the houses of God and the memory (μνημόσυνον) of the donors.”73 The first reason, not unexpectedly, concerns the kosmetic function of the gift, which the empress invokes by reference to Psalm 25(26):8, whereas the second points to spiritual benefits that the donor hoped to receive in return through the intercession of the clergy or, in this instance, the flock of nuns assembled at Theodora’s convent. The kind of remembrance that the term mnēmosynon, used in the above quote, designates is primarily ritual. It refers to the commemoration of the donor in either liturgical celebrations or private prayers, and in particular to memorial services conducted posthumously on his or her behalf.74 Among the honorary rights of the ktētōr of a religious foundation, the right to mnēmosynon was the most enduring and, given its redemptive function, surely the most critical.75 A contemporary of the empress

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72 73 74

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Oexle 1983. On reciprocity in donations to monasteries, see Smyrlis 2006, 154; Morris 2010. For the link between the gift and the commemoration of the donor, see Giros 2012, esp. 101–3. For the date, see Gkoutzioukostas 2009. Typikon of the Convent tou Libos, 117.5–8; trans. BMFD, 3:1271 (A.-M. Talbot). On the ritual mnēmosynon, see Petrakakos 1905, 130–35; Koukoules 1948–57, 4:208–11; I. Phountoules in ΘΗΕ, s.v. ‘Μνημόσυνον’, 8: cols. 1226–29; Velkovska 2001, 39–42; Brooks 2002, 182–243. Troicki 1935, 121; Thomas 1987, 254. For the importance of memorial services and the belief in the efficacy of monks’ intercession as incentives for monastic patronage, see Galatariotou 1987, esp. 92–95; Morris 1995, 120–42; Horden 2005; Thomas 2005; Kaplan 2007. See also M. Jeffreys and E. Jeffreys 1994.

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Theodora, Constantine Akropolites – who, along with his father George, was the ktētōr and restorer of a Constantinopolitan monastery of the Anastasis – refers to his contribution to the family foundation as to its monks’ “debt” (τὸ ὀφειλόμενον) owed to him, which they were expected to discharge by performing commemorative services (μνεία) in his honor.76 Constantine’s testamentary Logos details that, in addition to one thousand gold pieces he spent on the restoration of the monastery, he also acquired an auxiliary chapel for it, dedicated to Saint Lazarus of Galesios, for the completion of which he made further donations. Three hundred gold staters were set aside for the celebration of special feast days in this chapel, with three hundred more to be added for the same purpose in the following year.77 In return, he requested that commemorative services be performed in the main monastery church for himself as well as for his children and their descendants. Every Saturday the Divine Liturgy was to be celebrated in the chapel of Saint Lazarus on his behalf and on behalf of his mother and wife, while their joint annual commemoration, also to be held in the chapel, was to follow upon the saint’s feast day.78 Mnēmosynon was not the exclusive right of ktētores and their immediate family. As indicated in the empress Theodora’s Typikon, other benefactors were also entitled to it, granted that their contributions were pious in intent and, naturally, of substantial pecuniary value. The number and lavishness of memorial services, in fact, stood in direct proportion to benefactors’ largesse. Particularly explicit in this respect are detailed instructions for the celebration of mnēmosyna, laid out in the Typikon of the Constantinopolitan convent of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, founded around 1285 by Theodora Synadene, a niece of Michael VIII Palaiologos. The performance of memorial services was virtually the sole purpose of this aristocratic foundation. Those conducted for the foundress, her husband, and their children, all considered the convent’s ktētores, as well as for her parents, were especially rich, with the participation of no fewer than eleven priests in addition to the one who regularly officiated at the convent.79 In exchange for donations of money, landed property, or objets de grand luxe, liturgical commemorations were also granted to other individuals, nearly all of them related to the foundress by ties of blood or marriage.80 76 77 79 80

Delehaye 1933, 282. On Constantine Akropolites, see PLP, no. 520; Nicol 1965. 78 Delehaye 1933, 280, 282. Delehaye 1933, 282–83. Typikon of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, 80–82. Typikon of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, 91–94, 102–104. That, without a donation to the convent, no one was entitled to memorial services is clear from Theodora’s provision for the mnēmosyna of one of her granddaughters, Theodora-Theodosia. Even though Theodora-Theodosia made no

Gifts, prayers, and memory

For instance, one of Theodora’s nephews, the parakoimōmenos Andronikos Tornikes, who took the monastic name of Antony, endowed his memorial services by donating five hundred hyperpyra and a silver lamp weighing five litrai to the convent. On July 3, the day of his annual commemoration, six liturgies were recited for the salvation of his soul, the church was amply illuminated with two additional candelabra, and refreshment was served for the nuns in the refectory.81 Another of the foundress’ nephews, John Palaiologos – who also embraced the monk’s habit, taking the name of Ioasaph – was honored with comparatively more elaborate and more diverse forms of ritual remembrance. According to the Typikon, his annual commemoration was observed on August 8. On that day, as in Tornikes’ case, two candelabra were provided for additional illumination, but the number of liturgies recited for the salvation of his soul was seven; and in addition to refreshment in the refectory, the nuns were treated to a more lavish diet. Besides, every Thursday an offering of consecrated bread was made as a sacrifice on his behalf, while once a year four measures of wine were distributed to the poor and needy at the convent’s gate in his name. Prayers, commemorative meals, offerings, and alms – all these instruments of sustaining and perpetuating one’s memory had to be purchased with gifts of correspondingly high value, and those made by John-Ioasaph at the time of his death were such that the foundress felt obliged to hail him as φιλότιμος (“generous”) in the Typikon. His donations to the convent included a gold icon of the Virgin studded with pearls and eight precious stones, four of which were red and four light blue, and further supplied with a gold-embroidered veil bearing an image of the Virgin, entirely ornamented with pearls; a richly adorned icon of the Dormition of the Virgin; and a gold-embroidered podea with representations of the four Marian feasts and a “halo” (φεγγίον) made of pearls in the center. Exceptionally, John-Ioasaph was honored with burial in the convent. As the foundress specifies, he also donated a vineyard and a house so that a lamp may continually burn at his tomb.82 The care with which the Typikon of the Bebaia Elpis records the convent’s benefactors, their gifts, and the appropriate manner of their commemoration attests to the vital importance attached to the notion of

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contributions to the Bebaia Elpis, she exceptionally had the right to be commemorated because her father and the foundress’s son, the prōtostratōr Theodore Doukas Synadenos, was one of the most important benefactors of the convent: ibid., 91.22–32. Typikon of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, 93.4–11. On Andronikos-Antony Tornikes, see PLP, no. 29122. Typikon of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, 93.12–94.3. On John-Ioasaph Palaiologos, see PLP, no. 21486.

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mnēmosynon in medieval Byzantium. In order that their memory might not sink into oblivion but remain alive until the Day of Judgment, the names of benefactors had to be documented, committed to writing, and thereby preserved for posterity. Aside from monastic typika, other kinds of documents could be mobilized to this end. At the beginning of the inventory appended to his Diataxis, Michael Attaleiates stipulates that, should other “God-loving and pious men” endow his foundation, their names “ought to be set down in the register of the donated movable or immovable property, so that they may be commemorated in perpetuity in the daily and nocturnal offices of the holy church.”83 In accordance with Attaleiates’ injunction, the subsequent acquisitions of books, sacred vessels, liturgical textiles, icons and icon veils, and lamps are dutifully listed along with the benefactors’ names in separate entries at the end of this document.84 Individuals who, thanks to their munificence, earned the privilege of mnēmosynon were normally recorded in liturgical diptychs containing names of the living and the departed, which were read aloud during the celebration of the Eucharist.85 In monasteries, separate lists known as hiera brebia or, more rarely, psychochartia could be drawn up for the same purpose.86 Alternatively, the names of those to be commemorated could be noted down directly in euchologia and other service books.87 Dedicatory epigrams, too, could readily function as mnemonic vehicles, for verses inscribed on devotional gifts, as a rule, record the givers’ names.88 In the case of Amanteianos’ dodecasyllables on the silver-gilt censers donated to the Brontochion and Mangana monasteries by Maria Kanabina, this appears to have been their primary purpose. The two epigrams hardly qualify as great poetry. Even so, they manage to convey essential information in the fairly exacting format of a dodecasyllable tercet by identifying the giver (Maria), the recipient (the Virgin Mary and Saint George, respectively), the third party on whose behalf the gift has been made (Maria’s father, the

83 84

85 87 88

Attaleiates, Diataxis, 87.1166–89.1172; trans. BMFD, 1:356 (A.-M. Talbot), slightly modified. Attaleiates, Diataxis, 123–30. Only the donations of Attaleiates’ secretary, the praipositos John, and some of the books given by the foundation’s abbot Michael are recorded in the main inventory list: ibid., 91, 95–99. 86 Winkler 1971, 363–77; Taft 1991. De Gregorio 2001, esp. 120–27. Taft 1991, 111–13, 140–41. See also Kouroupou and Vannier 2005; Prinzing 2009. Expressions of self-effacement such as the ones found in the anonymous dedicatory formulae popular in late antiquity – οὗ ὁ Θεὸς οἶδεν τὸ ὄνομα (“whose name God knows”) and the like – whereby the donor avoids disclosing his or her name, are virtually absent from later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams (cf. however BEIÜ III, no. TR8). For the use of these formulae, see Babić 1971, esp. 266–69; Roueché 2007, esp. 225–30. For a brief overview of anonymity in Byzantine and post-Byzantine dedicatory inscriptions, see Anastasiadou 2009.

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monk Daniel Kasandrenos), and the function of the gift (dedication hyper sōtērias). Moreover, since the two epigrams were inscribed on objects intended for liturgical use, the names of Maria and her father would have been quite literally displayed before the eyes of those who were to pray on their behalf. Naming, as Oexle has pointed out, lies at the heart of ritual remembrance. In the context of a liturgical commemoration, the physically absent – whether alive or dead – are made present through the chanting of their names, thus entering into communion with the celebrants and all those praying for them.89 It is precisely this kind of liturgical communion of memory that Maria’s “named” gifts were meant to forge between her father, herself, and the monks of the Brontochion and the Mangana. As a matter of fact, dedicatory verses may directly voice the donor’s request for intercessory prayers and commemorations. A case in point is the epigram that accompanies a fresco depicting Saint George on horseback, dated to the late twelfth century, in the church of the Virgin Phorbiōtissa at Asinou on Cyprus (Plate 11, Figure 5.3).90 This imposing image of the youthful warrior galloping across a hilly landscape with a jeweled crown on his head was set up at the expense of the otherwise unknown specialist in horse medicine by the name of Nikephoros. The verses recording Nikephoros’ dedication are written below the saint’s scarlet, wind-blown cloak.

5

Ἵππων ἀκεστὴρ εὐσεβὴς Νικηφόρος θερμῷ κινηθεὶς ἐνδιαθέτῳ πόθῳ ἀνιστόρησεν ἐμφερῶς τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ παμμεγίστου μάρτυρος Γεωργίου κἀν τῇδε σεπτῶς τῇ μονῇ τῶν Φορβίω ποθῶν ἐφευρεῖν ἀντίληψιν ἐν κρίσει τὸν ὑπεραυγῆ μάρτυρα στε[φ]α[νίτην] καὶ τ[ὰ]ς προσευχὰς τῶν μενόντων ἐνθάδε. A healer of horses, the pious Nikephoros, moved by warm heartfelt desire, with like feeling painted the image of the greatest of martyrs, George, in this monastery tōn Phorbiōn with reverence, longing to find help at the Judgment from that most brilliant crowned martyr and the prayers of those dwelling here.91

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Oexle 1976, 79–87; Oexle 1983. On the fresco of Saint George, see Stylianou and Stylianou 1973, 34–39; Stylianou and Stylianou 1982; Frigerio-Zeniou 1995; Nicolaïdès 2012; Winfield 2012. For the epigram, see Buxton et al. 1933, 337–38; BEIÜ I, no. 232; Patterson Ševčenko 2012a, 81–83. Trans. Patterson Ševčenko 2012a, 82, with modifications.

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Figure 5.3 Fresco of Saint George on horseback, late twelfth century, church of the Virgin Phorbiōtissa, Asinou (photo: Gerald L. Carr). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

The dedicator’s hope in setting up the image was to secure two channels of intercession on his behalf, one heavenly, provided by the “greatest of martyrs,” and the other earthly, enacted through the supplications of the monastic community at Asinou. The same kind of twofold intercession is envisioned in an epigram from the Anthologia Marciana commemorating an imperial gift.92 The epigram was written for an icon of Saint John the Baptist that Manuel I Komnenos

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Anthologia Marciana, no. 319 (C5) (full text in Spingou 2012, 95).

Gifts, prayers, and memory

donated to a monastery of the saint, after having it adorned with a golden kosmos. The verses, addressed to the Baptist, first introduce the gift and then present a petition on the emperor’s behalf, which reads:

10

ὡς σὺ μὲν αὐτῷ πρὸς Θεὸν μέσος γίνου, ὁ τοῦ παλαιοῦ καὶ νέου νόμου μέσος, κἀν οὐρανοῖς σχεῖν τὴν βασίλειον στάσιν· τὸ δ’ εὐλογοῦν σε τῶν μονοτρόπων στίφος ὁρῶν τὸ δῶρον καὶ διὰ μνήμης φέρον Θεὸν δυσωποῦ τοῦ δεδωκότος χάριν. Thus, may you, who mediate between the Old and the New Law, become his mediator before God, so that he may preserve his royal status even in heaven; and may the throng of the monks who praise you, when they see the gift and hold it in remembrance, pray to God on behalf of the giver.

It is notable that the epigram explicitly calls attention to the commemorative function of the gift. The donated precious icon was meant to keep the memory of the imperial donor alive in the monastery. Each time the monks cast their gaze upon this image and its golden kosmos, they were expected to remember Manuel and pray for him, just as their saintly patron did. Exceptionally, dedicatory verses may even include a reminder to the earthly custodians of a gift of their obligation to commemorate the donor. This is the case with another epigram preserved in the Anthologia Marciana, a poem on an icon of Christ that the prōtonōbelissimos Nicholas Maurokatakalon donated to a monastery in Adrianople.93 Midway through the poem, Maurokatakalon appeals to Christ as follows:

15

σὺ γοῦν τὸ λύτρον, ὧνπερ ἡμάρτηκά σοι, ὅταν καθίσῃς εἰς κρίσιν, βράβευέ μοι. αἰτεῖ σε τοῦτο καὶ μοναστῶν τὸ στίφος οἳ καὶ καθυπέσχοντο λιτάς σοι φέρειν καθημέραν ἡμῶν τε μεμνῆσθαι, Λόγε, ἀραῖς ἑαυτοὺς ἐμβαλόντες ἐνδίκαις εἰ μὴ πέρας διδοῦσι τοῖς δεδογμένοις. When you sit to judge, may you grant me forgiveness for the sins I have committed against you. The throng of monks, too, asks you the same; for they have promised to offer you supplications and commemorate us

93

Anthologia Marciana, no. 263 (B96) (full text in Spingou 2012, 91). On Maurokatakalon and his wife, Euphrosyne Doukaina, see Polemis 1968, 77 (no. 31).

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Figure 5.4 Embroidered aēr-epitaphios of Andronikos II Palaiologos, early fourteenth century, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

daily, O Logos, making themselves liable to just condemnation, should they not fulfill their promises.94

Maurokatakalon, who may have been the monastery’s ktētōr, was evidently eager to safeguard his right to mnēmosynon. The epigram, which was likely inscribed on the icon, made it clear that the monks’ failure to respect this right would not go unpunished. Epigrammatic appeals for intercessory prayers and commemorations were particularly well suited to objects intended for liturgical use. Μέμνησο, ποιμὴν Βουλγάρων, ἐν θυσίαις ἄνακτος Ἀνδρονίκου Παλαιολόγου. Remember, O shepherd of the Bulgars, during the sacrifices, the emperor Andronikos Palaiologos.

This dodecasyllable couplet is found on a luxury textile donated by Andronikos II to the church of Hagia Sophia in Ohrid, the cathedral of the eponymous archbishopric (Plate 12, Figure 5.4).95 Made of red silk

94 95

Trans. Spingou 2012, 149, modified. The textile is now in the collection of the National History Museum in Sofia. On this piece, see Kondakov 1909, 243–45; Boĭcheva 2002; Evans 2004, cat. no. 188 (I. Petrinski); Boĭcheva 2005,

Gifts, prayers, and memory

embroidered with gold and silver thread, this sumptuous cloth shows the recumbent figure of the dead Christ displayed as the sacrificial Amnos, or Lamb, upon a draped altar that bears the emperor’s dedicatory verses. Two angels wearing the deacon’s vestments officiate behind the altar waving liturgical fans, while the symbols of the evangelists reverentially observe the rite, confined to the four corner segments; only Mark’s Lion in the lower left is missing. The Ohrid textile represents one of the earliest examples of the so-called aēr-epitaphios, a special type of aēr, or veil for covering the Eucharistic elements, embroidered with an image of the dead Christ.96 The precise function of this large and fairly cumbersome liturgical cloth that had been introduced by c. 1300, if not earlier, is still a matter of controversy.97 What is beyond doubt, however, is that the cloth was used in the solemn procession of the Great Entrance, the ceremonial transfer of the Eucharistic elements from the place of their preparation to the altar, which liturgical commentators traditionally interpreted as, inter alia, a ritual reenactment of the funeral cortege of Christ.98 Roughly at the time when the aēr-epitaphios was introduced in the Great Entrance procession, the same ceremony was enriched by yet another ritual element. The chanting of the Cherubic Hymn that accompanied the transfer of the Eucharistic elements came to be interrupted in order that the celebrants might recite commemorations – at first, in a low voice, but eventually aloud – for the clergy and secular authorities, for the individuals whose remembrance had been specifically requested, and finally, for the congregated worshippers.99 (These commemorations are not to be confused with those recited from the diptychs in the anaphora.) As Hans Belting has remarked, the ritual display of the aēr-epitaphios was clearly related to these commemorations, for the majority of dedicatory inscriptions embroidered on the late Byzantine examples of the cloth are couched in the language of liturgical intercessory prayers.100 This is precisely the case with the Ohrid textile. The imperative μέμνησο (“remember”) that introduces the emperor’s appeal is a direct echo of the formulaic invocation μνησθείη Κύριος ὁ Θεὸς ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὑτοῦ

96 97

98

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537–40; Schilb 2009, 236–42 (no. 1), with further references. On the epigram, see also BEIÜ II, no. Te3. On this liturgical cloth, see especially Taft 1975, 216–19; Boycheva 2003–4; Schilb 2009. For a thorough review of the evidence and various scholarly interpretations, see Schilb 2009, 20–113. See, e.g., Pseudo-Germanos, Historia ecclesiastica, PG 98, cols. 420C–421A; Symeon of Thessalonike, De sacro templo, PG 155, col. 728D. 100 Taft 1975, 227–34. Belting 1981, 195–96. See also Schilb 2009, 92–94.

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(“May the Lord God remember in his kingdom”), recited by the celebrants during the Great Entrance, which in turn harks back to the prayer of the Good Thief in Luke 23:42: Ἰησοῦ, μνήσθητί μου ὅταν ἔλθῃς ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ σου (“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”).101 The dedicatory epigram, in other words, rephrases the plea that would have been intoned as the textile was ceremoniously carried in procession. The only difference is that, instead of invoking the Lord himself, the verses seek the intercession of the “shepherd of the Bulgars,” that is, the archbishop of Ohrid.102 The emperor’s appeal may well have been addressed to his friend and favorite, the archbishop Gregory, whose dedicatory inscription on the exonarthex of the Ohrid cathedral we have briefly examined in Chapter 2. Although the epigrams on the gifts hyper sōtērias sent by Maria Kanabina to the monastic houses of the Brontochion and the Mangana do not make direct requests for commemorative prayers, her precious donations were nonetheless intended to secure priestly intercessions. The redemptive capacity of gifts for the salvation of one’s soul made to religious institutions was inextricably linked with their ritual corollaries. To borrow a scriptural simile, if by making such gifts the donors set up for themselves a treasury in heaven (cf. Matthew 6:19–21 and 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 12:33–34 and 18:22), it was the ritual celebration of their memory that guaranteed that this treasury was kept well stocked with spiritual goods. One should keep in mind, however, that beyond the institutionalized forms of intercession provided by the clergy and monks, there were other ways in which the donor’s quest for spiritual goods could be furthered. For virtually any reader of the dedicatory verses adorning a devotional gift could serve as an intercessor on the donor’s behalf. Even the semi-literate would have been able to perform such a role, insofar as rudimentary reading skill allows, at the very least, for the recognition of names. The only piece of 101

102

Brightman 1896, 378–80. For further examples of inscriptions on aeres-epitaphioi that echo the “remember”-formula, see Schilb 2009, 243 (no. 2), 248 (no. 3), 267 (no. 6), 288 (no. 11), 322–23 (no. 17), 328 (no. 18). To be sure, there was hardly a need for such a request. The emperor, after all, was no ordinary donor. His name was commemorated as a matter of course in every church of the Empire, and even beyond. Cf. the celebrated letter of 1393 addressed by Antony IV, patriarch of Constantinople, to the grand prince Basil I of Moscow: MM 2:190 (no. CCCCXLVII). The commemoration of the emperor’s name was especially in order in the cathedral of the archbishops of Ohrid, who, ever since the creation of their see under Basil II, were placed directly under the emperor’s jurisdiction and, moreover, appointed by him. See Gelzer 1893, 42–46; Tarnanides 1976, 94–110.

Gifts, prayers, and memory

information that a willing intercessor needed to know before sending his or her prayers to heaven was ultimately the name of the donor.103 As has been suggested in Chapter 1, the formal presentation of a gift may have been an occasion for the performance of the epigram inscribed upon it. Once Maria Kanabina’s silver-gilt censers reached the Brontochion and Mangana monasteries, it is possible that the short poems gracing these objects were recited as part of a presentation ceremony. The solemn delivery of these poems could have taken place either before an audience or in the presence of icons of the Virgin Hodēgētria and Saint George respectively, the sacred recipients of the two censers. One is tempted to go a step further and speculate whether performances of this kind were orchestrated periodically, perhaps in conjunction with the regular liturgical commemorations of the donors. To be sure, we lack any evidence that this was the case, but a comparable practice is attested. As we have seen, the annual festivities celebrating the inauguration of the monastery of Christ Pantokratōr in Constantinople included the recitation of an epigram, the lengthy poem in praise of the monastery and its founders, the emperor John II Komnenos and his wife Irene-Piroska, once displayed on a wall in the monastic complex.104 The example of this poem and its ceremonial role suggests that dedicatory epigrams could have been performed periodically in other commemorative contexts too. To perform an epigram, of course, one did not require a specific ceremonial occasion and setting. Anybody who had access to the treasuries of the Brontochion and Mangana monasteries could recite the dodecasyllables inscribed upon Maria’s censers and thereby activate their message. To the extent that the verses accompanying a devotional gift may be said to provide a script for the act of offering the gift, a vocal recitation of the verses restages this act. It does not simply affirm and commemorate the gift, but presents it anew. Performance is here akin to re-enactment.105 In the case of dedicatory epigrams in the form of a personal prayer, such a performative restaging of the original offering acquires a particular force, as the reader quite literally impersonates the donor by assuming the role of the speaking subject – the “I” of the epigram. The effect of this impersonation is to suspend temporal and spatial distances, and render 103

104 105

For an example of how the donor’s name can be visually highlighted in an epigram, see the pair of the Annunciation icons from Ohrid discussed below in this chapter. See aslo Hostetler 2011. See Chapter 1. For the performance of the epigram as a re-enactment of the ritual of dedication, see Spingou 2012, esp. 228–29. The subject of performance and re-enactment in archaic Greek epigrams has received a thorough treatment in Day 2010.

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the donor vicariously present through the medium of performed speech. By voicing the dedicatory prayer, the reader allows the donor to speak and appeal to the sacred recipient again in the here-and-now of oral delivery. Liturgical commemorations, private intercessory prayers, and performances of epigrams all variously contributed to the gift’s spiritual efficacy, while keeping the memory of the giver alive. Yet, as much as these forms of mediation may have been beneficial, they could not secure a positive outcome of the exchange with heaven that the gift was designed to accomplish. It is to the paradoxical nature of this exchange, as it is negotiated in epigrammatic poetry, that we must now turn.

Paradoxical exchange The splendid collection of artworks coming from the treasury of the former archbishopric of Ohrid includes a red silk cloth embroidered with gold and silver thread bearing an image of the Virgin orans with the Christ Child in a medallion on her chest (Figure 5.5).106 Running along the cloth’s border is a dedicatory inscription in eight dodecasyllable lines.107

5

Ὁ σάρκα λαβὼν ἐξ ἀπειράνδρου κόρης τρόποις ἀφράστοις, ὦ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς Λόγε, ἣν νῦν ὁρῶμε[ν ἀνθρώποις] προκειμένην εἰς ἑστίασιν, κἂν πᾶσι παρ’ ἀξίαν, δέξαι τὸ δῶρον ἐκ Θεοδώρου τόδε Κομνηνοδούκα καὶ Δουκαίνης Μ[αρίας] Κομνηνοφυοῦς τῆς καλῆς συζυγίας· ἀντιδίδου δὲ ψυχικὴν [σωτ]ηρίαν. O Logos of God the Father, you who assumed the flesh from the virgin Maiden in an ineffable manner, the flesh which we now see displayed for nourishment to mankind, even though nobody is worthy of it, receive this gift from Theodore Komnenodoukas and his fair wife, Maria Doukaina, of the lineage of the Komnenoi, and in return give salvation to their souls.

106

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Kondakov 1909, 270–71; Ivanov 1931, 35–36 (no. 3); Lozanova 2002, cat. no. 74 (R. Lozanova); Boycheva 2003–4, esp. 184; Rousseva 2006, cat. no. 139 (R. Rousseva). For the epigram on the cloth, see also BEIÜ II, no. Te2. The cloth is now in the collection of the National History Museum in Sofia. Unlike most Byzantine epigrams surrounding an image on all four sides, the verses on the cloth do not follow the typical sequence top–right–left–bottom (on which, see Chapter 1, n. 77). Rather, they are arranged in clockwise order and, moreover, face inward on each side.

Paradoxical exchange

Figure 5.5 Embroidered aēr with the Virgin and Child, c. 1215–25/26, National History Museum, Sofia (photo: National History Museum, Sofia)

The themes of Christ’s flesh and nourishment with their Eucharistic overtones suggest that the cloth served as an aēr, an identification borne out by the cloth’s iconography and relatively small size (75 x 55 cm).108 It is

108

For the identification of the cloth as an aēr, see Lozanova 2002, cat. no. 74 (R. Lozanova); Boycheva 2003–4, 184. Cf. also Petrov 2010, 70. The Virgin orans bearing a medallion with the

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only in the context of a liturgical celebration that the verse inscription, the image on the cloth, and the medium of textile would be fully meaningful and seamlessly coalesce. The Logos incarnate portrayed in the goldembroidered medallion mirrors the consecrated bread “displayed for nourishment” on a paten, while the stately figure of the virgin Maiden bearing the medallion on her chest brings to mind the metaphor of Mary as altar table popular in Byzantine homiletics and hymnography.109 The redness of the silk fabric, on the other hand, evokes not only the consecrated wine but also the color of Christ’s flesh, which, one should recall, patristic and Byzantine authors often compare to a purple cloth woven from the body of the Virgin.110 The aēr was a gift of Theodore Komnenos Doukas and his wife Maria, the ruling couple of Epiros, one of the splinter states that had emerged from the Empire’s collapse in 1204.111 The anonymous poet refers to the cloth by the neutral term dōron – here playfully deployed in a pun on Theodore’s name in line 5112 – but the couple’s donation is better described as a gift hyper sōtērias. It has been suggested that this precious embroidery, like the aēr-epitaphios of Andronikos II, was destined for the cathedral of Hagia Sophia at Ohrid.113 If this was indeed the case, then those who were to intercede for the donors and present their plea for salvation to the Lord

109

110

111

112

113

Christ Child on her chest is a common theme on Russian embroidered aeres dating from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. See Boycheva 2003–4, 184, with further bibliography. One should recall that, in Byzantine church decoration, the same iconography is often featured in the sanctuary apse. See G. M. Lechner in RbK, s.v. ‘Maria’, esp. cols. 46–47, 53. The phrase παρ’ ἀξίαν (“unworthily”) in line 4, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the language of communion prayers. Cf. Koutloumousianos 1832, 498–510. Cf. also a prayer chanted by the priest in a low voice in the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great: Brightman 1896, 410.16–19. Finally, the manner in which the verses are arranged on the cloth (see n. 107) speaks against the possibility that it served as an icon veil. On Mary as altar table, see, e.g., the famous theotokion from Andrew of Crete’s kanōn for Mid-Pentecost, PG 97, col. 1425: Γέγονεν ἡ κοιλία σου ἁγία τράπεζα, ἔχουσα τὸν οὐράνιον ἄρτον, Χριστὸν τὸν Θεὸν ἡμῶν, ἐξ οὗ πᾶς ὁ τρώγων οὐ θνήσκει, ὡς ἔφησεν ὁ τοῦ παντός, θεογεννῆτορ, τροφεύς (“Your womb became a holy table, having the heavenly bread, Christ, our God, from which all who eat will not die, as the Nourisher of all has said, O Mother of God”). Papastavrou 1993; Constas 2003, esp. 315–58; Evangelatou 2003. On the association between red fabric and Christ’s blood, albeit in a different context, see Toussaint 2010. On Theodore Komnenos Doukas and his reign, see Nicol 1957, 47–112; Prinzing 1983b, 38–48; Stauridou-Zaphraka 1990, esp. 63–84. In the case of Theodore Komnenos Doukas, puns of this kind could accommodate an ideological message. The monarch’s contemporaries hailed him as δῶρον Θεοῦ, a gift sent by God to Orthodox Christians living in the western provinces of the former Empire to save them from the enemies of the true faith, expel the Latins, and re-establish political and ecclesiastical order. See Stauridou-Zaphraka 1990, 121. Ivanov 1931, 35.

Paradoxical exchange

can be identified with the cathedral’s clergy and, more specifically, with the archbishop himself. This may have been John Kamateros, who was reinstalled on the throne of Ohrid upon Theodore’s reconquest of the city from the Bulgars in 1215, an event that has been proposed as the possible occasion for the donation of the aēr.114 Alternatively, the donors’ intercessor may have been Demetrios Chomatenos, whom we have met in Chapter 3. Appointed to the archbishopric by Theodore himself in 1216 or 1217, after Kamateros’ death, the celebrated jurist shared the monarch’s political aims. He backed Theodore’s aspirations to the imperial succession against the rival claims of the rulers of Nicaea and famously anointed him emperor in 1227. The aēr was certainly donated before this date, as the poetic inscription does not mention Theodore’s imperial title.115 Irrespective of its original destination and the circumstances in which it was made, the couple’s donation was conceived primarily as an act of redemption. The aēr, as the dedicatory verses make it plain, was a gift presented in anticipation of a divine reward in the form of eternal salvation. Reinforcing the notion that the heavenly remuneration is – or should be – a natural outcome of the gift is the imperative ἀντιδίδου (“give in return” or “repay”) in the concluding line. As it would appear, the transfer of the precious cloth that the verses seek to negotiate is circumscribed within the process of reciprocal exchange. The principle of reciprocity, prima facie, seems to underlie many of the donations recorded in the corpus of later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams. As we have seen, the language of obligation and indebtedness is a common feature of epigrams composed to accompany thank-offerings. A similar understanding of devotional gift-giving as a transaction that entails reciprocation is also articulated in epigrams written for petitionary gifts and gifts hyper sōtērias, most explicitly through the use of a lexicon of compound verbs prefixed by the preposition ἀντί that carries the connotations of exchange, equivalence, and mutuality.116 Typically put in the imperative or optative moods, the latter expressing a wish or exhortation, these verbs

114

115

116

Ivanov 1931, 35, where the date of 1216, commonly accepted in older scholarship, is given for the reconquest of Ohrid. On John Kamateros, see Dušanić 1975, esp. 321–22, and the editor’s introduction in Chomatenos, Various Works, 11*–12*. It should be pointed out that Theodore was proclaimed emperor at the end of 1225 or in 1226. For this much-debated chronology, see Stauridou-Zaphraka 1988 with earlier bibliography. For Chomatenos’ crowning and anointment of Theodore and the ecclesiastical controversy surrounding this act, see especially Prinzing 1983a; Macrides 1992. For Theodore’s titulature and epithets, see especially Ferjančić 1960, 53–58; Stauridou-Zaphraka 1990, 117–45. On the ἀνθ’ ὧν (“in return for which”) formula in ancient epigrams, see Festugière 1976.

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formulate the donor’s request addressed to a holy figure. Ἀντιδίδωμι (“to give in return” or “to repay”), employed in the inscription on the Ohrid aēr, is among the most common.117 In an epigram composed by Manuel Philes for a Marian icon, which the statesman and general Andronikos Asanes adorned with gold, the notion of reciprocity is emphasized by juxtaposing the verbs λαμβάνω (“to receive”) and ἀντιλαμβάνω (“to receive in return”).118 15

20

πηξάμενος γοῦν τὸ χρυσοῦν σοι θριγγίον, ἄλλον γὰρ οὐκ ἔδει σε λαμβάνειν φόρον, τὴν πλουτοποιὸν τὴν ὑπέρτιμον σκέπην, αἰτῶ ψυχῆς κάθαρσιν ἀντιλαμβάνειν, καὶ λύτρον αὐτῆς τὸν χρυσὸν τὸν ἐνθάδε, ὡς ἂν περικλείσῃς με, σεμνὴ παρθένε, μετὰ τελευτὴν, τῆς Ἐδὲμ τῷ θριγγίῳ. Having set up a golden fence [i.e., frame or revetment] for you – for what else you could receive as a tribute, you who are a supremely honorable shelter that supplies with riches – I ask to receive the purification of my soul and its redemption in return for this gold, so that, after death, you may enclose me, O holy Virgin, by the fence of Eden.

The holy figure’s benevolence may be appealed to by using the verb ἀντιδεξιόομαι (literally, “to return one’s greeting”).119 Slightly more specific requests may resort to ἀντιμετρέω (“to measure out in return” or “to compensate”), a verb stressing the element of equivalence and commensurability in exchange.120 In an epigram composed by Theodore

117

118 119

120

See, e.g., Miller 1875–81, 2:692, v. 31; BEIÜ III, no. TR70, v. 3; Grünbart 2007a, 104, v. 9; Philes, Carmina I, 137 (no. CCLXXXIII, v. 8); Philes, Carmina II, 154 (no. CX, v. 3); Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 23, v. 6. For examples in dedicatory epigrams preserved in situ, see the inscription on the staurothēkē of the empress Irene Doukaina in the treasury of San Marco in Venice: BEIÜ II, no. Me90, v. 16; the inscription in the church of Saint Nicholas at Platsa in the Mani: BEIÜ I, no. 135, v. 14; and the inscription on the Freising Lukasbild: BEIÜ II, no. Ik12, v. 12. See also Sola 1916, 149 (no. V, v. 8). Philes, Carmina II, 75 (no. XXXIII). See, e.g., Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 67, v. 30. Cf. a shorter version of this poem in Philes, Carmina I, 307 (no. CXIV, v. 16). See, e.g., Planoudes, Epigrams, no. 1, v. 18; Philes, Carmina I, 243 (no. LXVIII, v. 9). Cf. Philes, Historika poiēmata, 675 (Εἰς πύργον ὃν ἐδείματο τῇ Θεομήτορι ἐν τῇ μονῇ τοῦ μεγάλου Ἀθανασίου εἰς τὸ ἄγιον Ὄρος Νεῖλος μοναχὸς ὁ Νοταρᾶς, v. 16), and Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 28, v. 2, where the sacred recipient’s countergift is measured against the donor’s schēsis rather than his gift. On schēsis, see Chapter 6. Cf. also the epigram on the east façade of the north church of the former monastery tou Libos in Constantinople: BEIÜ III, no. TR79, v. 6.

Paradoxical exchange

Prodromos for an icon of the Virgin, which he himself purchased and had restored, giving and reciprocation are framed by the metaphors of the slave trade. Since the all-subduing Time threatened to ruin her form, the Mother of God was put on the market like a slave – she who was the savior of the slave human nature. The poet, moved by affection, bought her off and restored her image. Being himself enslaved to sin, he asks her to buy him off in return through her intercession (ἀνταγόρασον σαῖς λιταῖς).121 Occasionally, what the donor seeks to obtain is a spiritual equivalent of his or her costly material gift. In an epigram by Philes, for example, an unnamed metropolitan of Crete prays to a throng of his celestial intercessors, assembled in an icon of All Saints which he adorned with a precious kosmos, to adorn him in return “with the ideas of good deeds” (τῶν ἀγαθῶν πρακτέων ταῖς ἰδέαις . . . ἀντικοσμήσατέ με).122 The same conceit is deployed in a series of epigrams penned by Manganeios Prodromos for a set of chalice veils, which his patroness, the sebastokratorissa Irene, donated to a church. The poet pictures Irene imploring Christ, the recipient of the donation, to make her whiter than snow (ἀντιλευκάναις με χιόνος πλέον) and render her soul as brilliant as a pearl (ἀντιλάμψοις ψυχικῷ μαργαρίτῃ) in return, obviously in an allusion to the whiteness and brilliance of pearls with which she embellished the donated chalice veils.123 The Mangana poet apparently delighted in the use of recondite compounds with the prefix anti. In two epigrams from the same series Irene begs Christ to grant her salvation (ἀντιπρυτάνευε τὴν σωτηρίαν) and ransom her from her enemies (ἀντιλυτρώσαις με τῶν ἐναντίων) in return for her donation,124 while in another poem, written for the same patroness, the Virgin is beseeched to reward the sebastokratorissa with her “Godgiven grace” (ἀντιβράβευε τὴν θεόσδοτον χάριν) in return for the gift of a luxury textile hanging.125 The prefix anti in the same role of accentuating the notion of reciprocity also appears in nouns such as ἀνταμοιβή and ἀντάμειψις, two cognates and

121 122

123 125

For the motif of measuring and scales, see in addition Anthologia Marciana, no. 231 (B68) (full text in Spingou 2012, 83). Zagklas 2014, 271 (no. 9, v. 14). Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 77, vv. 5–6. The editor plausibly suggests that the donor is likely to be identified with the well-known bibliophile, Nikephoros Moschopoulos, titular metropolitan of Crete under Andronikos II Palaiologos: ibid., 109. On Moschopoulos, see PLP, no. 19376. 124 Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 38. Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 38. Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 35 (Εἰς τὴν σκέπην τῆς αὐτῆς ὑπεραγίας Θεοτόκου τῆς Ἁγιοσοριτίσσης, γενομένην καὶ αὐτήν παρὰ τῆς σεβαστοκρατορίσσης, v. 12).

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synonyms meaning “repayment” or “requital,” which occasionally turn up in epigrams composed to accompany petitionary gifts and gifts hyper sōtērias. The former word is used, for example, in an epigram commissioned by a monk Athanasios for a precious-metal revetment, with which he adorned an icon of the Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia. Philes, the author of the epigram, presents the monk’s petition to the holy phalanx depicted freezing in an icy lake as follows:126 Τὰς χεῖρας ὑμῶν τῷ ψύχει παρειμένας Ἀθανασίου ψυχικὴ θάλπει ζέσις, ὡς τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀνταμοιβῆς ἀξίως τεταμένας ἔχοιτε πρὸς τὸν δεσπότην. The spiritual ardor of Athanasios warms your hands paralyzed by cold, so that, in repayment to him, you may extend them worthily toward the Lord.127

For the latter word, one may turn to the dedicatory inscription of the bishop Leo of Argos and Nauplia on the west façade of the monastic church at Areia (Figures 2.7 and 2.8), already cited in Chapter 2. Here the speaking voice implores the Virgin to wash away Leo’s sins in repayment (εἰς ἀντάμειψιν) for the church he founded in her honor.128 The donor’s self-assured appeal to the sacred recipient’s obligation to reciprocate is by no means the only strategy of negotiating the transfer of the gift featured in dedicatory epigrams. In a diametrically opposed scenario, the donor denies any possibility of reciprocal exchange by stressing that the donated material goods are not given but rather returned to the sacred recipient, to whom they properly belong. Thus, when the court eunuch Michael Kallikrenites presents his sōstron in the form of an adorned Gospel book to Christ, he declares – in the words of the dedicatory epigram composed by Philes for that occasion – that the offering is merely a restitution.129 Τὴν σήν, Λόγε ζῶν, ἐξ ἐμοῦ βίβλον δέχου· σὺ γὰρ δίδως ἕκαστον, ὧν ἄν τις φέροι. (vv. 1–2) O living Logos, accept this book of yours from me; for whatever one may offer to you is your gift.

126 128

127 Philes, Carmina I, 35 (no. LXXIX). Trans. Talbot 1999, 87, slightly modified. 129 Feissel and Philippidis-Braat 1985, no. 51, v. 4. Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 34.

Paradoxical exchange

Similarly, in a poem from the Anthologia Marciana, Maria Doukaina, wife of the prōtostratōr Alexios Komnenos, appeals to Christ, whose famous icon at the Chalke Gate she honored with a luxury encheirion, by extolling his condescension.130 τὸ χρυσίον σόν, μάργαροι σοὶ καὶ λίθοι. πλὴν ἀλλὰ τὴν ἄμετρον ἐμφαίνων χάριν κἂν τὰ σὰ δέξῃ τῶν δεδωκότων κρίνεις (vv. 6–9) Gold is yours, as well as pearls and precious stones. Yet, exhibiting your measureless grace, even though you receive your own, you judge it as the donors’.

Like these costly substances that epitomize material kosmos, the dedicated encheirion is also Christ’s property. Nonetheless, hoping that the heavenly dedicatee would accept it as a true gift, Maria presents her offering with the plea: τὸ σὸν λαβὼν οὖν δῶρον ὡς ἐμὸν δέχου (“Receive your own gift as if it were mineˮ).131 The Scriptures provided an authoritative precedent for the notion of giving-as-returning in King David’s prayer on the occasion of the endowment of the first Temple of Jerusalem: σὰ τὰ πάντα, καὶ ἐκ τῶν σῶν δεδώκαμέν σοι (“All things come from thee, and of thy own have we given thee”) (1 Chronicles 29:14). Not surprisingly, the same notion is occasionally articulated in the preambles to foundation documents for monastic and charitable institutions. In the autobiographical preface to his Diataxis, for instance, Attaleiates states that the reason why he founded a poorhouse on his property at Rhaidestos was because Our compassionate and surpassingly good God seeks to receive from us a small inducement, so that he may show all his goodness and kindness towards us sinners. For he promised us many blessings on behalf of this single and very easy commandment of his, that out of the goods which we have, or rather which are his (for nothing is ours, inasmuch as our very existence is from God), we should give to those who ask of us. For who, except the humane God, would receive and accept such a gift, so as

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Anthologia Marciana, no. 70 (B126). The encheirion was Maria’s thank-offering for the miraculous cure of her husband, who had recovered from a terrible disease by touching the veil suspended before the icon of the Chalke Gate. On this couple, see Varzos 1984, no. 132. According to Rhoby 2010c, 191–92, the author of the epigram on the encheirion was most likely Manganeios Prodromos. Cf. Anthologia Marciana, no. 98 (B155), vv. 26–27.

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Devotional gifts to regard as a favor and offering from somebody else what comes from him and is his to use and grant?132

Likewise, in his testamentary Logos, Constantine Akropolites insists that no man’s property is his own, for “in truth nothing belongs to us who have been born and received mortal life.”133 If nothing truly belongs to us, then those who have been entrusted with the temporary use of wealth to a greater degree than the rest of mankind are especially obliged to make devotional gifts. Munificence hence becomes a requisite virtue of the elite, an outward manifestation of one’s eugeneia. When the redactor of the abridged version of Pachymeres’ history – probably to be identified with Philes134 – sets out to eulogize the piety and patronage of Michael Doukas Glabas Tarchaneiotes in a gloss to the narrative of the latter’s 1297 expedition against the Serbs in Macedonia, he characteristically states that the general “did not strive so much this unfortunate illusion of this vain existence as he did to dedicate to God the wealth given by God.”135 The religious establishments that enjoyed the general’s largesse included the monasteries of the Virgin Pammakaristos and the Virgin Athēniōtissa in Constantinople, the Prodromos monastery at Sozopolis, and the monastery of Prisklabētza at Prilep. So grateful was Glabas to the Lord, his “benefactor” (εὐεργέτης), that he lavished his wealth upon the poor, monks, and sacred dedications. These acts of donation and love for the needy were sure signs that Glabas was, as the redactor puts it, “exceedingly noble (εὐγενικώτατος) in soul no less than in body.”136 While the ultimate source of all wealth is God, the earthly goods that the donors strive to restitute may be dispensed through the mediation of lesser holy figures – the Mother of God, for instance. In the following dedicatory epigram, she is invoked as the true owner of the gift presented to her. Τὰ σὰ προσάγω σοί, κόρη παναγία, Λέων σὸς οἰκτρὸς οἰκέτης, Θεοῦ θύτης. I, your pitiable servant Leo, priest of God, bring what is yours to you, all-holy Maiden.

