Experiencing Byzantium: Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011 147241229X, 9781472412294, 9781315581507

Table of contents :
List of Contributors xiii
Editors’ Preface xv
1. Claire Nesbitt & Mark Jackson / Experiencing Byzantium 1
Section I: Experiencing Art
2. Liz James / Things: Art and Experience in Byzantium 17
3. Warren T. Woodfin / Repetition and Replication: Sacred and Secular Patterned Textiles 35
Section II: Experiencing Faith
4. Béatrice Caseau / Experiencing the Sacred 59
5. Andrew Louth / Experiencing the Liturgy in Byzantium 79
6. Nikolaos Karydis / Different Approaches to an Early Byzantine Monument: Procopius and Ibn Battuta on the Church of St. John at Ephesos 89
Section III: Experiencing Landscape
7. Nikolas Bakirtzis / Locating Byzantine Monasteries: Spatial Considerations and Strategies in the Rural Landscape 113
8. Katie Green / Experiencing 'Politiko': New Methodologies for Analysing the Landscape of a Rural Byzantine Society 133
9. Vicky Manolopoulou / Processing Emotion: Litanies in Byzantine Constantinople 153
Section IV: Experiencing Ritual
10. Heather Hunter-Crawley / The Cross of Light: Experiencing Divine Presence in Byzantine Syria 175
11. Sophie V. Moore / Experiencing Mid-Byzantine Mortuary Practice: Shrouding the Dead 195
Section V: Experiencing Self
12. Scott Ashley / How Icelanders Experienced Byzantium, Real and Imagined 213
13. Myrto Hatzaki / Experiencing Physical Beauty in Byzantium: The Body and the Ideal 233
14. Dion C. Smythe / Experiencing Self: How Mid-Byzantine Historians Presented their Experience 251
Section VI: Experiencing Stories
15. Margaret Mullett / Experiencing the Byzantine Text, Experiencing the Byzantine Tent 269
16. Georgia Frank / Sensing Ascension in Early Byzantium 293
17. Alexander Lingas / From Earth to Heaven: The Changing Musical Soundscape of Byzantine Liturgy 311
Index 359

Citation preview

Experiencing Byzantium Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011

Edited by Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson

Experiencing Byzantium

Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies Publications 18

Experiencing Byzantium

Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011

edited by Claire Nesbitt Durham University, UK and Mark Jackson Newcastle University, UK

First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies 2013 Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. The British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (44th : 2011 : Newcastle upon Tyne, England ; Durham, England) Experiencing Byzantium: Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011 / edited by Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson. pages cm. – (Publications of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies) 1. Byzantine Empire – Civilization – Congresses. 2. Byzantine Empire – Religion – Congresses. 3. Byzantine Empire – Social life and customs – Congresses. 4. Art, Byzantine – Congresses. 5. Cultural landscapes – Byzantine Empire – Congresses. 6. Identity (Pyschology) – Byzantine Empire – Congresses. I. Nesbitt, Claire, editor of compilation. II. Jackson, Mark, 1973- editor of compilation. III. Title. DF521.S67 2013 949.5’013 – dc23 2013010549 ISBN 9781472412294 (hbk) ISBN 9781315581507 (ebk)

Contents List of Illustrations and Tables   List of Contributors   Editors’ Preface  

1.

ix xiii xv

Claire Nesbitt & Mark Jackson

Experiencing Byzantium   1

Section I: Experiencing Art 2. Liz James Things: Art and Experience in Byzantium   3. Warren T. Woodfin

17

Repetition and Replication: Sacred and Secular Patterned Textiles   35

Section II: Experiencing Faith 4.

Béatrice Caseau

Experiencing the Sacred   59

5. Andrew Louth

Experiencing the Liturgy in Byzantium  

79

6. Nikolaos Karydis Different Approaches to an Early Byzantine Monument: Procopius and Ibn Battuta on the Church of St John at Ephesos   89 Section III: Experiencing Landscape 7. Nikolas Bakirtzis Locating Byzantine Monasteries: Spatial Considerations and Strategies in the Rural Landscape  

113

From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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Contents

8. Katie Green Experiencing Politiko: New Methodologies for Analysing the Landscape of a Rural Byzantine Society  

133

9. Vicky Manolopoulou Processing Emotion: Litanies in Byzantine Constantinople  

153

Section IV: Experiencing Ritual 10. Heather Hunter-Crawley The Cross of Light: Experiencing Divine Presence in Byzantine Syria  

175

11. Sophie V. Moore Experiencing Mid-Byzantine Mortuary Practice: Shrouding the Dead  

195

Section V: Experiencing Self 12. Scott Ashley

How Icelanders Experienced Byzantium, Real and Imagined  

213

13. Myrto Hatzaki Experiencing Physical Beauty in Byzantium: The Body and the Ideal  

233

14. Dion C. Smythe Experiencing Self: How Mid-Byzantine Historians Presented their Experience  

251

Section VI: Experiencing Stories 15. Margaret Mullett

Experiencing the Byzantine Text, Experiencing the Byzantine Tent   269

Contents

16. Georgia Frank

Sensing Ascension in Early Byzantium  

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293

17. Alexander Lingas From Earth to Heaven: The Changing Musical Soundscape of Byzantine Liturgy  

311

Index  

359

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List of Illustrations and Tables Figures 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3a

3.3b

3.4

3.5 3.6 4.1a 4.1b

A demonstration of the difficulty in carrying Projecta’s Casket (author’s photograph) Interior view of Projecta’s Casket (author’s photograph) Diptych portrait of Stilicho with his wife Serena and son Eucherios, c. 400, Cathedral Treasury, Monza (Alinari / Art Resource, NY) Green Chasuble of St Ulrich, tenth century, Augsburg, Parish of SS. Ulrich and Afra (Pfarramt St Ulrich und Afra, Augsburg) Silk with scenes from the Infancy of the Virgin, late fourth or early fifth century, Riggisberg, Abegg-Stiftung (© AbeggStiftung, CH-3132 Riggisberg, 1988; photograph: Christoph von Viràg) Reconstruction drawing of silk with scenes from the Infancy of the Virgin, late fourth or early fifth century, Riggisberg, Abegg-Stiftung (©Abegg-Stiftung, CH-3132; Riggisberg drawing: Barbara Matuella) Epitrachelion of Photios, late fourteenth- or early fifteenth century, Moscow, Kremlin Armoury (© State Historical and Cultural Museum-Preserve, ‘The Moscow Kremlin’, photograph by V.V. Blagov, 2009) Fragments of embroidery from the Chungul Kurgan burial, early thirteenth century, Kiev, Archaeological Museum (photograph courtesy of Yuriy Rassamakin, Kiev) Christ as High Priest, silk and metallic textile, sixteenth century, Washington D.C., Dumbarton Oaks (© Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington D.C.) Curtain pushed by the hand, Mosaic of the Visitation, Basilica Euphrasiana, Poreč, Ravenna (author’s photograph) Curtain pushed by the hand, at San Vitale, Ravenna (author’s photograph)

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4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

6.6

6.7 6.8 6.9 7.1 7.2 7.3

List of Illustrations and Tables

Curtain hook in situ at the Basilica Euphrasiana, Poreč (author’s photograph) 66 Doorway of the narthex at Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (author’s photograph) 68 Curtains shown in the mosaic panel at Sant’Apollinare in Classe (author’s photograph) 68 A bread stamp showing a cross and a blessing for a family reading: ‘Eulogia eu ef hmas ke epi ta tekna hmvn’ translated ‘Blessing of the Lord on us and our children’ (author’s photograph) 75 Church of St John, Ephesos, reconstructed plan of ‘Justinian’s church’ at ground level, showing main phases (author’s copyright) 92 Church of St John, Ephesos, west cross arm, north aisle, view of mid-twentieth-century restorations (author’s photograph)94 The main vault fragments of the church of St John at Ephesos (author’s photograph) 94 Church of St John, Ephesos, axonometric reconstruction (author’s copyright) 96 Church of St John, Ephesos, plan of the fifth-century, ‘pre-Justinianic’ church according to H. Hörmann (left), and cut-away axonometric of the initial Mausoleum that was later incorporated in the fabric of the cruciform, timber-roofed basilica (author’s copyright) 96 Church of St John, Ephesos, detail of the south colonnade of the nave; the Imperial monograms of Justinian and Theodora can be distinguished on the faces of the Ionic impost block capitals (author’s photograph) 103 Church of St John, Ephesos, detail of the passage between the southwest pier of the crossing and the southeast pier of the nave (author’s photograph) 105 Church of St John, Ephesos, first phase of the vaulted church and Baptistery (author’s reconstruction of plan) 106 San Marco, Venice, view of the nave looking east (author’s photograph) 109 Map of the region of Paphos noting the location of the monastery of St Neophytos (© Nikolas Bakirtzis and Woody Hanson) 118 The site of the old encleistra of Neophytos (author’s photograph) 120 General view of the Skete Prodromou with Aliakmon river in the background (author’s photograph) 125

List of Illustrations and Tables

7.4 8.1 8.2 9.1 9.2

9.3 10.1 10.2 10.3

10.4 13.1 13.2

General view of the monastic complex from the East (author’s photograph) Retrogressive landscape analysis of Politiko results (© author) Historic Landscape Characterization (HLC) of Politiko (© author) Anamnesis of the great earthquake: Commemorative litany illuminated in the Menologion, Vat.gr. 1613, fol. 142 (© 2012 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) Anamnesis of the fears of the great and unexpected earthquake: Illumination of the historic litany that is described in the text of the same folio. Vat.gr. 1613, fol. 350 (© 2012 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) Litanic use of sites in Constantinople related to civic events, according to the Typicon of Hagia Sophia (author’s copyright) Sion paten, 58 cm diameter, sixth century, Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, DC, BZ.1963.36.2 (author’s photograph) Processional Cross, 154 × 102.9 × 5.1 cm, sixth century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1950 (50.5.3) (author’s photograph) Bronze open-work standing lamp with cruciform handle from Egypt, 32.1 cm high, sixth–seventh century, Benaki Museum, Athens, ΓΕ 11509 (© 2006 Benaki Museum Athens) Cruciform window, monastery at southern Dana, Jabal Zawiyye, Dead Cities (© Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University) Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Empress Zoe before Christ, mosaic, Church of St Sophia, Constantinople (1042–1055) (photographed by Flavia Nessi) Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Empress Zoe (detail) (photographed by Flavia Nessi)

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129 145 147 161

161 166 180 182

185 186 235 247

Tables 17.1 Musical styles in the chants of festal vespers celebrated according to the rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (the ‘sung’ or ‘asmatic’ office) 17.2 Outline of the Invariable opening psalm of asmatic vespers

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List of Illustrations and Tables

17.3 The final Antiphon (‘Teleutaion’) prior to the Lamplighting Psalms as sung at the asmatic ‘kneeling’ vespers of Pentecost according to the Psaltikon MS Florence Ashburnhamensis 64. With additional rubrics from the Euchologion MS Grottaferrata Γ.β. 35 (GROT) and the Typikon of San Salvatore di Messina MS Mess. gr. 115 (MES) 330 17.4 Musical styles in festal vespers celebrated according to the Palestinian Horologion; musical styles in brackets have been inferred from rubrics and/or later notated sources. 346 17.5 The texts of a sticheron by Sophronios of Jerusalem and the Anagrammatismos based on it by John Koukouzeles 353 Musical Examples 17.1 Choral refrains for Psalm 85 from MS Athens EBE 2061 17.1a For the Feasts of Saints (fol. 50r) 17.1b For Easter Sunday (fol. 48r) 17.1c For the Saturday Evenings (and Feasts of the Holy Cross) (fol. 21 r)

329 329 329 329

List of Contributors Scott Ashley, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University Nikolas Bakirtzis, Assistant Professor and Marie Curie Fellow, The Cyprus Institute Béatrice Caseau, Université de Paris-Sorbonne Georgia Frank, Colgate University, USA Katie Green, University

School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle

Myrto Hatzaki, The A.G. Leventis Foundation, Athens Heather Hunter-Crawley, University of Bristol Mark P.C. Jackson, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University Liz James, Professor of Art History, University of Sussex Nikolaos D. Karydis, Lecturer in Architecture, University of Kent Alexander Lingas, Centre for Music Studies, City University London Andrew Louth FBA, Professor Emeritus of Patristic and Byzantine Studies, Durham University, Visiting Professor of Eastern Orthodox Theology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Vicky Manolopoulou, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University

From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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List of Contributors

Sophie V. Moore, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University Margaret Mullett, Director of Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC Claire Nesbitt, Department of Archaeology, Durham University Dion C. Smythe, School of History and Anthropology, Queen’s University Belfast Warren T. Woodfin, Kallinikeion Assistant Professor of Byzantine Studies, Art Department, Queens College, City University of New York

Editors’ Preface The papers collected in this volume have their origins in the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies hosted by the universities of Newcastle and Durham at Newcastle University from 8–10 April 2011. The symposium was attended by around 100 people and included 41 speakers who gave papers in plenary sessions and short communications. The 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies and subsequently this volume, Experiencing Byzantium, were in part inspired by ‘Performing Byzantium’, the 2005 symposium hosted by Queen’s University Belfast. The Belfast symposium prompted us to reflect that, in studies of the Byzantine world, so heavily defined by its visuality and splendour and by its ritual and performance, the related sense of experience of those extensive stimuli had been neglected and would be a profitable topic for future study. We also resolved to question further the importance of the more mundane experiences of the majority of the Byzantine populous away from the major monuments. The range of views we received on proposing this theme challenged us to think about how experience is treated in Byzantine Studies and further strengthened the case for a symposium and a volume devoted to investigating this aspect of Byzantine society and its study. Gathering together a group of scholars from across the sub-disciplines within Byzantine studies, we asked each to consider how their data sets might be explored and investigated to offer us insights into aspects of the Byzantine world. The results of this are presented in this volume. We would like to acknowledge the generous support of Newcastle Institute for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (NIASSH) and the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University, the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Durham University, and Ashgate Publishing. We would like to thank the following people for logistical support before and during the symposium: Sofia Chryssochoou, Barbara Cochrane, Sinead Devlin, Maria Duggan, Katie Green, Harry Heiskanen, Matthew Kinloch, Jaime Levell, Vasiliki Manolopoulou, Sophie Moore, Alexander Pleunick, Maiju Pojhola and Pippa Stacey. Our thanks also go to Sarah Semple, Sam Turner, Chris Fowler, Steve Erdal, Sophie Stewart and Steve McLean. The symposium was supported additionally by generous underwriting from From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies and the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust. We would like to thank the Executive Committee of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies and Ashgate for their help both in organising the conference and in bringing the publication to completion. The editing process was also helped by the invaluable experience and advice of Leslie Brubaker, Chris Fowler, Liz James, Rowena Loverance, Ruth Macrides, Rosemary Morris, Sean Tougher and Sam Turner, and we would like to thank John Smedley and his team at Ashgate Publishing for their help and support in the final stages of production of the volume. Each of the papers was read and received comments from both the editors and two anonymous reviewers; to this significant number of people we are all very grateful. Mark Jackson Claire Nesbitt

1. Experiencing Byzantium Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson

Experience seems to be like the shining of a bright lantern. It suddenly makes clear in the mind what was already there, perhaps, but dim.1

Introduction Study of the Byzantine past affords the opportunity for insight into the experiences of people who lived in a world very different from our own. The fragments of ‘evidence’ we routinely encounter were part of the lives of people in the past, but they continue to be very much part of our own experience.2 These ‘remnants’ are surviving components of past experiences, they maintain an identity in the present and they continue to participate in new experiences and encounters today as they have done through time. We are, of course, faced with the methodological problem of how we, in the twenty-first century, might appreciate the experience of the lives of people so long ago, and here the sources that we study present us with challenges. This volume is an attempt to explore the methodologies that might facilitate our understanding of interactions between Byzantine people and the affective and emotive registers of objects, images, texts and places. It will consider how our own understanding of various kinds of data, and engagement with them through a variety of disciplinary approaches, shapes our interpretation of life in Byzantium. The volume compiles current research on experience and outlines the necessity for engagement with theoretical frameworks, within which we can approach the study of experience better to understand things, texts, landscapes, music and people in the Byzantine world.

1

  W. De La Mare, Come Hither: A Collection of Rhymes and Poems for the Young of All Ages (London, 1923), pp. xxvii–xxviii. 2   B. Olsen, In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects (Plymouth, 2010), pp. 105–128. From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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So What Do We Mean By Experience? Experience can be defined as the apprehension of an object, thought or emotion through the senses or mind.3 An experience is a specific outcome of a relationship people have when they encounter other people, ideas, beliefs, material objects and places as well as, for example, natural phenomena such as the weather. The potential variety of encounters between people and other aspects of their universe is challenging to comprehend. It is nevertheless important to seek to understand experience because ‘experiencing plays basic roles in behaviour and in the formation of meaning’.4 Gendlin has argued that, Meaning is not only about things and it is not only a certain logical structure, but it also involves felt experiencing. Any concept, thing, or behaviour is meaningful only as some noise, thing, or event interacts with felt experiencing. Meanings are formed and had through an interaction between experiencing and symbols or things.5

This approach is investigated by several of the contributors to this volume who consider the emotive aspects of experience and the powerful emotion that was engendered by engagement with aspects of life in Byzantium.6 Writing of the tradition of Byzantine mysticism, Louth suggested that it is ‘a living tradition, which only makes it the more difficult to approach it in a critical, scholarly way’ (our emphasis).7 This takes us straight to the heart of the problematic nature of studying experience and the reason that we must consider our approaches carefully. We must find a scholarly way to measure and understand the experience of the individual and groups in the past. People will not experience phenomena in the same way. ‘Even though the biological equipment allowing the processing of sensory data similar to that which we ourselves process was in place – tongue, noses, ears, eyes etc. – we have to remember that this is not sensory “equipment” floating freely but rather 3

  The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 2007. Available at: http:// www.credoreference.com/entry/hmdictenglang/experience (accessed 24/04/12). 4   E. Gendlin, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning; A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective (Evanston, IL, 1997), p. 3. 5   Ibid., p. 1. 6   See for example A. Louth, ‘Experiencing the Liturgy in Byzantium’, this volume; G. Frank, ‘Sensing Ascension in Early Byzantium’, this volume; B. Caseau, ‘Experiencing the Sacred’, this volume; V. Manolopoulou, ‘Processing Emotion: Litanies in Byzantine Constantinople’, this volume. 7   A. Louth, ‘Light, Vision and Religious Experience in Byzantium’, in M.T. Kapstein (ed.), The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience (Chicago, IL, 2004), pp. 85–103, esp. 88.

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embodied’,8 thus people of varying age, gender or health might experience the same thing or event in radically different ways. Neither can we assume that people in the past would react in ways that might seem ‘normal’ to us, since senses and emotions are culturally constituted and thus we cannot project our own experiential interpretations back in time in a simplistic manner. Taking experience as a phenomenon bound up with emotion, Harris and Sørenson have deconstructed experience by identifying the key components, or ‘emotional agencies’, that come together to create it.9 In this approach a vocabulary of emotional agencies is used to navigate understandings of experience in (and of) the past. Harris and Sørenson consider emotion to be the act of being moved; this can be triggered by affective fields that are dynamic signifiers of emotion. Harris and Sørenson cite the example of a wedding ring that may be loaded with meaning in terms of its symbolism, but does not generate a powerful emotion on a day-to-day basis unless attention is drawn to it and the individual engages with it as a result of other factors.10 Affective fields can be objects, places or people; in fact anything that has the power to provoke emotion. These signifiers are dependent, however, on the interaction of other agents of emotion to determine their value; they are part of a dynamic emotive process that is part of experience. Experience then is channelled by attunement, the embodied process of ‘being’ in the world.11 The embodied experience of ‘being’ can be seen in ‘events’ or ‘occurrences’ involving people and things. An example might be the way Byzantine church architecture defined and reinforced hierarchies of space such as the use of screens,12 or the liminal space between the narthex and the nave of a church, which was frequently delineated by decorated doorways.13 The crossing of such a threshold for the first time by newly baptised Christians who would enter a space that they had previously only heard about, or had experienced only indirectly through listening from the narthex, would have been a journey of significance without prior experiential reference. The newly granted access to an exclusive place would not only engender new physical experiences and stimuli, but could also confer on the individual a new sense of entitlement or

8

  T. Insoll, Archaeology: The Conceptual Challenge (London, 2007), p. 49.   O.J.T. Harris and T.F. Sørensen, ‘Rethinking Emotion and Material Culture’, Archaeological Dialogues, 17.2 (2010), pp. 145–163, esp. 149–152. 10   Ibid. 11   Ibid. 12   S.E.J. Gerstel, Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological: Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West (Washington, D.C., 2006). 13   J.-M. Spieser, ‘Doors, Boundaries and the Use of Space’, English translation of ‘Portes, limites et organization de l’espace dans les églises paléochrétiennes’, Klio 77 (Berlin, 1995), pp. 433–445; repr. in J.-M. Spieser, Urban and Religious Spaces in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 2001), XV, pp. 1–14; see also Caseau, ‘Experiencing the Sacred’. 9

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privilege. Such places and events would have served to afford several new, alternative and complex experiences.14 The study of the past is itself embodied experience and not merely cerebral. Consequently, engagement with all aspects of Byzantine culture that survives, collectively, is important and is one of the factors that have driven the interdisciplinary approach taken by this volume. As archaeologists, the editors recognise both the value and potential of the material record to shape our understanding of people in the Byzantine world and also the importance of considering that material alongside historical texts, liturgical practices and sensory conditions that accompanied it. Viewed only through the lens of quantifiable material culture, the lighting of a Byzantine church may be reduced to the number and nature of extant windows and lamps. However, understood alongside readings of the typika, interpretations of the liturgy and contemporary metaphysical understandings of light, we are able to reconstruct a light-scape for worship that reflects the use of light as a symbolism of divinity, a currency of worship and an indicator of the hierarchy of space within the church building.15 Shanks stated: ‘archaeology is basically about particular experiences of the object world. I emphasize experience because, with others, I try to understand archaeology in materialist terms … as a collection of things people do’.16 Shanks’s statement prompts us to consider the variety of things that experience could mean to scholars of Byzantium, beyond the experience of the individual in the past. Liz James’s paper in this volume does just that, considering Projecta’s Casket both as an object from the past with which people would have engaged in particular ways and as an object with a biography that extends from Late Antiquity to the modern day, following the life of the casket through to its most recent incarnation as part of a museum collection.

New Agendas for Byzantine Research Byzantine archaeology has held strongly to traditional approaches and remained theoretically conservative compared to other areas of archaeology. The archaeological studies of Byzantium have not always contributed as much

14

  M. Jackson, ‘A Pilgrimage Experience at Sacred Sites in Late Antique Anatolia’, Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference Proceedings, 8 (1998), pp. 72–85. 15   C. Nesbitt, ‘Shaping the Sacred: Light and the Experience of Worship in Middle Byzantine Churches’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 36.2 (2012), pp. 139–160. 16   M. Shanks, Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology (London, 1992), esp. p. 1.

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to the broader discipline as might be expected.17 Byzantine archaeologists, perhaps in part because of the huge amount of material available for study, have not been challenged to theorise their data in ways that are more usual in the study of prehistoric periods, for which there is less surviving material and no texts.18 This is ironic in view of the richness and variety of the evidence available, which is best understood in an interdisciplinary way and with an appreciation of the variety of approaches applied to studies of text, art, anthropology and material culture. Byzantine archaeologists have tended to consider particular kinds of (mostly) monumental structures. Well-preserved church buildings, richly decorated in mosaics and loaded with imagery and symbolism, have been an obvious choice and yield a magnificent treasury of evidence to interpret. We find ourselves with many detailed descriptions of buildings, but few interpretations of their meaning and significance. Studies that pull together a variety of approaches are relatively rare, but it has been recognised that the role of landscapes and monuments is important in structuring encounters with places. Studies by Byzantine archaeologists, anthropologists and architectural historians who have developed embodied approaches to movement through topographical and monumental space stand out from more traditional approaches to buildings because they analyse not only the changing phases of buildings and places, but also how these structures and places in their various forms interact with the role of memory, motivations and experiences of individuals and groups.19 The same data may be interpreted in different ways to understand past lives: an example of this is the way that an archaeological report on human bones might record the attrition on the knees caused by repetition of household chores or the number of births for a given female pelvis. The damage to a female pelvis is determined by ‘the degree of pitting, grooving, or distortion on the posterior surface of the pubic symphysis, where stretching of ligaments and hematomas (bruises) from repeated births change the bone’.20 Thinking about such realities, ground into the bones of past people, should reveal something of the experience of life, birth and perhaps death; certainly it should suggest 17

  J. Crow, ‘Archaeology’, in E. Jeffreys, J. Haldon and R. Cormack (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies (Oxford, 2008), pp. 47–58. 18   J. Moreland, Archaeology and Text (London, 2001). 19   S. Coleman and J. Elsner, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress: Art, Architecture and Ritual Movement at Sinai’, World Archaeology, 26 (1994), pp. 73–89; J. Elsner and I. Rutherford, Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods (Oxford, 2005); R. Ousterhout, ‘Architecture as Relic and the Construction of Sanctity: The Stones of the Holy Sepulchre’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 62.1 (2003), pp. 4–23; A. Papalexandrou, ‘Echoes of Orality in the Monumental Inscriptions of Byzantium’, in L. James (ed.), Art & Text in Byzantine Culture (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 161–187. 20   L.J. Angel, ‘Ecology and Population in the Eastern Mediterranean’, World Archaeology, 4 (1972), pp. 88–105, esp. 97.

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something of the experience of women in a rural medieval environment. We tabulate our data and describe it, but often more ‘scientific’ approaches to publication shy away from interpretations that seek an understanding of the lives and experiences that produced such ‘evidence’. Most scholars of Byzantium are, and have always been, ultimately in pursuit of the lives of people in the Byzantine past. Sometimes, however, academic analysis seems to become the goal, rather than understanding the people who created the sources and to whom they were related. That is not to say that rigorous analysis is not essential, but it should not be our end point. We wish to go beyond examination of our sources to understand more about the people who made and lived with them, whether those datasets are evidence for landscapes, buildings, texts, portable objects, smells, sounds or bodies. The ultimate goal may be to appreciate the nature of life for the majority of people in the Byzantine world, the silent majority who are not revealed to us individually through personalised objects or texts. However, it is recognised that sometimes we must attempt to consider their experience through the experiences of particular historical characters at certain points in their lives, and that all lives are worth studying, offering us the diversity of society that reflects the Byzantine Empire. Individual lives are useful in considering the ‘accumulated’ experiences of a person during their life, and how people drew on previous experiences in dealing with life events. Dion C. Smythe’s paper in this volume discusses how this might be done to legitimise an individual’s authority in the creation of the texts or to project an image of themselves to others through the media that survive for us to study. In this way we are able to interpret the various experiences of ‘self’ in Byzantium. To champion study of experience is not to suggest that there is a gaping hole in existing research agendas dealing with people in Byzantine studies. Indeed, far from it, Byzantine studies have focussed on a breadth of human experience. At the heart of each is the experience of individuals and groups who lived in Byzantium viewed and interpreted by those writing in the recent past. There is much that has been addressed and woven through all these perspectives which have included as their subjects for example: bishops,21 monks,22 women,23 children,24 the poor,25 the

21

  A. Guillou, ‘L’évêque dans la société méditerranéenne des VIe–VIIe siècles: Un modèle’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, 131 (1973), pp. 5–19. 22   A. Bryer and M. Cunningham (eds), Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism, Papers from the Twenty-eighth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, March 1994 (Aldershot, 1996). 23   L. Garland, Byzantine Women: Varieties of Experience 800–1200 (Aldershot, 2006). 24   A. Papaconstantinou and A.-M. Talbot (eds), Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium (Washington, D.C., 2009). 25   E. Patlagean, Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance, 4e–7e siècles (Paris, 1977).