132 133 135 136

Attaleiates, Diataxis, 23.86–95; trans. BMFD, 1:334 (A.-M. Talbot). 134 Delehaye 1933, 279; trans. BMFD, 4:1377 (A.-M. Talbot). Beyer 2006. Pachymeres, Historia brevis 9.30, 2:68.11–13. Pachymeres, Historia brevis 9.30, 2:68.10–19. For the argument that Prisklabētza is to be identified with Treskavac, see Marković 2014.

Paradoxical exchange

The gift in question consisted of a pair of luxury icons showing the Annunciation, now kept at the Icon Gallery in Ohrid (Figures 5.6 and 5.7).137 The graceful figure of Gabriel on the left panel, his legs parted in a purposeful stride, extends a gesture of blessing signifying speech to the seated Virgin portrayed on the right panel with a spindle and a skein of purple wool in her hands. The words of the archangel’s salutation, ὁ Κύριος μετὰ σοῦ (“The Lord is with you!”), taken from Luke 1:28, are lettered in repoussé on either side of the Virgin’s halo, amidst the floral patterning of the panel’s silver-gilt revetment. Similar ornamentation spreads across the background of the icon of Gabriel, partially covering its frame occupied by smaller images of angels in imperial and military garb. By contrast, the frame of the Virgin’s icon is populated by prophets and saints, the former depicted in full figure and the latter en buste, with a Deēsis placed in the hierarchically central position at the top. When the two icons were painted and enhanced with precious-metal revetments is a matter of some controversy. The proposed dates range from the eleventh to as late as the early fourteenth century.138 The question of dating is further complicated by the fact that various elements of the icons’ kosmos do not appear to be contemporaneous. While two large glass cabochons gracing the maphorion, or veil, of the Virgin are undoubtedly a later addition, it is possible that her nimbus, the quadrilobe cartouches with the enameled Marian sigla ΜΗΡ ΘΥ (“Mother of God”), and the two vertical narrow plaques, each bearing one verse of the dedicatory couplet, also worked in enamel, were subsequently affixed as well.139 Their relative chronology notwithstanding, the plaques are strategically placed so that the spinning Maiden may point with the index finger of her left hand to the second verse of the couplet recording the donor’s name, as if in a gesture of approval (Plate 13, Figure 5.8). Directed by Mary’s finger, the viewer is drawn to the word Λέων (“Leo”) at the beginning of the second verse and implicitly encouraged to pray on the donor’s behalf. Scholars have variously identified this Leo, a “pitiable servant” of the Virgin, with two archbishops of Ohrid, the famous anti-Latin polemicist Leo (1037–1056) and the less well-known Jewish convert Leo Moungos

137

138 139

Kondakov 1909, 262–70; Djurić 1961, 15–17, 96–97 (no. 20); Grabar 1975b, 35–37 (no. 10); Balabanov 1995, 61–71, 180–82 (nos. 2 and 3); Peers 2004, 101–17; Cormack and Vassilaki 2008, cat. nos. 229.1 and 229.2 (M. Georgievski). For the epigram, see BEIÜ II, no. Ik14. For a convenient summary of scholarly opinions, see Ličenoska 1996, 392. Grabar 1975b, 35.

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Figure 5.6 Icon of the archangel Gabriel from the pair of icons showing the Annunciation, eleventh or twelfth century(?), Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra)

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Figure 5.7 Icon of the Virgin from the pair of icons showing the Annunciation, eleventh or twelfth century(?), Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra)

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Figure 5.8 Detail of the icon of the Virgin from the pair of icons showing the Annunciation, eleventh or twelfth century(?), Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

(probably after 1125/26).140 The epigram, however, refers to the donor simply as θύτης (literally, “sacrificer”), a generic designation for anyone ordained to the priesthood and hence allowed to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. The choice of the word thytēs should not be regarded merely as an index of the epigrammatic genre’s distaste for a more precise yet “vulgar” technical vocabulary. The word in fact reiterates the allusion to the Eucharistic sacrifice introduced in the first line with the phrase τὰ σὰ προσάγω σοι (“I bring what is yours to you”). This phrase echoes the

140

The former identification was put forward by Kondakov 1909, 269–70. For the latter, see Djurić 1961, 17, where Leo Moungos’ term of office is placed between 1108 and 1120 following a chronology accepted in older scholarship. For the revised dating, see Gautier 1963, 169.

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exclamation τὰ σὰ ἐκ τῶν σῶν σοὶ προσφέρομεν (“we offer to you your own of what is your own”), ultimately derived from 1 Chronicles 29:14, with which the celebrant presents the Eucharistic elements to God in the Byzantine liturgy.141 That an epigram accompanying a devotional gift should paraphrase the language of the liturgical anaphora is neither surprising, nor unwarranted. After all, by its very nature, the Eucharist is the ultimate paradigm of giving-as-returning. At the heart of this sacrament lies an act of thank-offering – the presentation of the consecrated bread and wine to God by the assembled congregation with the officiating clergy at its head. Since the presented Eucharistic gifts are transformed into the sacrificial body and blood of Christ, that which is given is the Son of God, who is himself the Father’s greatest offering to mankind and, indeed, the gift of all gifts.142 It is worth noting that at least one Byzantine commentator conceived of the Eucharist explicitly in terms of gift exchange. In Chapter 47 of his Explication of the Divine Liturgy, the fourteenth-century writer and theologian Nicholas Kabasilas raises the question of the manner in which the Eucharistic gifts are accepted by God. In the case of gift exchange between humans, to receive a gift means to place it among one’s possessions and make it one’s own. Likewise, the sign that God has accepted the offered bread and wine is that he makes them his own by transforming them into the body and blood of his only-begotten Son.143 There is, however, another sign of acceptance – reciprocation. “One can also tell how a gift has been received by what is given in return. And what is the return [ἀντίδοσις] made to us here?” asks Kabasilas. “Once more, it is the body and blood of Christ,” he responds, “for God accepts our bread and wine, and gives us in return his own Son.”144 And the indication that he grants us such an exchange is contained in the injunction λάβετε (“Take!”), with which Christ offered his own body as nourishment to his disciples at the Last Supper, thereby instituting the sacrament of the

141

142

143 144

Brightman 1896, 329, 386, 405. This liturgical formula and its variants appear on a range of early Byzantine objects and monuments. See Weitzmann and Ševčenko 1963, 393–94. See also Stichel 2006. For two middle Byzantine examples of the use of this formula, see Pallis 2013, 769, 780–81 (no. 12), 784 (no. 23). On gift-giving, incarnational theology, and the liturgy, albeit in the Roman Catholic tradition, see Herz 1958; Angenendt 1997, 373–78. On the Eucharistic offering as a model for the exchange between humanity and God, see also Magnani 2009b. Kabasilas, Explication of the Divine Liturgy 47. Kabasilas, Explication of the Divine Liturgy 47.5–6: ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀντιδόσεως δῆλον γίνεται ὅσον ἀποδέχεται τὸ δοθὲν ὁ λαβών. τίς οὖν ἐνταῦθα ἡ ἀντίδοσις; αὐτὸ πάλιν τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τὸ αἷμα· λαμβάνων γὰρ παρ’ ἡμῶν ἄρτον καὶ οἶνον ὁ Θεὸς αὐτὸν ἀντιδίδωσι τὸν Υἱόν. Trans. Hussey and McNulty 1960, 105.

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Eucharist. As Kabasilas explains, this word of institution signifies simultaneously “him who gives [ὁ διδούς], him who accepts [ὁ δεχόμενος], and that which is given [τὸ διδόμενον].”145 With the giver, the recipient, the gift, and the countergift all converging in the figure of the Logos incarnate, the Eucharist represents not only the ultimate paradigm of giving-asreturning, but also a model of closed, tautologically circular, and hence perfect gift exchange. In the context of the Divine Liturgy, giving and reciprocation are absolutely symmetrical and, moreover, unconditional; for, as Kabasilas insists elsewhere, the Eucharistic gifts are always accepted by God.146 No devotional gift could possibly initiate this kind of exchange, if only because, before a God who, as Paul reminds us, “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32), every mortal giver is and will always remain nothing but a debtor. Byzantine authors often speak of the overwhelming generosity of God, which renders any exchange with him fundamentally asymmetrical. The opening lines of Constantine Akropolites’ testamentary Logos are exemplary in this respect. What worthy offering could one make to God, who fills the heaven and earth, who has provided us with our very existence, and who was made incarnate and surrendered himself to death so that we might recover once more the well-being that we had lost on account of our transgression? How could one repay him for so many and such great blessings? Even if one were to offer himself in addition to his ostensible property (and I say “ostensible” because in truth nothing belongs to us who have been born and received mortal life), he will still fall immeasurably short in his debt; for what he has given is what he has received , and what payment would he need to pay off his debt? What repayment could one make equivalent to such gifts, where would he find them, from whom could he borrow them? It is in no way possible, in no way, to repay our benefactor for our blessings.147

In proportion to God’s unparalleled gifts bestowed upon mankind, the munificence of mortal donors is being perpetually reduced to frugality. The same predicament extends to their relationship with other members of the celestial hierarchy. Thus in the epigram on the gold-woven encheirion 145

146 147

Kabasilas, Explication of the Divine Liturgy 47.6: καὶ πόθεν δῆλον, φησίν, ὅτι ὡς δῶρα ταῦτα ἡμῖν ἀντὶ τῶν προσαγομένων παρὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ δίδοται. ἐξ ὧν αὐτὸς ὁ ταῦτα περικείμενός φησι πρὸς ἡμᾶς· ‘λάβετε,’ λέγων· οὕτω γὰρ μηνύεται τὸ δῶρον. ταύτῃ τῇ φωνῇ καὶ ὁ διδοὺς καὶ ὁ δεχόμενος καὶ τὸ διδόμενον σημαίνεται. Kabasilas, Explication of the Divine Liturgy 46. Delehaye 1933, 279; trans. BMFD, 4:1377–78 (A.-M. Talbot).

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that she presented as a thank-offering to the Virgin Hodēgētria, Eudokia Komnene, wife of Theodore Styppeiotes, emphatically confesses:148 5

κἂν πάντα γάρ τις συλλαβών σοι προσφέρῃ, καὶ πάλιν ἂν κρίνοιτο μικροδωρίας. Even if one were to gather up everything and offer it to you, it would still appear as parsimony.

The word mikrodōria in line 5 is a hapax.149 I have translated it as “parsimony,” but it can also mean simply “small” or “poor gift.” This evocative word captures the essence of another scenario of devotional gift-giving featured in dedicatory epigrams, whereby the donor selfdeprecatingly stresses the gift’s complete insufficiency vis-à-vis the greatness and liberality of the sacred recipient. Implicitly, this scenario draws attention to the donor’s humility. On the flip side, however, it also presents a problem. If the gift is hardly of any value, then the question arises as to what justifies the donor’s hope that a divine or saintly return would be granted. One possible answer to this question lies in the appeal to the scriptural precedents of mikrodōria. A good example of this strategy is found in an epigram penned by Philes for the consecration of a church dedicated to the great martyr George.150

5

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Πρὸς οὓς μὲν ὑπήνεγκας, ὦ μάρτυς, πόνους κἂν ἐξ ὑπερτίμων σε κοσμῇ τις λίθων, αὔταρκες οὐδὲν οὐδαμῶς ἂν εἰσφέροι. ἂν δὲ σκοπῇς τὸ φίλτρον ὡς ὁ δεσπότης, ὃς λαμβάνει καὶ μύρα πορνικὸν φόρον, χήρας τε λεπτὰ, καὶ δορᾶς αἰγῶν τρίχας, καὶ τήνδε κοινὴν οὖσαν οἴσεις τὴν ὕλην. οὐκοῦν ἀμοιβὰς τὰς πρεπούσας ἀντίδος ναόν με ποιῶν τῶν Θεοῦ χαρισμάτων. εὔνους τομίας ταῦτα Πεπαγωμένος. Even if someone were to adorn you with exceedingly precious stones, by no means he would offer anything sufficient in comparison to the trials which you, O martyr, endured. But if you consider my affection in the manner of the Lord, who accepts even the harlot’s tribute of ointment, the widow’s copper coins, and the goats’ hair, you will also bear this matter, though it is plain. So give me in return the appropriate rewards and make me a temple of God’s spiritual gifts. The devoted eunuch Pepagomenos these .

The ostensibly poor yet devoted founder of the church, whom Philes identifies only by his family name and his status of a castrated male, was an official of the patriarchate of Constantinople, the megas ekklēsiarchēs George Pepagomenos.151 The verses depict his foundation as a trifle, a gift so insignificant due to its unbearably “plain matter” – by which the poet presumably refers to the church’s stone and brick masonry – that, for Saint George to inhabit it, would virtually amount to another martyrdom (note οἴσεις in line 7 that echoes ὑπήνεγκας in line 1). True, the founder’s mikrodōria hardly merits any compensation, but the saint should not disregard it, as neither did the Lord disregard similar petty gifts in the past. When Moses was setting up the Tabernacle, the Israelites’ offerings of costly materials, gold and silver, purple cloths and precious stones, and the like, were as dear to the Lord as the goats’ hair, from which eleven curtains for the Tabernacle were spun (Exodus 25:1–7, 26:7, 35:4–9, 35:21–29). In the Gospels, he preferred two copper coins, which a poor widow put into the Temple’s treasury, to the large sums contributed by the rich (Mark 12:41–44; Luke 21:1–4), and at the feast in the house of Simon the Pharisee he pardoned the transgressions of the sinful woman who anointed his feet with sweet oil (Luke 7:36–50). The purpose of this marshaling of scriptural exempla is to persuade the saint to imitate the Lord’s compassion and favorably accept the church dedicated to him.152 To negotiate the transfer of the gift, the same rhetoric may be employed in an alternative manner, with the epigram comparing the giver to a biblical figure. This strategy is adopted in the dedicatory epigram on the chalice veil at Halberstadt (Figures 2.14 and 2.15). In these verses, which we have examined in Chapter 2, the sebastos Alexios Palaiologos, the donor 151 152

On this figure, see PLP, no. 22357. The two lines citing the above examples of mikrodōria in the epigram on Pepagomenos’ church (vv. 5–6) are repeated verbatim in another epigram by Philes composed for a church dedicated to Saint Nicholas, founded by a certain sebastos Klibanares: Carmina I, 79 (no. CLXIX, vv. 10–11). In yet another epigram on a luxury icon revetment, the poet brings up only the widow’s copper coins and the harlot’s ointment: Carmina inedita, no. 67, vv. 47–48. Cf. also Philes, Historika poiēmata, 659 (Ἐκ προσώπου τοῦ μητροπολίτου Μιτυλήνης Θεοδοσίου τῷ μεγάλῳ λογοθέτῃ διὰ βιβλίον, ὃ προσήνεξε τῇ αὐτοῦ μονῇ τῆς Χώρας, v. 15). For a possible patristic source of Philes’ verses, see p. 295.

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of the veil, presents himself in the role of the sinful women from Luke’s account mentioned above. He offers the silk potērokalymma, with its pearls and gold embroidery, to the Divine Logos as a substitute for the harlot’s lowly gifts of tears and ointment and her wiping of Christ’s feet with her hair. By imitating the mikrodōria of the Gospel sinner, the sebastos Alexios hopes to ensure that his own poor gift is kindly received in heaven. In this context, the dedicated liturgical cloth has little value in and of itself. Its purpose is essentially to serve as a stage prop in the donor’s devotional re-enactment of a paradigmatic biblical story of a humble offering met with divine approval. The foregoing survey of the dominant views on religious donation expressed and codified in dedicatory epigrams points to a polyvalent rather than monolithic discourse on the devotional gift. The absence of one overarching conceptualization of spiritual exchange, borne out by the contending, if not mutually exclusive, paradigms of reciprocation, givingas-returning, and mikrodōria, challenges the principle of reciprocity in the Maussian sense as a privileged model for interpreting gift-giving practices in the religious sphere. Instead, the very coexistence of these paradigms reveals an ambivalent attitude toward the possibility of a devotional economy that would project the mechanisms of exchange governing human transactions onto the celestial realm. The understanding of religious donation elicited in dedicatory epigrams is best described as paradoxical. Bringing together an earthly donor and a heavenly recipient, devotional giftgiving is conceived as being simultaneously reciprocal and beyond any possible reciprocation, voluntary as well as obligatory, a spiritual trade as much as an expression of a hierarchical relationship of obedience. The same applies to the fluid and, indeed, protean concept of the devotional gift. Rather than being set apart from other instruments and modes of transaction, the devotional gift occupies a continuum along which it shifts from a semblance of purchase or barter to compulsory tribute to oblation and even sacrifice. It should be pointed out that the paradigms of reciprocation, giving-asreturning, and mikrodōria are not only discursive models articulating the assumptions that underlie devotional gift-giving. Their thrust resides primarily in the realm of rhetoric and representation.153 These exemplary scenarios of gift-giving are, above all, rhetorical figurations of spiritual exchange that seek to position the donor vis-à-vis the sacred recipient

153

On the politics of representation as an integral part of gift-giving, see Algazi 2003, 18–19.

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and propose, if not set, the terms of the ensuing transaction. Most importantly, their purpose is to persuade. By turning pleas into arguments, they aim at motivating the recipient to accept the gift and act on the giver’s behalf. Particularly telling in this regard is the ubiquity of exhortations addressed to holy figures, most commonly in the form of the imperatives δέχου or δέξαι, both meaning “accept,” often qualified by an adverb such as εὐμενῶς (“kindly”), εὐσπλάγχνως (“compassionately”), or ἡδέως (“gladly”).154 For even in epigrams that seemingly envision a straightforward quid pro quo, reciprocation is always conditional upon the holy figure’s willingness to consent to the proposed transaction. When Theodore Komnenos Doukas and his wife Maria present their embroidered silk aēr to Christ, they formulate their plea for salvation as a request for a due countergift – witness again the imperative ἀντιδίδου (“give in return” or “repay”) in the concluding line of the epigram – but, characteristically, the request is preceded by the exhortation δέξαι (“accept”) in line 5 that precludes any automatic, let alone compulsory, reciprocation. The devotional gift thus always involves an element of uncertainty. It is contingent, open-ended, and intrinsically dialogic. A way out of the paradoxes inherent in the process of spiritual exchange ultimately lies in the shift from the gift to the giver. In the inscription on the Halberstadt chalice veil, as we have seen, the sebastos Alexios pictures this cloth’s costly materials as symbolic substitutes for the offerings presented to Christ by the Gospel harlot. Implicit in this scriptural analogy, however, is an allusion to the donor’s piety and affection. In Luke’s account, the harlot’s sins were wiped clean because of her faith and love. By appealing to her example, the sebastos Alexios claims the same virtues for himself. Likewise, when, in Philes’ epigram quoted above, the megas ekklēsiarchēs George Pepagomenos invokes the harlot’s ointment along with the widow’s two copper coins and the goats’ hair presented by the poor among the Israelites for the curtains of the Tabernacle, his aim is not only to justify his humble donation to Saint George – a mere church, one recalls – but also to align himself with these biblical donors whose offerings were kindly accepted by the Lord. The meanness of Pepagomenos’ gift is paradoxically a fitting attribute and, moreover, an index of his φίλτρον (“affection” or “love”) for the saint, professed in line 4. Underlying this emphasis upon the donor’s spiritual habitus is the notion that the measure by which a devotional gift is judged is not so 154

To limit myself to the Philean corpus, see, e.g., Carmina I, 37 (no. LXXXIII, v. 5), 78 (no. CLXIX, v. 7), 129 (no. CCLIV, v. 2), 241 (no. LXVI, v. 21); Carmina II, 154 (no. CX, v. 2).

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much its material worth but rather the attitude of the giver. A classic formulation of this notion is found in Gregory of Nazianzos’ oration On His Sermons and to the Tax Adjuster Julian, which may have inspired the verses penned by Philes for Pepagomenos’ church. Admonishing his listeners to embrace Christian behavior, the great Cappadocian encourages them to make offerings to God, by which he understands not only material goods, but also pious gestures and virtuous modes of conduct – pure virginity as well as honorable wedlock, fasting untainted by self-conceit as well as feasting tempered by self-control, prayers, hymns, tears, care for the needy, and the like. For no offering made to God is insignificant in and of itself.155 In order to prove this point, Gregory adduces a series of scriptural exempla of gifts that met with divine approval, even though some of them appear contemptibly small, mentioning specifically the widow’s copper coins and the goats’ hair for the Tabernacle. The clearest manifestation of divine goodness and love for mankind – Gregory declares – is that “God measures his reward not by the value of the gift but by the means (δύναμις) and disposition (διάθεσις) of the giver.”156 Despite their protestations to the contrary couched in the rhetoric of mikrodōria, affluent donors such as Pepagomenos and the sebastos Alexios were well aware of their dynamis, their means or capacity to offer lavish devotional gifts, which made them particularly sensitive to diathesis, or moral disposition, the second variable in Gregory’s equation of merit and reward, without which no gift can be properly judged. This is, of course, only to be expected. What is remarkable, however, is that in later Byzantine dedicatory epigrams the donor’s diathesis is conceived almost exclusively in terms of his or her emotional attachment to the sacred recipient and manifests itself in various forms of love, among which the one marked by ardent desire is dominant. The following chapter will attempt to explain why this should be the case.

155 156

PG 35, cols. 1049C–1052A. PG 35, cols. 1052D–1053A: τὸ δὲ κάλλιστον καὶ φιλανθρωπότατον, ὅτι μὴ τῇ ἀξίᾳ τοῦ διδομένου, τῇ δὲ δυνάμει καὶ τῇ διαθέσει τοῦ καρποφοροῦντος, μετρεῖ Θεὸς τὴν ἐπίδοσιν.

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The erotics of devotion

The particular display of a small icon of the Virgin and Child in the Benaki Museum at Athens is unlikely to be missed. The precious-metal kosmos of this image is exhibited in a rather un-Byzantine fashion not upon the icon, but next to it, attached to a panel of the matching size that reproduces the contours of the two figures depicted in the icon (Figures 6.1 and 6.2).1 The icon, which can be dated to the thirteenth-century, shows Mary tenderly kissing the right hand of the Infant Jesus in her bosom. The iconography is rare and probably alludes to the Passion of Christ, more precisely, to the moment during the Deposition from the Cross when the bereft Mother embraced the right hand of her dead Son.2 The paint surface is damaged and shows multiple traces of restoration. The panel appears to have been retouched and regilded twice before it was furnished with a rather crudely executed silver-gilt revetment that covers the nimbi, the background, and the frame. In all likelihood, this act of adornment took place sometime in the early fourteenth century. Displayed on the frame is a densely lettered poetic inscription recording that the icon’s kosmos was a gift offered to the Virgin by a certain George Sarabares.3 The following transcription includes a tentative reconstruction of the lacuna in line 6.

5

Οἶδας μὲν οἶδας τῆς ψυχῆς μου τὸν πόθον ὃν ἐκτρέφω, πάναγνε, πρός σε, παρθένε· ἀλλ’ εἰς τύπον δέδεξο καὶ χειρὸς δόσιν χρυσαργυροῦσαν σὴν σεβαστὴν εἰκόνα· ὡς ἄργυρον οὖν τὸν βίον λεύκαινέ μοι τῶν ἀρετῶν σκέπουσα χρυσ[ίῳ, κόρη]. ἐκ Σαράβαρη ταῦτα τοῦ Γεωργίου. You know, oh, you know the desire of my soul, which I nurture for you, all-chaste Virgin. Still, accept in image a gift from

1 2 3

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Milanou 2010; Drandaki 2013, 112–13, fig. 56. See Baltogianne 1994, 153–59 and esp. 178–80 (no. 54). BEIÜ III, no. AddII24. Three individuals with the same family name are listed in PLP, nos. 24850, 24851, 24852 (= 93560). There existed a monastery tou Sarabarē on Mount Athos. See Papazotos 1980.

The erotics of devotion

Figure 6.1 Icon of the Virgin and Child, thirteenth century, Benaki Museum, Athens (photo: Benaki Museum, Athens)

hand, too, the gift of gilded silver for your venerable icon. Make my life as white as silver and cover with the gold of virtues, O Maiden. These are from George Sarabares.

The affective tenor of the verses aptly mirrors the panel’s emotionally charged iconography. Like Manuel Dishypatos in the epigram on the

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Figure 6.2 Revetment of the icon of the Virgin and Child, early fourteenth century, Benaki Museum, Athens (photo: Benaki Museum, Athens)

Freising Lukasbild (Plate 1, Figure 0.1), Sarabares assumes the posture of a lover and opens his prayer to the Virgin with a declaration of his intense desire, his pothos for her. A statement as much as a question, the twicerepeated οἶδας (“you know”) only underscores the urgency of his appeal. The insistence on his passionate attachment to the Mother of God assigns a supplementary role to the gift of the silver-gilt kosmos. The donated

The erotics of devotion

revetment is merely a token of the giver’s emotional fervor. And when Sarabares asks for a countergift equivalent to this material offering, namely, his spiritual transformation effected by the Virgin in a process likened to cladding with precious metal, the implied reciprocity is ultimately one of emotions rather than gifts. The shift from the material offering to its emotional content, which the inscription on the Benaki icon performs, exemplifies the central importance attached to displays of affection in epigrammatic discourse. For what fuels religious donation and prompts the creation and adornment of sacred objects and spaces in dedicatory epigrams is typically the donor’s emotional attachment to a sacred recipient. Hardly ever do we read of generosity or a sense of duty, let alone prestige and honor. Even faith (πίστις) itself seldom figures as the sole motive behind the gesture of giving.4 Time and again it is love, intense longing, or the warmth of affection that urges one to consecrate material goods to Christ, the Virgin, or a saint. The donor is first and foremost a lover. By far the most common term in this context is pothos. The insistence with which this term is used in dedicatory epigrams and other related texts should not be taken lightly. I wish to propose that, far from being an empty catchword, pothos is a critical notion for understanding not only religious donation, but more broadly, personal piety in Byzantium. The present chapter sets out to elucidate this notion and flesh out its significance. Dedicatory epigrams, as we shall see, share the emphasis on pothos with other types of religious discourse, hymnography in particular. In this chapter, however, I shall move beyond the realm of religion and turn to another context in which pothos plays a prominent role, namely, patronage in the social sense. I shall argue that, since personal devotion to holy figures in Byzantium was largely conceptualized on the model of patron–client relationship, the pre-eminence of pothos as an agency behind devotional gift-giving must be seen as part of a larger rhetoric of desire that gave emotional content and urgency to personal submission in the religious and secular spheres alike. But before delving into the problematics of desire, devotion, and patronage, we must first consider the theme of gift-giving

4

The examples include Mauropous, Poems and Other Works, 12 (no. 26, v. 3); BEIÜ II, no. Me92, v. 1; Anthologia Marciana, no. 74 (B130), v. 5, no. 319 (C5), v. 6 (full text in Spingou 2012, 95); Grünbart 2007a, 104, v. 10. See also the epigram on the reliquary-enkolpion of Irene Synadene at Maastricht: Vogeler 1984, 79; BEIÜ II, no. Me95. In Philes, Carmina I, 36 (no. LXXXII) (= ibid., 432 [no. CCXXIV]), the donor’s pistis is a complement to the gift of an icon kosmos. Characteristically, both are seen as necessary ingredients of the proper way of honoring an icon (vv. 5–6).

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motivated by love and examine, more specifically, the epigrammatic language of affection.

Of gifts and love Pothos is not the only term used in dedicatory epigrams to describe the donor’s diathesis, to return to Gregory of Nazianzos’ equation of merit and reward, but, as noted above, it is the most common. ἔρως, another word for love, is extremely rare.5 It appears, for instance, in the company of pothos in the epigram on the charismatic image of Saint Demetrios, commissioned by the epi tou kanikleiou Theodore Styppeiotes, which Ι have discussed in Chapter 3.6 In explaining his decision to enlarge the chapel dedicated to the saint at his family residence, Styppeiotes likens the anguish inflicted on him by his pothos and burning erōs for Demetrios to an ailment that, so he hoped, an act of religious patronage would alleviate, if not entirely cure. Λόγχῃ πόθου σοῦ καρδίαν τετρωμένος καὶ φλεγμονὴν ἔρωτος ἐνθέου φέρων ἔσπευσα, μάρτυς, τῆς κακῆς ταύτης νόσου φάρμακον εὑρεῖν τὸν γλυκὺν παῦον πόνον. (vv. 1–4) Wounded in the heart by the spear of my desire for you and consumed by the fiery heat of divine love, O martyr, I hastened to find a remedy that would put an end to the sweet pain of this dreadful affliction.7

If erōs appears only exceptionally in the role of an instigator of the devotional gift in dedicatory epigrams, its synonym ἀγάπη is, to the best of my knowledge, never used, probably because its familiar connotations of charity and Christian fellowship rendered it unsuitable to express the donor’s inherently asymmetrical relationship with the sacred recipient.8 5

6 7

8

See, e.g., Anthologia Marciana, no. 40 (B2), v. 13 (full text in Spingou 2012, 74), no. 334 (C20), v. 18; and the example cited immediately below. Anthologia Marciana, no. 65 (B27). The motif of piercing the patron’s heart with the spear of pothos must be an allusion to Demetrios’ martyrdom by spears, which was most likely the subject of the charismatic image. See Chapter 3, n. 135. For the Christian concept of agapē, the classic study by Nygren 1953 remains fundamental. See also Spicq 1955.

Of gifts and love

By contrast, φίλτρον, yet another word for love, is encountered with some frequency.9 In an epigram from the Anthologia Marciana, for instance, the basilissa Irene-Dobrodeja, wife of Alexios, the first-born son of John II Komnenos, dedicates a gold revetment to an icon of Saint George as τοῦ πρὸς σὲ φίλτρου δεῖγμα (“token of my love for you”).10 Another epigram preserved in the same manuscript commemorates the restoration of an icon of the Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace at the behest of the megas droungarios Andronikos Doukas Kamateros. The restorer states that he has rekindled the light of the image, which the passage of time had almost extinguished, φίλτρου φλοξὶ ζέοντος (“with the flames of my ardent love”).11 The intensity of the donor’s affection is occasionally expressed by the word ζέσις, meaning “effervescence” or “seething” and, metaphorically, “ardor,” “passion,” or “zeal.”12 When the statesman and general Andronikos Asanes repays the Mother of God for the cure of his daughter by adorning her icon with gilded silver, he implores her, in Philes’ dodecasyllables, to accept this thank-offering observing τὴν ἔσω . . . τῶν σπλάγχνων ζέσιν (“the inner ardor of my heart”).13 In a similar vein, Maria Doukaina, wife of the prōtostratōr Alexios Komnenos, declares that it was both her wish and ψυχῆς ζέσις (“the passion of my soul”) to present a gold-woven encheirion to the icon of Christ of the Chalke Gate.14 Less “heated” emotional states may be described by the 9

10 11

12

13

14

See, e.g., Kallikles, Poems, no. 8, v. 15; Anthologia Marciana, no. 88 (B145), v. 5, no. 245 (B79), v. 14 (full text in Spingou 2012, 86), no. 251 (B84), v. 6 (full text in Spingou 2012, 88), no. 280 (B113), v. 5 (full text in Spingou 2012, 93), no. 317 (C3), v. 3 (full text in Spingou 2012, 95); Philes, Carmina I, 78 (no. CLXIX, v. 7), 137 (no. CCLXXXIII, v. 4); Carmina II, 194 (no. CLXXII, v. 11); and the two examples cited immediately below. Philtron may also prompt gifts to mortal rather than divine or saintly recipients. See, e.g., Anthologia Marciana, no. 335 (C21), v. 8, no. 336 (C22), v. 5; Philes, Historika poiēmata, 659 (Ἐκ προσώπου τοῦ μητροπολίτου Μιτυλήνης Θεοδοσίου τῷ μεγάλῳ λογοθέτῃ διὰ βιβλίον, ὃ προσήνεξε τῇ αὐτοῦ μονῇ τῆς Χώρας, v. 15). In Anthologia Marciana, no. 265 (B98), the donor is moved to have an icon of the prophet Daniel painted by τὰ φίλτρα (v. 2) for his dead son. Anthologia Marciana, no. 235 (B72), v. 14 (full text in Spingou 2012, 84). Anthologia Marciana, no. 97 (B154), v. 12. Rhoby 2010c, 180–83, tentatively attributes the epigram to George Skylitzes. On Andronikos Doukas Kamateros, see Polemis 1968, 126–27 (no. 98); Cataldi Palau 1993, esp. 7–11; Bucossi 2014, xix–xxvi. See, e.g., Philes, Carmina I, 35 (no. LXXIX, v. 2: ψυχικὴ [. . .] ζέσις); Carmina II, 239 (no. CCXXXIII, v. 5: ζέσιν ἄσβεστον εὐνοίας); Grünbart 2007a, 104, v. 10 (πίστεως ζέσει); and the two examples cited immediately below. See also the inscription of 1231/32 in the church of Saint Peter at Koubaras in Attica: BEIÜ I, no. 63, v. 6 (καρδίας ζέσει). Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 67, v. 31. Cf. the shorter version of the same poem in Philes, Carmina I, 307 (no. CXIV, v. 17). Anthologia Marciana, no. 70 (B126), v. 10.

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word εὔνοια, meaning “good will,” “kindness,” or “affection.”15 The adorned Gospel book that the princess Maria-Melane Palaiologina donated to the Chōra monastery is, for instance, said to have been offered to the Virgin μετ’ εὐνοίας ὅσης (“with great affection”).16 Finally, the donor’s emotional attachment to the sacred recipient may be referred to as σχέσις.17 When encountered in epigrammatic poetry in the context of devotional giftgiving, this semantically pregnant term – with its meanings ranging from “nature” and “quality” to “relation,” “expression,” or “attitude” – is best translated as “affection” or simply “love.”18 Thus, in one of the poems that Philes composed for the funerary parekklēsion of the Pammakaristos church in Constantinople, the prōtostratorissa Maria-Martha beseeches Christ to accept this structure stating that it clearly shows τῆς ψυχῆς μου τὴν σχέσιν (“the affection of my soul”).19 In the dedicatory inscription engraved on the reliquary of the hand of Saint Marina in the Museo Correr in Venice, schesis appears in the company of pothos.20 The anonymous woman who commissioned the reliquary confesses that the precious hand came into her possession as a result of her deep affection for the saint. 5

αὐτήν με πρὸς ζήτησιν ὤτρυνε σχέσις· ζητοῦσα γοῦν ἔτυχον αὐτῆς ἐκ πόθου. Love spurred me on toward a search for it [i.e., the hand]; searching, I found it on account of my desire.21

15

16

17

18 19 20

21

See, e.g., Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. XXI, v. 9; Philes, Carmina II, 227 (no. CCXIV, v. 32), 239 (no. CCXXXIII, v. 5); and the example cited immediately below. Papageorgiou 1894, 326, v. 13. The princess’s offering, despoiled of its precious kosmos, is now kept in the Dujčev Center at Sofia (Ms. gr. 177). See Krustev 1997. On Maria-Melane Palaiologina, see PLP, no. 21395. The majority of examples come from the Philean corpus. See Philes, Carmina I, 71 (no. CLIX, v. 21), 311 (no. CXX, v. 2), 356 (no. CLXXXVIII, v. 4); Carmina II, 76 (no. XXXIII, v. 24), 135 (no. LXVIII, v. 7); Carmina inedita, no. 28, v. 2, no. 67, v. 49; Historika poiēmata, 657 (Εἰς πύργον ὃν ἐδείματο τῇ Θεομήτορι ἐν τῇ μονῇ τοῦ μεγάλου Ἀθανασίου εἰς τὸ ἄγιον Ὄρος Νεῖλος μοναχὸς ὁ Νοταρᾶς, v. 15); and the poem cited immediately below. Cf. also Mango 2011, 65 (no. 2, v. 2); Philes, Carmina I, 249 (no. LXXV, v. 51); Papageorgiu 1899, 677, vv. 107–8. In Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. XLI, an epigram on a portrait of John II Komnenos, schesis in line 25 stands for the commissioner’s emotional attachment to the emperor. On this meaning of schesis with reference to epistolography, see Karlsson 1962, 21. Philes, Carmina I, 116 (no. CCXIX, v. 9). Ševčenko 1998, 251–52; D’Aiuto 2007, 432–39; BEIÜ II, no. Me81; Rhoby 2012a, 750. On the reliquary, see also Ross and Downey 1962; Evans and Wixom 1997, cat. no. 332 (J. Folda), with further bibliography. Trans. Ševčenko 1998, 252, slightly modified.

Of gifts and love

True, the reliquary box fashioned with gilded silver is a gift unworthy of the great martyr Marina. Yet, as the donor insists, ἄπειρος σὺν προαιρέσει πόθος (“my desire coupled with devotion is infinite”). Hence she begs the saint to save her from the storm of evil spirits, granting her in return ἀνάλογον . . . τῇ σχέσει δόσιν (“a gift commensurate with my love”). Few Byzantine epigrams broach the critical link between gift-giving and love as pervasively and playfully as the dedicatory verses inscribed on an icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria in the treasury of the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos (Plate 14, Figure 6.3).22 The icon depicts a stern, stately Mother of God holding the infant Jesus in her left hand and gesturing toward him with her right. Dated to the eighteenth century, this rather mediocre panel is a substitute for the now-lost painting, to which the icon’s exquisite, if partly damaged, silver-gilt revetment was originally attached. The stylistic vocabulary and technical repertoire of its openwork vegetal motifs, palmette-like ornaments in champlevé enamel, raised bosses, and scenes of the Great Feasts in repoussé displayed on the frame date the revetment to the early fourteenth century, a chronology corroborated by the information provided in the metrical inscription lettered in enamel on two plaques now affixed to the icon’s lower frame in reversed order. Tentatively attributed to Philes by Andreas Rhoby and Wolfram Hörandner,23 the inscription, with a lacuna in line 11, reads as follows:

5

10

Οὐκ ἄρα πᾶσα χάρις ἀνθρώπου χάρις οὐδ’ αἱ φύσεις ἔχουσι τὴν σχέσιν μίαν· τὴν σύγγονον γὰρ ἡ Παπαδοπουλίνα τὴν Ἀριανίτισσαν, ᾗ κλῆσις χάρις, οὐκ ἀπὸ κοινῶν δεξιοῦται πραγμάτων, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἁγνὸν τῆς Θεοῦ νύμφης τύπον, ὃν ἀγγέλων φάλαγγες ὀκνοῦσι βλέπειν, ἔρωτι κοσμήσασα ἐκ χρυσαργύρου [δί]δωσι αὐτῇ ζώπυρον φίλτρου ξένου· γένοιτο λοιπὸν ταῖς ἀδελφαῖς ἡ χάρις, [..........................................]ς εὐστοργίας βίου τε συντήρησις ἀσφαλεστάτη. Not every charis is a human charis, nor do the natures possess only one kind of love. For Papadopoulina honors her sister Arianitissa,

22

23

Grabar 1975b, 49–52 (no. 21); Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, 307–19 (no. 2), with further bibliography. For the epigram, see Rhoby and Hörandner 2007, 157–62; BEIÜ II, no. Ik25. Rhoby and Hörandner 2007, 157–62.

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Figure 6.3 Icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, early fourteenth century (revetment) and eighteenth century (painted panel), Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 234). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

whose name is Charis, not with some ordinary object; rather she gives her as a spark of her wondrous love this chaste image of God’s Bride, which the angelic hosts hesitate to behold, having lovingly adorned it with gilded silver. May now the sisters the charis [. . .] of love and the most secure preservation of life.

Of gifts and love

It has been convincingly argued that the two women mentioned in the inscription were daughters of the skouterios Theodore Sarantenos, an aristocrat from Berroia who founded a monastery dedicated to Saint John the Baptist in the same city.24 The inscription obviously identifies them by their husbands’ family names.25 By 1325, the year in which Sarantenos drew up his will detailing his donations to the monastery, both sisters were dead, along with their mother Eudokia and six other siblings.26 Since the skouterios’ foundation soon became a dependency of the Vatopedi monastery, it is not impossible that the icon of the Hodēgētria eventually reached Mount Athos as part of the foundation’s movable property.27 Its subsequent history notwithstanding, this luxury image of the Mother of God was originally in the possession of Arianitissa, who had received it as a sisterly gift, a pledge of Papadopoulina’s love, and it is around the theme of gift-giving motivated by love that the poem enameled on the icon’s revetment is built.28 The theme is introduced in the opening line with what reads as a rather enigmatic pronouncement about charis. The choice of this term, which I have left untranslated to avoid reducing its semantic charge, represents in and of itself a homage to the recipient, for, as we learn from line 4, Arianitissa’s name was Charis – a common pun on the Hebrew etymology of her real name Ioanna.29 One of the implied meanings of charis is that of “grace” and, more specifically, “divine grace,” and it is in this latter sense that the term is invoked in the petition on 24

25

26 27

28

29

See Loberdou-Tsigarida 2007, 72–73; Rhoby and Hörandner 2007, 159–61. The link with Berroia and the monastery of Saint John the Baptist was first recognized by Papazotos 1981, 408–9 (no. 6), who nonetheless came to a different conclusion as to the identity of the two sisters. On Sarantenos and his foundation, see Theocharides 1962; Actes de Vatopédi, 1:344–61 (no. 64). See also PLP, nos. 24898 and 24906. Papadopoulina is not attested in other sources. Her sister, on the other hand, is mentioned in Sarantenos’ will as the spouse of Michael Doukas Arianites: Actes de Vatopédi, 1:354. On Arianites, who was an eparchos in Berroia, see PLP, no. 1312. Actes de Vatopédi, 1:354–55. Cf. Philes, Carmina I, 247 (no. LXXV, vv. 10–14). Rhoby and Hörandner 2007, 160–61, argue that the Vatopedi icon is, in fact, listed in Sarantenos’ will as μικρὸν (sc. εἰκόνισμα) τῆς ὑπεραγίας Θεοτόκου τῆς Ὁδηγητρίας κεκοσμημένον (“small adorned of the most-holy Mother of God Hodēgētria”). I should add that the icon measures 56.5 x 42 cm, which may or may not be considered small. Loberdou-Tsigarida 2007, 73, points to another likely candidate, namely, ἕτερον (sc. εἰκόνισμα) μεσετάτην μὲν ἔχον τὴν ὑπεραγίαν Θεοτόκον, ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν δύο μερῶν τοὺς Ἀρχαγγέλους, κεκοσμημένον (“another adorned with the most-holy Mother of God in the middle and the archangels on either side”). However, as Stavros 2002, 237, has observed, this may have been a triptych with the archangels depicted on the wings. Epigrams composed to be inscribed on luxury icons presented as gifts between family members are not unattested. See, e.g., Philes, Carmina I, 308–309 (no. CXV). See I. Ševčenko’s commentary in Grabar 1975b, 51; Rhoby and Hörandner 2007, 161. Cf. also Kurtz 1923, 75.

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behalf of the two sisters formulated in line 10. However, as we have seen in Chapter 5, charis can also stand for “gift.” Inserting this meaning in the above translation, the opening line may be rendered as “Not every gift is a human gift” and accordingly interpreted as a preliminary remark ushering in the central, ekphrastic section of the epigram, wherein the Vatopedi icon is praised as a “superhuman” gift. Indeed, the verses explicitly dissociate the icon from ordinary gifts (οὐκ ἀπὸ κοινῶν . . . πραγμάτων in line 5), boastfully claiming that Papadopoulina presents her sister with nothing less than a “chaste” image of Mary, the Bride of God, which – the image, not the Bride! – even the angels in heaven hesitate to behold. Yet, despite the exquisiteness of this richly adorned gift – and here one should recall that charis can also mean “beauty” or “elegance” – the Vatopedi icon is merely a token of Papadopoulina’s great affection for her sister. In line 9, it is likened to a “spark” of her wondrous love in a simile probably alluding to the scintillating silver gilt of the icon’s revetment referred to in the preceding line. Papadopoulina’s love, in other words, can be neither measured, not fully expressed by her gift’s material worth. It is notable that the epigram uses no fewer than four different words to designate love. First, there is schesis, which, in line 2, is said to be not one, but many, depending on the “natures” it binds. The kind of schesis that Papadopoulina feels for Arianitissa is identified as erōs, with which she adorned the icon, and philtron, of which the icon, once adorned, represents but a spark. The exact connotation of the fourth word eustorgia is impossible to determine due to the lacuna in line 11, but it seems that this rare synonym for love was used primarily of the affection shared between family members.30 It may come as a surprise that the word pothos – as already pointed out, the most common term for love in dedicatory epigrams – does not feature in this list. Its absence, I believe, is not accidental. While the verses on the Vatopedi icon embrace the theme of gift-giving motivated by love, otherwise a staple in dedicatory epigrams, they nonetheless present an important difference; the recipient of the gift they commemorate is not a divine or saintly being but another lesser human, and their language of affection is calibrated accordingly. As I would argue, erōs and philtron rather than pothos designate 30

Cf. LBG, s.v. εὐστοργία. It should be pointed out that eustorgia derives from στοργή, meaning “love” or “affection,” a word used especially of parents and children. This particular connotation comes to the fore in the reconstruction of line 11 as κλῆρος ποθεινὸς πατρικῆς εὐστοργίας (“desired legacy of paternal love”), proposed by Rhoby and Hörandner 2007, 60, based on a parallel in Philes. Although highly conjectural, the reconstruction is appealing, not least because it accommodates an allusion to Sarantenos through the theme of paternal love.

Of gifts and love

Papadopoulina’s love for her sister, because in Byzantine epigrammatic poetry the latter term came to be associated primarily with a mortal donor’s emotional attachment to a holy figure.31 The absence of pothos from the lexicon of love in the inscription on the Vatopedi icon is as indicative as its presence – in the verbal form ποθέω (“to desire”) – in the dedicatory verses celebrating a sumptuous floor inlaid with porphyry, silver, and precious stones, which the empress Zoe commissioned for the church of Christ Antiphōnētēs at the Chalkoprateia in Constantinople sometime during the reign of her first husband, Romanos III Argyros.32 The verses, addressed to the divine recipient of this splendid imperial gift, state that, Τὴν εὐπρέπειαν ὡς ποθοῦσα σοῦ δόμου σκηνώματος τόπον τε σῆς δόξης, Λόγε, Ζωὴ βασιλὶς ἧς Ῥωμανὸς εὐνέτης καθωραΐζει τὸν προκείμενον πέδον. Desiring the beauty of your house and the dwelling place of your glory, O Logos, the empress Zoe, whose consort is Romanos, has embellished this floor.

The wording is familiar and, as the reader would hardly fail to notice, quotes from Psalm 25(26):8: Κύριε, ἠγάπησα εὐπρέπειαν οἴκου σου καὶ τόπον σκηνώματος δόξης σου (“Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house and the dwelling place of your glory”).33 The verses, however, depart from the scriptural text. Not only is – probably for prosodic reasons – the Lord’s house referred to as domos, instead of the psalmic oikos, but more importantly, the empress is said to have desired or yearned after (ποθοῦσα) rather than loved its beauty. This change of the verb should not be understood as a simple lapse owed to the poet’s quoting from memory. It is deliberate, I would argue, and exemplifies the pivotal role assigned to pothos as the key term for describing one’s motivation to engage in devotional gift-giving. In epigrammatic discourse the link between pothos and religious patronage is commonplace, if not axiomatic. Expressions such as ἐκ πόθου (“out of desire”) or πόθῳ (“with desire”) appear in dedicatory epigrams already during the iconoclastic era. Theodore of Stoudios uses them in

31 32

33

Cf., however, Christopher Mitylenaios, Poems, no. 45, vv. 1–2. Sola 1916, 24–25 (no. II). On these verses and Zoe’s special relationship with Christ Antiphōnētēs, see Papamastorakis 2003. The translation is mine.

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several of his poems, including the one composed for the church of Saint John the Theologian, which he himself founded at the Sakkoudion monastery in Bithynia shortly after 781.34 Similar phrasing, it should be pointed out, is also a feature of more pedestrian dedications written in prose. From manuscript colophons to monumental epigraphy, a wide variety of dedicatory texts celebrate the work of pothos in the creation, adornment, or restoration of objects and edifices. The term is encountered, for instance, in one of the prose inscriptions on the exterior of the church of the Virgin at Skripou. In the prayer addressed to the Mother of God, which, carefully sculpted in relief, runs along the curvature of the main apse, the prōtospatharios Leo, the founder of the church, is said to have erected this shrine ἐκ πόθου καὶ πίστεως μεγίστης (“out of desire and great faith”).35 In the early thirteenth-century vita icon of Saint George from Sinai, commissioned by a hieromonk portrayed on a miniature scale in the central field at the great martyr’s side, the dedicatory inscription reads: Ἅγιε τοῦ Θεοῦ, βοήθει τὸν σὸν δοῦλον Ἰωάννην μοναχὸν καὶ ἱερέα τὸν ἐκ πόθου κτίσαντα τὴν σὴν εἰκόνα τὸν Ἴβηρον (“O Saint of God, help your servant John, monk and priest, the Georgian, who fashioned your image out of desire”) (Figure 6.4).36 The formulaic character of such expressions of affection is most evident in countless run-of-the-mill prose dedications commemorating, say, the completion of a manuscript or the foundation of a church, in which pothos typically accompanies one or more stock terms such as ἔξοδος (“expenditure”), κόπος (“toil” or “labor”), συνδρομή (“contribution”), or συνεργία (“cooperation” or “assistance”), conventionally used to define the nature of the patron’s involvement.37 Characteristic in this regard is an inscription from the church of the Zōodochos Pēgē at Vrontamas in Laconia, painted above the south entrance to the narthex. The inscription, followed by the date of January 1, 1201, declares: 34

35 36

37

Theodore of Stoudios, Poems, no. LXXXVIII, v. 1 (παμπόθως), no. LXXXIX, v. 1 (ἐκ πόθου), no. XC, v. 7 (πόθῳ), no. CXII, v. 3 (πόθῳ). On Theodore’s foundation at the Sakkoudion monastery, see the editor’s commentary in ibid., 245. Oikonomides 1994, 481–82; Papalexandrou 1998, 114–29. Constantinides 1997; Cormack and Vassilaki 2008, cat. no. 315 (M. Vassilaki); Chatterjee 2014, 103–13. For manuscript colophons and scribal notes, see, e.g., Euangelatou-Notara 1982, nos. 233, 274, 388, 411, 443, 471, 536 (the numbers refer to the catalogue at pp. 121–229); EuangelatouNotara 1984, nos. 6, 29, 139, 185, 344, 348, 358, 451, 503, 557, 596; Euangelatou-Notara 2000, nos. 155, 208, 210, 228, 308, 309, 357, 363, 365 (the numbers refer to the catalogue at pp. 171–270). For monumental inscriptions, see, e.g., Stylianou and Stylianou 1960, nos. I, III, IV, V, VIII, X, XI, XIII, XVII; Feissel and Philippidis-Braat 1985, nos. 53, 59, 61, 64, 78. For a lexicon of terms that the Byzantines employed in relation to religious patronage and donation, based on the manuscript evidence, see Euangelatou-Notara 2000, 139–49.

Of gifts and love

Figure 6.4 Vita icon of Saint George with portrait of the hieromonk John, early thirteenth century, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan– Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)

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Οἰκοδομήθη καὶ ἱστορήθη ὁ πάνσεπτος καὶ θεῖος ναὸς τῆς ὑπεραγίας Θεοτόκου παρὰ συνεργίας καὶ ἐξόδου καὶ πόθου πολλοῦ Γερμανοῦ μοναχοῦ (“This all-sacred and divine church of the most holy Mother of God was built and decorated with wall paintings through the assistance, expenditure, and great desire of the monk Germanos”).38 Once petrified into dedicatory formulae, it is hardly surprising that such references to pothos became part of a common vocabulary of religious patronage shared across genres.39 Thus, the inventory appended to the Diataxis of Michael Attaleiates records that his secretary, the praipositos John, dedicated ek pothou a pair of deluxe textile hangings, an encheirion and a podea, to an icon of Saint John the Baptist for the remission of his sins.40 Similarly, in a letter to Andronikos II Palaiologos, the patriarch Athanasios I exhorts the emperor never to tire of providing for the holy churches, assuring him that, It is not possible to express with our mouths of clay the reward which awaits not only the builders, but also those who were eager in a holy manner, out of desire [ἐκ πόθου], to honor and make resplendent and embellish with treasures and dedications and whatever the human hand is able to fashion.41

It bears emphasizing that in dedicatory epigrams accompanying devotional gifts the donor’s pothos is, as a rule, directed to a holy figure. That the empress Zoe is said to have desired the beauty of the Lord’s house rather than the Lord himself in the epigram celebrating the floor of the Antiphōnētēs church is explained by the fact that the verses here quote from the Psalms. As a matter of fact, instances in which pothos is not personalized are extremely rare.42 A noteworthy example is provided by the dedicatory verses in a profusely illustrated late twelfth-century Psalter in the Benaki Museum at Athens (Ms. 68 [vitr. 34.3], fols. 174v–175r).43 The verses declare that the monk Barnabas, an official the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in Cyprus, had this book copied and decorated,

38 39

40 41 42 43

Feissel and Philippidis-Braat 1985, no. 53; Kalopissi-Verti 1992, 63–64 (no. A15). The currency of the pothos-formulae was such that they even turn up in secular dedications. See, e.g., the epigram inscribed on the eleventh-century Byzantine astrolabe at Brescia: BEIÜ II, no. Me52, v. 4. Attaleiates, Diataxis, 97.1306–99.1313. Athanasios I, Letters, 154.5–9 (no. 66); trans. ibid., 155, with minor modifications. In addition to the example cited immediately below, see Stefec 2011, 336, vv. 1–4. Cutler and Carr 1976 with the text of the epigram at 313–14. On the Benaki Psalter, see also Lappa-Zizeka and Rizou-Kouroupou 1991, 56–57 (no. 33).

Of gifts and love

5

ὑπερβολικὸν τὸν πόθον κεκτημένος τῶν δαυϊτικῶν καὶ ψυχοτρόφων λόγων. Having succumbed to an overwhelming desire for the Davidic words, nourishing to the soul.44

In the vast majority of dedicatory epigrams, however, professions of desire are framed in intersubjective terms. The object of the donor’s pothos, even if not stated explicitly, is normally the sacred recipient of the gift. The same applies to the pothos-formulae encountered in more pedestrian, prose dedications. The warmth of feeling these texts declare ultimately signifies an affective bond with the divine or saintly figure in whose name the given work has been undertaken.45 Despite its ubiquity in dedicatory epigrams and other related texts, pothos has received remarkably little attention in scholarship. In rare instances in which the term is deemed worthy of a comment, scholars are, for the most part, content to point to the utter conventionality of its use.46 The reason why pothos plays such a prominent role in epigrammatic discourse and the precise nature of this emotional state, as it is represented in texts, have not been sufficiently explained. In her study of the Anthologia Marciana, Foteini Spingou has rightly observed that dedicatory epigrams share their vocabulary of affection with other religious genres, and in particular with liturgical poetry.47 Hymnographic texts teem with references to love and fervent desire, whether these feelings are nurtured by the assembled faithful for a holy figure or by the venerated saint for God. The key terms in this context are pothos, philtron, and erōs, but of the three, pothos is by far the most common. Borrowings from or allusions to hymnography are, of course, frequent in epigrammatic poetry, and the prominence of the vocabulary of affection in dedicatory epigrams is surely to be seen in relation to the overlap between the two genres.48 Still, the question remains as to why the notion of desire should be accorded such centrality in the expressions of religious devotion. Indeed, why pothos?

44 45

46

47 48

Trans. Cutler and Carr 1976, 314, with a slight modification. Thus I do not agree with the inference by Euangelatou-Notara 2000, 145, that pothos is used to indicate the patron’s desire to see the work completed. See, e.g., Follieri 1965, 63–64; Lauxtermann 2003, 164; Rhoby 2010b, 318–19; Pallis 2013, 765–66. More attentive to pothos is Bernard 2014, 320–22. Spingou 2012, 219–21. To appreciate the extent to which epigrammatic and liturgical poetry share their language and imagery, one can consult the apparatus fontium in BEIÜ I–III.

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Defining pothos Pothos, it must be stated from the outset, is not simply a synonym for devotion. Rather, it is the name for what may be described as the erotic component of devotion, a kind of outpouring of the self toward a divine or saintly Other. As already noted in the Introduction à propos the appearance of pothos in the epigram on the Freising Lukasbild, this emotional state may be defined as love in the sense of desire, longing, or yearning. But let us examine more closely what kind of desire it is and how it operates. As the pre-eminent term for describing the donor’s emotional attachment to a holy figure, in epigrammatic discourse pothos is clearly invested with spiritual connotations. Its opposite is carnal love, often identified with erōs. A couplet composed by John Geometres articulates the antithesis between the two kinds of love in an exemplary fashion.49 Ἔρως ὁ δεινὸς ἐκτυφλοῖ μου τὰς φρένας, ἀλλ’ αἰθριάζει σὸς πόθος με, Χριστέ μου. The dreadful erōs blinds my senses, but the pothos for you, my Christ, restores my clarity.

Pitted against each other in the arena of the human psyche, erōs and pothos are here conceived as conflicting, if not mutually exclusive, emotions. Yet, regardless of the specific meanings assigned to them in Geometres’ iambs, the two terms by no means stand in so stark a contrast. Their semantic territories, in fact, overlap considerably. Despite its pagan background, let alone its familiar associations with the body and sex, erōs plays a significant role in the Christian rhetoric of sacred love, especially in the ascetic milieu, as a designation for man’s passionate love for God or even for the divine nature itself.50 Pothos, on its part, does not reside exclusively in the exalted realm of spiritual affection, nor is it innocent of associations with lowly carnal appetites. Its specificity lies elsewhere. Defined not so much by its object but rather by its nature, pothos is primarily a desire induced by a sense of lack, absence, or separation, a feeling of intense longing suspended, as it were, between the “no moreˮ and the “not yet.ˮ51

49 50 51

Geometres, Iambic Poems, 195 (no. 228). Chryssavgis 1985; Cameron 1997, esp. 7–17; Krueger 2006. See also Osborne 1994. For the semantics and etymology of pothos, see Kloss 1994, passim; Weiss 1998, esp. 32–34. See also LSJ, s.v. πόθος.

Defining pothos

This meaning of the term was already spelled out by Plato in Cratylus 420a, where pothos is said to pertain “not to that which is present, but to that which is elsewhere or absent [τοῦ ἄλλοθί που ὄντος καὶ ἀπόντος].” The anonymous treatise On Emotions (first century BCE or CE), transmitted under the name of Andronikos of Rhodes, defines pothos as “a loving desire for that which is absent” (ἐπιθυμία κατὰ ἔρωτα ἀπόντος).52 Likewise, Pseudo-Ammonios’ treatise On Similar and Different Words (fourth century CE) explains that “erōs and pothos differ, because erōs pertains to that which is present [τῶν παρόντων], and pothos to that which is absent [τῶν ἀπόντων].”53 Byzantine lexica and textbooks offer similar definitions. For example, the Eklogē, a lexicon of Attic Greek compiled by the early Palaiologan scholar Thomas Magistros, contains the following entry: Erō and erōs mainly of that which is present [ἐπὶ τῶν παρόντων], and pothō and pothos of that which is absent [ἐπὶ τῶν ἀπόντων]. As Libanios in a letter: “I left unwillingly and longed for it [ἐπόθουν], even now that I am settled at home.” Or Aristophanes in Wealth: “You yearn for one that is no longer here [ποθεῖς τὸν οὐ παρόντα] and call in vain.”54

Thomas’ contemporary, George Lakapenos, gives a very similar gloss in a commentary on the collection of his letters intended for school use, adducing the same quotation from Aristophanes as an illustration.55 Pothos differs from erōs insofar as erōs refers to both present and absent things [καὶ ἐπὶ παρόντων καὶ ἐπὶ μὴ παρόντων πραγμάτων], whereas pothos always refers to absent things [ἐπὶ ἀπόντων]. The verbs pothein and eran from these . While eran refers to both present and absent , pothein “to invoke and look for that which is absent [μὴ παρόντα],” as Aristophanes proverbially says: “You yearn for one that is no longer here and call in vain.”56

The sense of absence and separation igniting one’s desire, however, is not to be understood exclusively in spatial terms. Pothos, it should be emphasized, operates at social, ethical, and ontological levels as well. A forlorn lover and a traveler evoking the memories of a city left behind may feel its 52 53

54

55 56

Pseudo-Andronikos of Rhodes, On Emotions, 231.93. Pseudo-Ammonios, On Similar and Different Words, 49.18–19 (no. 189). Cf. also ibid., 50.1–9 (no. 190), 50.13–14 (no. 192). Magistros, Eklogē, 143.10–144.2. The quotations are from Libanios, Ep. 37.1 (= Ep. 33 Foerster), and Aristophanes, Wealth 1127. The quotation is also found in Suda, 4:155 (pi.1860). Lakapenos, Letters and Epimerisms, 152.24–30.

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burning heat as much as a supplicant in search of divine or saintly protection or a subject seeking the clemency of an emperor. In what follows, it is this “expanded” meaning of pothos as a desire to overcome distances embedded in the hierarchies of worship and power that will concern us.

Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos In its heyday, under the aegis of Theodore Metochites, the monastery of Chōra boasted what was probably the richest monastic library in Constantinople. Among the manuscripts that made their way into this impressive collection of sacred and secular writings was a volume of ascetic texts donated by Dionysios Arkas, metropolitan of Mitylene on the island of Lesbos.57 Arkas commissioned Philes to write an appropriate dedication in verse, which, unlike the volume itself, has come down to us.58 Philes’ verses take the form of direct address, in which the metropolitan expresses his deepest gratitude to Metochites for some unspecified benefactions.

5

Ἀνθ’ ὧν μὲν αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν εἰργάσω, τὸν τοῖς φίλοις πρέποντα φυλάξας νόμον, καὶ τῶν ἀπαρχῆς μὴ καθυφεὶς πρακτέων, ἀλλ’ ἄχρι καὶ νῦν τὴν καλὴν τρέφων σχέσιν ἐν τοῖς ὑπεκκαύμασι τῆς εὐσπλαγχνίας, τίς ἂν ἀμοιβὴ προσφυής σοι τυγχάνοι· θάλαμε καλῶν, κῆπε μεστὲ χαρίτων. In return for the favors which you have bestowed upon me, obeying the law of friendship and from the beginning unceasingly doing what needed to be done, and even now nurturing beautiful affection , fueled by your compassion, what kind of repayment would be appropriate, O chamber of goodness, O garden full of graces/favors?

Surely, no repayment, which is why the metropolitan resorts to the rhetoric of mikrodōria and draws a flattering comparison between Metochites and Christ. 57

58

On Arkas, see PLP, no. 5485; C. Constantinides 1980; Kaldellis and Efthymiadis 2010, 135–36 (no. 191). On the library of the Chōra monastery, see Bianconi 2005a. The verses are published in Philes, Historika poiēmata, 658–59, where the metropolitan is mistakenly named Theodosios in the title. For another dedicatory book epigram composed by Philes at the metropolitan’s order, see Sakkelion 1890.

Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos

15

ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ σὺ κατὰ τὸν σὸν δεσπότην, τὸ φίλτρον ἀθρεῖς καὶ τὰ λεπτὰ προσδέχῃ, εὑρεῖν γάρ ἐστι καὶ τὰ μικρὰ πολλάκις παραστατικὰ τῶν μεγάλων δείγματα, καὶ τήνδε νῦν τὴν βίβλον ὡς δῶρον πρόσου, θερμοῦ πόθου γνώρισμα τὸν φόρον κρίνων. But since, in the manner of your Lord, you look upon one’s love and receive favorably the copper coins – for trifles are often signs of great things – accept the present book, too, as a gift and consider this tribute as a token of my ardent desire.

The metropolitan then proceeds to praise Metochites as a second Moses, comparing the Chōra with the Tabernacle and, further, with another heaven on earth teaming with celestial treasures. He offers the book with a hope that Metochites will reciprocate and remain loyal to him and, finally, prays that God may reward his benefactor for his noble deeds and write his name in the Book of the Living. The poem features virtually all the elements typical of Philes’ dedicatory epigrams, including the use of first-person address couched in the tripartite structure of an ēthopoiia; an emotional tone and a rich vocabulary of affection; a familiar rhetoric of gift-giving buttressed by a reference to a scriptural exemplum – the poor widow’s copper coins (Mark 12:41–44; Luke 21:1–4) in this instance; praise and hyperbole; and even a customary coda in the concluding lines of the poem, in which the giver discloses his identity: 35

Διονύσιος Ἀρκὰς ἐξ Ἀχαΐας, ποιμήν, Θεοῦ κρίμασι, Λεσβίων τάδε πρὸς τὸν λογοθέτην σέ φησι τὸν μέγαν. Dionysios Arkas from Achaia, by the will of God the shepherd of the Lesbians, says these to you, the megas logothetēs.

Conventional in its motifs and structure, the poem would hardly merit special attention were it not for the fact that it does not commemorate a thank-offering made to a sacred personage but to another lesser human, earthly and mortal like the giver himself.59 To be sure, the quasi-religious manner in which the metropolitan presented his gift to Metochites was in 59

The poem should be compared in this regard with the dedicatory verses, tentatively attributed to Philes, on the Gospel book of the princess Maria-Melane Palaiologina: Papageorgiou 1894, 326–27. Both poems commemorate books donated as thank-offerings to the Chōra

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and of itself a form of flattery to the all-powerful megas logothetēs of Andronikos II. Yet the very fact that the topoi of dedicatory address could so effortlessly migrate from the sacred to the secular sphere suggests that, for the Byzantines, the hierarchical relations of loyalty and deference between devotees and holy figures in the spiritual realm, on the one hand, and between clients and patrons in social life, on the other, were analogous, similar in structure, and, accordingly, could share the same forms of expression. Focusing upon the notion of pothos, let us take a closer look at this analogy. Like countless donors offering gifts to recipients in heaven, Arkas approached his earthly protector with ardent desire. As an affective complement to the respect and submission owed to a powerful patron, pothos had a long tradition in Byzantium, one that can be traced not only in textual sources, but also in art. A remarkable visual testament to the association between desire and patronage is found in the so-called Vienna Dioskorides (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ms. Med. gr. 1), a lavishly illustrated collection of pharmacological tracts, which the princess Juliana Anicia received as a gift from the grateful citizens of Honoratai, a town on the Asiatic side of the Bosporos, for whom she had built a church sometime in the early sixth century.60 The manuscript’s dedicatory frontispiece (fol. 6v) shows the princess seated on a throne in the company of four personifications (Figure 6.5).61 Standing on either side of her like ladies-in-waiting are the virtues of Μεγαλοψυχία (“Magnanimity”) and Φρόνησις (“Prudence”), while a veiled figure labeled as Εὐχαριστία τεχνῶν (“Gratitude of the arts”) kneels in proskynēsis at her feet. A charming putto holding up an open codex, presumably the Dioskorides manuscript itself, to the princess’s right is identified as Πόθος τῆς φιλοκτίστου (literally, “Desire for the woman who is fond of building”). It personifies the desire of the people of Honoratai for Juliana Anicia, an intensely felt longing that stirred them to honor their benefactress with such a splendid gift.62 Maintaining the majestic dignity of her posture, the princess drops a handful of gold coins, taken from a heap in

60

61

62

monastery; yet, unlike the metropolitan Arkas, the princess presented her donation to the Virgin Chōrinē rather than to Metochites. Karabacek et al. 1906; Buberl 1937, 1–62; Gerstinger 1970. See also Brubaker 2002; Toresella and Battini 2005; Gamillscheg 2007. For the date of the Vienna Dioskorides, see Müller 2012. On Juliana Anicia and her artistic patronage, see especially Capizzi 1997 with further bibliography. On this image, see especially Premerstein 1903; Diamantopoulos 1995, esp. 85–100; Kiilerich 2001. Most scholars misinterpret the identifying label next to the putto, but, as has already been pointed out by Jüthner 1904, τῆς φιλοκτίστου is an objective genitive.

Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos

Figure 6.5 Portrait of the princess Juliana Anicia, Vienna Dioskorides, Ms. Med. gr. 1, fol. 6v, early sixth century, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (photo: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna)

Megalopsychia’s bosom, upon the codex in the putto’s hands in a pointed gesture of monetary sparsio that undoubtedly refers to her generous donation for the construction of the church. The frontispiece thus offers a kind of pictorial encomium extolling Juliana Anicia as a magnanimous and prudent patroness who receives the arts’ obeisance and dispenses largesse with a lavish hand. Quite remarkably, it is through their pothos that the people of Honoratai, the recipients of the princess’s largesse, take part in this ceremonial tableau.

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Expressions of communal pothos for powerful civic benefactors were not uncommon in early Byzantium. In the middle of the sixth century, for instance, the city of Aphrodisias in Asia Minor erected three statues in honor of a certain Rhodopaios, a magistrate who held the office of pater civitatis and was entrusted with supervising the grain supply.63 The inscription on the base of the second of these statues proclaims:64 [Τὸν ἀ]ληθάργητον εὐ[ερ]γέτην τὸν λου[τ]ροῖς καὶ σιταρχίαις λοιμὸν καὶ λιμὸν ἀπελάσαντα Ῥοδοπαῖον [τ]ὸν φιλόπατριν ποθοῦ[σ]α πόλις δευτέρῃ [τ]ῇδ’ εἰκόνι μαρμάραι κοσμήσασα ἀξίαις [ἡ]μείψατο τιμαῖς. The never-to-be-forgotten benefactor, who, with baths and with command of the grain supply, drove away plague and famine, Rhodopaios, lover of his country; the city, desiring him, has adorned him with this second marble image, repaying him with worthy honors.65

Like the Dioskorides manuscript, the honorary statue of Rhodopaios was a thank-offering and simultaneously a manifestation of the city’s pothos for him. In medieval Byzantium, pothos is primarily associated with ties of personal rather than communal dependence. This type of love emerges as a pivotal ingredient in the textual articulations of patron–client relationships. Personal patronage, as anthropologists define it, represents a form of exchange. It brings together two individuals – a patron and a client – of unequal status in a reciprocal relationship, in which the patron provides protection, brokerage, and access to the sources of power and wealth in exchange for the client’s service, respect, and loyalty.66 In Byzantine writing, the instrumental nature of this relationship is normally masked. The client’s personal submission to the patron thus often appears in the guise of erotic passion, friendship, or kinship, while the realities of self-interest and obligation are dissimulated behind a graceful façade of interactions motivated by love.67 When, in May 1344, the patriarch John XIV Kalekas joined a military expedition against John Kantakouzenos in Thrace, his protégé, Gregory Akindynos, sent him a letter from the capital bemoaning their separation. “Since your intervention on behalf of the divine laws did not permit your Holiness to remain at home, nor did my unworthiness permit me to follow you, rightly or rather necessarily, I had to communicate with your Holiness, at least by letters, and to express my natural desire [ἐμπεφυκότα πόθον] 63 65 67

64 Robert 1940–65, 4:127–32; Roueché 1989, 136–41. Roueché 1989, 137 (no. 86). 66 Trans. ibid. slightly modified. Boissevain 1966, 18. See also Gellner and Waterbury 1977. On this issue, see especially Mullett 1988; Mullett 1999b; Grünbart 2005, passim.

Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos

for you.”68 Professions of desire and of the need for union and intimacy are a trope in epistolography, which is, in a sense, the genre of pothos par excellence, given that physical separation is a prerequisite of letter exchange.69 Yet Akindynos’ pothos for the patriarch, which he tellingly describes as “natural” or “innate,” does not operate exclusively across geographic space, but also along the vertical ties of loyalty and obedience, bespeaking a separation that is social and moral as much as physical. By putting his pen to paper, Akindynos gives voice to what appears to be a relentlessly abiding emotional state. In Byzantine epistolography, pothos is a frequent companion to letterwriters declaring their allegiance to the powerful or seeking their protection. It is also the cause of much emotional effusion. Some of the more excessive examples of this kind of writing are to be found in the thirteenthcentury collection of model letters composed by Athanasios Chatzikes for a monastic audience as a primer in epistolary etiquette, style, and argumentation.70 One of Chatzikes’ Musterbriefe, addressed to a bishop, opens with the following confession. It is good to keep silence, especially for those who are well aware of their own weakness; it is good to keep silence and not engage in a display of wisdom unnecessarily for those who are unwise and barbaric. For thoughtful silence is better than untimely and inappropriate speech. But the desire of the soul [πόθος ψυχῆς] and the heart’s incomparable love [καρδίας ἔρως ἀνείκαστος] know how to impose themselves tyrannically and persuade one to reach toward what is beyond one’s power. The desire of the soul [πόθος ψυχῆς] knows how to compel one to forget one’s own limits and how to transport the lover [ἐραστήν] to the object of his desire [τῷ ποθουμένῳ].71

The imaginary monk-writer then goes on to compare his pothos for the bishop with the ecstatic desire that drives worshippers like himself toward

68

69

70 71

Akindynos, Letters, 140.8–13 (no. 38); trans. ibid., 141, with one slight modification. On Akindynos and his relationship with the patriarch, see ibid., ix–xxxiii. The notion of the capacity of a letter to bridge distances and create an illusion of presence is built into the very definition of the genre as it is formulated in Pseudo-Libanios, Epistolary Styles, 14.1–3: ἐπιστολὴ μὲν οὖν ἐστιν ὁμιλία τις ἐγγράμματος ἀπόντος πρὸς ἀπόντα γινομένη καὶ χρειώδη σκοπὸν ἐκπληροῦσα. ἐρεῖ δέ τις ἐν αὐτῇ ὥσπερ παρών τις πρὸς παρόντα (“A letter, then, is a kind of written conversation with someone from whom one is separated, and it fulfills a definite need. One will speak in it as though one were in the company of the absent person”; trans. Malherbe 1988, 67). On pothos in medieval Byzantine epistolography, see Mullett 1999b, 13–16, 19. For the use of epithets such as ἐπιπόθητος, παμπόθητος, ποθεινός, and the like in epistolary address, see Grünbart 2005, esp. 117, 262, 287, 310, 316–18, 341–42. Chatzikes, Epistolarion. On Chatzikes and his model letters, see also Treu 1909. Chatzikes, Epistolarion, 34.1–9 (no. 2).

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God, which in turn allows him to conclude: “Therefore, my ascent to your most holy Highness is reasonable, even though it is most irrational in other respects.”72 The force of this example lies precisely in its conventionality; it is a prescriptive model rather than a portrayal of an actual relationship. In thirteenth-century Byzantium, one may conclude, monks were expected to cultivate erotic passion for members of the episcopate – if not in reality, then certainly in the literary realm of their letters. Philes’ poems addressed to his actual or potential patrons abound in expressions of desire and deep affection. In an encomium for the orphanotrophos Tryphon Kedrenos, for instance, the poet introduces himself to the laudandus with a forthright declaration of pothos.73 15

βούλει μαθεῖν, τίς ἐστι Φιλῆς ὁ ξένος; Φιλῆς ὁ θερμῶς καὶ ποθῶν σε καὶ πνέων Would you like to learn who this stranger Philes is? Philes is the one who ardently desires and breathes by you.

In another poem, dedicated to the patriarch Niphon I – whom he addresses as ποθεινὲ πατριάρχα (“O desirable patriarch”) – the poet confesses his inability to pronounce a eulogy worthy of the illustrious head of the Church.74 Dismayed, he pleads for Niphon’s forbearance and, comparing his discourse to a ship, expresses a hope that his pothos at least, if not his literary prowess, may earn it a safe journey. σὸς γὰρ ἐγὼ σός, καὶ προδείξω τὸν πόθον, ὡς ἂν ἔχῃ πρόφασιν ὁ πλοῦς τῶν λόγων, καὶ μὴ θρασυνθὲν κινδυνεύσῃ τὸ σκάφος. (vv. 87–89) Yours I am, yours! And I shall first demonstrate my desire , so that the sail of my discourse may be justified and my audacious ship may not be in danger.

Pothos accompanied by hopefulness is what impels Philes on another occasion to approach Theodore Patrikiotes with a request for wheat, wine, and money.75

72 73 74

75

Chatzikes, Epistolarion, 35.20–22. Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 43. On Kedrenos, see PLP, no. 11604. Philes, Carmina II, 21–25 (no. X). The address ποθεινὲ πατριάρχα is found in the opening line. Philes uses it again in Carmina I, 220 (no. XLIII, v. 89). Philes, Carmina I, 261 (no. LXXXIII).

Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos

5

καὶ νῦν δὲ θαρρῶν εἰς τὸν ἑδραῖον πόθον καὶ τὴν ἀνεκλάλητον εὐελπιστίαν, ἣν αὐτός, ὦ κάλλιστε τῶν φίλων, δίδως And now I am emboldened by my steadfast desire and by the ineffable hope which you yourself, my most excellent friend, give .

A financial magnate who supported several “begging” intellectuals, Patrikiotes was hardly a friend in the conventional sense.76 The fact that Philes addresses him as such is by no means unusual.77 Personal patronage, as noted above, appears quite frequently in the guise of friendship.78 In the verses commemorating his gift to Metochites, the metropolitan Arkas, one recalls, praises the megas logothetēs for acting on his behalf as a loyal friend rather than a wellplaced protector. Similarly, in a letter to “someone of the powerful” (τινὶ τῶν δυνατῶν), Michael Gabras, a fourteenth-century writer and bureaucrat, solicits the addressee’s help with an appeal to philia – their friendship. Do not make me yearn after you [μὴ βούλου ποθεινότερος ἡμῖν γενέσθαι] due to your prolonged absence, so that, should you appear as my savior after too long, you might prove to be the opposite; in due course you might find me, so to speak, worn out, unable even to love [φιλεῖν], and then I would be of no use to you, starting from that which is the most important, namely, my friendship with you [πρὸς σὲ φιλίας]. At the same time, you would expose me to contempt and dismissal by everyone, if I were publicly refuted with respect to my love for you [εἰς τὸ περὶ σὲ . . . φίλτρον], which, as if it were a law, ought to be preserved unshaken.79

In Gabras’ portrayal of his relationship with the addressee, the element of reciprocity, essential to personal patronage, is duly acknowledged, but the emphasis is placed upon the exchange of emotions rather than favors. Gabras, as a client, offers love to the anonymous dynatos, who on his part – so we are told – values Gabras above all for his friendship. Their affectionate bond is public, observed and scrutinized by others, and should it be

76 77

78

79

On this figure, see PLP, no. 22077. See also Tziatzi-Papagianni 2011, 246–58. In a poem addressed to the domestikos Michael Atzymes, Philes describes himself as πολλοῖς φίλος (“friend to many people”) (Carmina inedita, no. 60, v. 21). In Byzantium, philia, or friendship, was a rather broad concept. Invested with social and political roles that went far beyond the intimate space of the self, it encompassed an astonishing range of relationships, from deep personal bonds to purely functional alliances buttressed by shared interests, ideologies, or fears. See Kazhdan and Constable 1982, esp. 28; Limousin 1999; Mullett 1999a; Messis 2008; and the references cited above n. 67. Gabras, Letters, 2:220.104–11 (no. 132).

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loosened or dissolved due to a lack of reciprocation, it would bring shame upon Gabras and, implicitly, upon the dynatos too, for the latter’s failure to acknowledge his client’s love might tarnish his image of a worthy patron. The purpose of Gabras’ missive was to persuade the addressee to intercede with the emperor on his behalf. Since he did not have the privilege of direct access to the court, he needed the mediation of a powerful friend.80 Occupying the summit of the social ladder, the emperor was the supreme patron and the ultimate object of pothos. Philes compares him to a source of “never-setting light” that shines upon those who yearn after him.81 In several poems addressed to Andronikos II, Philes speaks about his pothos. Thus, when accused of having criticized the imperial rule, he writes a poem, in which, as a “blameless servant,” he swears an oath of loyalty sealing it with a declaration of his “most affectionate and fervent desire” for the emperor.82 On another occasion, the poet asks for the emperor’s forgiveness; as he explains in an allusion to his absence from the court, ill health and some troubles restrained his “extraordinarily resounding desire” for a while.83 Elsewhere, Philes confesses that the character and achievements of Andronikos II surpass the power of his rhetoric, an obstacle that does not dissuade him, however, from singing praises to the emperor, lest silence obscure his pothos.84 In epigrammatic poetry, pothos is typically the impulse behind gifts presented to imperial figures and images set up in their honor.85 Characteristic in this regard is an epigram from the Anthologia Marciana composed for a privately commissioned portrait of Manuel I Komnenos and his second wife, Maria of Antioch.86 15

80

81

82 83 84 85

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Ἰωάννης δὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου θύτης Χρυσοροφίτης ἐξ ἐπωνύμου γένους,

Gabras belonged to a group of literati who lived a meager and unstable existence on the fringes of courtly and aristocratic society, constantly vying for grants, positions, and favors. Although he authored several orations in honor of Andronikos II, at least one of which was brought to the emperor’s attention, Gabras does not seem to have ever been invited to publicly recite his works at court. See the editor’s introduction in Gabras, Letters, 1:20–26; Mergiali 1996, 106–12. Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 6, v. 8. A variant of this poem is published in Carmina II, 131–32 (no. LXIII). Philes, Carmina II, 398 (no. XXXIII, vv. 26–27). Philes, Carmina I, 287 (no. CI, vv. 27–29). Philes, Carmina I, 270–71 (no. XCV, vv. 13–16). See, e.g., Anthologia Marciana, nos. 72 (B128), 81 (B138), 108 (B164), 277 (B110); and the example cited immediately below. See also the dedicatory poem inserted in the late eleventhcentury Barberini Psalter (Ms. Vat. Barb. gr. 372, fol. 4v): Anderson, Canart, and Walter 1989, 55. Cf. in addition George Pisides, Poems (1892), 56 (no. XLVIII). Anthologia Marciana, no. 221 (B58) (full text in Spingou 2012, 180–81).

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20

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κἂν εὐτελὴς ᾖ καὶ μικρὸς τὰ πρὸς τύχην, πίστει πόθον σύγκρατον αὐτοῦ δεικνύων ὃν πρὸς τὸν αὐτάνακτα Μανουὴλ τρέφει, τὸν πορφυρόχρουν τῆς Νέας Ῥώμης στύλον, χρώμασι τυποῖ δουλικῶς τοῦτον γράφων καὶ τὴν ἄνασσαν Μαρίαν συνεγγράφων, Ἀντιόχου γῆς πρὶν φέρουσαν τὸ κράτος καὶ νῦν δι’ αὐτοῦ κοσμικοῦ παντὸς κύκλου, γραφαῖς ἀφώνοις κεκραγὼς τὰ τοῦ πόθου, οὓς ὁ κρατῶν γῆς, οὐρανοῦ παντοκράτωρ, συνῆψε εἰς ἓν καὶ λέχος καὶ τὸ στέφος John, priest of the Logos of God, of the family of Chrysorophites, although low and insignificant in his lot, showing his desire mixed with loyalty, which he nurtures toward the emperor Manuel, the purple-hued pillar of the New Rome, slavishly portrays him in colors, and he also portrays the empress Maria, who formerly held sway over the land of Antioch, and now through him [i.e., Manuel] over the entire circle of the world. Giving voice to his desire through voiceless representations, he depicts those whom the One who rules over the earth, the heavenly ruler of all, has joined in one bed and one crown.87

The medium and setting of this imperial portrait cannot be deduced from the epigram, and the relationship between the otherwise unknown clergyman John Chrysorophites and the ruling couple remains unclear. Whether the portrait was commissioned in acknowledgment of an imperial favor bestowed upon Chrysorophites can only be a matter of guesswork. The verses elide any reference to particulars, presenting the portrait in a rather generic fashion as a due and deferential expression of the feeling of pothos befitting a loyal subject.88 Court ceremonial provided another context for voicing – literally – pothos for the emperor. As recorded in the tenth-century Book of Ceremonies, at certain moments in the endless succession of processions, celebrations, and rituals that shaped his public persona, the emperor was acclaimed as “the desire of the whole world” (ὁ πόθος τῆς ὅλης οἰκουμένης) or “the desire of the Romans” (ὁ πόθος τῶν Ῥωμαίων).89 According to the 87 88

89

Trans. Magdalino and Nelson 1982, 139, with modifications. Privately commissioned imperial portraiture flourished under Manuel I. On the role of art as a political tool during this emperor’s reign, see Magdalino and Nelson 1982, esp. 169–77. Book of Ceremonies, 1:279.10–11, 1:316.16–17, 1:318.1–2, 1:323.14, 1:325.20–21. The empress, too, was an object of pothos. At the imperial wedding ceremony, she was greeted as “you who are desired by all”(ἡ ποθουμένη παρὰ πάντας): ibid., 1:198.16–17.

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same source, on the occasion of Leo I’s ascension to the throne in 457, the cheerful crowd applauded the newly installed monarch by shouting, inter alia, “We all yearn for you!” (σὲ ποθοῦμεν πάντες).90 Not unexpectedly, the notion of pothos also figures in Byzantine political thought. Agapetos the Deacon in his widely read Ekthesis, a mirror of princes for Justinian I, advises the emperor to arouse desire in his subjects, balancing it prudently with a sense of fear. To your subjects, O most pious emperor, you ought to be simultaneously formidable [φοβερός] on account of the plenitude of your power and desirable [ποθεινός] through the bestowal of benefactions. You should neither slight fear in favor of desire, nor disregard desire in favor of fear, but rather may your mildness be such that you will not be disdained and also may your severity be such that you will still be esteemed.91

While Herakleios, as the poet George Pisides relates, wanted to base his power less on fear than on desire,92 Manuel II Palaiologos appears to have followed Agapetos’ advice.93 Upon his return from the Morea to Constantinople in the winter of 1409, the emperor was complemented in a letter written by John Chortasmenos for the way in which he had balanced fear and desire in his Peloponnesian subjects. “To them you were formidable (φοβερός) and desirable (ποθεινός) at the same time, which is most extraordinary – formidable on account of what you demonstrated by hating and chastising wickedness, and desirable by honoring virtue and exhorting everyone with gifts to strive toward it.ˮ94 For Chortasmenos, as for Agapetos, what makes the emperor “desirable” is above all his lavish dispensation of gifts and favors, that is, his role as a patron. For the most part, however, imperial patronage was a privilege shared by the fortunate few. To the vast majority of his subjects, the “never-setting light” of the emperor’s philanthropy manifested itself in dim reflections rather than direct glare, which is why commoners such as Gabras needed the help of powerful intercessors. The Byzantines assigned a comparable intercessory role to holy figures in the spiritual realm. Just as the emperor presided over a throng of dynatoi, listening to their petitions and 90 92

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91 Book of Ceremonies, 1:412.9. Agapetos the Deacon, Ekthesis, PG 86.1, col. 1177D. George Pisides, Expeditio Persica 2.90–91: ἐξουσίαν γὰρ οὐ τοσοῦτον ἐν φόβῳ / ὅσον προλάμπειν ἐν πόθῳ θεσπίζομεν. Pisides’ verses are echoed in Theophanes, Chronographia, 303.23–24. As a matter of fact, Manuel II’s Hypothēkai basilikēs agōgēs (PG 156, cols. 313–84), a mirror of princes that the emperor composed for his son, the future emperor John VIII, borrows extensively from Agapetos. See Ševčenko 1978, 8–9. Chortasmenos, Works, 199.15–17 (Letter 42). The letter was composed on behalf of Manuel Asanopoulos (PLP, no. 1537).

Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos

Figure 6.6 Scene of the Deēsis, 1383/84, church of Saint Athanasios tou Mouzakē, Kastoria (photo: Michalis Kappas)

complaints on behalf of their protégés, so did Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven – which the Byzantines conceived as a mirror image of their own basileia – receive a host of saintly intercessors pleading for their clients on earth.95 The notion that the protection and mediation of holy figures is analogous to secular patronage finds an apt visual articulation in a late Byzantine variety of the Deēsis composition, in which the participants appear dressed in contemporary courtly attire. A fine example of this iconography can be seen in the church of Saint Athanasios tou Mouzakē at Kastoria, decorated with mural paintings in 1383/84.96 The scene of Deēsis here occupies the lower zone of the north wall of the nave (Figure 6.6). Identified by an 95

96

On the mutual resemblance between the earthly and heavenly courts, see Mango 1980, esp. 151–55; Maguire 1997; Woodfin 2010; M. Carile 2012. On the affinity between the cult of saints and the patron–client system in Byzantium, see Mango 1980, 158–59. For the emergence of this cult in late antiquity in relation to the Roman patrocinium, see Brown 1981, 23–68; Rebenich 2001. For the overlapping between patronage and devotion in a Renaissance context, see Weissman 1982, esp. 47–50. For the use of the anthropology of patronage to describe interpersonal relations in the religious sphere, see Blok 1969, 366. Grigoriadou 1975; Pelekanides and Chatzidakis 1985, 106–107; N. Pazaras 2013, esp. 290–312, 397–402. On the so-called Royal Deēsis, see also Smolčić-Makuljević 2002; Kazamia-Tsernou 2003, 197–202, with further bibliography.