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sick,26 foreigners,27 orphans,28 eunuchs,29 same-sex lovers,30 friends,31 emperors,32 empresses33 and saints,34 to name but a few. Many decades ago, in a section of his Idea of History entitled ‘History as reenactment of past experience’, R.G. Collingwood asked how, or on what conditions, a historian can know the past.35 His argument held that a historian’s knowledge of the past is not empirical, but rather he maintained that it was indirect or inferential and that the historian must re-enact the past in his own mind: When a man thinks historically, he has before him certain documents or relics of the past. His business is to discover what the past was which has left these relics behind it. For example, the relics are certain written words; and in that case he has to discover what the person who wrote those words meant by them. This means discovering the thought … which he expressed by them. To discover what this thought was, the historian must think it again for himself. Suppose, for example, he is reading the Theodosian Code, and has before him a certain edict of an emperor. Merely reading the words and being able to translate them does not amount to knowing their historical significance. In order to do that he must envisage the situation with which the emperor was trying to deal, and he must envisage it as that emperor envisaged it. Then he must see for himself, just as if the emperor’s situation were his own, how such a situation might be dealt with; he must see the possible alternatives, and the reasons for choosing one rather than another; and thus he must go through the process which the emperor went through

26   A. Festugière, ‘Epidémeies “hippocratiques” et épidémies démoniaques’, Wiener Studien, 79 (1966), pp. 157–164. 27   J. Shepard and S. Franklin (eds), Byzantine Diplomacy, Papers from the Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, March 1990 (Aldershot, 1992). 28   T. Miller, ‘Charitable Institutions’, in Jeffreys, Haldon and Cormack (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, pp. 621–630. 29   K.M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium (London, 2003); S. Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society (London, 2008). 30   S. Tougher, ‘Michael III and Basil the Macedonian: Just Good Friends?’ in L. James (ed.), Desire and Denial in Byzantium (Aldershot, 1999), pp. 149–160; D.C. Smythe, ‘In Denial: Same-sex Desire in Byzantium’, in James (ed.), Desire and Denial in Byzantium, pp. 139–148. 31   M. Mullett, ‘Friendship in Byzantium: Genre, Topos and Network’, in J. Haseldine (ed.), Friendship in Medieval Europe (Stroud, 1999), pp. 166–184. 32   G. Dagron, Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in Byzantium (Cambridge, 2003). 33   L. James, Empresses and Power in Early Byzantium (London, 2001); J. Herrin, Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (London, 2002). 34   A.-M. Talbot, Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation (Washington, D.C., 1996); S. Hackel (ed.), The Byzantine Saint (New York, 2001). 35   R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), pp. 282–302.

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in deciding on this particular course. Thus he is re-enacting in his own mind the experience of the emperor; and only in so far as he does this has he any historical knowledge, as distinct from a merely philological knowledge, of the meaning of the edict.36

Immersing ourselves in them with study, we might hope to approach an understanding not only of the data but of the Byzantine people who were themselves once engaged with them by understanding the context of our sources as fully as possible. The mind of the academic working in the present faces the problem that contemporary worldviews are so radically different to those of people in the past that it might be considered impossible fully to gain a meaningful appreciation of the people who lived so long ago. Johnsen and Olsen examine the ideas of Collingwood in the light of Ian Hodder’s influential works of the 1980s that build on Collingwood’s approach. In their critique they suggest that the re-enacting of the past thoughts of people in the historian’s own mind is flawed because ‘it presupposes that the course of history conforms to the intention of the individual actors. Because many consequences of actions clearly are unintended they cannot be adequately understood within this framework of re-enactment’.37 Experience is often bound up in the study of phenomenology,38 a theoretical process that ‘aims to describe the character of human experience, specifically the ways in which we apprehend the material world through directed intervention in our surroundings’.39 Phenomenology is frequently associated with prehistoric archaeology, largely because its main proponents have been experts in that field.40 However, this theoretical framework, which sometimes favours an individual body-centred approach and sometimes a Heideggerian hermeneutic approach, can be successfully applied to any period.41 Beyond prehistory, and especially in the Byzantine period, we have texts from individuals that can reveal the sought-after ‘consciousness from the perspective of the subject’.42 This is being addressed: Galatariotou has 36

  Collingwood, The Idea of History, pp. 282–283.   H. Johnsen and B. Olsen, ‘Hermeneutics and Archaeology’, in J. Thomas (ed.), Interpretive Archaeology: A Reader (London, 2000), pp. 103–110, esp. 104. 38   See E. Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie (Den Haag, 1950); M. Heidegger, The Question of Being (New York, 1958). 39   J. Brück, ‘Experiencing the Past? The Development of a Phenomenological Archaeology in British Prehistory’, Archaeological Dialogues, 12.1 (2005), pp. 45–72, esp. 46. 40   For example C. Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments (Oxford, 1994). 41   See C. Nesbitt and D.P. Tolia-Kelly, ‘Hadrian’s Wall: Embodied Archaeologies of the Linear Monument’, Journal of Social Archaeology, 9.3 (2009), pp. 368–390; Nesbitt, ‘Shaping the Sacred’. 42   Brück, ‘Experiencing the Past?’ p. 46. 37

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applied phenomenological theory to accounts of travellers in Byzantium. She determined that, as well as the factual realities that we can glean from such descriptive sources, another, third level of reality exists in texts: this is the level of personal reality, which refers to the subjective, individual perception of the author. At this level, the text acts as a vehicle which the author uses – whether consciously or unconsciously – to express primarily his or her own subjective, personal views.43

Developing also since the mid-1990s, non-representational theories have seen the world as being in a perpetual state of becoming and have critiqued the privileging of the visual over lived experience and materiality.44 Nonrepresentational theories have wrangled with the problem of how ‘to access the unspeakable – the agency of landscapes, affect and sensuous experience’.45 Informed by appropriate theoretical frameworks, it is possible to attempt to approach the experience of particular individuals throughout their lives and the experiences of specific people during certain events. The difficulty here lies in our own backgrounds and worldviews: how can individual academics of the twenty-first-century world ever hope to understand the lives of people living in a very different past?46

Experience in Byzantium and Experience of Byzantium In a rapidly changing world, ethnographic analogy has also been a potential source of ideas and in some places elements recognisable across the longue durée might be manifest in contemporary communities, leading to the potential for direct historical analogies. Juliet Du Boulay cites, for example, ‘village story and song which have come down from Byzantine times’.47 Rather than imposing the present on the past, ethnographic analogy enables scholars in the present to consider possibilities for understanding the past, but it does not provide direct experience.48

43

  C. Galatariotou, ‘Travel and Perception in Byzantium’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 47 (1993), pp. 221–241, esp. 222–223. 44   E. Waterton, ‘Landscape and Non-representational Theories’, in P. Howard, I. Thompson and E. Waterton (eds), The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies (London, 2013), pp. 66–75, esp. 67. 45   Ibid., p. 72. 46   Insoll, Archaeology, esp. pp. 48 and 59–62. 47   J. Du Boulay, Cosmos, Life, and Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village (Limni, 2009), pp. 22–23. 48   Insoll, Archaeology, p. 48.

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There is also much to be gained for groups in the twenty-first century from embodied experience in the present – even if what is experienced is something created in the present and not an actual experience of the past. Cappella Romana, for example, research, sing and perform music from the Byzantine Empire.49 Mariana Kavroulaki’s Edible History Project derives from work on historic and contemporary foodways to recreate menus, cooking practice and tastes.50 The Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens ‘designs and implements educational activities adapted to the needs of different groups of people with disabilities’ so that, for example, visually impaired people are encouraged to experience Byzantine material culture in a range of different ways such as through touch.51 The multi-dimensionality of the datasets we study is part of what makes them interesting and challenging to consider. Thus, although there may have been preferred readings of an object, or a text for example, encounters might result in experiences that were not ‘authorised’. Experience for each person in the past, as in the present, was different, but that the people were expected to be affected by particular kinds of experience in the Byzantine world is clear from the conscious ways in which the Byzantine authorities prescribed and constructed formal imperial and religious ceremonies designed very much to affect: for example, in litanies.52 We must not forget that people were also engaged in, and affected by, the mundane activities, objects, routines and challenges of life.53 The lighting of a lamp at dusk in an early Byzantine house, for example, was for some far more than a functional response to darkness: rather, it was part of the ritual of a daily routine, which may have gone together with other activities such as prayer, making the lighting of a lamp and the banishing of darkness from a room an activity full of symbolism and meaning.54 Fundamental to the experience of urban and rural dwellers were sensory sensations and these have begun to be treated in some detail by scholars 49   The name Cappella Romana refers to the medieval Greek concept of the Roman oikoumene (inhabited world): see Cappella Romana (2007). Available at: http://www. cappellaromana.org/ (accessed 09/11/12); see also A. Lingas, ‘From Earth to Heaven: The Changing Musical Soundscape of Byzantine Liturgy’, this volume. 50   M. Kavroulaki, History of Greek Food: A Buffet of Greek Food History & Food Stories (2012). Available at: https://1historyofgreekfood.wordpress.com/ (accessed 10/11/12). 51   Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Culture and Sports, Byzantine & Christian Museum (Athens, 2010). Available at: http://www.byzantinemuseum.gr/en/educational_ programme_dept/disabled/ (accessed 01/11/12). 52   V. Manolopoulou, ‘Processing Emotion: Litanies in Byzantine Constantinople’, this volume. 53   Å. Berggren, ‘Emotional Aspects of a Fen’, Archaeological Dialogues, 17.2 (2010), pp. 164–167, esp. 164. 54   K. Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008), p. 78.

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of Byzantium.55 Art, text and object combine with the senses and cultural memory to produce spiritual experiences, ‘a placing of the body at the centre of religious experience, whilst attempting to transcend the body through the use of the senses’.56 This body-focussed study is not limited to the living: Sophie Moore’s analysis of the process and ritual of shrouding the dead highlights the importance of different elements that played an active part in the preparation of a dead person’s body for burial, witnessed through the various stages of washing and wrapping with burial clothes.57 Heather Hunter-Crawley has also focussed on the senses, but this time combined with the spiritual in her analysis of the ‘Cross of Light’: light, objects, architecture and water are united in varied encounters with people to afford experiences for both mind and body.58 While the focus on the sensory has centred on church buildings, sensations such as smells manifested themselves in the daily existence around the home and workplace, which may of course have been co-located. Cities such as Constantinople also would have been characterised in part by their smells: from the legislation dealing with the locations of smell-emitting industries to the use of incense in public and private events.59 The locus of experience has tended to be centred on monumental structures and studies of, for example, churches exist in good number; there have been fewer studies of other kinds of structures, however. Domestic buildings have been too much neglected, often because focus has been on a narrow range of sources. Oikonomedes writes, for example, After some thought I decided that there was no point (and no way, for lack of sources) in looking into the huts of the destitute, which were virtually empty. Poor peasants no doubt constituted a large percentage – in certain periods, the majority – of the Byzantine emperor’s subjects, but their dwellings lack interest because they certainly contained very little.60

Although the dwellings of the poor rarely appear in texts, far more can be gathered from the excavation of a humble peasant dwelling than is assumed

55   L. James, ‘Senses and Sensibility in Byzantium’, Art History, 27.4 (2004), pp. 522–537; B.V. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (Penn State, 2010). 56   James, ‘Senses and Sensibility in Byzantium’, p. 525. 57   S.V. Moore, ‘Experiencing Mid-Byzantine Mortuary Practice: Shrouding the Dead’, this volume. 58   H. Hunter-Crawley, ‘The Cross of Light: Experiencing Divine Presence in Byzantine Syria’, this volume. 59   Insoll, Archaeology, p. 48; M. Mundell Mango, ‘The Commercial Map of Constantinople’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 54 (2000), pp. 189–207, esp. 190–191. 60   N. Oikonomedes, ‘The Contents of the Byzantine House from the Eleventh to the Fifteenth Century’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 44 (1990), pp. 205–214, esp. 205.

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here.61 Excavations have revealed the structures, features and artefacts inside rooms to facilitate analysis of human agency and experience in a small settlement at Kilise Tepe in Isauria. We can see, for example in one room in area O14, that there would have been space for one or two people at a fireplace built into a low bench, while the dimensions of the bench and the cooking pots, jugs and storage vessels associated with it help us to understand the way the tending of these cooking pots took place sitting on the ground.62 We might consider the role of each of these spaces and artefacts in the routines of household life and the methodical practices of food preparation, or the taste such vessels impart to the different kinds of food they can be known to have contained. We can consider the role of symbols and decoration on the objects found in the house and through examining their context we can aim to go far beyond the descriptive and to approach an understanding of the lives of people.63 From the tools and equipment they used to process and store particular kinds of grain, to the seasonal agricultural methods used to grow that crop, we can see the toil and energy needed to exist in the Byzantine countryside and through such approaches seek to understand, and at least consider, the experience of the peasants who ‘represented the majority of the emperor’s subjects’,64 however far removed from our own.

Future Considerations The ways of approaching experience in this volume are diverse and imaginative. Authors consider a host of experiences and ways that the sources give us to access them, from ‘the thrill of that convergence of sacred and scripture’ in the drama of the ascension engendered through singing mixed emotions65 to the experience of spiritual revelation explored through participation in the liturgy and through the ‘dynamic process of concealment and revelation’ bound up in the material vitality of enactment.66 The overt aesthetic revelation is also countered by the more subtle experience of historical writing as a device

61

  See for example E. Sigalos, Housing in Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece, BAR International Series 1291 (Oxford, 2004). 62   M. Jackson and N. Postgate, ‘Excavations at Kilise Tepe 2009’, Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı, 32.3 (2011), pp. 424–446. 63   E. Dauterman Maguire, H. Maguire and M.J. Duncan-Flowers, Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House (Urbana, IL, 1989). 64   Oikonomedes, ‘The Contents of the Byzantine House’, p. 205. 65   Frank, ‘Sensing Ascension’. 66   Hunter-Crawley, ‘The Cross of Light’.

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for self-disclosure, understanding of self-image through art, and the retold experience lived through stories.67 Harris and Sørensen suggest that, encounter with the material world is inherently affective. Failure to incorporate understandings of emotion means that our attempts to understand how human beings and material things are co-constitutive fall short. If we are to understand how people and things bring their worlds into being we are required to engage with emotion …68

and to do this we must first engage with experience. The relatively small numbers of scholars of Byzantium are faced with an embarrassment of material. The challenge is perhaps to know not only how to approach this but where to begin since there are so many different sources with which one must be familiar; hence in part the importance of an interdisciplinary approach. There is for those engaged in interdisciplinary study a need for scholars to ‘open up’ their particular sub-disciplines for students and for others who are not specialists. Byzantine studies needs specialists who are skilled in many areas, but also those who can, having carried out rigorous methodologies in a particular area, explain to others outside their sub-disciplines how their material played a part in the lives of people in the past; in the current political climate they also need to be able to explain why that research might be significant today. Thus even a collection of humble household objects, or a short piece of text, might facilitate insightful analysis of past lives, contribute to our appreciation of the past in the present, and perhaps even challenge our own thinking today.

67   D.C. Smythe, ‘Experiencing Self: How Mid-Byzantine Historians Presented their Experience’, this volume; M. Mullett, ‘Experiencing the Byzantine Text, Experiencing the Byzantine Tent’, this volume; M. Hatzaki, ‘Experiencing Physical Beauty in Byzantium; The Body and the Ideal’, this volume; S. Ashley, ‘How Icelanders Experienced Byzantium, Real and Imagined’, this volume. 68   Harris and Sørensen, ‘Rethinking Emotion and Material Culture’, pp. 145–146; S. Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford, 2004).

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Section I Experiencing Art

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2. Things: Art and Experience in Byzantium* Liz James

It is rare that the first questions asked about a work of art are ‘What is it?’ and ‘What is it for?’ Instead, questions such as ‘What is it a picture of?’ or ‘What does it look like?’ more usually come to mind. Experiencing art tends to be about experiencing it in visual terms: what we perceive, what the picture or object looks like, concerns relating to style and to iconography, rather than to issues of the utility or purpose of the work of art.1 However, studying the image rather than the object is increasingly recognised as only a partial way of understanding the place of a work of art in its society, and this has led to art historians engaging with the idea of art as material culture.2 Recently, however, Averil Cameron has questioned the usefulness of the concept of ‘material culture’ for understanding Byzantine art, suggesting that to do so ‘reduces’ its study and allows art historians to move the study of art away from an understanding of the totality of Byzantine culture: for example, in studying icons, it allows them to distance themselves from concepts of Orthodox

*   My thanks to Chris Entwistle, who allowed me to lift up Projecta’s Casket, and to Michelle O’Malley, Helen Rufus Ward and Wendy Watson for their insights and discussions on topics and points made in this paper. 1   For the strength of the visual, formal, stylistic approach to Byzantine art and the issues inherent in this, see the important and still valid critique by R. Cormack, ‘“New Art History” vs. “Old History”: writing art history’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 10 (1986), pp. 223–31. 2   And, indeed, debating about the relationship between ‘visual culture’ and ‘material culture’: see, for example, D. Cherry (ed.), Art History Visual Culture, Special Issue of Art History 27.4 (2004), the review article by T. Hamling, ‘Another “turn” in the Art History versus Visual Culture debate?’ Art History 30 (2007), pp. 757–63. For Byzantium, B. Pentcheva, ‘The Performative icon’, The Art Bulletin 88 (2006), pp. 631–55; B. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (Penn State, 2010).

From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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spirituality.3 She has also asked whether there is a distinction between ‘art’ objects and objects of ‘material culture’, hinting at the issue of quality in how visual material might be defined. Her concern here is a critical one: what can works of art say if they are taken out of the context to which they belonged? For Cameron, ‘material culture’ implies objects without culturally specific meanings, devoid of a temporal context, and she takes particular issue with the idea that Byzantine icons can be assigned to the realm of ‘material culture’, suggesting that to understand the meaning of icons, the experience of icons, involves a wider knowledge, particularly of written sources, than the consideration of ‘material culture’ alone might allow. The implication is perhaps that the experience of icons lies beyond their existence as objects. In this context, Cameron articulates eloquently that the hardest of all the problems in understanding – experiencing – Byzantium is the whole area of the social knowledge, or thought-world, of Byzantine culture; her fear is that an emphasis on ‘material culture’ detracts from this. What I would like to show here is that ‘material culture’ and theories concerning the discussion of material culture can, in fact, help in understanding the thought-world of the Byzantines. ‘Material culture’, of course, has been a concept used by archaeologists as a non-specific way to refer to the artefacts or other concrete things left by past cultures. Indeed, Cameron’s definition of material culture appears to be one in which the object is studied as a subject in itself, detached from any surroundings. While it is true that this is one meaning, it is not the whole story. ‘Material culture’ can also be explained in a wider sense as an understanding of artefacts, be they works of art, or just ‘things’, in the context of the relationship between objects and social relations, a discussion that has to locate the object in its context. In seeing works of art as aspects of material culture, we need to understand them as material or physical objects with histories, patrons, commercial value and functions beyond the purely visual, as objects that have a job. In this context, studying a culture’s relationship to materiality is a lens through which social and cultural attitudes can be discussed; it is one key among many that offer some form of access to the Byzantine thoughtworld, or perhaps thought-worlds. So this paper will suggest that, in dealing with objects as objects, it is possible to add an additional dimension to our understanding of the ‘experience’ of Byzantine art. ‘Material culture’ does not simply allow the icon, say, to speak for itself;4 rather, by emphasising the

3

  A. Cameron, ‘The anxiety of images: meanings and material objects’, in A. Lymberopoulou (ed.), Images of the Byzantine World (Farnham, 2011), pp. 47–56; and A. Cameron, ‘Seeing Byzantium: a personal response’, in A. Eastmond and L. James (eds), Wonderful Things: Byzantium through Its Art (Farnham, 2013), pp. 311-318 . 4   W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘Romanticism and the life of things’, Critical Inquiry 28 (2001), pp. 167– 84, esp. 182, pointing out that images should be understood not as expressions of language’s desire to draw closer to the natural object but as visible and material entities.

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functional materiality of the object, it invites us to a greater understanding of the functions and the experience of icons. The label ‘material culture’ serves to open up questions of how we understand works of art as objects and, more specifically, as functioning objects, with a job to do, a role to play in a particular society. It allows us to ask questions about the importance of the relationship between people and things. In this context, I shall begin with a version of what Bill Brown has called ‘Thing Theory’, the absolute focus on the object as concrete ‘thing’. But it is also widely accepted that material objects inform social processes and so they need to be considered in terms of their production, exchange and consumption, for example, and in relation to the social contexts and consequences of these activities. In this context, I shall borrow Igor Kopytoff’s concept of the ‘cultural biography’ of objects in order to open up questions of how biographical approach to objects can raise questions about the changing links between people and things, and about the ways in which meanings and values can be accumulated by and transformed around objects.5 In this context of the ‘social life’ of objects, I shall touch on questions of the reciprocal relationships between people and their things; how works of art might circulate as objects with value and hence as commodities, or as objects of singularity and so removed from the sphere of commodification, or, indeed, as both.6 My aim is to open up issues concerning the experience of art in Byzantium and to discuss something of how the actual physical experience of works of art contributes to our understanding of the Byzantine perception of the world. I shall focus on a specific secular object, Projecta’s Casket in the British Museum, because this was the object that alerted me to the ways in which the physical nature of an object can alter our understanding and perception of it (Fig. 2.1), and also discuss the wider subject of icons, because they form the centre of Cameron’s concerns. The concept of the object as object, the thing as ‘thing’, is apparent in the context of Projecta’s Casket, a Late Antique silver box, a toilet casket, forming part of the Esquiline Treasure and housed now in the British Museum.7 Normally, 5   I. Kopytoff, ‘The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process’, in A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 64–91. Also see C. Gosden and Y. Marshall, ‘The cultural biography of objects’, World Archaeology 31 (1999), pp. 169–78. 6   A. Appadurai, ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’, in Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things, pp. 3–63. Appadurai’s concept of ‘the social life of things’ highlights the materiality or ‘thingness’ of objects as commodities, objects with a value that can be exchanged for other objects with a value. 7   K.J. Shelton, The Esquiline Treasure (London, 1981) remains the standard work on the treasure and the casket. On dating and owners, see Alan Cameron, ‘The date and owners of the Esquiline Treasure’, American Journal of Archaeology 89.1 (1985), pp. 135–45 and K.J. Shelton, ‘The Esquiline Treasure: the nature of the evidence’, American Journal of Archaeology 89.1 (1985), pp. 147–55.

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Figure 2.1

A demonstration of the difficulty in carrying Projecta’s Casket (author’s photograph)

the casket is an object discussed in terms of its style and its iconography. Is it classical or Byzantine or Late Antique in its appearance – and what exactly do those terms mean? What scenes do the images on it depict? Are they selfreferential, being all about bathing or perhaps marriage? What do they suggest about the cross-over of pagan and Christian iconography? How should the iconography be read in gendered terms?8 The casket is also discussed, in the 8

  See Shelton, Esquiline Treasure; D. Buckton, ‘The Projecta casket’, in D. Buckton (ed.), Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections (exhibition catalogue, London, 1994), pp. 33–4, cat. no. 10; K. Painter, ‘Il Tesoro dell’Esquilio’, in S. Ensoli and E. La Rocca (eds), Aurea Roma. Dalla citta pagana alla citta cristiana (Rome, 2000), pp. 140–46; J. Elsner, ‘Visualising women in Late Antique Rome: the Projecta casket’, in C. Entwistle (ed.), Through a Glass Brightly (Oxford, 2003), pp. 22–36; J. Elsner, Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text (Princeton, NJ, 2007), pp. 200–224; J. Elsner, ‘The Projecta casket’, in R. Cormack and M. Vassilaki (eds), Byzantium, 330–1453 (exhibition catalogue, London, 2009), pp. 71 and 380–81, cat. no. 12.

Liz James

Figure 2.2

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Interior view of Projecta’s Casket (author’s photograph)

context of both style and iconography, in terms of its craftsmanship: should it be seen as a high-quality work of art or a mass-produced object? But what is less considered is the nature of the casket as a physical object, something to be lifted, carried and opened (Fig. 2.2).9 The casket is over half a metre in length (55.9 cm, to be precise), almost half a metre (43.2 cm) wide and 28.6 cm high, so it is a bulky, awkward object to lift; O.M. Dalton gave its weight as 125,620 grains (over 21¾ lb).10 Shelton’s catalogue entry for the casket only mentions the weight because there is an inscription on the casket itself recording that weight (and she does not confirm whether the casket was weighed by the British Museum to verify this).11 This inscription records that the casket weighed about twenty-two Roman pounds. This translates roughly to sixteen pre-metric pounds, or just over a stone, or to a little over seven kilogrammes. This weight coupled with the dimensions make the casket very difficult to pick up and to carry. Further, the casket, as it survives, has lost any fixtures it might have had in the interior and is empty. A wooden frame to support a lining and a collection of contents would further increase its overall 9   In this discussion, I have left aside considerations of the restorations to the casket. Shelton’s discussion, Shelton, Esquiline Treasure, pp. 19–24 and esp. fig. 6, showing eighteenthand nineteenth-century restorations to the casket, suggests that, although the edges and corners have been restored, these restorations did not alter the fundamental shape of the casket. 10   O.M. Dalton, Catalogue of the Early Christian Antiquities in the British Museum (London, 1901). 11   Shelton, Esquiline Treasure, pp. 72 and 92, n. 1 on the location of the inscription. None of the catalogue entries cited in n. 8 gives the weight of the casket.

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weight and bulk. The handles, which may in any case be a nineteenth-century addition, do not appear to be designed for use; it is likely that, if the casket were lifted by the handles, it would pull away from them.12 The only way to hold it seems to be to balance it across the forearms, with the hands curling round the front for stability, and indeed, this is how a female figure is shown holding a very similar object on the front of the casket. But at this point, the lifter becomes very aware just how many edges and corners the casket has. What describing it and experiencing it in physical terms suggests is that the casket needs to be understood as a part of material culture, in terms of who, if anyone, used it, carried it (and how far?) or cleaned it.13 Where was it stored and how often did it have to be polished to avoid tarnishing, or was it preferred in a tarnished state?14 In this context, being aware of objects such as Projecta’s Casket as physical things with lives as material artefacts is perhaps the reverse of Maria Parani’s discussion of art in the context of ‘reconstructing the reality’ of images.15 Parani used images and primary sources to reconstruct what was ‘real’ in Byzantine imagery: she asked whether a figure was wearing contemporary clothing and carrying contemporary weapons, what sort of tables, thrones, beds, lamps might have existed in Byzantine life, investigating what she calls the ‘sensible reality’ of Byzantine images. But it is important also to remember what might be described as the ‘tangible unreality’ of such images. Within them, no saint ever looks strained under the weight of his panoply, no empress is ever crushed and constricted beneath her jewels and robes, and no evangelist strains his eyes by the light of a single oil lamp. What images do not reveal is the materiality of the objects depicted. They do not convey how much armour weighed or how easy it was to move when wearing a gold-embroidered, jewel-crusted loros or how much light a polycandelon gave out. Even on Projecta’s Casket, the waiting woman is not shown staggering beneath the weight of the casket she holds. Thinking about objects as things reminds us that pictures deal in ideal appearances, the appearance of reality perhaps, not in experiences or the experience of reality. So in thinking about the reality of images, it is necessary also to take the ‘thingness’ of objects into account: if the objects that are seen 12

  Shelton, Esquiline Treasure, p. 20.   K.M.D Dunbabin, ‘The waiting servant in later Roman art’, American Journal of Philology 124 (2003), pp. 443–68, esp. 458–62 on servants in bathing scenes and citing J. D’Arms, ‘Slaves at Roman convivia’, in W.J. Slater (ed.), Dining in a Classical Context (Ann Arbor, MI, 1991), pp. 171–83 on servants and slaves in the context of dining. 14   It has been suggested that the Romans preferred tarnished silverware: S. Knudsen, ‘Dining as a fine art: tablewares of the Ancient Romans’, in C. Kondoleon (ed.), Antioch: The Lost Ancient City (Princeton, NJ, 2000), pp. 181–5, esp. 182. For this in Classical Greece, see M. Vickers, ‘The influence of metal work on Athenian painted pottery’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 105 (1985), pp. 109–11. 15   M. Parani, Reconstructing the Reality of Images (Leiden, 2003). 13

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in pictures are translated into things, does it make a difference to how they are perceived and understood? Indeed, Byzantine works of art had their own lives as things, for Byzantine attitudes to art seem to involve its functionality rather more than its aesthetic appearance. Projecta’s Casket was made to be a casket, not a work of art, though the study of it as a casket has yet to be carried out. Similar points can be made about the physical nature of icons. To begin with, it is well known, though little discussed, that icons had different physical roles depending on their size.16 They could be very big, such as those icons well over a metre high and almost as wide that might be inserted into the iconostasis or ranged through the church.17 Other icons were designed to be used in processions, such as the double-sided icon from Kastoria depicting the Mother of God on one side and the Man of Sorrows on the other. These, too, were large: the Kastoria icon is 115 × 77 cm.18 There were smaller icons, the ones that may have had a personal use in peoples’ homes or were carried by the faithful in their baggage or in wallets on their person.19 But few exhibition catalogues record how much an icon (or indeed any object displayed in an exhibition) weighs, and little consideration is given to what it might mean to lift or transport an icon. As bulky rectangular objects made of solid wood, they cannot have been light or easy to handle. Considering works of art in terms of their physicality, be they icons or secular objects, matters because it leads to questions about what it meant for the Byzantines to experience art as functional objects: what it meant to carry Projecta’s Casket or to put an icon in a wallet. This idea of the ‘thingness’ of things is one that the cultural critic Bill Brown has explored, pushing the idea of ‘thingness’ a stage further to alert us to a cultural context for the point at which objects get noticed as objects.20 He argued that ‘things’ deal in the realness of the external world. In Brown’s words, ‘We begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us: when the drill breaks, when the car stalls, when the windows get filthy, when their flow within 16   On size as a feature of icons see T.F. Mathews, ‘Early icons of the Holy Monastery of St Catherine at Sinai’, in R.S. Nelson and K.M. Collins (eds), Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai (exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, CA, 2006), pp. 39–56, esp. 42. 17   For example, the paired icons of Moses and Elijah from St Catherine’s monastery, Mt Sinai, which are 132.5 cm × 69.9 cm: M. Vassilaki, cat. entry no. 316 in Cormack and Vassilaki (eds), Byzantium, pp. 460–61; or the sanctuary doors depicting the Annunciation from the same monastery, which are 120 × 34.3 cm and 118 × 32.2 cm respectively: Cormack, cat. no. 322 in Cormack and Vassilaki (eds), Byzantium, p. 461. 18   See E. Tsigaridas, cat. no. 83, in M. Vassilaki (ed.), Mother of God (exhibition catalogue, Athens, 2000), pp. 484–5. 19   The icon with the Triumph of Orthodoxy in the British Museum is 39 × 31 cm in size: Cormack, cat. no. 57 in Cormack and Vassilaki (eds), Byzantium, p. 394. 20   B. Brown, ‘How to do things with things (a Toy Story)’, Critical Inquiry 24 (1998), pp. 935–64; B. Brown, ‘Thing theory’, Critical Inquiry 28 (2001), pp. 1–22.

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the circuits of production and distribution, consumption and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily’.21 In other words, things intrude into our consciousness and we become aware of them when they do something (or, more usually, fail to do something)22 or something happens to them to change them from being objects taken for granted into becoming things with lives of their own, when they are noticed: a car that does not start; a mobile phone that is missing; a picture that falls off the wall and breaks its frame; or, in the case of the objects discussed here, a silver casket too heavy to lift or an icon that bleeds when stabbed or that turns away from a supplicant.23 These things can no longer be taken for granted as part of the everyday world where functioning cars, ringing mobiles, and pictures on walls are so familiar as not to be noticed.24 It is when the object stops being what we think it should be that we stop taking it for granted, we give it attention, and we start experiencing it. It becomes a presence. Patricia Cox Miller used ‘thing theory’ in her discussion of relics as more than body parts. She argued that as an object, a relic was, or is, simply a part of a dead person’s inanimate body. However, as the centre of cult activity, that same body part lost its character as a piece of a human being. It stopped being taken for granted; no longer functioned as a part of the human being but became instead a site of religious contact, a ‘thing’ that conveyed the relationship of the human subject to the sanctifying potential of human physicality as the site of spiritual presence and power.25 Icons might be said to work like this, for potentially the moment a Byzantine icon was noticed or experienced was the moment that it stepped out of its place on the wall and became active: the moment it exuded oil or wept or healed someone or turned away from them. This is perhaps what happened in the fifteenth-century Tuesday procession of the Hodegetria icon in Constantinople. The Russian pilgrim, Stephen of Novgorod, described how seven or eight men were needed to lay this ‘very large’ icon on the shoulders of one man, who then stretched out his arms as if crucified and moved, blindfolded, around the monastic precinct. The icon pushed the icon bearer ‘this way and that around’ and forcefully turned him 21

  Brown, ‘Thing theory’, p. 4.   Here, Bruno Latour’s concept of blackboxing in a different context might be considered: B. Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA, 1999). Latour discussed how scientific and technical work can be made invisible by its own success: when something works, attention is directed to the output and not the way in which it was produced. 23   Bleeding icons and an icon of the Virgin turning away from a supplicant are recorded in the Letter of the Three Patriarchs, ed. and tr. J. Munitiz et al., The Letter of the Three Patriarchs to Emperor Theophilus and Related Texts (Camberley, 1997). 24   As Patricia Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagination (Philadelphia, PA, 2009), p. 2, glosses it. 25   Cox Miller, Corporeal Imagination, pp. 1–3. 22

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about.26 The experience of carrying the icon had a central role in the religious experience; its weight, the experience of its weight and the fact that one man was enabled to carry what had taken ‘seven or eight’ to place on his back was central to the icon’s presence. Thinking of an icon, or indeed any ‘art object’ as a thing is not to separate the object from the images depicted on it, for these are also a part of the experience of its materiality. In the Miracles of Cosmas and Damian, a military man called Constantine is recorded as travelling with a representation of Cosmas and Damian out of faith and for his own protection.27 In Laodicea, he married a woman who shortly afterwards developed a pain in her jaw. Constantine himself was at a loss how to deal with this, but in her sleep, his wife had a reassuring vision of two young men who healed her, and she questioned her husband about their appearance. He suddenly remembered he had a representation of Cosmas and Damian in his wallet and only then produced it to show his wife, who, of course, recognised the two young men. The moment the icon, or rather the images on the icon, left the wallet, the moment the icon demonstrated its potential for action, became an object, the moment it was experienced as more than an image, then it became an object with power and indeed with agency. At this point the object became a thing in Brown’s terms; put another way, the icon became experience, or experienced. Brown suggested that it is the force or perhaps the power or manifestation of objects as sensuous presences or, as we might gloss it, physical experiences, that becomes a value in its own right. Cox Miller applied this to relics: the hand of St Catherine, for example, has both presence and value, but, as she rightly noted, its existence as a physical object, its sensuous presence, was what gave it the power to act or, put another way, gave it agency, the ability to influence what people around it did and how they behaved.28 ‘Thingness’ can also be applied to icons; the existence of icons as physical visual objects gave them agency.29 In Brown’s terms, we might say that it was their ‘thingness’, the point at which they stepped over from being objects into becoming sensuous presences, that allowed them to be used to make heavenly power available to human needs. In theory, within the Byzantine conception of images, icons as 26

  Stephen of Novgorod, translated in G.P. Majeska, Russian Travellers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington, DC, 1984), pp. 36–7. 27   Miracula SS Cosmae et Damiani, miracle 13, L. Deubner (ed.), Kosmas und Damien (Leipzig–Berlin, 1907), pp. 132–3 and translated in C. Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire: Sources and Documents (Toronto, 1974), pp. 138–9. 28   A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford, 1998), which argued against a view of art as a matter of meaning and communication, making a case that visual art did not ‘work’ like language. Gell saw agency as the ability of objects, specifically works of art, to influence the field of social action in ways which would not occur if those objects did not exist. 29   Cox Miller, Corporeal Imagination, pp. 145 and 164–6.

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‘things’ had agency: they were objects that could act, and act independently of human agency. When the Byzantines said that an icon worked a miracle, this, for them, was not hearsay but truth.30 Nevertheless, even here, it might be said that human agency played a part, for icons responded to human actions. Icons bled when stabbed by men, turned away when spurned by the unfaithful.31 I do not know of any examples from Byzantium of icons acting spontaneously or of their own accord. So ‘thingness’ is an encouragement to consider the physical materiality of works of art and to ask in what ways that physicality might influence the use and indeed the perception of the object. Another way of considering the material culture of objects is through Igor Kopytoff’s concept of the ‘cultural biography of things’. Kopytoff proposed that objects have a life and a life history, just as people do, and that it is possible to trace that life and see what the changes in the biography of an object might say about the life of that object, the recognised periods or ages in its life and the cultural markers for them, how its use might change with its age, and what happens when it reaches the end of its usefulness.32 Put another way, an object, though it may be the same object, can change in the ways in which people see, treat and experience it, and those changes inform us about changing attitudes within different societies to those objects. Projecta’s Casket offers a useful case study.33 The casket’s cultural biography can be broken down into three basic stages of existence. Its life and death as a casket, its making, use and then burial in the fourth century, forms stage one. It is now impossible to know whether the casket ever reached the end of its usefulness as a casket, whether it was buried because of its (perhaps sentimental) value as a casket or because of its value as twenty-two pounds of silver.34 The next stage of its life was its rediscovery in 1793 as buried treasure 30

  W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘What do pictures “really” want?’, October 77 (1996), pp. 71–82, whilst recognising the problems inherent in framing this question, suggested that pictures want mastery. Byzantine icons as apparently independent of human hands and human agency might be said to achieve that mastery. 31   In this context, R. Layton, ‘Art and Agency: a reassessment’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9.3 (2003), pp. 447–64, glosses the concept of ‘agency’ to argue that agency is about makers’ and viewers’ agency as much as it is about the inanimate object’s. In this context, the relationship between people and things is also significant. 32   Kopytoff, ‘Cultural biography of things’. 33   It was Helen Rufus Ward who made me aware of this aspect of the casket. I do not mean to imply by this division that the casket only carried these meanings or indeed that it held only one meaning at any one time. As is well recognised, ‘biography’ is multiple. For a tracing of the changing lives of objects, see A. Cutler, ‘From loot to scholarship: changing modes in the Italian response to Byzantine artefacts, ca. 1200–1750’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), pp. 237–67. 34   T. Papamastorakis, ‘The discreet charm of the visible’, in C. Angelidi (ed.), Byzantium Matures (Athens, 2004), pp. 111–27.

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and the various implications that it carried as a piece of the past and as a mass of precious metal.35 It was a sought-after work of art because it was understood as demonstrating a Late Antique revival, or even renaissance, of classical form and it passed through the hands of a series of collectors until it was sold to the British Museum in 1866. Its third stage of life is as an important museum piece regularly loaned out to exhibitions and in a special display case, ‘The Esquiline Treasure’, in the British Museum, a life as a highly valued cultural treasure removed, by and large, from human contact.36 There is no guarantee, of course, that this is its final stage, for it may outlive its usefulness and value as a museum object and be removed from display or even de-accessioned, and so enter a new social context. In each of these periods of its life, the casket has had a different incarnation, and has been perceived differently. In the fourth century, its life was as a silver box presumably for holding toiletries; in the eighteenth century, it was buried treasure from far away and long ago, associated with the romance of the Fall of Rome; now, it is a work of art and museum piece suitable for academic study. For a full biography of Projecta’s Casket, it has to be understood in each of these incarnations and for each different audience. As Kopytoff also pointed out, biographies can give clues to what are regarded as successful or disastrous careers; just as the careers of people can be examined to establish ideal career trajectories, so too those of objects. Inasmuch as it has survived to make it into the British Museum and into the history books, Projecta’s Casket in its reincarnations has had a successful career. But thinking about the casket in terms of its biography raises issues that might otherwise not be considered: what happens to objects decontextualised from their original functions, how are they appraised or not appraised? How are they thought of? Why are they collected, and as what? It is humans who give things significance, but it is only when things circulate in an exchange system that their value becomes apparent.37 What then of the cultural biography of an icon? And how might the career trajectory of a successful icon be constructed? To ask these questions in this way dislocates icons from one system into another, moves them away from their primary function as vehicles for prayer towards a consideration of them as objects with potentially varied lives, whose changes in life-course must be informative about changes in attitudes to icons as both objects and as holy objects.38 A successful icon clearly needed to start its life as an acheiropoietas image, an image not made with hands, because that guaranteed its legitimacy 35   On the pervasive nature of the ‘treasure’ aspect and the idea of it being buried to avoid barbarian invasions in the fifth century see Shelton, Esquiline Treasure, p. 13. 36   For its exhibition history up to 1994, see Buckton, ‘Projecta casket’; also Elsner, ‘Projecta casket’. 37   Appadurai, ‘Commodities’, p. 5. 38   Brown, ‘How to do things’, p. 954, on defamiliarising things.

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as an image and also made it miraculous. The ability to work miracles was surely the most significant marker for a successful icon, and it might well be that the type of miracle an icon could perform also made a difference. Since the ‘job’ of an icon was to perform as an interactive medium between this world and the next, a response, a miracle, was a tangible proof that the icon was fulfilling this role and was able to make contact and influence the heavenly powers.39 Whether this made up the full biography of the icon is another story; it might be that the success or otherwise of the icon depends on how much its role changed over time. The value of an icon lay not only in the fact that it had a life of its own but also in that it affected the lives of those who created and venerated it. If icons are considered in these terms, then one of the most successful icons must have been the miraculous icon of the Hodegon monastery, the prototype of perhaps the most famous of all iconographies of the Virgin, that of the Mother of God Hodegetria.40 According to written tradition, the original Hodegetria icon was painted by St Luke from life.41 It was supposedly sent to Constantinople in the fifth century by the empress Eudokia and established in the Hodegon monastery by Eudokia’s sister-in-law, Pulcheria. It was reputedly the icon that fought off the Avars; by the eleventh century, it was a key part of the annual Akathistos rituals, and by the twelfth, the focus of annual imperial commemorative ceremonies at the Pantokrator monastery.42 Each Tuesday, it was carried through the streets of the city and placed on the altar of a different church for the celebration of the liturgy. By the fourteenth century, the icon was the most famous focus of pilgrimage in Constantinople, and this procession had become a special ritual in which the icon bearer was blindfolded and walked round a particular square in the city, being guided where to go by the icon itself, the object itself miraculously translated into weightlessness.43 In 1453, when Constantinople was sacked, the icon was destroyed. The original icon of the Virgin Hodegetria fulfilled all the criteria for success. It was made by the evangelist Luke, and so was true to life; this established both its likeness and its authority. It was the gift of two pious empresses. It played a major role in safeguarding the city and was central to religious rituals within the city. It worked miracles. Indeed, it was so highly regarded that it was replicated over and over, and commemorated over and over. Finally, it met its end as a result 39

  R. Cormack, Painting the Soul (London, 1997), pp. 9 and 31.   B. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (Penn State, 2006), pp. 109–44. 41   The original source is said to be the sixth-century author Theodore Lector, Historia Ecclesia 1, 1, as excerpted by Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos in the fourteenth century: J.P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca 86, 165A. A translation is available in Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire, p. 40. Also see Pentcheva, Icons and Power, p. 120. 42   See Pentcheva, Icons and Power, pp. 121–9. 43   On which, Pentcheva, Icons and Power, pp. 129–36. 40

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of its success: it was destroyed by the Turks because of its potential for power, though this did not prevent its continuing commemoration.44 The life course of a successful icon offers a snapshot of how icons, or at least some icons, were conceived of and experienced over the period between the fifth and fifteenth centuries. Of course, it also reminds us of what biographers can do to their subjects and how success stories can be constructed, since the artistry of St Luke was a feature only made public in the eighth century, and the supposed fifth-century history of the icon seems mythological. However, those stories formed a part of the icon’s cultural biography: the mythology of success. While in its life, the Hodegetria icon might be described as ‘successful’, can the same be said of the sixth-century icon of the Virgin and Child with (probably) Sts George and Theodore from St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai?45 This icon was never ascribed to St Luke nor ever seen as an acheiropoietas image. It may well have never left Sinai. There are no miracles associated with it, it appears to have had no public face, and the iconography of the panel as a whole, with Child, Mary, saints and angels, while recurrent to a point, is not common. No copies spread its miracle-working powers. On the other hand, unlike the Virgin Hodegetria, it still exists. It is now displayed to tourists in the icon gallery of St Catherine’s monastery. Further, it could be argued that it has entered a new and successful phase of its career, for it now has a role as a work of art, displayed in a gallery at the monastery and occasionally sent abroad on tour to star in exhibitions. There must have been failed icons, ones that achieved nothing and that fell into disuse; the question of what happened to an icon that was no longer useful (how indeed that might be defined) is a moot one. Successful icons were replicated and repainted once they were proved successful, as happened to the Virgin of Vladimir, but no traces remain of their less-successful siblings.46 Is the Virgin and Child icon in fact exhibited by the monks because it is no longer regarded as having value as an image to pray before? Has it lost its ability to intercede? Has it failed? A biography of an object over time can throw up interesting insights into both the object itself and also the understanding of how the object has itself been conceptualised over time. Kopytoff was primarily interested in how objects functioned as commodities and how commoditisation might be seen to work through the study of an object’s changing biography. Seeing art as

44   In, for example, an embroidered icon of c1498 from Moscow, cat. no. 266 in Cormack and Vassilaki (eds), Byzantium, pictured at p. 315. 45   For which see R. Cormack, cat. no. 1 in Vassilaki (ed.), Mother of God, pp. 262–3. 46   For copies and versions of this icon see Mother of God of Vladimir on the Occasion of the 600th Anniversary of its Arrival in Moscow on 26 August (6 September) 1395, catalogue of an exhibition in the Tretyakov and Kremlin, (Moscow, 1995). My thanks to Robin Cormack for this reference. On the power of copies see G. Vikan, ‘Ruminations on edible icons: originals and copies in the art of Byzantium’, Studies in the History of Art 20 (1989), pp. 47–59.

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‘things’ thus helps us to convert these works of art into potential objects with value beyond their artistic value. Using this approach to consider Projecta’s Casket is relatively straightforward, for the casket was almost certainly a commodity throughout its life in whatever incarnation. Although its cost in the fourth century is unknown, some calculations as to its monetary value can be made.47 The casket is formed from twenty-two Roman pounds of silver. The Theodosian Code in 422 made an equivalence between silver and gold being paid into the Imperial treasury, suggesting that a pound of silver could be paid in the form of 5 gold solidi.48 On this basis, twenty-two pounds of silver translate to approximately 110 gold solidi. To give a bit of perspective to this figure, the average pay of a soldier was about 15 solidi per year, a Roman pound of purple silk cost maybe about 62 solidi, and the fourth-century pope Damasus endowed a church he founded with estates bringing in 120½ and 103 solidi each year.49 The weight of silver in pounds also compares well to the sorts of silver vessels given by Roman popes to churches of their foundation, also recorded in pounds.50 The weight of the casket’s silver can also be translated into pounds of gold. Since there were 72 solidi to the pound of gold, twenty-two pounds of silver equates

47

  These figures are based on those in the Price Code of Diocletian and some rough conversions from denarii into solidi: S. Lauffer, Diokeltians Preisedikt (Berlin, 1971) and M. Dalka, Constantine the Great Coins (Burbank, CA, 2002), available at: http://www. constantinethegreatcoins.com/edict/ (accessed 21/04/11). I have benefitted from reading R.C. Allen, ‘How prosperous were the Romans? Evidence from Diocletian’s Price Edict’, University of Oxford, Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series, 363 (October 2007), available at http://economics.ouls.ox.ac.uk/12121/1/paper363.pdf (accessed 21/04/11), which suggests that Roman workers needed to spend between 249.147 and 516.352 grams of silver per year on living. At approximately 7 kg, Projecta’s Casket would represent something between twenty-eight and thirty years of living expenses. Also see R. Hobbs, ‘Mine’s bigger than yours: comparing values of Late Roman hoards’, in S. Willis and R. Hingley (eds), Roman Finds: Contexts and Theory (Oxford, 2007), pp. 77–85. For debates about the costs and value of Late Antique silver in a wider context, see Alan Cameron, ‘Observations on the distribution and ownership of late Roman silver plate’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 5 (1992), pp. 178– 85 and K.S. Painter, ‘Late Roman silver plate: A reply to Alan Cameron’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 6 (1993), pp. 109–15. 48   The Theodosian Code 8. 1. 27, tr. C. Pharr, The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions (London, 1952). A slightly lower figure of 4 solidi to a pound of silver is implied at 13. 3. 2; Allen, ‘How prosperous?’. 49   L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis. Texts, introduction et commentaire (Paris, 1886–93), 2 vols; English translation by R. Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liverpool, 1989), p. 39. Also see the figures in A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire (Oxford, 1964), chapter 10. 50   Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, p. 34 on the gifts given by Constantine; p. 39 by those of Damasus; and p. 41 for those of Innocent.

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to just over one and a half pounds of gold.51 None of these figures indicates either the cost or the value of the casket, but they do hint at ways of locating the weight and value of the metal in a fourth-century context. Unless the owners were at the very top level of the Roman aristocracy, twenty-two pounds of silver was actually no small quantity. The status of the casket as commodity is hard to assess, however. The value of the silver is difficult to gauge, for it depends in part on whether the casket was seen as a ‘liquid asset’ by its owners, whether it was valued for its sentimental and/or its artistic value, and how far value was added, if at all, to the raw material through the process of manufacture.52 There is considerable debate about the status of the casket in terms of its craftsmanship; it is not sophisticated in terms of its physical manufacture, though its iconography is highly developed.53 We cannot be sure whether it was buried for its value in precious metal, its value as an object of use, its value as a piece of decoration, or even its value in emotional terms. After its first incarnation, something is known of the casket’s sale prices throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its final sale price to the British Museum, and its current insurance estimate at the British Museum is in considerable excess of anything that its fourth-century cost or value could have been. Those figures give clues about the value of the casket at different points in its life and indicate that it is more valuable now than it has ever been. What they make clear is how increasingly the casket has been valued above either its weight or its monetary value in silver, and indeed perhaps beyond what some might think its workmanship deserves. Why this should be so leads into debates about modern valuing of ‘art’, which, in turn, serve to highlight how far Projecta’s Casket has moved as a commodity in the twentyfirst century and how far we are prepared to see ‘art’ as ‘commodity’. Twentyfirst-century Western European society tends to value art as art very highly: to sell off works of art, the family silver, is often perceived as trading downwards. But in Late Antique society, melting down the family silver, translating it into ‘liquid assets’, was an acceptable thing to do, indeed was almost a justification for having works of art made from precious metals, something that gave these works of art an edge over objects that could not be liquidated, such as icons or ivories.54 51   Hobbs’s calculations in ‘Mine’s bigger’, pp. 81–3, come up with a similar figure based on a ratio of 1 pound of gold to 14 of silver. 52   Michelle O’Malley reminds me that manufacture rarely added value in the Renaissance world. 53   Shelton, Esquiline Treasure, pp. 48–50; Elsner, ‘Visualising women’, p. 24, notes David Buckton’s comment about the casket as ‘tinny’ in workmanship. Elsner suggests it may be a competent but not outstanding imitation of court style. 54   A. Cutler, ‘Prolegomena to the craft of ivory carving in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages’, in X. Barral i Altet (ed.), Artistes, artisans et production artistique au Moyen Âge, Colloque international vol. 2, Commande et travail (Paris, 1987), pp. 431–75.

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There are also objects that were not commodities in a particular society. By looking at shifts and differences about the place of objects in the commodity stakes, something of a ‘moral economy’ behind the visible economy of permissible transactions is revealed. Thus, for example, Antony Eastmond has suggested that consular diptychs were sent out accompanied by silver largitio, often in the form of silver dishes bearing the emperor’s image, and that this silver largitio could be melted down to be converted to cash (perhaps for the purchase of other commodities).55 But, in a society where the emperor’s image was the emperor, was it possible to translate a silver dish with the image of an emperor on it into hard cash or was that a form of lèse-majesté or even of treason?56 Melting down silver was well known in Byzantium, but even here, a moral economy applied. Theodore of Sykeon once spotted a church plate with a former existence as a prostitute’s chamber pot (which perhaps also offers a remarkable insight into what some prostitutes were believed to have been able to afford; this was perhaps part of her liquid wealth) and immediately rejected this vessel as unsuitable for use in his church.57 Projecta’s Casket was once a commodity; now, in its incarnation as a museum piece, it might be said to have moved out of being a commodity, in the sense that it is now not valued for the quantity of metal it contains but for its age, at least until it is de-accessioned. What then of icons in this context of the commodification of things? At what point did money exchange hands for icons? They are a category of object that perhaps are simultaneously commodity and excluded from commodification. To be saleable as a commodity is to be ‘common’; the singular and unique object is virtually unexchangeable – what price can be put on the Mona Lisa? Icons, however, especially successful ones, were, and are, replicated. In this context, should we understand only the original icon as carrying value and power or were its copies equally significant? Although Kopytoff pointed out that it is usually the sacred and symbolic objects of a society that are excluded from the ‘commodity market’ and reserved exclusively for those in power, icons almost certainly formed a part of a commodity market and were thus ‘common’. Icons are indeed one of the ‘commonest’ objects to survive from Byzantium. But their roles as objects, essentially as means to transmit devotion, made each one potentially unique, ‘uncommon’. Icons clearly were not reserved only for those in power, though once they gained a reputation for success, this could translate them into this sphere, as with the Hodegon icon, though copies of

55

  A. Eastmond, ‘Consular diptychs, rhetoric and the languages of art in sixth-century Constantinople’, Art History 33 (2010), pp. 742–65. 56   I owe this question to Jennifer Laity. 57   Life of St Theodore of Sykeon, chapter 42. Vie de Théodore de Sykéon, ed. and tr. A.-J. Festugière (Brussels, 1970), 2 vols; English translation by E. Dawes and N.H. Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (London and Oxford, 1948).

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that icon may have circulated widely.58 And where the link between exchange and value has been defined as politics, in Byzantium, in the context of certain objects, that link may well have been religion or faith. Cameron questioned the value of seeing works of art as objects because of the dangers in forgetting about them as products of a particular society. But objects matter as objects because in their physicality, which is not simply about their dimensions but also about their appearance, their materiality and their tangible presence, they compelled their viewers to engage with the experiencing of art and they compel us to engage with them as sensory objects. In Byzantium, materiality can be seen as central to so many aspects of the Byzantine thought-world, from politics to economics to theology.

58

  The value of the copies of icons, both in the Byzantine period and now, is another story. For ideas about unique, singular and sacred objects exchanged for political and diplomatic capital see Y. Hamilakis, ‘Stories from exile: fragments from the cultural biography of the Parthenon (or “Elgin”) marbles’, World Archaeology 31 (1999), pp. 303–20, esp. 313.