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Figure 6.7 Saint Alexander from the Deēsis, 1383/84, church of Saint Athanasios tou Mouzakē, Kastoria (photo: Michalis Kappas)

appended label as ὁ Βασιλεὺς τῆς Δόξης (“the King of Glory”), Christ is depicted seated on a high-backed throne, fully vested in the insignia of a Byzantine emperor. The Virgin Mary, herself crowned and arrayed like a queen, and Saint John the Baptist stand on either side of the throne, with their hands extended in supplication toward Christ. Lined up behind the Virgin in the order of precedence, four additional figures participate in the

Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos

Deēsis: the great-martyr George followed by an unidentified saint and, further to the left, Saint Alexander (Figure 6.7) and Saint Nicholas the Younger. The saints are not represented in their traditional iconography wearing ancient military or civilian costumes. Instead, they sport the fashionable attire of Palaiologan grandees, complete with ornate belted kabbadia, pearl-lined mantles, and tall elaborate hats. They clearly assume the role of courtiers, celestial dignitaries that, as indicated by the long staffs in their hands, occupy an exalted position in Christ’s retinue.97 In this courtly rendering of the Deēsis, spiritual advocacy is quite explicitly understood in terms of human relations. By casting a paradigmatic portrayal of the intercession on behalf of fallen humanity into an image of an aulic ceremony of petition, the Kastorian murals make manifest the notion that, for the Byzantines, the search for salvation was inextricably linked with the quest for divine or saintly patronage. That personal devotion to holy figures was largely conceptualized on the model of patron–client relationship is perhaps most evident in the fact that the same vocabulary was used in reference to both. So far we have been concerned with pothos, but there are other shared terms that rendered the boundary between the sacred and secular forms of patronage increasingly blurred. Consider, for instance, the following verses on an image of Christ in the company of the four evangelists, spuriously attributed to Michael Psellos or Nicholas, metropolitan of Corfu.98 5

10

χρώμασι τυπῶν τὴν ἀναφῆ σου θέαν πόθῳ ζέοντι καὶ γέμοντι τῆς φρίκης προσέρχομαί σοι τῷ βασιλεῖ τῶν ὅλων, ὅπως λύσιν εὕροιμι τῶν ἐπταισμένων. ἀλλ’ ὦ μαθητῶν ἡ λογὰς ἡ κοσμία, παρρησίαν ἔχουσα πρὸς τὸν δεσπότην σύναψον αὐτῷ μυστικαῖς ἐντυχίαις ἡμᾶς ποθοῦντας τὴν ὑμῶν προστασίαν, ὦ ἱερὸν σύνταγμα τῆς τετρακτύος. Depicting your ungraspable appearance in colors, with burning desire, yet filled with shivering fear, I come to you, the King of All, so that I may obtain the remission of my sins. And you, well-ordered assembly of the chosen disciples, since you have freedom of speech before the Lord, bind us close to him through your spiritual petitions, us who desire your protection, O sacred band of four.

97 98

On these staffs, see Parani 2003, 66–67; Macrides, Munitiz, and Angelov 2013, 336–39. Psellos, Poems, no. 85.

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The anonymous commissioner of the image approaches the heavenly King with a mixture of desire and fear, the same contrasting emotions that would seize a deferential subject approaching an emperor.99 Even though he has the audacity to appeal directly to Christ, he nonetheless feels that his prayer would be given a more responsive ear if backed by the intercession of the “sacred band” of the evangelists. The verses explicitly identify the source of the evangelists’ authority to plead the supplicant’s cause with their παρρησία before the Lord. The term parrhēsia denotes freedom of speech, and more specifically, candor or boldness in addressing one’s superiors, the license to speak one’s mind before the powerful and, if necessary, to offer advice or criticism.100 Parrhēsia with the emperor was a right famously enjoyed by holy men and claimed by fearless bishops and monks asserting their spiritual authority in face of the temporal power. As “freedom of speech” understood in this sense was a kind of privilege shared by the emperor’s confidants and favorites, parrhēsia could simply designate familiarity with or the right of access to the emperor. In a religious context, the same term was used to denote the assurance and confidence with which saints approach God. The Byzantines considered parrhēsia a defining characteristic of sainthood. As Michel Kaplan has argued persuasively, based on the evidence of hagiographic sources, tangible material signs of one’s sanctity such as incorruptible bodily remains or the flow of myron from the tomb were not prerequisites for the establishment of a cult, and even the testimony of miracles did not play a decisive role in this process. Saints’ credentials rested primarily on their power of intercession, their ability to exercise parrhēsia with God for the benefit of their devotees and, indeed, their spiritual clients.101 To be a saint in Byzantium meant, above all, to be a patron saint. It is highly characteristic in this regard that in the quoted verses parrhēsia figures as an attribute of the evangelists’ patronage, here referred to as their much-desired προστασία. The word itself, meaning “protection,” 99

100

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The contrast between desire and fear is further highlighted through the opposition between warmth and coldness implied in the choice of the words ζέω and φρίκη in line 6. It should be pointed out that pothos is often associated with phobos in the religious sphere. See, e.g., Pseudo-Basil the Great, Orationes sive exorcismi, PG 31, col. 1684A; Pseudo-John Chrysostom, De adoratione crucis, PG 52, col. 835; John of Damascus, In Dormitionem II.11.8. For epigrammatic poetry, see, e.g., Theodore of Stoudios, Poems, no. XXXV, v. 2; Bentein et al. 2009, 285 (no. 3, v. 5). The conceptual pair pothos–phobos recalls what Rudolph Otto described as fascinans and tremendum in religious experience: Otto 1917. On parrhēsia, see Scarpat 1964; Bartelink 1970. See also Flusin 1983, 178–79; Brown 1992, 61–70; Rapp 2005, esp. 260–73. Kaplan 1999, esp. 22; Kaplan 2000.

Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos

“support,” or “leadership,” is variously used in the sources.102 In a legal context, it may refer to an abbot’s supervision of a monastic community or to the administration of ecclesiastical institutions and imperial estates, but it is also used to designate the guardianship of orphans or the protection offered to widows. Prostasia, however, has an additional technical meaning: it is the Byzantine term for patron–client relationship. The action of supporting and countenancing one’s dependant, whether it involved, say, a grant of tax exemptions or an appointment to a lucrative position in the bureaucratic apparatus, was called prostasia. The patron was accordingly the προστάτης, or “protector,” of his client, while a man without powerful and influential patrons was considered ἀπροστάτευτος – literally, “unprotected.”103 The term’s associations with the hierarchical ties of personal dependence were carried over into the spiritual realm, where prostasia was a common designation for the protection granted by God, saints, or angels, and especially by the Virgin Mary, who was hailed as Φοβερὰ Προστασία (“Formidable Protection”), an epithet that she carries, for example, in the main cult image of the Koutloumousiou monastery on Mount Athos (Figure 6.8).104 To place oneself under her protection was to enter the service of the most potent intercessor before God. Viewed through the lens of prostasia, heaven was populated with patrons of varying status, influence, and power of mediation, and accordingly, personal devotion to them was tantamount to a form of spiritual clientage. The foregoing account of the analogy between sacred and secular patronal hierarchies allows us to draw some conclusions concerning the notion of pothos as it figures in Byzantine epigrammatic poetry. The emphasis on pothos as the key motivation behind religious donation in dedicatory epigrams reflects a larger rhetoric of love, desire, and intimacy that the Byzantines adopted to portray patron–client relationships. Pothos was a requisite attribute of a worshipper praying to a divine or saintly protector as much as it was of a petitioner seeking the support of a munificent benefactor. In Byzantium, these two kinds of interpersonal bonds were conceived of in similar terms and shared a common language of affection that stressed their emotional charge at the expense of their instrumentality. The notion of pothos was ideally suited to express the 102

103 104

For the following, see Saradi 1994, esp. 1:74–77, 2:314–18. See also Beck 1965; Brown 1971, esp. 85–87; ODB, s.v. ‘patronage, social’. See, e.g., Psellos, Letters (K-D), 111.16–17 (no. 81). Mantzarides and Tsigaridas 2013, 158–61. Cf. Papadopoulos-Kerameus 1909, 228. For this epithet, see, e.g., Germanos I, In Annuntiationem, PG 98, col. 321B. See also Eustratiades 1930, 65–66 (προστασία, προστατεύουσα, προστάτις).

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Figure 6.8 Icon of the Virgin Phobera Prostasia, sixteenth century(?), Koutloumousiou monastery, Mount Athos (photo: Koutloumousiou monastery, Mount Athos)

affective side of personal submission and, indeed, one’s status as a client, because, by its very nature, pothos maintains a due sense of hierarchy and subordination. As a desire aroused by the feelings of lack, insufficiency, and distance, it affirms the fundamental inequality inherent in any patron– client relationship. Whether a social superior or a holy figure separated from the client’s earthly existence by an ontological gulf, the desired patron

Personal patronage and the rhetoric of pothos

is always beyond the client’s reach, and their amorous exchange, the true fulfillment of pothos, always beyond the client’s control. *** Bringing this chapter to a close, we must take one final look at the question of the devotional gift. I have begun the chapter with the Benaki icon of George Sarabares and the epigram hammered into its precious kosmos (Figures 6.1 and 6.2). In these verses, Sarabares places his desire for the Virgin in the foreground, presenting the gilded silver with which he revetted the icon as a mere token of his intense yearning. The material offering here plays a secondary role; what matters is the donor’s pothos – the ultimate gift. In calling attention to the giver and his or her affective disposition, the erotic discourse evinced in dedicatory epigrams shifts the focus from the material value of the gift to its emotional valence. This change of emphasis is noteworthy insofar as it serves to reinscribe the paradoxical commutation of worldly assets into spiritual benefits in a broader economy of love.105 It subsumes the traffic of goods, favors, and services between earth and heaven, the present and the hereafter within the much more fundamental exchange of affection, upon which the personal rapport between the giver and the sacred recipient is predicated. Within this system of exchange that transcends the binaries of giving and reciprocation, merit and reward, devotional gifts are no more than outward signs or manifestations of inner emotional states – not so much proofs as expressions of affection. Rather than discharging debts or incurring obligations, their decisive function is to give tangible form to love. True, pothos is a ravishing gift in and of itself, but it must be made manifest, exposed, condensed into a material offering and, no less, inscribed and adorned with words.

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For a comparable notion in the medieval West, see Guerreau-Jalabert 2000.

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Image of the beloved

In the autobiographical preface to his Typikon of 1282 for the monastery of Saint Demetrios in Constantinople, Michael VIII Palaiologos states that his restoration of this monastic house, founded two centuries earlier by the emperor’s illustrious ancestor, George Palaiologos, was an accomplishment worthy of praise for two reasons. “We satisfied our pothos for the martyr by glorifying God, which after all was what had motivated my majesty in the first place. The second result was that we renewed the mnēmosynon of the blessed founder, our ancestor, which men had already consigned to oblivion.ˮ1 The first of the two reasons characteristically concerns the emperor’s desire for Saint Demetrios, the celestial patron of the imperial house of the Palaiologoi and one of Michael VIII’s personal protectors.2 Elsewhere in the preface the emperor self-assuredly declares: There are so many proofs of the great mercy of God to me, and I owe them to the supplications of all my holy patrons, but especially to those of my great defender, I mean the myroblytēs Demetrios. As an ambassador he is always, I am certain, presenting my case to God. I know too that from long ago and up to the present God has sent him as a shield to protect my life and the Empire, and I have no doubt that he bestows his own favor on me. Of all the things I have done as emperor, particularly those which were truly imperial inasmuch as they affected the common good, there is not one in which when I called upon him to come he did not immediately give me the sensation of his actual presence [αἴσθησιν . . . τῆς παρουσίας] through his assistance.3

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Typikon of Saint Demetrios, 463; trans. BMFD, 3:1247 (G. Dennis), with minor modifications. To these two reasons for undertaking the restoration, the emperor adds a third: “My majesty established this new monastery which would permit many to come together in it to lead a religious life which would be most pleasing to God; the number of those praying for us would increase, and in return our reward and recompense would be the greater” (Typikon of Saint Demetrios, 463–65; trans. BMFD, 3:1247 [G. Dennis]). On the monastery of Saint Demetrios, see Kidonopoulos 1994, 37–39, with further bibliography. For the emperor’s devotion to Saint Demetrios, see also Phoskolou 2013. Aside from the great Thessalonian martyr, Michael VIII was particularly devoted to the archangel Michael and the Virgin Acheiropoiētos. See Talbot 1993, 258–60; Konstantinide 2003; Hilsdale 2014, 31–197 passim. Typikon of Saint Demetrios, 461–63; trans. BMFD, 3:1246 (G. Dennis), slightly modified.

Image of the beloved

Removed from material existence, heavenly patrons – unlike their earthly counterparts – were for the most part invisible, and their sensate presence and proximity could not be taken for granted. When summoned, Saint Demetrios would reveal his parousia to Michael VIII in an indirect manner, by assisting the emperor in his endeavors, all the while remaining invisible. Divine or saintly presence could, of course, manifest itself more tangibly, through material signs. John Lazaropoulos’ fourteenth-century collection of miracles of Saint Eugenios recounts an incident in which the Trapezuntine martyr announced his “desired presence” (ποθεινὴ παρουσία) to the faithful assembled in his church by a sudden earthquake followed by the appearance of an ineffable fragrance and, subsequently, by the miraculous sweet-scented oil that gushed forth from the ciborium surmounting the church’s altar table.4 The comforting advent of a celestial protector may be likewise apprehended in visions or sought after through the mediation of relics. In a well-known passage from his encomium on Saint Theodore, Gregory of Nyssa wrote of devotees venerating the martyr’s relics: “Those who behold them embrace, as it were, the living body in full bloom: they bring eyes, mouth, ears, all the senses into play; and then, shedding tears of reverence and passion, they address their prayers of intercession to the martyr as if he were wholly present (ὡς ὁλοκλήρῳ καὶ φαινομένῳ).ˮ5 The as if of presence also underlies the logic of sacred images and the way in which they mediate one’s encounter with the holy.6 A classic formulation, attributed to Symeon the Stylite the Younger, sums up the response of icon-minded Christians to the charge of idolatry by asserting: “We do not approach the surface appearance , but, calling to mind the one outlined in the image, we behold the invisible by means of the visible picture and honor him as if he were present (ὡς παρόντα).”7 In the practice of icon veneration, the distinction between the portrayed figure’s spiritual presence in the mind of a worshipper and its actual presence in the icon was blurred, and transcendence could easily glide into immanence. Besides, bridging the gap between the 4 5 6

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Lazaropoulos, Synopsis of the Miracles of Saint Eugenios, 272.486–274.526. De sancto Theodoro, PG 46, col. 740B. For the analogy between relics and icons, see Chapter 3, n. 118. On icons as carriers of sacred presence, see also Belting 1994, passim; Miller 2009, 131–78. For a different interpretation of icons’ mediating power, see Barber 1993; Barber 2002, 107–23. On images and the dialectic of presence/absence within a broader theoretical perspective, see Belting 2001, esp. 11–55, 143–88; and the essays collected in Manuira and Shepherd 2006. Thümmel 1992, 322.28–30 (no. 59): οὐ γὰρ τοῖς χροειδίοις προσερχόμεθα, ἀλλ’ ἐν ὑπομνήσει τοῦ ἀντιτύπου ὑπογράμματος ὁρῶντες τὸν ἀόρατον διὰ τῆς ὁρωμένης γραφῆς ὡς παρόντα δοξάζομεν. Speck 1991, 194–210, has rejected Symeon’s authorship of this text as apocryphal.

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sensible and intelligible worlds, the icon was understood to convey and, indeed, embody the potency of its absent referent; while remaining a material object, it was nonetheless believed to participate in the reality of the one depicted. This indeterminacy and liminality of the icon, its persistent negotiation of the tensive equilibrium between presence and absence, is what rendered it a privileged locus and instrument of pothos in Byzantine religiosity. The link between desire and the icon was explicitly acknowledged in the dogmatic decree of the Second Council of Nicaea, which described the utility of images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, angels, and saints in the following terms: “the more these are kept in view through their iconic representation, the more those who gaze at them are aroused to remember and yearn for (πρὸς . . . μνήμην τε καὶ ἐπιπόθησιν) the prototypes.”8 Thus, in addition to being an aide-mémoire, the icon was perceived as a potent stimulus igniting the worshipper’s desire through viewing. The affective power of images, their ability to induce, nurture, and give expression to love, has not been sufficiently recognized in scholarship on the Byzantine icon.9 This chapter seeks to offer a fresh perspective on the use of images in personal piety by looking at the icon through the lens of pothos. I shall investigate how the Byzantines employed and manipulated icons to articulate bonds of spiritual clientage and express their emotional rapport with patrons in heaven. The quest for intimacy with the sacred took many forms in Later Byzantium, but its most eloquent and most sustained artistic expression is to be found in the realm of icon veneration, where items of kosmos, epithets, devotional portraits, and inscribed verses were variously mobilized to give tangible form to one’s relationship with the person depicted. In attending to the place of the icon in personal piety and devotional self-fashioning, the following discussion thus brings together several strands of inquiry running through this study, namely, the concept, aesthetics, and agency of adornment, the logic of sacred giving, the rhetoric of pothos, and the use of inscribed religious artifacts as sites and vehicles for the construction of personal identity.

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Mansi 13, col. 377D: ὅσῳ γὰρ συνεχῶς δι’ εἰκονικῆς ἀνατυπώσεως ὁρῶνται, τοσοῦτον καὶ οἱ ταύτας θεώμενοι διανίστανται πρὸς τὴν τῶν πρωτοτύπων μνήμην τε καὶ ἐπιπόθησιν. See also Uphus 2004, 319–22. Notable exceptions include Barber 1993, esp. 11, where the icon is defined as a “site of desire”; Barber 1999, 118–20; Peers 2009; Pizzone 2012; Pizzone 2013a. See also Peers 2006.

Affective images

Affective images W. J. T. Mitchell has observed that “the question of desire is inseparable from the problem of the image, as if the two concepts were caught in a mutually generative circuit, desire generating images and images generating desire.”10 This dynamic was widely acknowledged in the ancient world.11 In Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (35.151), the birth of the art of image-making is famously attributed to a desire to overcome separation and absence. As the story goes, a Corinthian maiden, whose lover was about to go abroad, traced the outline of the shadow of his face on the wall, cast by lamplight. Following his departure, the maiden’s father, a potter by the name of Boutades, filled in the outline with clay and created a relief. Born of a sense of longing and lovelorn grief, this image – the first portrait ever to be made – was a substitute for the departed young man, a kind of iconic double holding a promise of an encounter with his absent face.12 The capacity of images to render the absent present, offer consolation, and gratify one’s pothos, if only vicariously, is a recurrent theme in Byzantine writing. Exemplary in this respect is an epigram by Theodore Prodromos on a portrait of the emperor John II Komnenos.13 The portrait and the accompanying verses were commissioned by the emperor’s younger brother, sebastokratōr Isaac, in all likelihood shortly after their reconciliation in 1136, which put an end to Isaac’s fourteen-year-long exile as well as to his vain attempts to seize power from John.14 Predictably, the verses paint a rosy picture of fraternal love. Addressing the emperor in direct speech, Isaac reminds him of their father’s seed that united them, their conception in a single womb, the shared imperial purple and the swaddling-clothes, and their mutual affection that grew stronger and stronger as they matured, turning, as Prodromos puts it, from a tiny spark into a mighty furnace. And when, in a vicious turn of

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13

14

Mitchell 2005, 58. On the interplay between the image and desire, see also Bettini 1999, esp. 7–17, 38–58. On portraiture, desire, and presence in relation to the literary and pictorial tradition of the so-called Visio Procli in Byzantium, see Holloway 2007. Nasrallah 2010, 221–25. On the significance of this episode, see Stoichita 1997, 11–20; Bettini 1999, esp. 7–9; Suthor 1999. Prodromos, Carmina historica, no. XLI. On this epigram, see Magdalino and Nelson 1982, 130–32 (no. III). The reconciliation, however, did not prove lasting. Isaac began to plot against his brother again and was banished to Herakleia on the Black Sea. He was still in exile at the time of John II’s sudden death in 1143. On the sebastokratōr Isaac, see Varzos 1984, no. 36; Sinos 1985, 8–18.

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fate, envy sundered their unity of soul, the two brothers, moved by pothos, restored their loving bond.

15

20

ἐπεὶ δὲ νικήσαντος ὡς χρὴ τοῦ πόθου εἰς ἓν συνερρώγειμεν αὖθις οἱ δύο καί σε σφαδάζω συνεχῶς ἀεὶ βλέπειν, ἀμήχανον δὲ τοῦτο τῇ θνητῇ φύσει τόποις μεριστῇ τυγχανούσῃ καὶ χρόνοις καὶ τῶν τυχηρῶν πραγμάτων τοῖς εὐρίποις, στηλῶ σε καὶ γράφω σε χειρὶ ζωγράφου, ὃν ἐν μέσῃ γέγραφα πρὶν τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὡς ἂν ἀεὶ βλέπω σε καὶ σύνειμί σοι καὶ ψυχαγωγῶ καὶ πλανῶ μου τὸν πόθον ὡς πρωτοτύποις ἐντρανίζων τοῖς τύποις. Since, as was fitting, desire triumphed, the two of us reunited again, and I continually strain to see you always. But since this is impossible for the mortal nature, divided by place and time and the fluctuating affairs of fortune, I portray and depict you by the painter’s hand, you whom I have already depicted in the midst of my heart, in order that I may always see you and be with you, and console and deceive my desire, gazing intently at the image as if it were the prototype.15

Implicitly described as a material replica of an image painted in his heart, the portrait makes manifest Isaac’s relentless longing for John. It is a source of solace – albeit a deceptive one. Placed under the sebastokratōr’s intent gaze, it transforms from a mere representation into an ethereal, phantasmatic presence of John, thereby enabling Isaac’s vicarious encounter with his beloved emperor and brother. The portrait, in addition, performs another, no less vital role. Generated by the same pothos that brought the two brothers back together, it is a memorial to their reconciliation and a visible token of their affectionate union. Privately commissioned imperial portraits were not uncommon in Byzantium.16 Michael Psellos may have acquired one depicting Constantine IX Monomachos. Not unlike the image owned by the sebastokratōr Isaac, Psellos’ portrait of Monomachos served a therapeutic purpose, alleviating his insatiable pothos for the emperor, from whom he could not bear to be separated even for a short while. In a letter to Monomachos,

15

Trans. Magdalino and Nelson 1982, 131, with modifications.

16

Cf. Grünbart 2015, 104.

Affective images

which opens with a long eulogy of the emperor as a “god on earth” (θεὸς ἐπίγειος), Psellos assumes the posture of a swooning lover. But why am I saying this, bearing an impression of your face in my imagination alone [ἐν φαντασίᾳ μόνῃ]? When shall I come before my lord’s face? When shall I hear the golden tongue? When shall I see the joyous gaze of your eyes? Tomorrow! And yet, that moment is far away, the time remaining too long, and one day seems like an eternity. But placing your image in front of me, I shall assuage my desire [θεραπεύσω τὸν πόθον].17

Τhe letter juxtaposes two portraits of Monomachos: the visual impression of the emperor’s countenance formed in Psellos’ mind by his faculty of phantasia and the material picture of the emperor, upon which the letterwriter casts the desirous gaze of his bodily eyes.18 To these two is indirectly added a third – Psellos’ rhetorical description of the emperor’s God-like character in the letter, which in itself represents a discursive portrait of Monomachos.19 This multiplication of images, however, cannot replace the living presence of the emperor. The fulfillment of Psellos’ pothos remains deferred until that far-off tomorrow, and characteristically, in order to cool his longing, the impatient lover turns to the corporeal, tangible depiction of his beloved.20 The theme of soothing the anguish of one’s pothos by looking at a picture can be found in other contexts as well. Michael Choniates, for example, deploys it in a poem lamenting the former glories of the city of Athens, where he served as metropolitan between 1182 and 1204.21 In this poem, the city itself – or rather, its idealized past – assumes the role of an unattainable loved one.

17 18

19

20

21

Psellos, Letters (S), 361 (no. 115). Cf. a letter by Theodore, metropolitan of Kyzikos, to Constantine VII Porphyrogennētos, in which the writer speaks about a mental image of the emperor that he carries with him wherever he goes, beholding it with his spiritual eyes: Darrouzès 1960, 326.4–8 (no. 9). The letter, it must be noted in this regard, is commonly compared to a portrait, although not of the recipient, as is the case with Psellos’ verbal depiction of Monomachos, but of the writer. See Karlsson 1962, esp. 94–99. Like a picture of the absent beloved, “the letter,” in Synesios of Cyrene’s classic formulation (Synesios of Cyrene, Letters, 241.1–3 [no. 138]), “has the power to console unhappy lovers, providing in bodily absence the illusion of presence.” On the emperor’s portrait as a remedy (φάρμακον) for those who love him, see also Holobolos, Orations, 1:46.27–31, with Hilsdale 2014, 3–4, 31–34, 49–50. For imperial portraits on panel, see Marsengill 2013, 203–32. Mercati 1970, 1:483–88. On the poem, see Speck 1975; Breitenbach 2003, 284–86; Rhoby 2003a, 29–33; Lauxtermann 2004, 333–35; Livanos 2006. On Choniates and his attitude toward the ancient Greek past, see Breitenbach 2003, 257–87; Rhoby 2003a, 24–72; Kaldellis 2009, 145–65.

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Image of the beloved Since it was impossible – alas! – to see that celebrated city anywhere, for it has been hidden by incalculable and long-aged time, obscured in the depths of oblivion, I suffer literally the pain of the love-smitten, who, unable to see the faces of their desired ones as they really are when they are present, look at their images in a mental sort of way and thus soothe their burning love.22

While it is not impossible that these verses accompanied an actual representation of the city of Athens commissioned by Choniates,23 the image at which the learned metropolitan looked to comfort himself was a vision of the Athens of ancient lawgivers and rhetoricians, of glorious festivals and military expeditions, conjured up in his imagination. Turning to the religious sphere, we find the motif of a portrait standing in for an absent beloved in Symeon the New Theologian’s Fourth Ethical Oration, where it occurs in a simile describing the experience of those who ascend from sensory perception to the contemplation of the divine. As Symeon explains, They are like a bridegroom who gazes upon the inanimate image [ἄψυχον εἰκόνα] of his bride, fashioned with colors; he clings to and stares at it incessantly, and wants to gaze upon it in order to rekindle his desire and yearning [τὸν πόθον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν] for her. However, when he beholds the bride herself in his presence, not in the form of an image, but as an embodiment of the idea of comeliness, spotless in her incomparable and indescribable beauty, and when he kisses and embraces her, he can no longer bear at all to look at her image again. The same thing, although more intensely, is experienced by those who from the greatness and beauty of visible creatures contemplate the power and wisdom of their Creator24 and are led progressively up from these things in love and faith toward him and in pure fear.25

22

23 25

Mercati 1970, 1:486.4–487.12: ἐπεὶ γὰρ οὐκ ἦν οὐδαμοῦ φεῦ προσβλέπειν / αὐτὴν ἐκείνην τὴν ἀοίδιμον πόλιν, / τὴν δυσαρίθμου καὶ μακραίωνος χρόνου / λήθης βυθοῖς κρύψαντος ἠφαντωμένην, / ἐρωτολήπτων ἀτεχνῶς πάσχω πάθος, / οἳ τὰς ἀληθεῖς τῶν ποθουμένων θέας / ἀμηχανοῦντες τῶν παρόντων προσβλέπειν, / τὰς εἰκόνας ὁρῶντες αὐτῶν ὡς λόγῳ / παραμυθοῦνται τῶν ἐρώτων τὴν φλόγα. The above translation follows the partial translation by M. Lauxtermann in Agapitos 2004, 65. 24 For this possibility, see Speck 1975. Cf. Wisdom of Solomon 13:5. Symeon the New Theologian, Discourses, 2:72.903–74.917: ἀλλὰ καθάπερ ὁ τὴν ἐκ χρωμάτων κατασκευασθεῖσαν ἄψυχον εἰκόνα τῆς νύμφης νυμφίος ὁρῶν ταύτῃ πρόσκειται καὶ ἐνατενίζει διηνεκῶς καὶ βούλεται ὁρᾶν αὐτήν, ἀναφλέγων τὸν πόθον αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν τὴν πρὸς αὐτήν, ἐπὰν δὲ αὐτὴν ἐκείνην τὴν νύμφην παραγενομένην θεάσηται, οὐ κατὰ τὴν τῆς εἰκόνος μορφὴν οὖσαν, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἀσυγκρίτῳ καὶ ἀφράστῳ κάλλει ἀμώμητον τὸ εἶδος κεκτημένην τῆς εὐπρεπείας, καὶ ταύτην κατασπάσηται καὶ περιπλακῇ, οὐκέτι ὅλως ἀνέχεται πρὸς τὴν εἰκόνα ταύτης ἐναπιδεῖν σχετικῶς, τὸ αὐτὸ δὴ μειζόνως πάσχουσι καὶ οἱ ἐκ μεγέθους καὶ καλλονῆς τῶν

Affective images

In this remarkable passage that draws upon the tradition of bridal mysticism, the material world apprehended by the senses is implicitly conceived as a self-portrait of the invisible God. This seductive, grandiose picture elicits a powerful response from the lovesick beholders, transporting them toward their Divine Beloved. And yet, once they have been admitted into the divine presence, the picture itself loses its erotic allure and, instead, becomes a cause of much agonizing pain; for the experience of direct communion with God lays bare its less attractive underside, that of a mere substitute, an opaque material sign of absence. In the pictorial economy of pothos, Symeon reminds us, images always present themselves with a double edge: they torment as much as they console us, keeping our desire perpetually suspended between pain and pleasure, frustration and fulfillment.26 Not surprisingly, during the iconoclastic controversy the intimate link between pothos and visual representation was often invoked by iconophile polemicists.27 Thus, to counter the charge of idolatry and vindicate the Christian practice of image-making, the eighth-century treatise Adversus Constantinum Caballinum foregrounds the affective and commemorative functions of images by drawing a parallel between the icons of saints and the domestic portraits of loved ones. Many have painted images of people in their homes, either parents those of their children, or children those of their parents, on account of their mutual desire and affection [διὰ τὸν πόθον καὶ τὴν σχέσιν, ἣν εἶχον πρὸς ἀλλήλους]; and so that they may not forget them, they have set up their images in their homes. For that reason, they also kiss them, not as gods, but as I said before, on account of their desire and affection. The images of saints ought to be conceived of in this manner too. They have been depicted in the churches and books for the purpose of our recollection and love, and the correction of our way of life . . . and for the purpose of showing forth their beautiful martyrdom.28

26

27 28

ὁρωμένων κτισμάτων τὴν δύναμιν καὶ τὴν σοφίαν τοῦ γενεσιουργοῦ ἀναθεωροῦντες καὶ εἰς ἀγάπην καὶ πίστιν τὴν πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ εἰς φόβον ἐκ τούτων ἁγνὸν κατὰ προκοπὴν ἀναγόμενοι. This double-edged nature of images acquires a particular resonance when viewed in relation to Symeon’s general disregard for icons as devotional tools. See Barber 2007, 23–59. See especially Pizzone 2012, 63–67. Adversus Constantinum Caballinum, PG 95, col. 313A–B. For the argument that traces the origins of the Christian icon in the intimate engagement with portraits of family members and loved ones, as well as those of revered teachers, leaders, and patrons, see Marsengill 2011; Marsengill 2013, esp. 19–47, with further bibliography.

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Emotional attachment to the saints is here singled out as one of the reasons for both making and venerating their icons. Pothos, in other words, not only generates images, but also justifies their use. Similar argumentation was employed by the patriarch Nikephoros. In a series of patristic quotations and references to images adduced in his refutation of the iconoclastic synod of 815, one concerns a funerary portrait of Basil the Great purportedly set up by Gregory of Nazianzos. According to Nikephoros, Having extolled Basil the Great in very many and very great encomia, he [i.e., Gregory] came to decry the power of his discourse and confessed that he had been defeated by the nobility and virtue of that man; so he decided to honor him with an image and thus display his desire [τὰ τοῦ πόθου] more manifestly.29

Nikephoros’ audience was well aware of the body of funerary writings produced by Gregory in honor of his departed friend. These included a dozen epitaphs – one of which the patriarch goes on to quote – as well as a funeral oration widely regarded by the Byzantines as a supreme model of epitaphios logos.30 None of these exquisite literary works, however, appears to have been able to fully express Gregory’s deep admiration and love for Basil, which is why he gave up rhetoric in favor of visual representation.31 In the context of iconophile polemic, Gregory’s gesture is, of course, yet another piece of evidence endowing the Christian art of portraiture with the weight of patristic authority. As reported by Nikephoros, however, it also points out that images rather than words are the true vehicles of pothos. The affective side of the cult of images was further highlighted in iconophile theology by identifying pothos as a necessary component of the devotee’s spiritual and emotional disposition when approaching an icon. John of Damascus is quite explicit on this point. Let it be known that anyone who attempts to destroy an image brought into being out of divine desire and zeal, for the glory and remembrance of 29

30

31

Nikephoros, Refutatio et eversio 104.2–6. Nikephoros adduces the same example in Adversus Epiphanidem, 351.12–24. Gregory’s epitaphs to Basil are included in the Greek Anthology (AP 8.2–11). For the canonical status enjoyed by Gregory’s funeral oration on Basil, see Agapitos 2003, 7–9. No other source credits Gregory with setting up a funerary portrait of Basil. As shown by Demoen 1998, 14–15, Nikephoros must have deduced this information from a corrupt version of AP 8.11.5–6. Incidentally, in the conclusion to his oration in honor of Basil, Gregory likens his discourse to a painted portrait of the departed friend: Gregory of Nazianzos, Funeral Oration on Basil the Great 80.7. For the metaphorical use of the imagery of painting in Gregory, see Børtnes 2006.

Affective images

Christ, or of his Mother, the holy Theotokos, or of one of the saints, and moreover, for the disgrace of the devil and the defeat of him and his demons, and will not venerate, honor, and kiss it with desire for the one depicted [πόθῳ τοῦ εἰκονιζομένου] as an honorable image and not as god, is an enemy of Christ, the holy Mother of God, and the saints, and a vindicator of the devil and his demons.32

Similarly, the anonymous redactor of the Adversus Constantinum Caballinum declares: “I worship the indivisible and unconfused Holy Trinity, and the all-holy Mother of God, and all the saints, and I venerate and kiss their honorable and sacred images on account of my desire and deep love for them [διὰ τὸν πόθον καὶ τὴν πολλὴν αὐτῶν ἀγάπην].”33 Here, as in John of Damascus, the verb προσκυνέω (“to venerate”) is not to be understood in a generic sense. Rather, it denotes the physical act of bowing, genuflection, or prostration before an icon, which, along with the gesture of kissing, gives tangible form to the devotee’s affection.34 In a letter addressed to the emperor Constantine VI and his mother Irene by the Second Council of Nicaea, proskynēsis and kissing are explained as mutually equivalent gestures. To venerate an icon essentially means to kiss it. “Both are the same; for in ancient Greek kynein means ‘to kiss’ and ‘to love,’ while the prefix pros indicates a certain intensification of desire [ἐπίτασίν τινα . . . τοῦ πόθου]”; and further: “Whatever is loved is also venerated, and whatever is venerated is certainly also loved, as witnessed by our human relationships with our friends and by an encounter in which both are acted out.”35 When performed in front of an icon, the gesture of proskynēsis is invested with strong emotional resonance. It is not only an outward sign of submission and reverence, but also a way of manifesting one’s pothos for the divine or saintly figure depicted.36

32 34 35

36

33 John of Damascus, De imaginibus III.10.1–20. PG 95, col. 324B. On these gestures, see especially Auzépy 1987. Mansi 13, col. 404E: ταυτὸν γὰρ ἀμφότερα· κυνεῖν γὰρ τῇ ἑλλαδικῇ ἀρχαίᾳ διαλέκτῳ τὸ ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ τὸ φιλεῖν σημαίνει· καὶ τὸ τῆς πρὸς προθέσεως ἐπίτασίν τινα δηλοῖ τοῦ πόθου . . . ὃ γάρ τις φιλεῖ καὶ προσκυνεῖ· καὶ ὃ προσκυνεῖ, πάντως καὶ φιλεῖ, ὡς μαρτυρεῖ ἡ ἀνθρωπίνη σχέσις ἡ παρ’ ἡμῶν πρὸς τοὺς φίλους γινομένη, καὶ ἔντευξις τὰ δύο ἀποτελοῦσα. See also Uphus 2004, 326–31. It should be pointed out in this connection that pothos is repeatedly invoked in the iconophile definitions of proskynēsis, understood in the generic sense of “veneration,” and its types. See, e.g., John of Damascus De imaginibus III.40; Theodore of Stoudios, Antirrheticus I, PG 99, col. 348D; Nikephoros, Antirrheticus III, PG 100, col. 392A–C. See also Parry 1996, 166–77. The gesture of proskynēsis as an expression of pothos is further discussed below in this chapter.

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The longing for sensate presence and proximity mediated through the icon finds its most palpable expression in the kiss. A “symbol of desire” (σύμβολον πόθου), as John Mauropous defines it,37 the kiss was – and still is – a normative devotional gesture in Orthodox Christianity’s cult of images.38 By no means limited to its ritual role as a mark of deference, the kiss placed upon an icon conveys a sense of human intimacy and heartfelt affection. Indeed, as Pseudo-Athanasios asserts in a passage repeatedly quoted by iconophile authors, “We, the faithful, do not kiss icons in any other way, but that we may declare our desire for the ones depicted; we do this just as we kiss our parents and friends.”39 The declaration of pothos through kissing is a powerful moment as it involves direct bodily contact. By being kissed, the icon is touched.40 As the lips reach its surface, veneration, vision, and bodily movement merge in an intensely sensuous haptic experience. Bringing the devotee into the closest possible proximity with the icon, the kiss holds a promise of breaking the opacity of representation and summoning the object of the devotee’s desire into presence. A transformative kiss of this kind is recorded in one of the Vitae of the fourteenth-century Athonite hermit Maximos Kausokalybites.41 Before he became a hermit, Maximos had cultivated a highly affective devotion to the Virgin Mary. One day, as he himself relates in a conversation with the great ascetic leader, Gregory the Sinaite, he was in a church of the Virgin imploring her with tears for the grace of inner prayer. “And when with desire I kissed [ἀσπασάμενος μετὰ πόθου] her immaculate icon, suddenly I felt within my chest and in my heart a great warmth, not burning me but filling me with refreshment and sweetness and deep compunction. From that moment, father, my heart began to say the prayer inwardly.ˮ42

37

38

39

40 41 42

Mauropous, Poems and Other Works, 12 (no. 25, v. 3). Cf. Leontios of Neapolis, Apology Against the Jews, 68.53–57. As such, it was sanctioned by the Second Council of Nicaea, along with proskynēsis and the offering of incense and candle- or lamp-light: Mansi 13, col. 377D–E. See also Uphus 2004, 322–35. For general considerations of the ritual kissing of sacred objects, see G. Parrinder in Eliade 1987, s.v. ‘Touching’, 14:581–82; Frijhoff 1992. On the gesture of kissing in Byzantium, see the brief remarks in Brubaker 2009, 48–50. Pseudo-Athanasios, Quaestiones ad Antiochum, PG 28, col. 621B: . . . οἱ πιστοὶ οὐ δι’ ἕτερόν τινα τρόπον τὰς εἰκόνας ἀσπαζόμεθα, εἰ μὴ διὰ πόθον ὧν ἐμφανίζομεν· τοῦτο ποιοῦντες, ὡς καὶ πατέρας καὶ φίλους ἀσπαζόμεθα. For the use of this passage in iconophile writing, see Macé 2013, 128–43. Cf. Symeon of Thessalonike, Letters and Other Works, 156.591–94 (no. Β3). On this figure, see PLP, no. 16810; Ware 1988. Theophanes, Life of Saint Maximos Kausokalybites, 85.11–15; trans. Ware 1988, 424, with minor modifications. For the tradition of the “prayer of the heart,” see Hausherr 1966.

Adornment, desire, and the relational self

Maximos was no ordinary icon venerator and his kiss, to be sure, carried a touch of his future sainthood. Even so, his kissing experience exemplifies how the performance of pothos in front of an icon may activate its power to mediate sacred presence and afford the earthly lover an intimate, direct access to the heavenly beloved. In what follows, we shall examine how pothos is acted out in and around the icon by artistic and textual means. We shall explore, more specifically, the personalization of sacred images through different strategies of inserting and inscribing one’s self within the space of the holy figure depicted. The phenomenon of personalization, understood in this sense, is a distinctive trait of later Byzantine icon piety and can be detected in a variety of contexts, from the customized design of small intimate panels used in private devotions to the embellishment and amplification of great charismatic images displayed in public shrines. In the last centuries of the Empire, the icon came to bear the patron’s imprint to an unprecedented degree. Our inquiry into this aspect of later Byzantine artistic and religious culture begins with the icon’s kosmetic apparatus – precious-metal revetments, bejeweled frames and appliqués, richly embroidered silk veils, and the like. In epigrammatic discourse, as we shall see, material adornment of this kind is understood as an extension of the adorner’s persona. It is a figure of the relational self par excellence.

Adornment, desire, and the relational self Kosmos is, by its very nature, relational. What defines it is the condition of parergonality, of being added, attached to the ergon, of supplementing that which is addressed and pleaded, venerated and sought. Just as the relational self may enjoy association with, but never complete unification with the Other, so is kosmos both connected to, yet distinct from, the sacred object it accompanies. It bears emphasizing that, in dedicatory epigrams on luxury icons, the gesture of adornment is not only charged with a distinctly personal valence, but also, typically, eroticized. Indeed, in this context kosmos and pothos constitute a conceptual pair. The two are juxtaposed, for instance, in the opening lines of Manuel Dishypatos’ inscription on the Freising Lukasbild (Plate 1, Figure 0.1), which read: Ψυχῆς πόθος, ἄργυρος καὶ χρυσὸς τρίτος σοὶ τῇ καθαρᾷ προσφέρονται παρθένῳ. (vv. 1–2)

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Image of the beloved The desire of my soul, and silver, and thirdly gold are offered to you, the pure Virgin.

To stress the intensity and constancy of his pothos, in the following verses, one recalls, Dishypatos draws attention to the perishable nature of the precious-metal revetment affixed to the icon; for unlike silver and gold, the desire of his soul “could not be stained nor come to an end.” Such an emphatic contrast between the dedicated piece of adornment and the pothos that spurred its creation is somewhat unusual. Dedicatory verses normally conceive of kosmos as a tangible, physical embodiment of the giver’s intense longing for the sacred recipient. Thus, when a niece of Andronikos II Palaiologos, the nun Eulogia, regained her health through the intervention of the Mother of God, she had an icon of her spiritual protectress adorned with gilded silver. Verbalizing her gratitude in dodecasyllables composed by Philes for that occasion, the convalescent nun presents her thank-offering to the Virgin as a twofold gift – a precious ornament and an embodiment of her pothos.43 οὐκοῦν δέχου τὸ σῶστρον ἐκ χρυσαργύρου, δέχου δὲ καὶ τὸν ἔνδον ἀρρήτως πόθον. (vv. 13–14) So accept this thank-offering made of gilded silver and accept, too, my desire that ineffably lies within it.

In another poem by Philes, the same conceit is articulated through the metaphors of clothing and denudement.44 In acknowledgment of the Virgin’s unflagging protection, which he has enjoyed since childhood, Alexios Makrembolites45 sheathes – and, by implication, “clothes” – her image with a precious-metal revetment declaring: κοσμῶ δὲ φαιδρῷ τὴν γραφὴν χρυσαργύρῳ καὶ παραγυμνῶ τῆς ψυχῆς μου τὸν πόθον (vv. 8–9) I adorn your picture with radiant gilded silver and strip bare the desire of my soul.

43

44

Philes, Carmina I, 77–78 (no. CLXVIII). On this epigram, see Talbot 2014, 266. On the nun Eulogia, see PLP, no. 21370. 45 Philes, Carmina I, 214–15 (no. XLI). On this figure, see PLP, no. 16352.

Adornment, desire, and the relational self

To accentuate the critical link between adornment and desire, dedicatory verses may describe the manufacturing of an icon’s kosmos as a process that takes place in the patron’s heart as much as in the artist’s workshop. Exemplary in this regard is the epigram on an icon of Saint Nicholas, which George Skylitzes, an imperial official and poet under Manuel I Komnenos, adorned with gilded silver, probably on the occasion of his wedding.46 The poem, included in the Anthologia Marciana, opens with a praise of the great miracle-worker. Even without asking for or receiving any gifts, the bishop of Myra proved to be a generous benefactor in the past. This emboldens Skylitzes to declare the following: 5

νῦν, οἶδα, μᾶλλον συμπαθέστερος γένῃ χρυσάργυρον κόσμημα σοῦ λαβὼν τύπου· ὃ τοῦ πόθου μὲν ὑπεθερμάνθη ζέσει, ἐπ᾽ ἀκμόνι δὲ πίστεως ἡδρασμένης ἐκ καρδιακῆς κατεχαλκεύθη σφύρας. Now, I know, you will be even more compassionate, having received a silver-gilt adornment for your icon, which was heated with the fervor of my desire and forged by the hammer of my heart upon the anvil of firm faith.