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3. Repetition and Replication: Sacred and Secular Patterned Textiles1 Warren T. Woodfin

Textiles and repetition go hand in hand. One might even say that repetition is intrinsic to the textile medium itself, for it is the mechanical replication of the same sequences of warps and wefts, floats and binding points that creates the structure that holds the fabric together.2 On a much larger scale, the regular variations on these sequences create recognisable decorative or figural motifs. The repetitive quality of textiles and those ornamental motifs that derive from them have long challenged art historians. Oleg Grabar, in discussing the ‘textile aesthetic’ of ornament in Islamic art, both recognised the significance of repetition to the textile medium and critiqued the too-ready reliance upon assessments of repetitive ornamental motifs as ‘incantatory’, ‘magical’, or the like.3 Although such interpretations only begin to answer the question, they at the least recognise that repetition itself has bearing on meaning. In a pre-modern context, the production of large-scale repeating patterns with complicated motifs and smooth curves required a technical precision that was itself a testament to the power of the patron. Byzantium (along with the Islamic Middle East) enjoyed a tremendous technical advantage over its European neighbours in possessing the technology of the drawloom, by which complex fabrics with elaborate patterns could be woven essentially ad libitum

1

  For thinking with me on a number of aspects of the problem of meaning and repetition, I would like to thank Tristan Weddigen and the other participants in the Textile project of the Kunsthistorisches Institut at the University of Zurich. I am also indebted to the two anonymous readers, who provided helpful commentary and additional bibliography. 2   For technical vocabulary, I have primarily followed the usage of D. Burnham, Warp and Weft: A Dictionary of Textile Terms (New York, 1981). 3   O. Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament, The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1989 (Princeton, NJ, 1992), pp. 141, 234. See also L. Golombek, ‘The Draped Universe of Islam’, in P. Soucek (ed.), Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World (University Park, PA, 1988), pp. 25–49. From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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once the intricate work of programming the loom had been accomplished.4 Alfred Gell’s concept of the ‘enchantment of technology’ is useful in understanding the reception such textiles must have enjoyed in the middle ages. Gell posits that technically advanced works of art (such as Byzantine silks) generate an aura of enchantment through the difficulty the beholder has in fully comprehending the processes of their creation.5 Furthermore, this magical aura surrounding technically impressive works of art is transferred to the patron or the ruler behind its manufacture – the more so in cultures like Byzantium where the artist is socially invisible.6 Similarly, James Trilling has applied the term ‘conspicuous virtuosity’ to describe how the court arts of Byzantium display a superfluity of skilled workmanship that redounds to the glory of the empire, the court, and the emperor himself.7 Both Gell and Trilling note that such exhibitions of technical virtuosity can be at once enthralling and subtly menacing. It is, after all, but a short step from the bronze automata of the Byzantine throne room to the bronze siphons belching Greek fire.8 It hardly seems coincidental, therefore, that some of the most impressive Byzantine silks surviving in Western treasuries are those that depict somewhat threatening creatures – lions, eagles and griffins.9 Such dangerous beasts, beyond the reach 4

  On the technology of the drawloom, see A. Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving AD 400 to AD 1200 (Vienna, 1997), pp. 19–24; A. Muthesius, Studies in Silk in Byzantium (London, 2004), pp. 46–9; and J.P. Wild, ‘The Roman Horizontal Loom’, American Journal of Archaeology 91 (1987), pp. 459–71. For an alternative account, see J. Thompson and H. Granger-Taylor, ‘The Persian Zilu Loom of Meybod’, Bulletin du CIETA 73 (1995), pp. 27-53, esp. 44-47. J. Trilling explicitly links the rise of the Byzantine silk weaving on the drawloom to the fashion for repeated patterns, especially those framed in medallions. See J. Trilling, Ornament: A Modern Perspective (Seattle, WA, 2003), pp. 59–60. 5   A. Gell, ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’, in J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds), Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics (Oxford, 1992), pp. 40–63, esp. 49. 6   Gell, ‘Technology of Enchantment’, pp. 49–52. 7   J. Trilling, ‘Daedalus and the Nightingale: Art and Technology in the Myth of the Byzantine Court’, in H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204 (Washington, D.C., 1997), pp. 217–30, esp. 225–30. On textiles as diplomatic gifts, see A. Muthesius, ‘Silken Diplomacy’, in J. Shepard and S. Franklin (eds), Byzantine Diplomacy (Aldershot, 1992), pp. 237–48; Muthesius, Studies in Silk, pp. 131–8; A. Cutler, ‘Imagination and Documentation: Eagle Silks in Byzantium, the Latin West and Abbasid Baghdad’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 96 (2003), pp. 67–72. 8   Gell, ‘Technology of Enchantment’, p. 52; Trilling, ‘Daedalus and the Nightingale’, pp. 229–30. 9   On silks with these motifs, see Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving, pp. 44–54; the eagle silk from Brixen/Bressanone is described on p. 184, cat. no. M62. The similar eagle silk from Auxerre, the so-called shroud of St Germain, appeared in H. Evans and W.D. Wixom (eds), The Glory of Byzantium (New York, 1997), pp. 224–5, cat. no. 149. The griffin silk from Sion was included in the recent Royal Academy of Art exhibition in London: R. Cormack and M. Vassilaki (eds), Byzantium 330–1453 (London, 2008), pp. 122, 396, cat. no. 63. One might add

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of human domestication and control, are a fitting subject for execution through techniques that surpass ready comprehension. Icons, for their part, involve another kind of repetition. In this case, the repetition is not internal to the object, as it is with textiles, but rather internal to the image.10 Every icon, after all, is to be regarded as the impression or instantiation of a pre-existing prototype, whether it be of Christ himself, a saint, or an event from sacred history. To take a representative example, the icon of the Mother of God Hodegetria carries within itself a repetition that is at least double: first, there is the artistic duplication of the icon reputedly by St Luke himself that resided in the Monastery of the Hodegon in Constantinople.11 Later icons of this subject would likely have generations of intermediary images standing between them and the ‘original’ Hodegetria. The icon in the Hodegon was in turn considered to be St Luke’s representation of the original features of the actual, living and breathing Virgin and Christ child. The power of the icon, according to the theology elaborated in the ninth century and reasserted repeatedly thereafter, resides in its fidelity to its prototype. Fidelity of repetition guarantees connection. As is well known, this idea was initially formulated by St Basil in relation to imperial images. His famous quotation, itself again ‘doubled’ by being repeatedly quoted by Byzantine defenders of sacred images,12 defines the relationship of image and prototype:

to this list the silks with hornets (?) (ἀπὸ βδελλίων) attested in Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, ed. and trans. J. Haldon (Vienna, 1990), pp. 110–11, discussed below. An exceptional case of the wearing of a griffin-ornamented textile by the emperor himself is discussed by L. Jones and H. Maguire in ‘A Description of the Jousts of Manuel I Komnenos’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 26 (2002), pp. 104–48, esp. 127–36. 10   On the distinction between the icon as image and object, see A. Weyl Carr, ‘Leo of Chalcedon and the Icons’, in C. Moss (ed.), Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann (Princeton, NJ, 1995), pp. 579–84; H. Kessler, ‘Configuring the Original by Copying the Holy Face’, in The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, Villa Spelman Colloquia 6 (Bologna, 1998), pp. 141–8; W. Woodfin, ‘An Officer and a Gentleman: Transformations in the Iconography of a Warrior Saint’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 60 (2006), pp. 111–43, esp. 131–5. 11   For discussion of this image, see N. P. Ševčenko in M. Vassilaki (ed.), Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art (Athens and Milan, 2000), cat. no. 54, pp. 388–9. 12   Notably John of Damascus, for example, The Fount of Wisdom, trans. S.D.F. Salmon in John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series (repr. Grand Rapids, MI, 1955), vol. 9, p. 88. The analogy with the imperial likeness is used also by Nikephoros of Constantinople, Nicephori patriarchae constantinopolitani refutatio et eversio definitionis synodalis anni 815, 92, ll. 53–60, and 123, ll. 11–16, ed. J. Featherstone, Corpus Christianorum 33 (Turnhout, 1997), pp. 164–5 and 218 (the latter a direction quotation of St Basil).

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Repetition and Replication The image of the emperor is also called the emperor, yet there are not two emperors. Power is not divided nor is glory separated. Just as he who rules us is one power, so the homage he receives from us is one, not multiple, for the honour given to the image is transferred to the prototype.13

None of this will be news to Byzantinists, who are familiar with the various iterations of this theory elaborated in the struggle over icons and diligently repeated in later centuries.14 An interesting problem arises, though, when this ‘vertical’ mode of repetition from a prototype to a chain of copies collides with the ‘horizontal’ mode of repetition of an image across the length and breadth of a woven fabric. The repetition of motifs such as eagles or lions may be relatively unproblematic, but how do we understand what happens when textiles bear repeating images of subjects that are iconic in nature? Mechanical reproduction suddenly becomes an intricate problem when the repeated motif is the icon of Christ or the portrait15 of the emperor. Let us take first the textiles with imperial images and representations of such textiles. There is tantalising evidence of figural textiles in early Byzantium sharing the widespread function of imperial images – in the form of statues or paintings – as signs of the emperor’s delegated authority.16 The diptych of Areobindus, consul in 506, shows him clad in the toga triumphalis with its heavily decorated border.17 The ornamented band has standing figures, each, 13   Translation from J. Elsner, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: The Art of the Roman Empire A.D. 100–450 (Oxford, 1998), p. 57. 14   Carr, ‘Leo of Chalcedon and the Icons’, pp. 579–601; C. Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting: Art and Understanding in Eleventh-century Byzantium (Leiden, 2007), pp. 131–57; B. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park, PA, 2010), pp. 198–208; and see further Barber’s review of Pentcheva: C. Barber, ‘Bissera V. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium’, Art Bulletin 93 (2011), pp. 372–3. 15   Throughout this paper, the term ‘portrait’ appears as a usefully concise and familiar word to describe the likeness of the emperor. It is not intended to convey any of the semantic weight attached to it in post-medieval contexts, but it seems more expedient than reliance on Byzantine terminology such as charactēr, typos or eikon. 16   On the functions of the imperial image in Antiquity, see T. Pekáry, Das römische Kaiserbildnis in Staat, Kult and Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1985), pp. 42–65; H. Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. E. Jephcott (Chicago, IL, 1994), pp. 102–14; P. Stewart, The Social History of Roman Art (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 87–9. 17   Paris, Musée National du Moyen Âge (Thermes et hôtel de Cluny), Cl. 13135. R. Delbrueck, Die Consulardiptychen und verwandte Denkmäler (Berlin, 1929), pp. 43–58; W.F. Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters (Mainz, 1976), p. 33, no. 10, pl. 5; C. Olovsdotter, The Consular Image: An Iconological Study of the Consular Diptychs, BAR International Series, no. 1376 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 41–4, pl. 9.3; A. Eastmond, ‘Consular Diptychs, Rhetoric and the Languages of Art in Sixth-century Constantinople’, Art History 33 (2010), pp. 742–65.

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like the consul himself, wearing the toga triumphalis and holding a sceptre in the left hand and a cloth, or mappa, in the right. While it would be logical to assume that these figures are meant to represent the emperor, the consular insignia could apply with equal fitness to his co-consul or to Areobindus himself.18 One finds a somewhat clearer case with the two ivory plaques, one in Vienna, the other in Florence, generally thought to represent the empress Ariadne (r. 474–515).19 On both plaques, the empress wears a chlamys with an applied panel, the tablion, bearing what is unmistakably an imperial portrait. Despite the scale of the figure, the insignia of the sceptre and mappa are clearly present – consular attributes already well assimilated into the imperial portrait type.20 If indeed the ivory represents Ariadne, we are left to guess whether the tablion shows her first husband, Zeno, or her second, Anastasius I. There is a still earlier and more extraordinary example in the diptych of Stilicho, Magister Militum of the Western Roman Empire from 392/3 to 408, preserved in the treasury of Monza cathedral (Fig. 3.1).21 Accompanied on the pendant leaf by his wife, Serena, and his son Eucherios, Stilicho’s ivory could almost pass for an imperial family portrait. Indeed, among all the figures depicted on surviving diptychs from Late Antiquity, Serena is the lone woman who is neither an empress nor a personification.22 As the niece and adoptive daughter of Theodosius I, her appearance helps to shore up Stilicho’s claims and ambitions to wield the power allegedly placed in his hands by the dying emperor.23 The ivory nonetheless signals obedience to the proper imperial heirs. The sign that Stilicho is, himself, subject to a higher authority comes in the form of the busts of Honorius and Arcadius depicted on his shield. Such a clipeus portrait on a shield was both a sign of rank and of loyalty to the 18   The now-lost diptych of Procopius Anthemius, consul in 515, formerly in Limoges, showed a toga picta similarly adorned with busts within roundels, perhaps depicting imperial figures. It is illustrated in an eighteenth-century drawing in Delbrueck, Consulardiptychen, vol. 2, pp. 121–2, no. 17; Olovsdotter, Consular Image, p. 72, pl. 15. 19   Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten, pp. 49–50, nos. 51–2, pl. 27; K. Wessel, ‘Wer ist der Consul auf der Florentiner Kaiserinnen-Tafel?’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 57 (1964), pp. 374–9; D. Angelova, ‘The Ivories of Ariadne and Ideas about Female Imperial Authority in Rome and Early Byzantium’, Gesta 43 (2004), pp. 1–15. A re-assignment of the portraits to the empress Sophia (r. 565–578) has been proposed by A. McClanan, Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: Image and Empire (New York, 2002), pp. 168–78. 20   On the assimilation of consular titles and insignia to the Byzantine imperial office, see A. Alföldi, Die monarchische Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreiche (Darmstadt, 1970), pp. 150–54; G. Galavaris, ‘The Symbolism of the Imperial Costume as Displayed on Byzantine Coins’, American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 8 (1958), pp. 99–117, at 103. 21   Delbrueck, Consulardiptychen, pp. 242–8, no. 63; Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten, pp. 55–6, no. 63, pl. 35; B. Kiilerich and H. Torp, ‘Hic est: hic Stilicho: The Date and Interpretation of a Notable Diptych’, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 104 (1989), pp. 319–71. 22   Kiilerich and Torp, ‘Stilicho’, p. 358. 23   Kiilerich and Torp, ‘Stilicho’, pp. 354, 358.

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Figure 3.1

Repetition and Replication

Diptych portrait of Stilicho with his wife Serena and son Eucherios, c. 400, Cathedral Treasury, Monza (Alinari / Art Resource, NY)

imperial throne.24 Still more significant is that both Stilicho’s tunic and cloak are ornamented over their whole extent with repeating roundels bearing what are most likely to be regarded as imperial busts.25 The pattern of the two garments is slightly different: the chlamys has only busts, whereas the tunic presents alternating rows of busts and of standing figures under arcades. The latter may well be tyches or personifications of the imperial capitals (compare the famous ivory representations of Rome and Constantinople in Vienna).26 24   The shield portraits are associated by the Notitia Dignitatum with the rank of Comes domesticorum, an office held by Stilicho in 385–391/2. Kiilerich and Torp, ‘Stilicho’, p. 353. 25   A detail photograph and drawings of the patterns on the garments are reproduced in Kiilerich and Torp, ‘Stilicho’, figs 15 and 17, pp. 355 and 365. 26   Kiilerich and Torp, ‘Stilicho’, p. 366.

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Whereas the Areobindus and Ariadne ivories provided sufficient detail to indentify the consular – and thus also imperial – attributes of the figures, here the scale permits only a summary rendition of the busts, although their identity as imperial portraits can be safely assumed. Unfortunately, we cannot tell whether they represent Honorius alone or, as with the double portrait on the shield, are meant to represent Arcadius as well.27 In their analysis of the Stilicho ivory, Kiilerich and Torp sustain a comparison between the relative restraint of the image on the diptych and the audaciousness of the panegyrics delivered in praise of Stilicho by Honorius’ court poet, Claudian,28 who served as a mouthpiece for Stilicho’s ambitions to rule both halves of the Roman Empire.29 Most instructive is Claudian’s panegyric On the Consulship of Stilicho, which culminates in the ekphrasis of a garment. The poet paints a verbal picture of the goddess Roma offering to Stilicho, on behalf of all the provinces of the empire, a consular trabea, purple dyed and woven with gold, on which are depicted the children and the (as-yet-imagined) grandchildren of Stilicho and their attainment to imperial dignity.30 In contrast to the fictive robe woven by Minerva for Stilicho, adorned with his own image and that of his would-be imperial children,31 the artist of the diptych has clothed Stilicho in the images of the legitimate rulers. The garments shown on the diptych encode Stilicho as acting on behalf of the Theodosian dynasty. If the diptych as a whole – with its resemblance to imperial family groupings – has the potential to express Stilicho’s aspirations to dynastic power, the patterned clothing acts as a kind of hedge against too overt a disclosure of this message. The use of the imperial image as a badge of delegated authority appears to have functioned outside the boundaries of the empire as well. The bestdocumented example is the account – given in parallel versions in the Chronicon Paschale and in the Chronicle of John Malalas – of the conversion of Tzathe, king of the Laz, in 522. Coming in the midst of protracted hostilities with Persia, Justin I’s appointment of the Caucasian leader to the court office of kouropalates effectively stood for the Byzantine appropriation of Persia’s former

27   Kiilerich and Torp, ‘Stilicho’, p. 366, endorse the idea that both emperors are represented in the textiles. 28   Kiilerich and Torp, ‘Stilicho’, pp. 350–58. 29   A. Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970), pp. 47–62. 30   Claudianus, Carmina 22 (De consulatu Stilichonis, II), ll. 339–361, in J.B. Hall (ed.), Caludii Claudiani Carmina (Leipzig, 1985), pp. 218–19; Cameron, Claudian, p. 47. 31   Kiilerich and Torp, ‘Stilicho’, p. 366, n. 209; A. Cameron, ‘Claudian’, in J.W. Binns (ed.), Latin Literature of the Fourth Century (London, 1974), pp. 134–59, at 158, n. 9; E. Kitzinger, ‘The Hellenistic Heritage in Byzantine Art’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17 (1963), pp. 97–115, esp. 101–2.

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vassal.32 The emperor stood as godfather at Tzathe’s baptism and invested him with regalia bearing the imperial likeness. According to Malalas, He [Tzathe] wore the Roman imperial crown and a white chlamys of pure silk, having in lieu of the purple tablion a golden imperial tablion, in the middle of which there was a small bust of true purple bearing the likeness of the same emperor Justin, and also a white tunic, a paragaudes, itself having golden imperial decorations [ploumia], similarly bearing the likeness of the same emperor.33

The description of the costume worn by the king of the Laz confirms our interpretation of the costume on the early Byzantine ivories as bearing imperial portraits. Furthermore, the text of Malalas makes clear that the textile portraits are meant to show that the wearer’s authority is derived from the emperor in Constantinople, whose image he or she bears. Roger Scott has suggested that the level of detail in the passage cited above – in contrast with the generally laconic style of the chronicle – may show its reliance on an otherwise lost manual of diplomatic protocol.34 In this case, we can assume that, rather than being a one-off event, similar investitures happened on other occasions with other rulers. Another notable detail from the account is the repetition of the portraits. While the tablion, being a single decorative patch applied to the chlamys, bears a single imperial portrait – as was the case for the ivory of Ariadne – the tunic, or paragaudes, described in the text is covered with multiple images. Whether these images were woven or embroidered is impossible to determine, but they are explicitly identified as motifs (plural) of the likeness (singular) of the same emperor.35 Malalas thus implicitly answers the question that arises in the case of repeating imperial images: namely, are we looking at

32

  R. Scott, ‘Diplomacy in the Sixth Century: The Evidence of John Malalas’, in Shepard and Franklin (eds), Byzantine Diplomacy, pp. 159–65, esp. 162. On the later, Georgian use of the title kouropalates, see A. Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia (University Park, PA, 1997), p. 6. 33   Καὶ φορέσας στεφάνιν ῾Ρωμαϊκὸν βασιλικὸν καὶ χλαμύδα ἄσπρον ὁλοσήρικον, ἔχον ἀντὶ πορφυροῦ ταβλίου χρυσοῦν βασιλικὸν ταβλίον, ἐν ᾧ ὑπήρχεν ἐν μέσῳ στηθάριον ἀληθινὸν μικρόν, ἔχοντα τὸν χαρακτήρα τοῦ αὐτοῦ βασιλέως Ἰουστίνου, καὶ στιχάριν δὲ ἄσπρον παραγαύδιν, καὶ αὐτὸ ἔχον χρυσᾶ πλουμία βασιλικά, ὡσαύτως ἔχοντα τὸν χαρακτήρα τοῦ αὐτοῦ βασιλέως. Ioannes Malalas, Chronographia XVII, 9, ed. I. Thurn, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 35 (Berlin, 2000), p. 340. Cf. Procopius, De bello persico, II, 9, ed. J. Haury (Berlin, 1962), p. 215. The parallel account in the Chronicon Paschale gives the name of the ruler, Tzathe, and the year of his investiture, 522: Chronicon Paschale, ed. L. Dindorf, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae 16 (Bonn, 1832), pp. 613–14. 34   Scott, ‘Diplomacy in the Sixth Century’, pp. 162–3. 35   The Chronicon Paschale presents almost identical wording: Dindorf (ed.), Chronicon Pashchale, p. 614.

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images of a series of emperors, or multiple images of a single emperor?36 One might further rephrase the question as one of the representation of a particular emperor (this emperor) or of the imperial office (the emperor) more generally.37 Both questions bear on repetition and are issues to which we shall return. While formal investiture of foreign rulers by the Byzantines disappears from texts after the early period, the practice continues by implication through the gifts of garments bearing imperial images to foreign rulers. We have documentation, for instance, of the gifts presented by Byzantine rulers to their Arab counterparts. The letter recording the inventory of imperial gifts given by Romanos I Lekapenos to the Abbasid Caliph Al-Radi (r. 934–940) mentions numerous textiles with repeating motifs, including several decorated with eagles, lions, winged beasts, hunters, elephants, and animal combats, but also one with the image of an emperor on horseback carrying a standard.38 One can relate these patterns to those mentioned in texts such as De Ceremoniis. In describing a reception of foreign ambassadors in the Magnaura in 946, Constantine VII describes the officials taking up their places according to the designs and colours of their skaramangia: ’the green and rose-coloured eagles here, the oxen and many-ringed eagles there, likewise sea-patterns here, white 36

  For the case of multiple emperors represented on costume, compare the headgear of a second-century priest of the imperial cult in the Princeton University Museum and an analogous example excavated in 2002 from the Agora in Athens. J.M. Padgett (ed.), Roman Sculpture in the Art Museum, Princeton University (Princeton, NJ, 2001), pp. 56–60, cat. no. 13; L.A. Riccardi, ‘The Bust-crown, the Penhellenion, and Eleusis: A New Portrait from the Athenian Agora’, Hesperia 76 (2007), pp. 356–90. Not every series of busts in late Roman art is imperial, of course. A silver largitio dish found at Kaiseraugst made for the decennalia of Constans (inv. no. 1962.249a.b.), bears around its rim a band of ornament punctuated by ten individualised male portraits, none of which seems to be imperial. A. Kaufmann-Heinimann in M. Guggisberg (ed.), Der spätrömische Silberschatz von Kaiseraugst: Die neuen Funde (Augst, 2003), pp. 117–25, 142–64. 37   Ernst Gombrich has noted the ‘depersonalizing tendencies of the multiplying media’: what is an individual likeness in a single instance becomes divorced from any particular individual when repeated ad infinitum. On the other hand, his conclusion that repetition inherently devalues the meaning of the motif is belied, I would argue, by the evidence of Byzantine figural textiles. E. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art (Ithaca, NY, 1979), pp. 151–2. On the tension in the Byzantine imperial image between the ‘political’ and ‘personal’ bodies of the ruler, see A. Eastmond, ‘Between Icon and Idol: The Uncertainty of Imperial Images’, in A. Eastmond and L. James (eds), Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 73–86, esp. 78–81. 38   M. Hamidullah, ‘Nouveaux documents sur les rapports de l’Europe avec l’Orient musulman au Moyen Âge’, Arabica 7.3 (1960), pp. 281–300, esp. 286–7. This source is also translated and discussed in O. Grabar, ‘The Shared Culture of Objects’, in H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Court Culture from 829–1204 (Washington, D.C., 1997), pp. 115–30, esp. 118–20; Cutler, ‘Imagination and Documentation’, pp. 71–2; and in Jones and Maguire, ‘The Jousts of Manuel I Komnenos’, p. 123.

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lions here’.39 A key text for understanding the relationship between what we might term ‘implied investiture’ at home and abroad is a treatise of Constantine VII on imperial military campaigns. There we learn that the emperor’s baggage is to include silk garments of various sorts for presentation as gifts, both tailored and untailored, with decoration of eagles and βασιλίκια, which could refer to imperial symbols – as John Haldon cautiously renders it in his translation – or perhaps to imperial portraits.40 A striking feature of the text is that garments with patterns of eagles or imperial motifs are expressly designated both ‘for sending to distinguished and powerful foreigners’ and for distribution to the strategoi, kleisourarchai, and the more important of the tourmarchoi – that is, to the provincial subordinates of the emperor.41 This text thus provides the link between the fragmentary Byzantine textiles with imperial images that survive in the West and the practice of investiture with imperial symbols and, most likely, portraits within Byzantium itself.42 In referring to silks decorated with imperial motifs, the military treatise of Constantine VII may well have in mind silks such as the Ulrich Chasuble in Augsburg (Fig. 3.2), with its repeating pattern of imperial busts within roundels, or the fragment of a silk with large figures of the emperor on horseback found in a tomb in Bamberg cathedral, which in turn recalls the silk with an equestrian emperor described in the inventory of gifts to the Abbasid caliphate, already discussed above.43 39

  De Ceremoniis, ed. J.J. Reiske, 3 vols (Bonn, 1829), I, pp. 577–8, cited in Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, ed. J.F. Haldon, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 28 (Vienna, 1990), pp. 221–2, and A. Toynbee, Constantine Porphyrogenitus and his World (Oxford, 1973), p. 502. I borrow the translation of Cutler, ‘Imagination and Documentation’, pp. 68–9. 40   Haldon (ed.), Three Treatises, pp. 108–11, ll. 239–241; p. 126, ll. 506–509; commentary pp. 221–2. The βασιλίκια might also be interpreted as imperial monograms, such as are attested on a fragment of silk from the reign of Heraclius preserved at Liège. B. Borkopp, ‘Perlen, Rosetten und Blütenranken: Zur Ornamentik byzantinischer Seidengewebe’, in B. Borkopp and T. Steppan (eds), ΛΙΘΟΣΤΡΩΤΟΝ: Studien zur byzantinischen Kunst und Geschichte: Festschrift für Marcell Restle (Stuttgart, 2000), pp. 25–6; J. Lafontaine-Dosogne (ed.), Splendeur de Byzance (Brussels, 1982), p. 207, cat. no. Tx 1. 41   Haldon (ed.), Three Treatises, pp. 108–11, ll. 239–41; p. 126, ll. 506–11; commentary pp. 221–2. 42   I have previously argued for such a connection on the basis of the Byzantine idea of the ‘family of princes’: W. Woodfin, ‘Presents Given and Presence Subverted: The Cunegunda Chormantel in Bamberg and the Ideology of Byzantine Textiles’, Gesta 47 (2008), pp. 33–50. 43   Apart from the famous Gunthertuch in Bamberg, which, being tapestry woven, is a special case, several patterned textiles are known that may be considered to bear imperial portraits: the green Ulrich Chasuble in Augsburg, the imperial rider silk from a grave in Bamberg, the small fragment in Sens possibly representing an emperor, the silk from the binding of the Abba Codex in Hannover, two fragments in the cathedral treasury of Halberstadt, the silk from Mozac with an imperial lion hunt, now in Lyon, and a small fragment of a similar equestrian emperor from the abbey at Gandersheim. See R. Schorta,

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Figure 3.2

45

Green Chasuble of St Ulrich, tenth century, Augsburg, Parish of SS. Ulrich and Afra (Pfarramt St. Ulrich und Afra, Augsburg)

Monochrome Seidengewebe des hohen Mittelalters (Berlin, 2001), pp. 66–71; M. Martiniani-Reber in J. Durand (ed.), Byzance: L’art byzantine dans les collections publiques françaises (Paris, 1992), p. 193, cat. no. 128; p. 197, cat. no. 132; R. Baumstark (ed.), Rom und Byzanz: Schatzkammerstücke aus bayerischen Sammlungen (Munich, 1998), pp. 213–16, cat. nos. 66 and 67; Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving, pp. 59, 190; Otto von Falke, Kunstgeschichte der Seidenweberei (Berlin, 1921), pl. 6b.

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The pattern of survival in Western Europe of silks with images of emperors – along with other motifs with strong imperial associations such as lions and eagles – in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire and Kingdom of France suggests that their distribution as gifts was targeted at the most illustrious members of the so-called ‘family of princes’. In other words, they seem to have been distributed among foreign rulers who – like the king of the Laz four centuries earlier – were implicitly regarded as high officials of the Byzantine court, and thus, through their dress, symbolically assimilated to the body of officials under the real control of the emperor.44 Unfortunately, there is a sevencentury gap in our visual evidence from the Byzantine court itself of the practice of wearing textiles with the imperial image, that is, from the early sixth-century ivories cited earlier until the introduction of the skaranikon – a hat with the imperial image attached – in the court of the Palaiologoi around 1300. We thus have no direct, empirical evidence that the imperial portrait silks preserved in Western Europe were also worn by courtiers in Constantinople itself.45 On the other hand, the very ideological potency of the textile gifts to Western Europe would seem to be dependent on their functioning in a symbolic parallel with garments of the Byzantine court.46 The recipients of silks with imperial images carry the emperor’s likeness throughout the empire and beyond its borders. Just as the positioning of the courtiers at the diplomatic reception according to the motifs of their skaramangia represented an orderly hierarchy of power descending from the emperor, so the distribution of similar motifs abroad served to replicate this same courtly hierarchy outside the realm of the emperor’s direct sway. They thus help to reinforce Byzantium’s cherished political fiction of its universal sovereignty over the oikoumene.47 The repetition of the imperial images is allied to the absence of any identifying inscription. 44   On the imperial image as a sign of delegated authority, see C. Hilsdale, ‘The Social Life of the Byzantine Gift: The Royal Crown of Hungary Re-invented’, Art History 31 (2008), pp. 603–31, at. 615–17; Jones and Maguire, ‘The Jousts of Manuel I Komnenos’, pp. 129–33; Woodfin, ‘Officer and Gentleman’, pp. 123–37; I.M. Johannsen, ‘Rings, Fibulae and Buckles with Imperial Portraits and Inscriptions’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 7 (1994), pp. 223–42, esp. 229–31; Wessel, ‘Wer ist der Consul?’, pp. 374–9; O. Treitinger, Die oströmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee nach ihrer Gestaltung im höfischen Zeremoniell, 2nd edition (Darmstadt, 1956), pp. 204–7. 45   Treitinger expresses confidence that the practice of investiture with imperial images ‘heilt wohl die ganze byzantinische Zeit hindurch an’: Treitinger, Oströmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee, p. 206. M. Parani, in contrast, regards the handful of examples from Late Antiquity to be exceptional cases, and she concludes that the Palaiologan skaranikon represents the first and only widespread use of imperial images by Byzantine courtiers: M. Parani, ‘Cultural Identity and Dress: The Case of Late Byzantine Ceremonial Costume’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 57 (2007), pp. 95–134, at 121, n. 80. 46   Woodfin, ‘Presents Given and Presence Subverted’, pp. 43–44. 47   On the ‘Family of Princes’ and notions of universal sovereignty in Byzantium, see G. Ostrogorsky, ‘The Byzantine Empire and the Hierarchical World Order’, Slavonic and East

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The implication is that the imperial likeness is so pervasive that one need not ask whose image it is.48 Repeated ad infinitum and without the restrictive force of a naming inscription, these textile images relentlessly enforce the ideology of imperial power as a given. It is not this emperor, but the emperor, and the power of his gaze is, almost literally, everywhere. Much more abundant evidence exists for our second category of imagebearing textiles, those with religious motifs. Henry Maguire has drawn our attention to the large number of surviving early Byzantine textiles with religious subject matter and, conversely, the surprising disappearance of Christian motifs from woven textiles after the period of Iconoclasm in the eighth and ninth centuries.49 As Maguire argues, prior to Iconoclasm, textiles with religious imagery formed the dress of the laity, not the clergy, and their function was largely apotropaic rather than didactic. Hence the evident unconcern with repeated depictions of the same subject on a single garment, with providing identifying labels for the depicted figures, and even with the legibility of the depicted scenes. Repetitive ‘holy riders’ decorate the tapestry bands of tunics to ward off evil, but because of their lack of inscriptions they cannot be identified with any particular warrior saint. The life of Joseph is also depicted with great frequency, in both drawloom-woven silk and in tapestry-woven wool, but at times becomes so stylised through repetition as to be scarcely recognisable.50 Although the vast majority of these and similar textiles are one-off productions in woollen tapestry from Egypt, a handful of silk, drawloom-woven examples survives from Late Antiquity, demonstrating that the period witnessed the production of religious weavings with ‘automatic’ repeats.51 A fourth- or fifthcentury example comes in the form of a silk with scenes from the infancy of the Virgin, now in the Abegg-Stiftung near Bern (Fig. 3.3a and Fig. 3.3b). Found in Egypt in conjunction with a large tapestry-woven hanging with a Dionysiac European Review 35 (1956), pp. 1–14; D. Nicol, ‘The Byzantine View of Western Europe’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 8 (1967), pp. 315–39. 48   I am here indebted to P. Bourdieu’s concept of doxa as a way of conceptualising a system of virtually uncontestable thought. See P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 167–8. 49   H. Maguire, ‘Magic and the Christian Image’, in H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Magic (Washington, D.C., 1995), 51–71; H. Maguire, ‘From the Evil Eye to the Eye of Justice: The Saints, Art, and Justice in Byzantium’, in A. Laiou and D. Simon (eds), Law and Society in Byzantium: Ninth–Twelfth Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1994), pp. 217–39; H. Maguire, ‘Garments Pleasing to God: The Significance of Domestic Textile Designs in the Early Byzantine Period’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990), pp. 215–44. 50   L.H. Abdel-Malek, Joseph Tapestries and Related Coptic Textiles, Ph.D. diss. (Boston University, 1980); E. Kitzinger, ‘The Story of Joseph on a Coptic Tapestry’, Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1938), pp. 266–8. 51   A silk exemplar of the Joseph story in the Cathedral Treasury of Sens (inv. no. B 36) appeared in Durand (ed.), Byzance, p. 152, cat. no. 101, where it was tentatively dated to the sixth century.

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Figure 3.3a Silk with scenes from the Infancy of the Virgin, late fourth or early fifth century, Riggisberg, Abegg-Stiftung (© Abegg-Stiftung, CH3132 Riggisberg, 1988; photograph: Christoph von Viràg)

Figure 3.3b Reconstruction drawing of silk with scenes from the Infancy of the Virgin, late fourth or early fifth century, Riggisberg, AbeggStiftung (©Abegg-Stiftung, CH-3132 Riggisberg; drawing: Barbara Matuella)

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theme, the textile shows scenes drawn from the Protevangelion of James (the Presentation and Betrothal of Mary, and the Annunciation at the Well) as well as the Nativity of Christ.52 The association with another piece of clearly pagan subject matter at least implies a secular context. The last and most famous examples of this early series of silks are the Annunciation and Nativity silks in the Vatican. Specialists vary widely in their dating of the pieces: Anna Gonosová has proposed a date in the late sixth- or early seventh century, others, relating the textiles to descriptions in the Liber Pontificalis, place them around 800, while Anna Muthesius dates them after the end of Iconoclasm in 843.53 In any case, no other silks surviving from the middle Byzantine period bear religious subject matter. When religious motifs reappear on textiles – towards the end of the twelfth century – the medium is embroidery rather than weaving and is used for the adornment of liturgical veils and vestments of the clergy rather than for the clothes of the laity. Now textile images would conform to the norms of icons in other media; thanks to the shift to embroidery, figures would be produced in single images rather than multiples, each appropriately labelled with the names of the holy figures or of the events depicted.54 The embroideries on the front side of the Minor Sakkos of Photios, for instance, dated c. 1339, can be compared directly to images in monumental painting and icons.55 The narrative scenes follow a coherent programme, enhanced by the supplementary figures of the prophets that surround them, and the ranks of bishop saints and apostles in the margins recall the standing figures in Late Byzantine apse cycles. Images are coordinated both with identifying inscriptions and with exegetical texts – in the form of the prophets’ scrolls and the embroidered words of the Nicene Creed – to interpret them.56 In other cases, though, the neatness of the resolution of the textile-image problem 52

  L. Kötzsche, ‘Die Marienseide in der Abegg–Stiftung: Bemerkungen zur Ikonographie der Szenenfolge’, in Begegnung von Heidentum und Christentum im spätantiken Ägypten, Riggisberger Berichte 1 (Riggisberg, 1993), pp. 183–94. 53   A. Gonosová, ‘On the Alexandrian Origin of the Vatican Annunciation and Nativity Silks’, Sixteenth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, Abstracts of Papers (Baltimore, MD, 1990), pp. 9–10; L. von Wilkens, Die textilen Künste: Von der Spätantike bis um 1500 (Munich, 1991), pp. 38–9 (as eighth century); G. Cornini in R. Cormack and M. Vassilaki (eds), Byzantium 330– 1453 (London, 2008), p. 389, cat. no. 48 (as c. 800); Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving, pp. 67–8. 54   H. Maguire, The Icons of their Bodies: Saints and their Images in Byzantium (Princeton, NJ, 1996), pp. 137–45. 55   Maguire, Icons of their Bodies, pp. 197–8. A new dating, to c. 1400, has been argued by A. Barkov, ‘“Malyi sakkos Mitropolita Fotiia” iz sobraniia muzeev moskovskogo Kremlia: problemy stilia i datirovki’, in S.A. Beliaev and I.A. Vorotnikova (eds), Moskovskii kreml’ XIV stoletiia: Drevnie sviatyni i istoricheskie pamiatniki (Moscow, 2009), pp. 349–75. 56   W. Woodfin, The Embodied Icon: Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium (Oxford, 2012), pp. 57–60, 220–23.

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is less clear. Another of the vestments associated with Metropolitan Photios of Moscow, his epitrachelion, is decorated with an extended deesis consisting of the three central figures of Christ, the Virgin, and John the Baptist, supplemented by some 88 individual busts of saints (Fig. 3.4).57 Each of these roundel images measures approximately four centimetres across, and each figure adheres to the appropriate portrait type. Hence one can distinguish the prominent, bald forehead of St John Chrysostom and the basket-woven cap of St Spyridon. Furthermore, each image has an accompanying inscription, although the scale makes deciphering them something of a challenge. So, then, this object follows the letter of the law of post-Iconoclastic textile images: each image is labelled and, with the exception of the Virgin – who, in addition to being shown full length near the neck of the stole, is shown twice in the busts of the first row – none of the images is a duplicate of another. Each adheres to an accepted and recognisable portrait type, and each is duly labelled with the name of the saint depicted. One can connect the sequence and selection of saints, carefully grouped, of course, by their class, to the commemorations associated with the prothesis rite, as has been convincingly done by Juliana Boicheva, and one might draw other comparisons with the repetitive invocations in other liturgical chants.58 The visual impression given by the stole, however, is one of sustained repetition, and the closest parallels are in the repeating images we have seen in the imperial context. It seems, in fact, that Byzantine artists and patrons exploited the fluid boundary between the two types of images. I have argued elsewhere that the Orthodox Church drew on the already-familiar use of imperial images as signs of authority in order to stake claims to a higher – or rather more direct – source of authority in Christ.59 There are also a few, tantalising traces of iconographic traffic in the other direction, evidence that images of the saints were used in the imperial sphere in the late Byzantine period. The lost fresco portrait of Manuel I Megas Komnenos once located in the Church of Hagia Sophia at Trebizond shows his tunic adorned with the image of St Eugenios.60 The image recalls the earlier use of anonymous warrior saints on clothing, although here in way that makes a far-from-anonymous claim on the protection of the city’s patron martyr. We may now add to this evidence the embroidered bands from the nomadic prince’s burial at the Chungul Kurgan in southern Ukraine (Fig. 3.5), 57

  Woodfin, The Embodied Icon, pp. 71, 234.   J. Boicheva, ‘Tipologiia i semantika na epitrakhila’, Problemi na Izkustvoto 30.2 (1996), pp. 38–43. My thanks to Alexander Lingas for helpful discussion of this question. 59   W. Woodfin, ‘Celestial Hierarchies and Earthly Hierarchies in the Art of the Byzantine Church’, in P. Stephenson (ed.), The Byzantine World (Abingdon and New York, 2010), pp. 303–18; Woodfin, ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’, pp. 129–37. 60   A. Eastmond, Art and Identity in Thirteenth-century Byzantium: Hagia Sophia and the Empire of Trebizond (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 139–47; G. Gagarin, Sobranie vizantiiskikh’, gruzinskikh’ i drevnerusskikh’ ornamentov’ i pamiatnikiov’ arkhitektury (St. Petersburg, 1897), pl. 25. 58

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Figure 3.4 Epitrachelion of Photios, late fourteenthor early fifteenth century, Moscow, Kremlin Armoury (© State Historical and Cultural Museum-Preserve, ‘The Moscow Kremlin’, photograph by V.V. Blagov, 2009)

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Figure 3.5 Fragments of embroidery from the Chungul Kurgan burial, early thirteenth century, Kiev, Archaeological Museum (photograph courtesy of Yuriy Rassamakin, Kiev) dateable to the first half of the thirteenth century.61 A strip running down the centre of the caftan and across the sleeves consisted of rows of identical busts, contained within roundels with pearls and silver-gilt ornament. Although the embroidery is now in very fragmentary condition, it is clear that these figures were never labelled. The heads with their thick locks of curly hair may conceivably have represented a political figure, but their resemblance to the iconographic type of St George is striking.62 Furthermore, the technique of the multiple busts is highly exacting, as the stitches of the embroidery were placed at counted intervals on the weave of the underlying textile, resulting in very precise repetitions of the image.63 Having no exact parallels among surviving textiles, they force us to question whether the renewed Late Byzantine interest in embroidered sacred images was exclusive to liturgical vestments. The end of the Byzantine period witnessed the rise of a new class of woven textiles with sacred subjects, this time the product of Ottoman looms. While 61   W. Woodfin, Y. Rassamakin and R. Holod, ‘Foreign Vesture and Nomadic Identity on the Black Sea Littoral in the Early Thirteenth Century: Costume from the Chungul Kurgan’, Ars Orientalis 38 (2010), pp. 155–86. 62   Compare, for example, the early thirteenth-century biographical icon of St George at Mt Sinai, in H. Evans (ed.), Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557) (New York, 2004), pp. 372–3, cat. no. 228. 63   Woodfin, Rassamakin and Holod, ‘Costume from the Chungul Kurgan’, pp. 162–5, 171–2.

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Figure 3.6 Christ as High Priest, silk and metallic textile, sixteenth century, Washington, D.C., Dumbarton Oaks (© Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, D.C.) the images of the saints on the Epitrachelion of Photios follow what we might term the ‘letter of the law’ of icon production, that is not the case for the woven textiles with Christian subjects produced in Ottoman Bursa and Constantinople. The most widespread pattern, as well as likely the earliest, shows Christ in the guise of an Orthodox bishop, wearing the sakkos, omophorion, and mitre (Fig. 3.6). He blesses with both hands, holding his fingers in the traditional position that echoes his identifying inscription, ΙC ΧC. Crosses with the abbreviations for ‘IC XC NIKA’ appear between the roundels. The very pattern of the textile is echoed by the sakkos Christ wears in the image, which has crosses within and between its roundels. When applied to liturgical vestments, as it frequently was, the textile articulates the source of the wearer’s authority, just as with the garment covered in imperial portraits worn by Stilicho. The theological meaning is deeper here, of course: the bishop wearing Christ’s image not only acts in persona Christi, but he is also in a sense an alter Christus. The images reveal this, but in a kind of indirect way: the bishop is shown to be like Christ by wearing vestments that show Christ wearing the vestments of a bishop. It is a kind of spiritual x-ray vision that nonetheless only ever reveals the hidden meaning of the bishop’s ministry in terms of its outward appearance, the clothing in which he celebrates the liturgy.64 64   W. Woodfin, ‘Orthodox Liturgical Textiles and Clerical Self-referentiality’, in M. Goering and K. Dimitrova (eds), Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages

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The use of repeated religious motifs on textiles in the Late- and postByzantine periods is not a simple case of the re-emergence of the early, magical use of repetitive holy figures. That early, private use of holy images seems to have fallen victim to Iconoclasm and even more so to the theological arguments made in repudiation of Iconoclasm.65 Rather, the later use of repeating images of holy figures seems to grow out of the official use of the imperial likeness and of other symbols associated with the emperor. Instead of multiplying supernatural forces, the repetitive images instead evoke the idea of universal dominion: the many identical images as a stand-in for one figure of unbounded sway. Such symbolism is directly translatable from the sphere of imperial sovereignty to that of Christ. Ironically, it had to await the technical and economic resources of Ottoman rule in order to find its full expression in woven textiles. Any art-historical discussion on reproduction and repetition of images written in the last eight decades exists in the shadow of Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’.66 As Benjamin makes clear in his introduction, his project is to liberate the work of art from the authoritative ‘aura’ that enabled art to be put in harness to fascism; rather, being liberated by its free reproducibility, the image may be put to use by ordinary people for private ends or public resistance.67 Benjamin’s ideas about the reproduction and proliferation of images are consistent with Maguire’s analysis of the magical – or at the very least personal – use of holy images on the garments of early Byzantine laypersons. With the tightening of ecclesiastical control over images in the wake of Iconoclasm, the authority of the single, iconic image overshadows and suppresses the popular use of religious iconography on textiles. The gain in oversight over image production by the higher clergy is experienced as a loss of control over holy images by laymen and women.68 The evidence introduced here, however, suggests that, paradoxically, mechanical reproduction was used in the case of imperial and, later, ecclesiastical textiles as a means of extending – not resisting – the visual authority of the emperor and church. In Byzantium, the mechanical reproduction of images on the loom was itself a display of power through conspicuous virtuosity, as noted above. Also lurking not far beneath the surface is Byzantium’s self-image as oikoumene. (Turnhout, forthcoming). 65   Maguire, Icons of their Bodies, pp. 137–40. 66   W. Benjamin, ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’, 3rd edition, in Walter Benjamin, Medienästhetische Schriften, ed. Detlev Schöttker (Frankfurt am Main, 2002), pp. 351–83. 67   The critical phrase, ‘daß sie für die Zwecke des Faschismus vollkommen unbrauchbar sind’, was inexplicably omitted from the published English translation in W. Benjamin, Illuminations (London, 1972), p. 212. 68   Maguire, ‘Magic and the Christian Image’, pp. 68–70; Maguire, Icons of their Bodies, pp. 197–9.

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The conceptual replication of the imperial visage across a potentially endless expanse of silk cloth nicely mirrors the idea of the emperor’s (theoretically) universal sway. Similarly, the nature of the repeating images of Christ as high priest on the post-Byzantine textiles seems to invoke the physical multiplication of the image as a means of symbolising eternity. One might even take the repetition of the sacred image across the fabric – the ‘horizontal’ dimension mentioned at the start of this paper – as a kind of metaphor for the ‘vertical’ dimension in which the clergy and the liturgy of the church are in fact multiple and endlessly repeated but finite icons of the singular and eternal liturgy of heaven. To echo again the words of St Basil, despite the multiple roundels with Christ’s image and inscription, there are not many Christs, but one Christ and one liturgy, endlessly refracted through the particular persons by whom, and the moments in which, these textiles were worn.

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Section II Experiencing Faith

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4. Experiencing the Sacred Béatrice Caseau

Experiencing Byzantium naturally included participating in religious rituals and, for the majority of the population, in Christian liturgical ceremonies.1 On a regular basis, Christians entered churches, taking in the interior decor, the division of space, and the particular smell, hearing clerics and singers, sometimes responding, lighting lamps and tapers, approaching and touching sacred objects or elements of the church. Whether in a small chapel in Cappadocia, in a monastery in Syria or in the Hagia Sophia cathedral in Constantinople, church going and ritual participation involved the senses: viewing and hearing, but also smelling, touching and tasting. While many scholars have commented on the importance of sight and the role of icons and other images in focusing the attention of the faithful present inside churches, few scholars have devoted their time to studying the other senses, especially touch.2 Among the senses, touch was not the favourite of the philosophers, who tended to prefer the visual or the auditory sense.3 Touch is an overlooked sense in many accounts of Byzantine culture, yet it was an extremely important one in most religious rituals. Let us try to recapture some of the sensory experiences of Byzantine Christians, focusing specifically on touch, 1

  On the importance of liturgical ritual, see P.F. Bradshaw, Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers (Collegeville, MN, 1997); for a history of the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, R. Taft, The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and Other Preanaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 200 (Rome, 1975); J.F. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome, 1987); H.J. Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy: Symbolic Structure and Faith Expression (New York, 1986). 2   H. Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago, IL, 1994); L. James, Light and Colour in Byzantine Art (Oxford, 1996); R.S. Nelson (ed.), Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw (Cambridge, 2000); S. Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley, CA, 2006). 3   G.E.R. Lloyd and G.E.L. Owen (eds), Aristotle on Mind and the Senses: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, Cambridge, 1975 (Cambridge, 1978); on the denigration of touch in Western culture, see D. Howes, Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses (Toronto, 1971). From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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and taking examples from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, mostly in the Eastern Mediterranean. Naturally, recapturing the sensations the Byzantines could have felt when entering a church is difficult because this varied depending on the individual, the time of day and the type of church. However, it is possible to attempt a history of the sensory experiences by paying attention both to texts that have been previously studied from a different angle, and to interior architecture and images. ‘When you enter the church’, writes Choricius of Gaza, ‘you will be staggered by the variety of the spectacle.’4 In a similar vein, writing about the Hagia Sophia cathedral in Constantinople, Paul the Silentiary writes, ‘everything fills the eye with wonder’.5 Wealthy churches were awe-inspiring buildings, decorated to impress the visitor. However, experiencing the liturgical offices taking place inside these splendid churches was certainly different depending on whether one stood in the sanctuary, in the nave, in the galleries or in the narthex. The Byzantines are known for their obsession with taxis. Everyone has a proper place in society and should also occupy his or her proper place in church. While we have the middle-Byzantine taktika to understand how the taxis worked for the aristocracy, invited to dine at the imperial palace, we need to go back in time to find texts pointing to the ideal proper place for each category of Christians inside a church. Early Christian normative literature spelled out rules to distribute each group depending on sex, age, sanctity of lifestyle or place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Each category of Christians was bound by a set of rules, which included restrictions of access, either temporally or spatially, to areas of the church building. As early as the third century,6 and certainly up to the time of Symeon of Thessalonika in the fifteenth century, sources reveal the desire to allocate a particular space to the different social groups, taking into consideration whether they were clerics, consecrated persons, or laypeople, and distinguishing men and women, the young and the elderly.7 It remains difficult to assert that these rules were enforced at all times in all churches, but they certainly indicate how the Byzantines imagined the hierarchical value of different spaces inside 4

  Choricius of Gaza, Laudatio Marciani (I, 17), translated in C. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire (Toronto and London, 1986), p. 61; R. Penella (ed.), Rhetorical Exercises from Late Antiquity: A Translation of Choricius of Gaza’s Preliminary Talks and Declamations (Cambridge, 2009). 5   Paul Silentiarios, Description of the Church of Saint-Sophia, translated in Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, p. 89. 6   P. Bradshaw, M.E. Johnson and L.E. Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition (Minneapolis, MN, 2002). 7   J. Darrouzès, ‘Sainte-Sophie de Thessalonique d’après un rituel’, Revue des études byzantines 34 (1976), pp. 45–78; X. Werner, ‘L’espace liturgique d’après S. Siméon de Thessalonique’, in C. Braga (ed.), L’espace liturgique. Ses éléments constitutifs et leur sens (Rome, 2006), pp. 107–37.

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their churches. Being ushered to the proper area in church was most probably a common experience for many Byzantines. The Didascalia apostolorum is one of the first texts discussing the proper place for each group of Christians. Dating to the third century, it belongs to a time when Christians were a minority and most converts were adults. Naturally, the main distinction at that time was between catechumens and baptised Christians. While the latter were standing or sitting inside the nave and allowed to remain throughout the liturgy, the former, located either in the narthex or close to the doors of the church, had to leave after the sermon. They were not completely initiated and had no access to the Eucharistic table. Their location inside the church showed that they were members of the Christian community, but not yet full members. They were sometimes called hearers, because they were allowed to hear the readings and the sermon, but not to see, hear or taste what came after. A special prayer was said for the catechumens before they were invited to leave the church. It seems that deacons were responsible for supervising their departure. This distinction between catechumens and baptised Christians remained throughout the Byzantine middle ages, but when most of the population was born Christian and baptised during childhood, often the only catechumens were babies, who could hardly leave the church on their own. They were nevertheless often placed with their mother (or care-giver) in the same area occupied by the adult catechumens: close to the doors, or in the narthex. Besides their status as catechumens, one practical reason for that location was also the possible noise coming from babies, or very young children. Keeping them far away from the sanctuary, where the liturgical action took place, was intentional. Being close to the narthex meant that little children, unable to stay still, could run in the courtyard. At the end of Late Antiquity and during the middle ages, unless they came from non-Christian backgrounds, older children were often baptised Christians and could stay after the sermon for the Eucharistic liturgy. Children were usually supervised by one parent: young boys with their father, and girls with their mother, which is an indication of the separation of sexes inside the churches. Older boys were isolated under the supervision of a deacon. Likewise consecrated virgins were grouped together. The separation of men and women inside church buildings seems to have been a common feature.8 In some churches, men and women used different entrance doors.9 In large churches, where deacons were numerous enough to stand at the entrance, they could direct people where to stand or sit. 8

  J.-P. Sodini, ‘Archéologie des églises et organisation spatiale de la liturgie’, in F. Cassingéna-Trévedy and I. Jurasz (eds), Les liturgies syriaques (Paris, 2006), pp. 229–66, esp. 233; W. Mayer and P. Allen, The Churches of Syrian Antioch (300–638 CE) (Leuven, 2012), p. 212. 9   The apocryphal Cave of Treasures imagines Noah’s Arch, which symbolises the church, with two doors, one for females and one for males. A. Su-Min Ri, La Caverne des Trésors. Les deux recensions syriaques, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 486, Scriptores Syri.