With this arresting poetic image that melds together craftsmanship and individual psychology, the physical and the emotional, the verses explicitly present the precious-metal revetment gifted to the saint as a material expression and, moreover, equivalent of the donor’s affective state. The notion of kosmos as materialized pothos is pushed even further in another epigram from the Anthologia Marciana. Composed at the behest of the megas droungarios Andronikos Doukas Kamateros, the epigram accompanied the dedication of a bejeweled precious-metal revetment to an icon of the Virgin and Child.47 The verses, spoken in the voice of the donor, offer an impassioned plea to the Mother of God.

46

47

Anthologia Marciana, no. 249 (B82) (full text in Spingou 2012, 87). On the epigram, see Spingou 2012, 164–65, 257. It is likely, though by no means certain, that Skylitzes himself authored the verses. On this figure and the poetic works composed by or attributed to him, see Bucossi 2009; Rhoby 2010c, 179–89. Anthologia Marciana, no. 88 (B145), with emendations by Spingou (forthcoming). Rhoby 2010c, 187, tentatively attributes the epigram to George Skylitzes. On this poem, see also Pentcheva 2010, 126–27, 178–79, 202, who mistakenly assumes that the icon was entirely made of precious substances rather than adorned with them.

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Ἂν ἐσφυρηλατεῖτο τοῦ στήθους φύσις, ἂν ἐξεμαργαροῦτο καρδίας πλάσις, ἂν στιλπνότητα εἶχον ὀφθαλμοὶ λίθων, ἐκεῖνα ταῦτα κόσμον εἰσήνεγκά σοι, δεικνὺς ὅσον τὸ φίλτρον εἰς σέ μοι, κόρη, κἂν μὴ δ’ ἐν αὐταῖς ἦν λαβεῖν τούτου κόρον. ἐπεὶ δὲ σαρκῶν ἀγνοεῖ ταῦτα κράσις, τὴν τοῦ πόθου δὲ χρή με πυρσεύειν φλόγα, ἐκ τῶν κατ’ αἴσθησίν σε κοσμῶ τιμίων ... πλὴν χρυσίον τί, μάργαροι τί καὶ λίθοι πρὸς τὴν καθαρὰν ὑπὲρ αὐγὰς ἠλίου, ἀφ’ ἧς Λόγος προῆλθεν ὠστρακωμένος ὡς ἐξελύτρου μαργαρίτης πυρφόρου, ὡς δ’ ἐξ ὄρους ἄξεστος ἐτμήθη λίθος. σὺ δ’ ἀφορῶσα πρὸς τὸ τοῦ πόθου ζέον χρυσόν με δεῖξον τῇ πυρὸς τότε κρίσει, πᾶν ἔργον ὑπόχαλκον ἐκφλέξασά μου. αἰτῶ σεβαστὸς Ἀνδρόνικος Δουκόθεν καὶ Καματηρὸς ἐκ πατρὸς γεναρχίας μέγας τὲ δρουγγάριος ἐκ τῆς ἀξίας. If my breast could be hammered, if my heart could be wrought with pearls, if my eyes had the brilliance of precious stones, I would offer these very things to you as an adornment, thereby showing the greatness of my love for you, O Maiden, although not even this would suffice to express it. However, since our bodily constitution is incapable of this, and since the flame of my desire ought to be kindled, I adorn you with what appears precious to the senses . . . But what is gold, what are pearls and precious stones in comparison to you, who are purer than the rays of the sun, from whom the Logos came forth incarnate [literally, ‘with a hard shell’], like a pearl from the shell struck by a lightning flash,48 like an unhewn stone cut from the mountain.49 Observe my ardent desire and show me to be golden at that trial by fire [i.e., Last Judgment] by burning away my every deed contaminated with copper. I, sebastos Andronikos from the clan of the Doukai, a Kamateros on my father’s side, holding the office of megas droungarios, beseech you.

48 49

On the tradition that ascribed a pearl’s formation to lightning striking a shell, see Ohly 1977. Cf. Daniel 2:34.

Adornment, desire, and the relational self

Precious materials embody affective states. Yet they do so imperfectly; for the revetment dedicated by the megas droungarios falls short of conveying the greatness of his philtron and pothos for the Virgin. In fact, the revetment is presented as a mere substitute for the donor’s body, which, were it to be offered as a gift, would itself fail to fully express the intense emotional attachment he feels toward his heavenly mistress. While the motif of the giver presenting him- or herself as a gift is not uncommon in dedicatory epigrams,50 it is quite remarkable that, in this instance, the megas droungarios imagines himself explicitly as a sumptuous kosmos worked in repoussé and studded with pearls and precious stones. This conceit is rehearsed toward the end of the epigram, in the lines vocalizing the donor’s plea for salvation. Spiritual purification is here pictured as a process of separating gold from copper, a symbol of sin, in the goldsmith’s furnace of the Mother of God, fueled, as it were, by the pothos of her devotee.51 The conceit of the donor-as-kosmos gives graphic expression to the idea of the relational self. But it also signals that an article of adornment dedicated to an icon effectively stands in for the giver. Aside from embodying the feeling of pothos, the donated kosmos operates as a physical extension of the donor into the icon’s sacred space. It allows the donor to vicariously access the desired spiritual presence and potency residing in the icon and thus to bridge the distance that separates him or her from the holy figure depicted.52 To illustrate this point, we may turn to yet another epigram preserved in the Anthologia Marciana, which commemorates an act of restitution – the return of an icon of Saint Theodore Tērōn to the city of Corinth at the order of Manuel I Komnenos.53 The epigram was probably inscribed upon a gilded revetment with which the emperor adorned the icon. The verses, addressed to the saint, relate that, 5

50

51 52

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καὶ γὰρ λαβὼν σὴν προσκυνητὴν εἰκόνα, ἀθλητὰ Τήρων, τοῦ Θεοῦ δῶρον μέγα, ναοῦ τὸ καλλώπισμα τῶν Κορινθίων, ἐπανάγει μὲν εἰς πόλιν Κωνσταντίνου,

See, e.g., Kallikles, Poems, no. 1, v. 1; Philes, Carmina I, 76 (no. CLXVI, v. 4), 209 (no. XXXIIa, vv. 1–2); Carmina II, 194 (no. CLXXII, v. 9). Cf. Anthologia Marciana, no. 250 (B83), vv. 7–10 (full text in Spingou 2012, 88). On the ability of the gift to act as a proxy for the giver and render him or her vicariously present, see Bauer 2009, esp. 59–62. Anthologia Marciana, no. 222 (B59). On this epigram, see Mathieu 1954, 6–7; Avramea 1991.

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10

ἀνάκτορα χρόνοις δε μακροῖς λαμπρύνει φέροντά σε στίλβοντα τούτων ἐν μέσῳ. νῦν δ’ ἀλλὰ κόσμῳ χρυσοειδεῖ καλλύνας Κορινθίων δίδωσιν τῇ πόλει πάλιν· πείθει γὰρ αὐτὸν συμμιγὴς πίστει πόθος πλουτεῖν σε καὶ πόρρωθεν ἐγγὺς προστάτην. Having obtained your revered icon, the ornament of the church of the Corinthians, O martyr Tērōn and great gift of God,54 he [i.e., the emperor] brought it to the city of Constantine and made splendid the imperial palace for many years, with you shining forth in the midst of it. But now, having embellished with a gold-like adornment, he gives it back to the city of the Corinthians. For his desire mixed with faith persuades him that you will be his close protector even from afar.

The Corinthian icon of Saint Theodore Tērōn is unattested in other sources, and the epigram itself does not shed much light on the exact circumstances surrounding its peregrinations to and from Constantinople. It is safe to assume, however, that its transfer to the palace was yet another instance of the imperially sponsored appropriation of sacred objects from the provinces, a practice for which Manuel I was notorious.55 Perhaps the emperor used the Norman threat to mainland Greece as an excuse for placing this highly venerated cult image in his custody. In 1147, as Niketas Choniates reports, the Normans sacked the city of Corinth taking with them, among other treasures, an icon of Saint Theodore Stratēlatēs.56 The icon of the Stratēlatēs’ saintly companion and namesake may well have been brought to the capital for safekeeping shortly afterwards.57 Be that as it may, the Corinthians had long to wait for the return of their prized “ornament” (see χρόνοις . . . μακροῖς in line 8). With a flattery typical of imperial panegyric, the anonymous poet speaks of the icon’s restitution as a “proof of the emperor’s kindness” (δεῖγμα βασιλικῆς καρδίας) in the

54 55

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This is obviously a pun on the saint’s name. In addition to the icon of the Tērōn, the emperor ordered the transfer of two other sacred objects to Constantinople: the cover of the tomb of Saint Demetrios from Thessalonike in 1149 and the so-called Stone of Unction – the stone slab upon which the dead body of Christ had been placed after the Deposition and prepared for burial – from Ephesos in 1169. See Magdalino 1993, 178–79; Avramea 1991; Drpić 2012, 668 n. 73, with references to the sources. Choniates, History, 1:76.85–92. For the joint veneration of the two Theodores at Corinth, see Gritsopoulos 1972, esp. 166; Avramea 1991, 32; Cotsonis 2003, 14; Drpić 2012, 667–69.

Adornment, desire, and the relational self

introductory line. Manuel, he assures us, sends it off wholeheartedly, obeying the paradoxical logic of pothos. Physically separated from the icon, in which Saint Theodore’s power is localized, the emperor continues to lay claim to the saint’s protective presence. And he does so because he himself is present within the icon’s sacred space through the medium of his gift – the icon’s kosmos. Instantiating the emperor’s pothos for his celestial protector, this gilded revetment is the locus at which geographic distance collapses and separation yields to reunion. In an epigram by Nikephoros Kallistou Xanthopoulos, the mediating power of kosmos is dramatized through the motif of touch.58 The verses in question accompanied a sumptuous podea dedicated to an icon of Christ Plērophorētēs by Theodore Palaiologos, marquis of Montferrat and one of the sons of Andronikos II. Painfully aware of his countless sins, Theodore is here portrayed imploring the Lord to compassionately accept his gift.

20

ὕφασμα σηρῶν ἐξ ἐμοῦ, σῶτερ, δέχου, σειραῖς πυκασθὲν τεχνικῶς χρυσοστόλοις, ὡς ἂν τὸν ἑσμὸν τῶν κακῶν μου λανθάνων καὶ κράσπεδον σὸν τοῦτο δεικνὺς ἐνθάδε πίστει μόνῃ κλέπτοιμι τὴν σωτηρίαν· καὶ γὰρ ἔχω πόρρωθεν αἱμόρρουν τρόπον. Receive from me, O Savior, a silk cloth skillfully embroidered with goldcoated threads,59 as though you were ignorant of the swarm of my evil deeds, and let this be your hem, so that I may steal salvation by faith alone; for, indeed, I bear some distant resemblance to the woman with the issue of blood.

Theodore, as already mentioned, built a church in honor of Christ Plērophorētēs as a thank-offering for a miraculous cure.60 The goldembroidered silk podea most likely adorned this foundation’s main cult image.61 In a startling gender reversal, the marquis casts himself in an image of the woman with the issue of blood, mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels, who stealthily touched the hem of Christ’s garment and was

58 59

60 61

Xanthopoulos, Poems, no. 9. The adjective χρυσόστολος, here translated as “gold-coated,” may be a reference to the actual technique of using thin strips of gold or gold wire spun or wound around a fibrous core to produce threads. See Karatzani and Rehren 2006. See Chapter 2. Note that the epigram on the podea makes direct reference to the miraculous cure: Xanthopoulos, Poems, no. 9, vv. 12–15.

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healed and saved, and – in an allusion to Christ’s words to the woman, “Your faith has saved you” (Matthew 9:22; Mark 5:34; Luke 8:48) – imagines his own salvation as the result of a pious theft. In Theodore’s devotional re-enactment of the Gospel episode, the dedicated podea has been assigned the role of Christ’s hem.62 The connection is a felicitous one; for, once suspended at the icon’s lower edge, the precious embroidery could readily be likened to an article of clothing. Indeed, for the Byzantines, such an association was obvious enough to be registered in the word podea itself, which means “skirt” or “apron.”63 Viewed through the prism of the haimorrhousa’s haptic experience, Theodore’s gesture of adorning the icon acquires a particular resonance. The podea becomes, in a sense, a carrier of his touch and an instrument whereby the sinful yet pious donor may partake of, if not steal, Christ’s power (cf. Mark 5:30; Luke 8:46) residing in the icon. Creating a point of direct, physical contact with the divine, it is a liminal object endowed with a double existence – simultaneously an ornament of Christ’s dress and a proxy standing in for the donor. The idea of mediation, contact, and touch effected through the podea would have been only strengthened, if the silk cloth, as I suspect, included a portrait of Theodore. That this may have been the case is indicated by line 22: Θεόδωρος σὸς ταῦτά σοι γόνυ κλίνει (“ these to you, your Theodore falls on his kneesˮ). This specific reference to genuflection strongly suggests that a figure of the marquis shown in the act of proskynēsis was embroidered on the cloth.64

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Cf. Anthologia Marciana, no. 70 (B126), v. 14, where the veil suspended in front of the icon of Christ at the Chalke Gate is likened to Christ’s hem. The prōtostratōr Alexios Komnenos, as we learn from this poem, was miraculously healed through physical contact with the veil. Note that both the anonymous poet and Xanthopoulos deploy the word κράσπεδον, which is used in Matthew 9:20 and Luke 8:44. See Demetrakos, s.v. ποδιά; LBG, s.v. ποδέα. See further Frolov 1938, 463. Similar phrasing is occasionally encountered in epigrams accompanying supplicatory figures in proskynēsis. Cf., e.g., the line ὁ τὸ γόνυ κλίνων σοι Βασίλειος πέλων (“I, Basil, on bended knee before you”) in a poem written above the portrait of a donor crouching at the Virgin’s feet in the Gospel lectionary of 1060/61 in the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem (Ms. Megalē Panagia 1, fol. IV); or the phrase πρὸς σὲ τὸ γόνυ κλίνας (“having bent my knee before you”) in an inscription of 1337/38 accompanying the kneeling figure of a certain George depicted underneath a fresco-icon of the Virgin Gorgoepēkoos in the church of Saint Stephen at Kastoria. See Spatharakis 1976, 57–59; BEIÜ I, no. 97. Cf. also the epigram composed by Manganeios Prodromos for a sumptuous textile hanging that the sebastokratorissa Irene dedicated to the icon of the Virgin Hagiosoritissa: Manganeios Prodromos, Poems, 35, vv. 13–14. For a representation of an icon adorned with a podea bearing a portrait, see the illustration of Stanza 23 of the Akathistos Hymn at Cozia, Wallachia, in Spatharakis 2005, 72–73, fig. 146. On the subject of portraiture, see pp. 374–95.

Epithets

Understood as a physical extension of the donor into the icon’s sacred space, the gifted kosmos constitutes a point of privileged, exclusive access to the spiritual potency localized in the icon. By embellishing and amplifying the icon, the donor stakes a claim on this potency and seeks it for him- or herself. In this regard, the dedicated articles of adornment do more than articulate one’s emotional rapport with the holy figure depicted. They effectively personalize the icon. The practice of furnishing sacred images with kosmos is only one of several strategies of personalization at work in later Byzantine icon piety. Dedicatory inscriptions, whether in verse or in prose, as well as inscribed monograms can equally serve to inflect an image and tie it to a particular individual.65 In the following pages, however, we shall explore primarily two other strategies of personalization. One concerns the addition of special names, or epithets, to likenesses of holy figures. The other involves the insertion of portraits of donors and other individuals within or in the proximity of icons’ pictorial fields.

Epithets To personalize often means to alter. In the case of the Freising Lukasbild, this operation involved a change of identity. As one recalls, Manuel Dishypatos had an older icon of the Virgin repainted and adorned with the addition of a glittering precious-metal revetment inscribed with his poetic dedication. The pre-existing likeness of the Mother of God was thus transformed into a portrait of Dishypatos’ heavenly mistress. Indeed, the inscription enameled on the frame identifies this intercessory Virgin specifically as the donor’s spiritual protectress and the object of his abiding pothos. That their relationship is individualized and intrinsically personal is further indicated by the emphasis placed upon naming. Not only is the donor’s name spelled out in the inscription – such an insistence on identity is, after all, typical of dedicatory epigrams – but the Virgin herself is named in an appended label as ἡ Ἐλπὶς τῶν Ἀπελπισμένων, or “the Hope of the Hopeless.” Lending a sense of urgency to Dishypatos’ poetic petition, this captivating moniker specifies the role in which the Virgin appears – or rather, is called upon – in the icon.

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For monograms on icons, see, e.g., Sterligova 2013, 157–69 (no. 17) (L. A. Ščennikova and I. A. Sterligova), 294–97 (no. 74) (I. A. Sterligova).

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The use of epithets in images of Christ and the Virgin can be traced from the eleventh century onward.66 They generally fall into two categories: toponymic and qualitative. The toponymic epithets derive from the names of particular places, typically celebrated shrines and pilgrimage centers. Often, their function is to identify replicas of charismatic icons housed at these sites, perhaps the best-known example being the Marian epithet Hodēgētria.67 The qualitative epithets include a range of appellations that capture specific attributes or characteristics of the Mother of God and her divine Son, or indicate their individuality.68 The epithet Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn belongs to this category, along with designations such as Eleousa (“Compassionate”), Peribleptos (“Celebrated” or “Beautiful”), Gorgoepēkoos (“Swift to Hearken”), or Nikopoios (literally, “Victory-Maker”) – all applied to the Virgin. Poetic names of this kind abound in Byzantine hymnography, which appears to have been their principal source.69 In a prayer included in the services of the Great and Small Compline, for instance, the epithet Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn appears in a series of adjectives and metaphors describing Mary’s nature and praising her role in the economy of salvation. Ἄσπιλε, ἀμόλυντε, ἄφθορε, ἄχραντε, ἁγνὴ παρθένε, θεόνυμφε δέσποινα, ἡ Θεὸν Λόγον τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τῇ παραδόξῳ σου κυήσει ἑνώσασα καὶ τὴν ἀπωσθεῖσαν φύσιν τοῦ γένους ἡμῶν τοῖς οὐρανίοις συνάψασα· ἡ τῶν ἀπηλπισμένων μόνη ἐλπὶς καί τῶν πολεμουμένων βοήθεια, ἡ ἑτοίμη ἀντίληψις τῶν εἰς σὲ προστρεχόντων, καὶ πάντων τῶν Χριστιανῶν τὸ καταφύγιον.70 O spotless, untainted, uncorrupted, undefiled, pure Virgin, God-wedded Mistress, you who united God Logos with mankind through your paradoxical birth-giving and joined the apostate nature of our race with

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67 68

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The scholarship on the subject is for the most part concerned with Marian images. The relevant studies include Likhachev 1911; Kondakov 1914–15; Grabar 1974; Grabar 1975a; Hamann-Mac Lean 1976, esp. 80–120; Grabar 1977; Babić 1985; Babić 1988; G. M. Lechner in RbK, s.v. ‘Maria’, cols. 17–114; Mutafov 2006; Tatić-Djurić 2007. For the sphragistic material, see also Seibt 1987; Hunger 1994; Koltsida-Makre 2004. On the epithets attached to images of Christ, see K. Wessel in RbK, s.v. ‘Christusbild’, cols. 1014–34; Kazamia-Tsernou 2003, 231–38; Cotsonis 2013, esp. 557, 566–68. Much of the scholarship on named images approaches epithets from the point of view of iconography. For insightful remarks on the relationship between epithets and function, see Pentcheva 2006a, esp. 75–80, 174–82. For replicas of the Hodēgētria, see especially Babić 1994. Exceptionally, some among the Marian epithets derive from a particular feature of an image, e.g., Chymeutē (“Enameled”), or from a miracle performed by the Virgin, e.g., Machairōtheisa (“Stabbed with a Knife”). See Trahoulia 2002, esp. 277; Galavaris 1959. For the epithets of the Virgin in the Byzantine and Modern Greek tradition in general, see also Koukoules 1932; Timotheos of Jerusalem 1952–56; T. A. Gritsopoulos in ΘΗΕ, s.v. ‘Μαρία. Τὰ ἐπίθετα’, 8: cols. 709–13. 70 See Eustratiades 1930. Koutloumousianos 1832, 172–73, 182.

Epithets

heaven, you who are the only hope of the hopeless and the help of the struggling, the ready succor of those who hasten to you, and the refuge of all Christians.

The Great Paraklētikos Kanōn, to give another example, also invokes Mary as “the hope of the hopeless.” Σὲ τὴν ἁγνήν, σὲ τὴν παρθένον καὶ ἄσπιλον, μόνην φέρω, τεῖχος ἀπροσμάχητον, καταφυγήν, σκέπην κραταιάν, ὅπλισμα σωτηρίας, μή με παρίδῃς τὸν ἄσωτον, ἐλπὶς ἀπελπισμένων, ἀσθενῶν συμμαχία, θλιβομένων χαρὰ καὶ ἀντίληψις.71 Only you, pure one, you, spotless Virgin, I have, O impregnable fortress, refuge, mighty shelter, weapon of salvation. Do not disregard me, wretched one, O hope of the hopeless, ally of the ailing, joy and succor of the afflicted.

Hymnographic texts such as these provided a veritable catalogue of poetic names that could be used as inscriptions on sacred images. In view of the central role played by the icon in later Byzantine devotional culture, it is no coincidence that the same period witnessed an unparalleled proliferation of epithets. They now begin to appear not only in portrayals of Christ and the Virgin, but also in those of lesser figures in the celestial hierarchy. Saint Nicholas, for instance, may be labeled Thermos Prostatēs (“Fervent Protector”),72 Saint Panteleimon Sterrhos Athlētēs (“Steadfast Athlete”),73 while the great martyr George may be accompanied by a variety of epithets ranging from qualitative, such as Gorgos (“Swift”), to toponymic, such as Diasoritēs (“of Dios Hieron” in Lydia) or Phatrianos (“of Phatre” in Paphlagonia).74 Equally characteristic of the contemporary preoccupation with naming is the practice of adding epithets to older images. It was sometime in the late Byzantine period that the appellation Philanthrōpos (“Lover of Mankind”) – now barely legible – was inscribed in red, along with the sigla ΙC ΧC (“Jesus Christ”), on the celebrated sixthcentury icon of Christ at Sinai (Figure 7.1).75 This vogue for named images, I would argue, represents yet another facet of the later Byzantine culture of adornment. In post-iconoclastic art, 71 72

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Paraklētikos Kanōn, PG 140, col. 773C–D. The same epithet recurs in ibid., col. 777A. The epithet was especially common in Kastorian painting. See Acheimastou-Potamianou 1988, cat. no. 38 (Th. Papazotos); Mauropoulou-Tsioume and Tampake 2006, esp. 104–5, 110–11. See, e.g., Kypraiou 1986, cat. no. 91 (D. D. Triantaphyllopoulos). For Gorgos, see Tsolakes 1979, 479–83; Kissas 2004, 86–101; Katsaros 2013. For Diasoritēs, see Demetrokalles 2005 with further bibliography. For Phatrianos, see, e.g., Skampabias and Chatzedake 2007, 106 (no. 99) (K. Skampabias). Weitzmann 1976, no. B.1.

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Figure 7.1 Icon of Christ, sixth century with thirteenth-century(?) retouching, Saint Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai (photo: Kharbine-Tapabor / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)

Epithets

one should recall, images of holy figures are almost invariably accompanied by identifying labels such as the abbreviated nomina sacra ΙC ΧC and ΜΡ ΘΥ in the case of Christ and the Virgin, respectively, or, in depictions of saints, the label ὁ ἅγιος (“the saint”) followed by a personal name.76 In iconophile theory, such inscriptions were not understood merely as a way of establishing the identity of the person depicted or authenticating the image as a true likeness. Naming was, in fact, central to the very definition of sacred portraiture. Since the image and the one portrayed in it share not only the same form, but also the same name, the truthfulness of representation was seen to reside in homonymy as much as it does in formal resemblance. Name and form, in other words, constitute complementary means of binding the image to its prototype.77 Poetic and toponymic monikers, however, are quite different from proper names, and this kind of theological reasoning could hardly justify, let alone mandate, their use. Unlike proper names, they essentially function as modifying adjectives that could be removed without compromising the image’s referentiality – a fact that may well explain why the application of additional names to icons was always an exception rather than the norm. It is precisely by virtue of their adjectival force that epithets may be understood in terms of adornment. Displayed in close proximity to likenesses of holy figures, epithets are essentially textual supplements that, depending on their content, praise or appeal to the persons depicted, make shorthand references to liturgy and sacred topography, as well as to other images, and compress dogmatic concepts into vivid, memorable phrases. In doing so, they enrich and 76

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On the use of identifying inscriptions on sacred images, see Maguire 1996a, esp. 142–45; Kiilerich 2003; Dagron 2007, esp. 67–70; Russo 2010, 129–34; Maguire 2011. See also Bentchev 2001. For the Marian sigla ΜΡ ΘΥ, see Kalavrezou 1990. Emblematic of the intimate link between images and inscriptions in medieval Byzantium is the story of an acheiropoiēton depicting the Mother of God, which appeared in a church near Lydda in Palestine appropriately accompanied by an identifying label. The story is included in the florilegium of narratives about miracle-working icons incorporated in the so-called Letter of the Three Patriarchs to the iconoclast emperor Theophilos: Munitiz et al. 1997, 39–41. The following statement from the Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea is characteristic: ἡ εἰκὼν οὐ κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν τῷ πρωτοτύπῳ ἔοικεν, ἢ μόνον κατὰ τὸ ὄνομα καὶ κατὰ τὴν θέσιν τῶν χαρακτηριζομένων μελῶν (“The icon resembles the prototype, not with regard to the essence, but only with regard to the name and to the position of the members which can be characterized”) (Mansi 13, col. 244B; trans. Sahas 1986, 77). For the notion of homonymy in iconophile theory and its Aristotelian background, see Parry 1996, 52–63; Boston 2003. While the theological argument concerning the importance of names most likely accounts for the consistent use of identifying inscriptions in sacred images after Iconoclasm, it is important to note that the practice of naming was well established before the onset of the iconoclastic controversy. As Cotsonis 2005, esp. 489–92, has pointed out, pre-iconoclastic images of saints on seals are almost invariably labeled.

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amplify the images to which they are attached, and hence may be construed as a form of verbal kosmos. The kosmetic capacity of epithets is often highlighted through their elaborate visual presentation. A fine example of this practice is provided by an icon of the Mother of God (Figure 7.2) from a set of five icons, datable to c. 1370, formerly displayed on the templon screen of the monastic church of Saint Demetrios at Sušica near Skopje.78 The majestic Virgin holding the Infant Jesus, toward whom she gestures with her right hand, while the diminutive figures of the archangels Michael and Gabriel hover above, bears the fairly common epithet Hodēgētria. Painted in red, like other identifying labels in the icon, the epithet floats against an expanse of warm ocher above the Virgin’s right shoulder (Figure 7.3).79 The elegant accentuated capital letters are not arranged in linear fashion, but rather assume the shape of a cross, with the feminine article hē and the final alpha forming its vertical arm. This cross made of letters is, moreover, positioned in such a way that it mirrors the cross inscribed in the Child’s nimbus. Enhancing the visual appeal of the epithet are a few decorative features. Note the variation in the thickness of the strokes and the size of the letters or the addition of a superfluous abbreviation mark stretched above the fully spelled-out central portion of the horizontal arm of the cross. Equally noteworthy is the ligature consisting of a towering umbrellalike tau, the vertical stroke of which flows outward midway to trace the loop of a rhō. None of these elements of visual presentation, however, compromises the legibility of the epithet in the slightest. Even worshippers equipped with basic literacy would have realized that the icon in front of them was a replica of the great Hodēgētria, the palladium of the Empire and the icon of all icons.80 To assess how the Byzantines responded to epithets, it is instructive to revisit a well-known episode recorded in Sylvester Syropoulos’ account of the Council of Ferrara–Florence in 1438–39, convoked to put an end to the schism between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. When, at an

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On these icons, see Miljković-Pepek 2001, with untenable conclusions regarding the date and provenance of the set. See also Popovska-Korobar 2004, 213–16 (nos. 6–10). Marković 2013, 163, dates the icons to the period between 1365 and 1377. The other four icons from the set also show figures accompanied by calligraphically lettered epithets. Christ is labeled Παντοκράτωρ καὶ Ζωοδότης (“All-Sovereign and Life-Giver”), Saint John the Baptist ὁ Κῆρυξ τῆς Μετανοίας Κωνσταντινουπόλεως Πέτρας (“The Herald of Repentance of Constantinople’s Petra”), Saint Demetrios Ἐλεήμων (“Merciful”), and the archangel Michael Φοβερὸς Φύλαξ (“Fearsome Guardian”). On the icon of the Hodēgētria, see the references cited in Chapter 2, n. 36.

Epithets

Figure 7.2 Icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, c. 1370, Museum of Macedonia, Skopje (photo: Zoran Letra)

early stage in the negotiations, Joseph II, patriarch of Constantinople, requested from the pope permission to use a church in Ferrara to celebrate Easter services, some members of the Byzantine delegation strongly disapproved of the patriarch’s move. The most vocal among the critics was Gregory, the pneumatikos of the emperor John VIII Palaiologos, who

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Figure 7.3 Epithet ἡ Ὁδηγήτρια, detail of the icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria, c. 1370, Museum of Macedonia, Skopje (photo: Zoran Letra)

insisted that to worship in a Latin church was tantamount to endorsing union with the papacy. Voicing his concerns, Gregory specifically remarked on how alien Western religious art appeared to him. When I enter a Latin church, I do not venerate any of the saints that are there because I do not recognize any of them. At the most, I may recognize Christ, but I do not venerate him either, since I do not know in what terms he is inscribed [οὐκ οἶδα πῶς ἐπιγράφεται]. So I make the sign of the cross and I venerate this sign that I have made myself, and not anything that I see there.81

What perplexed Gregory in Western images of Christ, the only sacred personage he was able to identify with any certainty, was the meaning of the words inscribed upon them, which he could not read because, one suspects, he did not know Latin. But what kind of inscriptions is Gregory

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Syropoulos, Memoirs, 250.24–28: Ἐγὼ ὅτε εἰς ναὸν εἰσέλθω Λατίνων, οὐ προσκυνῶ τινα τῶν ἐκεῖσε ἁγίων, ἐπεὶ οὐδὲ γνωρίζω τινά· τὸν Χριστὸν ἴσως μόνον γνωρίζω, ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἐκεῖνον προσκυνῶ · διότι οὐκ οἶδα πῶς ἐπιγράφεται, ἀλλὰ ποιῶ τὸν σταυρόν μου καὶ προσκυνῶ. τὸν σταυρὸν οὖν, ὃν αὐτὸς ποιῶ, προσκυνῶ καὶ οὐχ ἕτερόν τι τῶν ἐκεῖσε θεωρουμένων μοι. Trans. Mango 1972, 254, with minor modifications. The interpretation of Gregory’s statement advanced here differs from the ones proposed in earlier scholarship. For a recent reading, with references to further bibliography, see Carr 2014.

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referring to exactly? These could hardly be simple identifying labels spelling out the name of the figure depicted, since he was evidently able to recognize Christ without such aids. The only other possibility is that he alludes to what, to his mind, would have been Latin equivalents of the Christological epithets in Greek with which he was undoubtedly familiar from contemporary Byzantine icons. In this respect, it is worth noting that the verb ἐπιγράφω (“to write upon” or “inscribe”), which occurs in the phrase, “I do not know in what terms he is inscribed,” can be used specifically in reference to inscribed epithets.82 Understood in this sense, then, what Gregory is saying is that, even though he is able to identify a Western image of Christ, he prefers not to venerate it, because he does not know what particular aspect of Christ is emphasized in the image – something that an inscribed epithet would make plain – and hence, he cannot determine the correct way to approach it. Of course, the remarks of the distrustful pneumatikos cannot be taken at face value. Considering the highly polemical context in which it was pronounced, his statement was primarily concerned with stressing the insurmountable differences between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. It is not so much evidence for Byzantine attitudes toward Western religious imagery as it is a testament to deep-seated anti-unionist sentiments harbored by many, if not most, of Gregory’s compatriots.83 Yet, exaggerated as it may be, Gregory’s reaction to portrayals of Christ labeled in Latin would have been pointless, were it not predicated upon an understanding of the function of epithets shared by his interlocutors. It suggests that written appellations could play a significant role in guiding Byzantine viewers – or at least, those literate among them – in their responses to devotional images. Their purpose was to provide what Roland Barthes called “anchorage” in his analysis of the semiotic function of linguistic messages attached to visual

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See, e.g., Papazoglou 1985, 372 (Εἰς τὴν θεομήτορα ἑστῶσαν ἐν λίθῳ, ἐπεγέγραπτο δὲ Πηγή). Cf. Philes, Carmina I, 318 (no. CXXVII) (Εἰς εἰκόνα τοῦ σωτῆρος Χριστοῦ, οὗ ἡ ἐπιγραφὴ συμπαθής); Delehaye 1933, 266 (ἡ ἐπιγραφὴ ἡ ἔν τισιν εὑρισκομένη τῶν σεπτῶν εἰκόνων Χριστοῦ ἡ ὁ ἀντιφωνητής ). See also LBG, s.v. ἐπιγράφω. See Zeitler 1994, 680–81. It is important to bear in mind that Gregory – whose character Syropoulos tellingly describes as ποικίλον τε καὶ πολύτροπον (“changeable and crafty”) (Memoirs, 344.9) – often changed his position on the question of the union during the council, only to subscribe to its decisions in the end arguing that, regardless of the fate of the union, whoever took part in the council would be anathematized. Subsequently elected to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople as Gregory III, he ended his career as a pro-unionist émigré at the papal court in Rome. On Gregory and his bearing during the council, see Varnalides 2001, esp. 25–48; Gounarides 2001, 115–18. See also PLP, no. 4591.

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representations.84 The epithet served to delimit the range of possible significations inherent in the image and to anchor its meaning. It specified who exactly was depicted and thus could help the viewer calibrate his or her devotional stance when approaching the image. If the epithet acted as a signpost for the viewer, it could also function as a means of inflecting the image and customizing it to suit a specific purpose. An illuminated Psalter in Oxford (Christ Church, Ms. gr. 61) provides a good example of this practice.85 Shortly after its completion in 1391, the Psalter – initially without figural decoration – was adorned with a set of full-page miniatures. Two of these, laid out on the facing folios 102v and 103r, depict a truly remarkable scene of presentation: the Virgin, on the left, pulls a monk out of a sarcophagus and presents him to the enthroned Christ, shown on the right (Figures 7.4 and 7.5). A damaged inscription in the lower frame of the miniature on the left folio gives the monk’s family name: Kaloeidas.86 Perhaps the Psalter’s original owner, he must have already been dead by the time the manuscript received its figural decoration. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why he is depicted rising from a sarcophagus.87 Forming, as it were, a kind of devotional diptych in book format, the two miniatures articulate a bold pictorial plea for the salvation of Kaloeidas’ soul. Visually, the scene is clearly modeled after the iconography of the Anastasis, in which Christ typically grasps Adam by his wrist and pulls him out of his tomb.88 Here the role of resurrecting the dead monk is assigned to the Mother of God, the most potent celestial intercessor, who is called upon to plead Kaloeidas’ case before Christ. Notice her left hand raised in a gesture of petition. Seated on his throne, the Heavenly Judge favorably responds to her intercession with a gesture of blessing; for, as the epithet inscribed next to him indicates, he is Ἐλεήμων, or “Merciful.”89 The Virgin, on the other hand, is labeled Ὀξεῖα Ἀντίληψις, or “Swift Succor.” Occasionally encountered in Byzantine hymnography and other sources, this rather rare epithet points to Mary’s willingness to 84 85 86

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Barthes 1964, esp. 44–45. On this manuscript, see Vokotopoulos 1975–76; Hutter 1977–97, 4.1:148–53 (no. 52). The inscription reads: [. . .]ς μοναχός ἐστιν ὁ ἐνταῦθα δεόμενος καὶ Καλοειδᾶς κεκλημένος (“the one who is praying here is a [. . .] monk by the name of Kaloeidas”). The Kaloeidas family is well attested in the sources. See the editor’s commentary in Chortasmenos, Works, 119–20. As rightly pointed out by Parpulov 2004, 157. Galavaris 1977 has argued that the scene’s unique iconography is inspired by the apocryphal accounts of the Virgin’s descent into Limbo. See also Semoglou 2003, esp. 80–81; Yota 2012, 284–85. For further occurrences of this relatively common epithet in Byzantine depictions of Christ, see Vokotopoulos 1975–76, 189.

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hear and respond promptly to the prayers of her devotees.90 The appellation is well chosen, not least because it matches admirably the miniature’s iconography. The scene’s dramatic tenor and pervading sense of urgency are nicely captured by the adjective oxys, meaning “swift,” but also “sharp” or “keen.” Still more tellingly, the word antilēpsis – which, in addition to “succor,” also means “grasp” or “laying hold of” – clearly alludes to the Virgin’s act of seizing the monk’s hand in order to rescue him from death, corruption, and darkness, and draw him into the luminous presence of Christ, who, as the words written in the open book on his lap proclaim, is “the light of the world” (John 8:12). Working in tandem with iconography, the epithets attached to the figures of the Virgin and Christ serve to customize the image to best respond to the overriding concern with the fate of Kaloeidas’ soul in the afterlife, and in doing so, they help create an extraordinary vision of personal salvation. In the miniatures of the Oxford Psalter, the role of naming is akin to that of invocation. This, I would argue, is precisely how qualitative epithets on images of holy figures were meant to function. By pointing to a particular trait or attribute of the person depicted, the inscribed name specifies the role in which that person is called upon to appear and act through the medium of his or her image. To name in this instance means not simply to identify but to address, appeal to, petition, and, indeed, conjure. To flesh out this performative force of epithets, it is instructive to take a brief look at Theodore II Laskaris’ oration On Divine Names, a short theological essay modeled after the celebrated treatise of the same title composed by Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite. In the introductory part of the oration, following Pseudo-Dionysios, Theodore stresses that God is both polyonymous and anonymous. Due to his absolute transcendence, God is beyond all names; yet, inasmuch as he reveals himself to created beings, he can be named. Divine names do not convey the divine essence, which is emphatically beyond circumscription, but they are neither arbitrary, nor meaningless. This is why the emperor instructs his readers to search for deeper significance in the names assigned to the divinity, arguing that “the meaning of the names is, in some sense, divine [ἔχει . . . ἑτέραν τινὰ θειότητα]; for the names are not applied arbitrarily or by chance, but indicate

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See, e.g., Great Paraklētikos Kanōn, PG 140, col. 776C; Christopher Mitylenaios, Metrical Calendars, 1:365.172; Mauropous, Eight Paraklētikoi Kanones, 156.89–90 (no. 7); and the alphabetic hymn to the Virgin by Nikephoros Kallistou Xanthopoulos published in Jugie 1929, 379. Vokotopoulos 1975–76, 190, notes only one other instance of the use of this epithet in Byzantine art.

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Figure 7.4 Virgin Oxeia Antilēpsis pulling the monk Kaloeidas out of a sarcophagus, Psalter, Ms. gr. 61, fol. 102v, shortly after 1391, Christ Church, Oxford (photo: Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford)

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Figure 7.5 Christ Eleēmōn, Psalter, Ms. gr. 61, fol. 103r, shortly after 1391, Christ Church, Oxford (photo: Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford)

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operations [ἐνεργείας] that reveal the magnificence of God.”91 Underpinning Theodore’s – as well as Pseudo-Dionysios’ – understanding of divine names is a “naturalist” theory of language, formulated by the Stoics and subsequently developed and reworked in Neoplatonism, which posits an ontological connection between words and the things they signify.92 Words are not conventional signs, arbitrarily attached to their referents, and the way in which they operate cannot be reduced to mere linguistic representation. Rather, language has an intrinsic relation to reality. Far from being simply labels for the entities we encounter in the world, words express the nature of things and somehow partake of it. Applied to divine names, this conceptualization of language has important implications. While in his essence God remains hidden, inaccessible to language, his potency mysteriously inheres in the designations and attributes we use to describe his revelatory selfmanifestations, or – as Theodore puts it – his energeiai. Accordingly, divine names are not appellations of an ordinary kind, but words imbued with sanctity and filled with power. Theodore’s views are consonant in this regard with those put forth by the Areopagite. In one important aspect, however, the emperor departs from his patristic model. Unlike Pseudo-Dionysios who limits his discussion to the names that God himself revealed in the Scriptures, the emperor’s onomasticon is far more inclusive. His oration ends with a list of over seven hundred appellations culled, by his own admission, “from every written source, both sacred and secular.”93 What is notable is that some of the names in this list are also encountered in Byzantine and post-Byzantine images of Christ. These include such qualitative epithets as Glykys (“Sweet”), Eleēmōn (“Merciful”), Krataios (“Mighty”), Psychosōstēs (“Savior of Souls”), and Hyperagathos (“Supremely Good”), to name but a few.94 Although the emperor makes no reference to divine names found in mosaics, frescoes, and panel paintings, his argumentation is evidently applicable to epithets attached to images of Christ. Like other appellations with which we address and praise the divinity, Christological epithets are sacred in character. They, too, may be said to bear a trace of the Lord’s might, splendor, and grace.

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Theodore II Laskaris, On Divine Names, 100.42–44: ἔχει δὲ ἡ τῶν ὀνομάτων σημασία, ἑτέραν τινὰ θειότητα· οὐ γὰρ ἁπλῶς καὶ τυχόντως τὰ ὀνόματα ἔγκεινται, ἀλλ’ ἐνεργείας ὑποδηλοῦσιν ὑποδεικτικὰς τῆς θείας μεγαλειότητος. Struck 2004, passim. See also Dillon 1985; Janowitz 2002, 33–43. For the power attached to words in the medieval West, see Delaurenti 2007. Theodore II Laskaris, On Divine Names, 100.30–31: ἐκ πάσης γραφικῆς πηγῆς, τῆς ἐντός τε καὶ τῆς ἐκτός; the list is at 100.49–108.273. Surprisingly enough, an epithet as ubiquitous as Pantokratōr is absent from the list.

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The theology of divine names provides a conceptual framework for elucidating the way in which qualitative epithets in images of sacred personages in general were meant to operate. Insofar as the epithet carries some of the spiritual potency of the holy figure depicted, it functions as a medium through which that potency may be activated. By being named, the holy figure is invoked, appealed to, and summoned to act in a particular capacity.95 It is worth recalling in this connection that, when qualitative epithets occur in liturgical poetry, they are typically encountered in praises and supplications addressed directly to the holy figure that is being honored. The same holds true for epigrams. Consider, for instance, the quatrain that Constantine Amanteianos composed to accompany a silver-gilt revetment with which Nikephoros Kanabes adorned an icon of the Virgin Amolyntos (“Undefiled”).96 In this poem, the donor not only addresses Mary by her epithet, but his entire petition revolves around it. Ἐκτὸς μολυσμοῦ καὶ φθορᾶς ἔργων δίχα τὸν δημιουργὸν ἀποτίκτεις, παρθένε· τί γοῦν; μολυσμοῦ καὶ φθορᾶς, αἰτῶ, ῥύου Νικηφόρον σόν, ἀμόλυντε, Κανάβην. You, Virgin, give birth to the Creator of everything, except for defilement and corruption. What then? I beg you, O undefiled one, to deliver your Nikephoros Kanabes from defilement and corruption.

In conceiving Christ, Mary preserved her virginity, which is why she is hailed as “undefiled.”97 Her virginal motherhood raised her above

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This line of reasoning could be extended to toponymic epithets as well. Thus it could be argued that the inscription Hodēgētria, for instance, serves not only to mark a copy of the famed Constantinopolitan original, but also to conjure the potency of the Virgin as it manifested itself in this charismatic icon or, more generally, at the site of the monastery tōn Hodēgōn. Bassi 1898, no. V. The title of the quatrain reads: στίχοι τοῦ Ἀμαντειανοῦ εἰς εἰκόνα τῆς ὑπεραγίας δεσποίνης ἡμῶν Θεοτόκου καὶ ἐπικεκλημένης ἀμολύντου ἔχουσαν ἀργυροδιάχρυσον κόσμον, ὃν οἰκείᾳ δαπάνῃ κατεσκεύασεν ἐν τῇ Πελοποννήσῳ κυρὸς Νικηφόρος ὁ Κανάβης (“Verses by Amanteianos on an icon of our most-holy Lady Theotokos, named Amolyntos, which is furnished with a silver-gilt kosmos that Lord Nikephoros Kanabes fashioned at his own expense in the Peloponnese”). The editor mistakenly reads κόσμον as βωμόν. On Nikephoros Kanabes, see Chapter 5. See, e.g., Sophronios of Jerusalem, Epistola synodica, PG 87.3, col. 3161B. The epithet is documented in post-Byzantine representations of the Virgin, where it often accompanies iconographies that thematize the Passion of Christ. See Chatzedakes 1977, 68 (no. 16); Baltogianne 1994, 153, 162, and nos. 51, 65; Piatnitsky, Baddeley, and Brunner 2000, cat. no. B165 (Y. Piatnitsky); Drandaki 2002, 120–22 (no. 25). A church dedicated to the Virgin Amolyntos existed in late Byzantine Constantinople. See Janin 1969, 157.