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Three models coexisted in the early Byzantine world for this separation of the sexes: the first model had women standing on the left side of the church and men standing on the right (the ‘better side’); in a second model, women would stand closer to the doors, behind the men, who stood closer to the sanctuary; and in a third possibility, where upper galleries existed, women could stand in the galleries. The first two models established a hierarchical distinction between men and women. The third model was meant to protect women from the gaze of men. In the Hagia Sophia church, this gallery was at the disposal of high-ranked women, the empress and the aristocrats.10 This use of the galleries for upper-class women reveals another division inside the church, that between rich and poor, aristocrats and ordinary laywomen, who probably stood on the lower floor of the Hagia Sophia, on the left side of the church. In spite of a discourse of equality in front of God, the social divisions were reproduced in the spatial allocation of the different social groups, at least in that special church where the court was welcomed for important religious festivals. Finally, there was a special area for a category of women, whose lifestyle was praised and close to members of the clergy: the deaconesses. In the fourth century, they played an important role during baptismal ceremonies: they anointed the body of women with oil during the period when it was common to anoint the whole body. They also had a mission of conversion and religious education for women. However, their liturgical role vanished when it became common to baptise young children. Some deaconesses remained on the clerical roll and they could stand in a special area in the left part of the nave. This particular area, quite close to the sanctuary, reflected their respected status in the community, as celibate women living for God. Being on the payroll of the church, they were given some privileges; however, as women, they were not allowed to enter the sanctuary, except for their own ordination. They did not touch the sacred vessel, nor distribute communion, but supervised the women standing in the left part of the nave. They also had door-keeping duties.11 The area of the sanctuary and the ambo were reserved for the clergy and access to the sanctuary came to be forbidden to the laity. There were some exceptions to this rule: male children were carried around the altar when 207 (Louvain, 1987), p. 52. I wish to thank F. Briquel-Châtonnet for this reference; A. Su-Min Ri, Commentaire de la Caverne des Trésors. Etude sur l’histoire du texte et de ses sources (Louvain, 2000), p. 242. In the 16–17 November 2012 conference on Syriac churches, Les églises en monde syriaque (Xe Table-ronde de la Société d’études syriaques), Elif Keser Kayaalp pointed out architectural examples (forthcoming in 2013, to appear within a volume of the collection Etudes syriaques). 10   R. Taft, ‘Women at Church in Byzantium: Where, When – and Why?’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 52 (1998), pp. 27–87, esp. 31; testimony of Paul Silentiarios at p. 34. 11   A. Karras, ‘Female Deacons in the Byzantine Church’, Church History 73.2 (2004), pp. 272–316; A. Karras, Women in the Byzantine Liturgy (Oxford, 2005).

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presented at church.12 Also, when he attended church, at the start of the liturgy, the emperor entered into the sanctuary. The sanctuary was once accessible to the imperial family for the communion, but during the fifth century, that ceased to be the case.13 Imperial women had to take communion outside the chancel barrier. Finally, a canon of the Council in Trullo (691–692) stated that no layperson should be allowed inside the sanctuary.14 An exception was granted to the emperor, who could enter to deposit gifts and cense the altar, but he too had to remain outside to take communion. Altogether, the location of each group followed the gradient of sacredness of the church, progressing from the narthex to the sanctuary, and reflected the hierarchical difference between clerics and laypersons, and between men and women. Age was also a factor: when sitting is mentioned, young people must stand while older people sit.15 Sitting was not frequently possible and during festivals the laity had to stand. The visual experience of the liturgical ceremonies was certainly quite different for those at the back of the church to that of those standing in front or in the galleries. Women placed at the back of the church, or even in the narthex, in the case of menstruating women, could hardly see anything taking place in or around the sanctuary. In a church as big as the Hagia Sophia, one wonders if they could even see and hear what was said on the ambo, when a crowd was standing in front of them.16 In smaller churches, and less crowded ones, their experience might have been different. For men and women at the back of the church, processions, such as the great entrance, were moments of particular importance, where liturgical activity joined them where they stood. Clergymen were aware of the fact that it was more difficult to follow the liturgy when one could not see what was going on, or hear very clearly prayers and sermons. In canonical–liturgical sources, older boys were placed in the nave ideally, very close to the sanctuary, in the hope that some of them would become familiar with the liturgy and enter the clergy. Miracle stories mention 12   M. Arranz, Évolution des rites d’incorporation et de réadmission dans l’Église selon l’Euchologe byzantin, Gestes et paroles dans les diverses familles liturgiques (Rome, 1978), pp. 31– 75; M. Arranz, Admission dans l’Église des enfants des familles chrétiennes, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 49 (Rome, 1983), pp. 284–302. 13   R. Taft, ‘The Byzantine Imperial Communion Ritual’, in P. Armstrong (ed.), Ritual and Art: Byzantine Essays for Christopher Walter (London, 2006), pp. 1–27. 14   Canon 69; see G. Nedungatt and M. Featherstone (eds), The Council in Trullo Revisited (Rome, 1995), p. 151. 15   Constitutions Apostoliques (II, 57, 12), ed. and tr. M. Metzger, Les  Constitutions apostoliques (Paris, 1985), pp. 316–17; more examples in B. Caseau, ‘La place des enfants dans les églises d’Orient (3e–10e siècles)’, in M. Aurell and Th. Deswarte (eds), Famille, violence et christianisation au Moyen Âge. Mélanges offerts à Michel Rouche (Paris, 2005), pp. 15–27. 16   R. Mainstone, Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian’s Great Church (New York, 1988), p. 231.

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boys learning the prayers said by the priest during the consecration of the host (something said in a low voice) and being able to repeat them, word for word.17 They were placed in such a manner as to be able to follow the rituals, while their sisters were with their mother, either on the left side of the nave or at the back of the church. As a group, these young boys, no longer with their fathers, were under the supervision of a deacon, who had the sometimes arduous task of making them pay attention and keep silent. Sight and hearing may not have been the most important of the senses involved in participating in the liturgy. They certainly played a role, but not to the same extent for everybody present in a very large church such as the Hagia Sophia. For most laypeople, an active participation in church rituals and liturgy involved touching. Pushing a door or a door curtain was probably the first active gesture, besides walking (Fig. 4.1a and Fig. 4.1b). Mosaics, such as those in the apse of the Eufrasiana church in Poreč, or of the Saint Vitale church in Ravenna, depict this gesture. Entrance doors were adorned with curtains, even in village churches, as the fifth- to sixth-century papyrus P. Grenf. II.111 proves: it lists six door curtains (plus an old one) in the inventory made by the archdeacon for the priest of a church in the village of Ibion. The number of curtains indicates that the church had three doors.18 Curtains were especially important to mark the threshold, when the doors were opened. They created a visible boundary between outside and inside, or between two spaces inside a building. Curtain hooks are still visible in some churches, such as the Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople, the Eufrasiana in Poreč or the basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe. In these churches of the Justinianic period, cast bronze hooks in the shapes of fingers were set between the cornices and lintels above the doors.19 Original finger hooks are still in place, for example, at Parentium (Poreč) and above the south and central doors leading to the inner narthex at the Hagia Sophia church (Fig. 4.2).

17   Antony of Choziba, The Miracles of the Mother of God (5), ed. C. House, ‘Miracula beatae virginis Mariae in Choziba’, Analecta Bollandiana 8, (1888), pp. 366–7; translated in T. Vivian and A.N. Athanassakis, The Life of Saint George of Choziba and the Miracles of the Most Holy Mother of God at Choziba (San Francisco, CA, and London, 1994), p. 101–102; John Moschus, The Spiritual Meadow (196), Patrologia Graeca 87, c.3081, translated in J. Wortley, John Moschus: The Spiritual Meadow (Kalamazoo, 1992), pp. 172–4. 18   P. Grenf. II, 111, ed. and transl. A. S. Hunt, C. C. Edgar, Select Papyri I: Non-Literay (Private Affairs), London, 1970, pp. 423-234; B. Caseau, ‘Objects in Churches: The Testimony of Inventories’, in L. Lavan (ed.), Late Antique Archaeology: Objects in Use (Leiden, 2008), pp. 551–79; E. Wipszycka, ‘Church Treasures in Byzantine Egypt’, The Journal of Juristic Papyrology 34 (2004), pp. 127–39. 19   A. Terry and H. Maguire, Dynamic Splendor: The Wall Mosaics in the Cathedral of Eufrasius at Porec, (University Park, PA, 2007), p. 60.

Figure 4.1a Curtain pushed by the hand, Mosaic of the Visitation, Basilica Euphrasiana, Poreč (author’s photograph)

Figure 4.1b Curtain pushed by the hand, at San Vitale, Ravenna (author’s photograph)

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Figure 4.2

Curtain hook in situ at the Basilica Euphrasiana, Poreč (author’s photograph)

Because churches adopted many features of domestic architecture, curtains must have been used very early on in entrance doors. They certainly started to become an element of decor in Late Antique basilicas. As in houses, curtains were used to keep insects and birds out of the building. They protected the privacy of the inner space from uninvited eyes. In areas where sunlight could be very bright, they provided a screen barrier. Most of all, however, their role was to adorn an important area and indicate a change of space: between narthex and nave, and between nave and sanctuary. Thus, curtains acted as a visual signal of the differentiated sanctity of the two spaces they demarcated. Besides these practical roles, and their symbolic meaning, they added warmth and colours to the church.20 In Byzantine churches, curtains added their touch to the ‘passion for colour, complex variation, effects of light, contrast, and the interaction of media as essential elements in the formation of beauty’, which defines Byzantine aesthetics inside churches.21 Although, in poorer churches, 20

  G. Ripoll, ‘Los tejidos en la arquitectura de la antigüedad tardia. Une prima approximacion a su uso y funcion’, Antiquité Tardive 12 (2004), pp. 169–82. 21   E.S. Bolman, ‘Painted Skins: The Illusions and Realities of Architectural Polychromy, Sinai and Egypt’, in S.E.J. Gerstel and R. Nelson (eds), Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 119–40, esp. 123.

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they were probably very simple and perhaps off-white, in wealthier churches, they were embroidered with religious scenes or figures, or intricate designs.22 In the fourth century, not everyone accepted door curtains embroidered with holy figures. Epiphanius of Salamis tore down a village church curtain on which the image of Christ had been embroidered, because he felt it was improper to let just any hand touch such a holy figure in the mundane gesture of pushing the curtain to enter the building.23 Many of the curtains depicted on mosaics have geometrical patterns rather than figurative embroideries, which may be an indication that Epiphanius’ feelings were shared. The gift of curtains and an altar cloth became an imperial tradition. The Byzantine emperors offered precious curtains to adorn churches, starting in the fourth century. According to the Chronicon Paschale, Emperor Constantius offered splendid golden door curtains for the dedication of the Hagia Sophia24 (Fig 4.3). In Constantinople, Empress Irene and her son gave veils and curtains of gold thread to the church of Pege, as well as precious liturgical vessels. She had herself and her son depicted in the act of offering these gifts.25 The recording of gifts of curtains in the Liber Pontificalis ecclesiae romanae testifies that they were valued presents.26 Above the magnificent doors of Saint Sabine, traces of the hooks holding the curtains can still be seen. Roman basilicas had different sets of curtains, which changed with the liturgical period and adorned doors, canopies and walls for certain feasts. The presence of textiles certainly modified the acoustics of a church and avoided some of the reverberation created by marble surfaces. Textiles were also sometimes present on walls or in between columns. The mosaics of Sant’Apollinare in Classe reveal how curtains were tied around columns (Fig. 4.4). There is also archaeological evidence for the presence of curtains in between columns. In the churches of Pella, holes were drilled in the columns 22

  S. Schrenk, Textilien des Mittelmeerraumes aus spätantiker bis frühislamischer Zeit (Riggisberg, 2004); M.-C. Bruwier, Egyptiennes. Etoffes coptes du Nil, Mariémont (Morlanwelz, 1997); Y. Bourgon-Amir, Les Tapisseries coptes du musée historique des tissus, Lyon (Montpellier, 1993); M. Flury-Lemberg, Textile Conservation and Research (Bern, 1988), pp. 396–405; M. Martiniani-Reber, Lyon, musée historique des tissus. Soieries sassanides, coptes et byzantines Ve–XIe siècles (Paris, 1986). 23   Letter to the emperor Theodosius and letter to John bishop of Jerusalem, translated in Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, pp. 41–3. 24   Chronicon Paschale (I), ed. B.G. Niebuhr, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (Bonn, 1832), p. 544, tr. M. and M. Whitby, Chronicon Paschale 284–628 AD (Liverpool, 1989), p. 35. 25   De sacris aedibus Deiparae ad Fontem, translated in Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, p. 156, also translated in A.-M. Talbot and S. Fitzgerald Johnson, Miracle Tales from Byzantium (Cambridge, MA, 2012), p. 223. 26   M. Martiniani-Reber, ‘Tentures et textiles des églises romaines au Haut Moyen Âge d’après le Liber Pontificalis’, Mélanges Ecole Française de Rome 111 (1999), pp. 289–305.

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Figure 4.3

Doorway of the narthex at Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (author’s photograph)

Figure 4.4

Curtains shown in the mosaic panel at Sant’Apollinare in Classe (author’s photograph)

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to fix rods and hang curtains, either to separate a space for women or simply to adorn the nave with hangings that could be tied up between the columns.27 In any case, textiles, whether in the form of hangings or sometimes carpets, contrasted with the smooth marble slabs that adorned the lower parts of the walls and often the floors; they brought warmth to the cold marble and absorbed sounds. They modified the sensory experience of church-goers. This contrast between textile and marble or mosaic floor was certainly striking. After pushing the curtain, the second gesture of a worshipper was very probably touching the floor in a gesture of respect for God’s presence inside the church. Marble was frequently used on church floors, in churches built with significant funding. A visitor entering such a church could feel the cold marble when performing a proskynesis or when simply touching the floor in a gesture of humility. Touch was also involved in gestures of devotion, such as kissing columns, doors and icons, not to mention touching the reliquaries and the lamps above them. John Chrysostom describes the habit of kissing the door of the church in a sermon preached at Antioch: ‘Do you not see how many of you kiss even the porch of this temple, some stooping down, some grasping it with their hand and putting their hand to their mouth’.28 The tradition of kisses and prostrations also existed in the West. Paulinus of Nola depicts the gestures of a peasant coming to petition Saint Felix: ‘he prostrated himself at the doors, planted kisses on the doorposts’. Peter Brown, who has gathered some of the evidence in an article published in 1998, interprets a passage of Augustine’s sermon, which mentions Christians who adore columns in churches, as referring to this practice of kissing elements of the church building.29 Late Antique and Byzantine Christians enjoyed contact with sacred objects or places, which they believed to be filled with the power to protect them and sometimes even cure them. They came to church in order to approach and touch the sacred.30 Kissing icons or reliquaries achieved that goal. The power of relics was accessed by touching, even if through a reliquary. Gregory of Nyssa describes the deportment of pilgrims worshipping relics: ‘those who behold them embrace, as it were, the living body in full flower: they bring eye, mouth, ear, all senses into play, and then shedding tears of reverence and passion, they address to the martyr their prayers of intercession as though they

27   R. Houston Smith and L. Preston Day, Pella of the Decapolis, vol. 2: Final Report on the College of Wooster Excavations in Area IX, The Civic Complex, 1979–1985 (Wooster, OH, 1989), p. 45. 28   John Chrysostom, Sermon on the Second Letter to the Corinthians (30, 1–2), Patrologia Graeca 61, c.607, translated in T.W. Chambers, Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 12 (Grand Rapids, MI, 1979), p. 418. 29   P. Brown, ‘Augustine and a Practice of the Imperiti: Qui adorant columnas in ecclesia (S. Dolbeau 26.10. 232, Mayence 62)’, in G. Madec (ed.), Augustin prédicateur (395–411) (Paris, 1998), pp. 367–75. 30   G. Vikan, Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art (Washington DC, 2010).

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were present’.31 The number of enkolpia, used to hold fragments of the saints’ relics or a morsel of the Eucharist, is clearly linked to this desire to touch the sacred, or to have the sacred touch one’s body, and through it protect one’s soul.32 Through touch, holiness and even divine life could be transmitted. The devotion given to objects known to have been held by the saints, such as the belt of a holy woman,33 or even better the veil or belt of the Theotokos,34 shows how much contact mattered. In the case of Christ, it was not possible to have a body to divide as was done with so many of the saints’ bodies, but the objects he held as a child and the instruments used to torture him were all considered very precious.35 The proof of their belonging to Christ was their ability to cure.36 Among these, the favourite was undoubtedly the cross. Discovered in the fourth century, fragments of it were quickly dispersed: Macrina (d.380), the sister of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, wore a piece of the cross around her neck, so that it touched her heart.37 After Heraclius’ victory over the Sassanians, part of the holy cross was brought to the imperial palace in Constantinople and kept in a staurothek. Each year, it was brought to the Hagia Sophia to be kissed and venerated by the Byzantine court and by the Constantinopolitans. For three days, from Thursday to Saturday, during the Holy Week before Easter, the cross was taken out of its reliquary and presented to be kissed first by the men led by the emperor, then by the empress leading the women, and finally by members of the clergy. Arculf, a Gallic bishop who travelled to the East on a pilgrimage in the 680s, told abbot Adomnan of Iona that wonderfully fragrant

31

  Gregory of Nyssa, Encomium on Saint Theodore, Patrologia Graeca 46, 740B, translated in P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, IL, 1981), p. 11; G. Vikan, ‘Pilgrims in Magi’s Clothing: The Impact of Mimesis on Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art’, in G. Vikan (ed.), Sacred Images and Sacred Power in Byzantium (Aldershot, 2003). 32   B. Pitarakis, Les croix-reliquaires pectorales byzantines en bronze (Paris, 2006). 33   Life of Melania the younger (61), Greek text, introduction and notes in D.Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie (Paris, 1962), pp. 248–50. 34   J. Wortley, ‘The Marian Relics at Constantinople’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 45 (2005), pp. 171–87; M.B. Cunningham, Wider than Heaven: Eighth-century Homilies on the Mother of God (New York, 2008); L. Brubaker and M.B. Cunningham, The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium: Texts and Images (Farnham, 2011). 35   J. Durand and B. Flusin, Byzance et les reliques du Christ (Paris, 2004). 36   P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinage d’Orient (Paris, 2004). 37   Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Macrina (30), ed. and French tr. in P. Maraval, Vie de Sainte Macrine [par] Grégoire de Nysse. Introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes et index (Paris, 1971), pp. 238–40; on the discovery attributed to Helena, the mother of Constantine, J.W. Drijvers, Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden, 1992); J.W. Drijvers, ‘Helena Augusta, the Cross and the Myth: Some New Reflections’, Millennium 8 (2011), pp. 125–74.

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oil, able to cure all illnesses, oozes from the wood of the cross.38 Another relic of Christ played an important role in Constantinople: the Mandylion, a piece of cloth, which had reputedly touched the face of Jesus.39 This relic was kept in the city of Edessa, until it was brought to Constantinople in 944.40 The twelfth-century manuscript illustrating the Chronicle of John Skylitzes contains the image of the emperor welcoming the Mandylion. The face of the emperor meets the face of Jesus imprinted on the piece of cloth. The image reveals that personal contact and touch was central in the gesture of devotion.41 Byzantine pilgrimage sanctuaries provided visitors with opportunities to touch holiness. This could be in the form of oil burning in front of the tomb, hnana, ‘holy dust’ from the tomb, or kerote, a mixture of wax, oil and dust. At healing shrines, the sick, hoping for a cure, would anoint themselves with these sanctified medicines. Visitors would bring some oil home in little flasks, often called ampullae. Miracle stories emphasised the healing power of these products. The writer of saints Kosmas and Damian’s miracles recalls stories of sick persons cured with kerote.42 Reading those texts, one could assume that access to the lamps was easy, but clerical mediation appeared to be in place in most sanctuaries.43 Members of the clergy would welcome the sick and organise the distribution of oil and of kerote.44 Some saints, called myroblites, specialised in giving perfumed oil with curative properties. Gregory of Tours mentions the oil given by Saint Andrew at Patras, as if it was full of spices.45 For the saint’s feast, it flowed out of the tomb and reached the middle of the church. Potions and unguents were made out of it. Cyprus had many 38

  Adomnan, The Holy Places (Bk. 3, 3, 5–12), translated in J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), p. 202. 39   H.J.W. Drijvers, ‘The Abgar Legend’, in W. Schneemelcher (ed.), New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 1: Gospels and Related Writings (London, 1991), pp. 492–500. 40   Histoire de Yahya ibn-Said al-Antaki, Continuateur de Said ibn-Bitriq, ed. and tr. I. Kratchovsky and A. Vasiliev, I. Patrologia Orientalis 18 (Paris, 1924), pp. 730–31; E. Patlagean, ‘L’entrée de la Sainte Face d’Edesse à Constantinople en 944’, in A. Vauchez (ed.), La religion civique à l’époque médiévale et moderne (Chrétienté et Islam) (Rome, 1995), pp. 21–35; A.M. Dubarle, ‘L’homélie de Grégoire le référendaire pour la réception de l’image d’Edesse’, Revue des études byzantines 55 (1997), pp. 5–51; S.G. Engberg, ‘Romanos Lekapenos and the Mandilion of Edessa’, in Durand and Flusin (eds), Byzance et les reliques du Christ, pp. 123–42. 41   See Manuscript Codex Biblioteca Nacional de España Mss Graecus Vitr. 26-2 folio 131r. 42   L. Deubner, Kosmas und Damian (Leipzig, 1907), p. 232. 43   N.F. Marcos, Los Thaumata di Sofronio (Madrid, 1975). 44   B. Caseau, ‘Parfum et guérison dans le christianisme ancien et byzantin: des huiles parfumées au myron des saints byzantins’, in V. Boudon-Millot, B. Pouderon and Y.M. Blanchard (eds), Les Pères de l’Eglise face à la science médicale de leur temps (Paris, 2005), pp. 141–91. 45   Gregory of Tours, Liber in Gloria Martyrum (30), ed. B. Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Hannover, 1885), pp. 505–6.

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myroblite saints. John the Almsgiver, patriarch of Alexandria buried in his native city of Amathonte, gave perfumed oil, bringing incorruptibility and eternal life to ‘his children like a loving father’.46 Many such miracles took place during the Arabic invasion of the island, as a testimony that the saints had not abandoned the faithful. Starting in the ninth and tenth centuries, two saints, Nicholas of Myra and Demetrius, were renowned for their gift of myron. After Thessalonika was taken in 904 and the church of Saint-Demetrius was partially destroyed, the cult was reorganised and the myron started to flow. John Staurakios, chartophylax of the church in the thirteenth century, mentions how the oil flowed out of the reliquary through tubes to reach the faithful.47 In the miracles stories of Saint Eugenios of Trebizond, a monk recalls how he saw people take some of this holy perfumed oil, rub it on themselves, and take it home.48 In other churches, water was the means to convey the healing powers of the saints. Before the myron replaced it, the cult of Saint Demetrius included holy water.49 Holy fountains were also frequent in sanctuaries of the Theotokos. The hagiasma of the Theotokos of Blachernai, which was a major church in the capital, attracted many people; and even when the church was destroyed, the fountain remained. Holy waters endured through the centuries and were frequented by Christians and Muslims. Close to Constantinople, however, the most famous sanctuary for healing waters was the monastery of the Theotokos of Pege.50 The waters of a spring reputedly blessed by the Mother of God flowed inside the church, dated to the sixth century. Two compilations of miracles performed by the Theotokos of Pege, one dating to the tenth century and a second dating to the fourteenth century, have recently been studied.51 As is usual in miracle stories, it matters to the writer or compiler to underline 46

  Leontios of Neapolis, Life of John the Almsgiver, §60, ed. A.J. Festugière, with the collaboration of L. Ryden, Léontios de Néapolis, Vie de Syméon le Fou et Vie de Jean de Chypre, édition commentée (Paris, 1974), p. 409. 47   J. Staurakios, Analecta de unguento, in S. Demetrii Martyris Acta, J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca 116, col. 1421 (1864); A. Grabar, ‘Quelques reliquaires de saint Démétrios et le martyrium du saint à Salonique’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950), pp. 3–28. 48   J.O. Rosenqvist, The Hagiographic Dossier of St Eugenios of Trebizond in Codex Athous Dionysiou 154 (Uppsala, 1996), p. 45. 49   A. Mentzos, Τό προσκύνημα τοῡ Ἀγίου Δημητρίου Θεσσαλονίκης στά βυζαντινά χρόνια. Έταιρεία τών φίλων τοῡ λαοῡ. Κέντρον έρεύνης βυζαντιου (Athens, 1994), pp. 120–65. 50   R. Janin, La géographie ecclésiastique de l’Empire byzantin. 1, Le siège de Constantinople et le patriarcat œcuménique. 3, Les églises et les monastères (Paris, 1969), pp. 223–8. 51   S. Efthymiadis, ‘Le monastère de la Source à Constantinople et ses deux recueils de miracles. Entre hagiographie et patriographie’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines 64–65 (2006–2007), pp. 283–309; A.-M. Talbot, ‘The Anonymous Miracula of the Pege Shrine in Constantinople’, Palaeoslavica 10 (2002), pp. 222–8; A.-M. Talbot, ‘Two Accounts of Miracles at the Pege Shrine in Constantinople’, Mélanges Gilbert Dagron, Travaux et Mémoires 14 (Paris, 2002), pp. 605–15.

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the wide influence of the sanctuary and how its fame reached all social groups from the humblest to that of the imperial family. In this case, however, a high percentage of miracles involved the aristocracy or the imperial family. Two types of healing methods took place near that hagiasma. First, mud could be made with the holy water and rubbed on the sick part of the body, following a method quite similar to miracles performed by Christ himself. Second, the water could be consumed to bring about good health. The miracle stories concern important members of the imperial family throughout Byzantine history, including the sister of Justinian’s spouse Theodora, who was cured with mud; Empress Irene, healed of a haemorrhage after drinking the holy water; Zoe Karbonopsina, who was no longer sterile after benefiting from both water and mud; and later, in 1330, the sick Andronic III, who recovered after drinking the water. Some of the water was also used to bathe his forehead. The Russian pilgrims Ignatius of Smolensk and Zosimus saw the church, but in 1547, when Pierre Gilles came to Constantinople, it was no longer standing.52 From the fourteenth century, the church was known by the name of Zoodochos Pege.53 The numerous icons of the Theotokos Zoodochos depicting Mary in the middle of a beautiful fountain, and sick or possessed people healed and freed by tasting the water, are a proof of its enduring popularity.54 The church was destroyed, but the reputation of the waters blessed by the Theotokos and infused with her healing powers remained. As we can see from this example, experiencing the sacred was not only about touch but also about taste. Touch, smell and taste were combined in the case of holy oil used in potions, or that of ‘edible icons’, wax or clay images of the saints believed to have curative powers.55 Naturally, tasting bread and wine was the most frequent experience in church, at least for members of the clergy, and took place at least once for all baptised Christians. Late Antique preachers invited the faithful to touch and taste the Eucharist.56 Not unlike 52   P. Gilles, Itinéraires byzantins. Introduction, traduction du latin et notes de Jean-Pierre Grélois (Paris, 2007), p. 440. 53   A.-M. Talbot, ‘Epigrams of Manuel Philes on the Theotokos tes Peges and its Art’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 48 (1994), pp. 135–65, esp. 136; Talbot, ‘Two Accounts of Miracles’, p. 609. 54   N. Teteriatnikov, ‘The Image of the Virgin Zoodochos Pege: Two Questions Concerning its Origin’, in M. Vassilaki (ed.), Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 225–38. 55   G. Vikan, ‘Ruminations on Edible Icons: Originals and Copies in the Art of Byzantium’, Studies in the History of Art 20 (1989), pp. 47–59, reprinted in Vikan (ed.), Sacred Images. 56   Preachers had to address the question of the taste of the Eucharist: it still tasted like bread and wine – see G. Frank, ‘L’eucharistie et la mémoire sensorielle selon Jean Chrysostome’, in N. Bériou, B. Caseau and D. Rigaux (eds), Pratiques de l’eucharistie dans les Églises d’Orient et d’Occident (Antiquité et Moyen Âge) (Paris, 2009), pp. 765–78.

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putting one’s hands on the reliquary, but with even greater awe, touching the consecrated bread amounted to touching the body of Christ. Cyril of Jerusalem recommended that Christians appreciate the contact of their hands with the consecrated parcel holding Christ. He also told them to extend the benefit of this contact to the other senses, the eyes in particular.57 The Church Fathers of this period emphasised this personal contact and this proximity with Christ that communion allowed. Theodore of Mopsuestia (d.428), Narsai (fifth century) and Cyrus of Edessa (sixth century) advised the faithful to kiss the Eucharistic bread before eating it.58 Kissing the bread while acknowledging the presence of Christ in one’s hands was both a gesture of devotion and one of purification of the mouth. Many of the Byzantines did not dare take communion with too many sins tarnishing their souls. They considered it risky for their salvation, so instead, they preferred to take blessed bread.59 Clerical mediation transformed gifts of food into a sacrificial offering. In the fourthcentury compilation known as the Apostolic Constitutions, Christians were encouraged to give first fruits of wheat, wine, oil and fruits, and they were told that God would bless their fields and bring prosperity to their families.60 We hear of cheese, olives and wine brought to churches in the early centuries of the Byzantine Empire, but the most commonly offered food was bread. In cities such as Alexandria or Aphrodito, the wealthy had flour sent to bakers with orders to deliver bread to churches.61 Only a small amount of this bread was consecrated on the altar. Eventually only bread prepared by clerical hands or under clerical supervision was taken for consecration. Yet all the bread brought by the faithful was redistributed, mostly to members of the clergy, to the poor registered as beneficiaries, and as antidoron, blessed bread offered at the end of the liturgy. The eulogia breads were often marked with crosses

57

  Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses (5.22), translated in L.P. McCauley and A. Stephenson, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (Washington DC, 1970). 58   Theodore of Mospuestia, IIe homélie sur la messe (27–28), Les Homélies catéchétiques de Théodore de Mopsueste. Reproduction phototypique du Ms. Mingana Syr. 561, translation, introduction and index by R. Tonneau, in collaboration with R. Devreesse (Vatican City, 1949), pp. 577–9; Narsai, homily 17, tr. J. Armitage Robinson, The Liturgical Homilies of Narsai (Cambridge, 1909), p. 29; Six Explanations of the Liturgical Feasts by Cyrus of Edessa, An East Syrian Theologian of the Mid Sixth Century, tr. W.F. Macomber, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 356, Scr. Syri 156 (Louvain, 1974), p. 18. 59   B. Caseau, ‘Sancta sanctis. Normes et gestes de la communion entre Antiquité et haut-Moyen Âge’, in Bériou, Caseau and Rigaux (eds), Pratiques de l’eucharistie, pp. 371–420. 60   Apostolic Constitutions (II, 34, 5) ed. and tr. Metzger, Les Constitutions apostoliques, pp. 256–7.  61   A. Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints en Égypte des Byzantins aux Abbassides. L’apport des inscriptions et des papyrus grecs et coptes (Paris, 2001), p. 168; E. Wipszycka, Les ressources et les activités économiques des églises en Égypte du IVe au VIIIe siècle (Brussels, 1972), pp. 7–9.

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Figure 4.5

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A bread stamp showing a cross and a blessing for a family reading: ‘Eulogia eu ef hmas ke epi ta tekna hmvn’ translated ‘Blessing of the Lord on us and our children’ (author’s photograph)

or with religious scenes62 (Fig. 4.5). They had religious value as blessed bread, conveying some form of communion with Christ and calling on God’s blessing Sanctification by contact was an extremely important part of the early Byzantine religious experience. It remained an important feature of later Byzantine culture, but underwent significant changes. The communion experience changed at the end of Late Antiquity. The Byzantines did not feel that their hands were pure enough to hold the body of Christ any longer and they replaced communion in the hand by communion with a spoon.63 The sensory participation of the faithful in the whole Eucharistic ritual diminished: the eventual building of an iconostasis deprived them of seeing what was taking place on the altar, while contact with the body of Christ was reduced with the abandonment of hand communion. They could still hear the invitation ‘Ta Hagia tois hagiois’ (the holy things for the holy people), but no longer the prayers of consecration.64 Participation in the communion ritual became quite 62

  G. Galavaris, Bread and the Liturgy: The Symbolism of Early Christian and Byzantine Bread Stamps (Madison, WI, 1970). 63   B. Caseau, ‘L’abandon de la communion dans la main (IVe–XIIe s.)’, Mélanges Gilbert Dagron, Travaux et Mémoires 14 (Paris, 2002), pp. 79–94. 64   R.F. Taft, ‘“Holy Things for the Saints”: The Ancient Call to Communion and its Response’, in G. Austen (ed.), Fountain of Life: In Memory of Niels K. Rasmussen, O.P., NPM Studies in Church Music and Liturgy (Washington DC, 1991), pp. 87–102; B. Caseau,

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rare for most laypeople.65 Many Christians related to the Eucharist offering in another way, by giving of bread and wine and by seeing, with eyes of faith, the transformation of the elements on the altar (or prosphora) into the Body and Blood of Christ, at least when, during the high middle ages, chancel barriers around the altar area did not block the view.66 Afterwards, when the iconostasis isolated the sanctuary from the nave, their attention was often more centred on the procession of the gifts, before the consecration.67 Other forms of participation in the liturgical rituals or acknowledgement of the church as a sacred space also took precedence. Touching and kissing the icons or the reliquaries became common gestures of sanctification.68 The horos of the Council of Nicaea II in 787, decided that it was proper and good to give icons kisses and proskynesis.69 After 843, icons were granted a specific function in church ritual: they were offered to the faithful for veneration and kissed both by the priest and by the worshippers.70 Portable icons were changed in accordance with the church calendar and became part of the liturgy. Touching and kissing icons became a mark of the Byzantine religious culture. Pilgrimages and visits to churches included gestures of veneration towards icons and relics. Ignatius of Smolensk recalls his moves while visiting the Hagia Sophia in 1389: ‘We kissed the table on which the Relics of the Passion of Christ are placed, and the [the body of] St. Arsenius the Patriarch and the table at which Abraham welcomed Christ manifest in Trinity, as well as the iron pallet on which Christ’s martyrs were burned’.71 To these personal gestures of devotion towards objects, one should add ritual kisses given to people. The kiss of peace was important in the early church to create a family bond between the full members of the community.72 ‘L’Eucharistie au centre de la vie religieuse des communautés chrétiennes (fin 4e s. – 10e s.)’, in P. Brouard (ed.), Eucharistia (Paris, 2002), pp. 125–43. 65   R. Taft, ‘The Decline of Communion in Byzantium and the Distancing of the Congregation from the Liturgical Action: Cause, Effect, or Neither?’, in S.E.J. Gerstel (ed.), Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West, Dumbarton Oaks Studies (Washington DC, 2006), pp. 27–50. 66   Taft, ‘The Decline of Communion in Byzantium’, p. 38; also S.E.J. Gerstel, ‘An Alternate View of the Late Byzantine Sanctuary Screen’, in Gerstel, Thresholds of the Sacred, pp. 135-161, at p. 135. 67   C. Walter, ‘The Origins of the Iconostasis’, Eastern Church Review 3 (1971), pp. 251–67. 68   L. Gougaud, ‘Baiser’, Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1937), pp. 1203–4. 69   D.J. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth-century Iconoclasm (Toronto, 1986/88). 70   Belting, Likeness and Presence, p. 172. 71   G. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington DC, 1984), p. 92 72   M. Penn, ‘Performing Family: Ritual Kissing and the Construction of Early Christian Kinship’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 10.2 (2002), pp. 151–74.

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The Apostolic Constitutions recall the order given by the deacon: ‘Greet one another with a holy kiss’ – and the members of the clergy kiss the bishop, the laymen kiss the laymen, and the laywomen kiss the laywomen.73 The Byzantine tradition, explains R. Taft, was to exchange the peace among members of the same rank. It seems that the kiss of peace stopped being exchanged between laypeople at some point during the middle ages, after the eleventh century. By the time of Philotheos Kokkinos, patriarch of Constantinople during 1353– 54 and from 1364 to 1376, only members of the clergy exchanged the kiss of peace.74 The Book of Ceremonies lists the objects kissed by the emperor when he came to church and mentions that a kiss was exchanged by the patriarch and the emperor before the liturgy, or at different moments, such as after lunch. For the emperor, the kiss of peace was extremely ritualised. Here again the Book of Ceremonies mentions the ideal order that should be followed: ‘The sovereigns, standing outside the chancel, give the kiss first of all to the patriarch, then after him to the synkellos, all the metropolitans and archbishops, and to the protopope of the Great Church, and to the dignitaries of the patriarch … then to all those of the senate, all of whom the master of ceremonies leads by the hand’.75 This tradition is no longer mentioned by the De Officiis of PseudoKodinos in the fourteenth century. Kissing the hand of the priest (bishop or patriarch) was such an important gesture that it is depicted on late medieval paintings of the communion of the Apostles. The apostle kisses Jesus’ hand, at the time he receives the bread from him.76 Also, kissing objects increased both during the liturgy and as a form of personal devotion. These are just a few examples of the importance of touch in Byzantine religious rituals. The Late Antique and Byzantine Christians wished to establish a personal contact with the building and its objects, as well as with the people. These numerous examples of gestures of devotion call for a revision of our too-often audio or visual-centred understanding of the religious experience of Byzantine worshippers. Instead of focusing on the gaze or on the sounds and perfumes, this paper has attempted to draw attention to two of the senses that are often neglected in the accounts of Byzantine aesthetics, but that played an important role in experiencing liturgies and devotions: touch and taste.

73   Apostolic Constitutions (VIII, 1, 7), ed. and tr. Metzger, Les Constitutions apostoliques, pp. 174–5. 74   Taft, The Great Entrance, pp. 395–6. 75   Constantin Porphyrogénète, Le Livre des cérémonies (I, 1), ed. and tr. A. Vogt (Paris, 1967), p. 13; translated in R. Taft, Through their Own Eyes: Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw it (Berkeley, CA, 2006), p. 88. 76   K.Ch. Felmy, ‘Customs and Practices Surrounding Holy Communion in the Eastern Orthodox Churches’, in Ch. Caspers, G. Lukken and G. Rouwhorst (eds), Bread of Heaven. Customs and Practices Surrounding Holy Communion: Essays in the History of Liturgy and Culture (Kampen, 1995), pp. 41–59.

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5. Experiencing the Liturgy in Byzantium Andrew Louth

It is not altogether bizarre that at the symposium this paper was placed in ‘Experiencing Landscape’, rather than in the final session, ‘Experiencing Faith’, for it is crucial to understanding any experience of the Divine Liturgy to realise that it takes place in space and time: it belongs, in a way, to a landscape – and also to the sequence of time. That might seem obvious, but a few moments’ reflection reveals, I think, that, if obvious, its significance is easily overlooked. For many scholars, the Divine Liturgy is thought of as a text: where can I find the text, where is it published, what is the best edition, translation, and so on? That is despite the advice given long ago by Joan Hussey that to understand the Divine Liturgy you have to go and take part in it. There are further pathways to misconception. What is experience? For us, it is almost obvious that experience is primarily individual: it is what happens to an individual, and what he or she makes of it. Even a corporate experience tends to be thought of as the sum of a lot of individual experiences: it is individuals, after all, we think, that have eyes and ears and other sense organs; a community, as such, does not. There are some experiences that seem to be more than the sum of the individual experiences: a football match, for example, or the experience of listening to, or even better taking part in, a concert. Or perhaps watching a film, though DVDs and (for concerts) CDs seem to offer us the experience in a purely individual form – and while, as we sometimes recognise, and usually lament, it is not the same thing, nonetheless many of us seem to spend a lot more time listening to CDs and watching DVDs than going to concerts or the cinema. I would go further and suggest that even the ways we think of space and time nowadays encourage an approach to experience as essentially individual. And it is with concepts of space and time that I want to start. This entails an approach to the liturgy that will pay most attention not to what you might have expected from this paper – an account of the Divine Liturgy and how Byzantine Christians might have been expected to understand it (that has been done before, nowhere so well as by – now – Metropolitan Kallistos in a paper given to the Twentieth From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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Spring Symposium in 1986)1 – but to what one might think of as the frames of reference in terms of which Byzantine Christians interpreted their experience. I make no apology for this, since, as I have just suggested, these frames of reference were very different for Byzantine Christians than for modern, even very traditional, Christians, even though the terminology and concepts are often deceptively similar. The question I start with – how space and time were understood and experienced – is something that I dealt with at greater length than can be attempted here in a paper contributed to a symposium called ‘Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy’, to which I refer readers for more detail.2 However, quite briefly, I suggested then, and want to suggest now, that, despite the fact that much of the terminology used in Classical and Late Antiquity and modern science and philosophy seems much the same – space as a receptacle, for instance, or time as interval – understandings of space and time then and now are very different. Modern notions of space and time are predominantly quantitative: they are ways of measuring. The theories of relativity, both special and general, complicate what we might mean by measurement, but I do not think they fundamentally alter that aspect of space and time in the classical physics of Newton and Leibniz. Notions of space and time in Classical and Late Antiquity are more to do with ways of being, or more precisely, of becoming. Plato, in the Timaeus, introduces the ‘receptacle, or as it were nurse, of all becoming’.3 It is not just that in which things move, but that in which everything becomes. What takes place in the receptacle, which Plato will later identify with space,4 is much more than the movement of material, physical bodies: it is nothing less than the change and becoming of everything subject to such change and becoming. To be in space, then, is not just to be geometrically located, as it were, but to belong to the realm of change and becoming: the hypodoche is certainly a receptacle, but that means more than a container, something to put things in – rather, it means that which receives, provides room for, everything that constitutes the cosmos, the product of reason and necessity. Nor is the cosmos something for Plato that can be considered in purely material terms. Before he comes to speak of the receptacle of becoming, he describes the cosmos as a living being, having soul at the centre, with body wrapped round the outside, as it were, of soul (Plato clearly has in mind something like an armillary sphere) – it is for this reason that the cosmos and a human being can be seen as mutually reflecting one 1

  Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, ‘The Meaning of the Divine Liturgy for the Byzantine Worshipper’, in R. Morris (ed.), Church and People in Byzantium (Birmingham, 1990), pp. 7–28. 2   A. Louth, ‘Space, Time and the Liturgy’, in A. Pabst and C. Schneider (eds), Encounter Between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy: Transfiguring the World Through the Word (Farnham, 2009), pp. 215–31. 3   Timaeus (49a), tr. H.D.P. Lee (Harmondsworth, 1965). 4   Chora: Timaeus (52a), tr. Lee.

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another, human kind being, in the coinage of the Renaissance, a microcosm, a little cosmos, micros kosmos, an idea frequently found in the Fathers. Even a quick glance at the Timaeus reveals that the cosmos as a living entity is not some sort of primæval being, but is already instinct with principles of reason and proportion. Plato explains at some length how the soul contains within itself complex and beautiful mathematical structures, and as he goes on to discuss what it is that is formed within the receptacle of becoming, we find a discussion that embraces everything that comes into being from the four elements of fire, earth, air and water, and how on this foundation we find the principles of pleasure and pain, tastes, odours, sounds, colours, and beyond that the emotional structure of the soul – its capacity for being aroused, ultimately to anger, and for experiencing desire and longing (its incensive or spirited and its desiring or appetitive powers). The kinds of becoming envisaged within the receptacle of becoming go well beyond the movement of physical particles, and include what is perceived by the senses and the very process of sensation, the experience of pleasure and pain, and the complex reality of the soulful experience (to avoid the debased meaning attached to ‘psychic’ or ‘psychological’) of mortal beings. Another term Plato uses to characterise space is diastema, interval or distance, but again we find that this means not just measurable distance, but any distance or extension, including the capacity to move in an argument, say, from premises to a conclusion, or the ‘distance’ implicit in the notion of desire for something. The notion of multitude or the manifold is implicit in the realm of becoming and diastema is implicit in this. It is not so much a physical concept, as a metaphysical one. The notion of interval applies to time as well, but again does so in a multitude of ways. It certainly includes the time through which the sequence of the seasons passes, the succession of years, the movement from day to night and night to day, but it includes other experiences of time: the time through which human beings pass from birth, through infancy, and childhood, to maturity, and then on to death; the time through which our ideas, thoughts, feelings, relationships pass. These different modes of time all relate one to another, but it would be quite wrong to think that the ticking of the clock, as it were, or the vibration of a quartz crystal, is the proper meaning of time, in comparison with which, psychological time, for example, has only metaphorical significance. And even if it is true – as it is – that ‘cosmic’ time has some fundamental significance, as embracing and including all other experiences of time, then it needs to be remembered that for Plato the ‘cosmos’ is more than a merely material reality, but a ‘living being with soul and intelligence’ – zoon empsychon ennoun.5 The centrality of the notion of diastema to ancient understanding of space and time has a further important consequence we should note. It does not mean that space and time are full of ‘gaps’, gulfs of unmeaning, as it were, 5

  Timaeus (30b), tr. Lee.

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dooming the world of becoming to ultimate meaninglessness. Even for Plato, for whom there can be no logos of anything in the realm of becoming,6 the truth is quite the contrary: the cosmos, existing in space, and time itself are creations of the gods; they have meaning that is revealed in their structures, constituted by relationship. Time is for Plato ‘a moving image of eternity’:7 it is ordered towards eternity; within the realm of becoming it represents eternity as its image. The sequence of time is not meaningless, though for Plato it is cyclic: it is a ‘vulgar error’, popular among some theologians, that cyclical time spells meaninglessness, in contrast with the purposeful nature of linear time, it is ordered towards eternity. Such an understanding of space and time opens up wholly new dimensions in which to grasp what is meant by experiencing the liturgy. Let us start with time. The Divine Liturgy – indeed, all the liturgical services that developed in the early Byzantine period – takes place in time, indeed takes time, quite a bit of it! However, it does not do this randomly. From as early as we have evidence, the Christian Church adopted the Jewish system of a week of seven days, and radically transformed this by making the first day of the week, the day of the Sun, in the Roman system, the day of the Resurrection: the turning point of the week, the first and eighth day. Again, as early as we have evidence, the Christians adopted the Jewish Passover, or Pascha, and made it into the Christian Pascha, the yearly commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ. Furthermore, the timing of the Christian Pascha – the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox – aligns Pascha with the creation of the world, which must have been, the ancients thought, in spring, and with the date on which the archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary the conception of Christ, 25 March. These dates were aligned, calendrically, in different ways, but the aim of aligning creation and the two key points in recreation in Christ – his conception and his Resurrection – is clear. Celebrating the Divine Liturgy on the first day of the week – a practice for which the evidence is as early as we have evidence – makes the celebration of the Divine Liturgy a kind of echo of creation and recreation in Christ. Time is no meaningless succession of events, but a cyclic recourse to sources of life and new life, a constant journey of hope, a movement towards the fulfillment of the hope founded in the Resurrection of the incarnate Word, the Word of God who created the world. The yearly celebration of Pascha and the weekly celebration of the Day of the Resurrection provide the basis for the Christian Byzantine experience of time. On this basis an elaborate structure came to be built, to which was added a cycle of feasts associated with the celebration of the Birth of Christ: by early in the fifth century, feasts on 25 December and 6 January had been distinguished, in different ways in East and West, and other feasts related to the infancy of Christ and his mother gradually emerged – as well as 6

  Timaeus (29d), tr. Lee.   eiko … kineton tina aionos: Timaeus (37d), tr. Lee.

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yearly commemorations of a host of saints. Days of fasting became established – fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays is mentioned in the Didache8 – and periods of fasting before various major feasts also were established, beginning with a forty-day fast (variously calculated) before Easter. The celebration of the Divine Liturgy, and of the events and people commemorated, lent a shape and a purpose to the sequence of time. There is nothing new in this: many ancient cultures give shape to time by liturgical celebrations, but it was true, too, for Byzantine Christians – this was how time was shaped for them, how they experienced time. It is not at all an individual experience of time; time has this shape through the liturgical celebration, regardless of how individuals relate to it. Individuals do not create it, they simply recognise it, take it into their experience. The Divine Liturgy also takes place in space: in a place. We know very little about what kind of space the early Christians used to celebrate the liturgy together. Romantic suggestions about underground catacombs or large rooms in the houses of the better-off are little more than that: romantic suggestions. There is little evidence from the period of persecution, though the Christian church at Dura-Europos suggests that for Christians the church was created as a special place and care was devoted to its decoration. From the time of the peace of the Church, churches – basilicas – came to be built. There is a magnificent early example of the meaning that was invested in such a building in the homily that Eusebios, the church historian, gave at the dedication of the basilica at Tyre in about 316, which he included in the tenth book of his Church History.9 Already as early as this – barely half a decade after the peace of the Church – the meaning of the church building is freighted with symbolic meaning. One element in the construction of such a Christian church was orientation – literally: Christian churches were built facing east, for Christians had – again, for as long as we have any evidence – adopted the custom of facing east to pray (it is mentioned in virtually all the early commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer), in contrast to the Jews, who prayed facing Jerusalem (and later the Muslims, who, after following the Jews, eventually adopted the practice of praying facing Mecca). St Basil the Great comments on this practice: For this reason we all look towards the East in our prayers, though there are few who know that it is because we are in search of our ancient fatherland, Paradise, which God planted towards the East. We fulfil our prayers standing upright on the first day of the week, but not all know the reason for this.10

8

  Didache (8.1), tr. A. Milavec (Collegeville, MN, 2004).   Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica (10. 4. 2–72) tr. G.A. Williamson (Harmondsworth, 1989). 10   Basil the Great, De Spiritu sancto (66), ed. B. Pruche, Sources Chrétiennes 17bis (Paris, 1968), p. 484. 9

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Basil’s comment is striking. We face east to pray, we stand upright for prayer on the first day of the week – but not everyone knows why we do this! So these gestures are precisely not individual gestures expressing some individual intention; they are corporate gestures that we adopt, whether we understand them or not. Or rather, as Basil goes on to suggest, these gestures have a meaning that we discover, into which we enter – a meaning, moreover, that is in principle indefinable or inexhaustible. These gestures and practices are ways of participating in the meaning the Christian community gives to its relationship to God. It is not only that the symbolic significance is complex and needs to be learnt; it is also that the symbolic significance of our religious acts is capable of development in response to deeper and deeper understanding of what we participate in through our religious acts and gestures. The church building, the naos, or temple, was the place where the liturgy was experienced. As the centuries passed, the way in which the church fulfilled this role developed. First of all, in the early centuries (and, I would argue, even later, though not so generally), the church building was not where you gathered for the liturgy, but the destination of a procession, which culminated in the liturgy. The experience of Christians was not simply gathering in a place, but taking part in a procession.11 Processions involve lots of people: there is order and structure and a lot of confusion. Somewhere in the procession – usually at the front – there is an ordered group, carrying banners, candles, burning incense and followed by singers and the clergy; alongside and behind this procession there are lots of people following, and people standing around watching. All of these people are taking part. It is not very likely that such processions took place very often during the period of persecution, but they seem to have become an important feature of liturgical celebration from the fourth century onwards; they are called stational liturgies (the terminology for which goes back to the second century).12 How long these processions continued is hard to say; liturgical evidence is notoriously difficult to evaluate. My impression is that processions continued, though normal Sunday worship perhaps sooner rather than later became a matter of people gathering together in a church to worship. Processions are pre-eminently a corporate experience; but they are also going somewhere, and the immediate sense of going to a particular place with the bishop to celebrate the Divine Liturgy provides a template, as it were, for other experiences: the experience of proceeding through one’s life, the experience of journey with and in the Church to greet Christ when he comes again at the Second Coming, at the Parousia. Fragments of these journeys remain in the Byzantine liturgy as it is still celebrated – notably the antiphons or 11

  For a recent discussion of religious processions in Byzantium, see L. Brubaker and J. Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c.680–850 (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 620–22. 12   On these stational liturgies, see J.F. Baldovin SJ, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome, 1987).

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psalms at the beginning of the liturgy. But processions remained an important part of Byzantine religious experience, though how closely associated with the liturgy it is hard to say. One example for which we have abundant evidence is processions: On Ceremonies, the treatise issued under the name of Constantine Porphyrogennetos, gives instructions for various processions that took place in the course of the Church’s year in Constantinople, notably the procession from the Vlachernai Palace to the church of Hagia Sophia on the first Sunday of Lent, the feast of Orthodoxy, in connexion with the celebration of the victory over Iconoclasm;13 there were other processions with the icon of the Mother of God in Constantinople, accompanied by the singing of the Akathist Hymn (note that akáthistos means not simply ‘standing’ but also ‘not sitting’ – it could well describe people walking in procession).14 Eventually the arrival at the church became not part of a public procession, but the result of an individual journey. Nonetheless, one entered the church, a building orientated towards the East, the ‘place of our ancient fatherland’, as St Basil put it, but also the place of the rising of the sun, a symbol of the dawning of a new day, which came to be taken up in Christian symbolism as foreshadowing the second coming of Christ, from the East, the rising of the Sun of Righteousness. The church itself came to be interpreted as a microcosm, a little reflection of the cosmos, which was expressed in terms of its representing heaven and earth as God created them, with the suggestion that the celebration of the liturgy within the microcosm of the church was effective for the life of the oikoumene, the whole inhabited world, or indeed the whole cosmos. We shall come to that later; but first, what happened in church, and how did Byzantine Christians experience this? Within the church there was movement, sound and light. The movement within the church embraced both the movement of the clergy – from within the sanctuary, out into the nave (naos), and back again – and also the movement of the flames from the burning lights – of oil lamps and candles – as well as the movement upwards of the smoke of the incense. The deacons, who moved most frequently between the sanctuary and the nave, wore (and wear) freely hanging stoles (oraria), a symbol of the freedom with which they move, like the angels, between the people and the presence of God, carrying the people’s petitions to God and bringing to the people God’s blessing, above all, when the deacon brings out to the people the holy gifts.15 The upward movement of the incense recalls the verse of the psalm, ‘Let my prayer be set forth in your sight as incense’,16 which is chanted at Vespers during the censing of the church. 13

  Constantine VII Porphyrogennitos, De ceremoniis (I. 37. 28), ed. A. Vogt, Collection Byzantine (Paris, 1935), pp. 144–8. 14   See the icon of the Akathist in M. Vassilaki (ed.), The Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art (Milan, 2000), p. 381, with detail of the procession on p. 384. 15   See Theodore of Mopsuestia, Homilies (15. 23), ed. R. Tonneau OP and R. Devreesse, Les Homélies catéchétiques de Théodore de Mopsuestia, Studi e Testi 145 (Vatican City, 1949), p. 501. 16   Psalm 140.2.

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These movements create a circular rhythm: proceeding forth from the presence of God among the people, and returning bearing their prayers and hopes and longings. This movement was also interpreted by the singing of the choir or the people, but we know very little about this, save that it was unaccompanied by instrumental music of any kind. The singing, however, was interpreted as echoing the eternal song of the heavenly beings. St John Chrysostom tells his congregation at one point, ‘Think beside whom you stand, with whom you are about to call on God – with the cherubim’;17 the words of Chrysostom and other Fathers eventually fed into the cherubic hymn sung as the holy gifts are brought in procession to the altar.18 We have seen a little of the significance attached to light – the moving light of the burning flames – and perhaps we should note that lamps burning in front of icons also formed part of the private devotion of Byzantine Christians. There is, however, another sort of light that was drawn on to express the significance of what took place within the church. As already remarked, Byzantine churches were orientated: they faced east. In this they gave monumental expression to the practice of the early Christians, attested from the beginning of the third century at least, of praying facing east.19 More precisely, churches came to be orientated to face the point on the horizon where the sun would rise on the feast day of the church. Although at the beginning Byzantine churches were places flooded with light (such certainly seems to have been the case with the Great Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople, as is evident from Prokopios’ Buildings and Paul the Silentiary’s Ekphrasis), later on churches were much darker places, with few places where light could enter from outside. There were two principal exceptions to this: the windows in the low parapet that supported the central dome of the church, and the great doors at the west of the church that could be opened to let light in. It has been argued20 that churches in the Byzantine world were constructed to take greatest advantage of these inlets of light. The sills of the windows beneath the dome were angled and polished so that the horizontal light of dawn was reflected up on to the figure of Christ the Ruler of the Universe, Pantokrator, in the dome, creating an impression of the figure of Christ, bathed in light, seeming to hover over the darkened church during the dawn office (orthros, matins) of the feast of the dedication (on other days in the year the effect would still be produced, though 17   John Chrysostom, Homilies (4. 408–9), ed. A.-M. Malingrey, Sur l’incompréhensibilité de Dieu, SC 28bis (Paris, 1970), p. 260. 18   See R.F. Taft SJ, The Great Entrance, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 200 (Rome, 1978), pp. 64–5. 19   See for example: Origen, On Prayer (32), ed. and tr. J.J. O’Meara, Ancient Christian Writers 19 (New York, 1954), pp. 136–7. 20   Recently, and in great detail, by I. Potamianos, To Phos sti Byzantini Ekklisia (Thessaloniki, 2000), which covers a great deal of ground – philosophy of light, astronomy, measurement of time, as well as the construction of Byzantine churches.