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fallen – and, hence, defiled – humanity and accorded her the power to intercede with the Creator for the salvation of those enslaved to sin and moral corruption. It is in this capacity, as the undefiled protectress, that she is invoked to intervene on behalf of Kanabes, her spiritual client, and save him. The vocal delivery of the dedicatory verses would have only strengthened the performative force of the inscribed epithet. For in the course of reciting the epigram, the reader would utter the vocative ἀμόλυντε (“O undefiled one!”) and thus activate, as it were, the written appellation by turning it into an invocation. The fact that later Byzantine epigrams on icons quite often refer to, or playfully engage with, epithets is in and of itself indicative of the prominence enjoyed by named images in the devotional culture of the period. The inscribed name and the accompanying verses represent two forms of textual intervention into the pictorial space of the icon that could supplement and reinforce each other. If the act of naming opened up a space for inflecting the icon, the epigram allowed for the poetic amplification and dramatization of the name’s semantic charge. To return to Barthes’ terminology, the function of the epigram may be construed as that of “relay.”98 Unlike the epithet, which serves to keep in check the polysemy of the image and thus to “anchor” its meaning, the epigram stands in a complementary relationship to the image in the sense that the inscribed verses and visual forms work in concert to articulate an overall message. The potential for interplay between the epithet and the epigram is elegantly exploited by Philes in a poem commissioned by Maria, wife of the prōtostratōr Glabas, for an icon of the Virgin Kecharitōmenē, or “Full of Grace,” an appellation borrowed from the archangel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary at the Annunciation related in Luke 1:28.99 Toying with different shades of meaning of the word charis, which is at the root of the Virgin’s epithet, Philes interweaves the themes of salvation history, biblical typology, image-making, and gift-giving in the introductory verses of the poem. 98 99

Barthes 1964, 45. Philes, Carmina I, 75–76 (no. CLXV). The preceding poem in E. Miller’s edition (no. CLXIV) was composed for the same commission. On this alternative version, see pp. 379–81. Although neither of the titles mentions the epithet, in both poems Maria’s petition is addressed specifically to the Virgin Kecharitōmenē, which indicates that this appellation was indeed inscribed upon the icon. It should be noted that the epithet Kecharitōmenē is not commonly encountered in the visual record. Rare examples from the Byzantine era include a fresco-icon in the church of the Virgin tou Arakos at Lagoudera, Cyprus, dated to 1192, and a late thirteenthcentury icon housed in the Xenophon monastery on Mount Athos. See Nicolaïdès 1996, 4–5, 110–11; Kyriakoudes et al. 1998, 76–78.

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Ἐχρῆν μὲν ἡμᾶς ἐξ ὑλῶν ὑπερτίμων τὸν σόν, Μαριάμ, ζωγραφεῖν θεῖον τύπον. τοὺς γὰρ τύπους λύσασα τοῦ πάλαι νόμου, καὶ τὰς ἀμυδρὰς καὶ σκιώδεις ἐμφάσεις, ὅ φασι γυμνὴν ἀντιδίδως τὴν χάριν. ἀλλ’ ἡ νοητὴ τῆς ψυχῆς σου φαιδρότης ὑλῶν ὁρατῶν ἐκνικᾷ πᾶσαν χάριν. πλὴν εἴπερ ἐξῆν ζωγραφεῖν κατὰ μέρος100 καὶ τὰς πρὸς ἡμᾶς δωρεὰς σὰς ἐνθάδε, χάριν ἂν εἶχον ταῖς γραφαῖς καὶ τοῖς τύποις. νυνὶ δὲ νικᾷ καὶ τὸ τῆς τέχνης μέτρον ἡ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἄφθονος χορηγία. We should have depicted your divine form, Mary, with supremely precious materials. For having dissolved the forms of the Old Law and its obscure and shadowy reflections, you give in their place, as it is said, unveiled grace.101 But the spiritual splendor of your soul surpasses all beauty of physical materials. And if, indeed, it were possible to partially depict your gifts to us here as well, I would have shown my gratitude through pictures102 and forms. But your profuse bestowal of blessings surpasses the capacity of art.

The verses celebrate Mary’s role in the history of salvation. By giving birth to Christ, the Virgin “full of grace” put an end to the Old Testament era with its murky foreshadowings of events to come and ushered in the age of unveiled – or, literally, “naked” – grace (charis). Drawing upon the analogy between biblical typology and painting,103 the poet juxtaposes the Old Testament typoi, meaning “forms” or “images,” but also “prefigurations,” with Mary’s divine typos – her icon, which is the subject of the epigram. Even if this image were wrought with the most precious of earthly substances, their beauty (charis) would be no match for the splendor of Mary’s soul. Neither is the art of painting capable of adequately expressing the donor’s gratitude (charis) and furnishing a worthy repayment for the benefactions the Virgin bestowed upon her. These, as the following lines 100

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The published text reads κατὰ μέλος, but κατὰ μέρος is a better reading. See Philes, Carmina I, 75 n. 6. The source of this phrase could be John Chrysostom, In principium Actorum, PG 51, col. 73: ἐξῆλθε γυμνὸς τῶν ὅπλων, ἵνα φανῇ γυμνὴ ἡ τοῦ Θεοῦ χάρις (“He [i.e., David] went out bare of weapons, so that the grace of God may appear bare”). Implicitly, γραφαί here could also denote “writings” or “texts,” and hence allude to the epigram itself. On which, see Sheerin 1986; Kessler 1993.

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of the epigram specify, include Maria’s wealth, her marriage to a noble and intelligent man, as well as the blessing of childbirth. In the end, she can do nothing but give herself as a thank-offering and ask for the Virgin’s protection in this life and in the life to come. 25

σὺ γοῦν μόνη σκέποις με σὺν τῷ συζύγῳ, σὺ καὶ συνάπτοις εἰς Ἐδὲμ θείους τόπους. ἡ πρωτοστρατόρισσα ταῦτα Μαρία Κομνηνοφυὴς τῇ κεχαριτωμένῃ. May you alone protect me and my husband, and may you also unite us in the divine places of Eden. The prōtostratorissa Maria of the lineage of the Komnenoi these to the One Full of Grace.

In another epigram by Philes, penned for an icon of Christ Sympathēs (“Compassionate” or “Sympathetic”) in the possession of the pinkernēs Alexios Doukas Philanthropenos, the epithet figures not only as a form of written invocation, but more specifically, as a way of creating a copy of an original inscribed with the same appellation.104

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Ἔδειξας οἷς εἴρηκας εἰς τὰς ἐμφάσεις ὡς συμπαθὴς εἶ· τοῦτο γὰρ δή σοι φύσις· καὶ τὴν ἐμὴν σύζυγον ἐστειρωμένην καὶ φιλτάτου σαίνοντος ἐστερημένην, ὡς δεσπότης εὔσπλαγχνος οἰκτείρας, Λόγε, ἡμῖν σεαυτὸν εἰκονισμένον δίδως· ὕπαρ γὰρ ἦν ἄντικρυς, οὐκ ὄναρ τόδε, καθὼς ἐπιστὰς εἶδον αὐτὸς τὸν τύπον, ἐφ’ οὗπερ ἦν καὶ τοῦτο, Συμπαθὴς ὅδε. λαβόντες οὐκοῦν ἀσφαλεῖς τὰς ἐγγύας ἐγγράφομέν σου δεῦρο τὸν θεῖον τύπον, ὡς τῆς πρὶν ἀντίμιμον εἰκονουργίας· σὺ δ’ ὡς ἀληθὴς καὶ θεὸς καὶ δεσπότης, καὶ συμπαθὴς τὴν φύσιν ὡς ἐπεγράφης, δὸς τέκνον ἡμῖν κατὰ τὸ πρόσταγμά σου τὴν τοῦ γένους αὔξησιν ἀθροῦν τῷ χρόνῳ· τίκτοι γὰρ ἂν καὶ λίθος εἰ μόνον θέλεις. Φιλανθρωπηνὸς ταῦτα σὸς λάτρις Δούκας.

Philes, Carmina I, 318–19 (no. CXXVII). The title reads: Εἰς εἰκόνα τοῦ σωτῆρος Χριστοῦ, οὗ ἡ ἐπιγραφὴ συμπαθής (“On an icon of Christ the Savior with the inscription Sympathēs”). On Alexios Doukas Philanthropenos, see Chapter 1.

Epithets You showed with what you said, when you appeared , how compassionate you are – for this, indeed, is your nature – and taking pity on my barren wife, deprived of a child to gladden her, like a caring master, O Logos, you give yourself to us in a painting. For it was truly a vision, not a dream, when, standing before it, I myself gazed at your image, upon which was also this here, Sympathēs. Therefore, having received sure pledges, we inscribe your divine image here in imitation of the previous depiction. And you, as the true God and Lord, compassionate in nature, just like you were inscribed, give us a child according to your commandment that our race should increase over time;105 for even a stone could bear a child, if you only wish it.106 Philanthropenos Doukas, your servant, these .

The epigram relates a rather peculiar story, which may be reconstructed as follows. While he was praying in front of an icon of Christ Sympathēs, Philanthropenos had a vision: the image came to life, as it were, before his own eyes and spoke to him, announcing that he and his wife would conceive a child. In response to this vision, Philanthropenos had another icon of Christ inscribed with the epithet Sympathēs and also with the present epigram commissioned from Philes to commemorate the miraculous occurrence and vocalize the couple’s plea to the Lord.107 Through such an alteration, the latter icon was transformed into a copy of the former. Interestingly, copying in this instance did not involve the reproduction of the original’s formal features, but rather the simple yet potent gesture of naming, the purpose of which was to invoke the divine power that made itself manifest in the original. Aimed at activating Christ’s compassion on behalf of the childless couple, the inscribed epithet inflected the function and meaning of the icon and charged it with a distinctly personal valence. While Sympathēs is a designation occasionally applied to Christ in Byzantine literature,108 Philes’ epigram is, to my knowledge, the sole piece

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106 Cf. Genesis 1:28. Cf. Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8. The following epigram in E. Miller’s edition of Philes (Carmina I, 319 [no. CXXVIII]) was almost certainly composed on behalf of Philanthropenos’ wife to be inscribed upon an icon of the Virgin, to whom she prayed for a child. For the possibility that the two icons formed a diptych, see Talbot 2014, 267. For examples from hymnography and patristic texts, see, e.g., Romanos the Melode, Hymns, 2:272.8 (no.17), 3:356.7 (no. 31); Pseudo-Athanasios, Quaestiones in scripturam sacram, PG 28, col. 733C; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses ad illuminandos, 1:266 (no. 10); John of Damascus, Expositio fidei 62.9; and the above-cited prayer included in the services of the Great and Small Compline: Koutloumousianos 1832, 173, 182.

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of evidence attesting to its use in devotional images. Members of the late Byzantine elite appear to have been quite fond of such unusual and even arcane epithets. The marquis Theodore Palaiologos, as we have seen, cultivated a special devotion to a Christ surnamed Plērophorētēs, literally meaning the “One Who Fulfills” or the “One Who Gives Assurance.” I am aware of only one example of the use of this peculiar appellation, the source of which is yet to be identified, in the surviving visual record. It turns up in the frame of a fourteenth-century icon in the treasury of the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos. This small panel measuring a mere 25.5 x 22 cm depicts a pensive, melancholic Virgin holding the infant Jesus who presses his cheek against hers, while the archangels Michael and Gabriel contemplate their tender embrace from above (Plate 15, Figure 7.6).109 With the exclusion of the covering for Mary’s left hand extended in prayer, as well as the ornament on her left shoulder and the strings of pearls outlining her and her Child’s contours, the rest of the icon’s kosmos is original, albeit considerably damaged. The revetment in delicate silver filigree that covers the haloes and background of the painted figures displays two plaques with an inscription identifying the Virgin as Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, the epithet we have encountered in the icon of Manuel Dishypatos at Freising.110 A diminutive image of Christ Plērophorētēs, worked in repoussé, occupies the center of the icon’s upper frame. Originally, the frame was populated with similar images in low relief depicting lesser holy figures, but only that of Saint John Chrysostom on the right is still standing. These images alternated with rectangular panels bearing a dedicatory inscription in verse, now reduced to fragments. Thanks to a transcription made when the frame was in a slightly better state of preservation,111 the verses may be partially reconstructed, although their exact number and sequence remain debatable.112

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Grabar 1975b, 61–62 (no. 32); Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, 191–95 (nos. 44–45), 288, 357–63 (nos. 9–10), with further bibliography. See also Talbot 2014, 260–62. The piece is now combined with another icon of Christ to form a diptych. Monastic tradition identifies the two panels as the famous νινία, or dolls, of the empress Theodora, wife of the last iconoclast emperor Theophilos. For further examples of the use of this epithet in Marian images in Byzantine and postByzantine art, see Kousoula and Trifonova 2009. The transcription is preserved in the eighteenth-century Ms. Athous Vatop. 1037, fol. 25v, from which it was edited by the monastery librarian, the monk Eugenios, in his 1891 verse description of this Athonite house. See Kondakov 1902, 192–93 n. 1; Millet, Pargoire, and Petit 1904, 26 (no. 76). For the epigram, see BEIÜ II, no. Ik26.

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Figure 7.6 Icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, middle of the fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and LoberdouTsigarida 2006, fig. 314). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

Βεβαία ἐλπὶς ἠπορημέ[ν]ων, κόρη, σ[κέπη γενοῦ] μ[ου καὶ ψυχῆς] σω[τηρία] τὸν βόρβορον πλύνουσα τῶν ἁμαρτάδων· [οἶδά σε καὶ γὰρ ὀρφανῶν τε καὶ ξένων] [. . .] Φιλανθρωπηνὴ Ἄννα ταῦτά σοι κράζει.113 113

In all likelihood, the epigram was more than six lines long. As for the sequence of the verses, it is possible that the plaque with the phrase Φιλανθρωπηνὴ Ἄννα ταῦτά σοι κράζει (“Anna Philanthropene cries out these to you”), now displayed on the right, below the bust of

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O Maiden, sure hope of those in need, be my protection and the salvation of my soul, and wash away the dirt of my sins. For I know that you [. . .] of both orphans and strangers. [. . .] Anna Philanthropene cries out these to you.

Due to lacunae, it is impossible to ascertain, for instance, who the “orphans and strangers” referred to in a now-lost verse are, but the gist of the epigram is clear: Anna Philanthropene presents her plea for salvation, seeking the spiritual patronage of the Virgin portrayed in the icon, whom she invokes – echoing the Virgin’s epithet Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn – as bebaia elpis, or “sure hope.” We have already met this Anna in Chapter 3, where we admired her glorious attire in a portrait from the Oxford manuscript of the Typikon of the Constantinopolitan convent of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, founded by Anna’s grandmother, Theodora Synadene (Figure 3.19).114 Evidently, the epithet chosen for her icon carried a special resonance, insofar as it evoked a monastic house with which Anna was personally associated.115 Whether she also had a connection with Theodore Palaiologos’ foundation dedicated to Christ Plērophorētēs is not known, but the application of this highly unusual name to the image of Christ placed in a hierarchically central position on the frame nicely fits the icon’s overall program: if the Virgin of “Sure Hope” is called upon through the medium of her image to intercede on Anna’s behalf, it is the “One Who Fulfills” and “Gives Assurance” that has the power to grant eternal repose to Anna’s soul in Paradise. In the Vatopedi icon, the donor claims a place for herself not only through the epithets, dedicatory verses, and precious-metal revetment, but more explicitly, through her own portrait. Barely visible due to extensive paint loss, Anna is depicted crouching in the icon’s lower frame, with

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Saint John Chrysostom, is not in its original position. This verse almost certainly belonged to the concluding part of the epigram, and accordingly, it may have been placed in the lower frame. PLP, no. 29737; Nicol 1968, 150–51 (no. 40). It is possible that, having taken the veil, Anna ended her life in the convent of the Bebaia Elpis. She is probably to be identified with the nun Xene Philanthropene, who, in 1392, undertook the restoration of this monastic house and whose daughters Eugenia and Anna continued to support it after her death: Typikon of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, 103.25–104.30. See Nicol 1968, 165 (no. 56). Hutter 1995, 81 n. 11, has questioned this identification, however, arguing that Xene was more likely Anna’s daughter. Incidentally, the link with the convent of the Bebaia Elpis could explain the reference to orphans in the epigram on the Vatopedi icon, for we know that the convent provided refuge to orphaned girls: Typikon of the Virgin Bebaia Elpis, 25.21–26.2.

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Figure 7.7 Portrait of Anna Philanthropene on the icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, middle of the fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 210)

her arms raised in supplication (Figures 7.7 and 7.8), accompanied by a nearly obliterated formulaic inscription, painted to the right, which gives a string of her illustrious family names: Δέησις τῆς δούλης τοῦ Θεοῦ Ἄννης Παλαιολογίνης Καντακουζηνῆς τῆς Φιλανθρωπινῆς (“Prayer of the servant of God Anna Palaiologina Kantakouzene Philanthropene”).116 Compared with her sumptuous gold-ornamented gown and jewelry in the Oxford manuscript, the plain red garment and the white wimple-like headdress Anna wears in the icon seem to bespeak a sense of decorous austerity consistent with her deep reverential bow. Yet hers is an assertive presence; for, relegated though she is to the frame, Anna nonetheless inhabits a sacred image, sharing its space with divine and saintly figures, and most importantly, with the Mother of God. Visualizing and thus perpetuating her prayer, Anna’s seemingly humble portrait affords her nothing less than an access – vicarious, to be sure – to her spiritual protectress. It allows her to communicate with the Virgin in a kind of pictorial encounter staged within the icon.

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The complete loss of the revetment in the lower frame makes it impossible to determine whether the painted portrait was covered or left exposed after the addition of the preciousmetal kosmos, which Anna appears to have commissioned at a later date. The second scenario seems more likely. If the portrait was covered, however, it stands to reason that Anna’s crouching figure was duplicated in repoussé on the revetment.

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Figure 7.8 Drawing of the portrait of Anna Philanthropene on the icon of the Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn, middle of the fourteenth century, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos (photo: after Tsigaridas and Loberdou-Tsigarida 2006, fig. 211)

Pothos portrayed In post-iconoclastic Byzantium, icons defined privileged, restricted spaces, to which likenesses of secular individuals were not commonly admitted. Yet, by the time Anna Philanthropene had her own image inserted in the Vatopedi icon, the Byzantines had become less reticent toward this category of portraiture. Allowing that the visual record at our disposal may present a somewhat distorted picture as fewer objects and monuments survive from the period before the twelfth century, one cannot fail to observe that Later Byzantium witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of portraits of lesser humans in the vicinity of sacred personages, which now invade not only church walls and pages of illuminated manuscripts, but also the hallowed surfaces of icons and their kosmetic apparatus.117 117

Velmans 1971, 132–34; Radovanović 1984, 56–63; Patterson Ševčenko 1993–94; Mouriki 1995; Carr 2006; Preobrazhenskiĭ 2012, passim; Marsengill 2013, 183–258 passim. See also KalopissiVerti 2012, 115–31, 179–90. There has been a tendency in scholarship to routinely identify secular figures inhabiting icons as commissioners or donors. In the absence of dedicatory inscriptions, however, it is difficult and often impossible to establish whether the portrayed individual was indeed responsible for the creation of the work, or, for that matter, whether that individual was depicted while still alive. Icons bearing images of the deceased are known to

Pothos portrayed

The space apportioned to supplicant figures within and around icons varies. They may inhabit the pictorial field, sharing it with a divine or saintly being, as do the layman Nicholas in the small panel of Saint Irene (Figure 2.12) and the hieromonk John in the vita icon of Saint George (Figure 6.4), both at Sinai. Occasionally, the portrayed mortal worships at a distance, standing or genuflecting in the frame or on the precious-metal kosmos affixed to the icon. Constantine Akropolites and his wife Maria, for instance, reverently extend their hands in supplication toward the Virgin Hodēgētria in an icon at Moscow, where their figures, displayed at the lower extremities, are embedded in the icon’s silver cladding (Figure 7.9).118 Similarly, the archbishop Nicholas of Ohrid venerates a Virgin with the epithet Psychosōstria (“Soul-Saving”) from the silver-gilt revetment of her colossal mid-fourteenth-century icon at Ohrid, assuming a place in the frame, at the lower right (Figures 7.10 and 7.11).119 As witnessed by the Urbino textile (Plate 3, Figure 2.1), icon veils can also exhibit likenesses of secular individuals. Exceptionally, a portrait can even appear on the back of an icon. To be sure, no such icon has been preserved, but an epigram copied in the Anthologia Marciana records one instance of this kind of arrangement. The epigram was commissioned by a certain Basil Serblias to accompany an icon of Christ Peribleptos, which he furnished with a kosmos, having his own likeness depicted on the back.120 The verses explain that Serblias’ fear to gaze directly at the Lord even in a pictorial representation forced him to place his portrait on the panel’s reverse side. In a personal appeal to Christ, the anxious donor confesses: 10

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ὃν γὰρ Χερουβὶμ οὐ στέγοντα προσβλέπειν πρόσωπον κρύπτει τοῖς πτέρυξιν ἐν τρόμῳ,

have been displayed at tombs and dedicated to shrines for the continuation of prayers on their behalf and the preservation of their memory. It is not inconceivable that some of the portraits that have come down to us were intended to serve precisely this commemorative function – all the more so since, as Spatharakis 1976, 253, has observed, the quick and the dead could share the same iconography in Byzantium. For funerary icons, see Papamastorakis 1996–97, 298–303; Papamastorakis 1997; Carr 2001; Carr 2005; Brooks 2006. See also Marsengill 2013, 232–45. Strictly speaking, to quote what has been written of panel paintings with figures in prayer in late medieval Tuscany, “the depicted supplicant is in the first place the one for whose salvation the work has been executed” (Schmidt 2005, 110). Cf. also Safran 2014. Grabar 1975b, 45–46 (no. 18); Evans 2004, cat. no. 4 (E. Gladysheva), with further bibliography. Balabanov 1995, 130–44, 201–2 (no. 31); Evans 2004, cat. no. 153 (M. Georgievski), with further bibliography. Anthologia Marciana, no. 219 (B56) (full text in Spingou 2012, 81).

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Figure 7.9 Icon of the Virgin Hodēgētria with portraits of Constantine Akropolites and his wife Maria, late thirteenth or early fourteenth century (revetment) and last quarter of the fifteenth century (painting), State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (photo: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

πῶς οὐχ ὁρᾶν ἂν καὶ γεγραμμένος τρέμω; ὀπισθογραφῶν τοιγαροῦν μου τὸν τύπον κἀν τῇ γραφῇ σήμαντρα τοῦ φόβου φέρω. How would I not tremble, even as a depiction, while gazing at the One upon whom the cherubim do not dare to look, but hide their faces with

Pothos portrayed

Figure 7.10 Icon of the Virgin Psychosōstria with portrait of the archbishop Nicholas of Ohrid, middle of the fourteenth century, Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra)

their wings in terror? Therefore, by painting my portrait on the back, I express my fear in the image as well.

To evoke the fear of encountering the Lord face to face is surely a clever way to dramatize the portrait’s unusual placement. Besides, given that the epithet Peribleptos derives from the verb βλέπω (“to see”) – the epithet literally means “looked at from all sides” – it is only appropriate that the

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Figure 7.11 Detail of the icon of the Virgin Psychosōstria with portrait of the archbishop Nicholas of Ohrid, middle of the fourteenth century, Icon Gallery, Ohrid (photo: Zoran Letra)

anonymous poet should build Serblias’ dedicatory address around the theme of seeing, being seen, and hiding from sight. Yet, beyond the immediate context of the verses, the striking conceit that even a painted effigy may tremble in the presence of Christ encapsulates a larger concern. It signals that the insertion of portraits of lesser humans within and around icons was an inherently bold gesture, a form of intimacy with the sacred that had to be carefully negotiated. One aspect of this negotiation involves a practical problem. As Nancy Patterson Ševčenko has rightly pointed out, supplicant portraits are not easily integrated in icons, which, because of their cultic function, must maintain their integrity and autonomy as holy images able to communicate with devotees praying outside rather than within their representational space.121 This explains why the holy figure is typically remote, irresponsive to the supplicant, whose presence, in turn, must remain unobtrusive – a 121

Patterson Ševčenko 1993–94, 157. See also Patterson Ševčenko 1994. For the same issue, albeit in a different context, see in addition Bacci 2003a, 188–93.

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principle pushed to its limit in Serblias’ icon of the Peribleptos. In rare instances in which the holy figure acknowledges the supplicant, it does so with a decorous restraint, through carefully orchestrated gestures, or even inadvertently, as in the Ohrid icon of the Psychosōstria, where, by virtue of the strategic positioning of his portrait in the lower right frame, the archbishop Nicholas appears to be receiving the blessing of the Christ Child’s right hand. The directness of Manuel’s interaction with the archangel Michael in the Urbino textile is unusual and, as we have seen in Chapter 2, may be explained by the fact that the prostrate supplicant here impersonates the Old Testament Joshua. Regardless of its location and the specific iconography employed, a devotional portrait gives concrete, pictorial form to one’s relationship with a sacred protector. More than anything else, it is the visualization of a desiring self. Byzantine dedicatory epigrams, in fact, posit a direct link between pothos and portraiture. A case in point is a poem composed by Philes for the prōtostratorissa Maria as an alternative to his dedicatory verses on the icon of the Virgin Kecharitōmenē discussed above.122

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Εἰς τί μόνη, πάναγνε, παρθένος κύεις, τηρεῖς δὲ σαυτὴν καὶ τεκοῦσα παρθένον; ἢ τοῦτο πάντως, ὡς τὸ πᾶν σώσῃς γένος ζωῇ φθορὰν λύσασα καὶ τόκῳ λύπην. εἰ γοῦν τὸ σώζειν ἔργον ἐστί σοι μέγα, καὶ ταῦτα τὴν σύμπασαν ἀνθρώπων φύσιν, πῶς οὐ μόνην σώσεις με τὴν σὴν ἐξόχως, ἣν ἀπὸ γαστρὸς μητρικῆς δούλην ἄγεις; ἐν σοὶ γὰρ αὐτὴ123 καὶ ψυχὴν καὶ σαρκίον, καὶ πᾶν ὅ τι χρήσιμον ἐν βίῳ φέρω. καὶ σὺ μόνη σκέποις με σὺν τῷ συζύγῳ, τιθεῖσα καλὰς τῆς ψυχῆς τὰς ἐλπίδας· ὁ τύπος εἰκὼν τοῦ περὶ σέ μου πόθου. λοιπὸν σιωπῶ, τοῦτο γὰρ πρέπον τύποις. ἡ πρωτοστρατόρισσα ταῦτα Μαρία πρὸς τὴν Μαριὰμ τὴν κεχαριτωμένην. Why is it that you alone, All-Chaste One, being a virgin conceive and preserve your virginity even after giving birth? Without doubt, this so that you may save the entire race, destroying

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Philes, Carmina I, 74–75 (no. CLXIV). The published text reads αὐτήν, but, as the editor suggests (Philes, Carmina I, 75 n. 2), αὐτή is a better reading.

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corruption with life and sorrow with childbirth. Then, if salvation is your great work, and this applies to all mankind, how would you not save me alone, who am pre-eminently yours, whom you bring forth out of my mother’s womb as your servant? For I myself am in you with both my soul and my body, and I receive everything that is beneficial in the life. May you alone protect me and my husband, implanting good hopes in my soul. This image is a picture of my desire for you. Now I shall remain silent; for this befits images. The prōtostratorissa Maria these to Mariam Full of Grace.

This alternative version informs us that the icon of the Kecharitōmenē included a portrait of Maria. That the word typos in line 13 refers to Maria’s own likeness rather than to the image of the Mother of God is clear from the following line in which, bringing her prayer to a close, the prōtostratorissa withdraws to silence with an assertion that silence is appropriate for typoi. Playing with the notion of the mute image, Philes envisions Maria’s portrait literally speaking the epigram. With the exclusion of the two concluding lines, his dodecasyllables are meant to function as a “speech bubble.” Yet, curiously enough, this speaking-yet-silent portrait is said to be an eikōn of Maria’s pothos for Mary. What does Philes mean by that? Is he suggesting that, by inserting a mute – and hence, lifeless – image of herself in the icon, Maria can achieve only an illusory intimacy with the Virgin? Is the portrait but an index of the existential gulf that separates the prōtostratorissa from her heavenly protectress, a trace of her relentless desire for presence and proximity that the medium of visual representation can soothe, but never fully gratify?124 This is certainly a 124

Pothos and portraiture are linked in a comparable way in an epitaph to Cleofe Malatesta, wife of Theodore II Palaiologos, despot of the Morea: Lampros 1912–30, 4:176. Traditionally attributed to Bessarion, the epitaph seems to have accompanied a double portrait of Cleofe and Theodore displayed at her tomb. The verses are spoken in the voice of the bereaved despot who, addressing his departed consort, identifies five ways in which they were, are, and will be joined: he recalls their former bodily union (first way), now replaced by a union in spirit (second way), then points to the funerary composition they share (third way), and lastly, in anticipation of his own death, which will bring their bones together in the same tomb (fourth way), envisions the moment when they will be reunited in heaven (fifth way). Of the third, pictorially enacted union, Theodore says the following: ταύτῃ γὰρ ἐν ταύτῃ σε γράψας εἰκόνι / πάντως ἐμαυτὸν προσπαρέγραψα, τρόπῳ / ἑνώσεως θέλων ξυνῆφθαί σοι τρίτῳ, / ὡς τοῦ πόθου σβέσαιμι τὴν δεινὴν φλόγα / ψυχῆς τ’ ἐπαντλήσαιμι οἰδαῖνον πάθος (“And so, portraying you in this image, I have placed my own portrait beside you in every sense, wishing to be united with you in a third way, so as to quench the terrible flame of my desire and empty out the swollen anguish from my soul”) (vv. 10–14). On the epitaph, see Ronchey 1994, 58–60; Wright

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possibility. Pothos, after all, operates alongside that constant negotiation of presence and absence, which is the condition of all images, sacred and secular alike. But the idea of a portrait as an image of pothos may be cast, too, in a more affirmative light. It may signal the portrait’s capacity to convey the inner disposition of the person it represents – a notion that Philes voices elsewhere, for instance, in his epitaph to Xene, wife of the skouterios Kapandrites.125 Describing a painting displayed at her tomb, in which the deceased woman was portrayed in the company of the Mother of God, the poet remarks: παρίσταται δ’ οὖν εὐλαβῶς τῇ παρθένῳ, καὶ τὴν πάλαι ζέουσαν ἐμφαίνει σχέσιν, ὡς ἡ γραφικὴ πάντα μικροῦ δεικνύει. (vv. 11–13) She reverently stands by the Virgin and exhibits her former ardent love, as the painting shows in almost every respect.

With a praiseworthy representational force, Xene’s funerary portrait is able to convey the schesis she nurtured for the Virgin while she was still alive. The close correlation between the bearing and movements of the body and the inner emotional state is a frequent theme in Byzantine art literature. Writing in the early fifteenth century, the scholar and diplomat Manuel Chrysoloras likens the artist’s shaping of inert matter to the way in which the motions of the soul are externalized in the body. Just as the soul of each man disposes its body, which is easily malleable, in such a way that its own disposition – be it sorrow, joy, or anger – is visible in the body, so does the artist by means of imitation and skill dispose the stubborn and hard substance of stone, bronze, or pigments – a substance that is alien and disparate – and makes the emotions of the soul visible in these .126

In art, what communicates emotion is above all bodily attitude, often referred to as schēma.127 For Philes, the expressiveness of postures and

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(forthcoming) with the argument that the despot himself composed the verses. See also Ronchey 2001. Philes, Carmina inedita, no. 90. On this poem, see Kydonopoulos 1998. The quotation comes from the celebrated letter to Demetrios Chrysoloras written in Rome in 1411: PG 156, col. 60A; trans. Mango 1972, 255, with modifications. For the role of bodily attitude in expressing emotion in Byzantine art, see Maguire 1977. See also ODB, s.v. ‘emotions’.

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gestures is a criterion for appraising an artwork. Thus, in a quatrain on a precious-metal icon of the Dormition of the Virgin, the poet admires the vivid schēmata of the mourners assembled around Mary’s deathbed.128 Ζωῆς ξένην κοίμησιν ἐκ χρυσαργύρου δίδωσι τέχνη, καὶ τὸ δὴ μάλα ξένον, ὅτι γε καὶ σχήματα πενθούντων φέρει τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς τυποῦσα ταῖς ὕλαις πάθη. Art renders a strange dormition of life in gilded silver. And what is particularly strange is that it also imitates gestures of lamenting figures, thus representing the emotions of the soul with material substances.

A similar interest in external comportment informs the ekphrasis of an image of the Martyrdom of Saint Demetrios composed by the fifteenthcentury writer Makarios Makres. The image – for which a post-Byzantine panel in Venice provides a good parallel (Figure 7.12) – showed the saint calmly submitting his body to the spears of a group of executioners, eager to receive a crown of martyrdom.129 This is how Makres characterizes the bearing of the saint’s servant Loupos, depicted at the side as an eyewitness: He reveals his grief and fear through his posture [σχήματι] and hands. With one hand he lifts the hem of his garment, shrinking, as it were, and bracing himself and seeking some sort of relief from the horror; terrified, he raises the other hand, which looks as if it wards off the sight of the truly dreadful things.130

Seeing his master being speared to death, Loupos expresses his inner turmoil bodily. If the appearance of the body communicates an individual’s emotional state, then, turning back to the portrait of the prōtostratorissa Maria, one might ask: What is the schēma of pothos? True, Philes’ verses on the icon of the Kecharitōmenē make no reference to Maria’s posture, but it is safe to assume that, like other donor figures in icons, she was shown in the act of venerating the Virgin. In fact, a poem preserved in the Anthologia Marciana makes the connection between pothos and proskynēsis explicit, albeit in a different context. The poem commemorates a wall painting set up by 128 129

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Braounou-Pietsch 2010, 64–66 (no. 5). For the panel in Venice, see Tselente-Papadopoulou 2002, 135 (no. 21). On the iconography of the Martyrdom of Saint Demetrios, see the references cited in Chapter 3, n. 135. Makres, Ekphrasis of the Martyrdom of Saint Demetrios, 167.26–168.30.

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Figure 7.12 Icon of the Martyrdom of Saint Demetrios, fifteenth or sixteenth century, Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini, Venice (photo: Icon Museum, Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini, Venice)

John Komnenos, nephew of Manuel I, at the gates of his Constantinopolitan residence.131 The mural depicted the emperor together with his father, John II, and grandfather, Alexios I. As can be expected, the anonymous poet ascribes the creation of this dynastic portrait group to John’s pothos for the emperors.

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Anthologia Marciana, no. 72 (B128). On this epigram, see Magdalino and Nelson 1982, 135–37 (no. V). See also Spingou 2012, 146–47, 186, 235, who argues that the epigram accompanied a mosaic displayed on the façade of a church or in a church narthex. On John Komnenos, see Varzos 1984, no. 128.

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Ἰωάννης γὰρ εὐκλεὴς ἐν ἀξίαις πρωτοσεβαστοῦ πρωτοβεστιαρίου, ὃν πορφυρανθὴς Ἀνδρόνικος ἐκφύει σεβαστοκράτωρ, τέκνον αὐτοκρατόρων, ὃ εἶχεν ἐγκάρδιον ἐκφαίνων πόθον πρὸς τοὺς γενάρχας, αὐτάνακτας δεσπότας, τούτων πρὸ πυλῶν εἰκονίζει τοὺς τύπους εἰς καλλονῆς αὔξησιν, εἰς κόσμον μέγαν. John, renowned in the dignities of prōtosebastos and prōtobestiarios – whom the purple-blossoming sebastokratōr Andronikos, an imperial offspring, sired – demonstrating the desire which he had in his heart for the imperial lords, founders of the dynasty, depicts their figures in front of these gates to amplify their beauty, as a great adornment.132

The verses further inform us that John was himself portrayed in the mural, prostrate at the feet of his uncle. 25

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σκόπει δ’ ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς καὶ τὸ τοῦ πόθου μέτρον, ὃ πρὸς τὸν αὐτάνακτα Μανουὴλ φέρει ὁ πορφυρανθόβλαστος ὃς ταῦτα γράφει· ἣν γὰρ τρέφει δούλωσιν αὐτῷ δεικνύων καὶ πίστιν ἀσύγκριτον ἐκ ψυχῆς μέσης ποδῶν προκύπτων προσκυνεῖ κἀν τοῖς τύποις. Behold here the measure of the desire that the purple flower’s offshoot, the one who depicts these things, bears toward the emperor Manuel. For, showing the servitude and incomparable loyalty which he cherishes toward him in the midst of his soul, he falls at his feet and venerates even in this image.133

The prostration John renders to the emperor is here understood as a demonstration of servitude and loyalty driven by his pothos. Pictorially enacted in the mural, his gesture of proskynēsis represents not only a sign of submission, but also an outward manifestation of his emotional attachment to Manuel.134 In view of the role played by the rhetoric of desire in 132 133 134

Trans. Magdalino and Nelson 1982, 135, with modifications. Trans. Magdalino and Nelson 1982, 136, with modifications. The last third of the poem comprises John’s direct address to the emperor, in which he declares that Manuel is his second father and, moreover, a second God. Similarly phrased declarations of loyalty and affection are found in two epigrams by Manganeios Prodromos, composed for what appears to have been a deluxe banner with which John presented the emperor: Miller

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the Byzantine conceptualization of hierarchical ties of personal dependence, this overlap between subservience and affection is not unexpected. What is notable, however, is that it is conceived specifically in terms of physical gesture and its visual representation. We have already seen that in iconophile writing proskynēsis performed in front of an icon is seen as an expression of pothos for the person depicted. The Fathers of the Second Council of Nicaea went so far as to liken it to a kiss. As it would appear, the emotional valence of this gesture was recognized in other contexts, too, regardless of whether the object of veneration is a sacred personage or an emperor, and whether the venerator is performing proskynēsis in person or vicariously, through the medium of his or her portrait. In Byzantium, in religious and ceremonial contexts alike, proskynēsis encompassed a range of postures and bodily movements, from a simple bow of the head to a genuflection and total prostration.135 In devotional portraits, however, proskynēsis typically takes the form of either kneeling or standing with hands raised in supplication. If depicted kneeling, the supplicant may assume a prostrate position, crouching on the ground with his or her head and hands lowered, as in the Sinai icon of Saint Irene (Figure 2.12). Alternatively, the supplicant may raise the upper part of his or her body to a varying degree, from a sharply inclined to a fully erect position, turning the head and hands up toward the holy figure, as in the Urbino textile (Plate 3, Figure 2.1). The latter variety, to which I shall refer as the upright-kneeling posture, makes its appearance in the second half of the eleventh century.136 This new form of deep proskynēsis gradually

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1875–81, 2:583. There is reason to believe that these poetic effusions conveyed genuine feelings. Following the death of John’s father, the sebastokratōr Andronikos, Manuel is known to have treated his nephew with paternal care. As Kinnamos relates (Epitomē, 126.1–8), when John lost an eye in a tournament, the emperor granted him the titles of prōtosebastos and prōtobestiarios to console him. On the gesture of proskynēsis and its representation in art, see Treitinger 1938, 84–94; Guilland 1946–47; Hendrickx 1973; Spatharakis 1974; Cutler 1975, 53–110; Vojvodić 2006; Brubaker 2009; Vojvodić 2010. See also Koukoules 1948–57, 1.2:105–10. The earliest example that I am aware of features an individual rendering proskynēsis to an emperor rather than to a holy figure. It comes from a manuscript of the Homilies of John Chrysostom in Paris (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ms. Coislin 79), dated to c. 1071–81. In a dedicatory miniature on folio 2v, a tiny figure at the souppedion of Nikephoros III Botaneiates assumes the upright-kneeling posture while paying obeisance to the emperor. See Spatharakis 1976, 111–12, fig. 72; Krause 2004, 180, fig. 235. The extant examples of the new type of proskynēsis predating the Palaiologan period are admittedly few and far between. One can be seen in a miniature depicting the monk Matthew in a Psalter at Jerusalem (Ms. Taphou 55, fol. 260r), dated to the third quarter of the twelfth century. See Vocotopoulos 2002, no. 16. Another example can be seen on the so-called endytē of San Marco in Venice. See Hahnloser 1965–71, 2: cat. no. 115 (M. Theocharis), pl. LXXXIII; Favaretto and Da Villa Urbani 2003,

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replaced the older, prostrate-kneeling type, which is rarely seen in devotional portraits after the second half of the thirteenth century.137 The upright-kneeling posture represents a typical, if not quintessential, attitude of prayer and veneration in Palaiologan art, one that features in a variety of contexts.138 Assuming this stance, Theodore Metochites presents his foundation to Christ in the donor mosaic at the Chōra (Figure 5.2); and it is essentially from this type of proskynēsis that the Virgin Oxeia Antilēpsis raises the monk Kaloeidas in the Oxford Psalter (Figure 7.4). The introduction of the upright-kneeling posture in the Byzantine iconography of supplication has been ascribed to the influence of Western art,139 in which, beginning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, kneeling erect with the hands joined before the chest became the standard prayer gesture.140 The argument in favor of a Western provenance, however, has little to recommend itself. Leaving aside the fact that the spread of the genuflexio recta141 did not precede the emergence of the upright-kneeling posture, there are notable differences between Byzantine devotional figures and their Western counterparts.142 In Byzantine images the supplicant’s hands are always held apart, in a parallel position, whereas in Western examples they are joined, with the palms pressed together. As for the carriage of the supplicant’s upper body, in the West an erect position is the norm, in Byzantium an option. Seemingly minor, these differences are important because they

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139 140

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124, fig. 2, 125 (no. 2) (D. Davanzo Poli). The odd almond-shaped mass in the lower righthand corner of this large, incompetently restored embroidered cloth with a depiction of the two archangels, represents a mantle – the only surviving part of the figure of a supplicant. The mantle’s distinct contour leaves no doubt that the figure once wrapped in it held the uprightkneeling posture. Dedicatory verses embroidered on the cloth record a prayer of a certain sebastokratōr Constantine Angelos, whom Laurent 1960 has identified – in my opinion, convincingly – with the brother of the emperors Isaac II and Alexios III, thus dating the cloth to the years 1185 to 1203. For arguments in favor of a different identification and date, see Theochare 1959; Théocharis 1963. Another roughly contemporary example of the uprightkneeling posture is found on a seal of Constantine Mesopotamites, metropolitan of Thessalonike, showing this prelate at the feet of Saint Demetrios. Based on the chronology of Mesopotamites’ checkered ecclesiastical career, the seal can be dated to the period from 1196 to the mid-1220s. See Laurent 1963–81, 5.1:338–39 (no. 464), 5.2:pl. 63; Laurent 1963. The portrait of Anna Philanthropene in her icon at the Vatopedi monastery is a late example of the older form of deep proskynēsis. For a selection of examples, see Teteriatnikov 1996, 309–13. For examples from medieval Serbia, see Vojvodić 2006, 384–85. Grabar 1960, 128; Cutler 1975, 78–79; Teteriatnikov 1996, 313–14. Ladner 1983; Schmitt 1990, esp. 295–301. See also Bériou, Berlioz, and Longère 1991, 86–92 (A.-F. Leurquin-Labie); Bacci 2000, 403–13. The term is used by the thirteenth-century Dominican Humbert of Romans: Schmitt 1990, 301–2. As rightly pointed out by Belting 1970, 73.

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signal that, despite their similarities, the two attitudes of prayer are of different derivation. According to a widely accepted interpretation, the gesture of kneeling iunctis manibus was borrowed from the ritual of feudal homage, in which the vassal placed his joined hands in those of his suzerain as a sign of fidelity and personal submission.143 By contrast, the upright-kneeling posture represents a variation on the older form of deep proskynēsis; instead of crouching prostrate on the ground, the supplicant now lifts the torso up in order to address him- or herself more vigorously to the object of veneration. Natalia Teteriatnikov has already drawn attention to the psychological dimension of the new supplicatory format and its emphasis on direct communication between the devotee and the holy figure.144 I would further argue that the shift from prostrate to upright kneeling should be seen as a manifestation of the same kind of self-assertiveness that propelled the rise of the the ēthopoietic “I”-speech as the most common form of dedicatory epigram in Later Byzantium. Indeed, the new type of proskynēsis may be construed as a visual equivalent to the dedicatory address in the first person singular. What portraits of upright-kneeling supplicants and epigrams spoken in the patron’s voice have in common is an element of selfaffirmation through active involvement: just as the patron refuses to remain silent, but lets him- or herself be heard in a prayer, so does the portrayed supplicant rise from a prostrate position to reach out toward the holy figure, thus calling attention to him- or herself. But there is another point that needs to be stressed here. With its opening of the supplicant’s body and, in particular, with its dramatization of the gaze, the uprightkneeling posture foregrounds the emotional side of the act of proskynēsis. It offers a visual formula ideally suited to convey the notion of pothos. In devotional portraits featuring the new gesture of supplication, pothos is specifically marked as ocular. Here, to paraphrase Jeffrey Hamburger, to look is to desire, and to desire is to look.145 Searching for the heavenly protector’s visage, the upturned gaze of the genuflecting devotee is above all the gaze of a lover. It is worth recalling in this regard that love is closely associated with the sense of sight in Byzantine erotic discourse, both sacred and secular. The notion that the source of erotic attachment lies in the

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145

See Ladner 1983, esp. 220, 237; and, for a more cautious view, Schmitt 1990, 296–97. Teteriatnikov 1996. I do not agree, however, with the author’s contention that the emergence of the upright-kneeling posture, which she mistakenly places in the second half of the thirteenth century, should be linked specifically with the rise of a proto-hesychast spirituality. Hamburger 1997, 129.

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mesmerizing experience of seeing the beloved had already been formulated in the ancient world.146 Plato in Phaedrus speaks of “the effluence of beauty” (τοῦ κάλλους ἡ ἀπορροή) entering the lover’s eyes at the sight of the beloved and further likens the spread of love through eye contact to an “inflammation of the eyes” (ὀφθαλμία).147 “Vision,” writes Plutarch in a similar vein, “gives the first impulse to love, that most powerful and violent experience of the soul, and causes the lover to melt and be dissolved when he looks at those who are beautiful, as if he were pouring forth his whole being toward them.”148 The trope of the erotic gaze is also encountered in the Scriptures. “You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes,” exclaims the lover in Song of Songs 4:9. The understanding of love as a force that penetrates through and flows out from the eyes is often evoked in Byzantine writing.149 Perhaps the best example is Manganeios Prodromos’ poem On Erōs, in which love is pictured as an irresistible power invading the human psyche through the eyes.150 Addressing the personified Erōs, the poet wonders: “Explain, Erōs, how is it that you emanate from eyes into eyes, and how does it happen that, even though you first flow into them, you do not harm them but keep the eyes unscathed, not consumed by flame, whereas you shoot your fire and your arrows into the hearts?ˮ151 In his response, Erōs boastfully declares that, even when the lover’s eyes are closed, he can still penetrate the lover’s consciousness and afflict his heart by using another eye, namely, the lover’s mind. For, in the absence of physical sight, Erōs employs the mind to paint a spiritual portrait of the beloved.152 Needless to say, Christian authors found the susceptibility of the eyes to erotic assaults troubling. The fourth-century treatise on the subject of virginity attributed to Basil of Ankyra conceives of sight as a dangerous faculty, a potential gateway to licentiousness and corruption. “The contact established through speech and glances furtively leads to the contact of hands. And these, intertwined with each other as if in a 146

147 148

149 150 151

152

On the gaze of love in the ancient world, see Goldhill 1996, 24–26; Goldhill 2001; Hubbard 2002; Bartsch 2006, esp. 57–114. See also Frontisi-Ducroux 1996. Plato, Phaedrus 251b and 255d. Plutarch, Quaestiones convivales 5.7.2; trans. Clement and Hoffleit 1969, 421–23, slightly modified. Magdalino 1993, 381; Roilos 2005, 178–80. Polemes 1994, 359–64, with corrections in Jeffreys 1995. Polemes 1994, 359.1–4: Ἐξ ὀφθαλμῶν εἰς ὀφθαλμοὺς εἰπὲ πῶς ῥέεις, ἔρως, / καὶ πῶς, εἰσρέων ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς πρώτους, αὐτοὺς οὐ βλάπτεις, / ἀλλὰ τηρεῖς τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἀτρώτους, ἀφλογίστους, / τὸ πῦρ δὲ καὶ τὰ βέλη σου πέμπεις εἰς τὰς καρδίας. Polemes 1994, 360.17–23, 361.55–64.

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chain, bring about sexual contact.”153 But in the discourse of sacred love the eroticized gaze was validated as a means of apprehending the divine, if only partially. In one of his hymns, for instance, Symeon the New Theologian describes how the act of seeing sets ablaze his insatiable pothos for God.154 15

20

ἐγὼ πονῶ, ἐγὼ ἀλγῶ τὴν ταπεινὴν ψυχήν μου, ὅταν φανῇ ἐντὸς αὐτῆς λάμψαν τρανῶς τὸ φῶς σου· ὁ πόθος πόνος παρ’ ἐμοὶ καὶ καλεῖται καὶ ἔστιν. ἄλγος τῷ μὴ ἰσχύειν με ὅλον περιλαβεῖν σε καὶ κορεσθῆναι, ὡς ποθῶ, ὑπάρχει μοι καὶ στένω· ὅμως ὅτι καὶ βλέπω σε, ἀρκετόν μοι καὶ τοῦτο. I suffer, I feel pain in my wretched soul when your light appears in it, shining brightly. In my case, desire is called suffering and suffering it is. The pain of being unable to embrace you entirely and satisfy myself as much as I desire is what I feel, and I sigh. Still, the fact that I see you is enough for me.

Granted, Symeon’s gaze dwelled on an inner spectacle of divine light rather than on an object of veneration available to the bodily eyes, but the same desire to see also animates less introverted forms of devotion in Byzantium, in particular those centered on icons.155 Describing an image of Christ venerated at a hermitage near Thracian Herakleia, the patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos in his Vita of Saint Sabas the Younger tellingly declares: τοσαύταις δὲ φαιδρότησι καὶ καλλοναῖς τὸ θεῖον ἐκεῖνο περιλάμπεται πρόσωπον οὐ τεχνικαῖς μᾶλλον ἂν εἴποι τις, ὅσον ἱεραῖς τισι καὶ ἀρρήτοις, ὡς μηδέποτε κόρον λαμβάνειν τὸν ἐνορῶντα, μᾶλλον μὲν οὖν καὶ ἡδονῆς τινος ἀπορρήτου πληρούμενον πτεροῦσθαι δοκεῖν ὡσανεὶ τῷ πρὸς τὴν ὅρασιν ἔρωτι καὶ μηδ’ εὐχερῶς ἔχειν ἀφίστασθαι.156 The divine countenance is illuminated with so much radiance and beauty – less a work of art, one would say, than something sacred and ineffable – that the beholder can never have enough of it; indeed, filled with an indescribable pleasure, he appears to be aroused [literally, ‘winged’], so to speak, by the erōs for the sight and cannot easily depart.

Transfixed and erotically stirred by the image, the beholder can do nothing but feast his eyes on the beauty of the Lord. As I would argue, it is with this 153

154 156

De virginitate, PG 30, col. 704A. The treatise appears in the Patrologia Graeca among the spurious works of Basil the Great. For the authorship, see Cavallera 1905. On the perils of sight, see further Leyerle 1993. 155 Symeon the New Theologian, Hymns, no. 7. Cf. Beck 1975, 41. Kokkinos, Life of Saint Sabas the Younger 53.47–51.

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kind of scopic urge that the kneeling supplicant rises from a prostrate to an upright position in the new type of proskynēsis. Moved by pothos, the supplicant lifts the upper body to look upon the face of the beloved holy protector. The celebrated icon of Christ Pantokratōr of c. 1363 in the Hermitage provides a good case for examining the role of the gaze in Byzantine devotional portraits (Plate 16, Figure 7.13).157 This exquisite panel depicts a half-length figure of Christ blessing with his right hand and holding a bejeweled Gospel book in his left. The lower extremities of the icon’s frame are occupied by two diminutive figures. Of the figure on the left only faint traces remain, but the formulaic inscription above it is still legible: Δέησις τοῦ δοῦλου τοῦ Θεοῦ Ἀλεξίου τοῦ μεγάλου στρατοπεδάρχου (“Prayer of the servant of God Alexios the megas stratopedarchēs”). Alexios was undoubtedly portrayed in the upright-kneeling posture like his better-preserved companion on the right whose elegant gold-embroidered kabbadion with double-headed eagles, complete with a white handkerchief tucked into his belt, and a tall headdress adorned with an image of an enthroned emperor are delineated with much gusto for ornamental detail (Figure 7.14). The inscription above the latter supplicant’s head reiterates the formula: Δέησις τοῦ δοῦλου τοῦ Θεοῦ Ἰωάννου τοῦ μεγάλου πριμικηρίου (“Prayer of the servant of God John the megas primikērios”). The two individuals portrayed in the icon were brothers. Following the civil war of 1352–54, in which they had sided with the victorious John V Palaiologos against John VI Kantakouzenos, Alexios and John – their family name may have been Kontostephanos158 – established themselves as semi-independent lords in Eastern Macedonia and the Northern Aegean, all the while working their way up through the ranks of the imperial hierarchy.159 To affirm their newly acquired status and power, and amass spiritual riches in addition to the material ones, the brothers founded a monastery dedicated to Christ Pantokratōr on Mount Athos.160 The choice of this epithet, which carried strong imperial overtones, is in and of itself a testament to their ostentation.161 The Hermitage icon of the Pantokratōr must have been destined 157

158 160 161

Lemerle 1947; Papamastorakis 1998, 43–44, 50; Piatnitsky, Baddeley, and Brunner 2000, cat. no. B125 (Y. Piatnitsky); Baltogianne 2003, 22–25. 159 Actes de Pantocrator, 11–12. Oikonomides 1996, 103–11. Actes de Pantocrator, 3–15. See Matthews 1978, esp. 451–52, 456–59. The epithet’s association with imperial power was promoted under the Komnenoi with the foundation of the monastery of Christ Pantokratōr in Constantinople by John II and his wife Irene. See especially Stanković 2006, 270–88. It should be pointed out that the monastery retained its imperial cachet during the late Byzantine era, when it served as the principal burial ground for members of the Palaiologan dynasty. See Kotzabassi 2013b, esp. 67–69.

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Figure 7.13 Icon of Christ Pantokratōr, c. 1363, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (photo: Vladimir Terebenin / State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg). For the colour version, please refer to the plate section.

for the newly established monastic house as part of the brothers’ endowment. The small nail holes dotting the outlines of the painted figures indicate that the icon was originally sheathed in precious metal. The now-missing kosmos seems to have covered the background and the frame, leaving the likenesses of Christ and the two founders exposed.

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Figure 7.14 Portrait of the megas primikērios John on the icon of Christ Pantokratōr, c. 1363, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (photo: Vladimir Terebenin / State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg)

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Admitted into divine presence, yet reduced to an unobtrusive existence in the margin, Alexios and John appear both united with and separated from the Lord. The miniature size of their figures coupled with their relegation to the frame creates a sense of distance, psychological as much as spatial, between the two brothers and Christ that effectively dramatizes the act of looking, in which they were both originally engaged. In the still preserved portrait on the right, John is depicted casting his gaze across the vast expense of the pictorial field only to fix it upon the luminous face of Christ that shines with the rays of vivid lead-white highlights. To understand the connective power of John’s telescopic gazing from the frame, one needs to bear in mind that the Byzantines generally conceived of sight in terms of physical contiguity. By looking at an object, the viewer was believed to be physically connected with it by means of optical rays.162 In his celebrated Homily 17, delivered in 867 on the occasion of the inauguration of the new apse mosaic of the Virgin and Child at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the patriarch Photios gave the following account of the power and mechanics of sight: The Virgin is holding the Creator in her arms as an infant. Who is there who would not marvel, more from the sight of it than from the report, at the magnitude of the mystery? . . . For even if the one introduces the other, yet the comprehension that comes about through sight is shown in very fact to be far superior to the learning that penetrates through the ears. Has a man lent his ear to a story? Has his intelligence visualized and drawn to itself what he has heard? Then, after judging it with sober attention, he deposits it in his memory. No less – indeed much greater – is the power of sight. For surely, having somehow through the outpouring and effluence of the optical rays touched and encompassed the object, it too sends the essence of the thing seen on to the mind, letting it be conveyed from there to the memory for the concentration of unfailing knowledge.163

As Robert Nelson has pointed out, Photios’ brief explication of the process of seeing in this passage unmistakably evokes the theory of extramission, first advanced in ancient Greek philosophy and optics.164 Simply put, this

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For the sense of sight in Byzantium, see Nelson 2000b; Bydén 2003, 199–210; Mariev 2011. See also James 2004, 527–29. For the medieval West, see Camille 2000; Hamburger 2000; Biernoff 2002; Denery 2005. Photios, Homilies, 170.24–171.3; trans. Mango 1958, 294. Nelson 2000b, 150–53. See also Mariev 2011, 78–79. For the ancient theories of vision, see Lindberg 1976, 1–17; Simon 1988. See also Mugler 1960; Rakoczy 1996; Bartsch 2006, 58–67.

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theory holds that visual perception is accomplished by optical rays issued forth from the eye, which extend to the object of vision, touch it, and then return to the eye. With its emphasis on the agency of the viewing subject, the extramission model foregrounds an understanding of the eye as an active organ that seeks out, probes, grasps, and adheres to its object. To be sure, extramission was not the only theory of vision known to or espoused by the Byzantines, but it seems to have enjoyed the widest currency. It certainly best accommodated the popular understanding of the eye’s operation that lay behind the ubiquitous obsession with the evil eye and the belief in the erotic power of the gaze.165 Overall, vision in Byzantium was dynamic, connective, and, in a sense, tactile. To look upon an object was akin to touching it. In a religious context, this overlap between the optic and the haptic rendered the visual apprehension of the sacred an extraordinary and potent experience.166 This explains why, for instance, John Chrysostom could describe the dramatic moment of gazing at the Eucharist in tactile terms, with the worshippers enfolding and embracing Christ, the sacrificial offering, with their eyes (περιπτύξασθαι καὶ περιλαβεῖν . . . διὰ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν),167 or why John of Damascus demands that we should “venerate and kiss” the holy icons “with both eyes and lips” (προσκυνεῖν καὶ καταφιλεῖν καὶ ὀφθαλμοῖς καὶ χείλεσι).168 It is precisely this kind of affective ocular palpation that the portrait of John pictorially enacts. With his upturned gaze, the diminutive worshipper reaches out from his subordinate place in the frame to venerate, touch, embrace, and kiss the face of the Lord. Seeing is here not so much an act of detached contemplation as it is a participatory extension of self, a means of partaking of and commingling with the object of vision. It goes without saying that the inclusion of the portraits of Alexios and John in the Hermitage icon served multiple purposes. Perhaps most obviously, it was aimed at preserving and perpetuating their memory. Displayed on what must have been an important cult image, the portraits were instrumental in forging a lasting bond between the two brothers and the monastic community of their Athonite foundation. Anyone approaching the icon in prayer would have been prompted to intercede for the salvation of their souls. Moreover, since the painted figures were – and that

165 166

167 168

On the evil eye, see Maguire 1994; Dickie 1995; Russell 1995. For the alliance of sight and touch in religious devotion, see Frank 2000a, esp. 102–33; Frank 2000b, 104–9. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood 3.4.25–29. John of Damascus, De imaginibus II.10.48–67. See also De imaginibus I.47.17–21.

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of John still is – engaged in an endless deēsis, they served as a form of intercession in their own right, re-enacting the brothers’ supplications in their absence, and even after their death. But in addition to these commemorative and intercessory functions, the portraits of Alexios and John were also meant to articulate their special personal relationship with Christ Pantokratōr. The brothers staked a claim on Christ’s pictorial presence in the icon by having themselves portrayed at his side. Genuflecting deferentially in the frame, they appealed to the All-Sovereign Lord with selfassertive, penetrating gazes that not only added emotional urgency to their pleas, but also allowed them to bathe vicariously in the radiance of the divine face. *** When viewed through the lens of pothos, the Byzantine icon emerges as a remarkably intimate devotional instrument. Far from being a remote object of veneration surrounded by an almost impenetrable aura of sanctity, within which we tend to enshrine it, the icon was an approachable and responsive companion. Inflected and personalized through epithets and inscriptions, veils and precious-metal revetments, as well as through the addition of devotional portraits, the icon was drawn into the human sphere, and its power to mediate presence and provide access to the holy figure depicted harnessed to the needs of individual devotees. Surrounding the holy figure’s likeness, these various forms of personal intervention into the icon’s sacred space did more than articulate bonds of spiritual clientage; they also transformed the icon into a vehicle of personal expression, a stage upon which one’s self could be projected and dramatized in relation to the divine or saintly Other.

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When, sometime in the 1280s, his young daughter Theodora fell gravely ill, Constantine Akropolites took her to the Kosmidion, an old Constantinopolitan healing shrine dedicated to Saints Cosmas and Damian, in the hope of obtaining a cure. As related in a fourteenth-century collection of miracles of the saints, upon seeing Constantine’s faith, the two holy physicians took pity on the girl and in an ineffable manner restored her health. In return, the grateful father presented them with a luxury peplos, or textile hanging. As an act of compensation on behalf of his daughter, the father came bringing to the saints as a ransom [ἀντίλυτρον] a peplos woven with gold and silk thread, bearing the images of the saints and of his daughter. And he had an iambic inscription made all around the peplos [ἐν κύκλῳ δὲ καὶ ἰάμβους ἐγχαράξας τῷ πέπλῳ], which even after death bears witness to the miracle, and prompts those who have physical ailments to seek refuge with the saints.1

That the author of the miracula thought it worthwhile to record Akropolites’ donation is a clear indication of its exquisiteness. The sumptuous cloth, which may have served as an icon veil, was surely a memorable object, one that provided an apt expression not only of the donor’s deep gratitude to the saints, but also, undoubtedly, of his elevated social standing and refined taste. Akropolites, whose testamentary Logos for the monastery of the Anastasis we have repeatedly consulted in Chapter 5, was born into a prominent family of civil functionaries (see also Figure 7.9). At the time of the miracle at the Kosmidion, he held the office of logothetēs tou genikou. Like his father, the statesman and historian George Akropolites, Constantine was an accomplished writer, most renowned for his numerous encomia of saints, and his circle of friends, if we are to judge by his voluminous

1

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Maximos the Deacon, Miracles of Saints Cosmas and Damian, 199.26–33: ἀντιφιλοτιμούμενος ὑπὲρ τῆς θυγατρὸς ὁ πατὴρ πέπλον τινὰ χρυσοῦ καὶ Σηρῶν νημάτων ἐξυφασμένον τούς τε τύπους παρ’ ἑαυτῷ τῶν ἁγίων καὶ δὴ καὶ τῆς θυγατρὸς ἱστουργῷ ἐξεικονισθέντας φέροντα τέχνῃ πρόσεισιν ἄγων ἀντίλυτρον τοῖς ἁγίοις· ἐν κύκλῳ δὲ καὶ ἰάμβους ἐγχαράξας τῷ πέπλῳ καὶ μετὰ θάνατον τῷ θαύματι μαρτυρεῖ καὶ προτροπὴ τοῖς κακῶς τὸ σῶμα διακειμένοις τῆς ἐπὶ τοὺς ἁγίους καταφυγῆς γίγνεται. Trans. Talbot 1994, 156. See also Talbot 2004, 235.

Conclusion

correspondence, included some of the leading intellectual figures of the time.2 It was only appropriate, therefore, that his thank-offering commemorating the miraculous cure should be fashioned with costly materials, gold and silk thread, graced with figural imagery, and most significantly, furnished with a dedicatory inscription composed in “iambs” – that is, in dodecasyllables – rather than in plain prose. In Byzantium, a lavish aristocratic gift such as this one was most fittingly escorted by an epigram. This book has investigated the artistic culture of the later Byzantine elite using the evidence of epigrammatic poetry as a heuristic device. I have argued that in order to reconstruct how the likes of Constantine Akropolites viewed, thought of, handled, and interacted with their art, we can greatly benefit by turning to the epigrams that these individuals commissioned or, in some cases, wrote themselves. These poetic texts, to be sure, are highly diverse, as they confront art on many different levels. But taken as a whole, they present us with a fairly coherent system of concepts, values, attitudes, and patterns of thought – in a word, a discourse – which is directly relevant for understanding Byzantine art in its aesthetic, social, and religious contexts. The nearly ubiquitous presence of epigrams both as inscriptions and performed speeches ensured that this discourse enjoyed a wide currency among educated Byzantines. It was part of their shared cultural baggage, a facet of the thought-world they inhabited. My aim has been to uncover certain aspects of the epigrammatic discourse on art, namely, those that pertain to the interplay between art and devotion. But as a subsidiary goal, I have also sought to call attention to the critical significance of epigrammatic poetry as an art-historical source and to demonstrate how this rich body of texts can be used to frame our scholarly accounts of Byzantine art. Central to the account of Byzantine art laid out in the preceding pages has been the concept of kosmos. The exploration of this concept in Chapter 3 highlights two important points: first, that epigrams and other period sources offer us a language as well as a discursive framework to identify, describe, and elucidate phenomena that the conceptual toolbox of the modern art historian may not be adequately equipped to handle; and second, that in view of major losses of Byzantine archives, monuments, and works of art, epigrams represent an invaluable source of information for reconstructing trends in the artistic patronage of the Byzantine elite. Kosmos is a difficult concept to pinpoint. When applied to works of art, the

2

On Constantine Akropolites, see Chapter 5, n. 76.

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term could refer to practically any kind of embellishment and elaboration, anything that affords pleasure or elicits wonder in the spectator on account of its rich and costly materials, expert manufacture, and graceful appearance. The term, however, had a more specific, if not technical, meaning as the standard designation for precious-metal and/or bejeweled revetments and fittings attached to icons, reliquaries, book covers, liturgical vessels, and the like. As the evidence of epigrammatic poetry amply demonstrates, sumptuous kosmos emerged as a favored category of art patronized by the powerful and wealthy in Later Byzantium. To lavishly adorn a sacred object – in particular an icon – became a paradigmatic gesture, a preferred way to show one’s piety, affluence, and high social standing. For the Byzantines, kosmos was much more than a simple, unproblematic decoration. Rather, it was a dynamic entity capable of amplifying, inflecting, and even altering the object, a force that brought about fulfillment and perfection. An object stripped of its kosmos was considered incomplete and outright naked. The gesture of adornment was, in addition, charged with an intensely personal valence. To adorn was also to touch and embrace, to personalize, and indeed, to possess. The ability of kosmos to act on behalf of the patron and to serve, in a sense, as his or her physical extension explains in no small part why articles of adornment came to occupy such a pivotal place in the material culture of personal piety. So pervasive was the discourse of kosmos in Later Byzantium that it also informed how verse inscriptions were perceived and conceptualized. Regardless of its verbal content, an epigram can emphasize and enhance the value of the object to which it is attached simply by virtue of its poetic form. It can, moreover, contribute to the object’s visual appeal through its calligraphic lettering, materiality, and physical arrangement. The Byzantines conceived of these two interrelated aspects of verse inscriptions in terms of kosmos. As has been discussed in Chapter 4, for some authors, epigrams constituted the highest, most precious form of adornment. Considered against the background of a logocentric culture fostered in the circles of later Byzantine literati and their enlightened patrons, epigrams were all but indispensable. For art was never truly complete without the luminous aura of logos imparted by inscriptional poetry. While encapsulating the profound synergy between object and text, the notion of epigram-as-kosmos also throws into relief the material dimension of the inscribed verse. The Byzantines were clearly sensitive to the fact that poetic inscriptions were in essence material artifacts. As we have seen, they often took great care to present a poem in a manner that was not only visually pleasing, but that also strengthened and amplified its verbal message.

Conclusion

In attending to the nexus of art and devotion, the foregoing investigation has for the most part moved within the parameters provided by dedicatory epigrams. Viewed through the prism of these and other related texts, religious art created in the orbit of personal piety functioned primarily as a medium of spiritual exchange, and more specifically, as a special kind of gift. Sacred giving was such a ubiquitous and seemingly unproblematic practice in Byzantium that we rarely take the trouble to ponder the logic behind it or to look more closely at the diverse forms it could take. The detailed analysis of the evidence of dedicatory epigrams conducted in Chapter 5 reveals, however, that this practice was attended by a measure of anxiety. The notion that material wealth could translate and be converted into spiritual wealth was inherently paradoxical, even unsettling, and therefore, it required a careful rhetorical framing and negotiation. Far from operating uniformly according to a straightforward system of reciprocal exchange, sacred giving could appear in many different guises, among them as a type of restitution, voluntary offering, mandatory tribute, and spiritual trade. The devotional gift was, ultimately, not so much an instrument of exchange as it was a token of a relationship. Its purpose was to claim, affirm, solidify, and make manifest – and moreover, public – an interpersonal bond. Just as the gold-woven silk peplos dedicated by Akropolites at the Kosmidion proclaimed the favor he had found with Saints Cosmas and Damian, so did countless other devotional gifts in Byzantium work to forge and maintain a lasting rapport between the donor and a holy figure, the recipient of the donation. Asymmetrical and hierarchical, this rapport represented a form of service and personal dependence akin to the patron–client relationship in social life. The Byzantines regarded holy figures less as exemplars or models of virtuous conduct than as sources of power and protection. When supplicated, these remote yet curiously intimate individuals were expected to directly intervene on behalf of their devotees, both in the present life and in the life to come. Spiritual clientage thus provided a framework for the expression of personal devotion to Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the community of saints. To be the client of a holy figure was also to play the role of a lover. As Chapter 6 has shown, the discursive representations of ties of personal dependence in both the sacred and secular spheres drew upon a language of affection. They equated one’s submission to a powerful protector with emotional attachment and even erotic passion. Central to this rhetoric was the concept of pothos. This term denotes a particular kind of loving desire, namely, the one aroused by a sense of lack and distance, the inability to unite with the object of one’s affection. As such, pothos powerfully

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describes the condition of being a client. It points to a self painfully aware of its own insufficiency and driven to seek fulfillment or completion in the Other, be it a social superior or a holy figure in heaven. While pothos and the discourse that surrounded it are eminently relevant for understanding personal piety in Byzantium, the present study has argued that this concept should also enter the lexicon of Byzantine art history. With pothos as a heuristic tool, we can better appreciate and throw into sharper focus the personal and affective side of Byzantine religious art. The close affinity between devotion and desire demands that we consider how devotional artifacts might express, focus, and materialize emotions. Taking up this challenge, Chapter 7 has zoomed in on the icon. Pothos and visual representation are natural companions. The notion that pictures have the ability to induce or gratify one’s desire for the person depicted was current in Byzantium. Iconophile theologians, as we have seen, repeatedly brought up the concept of pothos in their writings in defense of image veneration. To evoke the affective power of images, however, seems particularly appropriate when investigating the fate of the icon in the last centuries of the Empire. Later Byzantium was a great age of the icon. Sacred portraiture, to be sure, had occupied a privileged place in Byzantine religiosity ever since the seventh century at the latest, but starting from the eleventh century one perceives a significant growth in icon piety. This growth can be measured by the rise of the cult of great miracle-working icons such as the Hodēgētria, but also by the increasingly central role that icons came to play in the devotional life of laypeople. To at least one Western observer, this trend was worrisome. In his polemical tract On the Heresies and Abuses of the Greeks, Leo Tuscus, an official translator at the court of Manuel I Komnenos, denounces contemporary Byzantines for their excessive attachment to their personal icons. “In their houses they build small chambers [mansiunculas], in which they place images of saints, and to them they show every reverence with lamps, candles, and incense. And the communal churches, which their fathers have built, they allow them to be abandoned and reduced to ruin.ˮ3 What icons offered to their venerators was a sense of intimacy and accessibility – the promise of a direct encounter with the holy figure depicted. In Later Byzantium, this

3

On the Heresies and Abuses of the Greeks, PG 140, col. 547B–C: In domibus suis mansiunculas construunt, in quibus sanctorum imagines collocant, et eis omne obsequium exhibent lampadarum, cereorum, et incensi; et synodales, quas patres eorum construxerunt, ecclesias, in solitudinem sinunt et in paupertatem redigi. See also Bacci 2003b, 1037–38. On Leo Tuscus, see Dondaine 1952.

Conclusion

encounter was persistently invoked and orchestrated through artistic and epigraphic means, as elite patrons surrounded the images of their heavenly protectors and intercessors with epigrams and epithets, precious-metal revetments, lamps, encheiria and podeai, as well as with their own portraits in prayer. While enhancing and amplifying the icon, such accouterments simultaneously personalized it. They created multiple points of entry through which the patron could penetrate the icon’s sacred space and leave an imprint of his or her self within it. If dedicatory verses and devotional portraits presented the patron directly, through the media of verbal and visual representation, the material adornment did so in less overt yet no less powerful ways. For, considered within the framework of epigrammatic discourse, the kosmos dedicated to the icon stood in for the patron and, more specifically, for his or her emotional attachment to the person depicted. It was not simply a splendid work of gold, silver, gems, pearls, silk, and the like, but the very pothos materialized. The personalization of the sacred through inscribed words, pictures, and precious materials that one can see at work in the domain of icon veneration represents an aspect of a broader shift in later Byzantine religious culture toward more self-assertive expressions of personal piety. Nowhere is this tendency more evident than in the unprecedented popularity of dedicatory epigrams in the form of a personal prayer. Chapter 2 has demonstrated how these poetic supplications, which can be quite elaborate and often present a semblance of autobiography, emerged as a distinct literature of the self. The inscriptional use of such texts greatly contributed to their impact. Once inscribed, a dedicatory prayer effectively transformed an artifact or building into a stage where the patron could perform – in Erving Goffman’s sense of the word – his or her identity. This performance involved a careful negotiation between individual choices on the one hand, and social and religious norms and genre conventions on the other. The result was a discursively and artistically crafted “I,” the bearer of a self firmly embedded in a web of social alliances and hierarchies, but also lifted toward the divine realm and the elusive yet omnipresent figure of the holy Other. Far from responding solely to spiritual needs, religious objects adorned with dedicatory epigrams provided elite patrons with a flexible, if normative and highly regimented, medium of self-fashioning. This study has identified resemblance and relationality as key operative principles in the making of the patron’s devotional self. Both of these principles have wider relevance for understanding Byzantine conceptions of subjectivity. Appearing on the stage of the inscribed object, the patron re-enacts one or several paradigmatic roles, including the roles of the

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servant of a holy figure, the sinner smitten with remorse, the open-handed donor, and the lover burning with desire. On occasion, as we have seen, he or she may identify with an exemplary figure from the sacred past such as the Old Testament Joshua or the harlot from Luke’s account of the feast in the house of Simon the Pharisee. In these devotional performances, personal identity is not an emanation of individuality, but a product of conformity with normative subject positions and modes of behavior. The self, although one’s own, is made in the image of another. Relationality, the other principle at work in devotional self-fashioning, dictates that the self emerges in an act of submission to a morally superior Other. The subject is neither autonomous, nor entirely complete: the “I” requires a “you.” This intersubjective bond finds its most forceful articulation in the performances of pothos. Pothos gives emotional substance to a particular kind of subjectivity, one marked by a sense of personal disorder.4 There is, on the one hand, a strong element of self-affirmation in pothos: the desiring subject claims intimacy and an affective rapport with the object of desire. Yet, on the other hand, pothos posits a very anxious self, a self limited and constrained both hierarchically and existentially. Within the framework of religion, this anxiety is, of course, a function of the very condition of being human, that is, susceptible to sin, spiritual corruption, and death. The desiring self is never too far from the guilt-ridden penitential self, a subject position that every pious Christian ought to inhabit.5 But there was another force that contributed to the configuration of the anxious self in Byzantine epigrammatic discourse, namely, society. The acute sense of anxiety implicit in the rhetoric of pothos is a poignant reflection of the realities of the Byzantine social world. It gestures to an intensely competitive milieu in which forging and manipulating ties of personal dependence through the system of patronage was critical to advancing or maintaining one’s position in a fluid topography of friendships, alliances, and factions. The peplos that Akropolites gifted at the Kosmidion has not come down to us, but hundreds of other objects and poetic texts have. These works of verbal and material artistry present us with a vast gallery of idealized portraits of prominent Byzantines. By subjecting these portraits to close scrutiny we may never know the historical individuals behind them, but we can learn a great deal about what it meant to be a person in the Greek Middle Ages.

4

Cf. Krueger 2014, 11, 221.

5

On the penitential self in the liturgy, see Krueger 2014, passim.

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Index

See name of town or city for specific icons, buildings, manuscripts, etc. absent voice/silence, epigram compensating for, 238–42 adornment. See kosmos Adversus Constantinum Caballinum, 339–41 aēr-epitaphios, introduction of, 273 agapē, non-use of, 300 Agapetos the Deacon, Ekthesis, 324 Akathistos Hymn, illustration of, Cozia, Wallachia, 350n64 Akindynos, Gregory, 318–19 Akropolites, Constantine Anastasis monastery, Constantinople, testamentary Logos for, 96, 266, 284, 290, 396 icon of Virgin Hodēgētria with Constantine and Maria Akropolites, 375 Kosmidion, textile donated to, on cure of daughter Theodora, 396–97, 399, 402 Akropolites, George, 18, 266, 396 History, 116 Akropolites, Melchisedek, 18–21, 23–25, 29, 47, 66 Alexios I Komnenos (emperor), 66, 85, 93, 130, 142, 154, 160, 182, 383 Alexios III Angelos (emperor), 111, 385n136 Amanteianos, Constantine, 262–64, 268, 365–66 Andrew of Crete, 278n109 Andrew (panhypersebastos), 227–29 Andronikos II Palaiologos (emperor), 33, 47, 73n13, 76, 180n172, 183–84, 206, 254, 256, 272–74, 278, 310, 316, 322, 344, 349 Andronikos III Palaiologos (emperor), 33, 254 Andronikos of Rhodes, 313 Angeloi. See specific emperors Angelos, Alexios Komnenos (owner or donor of panagiarion), 58, 60–61 Angelos, Constantine (sebastokratōr), 385n136 Angelos, Senachereim (megas stratopedarchēs), 33

animate/lifelike image, 64, 241 Anna of Hungary, 34n48 anonymity, 268n88 Anonymous Patrician, 241 anonymous Russian pilgrim, 115n117 Anthologia Marciana (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Ms. Marc. gr. 524), 6n18 affection, vocabulary of, 300n5, 301, 311 collection of epigrams in, 6, 16 Dalassenos, John Rogerios, epigram dedicating dead wife’s jewelry, 177–78 George the firefighter, Saint, epigram, 26, 31 golden lamp sent by Manuel I Komnenos to Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem, 259–61 on icon restoration, 156 John the Baptist, Saint, icon, epigram for, 270–71 Kamateros, Andronikos Doukas, epigram for revetment of Virgin and Child icon, 345–47 Komnenos, John, poem commemorating wall painting set up by, 382–85 kosmos in, 141 Maurokatakalon, Nicholas, epigram for icon donated by, 271–72 on miraculous escape from death of Manuel Styppeiotes, 92–93, 166n136, 255n41 on portrait of Manuel I Komnenos and Maria of Antioch, 322–23 pothos and social/personal patronage in, 322–23 on precious belt of Maria of Antioch, 27–28 restitution, epigrams expressing gift-giving as, 283 Serblias, Basil, epigram for Christ Peribleptos icon of, 375–79 Skylitzes, George, epigram for icon of Saint Nicholas, 345 on Styppeiotes image of Saint Demetrios, 165–67, 300

475

476

Index

Anthologia Marciana (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Ms. Marc. gr. 524) (cont.) terminology for gift-giving used in, 255n39, 257 triple lamp dedication, 96–98 on veil of icon of Christ at Chalke Gate, Constantinople, 350n62 votive transaction between Gerasimos and Saint Panteleimon, 258–59, 261 Anthologia Planudea, 32 Antonin (Russian archimandrite), 118n4 Antony of Novgorod, 156n114 Apamea, Syria, relic of True Cross from, 129 Aphrodisias, statues in honor of Rhodopaios erected by citizens of, 318 Aphthonios, Progymnasmata, 89 Arbantenos, John, 85–87, 96, 99, 102–5, 140 Areia, Argolid, monastic church at, 80, 82, 282 Arianitissa (daughter of Theodore Sarantenos), 305 Aristeides, Ailios, 102n91 Aristophanes, Wealth, 313 Aristotle, 154 Physics, 102n91 Arkas, Dionysios, 314–16, 321 Arsenites, 184 art of logoi, 23, 187, 242 artists in dedicatory epigrams, 71–75 epigrams adapted from anthologies, painters’ guides, and model books by, 29–31 liaison between patron and artist, poets acting as, 46–48 poets, collaboration with, 39–46 Asanes, Andronikos, 255, 280, 301 Asinou, Cyprus, church of the Virgin Phorbiōtissa, fresco of Saint George on horseback, 269–70 Astrapas, Eutychios and Michael, 29 Athanasios (monk commissioning epigram for icon of Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia), 282 Athanasios I (patriarch of Constantinople), 183–84, 310 Athanasios of Alexandria, Epistola ad Marcellinum, 89n47 Athens Benaki museum Psalter of Barnabas, Ms. 68, 310–11 Sarabares, George, icon of Virgin and child with inscription of, 253n25, 296–99, 331 Byzantine and Christian Museum, Virgin Akatamachētos icon, 135

Choniates poem on former glory of, 337–38 Kanellopoulos collection, Last Judgment icon, 22 Metochion of the Holy Sepulcher, Ms. 351 (now in National Library of Greece), 63n122 National Archaeological Museum, gold ring, 22–23, 31 Attaleiates, Michael, Diataxis, 96, 246, 252, 268, 283–84, 310 Atzymes, Manuel (sebastos), 90–92 Atzymes, Michael (domestikos of the Eastern themes), 33 authōron (improvisation), 62–65 autobiographical details in epigrams, 96–98 Bačkovo, Bulgaria, monastery of the Virgin Petritzonitissa, 96 Balsamon, Michael, 36 Balsamon, Theodore, 6, 172 Barberini Psalter (Ms. Vat. Barb. gr. 372), 322n85 Bardas (kaisar and donor of Croce degli Zaccaria), 161–65 Barnabas (monk-official of Jerusalem Patriarchate in Cyprus), 310–11 Barthes, Roland, 359, 366 Basil of Ankyra, 388 Basil the Great, Saint, funerary portrait, 340 on seal of Basil of Thessalonike, 106 Basil (metropolitan of Thessalonike), seal of, 106 Basil the Younger, Saint, called upon as intercessor with Saint Onouphrios, 171–72 Basilakes, Nikephoros, 92 Beaton, Roderick, 35 Bedos-Rezak, Brigitte, 52, 107 begging poets and begging poetry, 33–35, 321 Bekkos, John XI (patriarch of Constantinople), 188–89 Belting, Hans, 273 Benton, John F., 107n104 Bera, Typikon of monastic church of Virgin Kosmosōteira near, 97, 129, 156–57 Bernard, Floris, 31 Berroia Anastasis church at, 72–75 Philes, Manuel, verse inscriptions attributed to, 32n38 Bessarion, Cardinal, 380n124 Bible David’s prayer on endowment of first Temple of Jerusalem, 283

Index

erotic gaze in, 388 Joshua, son of Nun, on Urbino textile, 67–70, 108–11, 379 mikrodōria, scriptural precedents for, 292 narrative and typology, devotional identity constructed on, 108–16 Tabernacle in Old Testament, comparison of churches to, 217–18 Birth of John the Baptist, silence of Zachariah addressed on icon of, 238–40 Bithynia, Sakkoudion monastery, church of Saint John the Theologian, 307–8 Blemmydes, Nikephoros, Basilikos Andrias, 236 Book of Ceremonies, 323 Bryennios, John Doukas, 257 Bucharest, Biblioteca Academiei Române, Ms. 410, 63n122 calligraphy, 188–202 Cambridge, Trinity College, Ms. O.2.36, 227 carmina cancellata, 220, 224–29 carmina figurata, 219–30 Carr, Annmarie Weyl, 156 Chalcis treasure, rings from, 32n38 Chalkiopouloi, cave church of Saint Andrew the Hermit, 27 Chambéry diptych, 42–46, 61, 202 charaktēres, 51 Chatzikes, Athanasios, 319–20 childbirth and pregnancy, 103–5 Chomatenos, Demetrios as archbishop of Ohrid, 279 silver icon revetment of, 118–21, 124, 129, 161, 167 Choniates, Michael (author of poem on former glory of Athens), 337–38 Choniates, Niketas, on sacrilege of Isaac II, 178–79 Chortasmenos, John, 36–37, 324 Choumnos, Nikephoros, 180–84 Chrysoberges, Luke (patriarch of Constantinople), 227n73 Chrysoloras, Demetrios, 381n126 Chrysoloras, Manuel, 381 Chrysorophites, John, 322–23 collections of epigrams, 6 commemoration, 56, 262–76 Constantine I (emperor), 49, 217n52 Constantine V (emperor), 193 Constantine VI (emperor), 341 Constantine VII Porphyrogennētos (emperor), 241n113, 337n18

Constantine IX Monomachos (emperor), 173, 336–37 Constantinople Anastasis monastery, 96, 266, 396 Andrew, Saint, en tē Krisei, church of, 100–2 Chalke Gate icon of Christ, encheirion for, 283, 301 icon of Christ, veil in front of, 350n62 iconoclastic carmina cancellata, 225–27 Chalkoprateia, church of Christ Antiphōnētēs, inlaid floor, 307, 310 Chōra monastery Arkas, Dionysios, volume of ascetic texts donated by, 314–16 donor mosaic, 247, 386 Gospel book given by princess MariaMelane Palaiologina, 32n38, 302, 315n59 letter of founder to monks of, 247 tomb of Michael Tornikes and wife, 32n38 Christ Panoiktirmōn monastery, 96 Christ Pantokratōr monastery epigram in praise of monastery and its founders, 5n16, 57–58, 275 fresco or wall mosaic icon of Virgin with carmen cancellatum, 227–29 promotion of epithet with founding of, 390n161 Christ Plērophorētēs, church of podea and icon for, 349–50 possible connection of Anna Philanthropene with, 372 Xanthopoulos, Nikephoros Kallistou, dedicatory poem for Theodore Palaiologos by, 94–95, 256 Saint Demetrios, transfer from Thessalonike of tomb cover of, 348n55 Saint Demetrios monastery, Typikon of Michael VIII for, 96, 332–33 Hagia Sophia apse mosaic of Virgin and Child, 393 edict of Manuel I Komnenos, 193–95, 201 iconoclastic synod of 815, 225 pearl-weeping icon of Mother of God, 115n117 purple aēr “stripped naked of the pearls it once had,” 179n169 wood from unsalvageable icons used to heat holy myron, 156n114 Holy Apostles, church of, 111n110 Kosmidion, textile presented by Constantine Akropolites to, 396–97, 402

477

478

Index

Constantinople (cont.) Mangana, imperial monastery of Saint George at, 263–64, 268, 274–75 Mermer-Kule or Marble Tower, 36n62 monastery tou Libos epigram on east façade of north church, 280n120 Typikon, 265 Nicholas tou Glaba, Saint, Philes epigram on, 205n35 Polyeuktos, Saint, church, 5n16 porphyry column of Constantine, 49 Stone of Unction transferred from Ephesos, 348n55 Stoudios monastery, shield with carmen cancellatum, 227n73 Virgin Amolyntos church, 365n97 Virgin Athēniōtissa monastery, 284 Virgin Bebaia Elpis convent, Typikon, 96, 175–77, 266–67, 372 Virgin Hagiosoritissa icon, 140n67, 350n64 Virgin Hodēgētria icon confraternity dedicated to, 105n100 cult of, 156, 400 encheiria dedicated to, 85–87, 96, 99, 103–5, 140n67, 140, 166n136, 246n3, 255–56, 290–91 replicas of, 356, 365n95 Virgin Pammakaristos church, 32n38, 203–14, 284, 302 Virgin tēs Pēgēs monastery, 90 Corfu, church of Saints Jason and Sosipater, 139n62 Corinth epigram of Theodore I Palaiologos on gate of (now lost), 75 return of icon of Saint Theodore Tērōn to, 347–49 sack by Normans, removal of icon of Saint Theodore Stratēlatēs in, 348 Cosmas and Damian, Saints, miracles of, 396–97, 399 Cozia, Wallachia, illustration of Akathistos Hymn, 350n64 created world, God as kosmētōr of, 120–24 Croce degli Zaccaria, 161–66 cruciform lectionaries, 220 Cutler, Anthony, 13 Dalassenos, John Rogerios (kaisar), 177–78 De virginitate (attrib. Basil of Ankyra), 388 dedicatory epigrams, 9–11, 67–117, 399 artists in, 71–75

defined, 71 “I,” patron speaking as, 17, 82–85, 87–98, 387 praising patron, 75–79 as prayers, 80–87 saints and holy figures as speakers, 80–82 self-representation in, 98–117 Deēsis composition with saints as courtly figures, 325–27 Demetrios, Saint, Makres, Makarios, ekphrasis of image of martyrdom of, 382 as patron saint of Michael VIII, 332–33 as patron saint of Thessalonike, 106 transfer of tomb cover to Constantinople from Thessalonike, 348n55 Derrida, Jacques, La vérité en peinture, 143–44, 167 desire and devotion. See pothos devotional gift-giving. See gift-giving, devotional diathesis (moral disposition) of devotional gift-giver, 295, 300 Dishypatos, Manuel, 2, 3n5, 8, 10–11, 13–14, 297–98, 343–44, 351, 370 diskokalymma (paten veil), Halberstadt, 111–16 Dölger, Franz, 111 Doukaina, Irene (wife of Gregory Kamateros), 237, 237n107 Doukaina, Maria (wife of Alexios Komnenos prōtostratōr), 283, 301 Doukas, Isaakios (sebastokratōr and governor of Ohrid), 231, 233 Doukas, John (kaisar), 235 Edessa (Vodena), inventory of Virgin Gabaliōtissa monastery, 139 ego-document, 98 eidos, 153–54 ekphrasis of image of martyrdom of Saint Demetrios (Makarios Makres), 382 of Metropolis of Serres (Theodore Pediasimos), 125–29 emotional content of religious devotion. See pothos, schēma emperors. See entries at imperial; specific emperors Ephesos staurothēkē of basilica of Saint John the Evangelist in (Croce degli Zaccaria), 161–66 transfer of Stone of Unction to Constantinople from, 348n55

Index

epigram in Later Byzantium, 1–17, 396–402 academic interest in, 7 composition of, 15, 18–48. See also writing epigrams dates, 6, 16–17 dedicatory epigrams, focus on, 9–11, 67–117, 399. See also dedicatory epigrams defined, 4 gift-giving and, 15, 244–95, 399. See also gift-giving, devotional goals in studying, 397 for icons. See icons kosmos and, 15, 118–85, 397–98. See also kosmos as logos, 21–25, 188, 226, 230–42, 398 as material artifacts with visual and aural qualities, 7–8 number, length, and types, 4–6 patronage and, 13–14, 29–48. See also patronage, artistic pothos and, 15, 296–331, 399–401. See also pothos reading/reciting, 15, 48–66. See also reading/ reciting epigrams scope of study of, 6, 9 “epigrammatic habit,” 21–22 epistolography/letters, 318–20 epithets or names for saints and holy figures, 351–73 erōs, use of, 300, 306, 312–13, 388 erotic gaze, 387–94 Eszterhom cathedral treasury staurothēkē, 158–60, 167 ēthopoiia, 89–95, 166n136, 387 eugeneia, 99–102, 284 Eugeneianos, Niketas, 186–87, 211, 226 Eugenios, Saint, miracles of, 178, 333 Eulogia (nun and niece of Andronikos II), 344 Eusebios of Caesarea, Church History, 217n52 Eustathios of Thessalonike, 92, 174, 179–80, 227n73 Euthymios (patriarch of Constantinople), Vita, 129 extramission, 393–94 ex-votos or votives, 257–61 fear (phobos), 324, 328, 376–78 Ferrara-Florence, Council of (1438–39), 356–59 figured epigrams, 219–30 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Laur. V 9 (Bible of Niketas), 139n62

Foucault, Michel, 117 Fourth Crusade, 16, 111 Franses, Henri, 250 Freising Lukasbild, 1–4, 8–15, 280n117, 297–98, 312, 343–44, 351, 370 friendship (philia), 321 Gabras, Michael, 46, 321–22 Gabriel (archangel), standard epigram associated with, 29–31 Gabriel (monk-painter), 46 Gabrielopoulos, George Kydones, 262n61 Gastreas (painter), 46 gender criticism of feminine adornment, 146 male patrons imitating females, 116, 349–50 sacrilege as forced denudement, 169 self-representation by female patrons, 102–5 Genoa cathedral treasury, Croce degli Zaccaria, 161–66 genuflexio recta, 386 Geometres, John, 312 George of Antioch, 80–82 George Saint, vita icon, 308, 375 Georgius Monachus Continuatus, 179n168 Gerasimos (votive transaction with Saint Panteleimon), 258–59, 261 Germanos I (patriarch of Constantinople), In Annuntiationem, 329n104 Germanos (monk, church of the Zōodochos Pēgē, Vrontamas, Laconia), 308–10 gift-giving, devotional, 15, 244–95, 399 commemoration, remembrance, and mediation, 262–76 dedicatory epigrams and, 71 defined and described, 11–12 elite, munificence as requisite virtue of, 284 giver’s intent, stress on, 294–95 hyper sōtērias, 252, 265, 274, 278–79, 282 intercessory prayer in return for, 274–75 mikrodōria (stressing insignificance of gift), 291–93, 314 paradigms for understanding, 276–95 persuasive or negotiating aspect of, 294 petitionary gifts, 252, 256, 279, 282 portraits of supplicants included in icons, 372–95, 374n117 pothos and, 294–95, 300–11 reading of epigrams on presentation of gift, 61, 275 as reciprocal exchange, 247–50, 279–82, 293–94 as restitution to sacred recipient as true owner, 282–90

479

480

Index

gift-giving, devotional (cont.) saints and holy figures as direct recipients, 251–52 terminology used in, 252–57 thank-offerings, 252–57, 279, 290–91 typology of, 251–61 votives or ex-votos, 257–61 Glabas Tarchaneiotes, Michael Doukas and Maria (Maria-Martha, prōtostratorissa), 33, 203–14, 284, 302, 366–68, 379–80, 382 Goffman, Erving, 98–99, 401 Great and Small Compline, 352 Great Entrance, procession of, 273–74 Great Paraklētikos Kanōn, 88n42, 234, 353, 363n90 Greek Anthology, 79, 229, 340n30 Gregoras, Nikephoros, 180 Gregory (metropolitan of Mitylene), 116 Gregory of Nazianzos Basil the Great epitaphs and funerary oration on, 340 funerary portrait of, 340 On His Sermons and to the Tax Adjuster Julian, 295, 300 Homilies (Mount Athos, Iviron monastery, Ms. gr. 27 [nunc 19]), 139n62 Liturgical Homilies (Sofia, Dujčev Center, Ms. gr. D. 282 [olim Prodromos P. A. 14]), 220–24 on material adornment, 146 Gregory of Nyssa, 333 Gregory (archbishop of Ohrid), 75–77, 274 Gregory (pneumatikos of John VIII), later Gregory III (patriarch of Constantinople), 356–59, 359n83 Gregory the Sinaite, 342 Gyges (king of Lydia), 39 Halberstadt liturgical cloths, 111–16, 292–94 Hamburger, Jeffrey, 387 Herakleios (emperor), 324 Herakleia, Thrace, image of Christ in hermitage near, 389–90 Hermitage, icon of Christ Pantokratōr, 390–95 Holobolos, Manuel, 220 holy figures. See saints and holy figures homilies, recited metrical prologues to, 61–62 Honoratai, Vienna Dioskorides presented to Julia Anicia by citizens of, 316–17 Hörandner, Wolfram, 7, 42, 303 Humbert of Romans, 386n141 hymnography, 233–35, 299, 311, 352–53, 369n108

“I,” patron speaking as, 17, 82–85, 87–98, 387 Iconoclasm, 225–27, 339–40, 355n77 icons central role in lay devotional life, 400 clothing of, kosmos as, 167–84 Freising Lukasbild, 1–4, 8–15, 280n117, 297–98, 312, 343–44, 351, 370 hymn, as icon’s verbal kosmos, 233–35 kosmos, importance of, 139–43 matter and the sacred, relationship between, 144–67 relics as icons, icons as relics, 157–60, 167 restoration of, 156–57, 301 through lens of pothos, 332–95, 400–1 affective power of images, 335–43 epithets or names for saints and holy figures, adding, 351–73 kosmos and the relational self, 343–51 portraits of supplicants included in icon, 372–95, 374n117 presence of holy figure and, 333–34 identity. See individual and subjectivity imperial patronage, 322–25, 328 imperial portraiture, 322–23, 335–37 improvisatory epigrams, 62–65 individual and subjectivity, 14–15 devotional self, 105–17 eugeneia and, 99–102 gender and, 102–5 “I,” patron speaking as, 82–85, 87–98 pothos giving emotional substance to, 402 self-representation, 98–117 intercessory prayer, donations seeking, 274–75 inventories kosmos in, 130–39, 179n169 pothos in, 310 Ioannikios (oikonomos of monastery tou Philokalou, Thessalonike), 147–53, 251 Irene (mother of Constantine VI), 341 Irene (sebastokratorissa), 140, 281 Irene Doukaina (empress of Alexios I), 66, 237n105, 253n25, 280n117 Irene-Bertha (empress of Manuel I), 256 Irene-Dobrodeja (wife of Alexios, first-born son of John II), 301 Irene-Piroska (empress of John II), 57, 105n98, 275 Isaac II Angelos (emperor), 158n123, 178–79, 385n136 Isaac (metropolitan of Ephesos), 161–66 Isaiah (monk-painter), 47–48 Islam calligraphy in, 188–89

Index

Manuel II Palaiologos (emperor), Dialogues with a Persian, 153–54 pseudo-Arabic, 189 Rallis, Theodore, The Booty, 167–69, 180 Italikos, Michael, 65–66, 92, 260 James the Persian, Saint, pseudo-Arabic associated with, 189, 191 Jerusalem David’s prayer on endowment of first Temple of, 283 Greek Patriarchate, Gospel lectionary of 1060/61, Ms. Megalē Panagia 1, 350n64 Holy Sepulcher, golden lamp of Manuel I Komnenos dedicated to, 259–61 Ms. Taphou 55 (psalter), 385n136 Job of Esztergom, 158n123 John II Komnenos (emperor), 35, 57, 85–86, 105n98, 177, 260–61, 275, 301, 335–36, 383 John III Batatzes (emperor), 236 John V Palaiologos (emperor), 67n2, 390 John VI Kantakouzenos (emperor), 33, 263, 318, 390 John VIII Palaiologos (emperor), 357 John the Baptist, Saint, silence of Zachariah addressed in icon of birth of, 238–40 John Chrysostom In diem natalem Christi, 217n53 In Epistulam ad Hebraeos, 218n55 In Genesim homilia XXI, 146n89 Homilies (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ms. Coislin 79), 385n136 Patmos icon of, 132 On the Priesthood, 394 In principium Actorum, 367n101 John of Damascus, 227n73, 230, 340–41, 394 John (Georgian hieromonk), 308, 375 John XIII Glykys (patriarch of Constantinople), 74 John the Grammarian, 225–27 John XIV Kalekas (patriarch of Constantinople), 318–19 Joseph II (patriarch of Constantinople), 357 Joshua, son of Nun, on Urbino textile, 67–70, 108–11, 379 Juliana Anicia (princess), 316–17 Jussen, Bernhard, 249–50 Justinian I (emperor), 251, 324 Kabasilas, Nicholas, Explication of the Divine Liturgy, 289–90 Kalierges, George, 72–75

Kallikles, Nicholas collection of epigrams by, 6 encheiria dedicated to icon of Virgin Hodēgētria, epigrams for, 85–87, 96, 99, 103–5, 140 Kamateros, Gregory, epitaph and epigram for icon of Christ composed for, 236–38, 237n107, 242 kosmos in epigrams of, 140 philtron used by, 301n9 staurothēkē of Eudokia Komnene, epigram for, 158n122 Kallikrenites, Michael, 254, 282 Kaloeidas (monk probably owner of psalter), 360–63, 386 Kalopissi-Verti, Sophia, 74 Kalothetos, Ignatios, 73n13 Kamateros, Andronikos Doukas (megas droungarios), 301, 345–47 Kamateros, Gregory (logothetēs), 236–38, 237n107, 238n108, 242 Kamateros, John (archbishop of Ohrid), 279 Kambourova, Tania, 250 Kanabes, Nielos, 262n61 Kanabes, Nikephoros, 262–64, 365–66 Kanabina, Maria Kasandrene, 262–64, 268–69, 274–75 Kanabina, Martha, 262n61 Kant, Immanuel, third Kritik, 143 Kantakouzenoi. See specific emperors and despots Kantakouzenos, Theodore Palaiologos, 36–37 Kapandrites, George, 32n38 Kapandrites (skouterios), epitaph for wife Xene, 381 Kaplan, Michel, 328 Kasandrenos, Demetrios-Daniel, 262–64, 268–69 Kastoria church of the Holy Anargyroi, inscription commemorating restoration of, 72 church of Saint Athanasios tou Mouzakē, mural paintings, 325–27 church of Saint Stephen, fresco-icon of Virgin Gorgoepēkoos, 350n64 Kausokalybites, Maximos, Vita of, 342–43 Kazhdan, Alexander, 14 Kedrenos, Tryphon (orphanotrophos), 320 Keroularios, Michael (patriarch of Constantinople), and brother, 187 Khludov Psalter (Moscow, State Historical Museum, Ms. gr. 129d), 182

481

482

Index

Kinnamos, John, 92, 260–61 Kissas, Sotirios, 232 kissing, as form of veneration, 341–43 Klibanares (sebastos), church of Saint Nicholas founded by, 292n152 kneeling iunctis manibus, 387 Kokkinos, Philotheos, Vita of Saint Sabas the Younger, 389–90 Komnene, Anna (wife of John Arbantenos), 86, 103–5, 140 Komnene, Eudokia (daughter of Alexios I), 158n122 Komnene, Eudokia (wife of Progonos Sgourous), 29, 244–46 Komnene, Eudokia (wife of Theodore Styppeiotes), 166n136, 255–56, 290–91 Komnene, Irene Dokeiane (daughter of Sophia Komnene), 93–94 Komnene, Maria (eldest daughter of John II), 177–78 Komnene, Sophia (niece of Alexios I), 93 Komnenoi. See specific emperors Komnenos, Alexios (prōtostratōr), 283, 301 Komnenos, Alexios (son of John II), 105n98, 301 Komnenos, Isaac (sebastokratōr), 129, 156–57, 335–36 Komnenos, John (nephew of Manuel I), 382–85 Komnenos Doukas, Theodore, and wife Maria (rulers of Epiros), 276–79, 294 Konrad von Krosigk, 111n115 Kontostephanos, Alexios (megas stratopedarchēs, on Hermitage icon of Christ Pantokratōr), 390–95 Kontostephanos, John (megas primikērios, on Hermitage icon of Christ Pantokratōr), 390–95 Kosmas Indikopleustes, Christian Topography, 217n53 Kosmas the Hymnographer, Saint, Vitae of, 235 kosmos, 15, 118–85, 397–98 alternative terms in medieval Greek, 125n19 as clothing, 167–84 created world, God as kosmētōr of, 120–24 defined and described, 11 defining, 125–44 desecration as sacrilege, 144–45, 167–84 donor as, 347–51 epigrams as kosmos, 186–243 figured epigrams, 219–30 as “golden words,” 226

logos, as instantiation of, 188, 226, 230–42, 398 as material artifacts, 188 script as ornament, 188–202 spatial context and delineation, 202–19 epithets or names, kosmetic quality of, 356 history of use of term, 129–36 icon kosmos, importance of, 139–43 icons through lens of pothos and, 343–51 logos as, 242–43, 398 material value and, 137–39 matter and the sacred, relationship between, 144–67 parergonality of, 143–44, 167, 343 patronage and, 16–17, 139–41, 160–61 personal and sacred kosmos, relationship between, 177–79 as pivotal concept in devotional practice and aesthetic discourse, 124, 185 pothos and, 343–51 relationality of, 120, 143, 343–51 touch, mediating power of kosmos through, 349–50 Kumler, Aden, 14 Kyriakos (metropolitan of Ephesos), 161–65 labyrinth poems, 220–24 Lagoudera, Cyprus, fresco-icon of Virgin in church of the Virgin tou Arakos, 366n99 Lakapenos, Basil, 79n27 Lakapenos, George, 313 Latin saints, Byzantine lack of familiarity with, 356–59 Lauxtermann, Marc, 7, 9n26, 227 Lazaropoulos, John, 178, 333 leaven, Psellos’s poem on allegorical interpretation of parable of, 27 Lemniotes, Theodore, 72 Leo I (emperor), 324 Leo III (emperor), 193 Leo V (emperor), 225 Leo VI (emperor), 129 Leo (bishop of Argos and Nauplia), 80, 82, 282 Leo (metropolitan of Chalcedon), 154–56, 182 Leo the Grammarian, 179n168 Leo (anti-Latin polemicist and archbishop of Ohrid), 285 Leo (prōtospatharios), 77–79, 229, 308 letter mysticism, 51–52 Letter of the Three Patriarchs, 355n76 letters/epistolography, 318–20 Libanios, Epistles, 313 lifelike/animate image, 64, 241

Index

Limburg staurothēkē, 139n62 lion, improvisatory epigram inspired by image of, 63–65 literacy, 52 literary improvisation, 62–66 liturgy epigrams on objects used in, 58–61, 272–74 epigrams paraphrasing language of, 288–90 Great and Small Compline, 352, 369n108 Great Entrance, procession of, 273–74 Great Paraklētikos Kanōn, 88n42, 234, 353, 363n90 Panagia, Elevation of the, 58–61 logoi, art of, 23, 187, 242 logos, epigram as, 21–25, 188, 226, 230–42, 398 love and devotion. See pothos Lydda, Palestine, acheiropoiēton depicting Mother of God appearing in church near, 355n76 Maastricht, reliquary-enkolpion of Irene Synadene at, 299n4 Madrid, Escorial, Ms. X.IV.20, 238n110 Magdalino, Paul, 21–22 magic, 39, 50–51 Magistros, Thomas, Eklogē, 313 Magnani, Eliana, 249 Makrembolites, Alexios, 344 Makrenos, George Komnenos, 253 Makres, Makarios, ekphrasis of image of martyrdom of Saint Demetrios, 382 Malatesta, Cleofe, 380n124 Malaxos, John, 227–29 Manasses, Constantine, Synopsis Chronikē, 121 Manastir (near Prilep), church of Saint Nicholas at, 170 Manganeios, Prodromos, collection of epigrams by, 6 Komnenos, John, epigrams for banner presented to emperor, 384n134 kosmos in epigrams of, 140 On Erōs, 388 reciprocal exchange in epigrams of, 281 Virgin Hagiosoritissa, epigram for textile hanging dedicated to, 140n67, 350n64 Mango, Cyril, 9n26, 209 Maniakes, Alexios, 255n39 Manuel I Komnenos (emperor), 27–28, 49, 92, 193, 195, 201, 256, 259–61, 270–71, 322–23, 345, 347–49, 383–84, 400 Manuel II Palaiologos (emperor) Dialogues with a Persian, 153–54, 160 in the Morea, 324

Manuel Kantakouzenos (despot of the Morea), 264 Manuel (patron of Urbino textile), 67–70, 100, 108–11, 379 manuscript record, epigrams transmitted in, 6, 25–29 Maria of Antioch portrait of Manuel I Komnenos and, 322–23 precious belt of, 27–28 Mark (monk), psalter commissioned by, 146–47 Mary the Younger, Saint, Vita of, 146, 177 Maurokatakalon, Nicholas, 271–72 Mauropous, John “Against the man who criticized the verse. . .,” 37n66 on kissing as symbol of desire, 342 kosmos not present in epigrams of, 140 Mango’s assessment of, 9n26 oration on Dormition of Virgin, 236 Mauss, Marcel, Essai sur le don, 248–49 Maximos the Deacon, Miracles of Saints Cosmas and Damian, 396n1 Megistos, Leo, 62n119, 64–65 Melane (prōtoïerakaria), funerary portrait of, 56–57, 238 memoria (remembrance), 262–76 Mēnologion of Basil II, 110 Mesopotamites, Constantine (metropolitan of Thessalonike), 385n136 Meteora, Great Meteoron monastery, icon of Saint Nicholas, 132 Metochites, Theodore, 175, 247, 249, 314–16, 321, 386 metron, 23–25 Michael (archangel) adorned icon in Coptic encomium, 141n72 on Urbino textile, 67–70, 86, 108–11, 379 Michael IV (emperor), 174 Michael V Kalaphates (emperor), 92n61 Michael VIII Palaiologos (emperor), 32n38, 96, 100, 111n110, 164, 184n185, 188–89, 265–66, 332–33 Michael IX Palaiologos (emperor), 32n38, 33 Michael (secretary), 97 mikrodōria, 291–93, 314 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana Ms. Ambr. B 119 sup., 79n27 Ms. D 538 inf., 262n61 Miller, Emmanuel, 90 Mistra Brontochion monastery, 262–64, 268, 274–75

483

484

Index

Mistra (cont.) Christ Zōodotēs monastery, 264 church of Virgin Pantanassa, 32n38, 82–84, 86 Parori, church of the Virgin at, 5n16 Mitchell, W. J. T., 335 Mitylenaios, Christophoros, 9n26 mnēmosynon (remembrance), 262–76 Monomachos, Michael Senachereim, ring of, 38–39, 62 Montecassino staurothēkē, 139n62 Montferrat, church of Christ Plērophorētēs founded by marquis of, 94–95, 256, 349–50 Moschopoulos, Nikephoros, 281n122 Moscow icon of Virgin Hodēgētria with Constantine and Maria Akropolites, 375 reliquary-enkolpion, 198–202 State Historical Museum Ms. 3649, 102n91 Ms. gr. 129d (Khludov Psalter), 182 Moungos, Leo (Jewish convert and archbishop of Ohrid), 285–88 Mount Athos Christ Pantokratōr monastery, founding of, 390 Great Lavra Aspasmos of Saints Peter and Paul, icon of, 32n38 Five Martyrs of Sebasteia, icon of, 157 Gospel Lectionary (Phokas or Skeuophylakion Lectionary), 130 Iviron monastery, Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos (Ms. gr. 27 [nunc 19]), 139n62 Panteleimon monastery, panagiarion on Alexios Komnenos Angelos (now lost), 58, 202 Vatopedi monastery Birth of John the Baptist icon, 239 Ms. Athous Vatop. 1037, 370n111 Virgin and Child icon probably on cabinet door, 195–98, 201 Virgin Elpis tōn Apelpismenōn icon, 32n38, 370–73, 386n137 Virgin Hodēgētria icon, 32n38, 303–7 Xenophon monastery inventory of property, 130–31 Virgin Kecharitōmenē icon, 366n99 Mouzakios, Theodore Doukas (epi tou stratou), 170n140 Mouzalon, George, 233–35 Muslims. See Islam myroblytēs, 97

names or epithets for saints and holy figures, 351–73 narrative and typology, devotional identity constructed on, 108–16 Naumachika (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Ms. Ambr. B 119 sup.), dedicatory epigram in, 79n27 Nelson, Robert, 393 Neophytos (metropolitan of Mokessos), 92 Neophytos the Recluse, commentary on the Hexaēmeron, 121 Nestor, Saint, pseudo-inscriptions around figure of, 191 Nevers staurothēkē (now lost), 32n38 Nicaea, inscription commemorating restoration of walls of, 193 Nicaea, Second Council of (787), 155, 334, 341, 342n38, 355n77, 385 Nicholas (metropolitan of Adrianople), 155n106 Nicholas (metropolitan of Corfu), 327 Nicholas (portrayed on Saint Irene icon, Sinai), 108, 375 Nicholas of Myra, Saint, adorned ōmophorion on icon of, 132 as patron saint of prisoners, 253–54 patron’s prayer to, 97 Nicholas of Ohrid (archbishop), 375, 379 Nicholas the Sophist, 144 Nikephoros II Phokas (emperor), 92n61, 130 Nikephoros (horse medicine specialist), 269–70 Nikephoros (patriarch of Constantinople), 154, 340 Niketas, Bible of (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Laur. V 9), 139n62 Niphon I (patriarch of Constantinople), 74n14, 180–84, 320 nudity desecration as form of, 167–84 of Saint Onouphrios, 169–72 Nunn, Valerie, 160 Oexle, Otto Gerhard, 265, 269 Ohrid Hagia Sophia aēr gifted by Theodore Komnenos Doukas and wife Maria, 276–79, 294 aēr-epitaphios dedicated by Andronikos II, 272–74, 278 Ascension fresco in sanctuary of, 127 exonarthex inscription, 75, 80, 274

Index

icons pair of icons of Annunciation, 284–88 Virgin Psychosōstria, 375, 379 Virgin Peribleptos (now Saint Clement), monastery church of archangel Gabriel in narthex, 29–31 founded by Progonos Sgouros and Eudokia Komnene, 29–31, 244 icon of Christ from, 230–33 pseudo-inscriptions, 191 Sgouros Crucifixion cloth probably donated to, 244–46, 251 templon screen, 118 oiketēs, 111 Oikonomides, Nikolaos, 79 On Emotions, 313 On the Four Parts of the Perfect Speech, 24 On the Mystery of the Letters, 52 Onouphrios, Saint, nakedness of, 169–72 orality, 8, 54–66, 238–42 ornament. See kosmos Oxford Bodleian Library Ms. E. D. Clarke 15, 146–47 Ms. Lincoln College gr. 35 (Typikon of Virgin Bebaia Elpis convent, Constantinople), 175–77, 266, 372–73 Christ Church, Ms. gr. 61 (Oxford Psalter), 360–63, 386 Pachymeres, George, 188–89, 284 Pakourianos, Gregory, 96 Palaiologina, Maria (nun), funerary stele of, 32n38 Palaiologina, Maria-Melane (princess), gospel book of (Sophia, Dujčev Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies, Ms. 177), 32n38, 256n42, 302, 315n59 Palaiologoi. See specific emperors and despots Palaiologos, Alexios (sebastos), 111–16, 292–94 Palaiologos, Andronikos (prōtobestiarios), 33 Palaiologos, Constantine (son of Andronikos II), 34n48 Palaiologos, Demetrios (despot and son of Andronikos II), 32n38 Palaiologos, George (founder of monastery of Saint Demetrios of the Palaiologoi), 332 Palaiologos, George (megas hetaireiarchēs), 64, 111 Palaiologos, John-Ioasaph (nephew of Theodora Palaiologina Synadene), 267

Palaiologos, Theodore (marquis of Montferrat and son of Andronikos II), 94–95, 256, 349–50, 370, 372 Palermo, church of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, 80–82 Panagia, Elevation of the, 58–61 Panteleimon, Saint, votive transaction of Gerasimos with, 258–59, 261 Papadopoulina (daughter of Theodore Sarantenos), 305–6 Papamastorakis, Titos, 3n5 Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, 51 parergonality of kosmos, 143–44, 167, 343 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France Ms. Coislin 79, 385n136 Ms. gr. 47, 264 Parori (near Mistra), church of the Virgin at, 5n16 parrhēsia, 328 Patmos, inventory of monastery of Saint John the Theologian, 131–36 Patrikiotes, Theodore, 33, 320–21 patronage, artistic, 13–14 ancestry and lineage of patron, 99–102 artistic agency generally ascribed to patron, 71–75 begging poets and, 33–35 gender and identity, 102–5, 116 “I,” patron speaking as, 17, 82–85, 87–98, 387 involvement with and instructions to epigrammatists, 36–42 kosmos and, 16–17, 139–41, 160–61 letter from Maximos Planoudes to Melchisedek Akropolites with commissioned epigram verses, 18–21, 23–25, 29 liaison between patron and artist, poets acting as, 46–48 portraits of supplicants included in icon, 372–95, 374n117 praise of patron in epigram, 75–79 second person, patron addressed in, 79 selection of epigrams presented to patron, 37–42 self-representation of patrons, 98–117 writing of epigrams by patrons, 31 patronage, personal/social, and pothos, 299, 314–31, 399–400 Paul (prōtos of Mount Athos), 130–31 Pediasimos, Theodore, ekphrasis of Metropolis of Serres, 125–29 Pentcheva, Bissera, 139, 142–43

485

486

Index

Pepagomenos, George, 292, 294–95 performative epigrams, 28, 61–62 performative events, epigrams as, 8, 28, 54–66, 275–76 performative self, 98–99, 401 periautologia, 88 personal piety gift-giving as expression of, 251–61 self-representation and, 105–17 use of icons in. See icons, through lens of pothos personalization of the sacred, 343, 351, 395, 401 personal/social patronage and pothos, 299, 314–31, 399–400 petitionary gifts, 252, 256, 279, 282 pharmacological tracts in Vienna Dioskorides, 316–17 Philanthropene, Anna, 175–77, 370–73, 372n115, 386n137 Philanthropene, Xene, 372n115 Philanthropenos, Alexios Doukas (pinkernēs), 46–48, 368–69 Philanthropenos, Michael, 175–77 Philanthrōpos epithet on icon of Christ at Sinai, 353 Philes, Manuel alternative terms for pothos used by, 301–2 Atzymes, Manuel, verses composed for, 90–92 collection of epigrams by, 6, 16 epithets in epigrams by, 366–70 Eulogia (nun), epigram for icon of Virgin of, 344 gift-giving terminology used by, 253–56 giver’s intent stressed by, 294 icon-as-relic analogy, 157–58, 160 improvisatory epigrams of, 62–65 John the Baptist, quatrain for icon of Birth of, 238–40 kosmos in epigrams of, 141 on lifelike artistic depiction, 241 lion, improvisatory epigram inspired by image of, 63–65 Makrembolites, Alexios, epigram for icon of Virgin of, 344 Mango’s assessment of, 9n26 Melane (prōtoïerakaria), funerary portrait of, 56–57, 238 mikrodōria used by, 291–92 monastery tou Philokalou Gospel lectionary, Thessalonike, epigram for, 147–53, 251 Monomachos, Michael Senachereim, epigrams for ring of, 38–39, 62

Nicholas, Saint, tou Glaba, Constantinople, epigram on, 205n35 Onouphrios, Saint, epigram for icon of, 169–72 orality in epigrams of, 55–57 Pachymeres’s history, as probable redactor of abridged version of, 284 as poet, 32–34 portraiture and pothos, epigrams showing link between, 379–81 pothos and social patronage in poetry of, 314–16, 320–22 reciprocal exchange in epigrams of, 280–82 restitution, epigrams expressing gift-giving as, 282 Saint Demetrios church, Thessalonike, parekklēsion of Saint Euthymios inscriptions, 205n35 on schēma, 381–82 surviving objects with epigrams inscribed, 32n38 Virgin Hodēgētria icon, Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos, 303 Virgin Pammakaristos church, Constantinople, parekklēsion inscriptions, 204–14 philia (friendship), 321 phobos (fear), 324, 328, 376–78 Phokas or Skeuophylakion Lectionary, Great Lavra, Mount Athos, 130 Photios (patriarch of Constantinople), Homily 17, 393 Phrangopoulos, John (prōtostratōr), 83 Pisides, George, 24, 324 Planoudes, Maximos Akropolites, Melchisedek, epigrams in letter to, 18–21, 23–25, 29, 66 collection of epigrams by, 6 Comparison between Winter and Spring, 18n2 Constantinople, epigrams for church of Saint Andrew en tē Krisei in, 100–2 liaison between patron and artist, acting as, 46–48 personal use, epigram written for, 31 as poet, 31 Plato Cratylus, 313 Phaedrus, 388 Republic, 39n70 Platsa, the Mani, church of Saint Nicholas near, 52–54, 215–19, 280n117

Index

Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 335 Plutarch Lives, 262n61 On Praising Oneself Inoffensively, 88n41 Quaestiones convivales, 388 poetic meter used for epigrams, 19, 23–25 poets in Later Byzantium, 31–48 potērokalymma (chalice veil), Halberstadt, 111–16, 292–94 pothos, 15, 296–331, 399–402 agapē, non-use of, 300 alternative terms for, 300–3, 306 defined and described, 12–13 defining, 312–14 erōs, use of, 300, 306, 312–13 erotic gaze, 387–90 on Freising Lukasbild, 3, 10–11, 297–98, 312 genres of religious patronage, use across, 310 gift-giving and, 294–95, 300–11 icons through lens of. See under icons identity and subjectivity, emotional substance given to, 402 kosmos and, 343–51 personal/social patronage and, 299, 314–31, 399–400 phobos (fear) and, 324, 328 saints and holy figures, directed at, 310–11, 325–29 schēma of, 382–85 sight, as function of, 387–94 supplicant portraiture and, 379–85, 387 prayers, dedicatory epigrams as, 80–87 pregnancy and childbirth, epigrams involving, 103–5 Prilep Manastir, near Prilep, church of Saint Nicholas at, 170 monastery of Prisklabētza at, 284 Prodromos, Theodore alternative terms for pothos used by, 302n15 begging poet stance assumed by, 35 collection of epigrams by, 6 death of, monody of Niketas Eugeneianos on, 186–87, 211, 226 encheirion dedicated to icon of Virgin Hodēgētria, epigram for, 166n136, 255–56, 290–91 “golden words” of, 211, 226 on Holy Sepulcher dedications of John II, 260n56 John II, epigram on portrait of, 335–36

on miraculous escape from death of Manuel Styppeiotes, 166n136, 255n41 Monody on the Logothetēs Gregory Kamateros, 238n108 reciprocal exchange in epigrams of, 281 Proklos of Constantinople, 218n54 Prokopios of Caesarea, 129 proskynēsis, 341, 384–87, 390 prostasia, 328–29 Psalidas, Xenos and Euphrosyne, 72–75 Psalms, language of, 89 Psellos, Michael Chronographia, 174 female voice used by, 116n120 funeral oration for patriarch Michael Keroularios, 187 leaven, allegorical interpretation of parable of, 27 literary work compared to jewelry by, 235 on Pisides’ verses, 24 portrait of Constantine IX, 336–37 unadorned icons, preference for, 173 verses on image of Christ with four evangelists attributed to, 327–28 Pseudo-Ammonios, On Similar and Different Words, 313 Pseudo-Anastasios of Sinai, In Hexaemeron, 218n54 pseudo-Arabic, 189 Pseudo-Athanasios of Alexandria, 217n53, 342, 369n108 Pseudo-Basil the Great, Orantiones sive exorcismi, 328n99 Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite, 363–64 Pseudo-Germanos, Historia ecclesia, 273n98 Pseudo-Hermogenes, Progymnasmata, 91n58, 144n83 pseudo-inscriptions, 189–91 Pseudo-John Chrysostom, De adoratione crucis, 328n99 Pseudo-John of Damascus, In Nativitatem Mariae, 218n54, 229n80 Pseudo-Libanios, Epistolary Styles, 319n69 Pseudo-Symeon, 179n168 Pseudo-Zonaras, Lexicon, 89n49 Qasr-el-Lebia, Cyrenaica, floor mosaics at, 121n17 qualitative epithets, 352, 363 Rallis, Theodore, The Booty, 167–69, 180 Raoul, Manuel, 46

487

488

Index

Raoulaina, Theodora, 100–2 Ras al-Hilal, Cyrenaica, floor mosaics of Justinianic basilica at, 121–24 reading/reciting epigrams, 15, 48–66 absent voice/silence, epigram compensating for, 238–42 audience, 48–49 improvisatory epigrams, 62–65 as intercessory prayer, 274–75 as oral/performative events, 8, 28, 54–66, 238–42, 275–76 on presentation of gift, 61, 275 in theatron, 21, 28, 65–66 visual impact of epigrams beyond, 49–54 reciprocal exchange, devotional gift-giving viewed as, 247–50, 279–82, 293–94 relational self, 105–7, 251, 343–51 relationality, principle of, 105–7, 116–17, 143, 399, 401–2 relics as icons, icons as relics, 157–60, 167 remembrance, culture of, 56, 262–76 resemblance, principle of, 107–8, 116–17, 401–2 Rhakendytes, Joseph, Synopsis of Rhetoric, 24n14 Rhoby, Andreas, 3n2, 7, 74, 303 Rhodopaios (pater civitatis of Aphrodisias), 318 Roger II (king of Sicily), 80 role-playing, 116 Romanos III Argyros (emperor), 307 Romanos the Melode, 369n108 Russian Anonymous (anonymous Russian pilgrim), 115n117 Sabas the Younger, Saint, Vita of (Philotheos Kokkinos), 389–90 sacred, personalization of, 343, 351, 395, 401 sacrilege and kosmos, 144–45, 167–84 saints and holy figures as direct recipients of devotional gifts, 251–52 images of. See icons names or epithets added to, 351–73 patronage, personal/social, and, 299, 314–31, 399–400 pothos directed at, 310–11, 325–29 as speakers of dedicatory epigrams, 80–82 Sarabares, George, Virgin and child icon of, 253n25, 296–99, 331 Sarantenos, Theodore, daughters of, 305 schēma, 381–82 script as ornament, 188–202 seals, 5, 16, 106–7, 355n77

Selçikler (Sebaste), templon architrave from church near, 139n62 self. See individual and subjectivity self-fashioning, 11, 15, 117, 334, 401–2 self-representation in dedicatory epigrams, 98–117 Serblias, Basil, 375–79 Serres, ekphrasis of Metropolis of (Theodore Pediasimos), 125–29 Ševčenko, Nancy Patterson, 378 Sgourous, Progonos (megas hetaireiarchēs), 29, 244–46 sight pothos, ocularity of, 387–94 as theme of epigram, 375–78 silence/absent voice, epigram compensating for, 238–42 Silibritzianos, Theodore, ring of, 32n38 Simplikios, 102n91 Sinai icon of Last Judgment at, 19 pectoral cross reliquary from, 39–42 Philanthrōpos epithet on icon of Christ at, 353 Saint Irene icon with layman Nicholas, 108, 375, 385 Skeuophylakion or Phokas Lectionary, Great Lavra, Mount Athos, 130 Skripou, Boeotia, church of Dormition of Virgin at, 77–80, 229, 308 Skylitzes, George, 301n11, 345 social/personal patronage and pothos, 299, 314–31, 399–400 Sophia, Dujčev Center for Slavo-Byzantine Studies Ms. 177 (Gospel book of Maria-Melane Palaiologina), 32n38, 256n42, 302, 315n59 Ms. gr. D. 282 (olim Prodromos P. A. 14), 220–24 Sophronios of Jerusalem, Epistola synodica, 365n97 Spanes, Constantine (tzaousios), 52–54, 215–19 Spingou, Fonteini, 28, 61–62, 66, 97, 141, 311 Stone of Unction, 348n55 Striding Lion (mosaic from Antioch), 63–65 Stroumitza, inventories of monastery of Virgin Eleousa near, 136 Styppeiotes, Manuel, 92, 166n136, 255n41 Styppeiotes, Theodore (epi tou kanikleiou), 92, 165–67, 290–91, 300 subjectivity. See individual and subjectivity supplicant portraits in icons, 372–95, 374n117

Index

Sušica, near Skopje, Saint Demetrios monastic church, icon of Mother of God from, 356 Symeon Logothetes, 179n168 Symeon the New Theologian Fourth Ethical Oration, 338–39 Hymns, 389 Symeon the Sanctified, 130 Symeon Stylites the Younger, 333 Symeon of Thessalonike De sacramentis, 160n127 De sacro templo, 218n55 on kissing icons, 342n40 Synadene, Irene, reliquary-enkolpion of, 299n4 Synadene, Theodora Palaiologina, 96, 175, 266–67, 372 Synadenos, Theodore Doukas (prōtostratōr), 266n80 Synesios of Cyrene, 337n19 Syrgiannes (pinkernēs), 33 Syropoulos, Sylvester, 356–59 Tabernacle in Old Testament, comparison of churches to, 217–18 Taylor, Charles, 116 technopaignia, 220 Tegea, Arcadia, basilica floor mosaic at, 124n18 Teteriatnikov, Natalia, 387 textiles kosmos as clothing, 167–84 text compared to, 56 thank-offerings, 252–57, 261, 279, 290–91 theatron, 21, 28, 65–66 Theodora (empress of Michael VIII), 265–66 Theodore II Laskaris (emperor) Blemmydes, Nikephoros, and, 236 last days of, 116 Mouzalon, George, letter to, on hymn for icon of Virgin, 233–36 On Divine Names, 363–65 Theodore I Palaiologos (despot of the Morea), 5n16, 75 Theodore II Palaiologos (despot of the Morea), 380n124 Theodore (metropolitan of Kyzikos), 337n18 Theodore of Stoudios, 154, 225, 307–8 Theodore Stratēlatēs, Saint, Corinthian icon taken in Norman sack, 348 ekphrasis of Metropolis of Serres on, 127 kosmos compared to weaving in icon revetment epigram, 172 phoros used in icon epigram, 256

Theodore Tērōn, Saint, Corinth, return of icon to, 347–49 ekphrasis of Metropolis of Serres on, 127 encomium of Gregory of Nyssa on, 333 phoros used in icon epigram, 256 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Interpretatio Epistulae ad Hebraeos, 218n55 Theodosios of the Kievan Caves, Saint, Vita of, 259n53 Theophanes, Life of Saint Maximos Kausokalybites, 342n42 Theophilos (emperor), 179n168, 355n76 Thessalonike inventory of family from, 137–39 monastery tōn Blatadōn, sarcophagus cover, 32n38 monastery tou Philokalou, Gospel lectionary, 147–53, 251 Norman capture of, 179–80 Saint Demetrios, basilica of, 32n38, 205n35 Saint Demetrios, tomb cover of, transferred to Constantinople, 348n55 Thyrsos (bishop of Tegea), 124n18 Tinos, icon of Virgin Megalocharē, 178n163 Tokra, Cyrenaica, floor mosaics at, 121n17 toponymic epithets, 352, 365n95 Tornikes, Andronikos-Antony (parakoimōmenos), 267 Tornikes, Michael, and wife, 32n38 touch erotic consequences of, 388–89 mediating power of kosmos through, 349–50 Trebizond, Virgin Chrysokephalos icon in cathedral of, 178 Tuscus, Leo, On the Heresies and Abuses of the Greeks, 400 Typikon of monastery tou Libos, Constantinople, 265–66 of Saint Demetrios monastery, Constantinople, 96, 332–33 of Virgin Bebaia Elpis convent, Constantinople (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Lincoln College gr. 35), 96, 175–77, 266, 372–73 of Virgin Kosmosōteira monastic church, Bera, 97, 129, 156–57 of Virgin Petritzonitissa monastery, Constantinople, 96, 173n147 typology and narrative, devotional identity constructed on, 108–16 typology of devotional gift-giving, 251–61

489

490

Index

Tzetzes, John, 62n119 Tzykandyles, Manuel, 262n61 Urbino textile, 67–70, 86, 100, 102, 108–11, 375, 379 van der Velden, Hugo, 261 Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Ms. Vat. Barb. gr. 372 (Barberini Psalter), 322n85 Ms. Vat. gr. 676, 140 Ms. Vat. gr. 1613 (Mēnologion of Basil II), 110 Ms. Vat. gr. 1899, 102n91 Venice Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Ms. gr. I, 53 [=966], 150 Ms. Marc. gr. 444, 144–45, 180 Ms. Marc. gr. 524. See Anthologia Marciana Demetrios, Saint, icon showing martyrdom of, 382 Museo Correr, reliquary of hand of Saint Marina, 42n73, 139n62, 302–3 San Marco endytē, 385n136 staurothēkē of empress Irene Doukaine, 253n25, 280n117 verse-filling asyndeton, 201 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. Med. gr. 1 (Vienna Dioskorides), 316–17 Ms. Med. gr. 43, 227–29 visual impact of epigrams beyond literal reading, 49–54 Vodena (Edessa), inventory of Virgin Gabaliōtissa monastery, 139 votives or ex-votos, 257–61 Vrontamas, Laconia, church of the Zōodochos Pēgē, 308–10 Western saints, Byzantine lack of familiarity with, 356–59

writing epigrams, 15, 18–48 artist and poet, collaboration between, 39–46 artists, epigrams adapted from anthologies, painters’ guides, and model books by, 29–31 improvisatory epigrams, 62–65 letter from Maximos Planoudes to Melchisedek Akropolites with epigram verses, 18–21, 23–25, 29 liaison between patron and artist, poets acting as, 46–48 logos, epigram as, 21–25 patrons’ involvement and instructions, 36–42 patrons writing their own verses, 31 poetic meters used in, 23–25 by poets, 31–48 selection of epigrams presented to patron, 37–42 written word, prestige of, 49–54 Xanthopoulos, Nikephoros Kallistou alphabetic hymn to the Virgin, 363n90 church of Christ Plērophorētēs, epigram on, 94–95, 256 icon of Christ Plērophorētēs, verses for podea dedicated to, 116n120, 349–50 collection of epigrams by, 6 gift-giving terminology used by, 253n28, 256 Mango’s assessment of, 9n26 Xene (wife of skouterios Kapandrites), 381 Zachariah (father of John the Baptist), silence of, 238–40 Zarzma monastery, Georgia, Transfiguration of Christ icon from, 141–42 Zoe (empress), 174, 307, 310 Zonaras, Epitome of Histories, 160n126