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less dramatically). On the evening before, at Great Vespers of the feast, the light flooding in through the opened west doors would shine directly onto the holy doors at the entrance to the sanctuary (eventually, the central doors in the iconostasis), as they were opened for the procession of incense and lights at the little entrance, before the singing of the hymn Phos ilaron, ‘Joyful Light’. This use of natural light would have enhanced immensely the symbolism of the church as microcosm. Furthermore, light itself had an enormously developed symbolism drawn both from the Scriptures, in which light is the first creature21 and light symbolism is frequent in relation to the coming into the world of the Incarnate God, and from Neoplatonism, where light symbolism was also important: the light radiating from the sun onto the earth was the principal symbol of the light of God radiating on humans and the cosmos.22 In this way, the church building itself came to be the focus for symbolic imagery, and seen as a little cosmos, its internal structure reflecting the structure of the cosmos. The microcosmic function of the church was interpreted in two (in principle, contradictory) ways. One of these symbolic structures, expounded, for example, in the Mystagogia of St Maximos the Confessor, takes the division between the sanctuary and the nave to reflect the division in the cosmos between heaven and earth: Maximos’ account preserves something of the sense of the church as the destination of a procession (which still evidently took place in his day), ending up within, or on the threshold of, the heavenly courts and the worship of the angels.23 According to the other symbolic representation, it is a horizontal division, with the dome above, with its depiction of Christ Pantokrator, gazing down from heaven, and the nave, the lower part of the building, where the church on earth is assembled; between are depicted ranks of angels, prophets and saints. In either case there are two ways in which such symbolism can be interpreted, associated by liturgical scholars with the great Mediterranean cities of Antioch and Alexandria. Just as in Christology it used to be fashionable to oppose the approaches of Antioch and Alexandria, and also in matters of biblical interpretation to contrast a literalist Antiochene approach with an allegorical Alexandrian one, so interpretations of liturgical symbolism are dubbed ‘Antiochene’ and ‘Alexandrian’. St Germanos of Constantinople’s vastly influential commentary 21

  Genesis 1.3.   For some account of the variety of ways in which light symbolism was interpreted in the Byzantine world, see A. Louth, ‘Light, Vision and Religions Experience in Byzantium’, in M.T. Kapstein (ed.), The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience (Chicago, IL, and London, 2004), pp. 85–103. See also C. Nesbitt, ‘Shaping the Sacred: Light and the Experience of Worship in Middle Byzantine Churches’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 36.2 (2012), pp. 139–60. I am grateful to Dr Nesbitt for sight of this fascinating paper, but it came too late to incorporate into my own article. 23   Maximos the Confessor, Mystagogia (2–3 and compare 8–9), ed. C. Boudignon, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 69 (Belgium, 2011), lines 207–63 and 600–640. 22

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on the Divine Liturgy (Ekklesiastike historia kai mystike theoria – best translated, I think, as ‘What happens in church and its hidden meaning’) is said to reflect these two approaches in the first two paragraphs, which read: ‘The church is the temple of God, a holy place, a house of prayer, the assembly of the people, the body of Christ [this is meant to be ‘Antiochene’] … The church is an earthly heaven in which the God beyond the heavens dwells and walks about [and this the ‘Alexandrian’]’.24 A better way of thinking about these two interpretations of the liturgical action, I would suggest, is to think of one (the socalled ‘Antiochene’) as relating the liturgical action to its geographical context in the Jerusalem Temple and the life of Christ, and the other (the so-called ‘Alexandrian’) as relating the liturgical action directly to the heavenly action that it represents. There is no contradiction between these two approaches to understanding the liturgical action. They reflect more immediately than traditions of interpretation associated with Antioch and Alexandria, what one might call a kind of theological triangulation, where what happens in any church, wherever it may be situated, is related, on the one hand, to the events that took place in Jerusalem (and also the worship that took place in the Temple, conceived as archetypal), and on the other, to the worship of the heavenly courts. The two approaches are not at all contradictory, and the various ways in which they might be seen to intersect, nourished the experience that the Byzantine Christian had through participation in the services of the Church, and especially of the Divine Liturgy. What I have suggested here is only a variety of ways of attempting to enter into the way in which Byzantine Christians experienced the Divine Liturgy. All of them – the understanding of space and time that they brought to their interpretation of their experience, the ways in which they structured the space of the church and the temporal rhythms of the day, the week and the year, as well as what took place in the church building itself – are patient of almost endless reflection and consideration. I hope this paper has offered some principles that can enable us to enter to some degree into the liturgical experience of Byzantine Christians.

24   St Germanus of Constantinople, On the Divine Liturgy, ed. and tr. P. Meyendorff (Crestwood, NY, 1984), p. 56.

6. Different Approaches to an Early Byzantine Monument: Procopius and Ibn Battuta on the Church of St John at Ephesos Nikolaos Karydis

Introduction Some written records yield invaluable evidence for the experience of religious space in Byzantium. Correctly interpreted, they reveal the various ways in which churches were perceived by different authors. They also help to visualise monuments that have now disappeared or been reduced to amorphous masses of mortar, brick and rubble. However, reconstructing the form of a church long after its loss on the basis of written records is not as easy as it seems. Nor is it always possible to distinguish those particular elements within a written testimony that reflect a particular point of view, and the subjective character of experience. Indeed, in some cases, the records are scanty or non-existent; on other occasions, they seem to speak an enigmatic language. There are many instances when literary sources give distorted accounts of architectural forms, which are in conflict with archaeological evidence. Worse, sometimes historic documents seem to contradict each other, presenting us with unsurpassable dilemmas.1 My recent reconstruction of the sixth-century church of St John at Ephesos has been confronted with all these difficulties. Associated with Justinian’s monumental building programme, this is a church of enormous historical significance and many different facets.2 To reconstruct it is to visualise a 1

  For a note of warning about the opacity of Byzantine written records, by one of the authorities on Byzantine architecture, see C. Mango, Byzantine Architecture (New York, 1978), p. 8. 2   The first excavation of the monument, carried out in two campaigns, was published in G.A. Sotiriou, ‘1921–1922: Ελληνικαί Ανασκαφαί εν Μικρά Ασία’, Archaiologikon Deltion 7 (1924), pp. 89–206, and in H. Hörmann, Die Johanneskirche, Forschungen in Ephesos IV/3 (Vienna, 1951). Recent analysis of the remains and reconstruction proposals occur in M. Büyükkolancı, From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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building that was experienced in the sixth century as the Ephesian counterpart of the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.3 The same building was regarded during the middle ages as the heart of the city of Ephesos, and was revered as one of the main pilgrimage destinations in Asia Minor.4 The survival of written testimonies, referring more or less directly to the form of this church, is something exceptional among the Early Byzantine churches of west Asia Minor. The existence of numerous written records can be attributed to the high status of this church, its links with Imperial initiative, and its role as a key monument of Byzantine Ephesos.5 The most extensive references to the form of St John are found in the sixthcentury account of Procopius and the fourteenth-century account of Ibn Battuta.6 These documents constitute the first and the last accounts to be written about the monument. They have been an important part of my research into the original form of the church, part of which was published in 2011.7 Having carefully examined these testimonies, I concluded that their brevity and ambiguity compromise their value as evidence for reconstruction. As a result, the work I have published so far makes limited reference to them, focusing instead on archaeological evidence.8 Although this work helped to visualise what seemed to be the vaulted phase of St John, it did not address the issue of the evolving form of the monument and changing perceptions of it through the centuries. This paper seeks to fill this lacuna by answering three important questions. The first question focuses on the definition of the building phases that generated this imposing vaulted edifice. The second is directly linked to the first: whether Das Leben des Heiligen Johannes und die Johanneskirche (Selçuk, 2000), A. Thiel, Die Johanneskirche in Ephesos (Wiesbaden, 2005), and N. Karydis, Early Byzantine Vaulted Construction in Churches of the Western Coastal Plains and River Valleys of Asia Minor (Oxford, 2011), pp. 8–13 and 69–107. 3   R. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (New Haven, CT, and London, 1986), p. 242. 4   For the role of the church as a major pilgrimage destination see C. Foss, ‘Pilgrimage in Medieval Asia Minor’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002), pp. 129–51 esp. 132. 5   For the role of the church as the central monument of Ephesos after the sixth century, see C. Foss, Ephesus after Antiquity: A Late Antique, Byzantine and Turkish City (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 85–9. 6   Procopius, Buildings, V.I. 4–7, tr. H.B. Dewing (Cambridge, MA, 1940), pp. 317–19. For Ibn Battuta’s fourteenth-century description of St John at Ephesos, see H.A.R. Gibbs, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325–1354, Vol. II (Cambridge, 1962), p. 444. 7   See Karydis, Early Byzantine Vaulted Construction. The fourth chapter of this book investigates some aspects of the vaults of St John on the basis of evidence from vault fragments. The definitive reconstruction of the vaults of the monument will be published in a forthcoming article. For a study of building methods in west Asia Minor, see also F. Fasolo, L’Architettura Romana di Efeso, Bolletino del Centro di Studi per la Storia dell’ Architettura 18 (Rome, 1962); F.W. Deichmann, Studien zur Architektur Konstantinopels im 5. und 6. Jahrhundert nach Christus (Baden-Baden, 1956). 8   See Karydis, Early Byzantine Vaulted Construction, pp. 87–8.

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the entirety of the church ruins found on site today should be attributed to Justinian’s intervention in the sixth century. Whereas the two first questions concern the changing form of the monument, the third deals with the change in the way the church was perceived in two periods as distant and different as those of Procopius and Ibn Battuta. Trying to answer these questions, the present paper re-examines the enigmatic words of Procopius and Ibn Battuta in a new light. Indeed, thanks to my recent reconstruction, our present examination benefits from an improved understanding of the form of the church of St John. Unlike previous reconstruction attempts where the visualisation of the missing vaults of the monument was mainly hypothetical, the recent reconstruction is based on a new interpretation of an extensive body of construction details, some of which had been previously overlooked. This study revealed new evidence, which helped to construct a more plausible model for the definitive form of the vaulted church. Armed with a better understanding of the main lines and structures of the building that seem to be the common object of the descriptions of Procopius and Ibn Battuta, we can try to establish what is real and what is distorted in them. The interpretation of the inconsistent or erratic parts of these descriptions is not only essential for the visualisation of the monument but also improves our understanding of the authors themselves. It reveals the influence of different cultural backgrounds on the perception of the great pilgrimage church, and reflects the change in the experience of this major Early Byzantine monument during the middle ages. In addition, the re-examination of the account of Procopius in the light of the reconstructed form provides essential evidence for the building phases of the vaulted church. Indeed, Procopius compared the two phases of St John before and after Justinian’s drastic remodelling. My recent reconstruction of the vaulted church, in what seems to be its definitive form, supports Procopius’ comparison as evidence for the form of the monument before Justinian’s intervention. This methodology demonstrates the value of written accounts that record the experience of architectural space in Byzantium. For all their vagueness and obscurity, these records sometimes constitute our only indication of the form of a building before its drastic modification or collapse. On the other hand, we realise that the recording of the experience of architectural space in Byzantium could be a creative process in which the author’s background, imagination and possible biases played an important role. Even though certain written testimonies fail to give a faithful description of a building, they are still valuable: in ‘recreating’ their object, they reflect the personal viewpoints and limitations of each author. Before we move on to explore the written testimonies of Procopius and Ibn Battuta, a few preliminary words are necessary on those aspects of the form of St John that are known to us today. In this preamble, my recent reconstruction of the vaults of the church is combined with earlier reconstructions of its plan to make the overview of this remarkable monument as complete as our current knowledge allows.

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Figure 6.1

Church of St John, Ephesos, reconstructed plan of ‘Justinian’s church’ at ground level, showing main phases (author’s copyright)

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Visualising Justinian’s Church Justinian’s church of St John at Ephesos has been explored systematically since its discovery by Georgios A. Sotiriou in 1921. Nine decades of excavation and survey have shed light on the ground plan of the aisled cruciform church, as well as the footprint of its Atrium, Baptistery and Skeuophylakion (Fig. 6.1).9 Examining the plan of the main church in its sixth-century and, probably, definitive phase (after Justinian’s intervention), we note that the west cross arm is longer than the others, giving the building the strong directional east– west axis proper to a standard basilica. However, the effort to visualise the original form of the church has not been limited to its plan. Several scholars have attempted to recapture the form of the entire superstructure, including the vaults.10 Some parts of the church have even become the object of full-scale, physical reconstruction (Fig. 6.2).11 In spite of all these efforts, our knowledge of the vaults of the church remained limited until recently. One of the most persisting dilemmas concerns the form of the major vaults that cover each of the bays: were they domes on pendentives, as the ones that crown the monument in its first reconstruction by Hans Hörmann? Or should they be visualised as pendentive domes like the ones that Andreas Thiel shows over the cross arms in his reconstruction proposal? I tried to resolve this problem elsewhere through a detailed reexamination of the surviving remains, in particular the fragments of vaulting lying on the ground (Fig. 6.3).12 My work relied considerably on the survey of vault fragments published by Hans Hörmann.13 This is an invaluable record, as it includes an extensive and well-illustrated discussion of vault fragments that were destroyed during the excavations.14 On the other hand, in spite of its attention to detail, Hörmann’s 9   Thiel, Die Johanneskirche, pp. 9–98, includes the most recent and detailed survey of the monument. It is accompanied by a complete bibliography and an excellent account of the numerous stages that marked the discovery of the church. 10   The reconstruction published in Hörmann, Forschungen in Ephesos, pp. 165–9, figs 42 and 44, has been tremendously influential in the way we perceive St John today. Still, the accuracy of several aspects of this reconstruction has been questioned by A.M. Schneider, ‘Rezension zu H. Hörmann, Die Johanneskirche (FiE IV,3)’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 46 (1953), pp. 179–82, and H. Plommer, ‘St. John’s Church, Ephesus’, Anatolian Studies 12 (1962), pp. 119– 29, esp. 124. Hörmann’s reconstruction was thoroughly revised in Thiel, Die Johanneskirche, pp. 110–11. 11   See Büyükkolancı, Johannes und die Johanneskirche, p. 46. 12   See Karydis, Early Byzantine Vaulted Construction, pp. 67–107. 13   See Hörmann, Forschungen in Ephesos, pp. 92–103. 14   According to Hörmann, Forschungen in Ephesos, p. 92, the destruction of these massive fragments was necessary to study the lower layers of ruins, including the remains of walls and piers.

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Figure 6.2

Church of St John, Ephesos, west cross arm, north aisle, view of mid-twentieth-century restorations (author’s copyright)

Figure 6.3

The main vault fragments of the church of St John at Ephesos (author’s copyright)

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analysis has two major limitations. Firstly, it focuses on vault fragments from the west cross arm of the church (the same ones that Hörmann’s team destroyed) and seems to overlook three major fragments of vaulting that still survive on site and belonged to the main vaults of the transept. Secondly, Hörmann’s interpretation of the fragments failed to overcome a limitation caused by the very nature of these construction details: all of them come from the springing of the vaults; not a single fragment of the caps has survived. As a result, Hörmann’s reconstruction of the crown of the vaults was not adequately substantiated, causing the present dilemma between pendentive domes and hemispherical domes on pendentives. Having recognised the problems of the previous study, my recent publication includes the first detailed documentation of all the surviving fragments, including the ones overlooked by Hörmann. It also features a new interpretation of these lowlevel fragments. This was based on graphic documentation and comparison with similar details in a wide range of surviving coeval buildings. My study revealed a specific construction detail of the springing of a spherical vault, which makes it possible to deduce the form of the vault’s crown. This new reading of the vault fragments indicates that the crossing of the church had a full dome on pendentives, while the transepts and nave had lower pendentive domes (Fig. 6.4). The detailed study of the fragments also revealed a constructional difference between the nave domes and those over the transept and chancel. While the domes over the transept were built with the standard method of radial bricks set in circumferential courses, the ones over the nave had a pattern of arched brickwork similar to those we find in Late Roman Spalato and Side. Although recent research revealed new evidence for the form of the vaulted church, there are still many lacunae in our understanding of its building phases. One of the most serious problems concerns the form and date of the so called ‘pre-Justinianic’ church. According to both Hans Hörmann and Andreas Thiel, the ‘pre-Justinianic’ church of St John was a cruciform, timberroof basilica. Hörmann raised the possibility that the crossing of this basilica was an even earlier centralised Mausoleum, which sheltered the shrine of St John at Ephesos (Fig. 6.5).15 Although some aspects of this form are confirmed by the Austrian excavations, others, such as the form and length of the nave of this early building, are not adequately substantiated. There are also uncertainties about the extent of Justinian’s intervention and the building process that generated the vaulted church. The lack of homogeneity in the church fabric indicates at least two building phases. Several scholars, including Hans Hörmann, Hugh Plommer, Marcell Restle and Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, agree that there are important constructional and stylistic differences between the nave and the east part of the church (which includes 15   See Hörmann, Forschungen in Ephesos, pp. 200, 205 and 227; also Thiel, Die Johanneskirche, pp. 100–103.

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Figure 6.4

Church of St John, Ephesos, axonometric reconstruction (author’s copyright)

Figure 6.5

Church of St John, Ephesos, plan of the fifth-century, ‘preJustinianic’ church according to H. Hörmann (left), and cut-away axonometric of the initial Mausoleum that was later incorporated in the fabric of the cruciform, timber-roofed basilica (author’s copyright)

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the transept and the sanctuary).16 The most obvious differences are found in the shape of the bays, and in the number of columns in the columnar screens between the main piers. Furthermore, Deichmann’s study of capitals, bases and cornices has revealed important differences in the carved decoration as well. Finally, both Hörmann and Plommer have noticed a continuous joint interrupting the brick walls between transept and nave, and pointed out that this joint marks a change in brick sizes and the mortar bed thickness. Surprisingly, a major constructional difference between the two parts remains unnoticed: whereas the piers of the east part are made of ashlar masonry courses of equal height, those of the nave display alternate tall and short courses. If all scholars agree that the above differences are indicative of two building phases, there is no consensus about the chronological difference between the phases. Both Hörmann and Thiel attribute the entire vaulted church to the time of Justinian and Theodora, and claim that its construction was interrupted briefly in order to follow a slightly modified design.17 I hesitate to accept this interpretation. The constructional differences between the two parts of the vaulted building (found in the piers, the walls and the vaults) are far too important to have been caused by a brief interruption of the construction process. Indeed, for other scholars, these differences indicate that the vaulted church was built in two chronologically distant phases.18 There are even some, briefly expressed, hypotheses about the form of the vaulted church before Justinian’s remodelling.19 In spite of these hypotheses, no evidence has been presented so far for the date of the first phase of the vaulted church, the degree to which it 16   For the continuous joint and some of the constructional and design differences between the east and west part, see Hörmann, Forschungen in Ephesos, pp. 51, 69, 100 and 297, and Plommer, ‘St. John’s Church’, pp. 122–4. A fine account of the major differences in the carved decoration of the two parts occurs in F.W. Deichmann, ‘Zur Spätantiken Bauplastik von Ephesus’, in A.M. Mansel (ed.), Mansel’e Armağan, Melanges Mansel I (Ankara, 1974), pp. 549–70, esp. 562. Finally, a summary of the differences between the two parts of the church occurs in M. Restle, ‘Ephesos’, in K. Wessel and M. Restle (eds), Reallexikon zur Byzantinischen Kunst II (Stuttgart, 1971), pp. 164–207, esp. 188. 17   See Hörmann, Forschungen in Ephesos, pp. 100–101. For a refutation of this argument see Plommer, ‘St. John’s Church’, p. 122. Thiel, Die Johanneskirche, pp. 31 and 109–11, believes that only the surrounding brick walls of the transept and chancel of the vaulted church belong to a building phase that is a bit earlier than Justinian’s remodelling. However, this hypothesis overlooks the fact that the constructional differences between nave and transept are not only found in the surrounding walls, but in the piers and the vaults as well. 18   See Plommer, ‘St. John’s Church’, p. 125; Restle, ‘Ephesos’, p. 188; Deichmann, ‘Spätantiken Bauplastik’, p. 562, and Büyükkolancı, Johannes und die Johanneskirche, pp. 48–9. 19   Restle, ‘Ephesos’, p. 188 suggests that the first phase of the vaulted church had a centralised plan, and that the second phase coincides with the construction of the nave. Büyükkolancı, Johannes und die Johanneskirche, p. 48 attributes the first phase to the times of Justin I (518–527) and claims that the building was originally intended to have only one dome. Both arguments lack substantiation.

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was completed, or the extent to which its design differed from that of the second, Justinianic phase. The resolution of this problem is essential to understand the architectural experience of the church. A building that constituted a patchwork of differently designed parts would have been experienced differently from a homogeneous one, executed in one continuous phase. If the form of the first phase of the vaulted church remains to be discovered, some of the elements of the second, definitive phase are also opaque. Take, for instance, the central dome over the crossing: it is unclear whether this vault had windows or not. The fact that many coeval churches had windows in the base of their domes seems to indicate that a similar layout occurred in St John. However, in the absence of firm evidence, most scholars tend to withhold judgement on this topic. Thus, an essential aspect of the architectural experience of the church remains obscure. Indeed, the existence of windows would have had a major impact on the lighting of the church, which plays an essential role in the experience of religious space. The study of the remains of the church is not enough to fill these lacunae. We therefore have to turn our attention to potential evidence in the written records of Procopius and Ibn Battuta. These descriptions offer the opportunity to approach the problem of reconstruction in a different, more complex way. This time, there are three objectives. The present paper examines the earliest of the available written records to shed light on the form of the first phase of the vaulted church. Furthermore, it compares the reconstruction of the vaulted church as remodelled by Justinian with the descriptions of Procopius and Ibn Battuta to determine the faithfulness of these accounts. Finally, it seeks to interpret the way in which the church was perceived by the above chroniclers in two crucial points of its history: the time of its completion (sixth century) and the years after its transformation into a mosque (fourteenth century).

Examining the Written Testimonies: From Procopius to Ibn Battuta Procopius’ sixth-century treatise ‘On Buildings’, an unfinished panegyric on Justinian’s building activity throughout the Empire, constitutes one of the rare surviving chronicles of church building in Early Byzantine Asia Minor.20 This 20

  For an English translation of the original Greek text, see Procopius, On Buildings (de Aedificiis), tr. and ed. by H.B. Dewing and G. Downey (London, 1940). Thorough interpretations of Buildings, grounded by reference to contemporary records and the historical and political context of this work, occur in A. Cameron, Procopius and the 6th Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1985), pp. 84–112 and G. Downey, ‘The Composition of Procopius, De Aedificiis’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 78 (1947), pp. 171–83. There seems to be a disagreement among scholars about the date of Procopius’ book Buildings. Both M. Whitby, ‘Justinian’s Bridge over the Sangarius and the Date of Procopius’ de Aedificiis’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 105 (1985), pp. 129–48, esp. 141–7, and Downey,

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book includes a passage that refers to the rebuilding of St John at Ephesos by Justinian.21 At first sight, this seems to be an extremely valuable document. Indeed, it is not only contemporary to the remodelling of St John, but also comes from an author who seems to have been in close contact with the emperor who commissioned this work.22 On the other hand, a careful examination of the text and the studies that have been devoted to it during the last sixty years reveals certain limitations. The first one concerns the lack of detail. In spite of Procopius’ proximity to the Imperial court, his description of St John at Ephesos fails to give the information we might like about the appearance of the building.23 Perhaps, this is because the author did not have first-hand knowledge of the monument. Indeed, the literary style of the passage on St John is not the one we would encounter in the report of a personal experience. It is rather more similar to an entry in an encyclopaedia, or to a brief report reflecting the popular perception of the monument.24 An additional limitation concerns the reliability of the document. As Averil Cameron has shown, the value of the document as a source is constrained by its political and literary purpose. Procopius, after all, treats Justinian’s building campaigns in panegyrical terms. In such a context, we cannot exclude that the author manipulated his material to magnify Justinian’s intervention in Ephesos, giving the Emperor more credit as a builder than he actually deserved. ‘The Composition of De Aedificiis’, p. 181, place this book at c. 560. Their attribution is based on Procopius’ reference to the imminent completion of the bridge over the Sangarius River, which, according to other sources was begun only in c. 560. On the other hand, according to Cameron, Procopius, pp. 9, 85–6, an earlier date, around 554/5, ‘accords far better, on all grounds with Procopius’ work’. For instance, J.A.S. Evans, ‘The Dates of the Anecdota and the De Aedificiis’, Classical Philology 64.1 (1969), p. 29, correctly claims that, given its particular character, Procopius’ description of Hagia Sophia cannot postdate the collapse of the first dome of the ‘Great Church’ in 558. 21   Procopius, Buildings, V. I. 4–7, tr. and ed. by Dewing and Downey. 22   Downey, ‘The Composition of De Aedificiis’, p. 176, shows that Justinian knew that the treatise was being written. 23   According to Cameron, Procopius, p. 9, this lack of detail also occurs in several other sections of the same treatise, and has been taken as the mark of an author who is not interested in aesthetic qualities and the appearance of the works he describes. 24   The brevity and vagueness of Procopius’ treatment of a major monument like St John at Ephesos may indicate that the author did not have a direct knowledge of the Ephesian church. Downey, ‘The Composition of De Aedificiis’, p. 173, claims that, when Procopius was unable to draw on his own observation (as he did so well in sections of his treatise dealing with major Constantinopolitan monuments), he could have made use of government archives. The contents of these archives may even have been reproduced in parts of Buildings where the narrative peters out into lists (e.g. in book IV). For more information about Procopius’ lists see M. Perrin-Henry, ‘La Place des Listes Toponymiques dans l’Organisation du Livre IV des Edifices de Procope’, in Geographica Byzantina, Byzantina Sorbonensia 3 (Paris, 1981), pp. 93–106.

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In fact, other passages in Procopius’ treatise do precisely this. They attribute to Justinian work that was carried out by Emperor Anastasius (AD 491–518) and exalt minor repairs into full-scale building.25 Taking these problems into account is essential when interpreting the passage that interests us. Although some of Procopius’ claims should be treated with caution, the critical reading and analysis of this record reveals valuable evidence for the form of the church and its building phases. As I have shown elsewhere, Procopius’ treatise provides some indications for the visualisation of the second phase of the vaulted church of St John, namely the church that resulted from Justinian’s remodelling. The present paper re-examines this account to shed light on the form of the first phase of the vaulted church. Before examining Procopius’ reference to this early phase, I shall summarise the contribution of this account to the reconstruction of the second phase of the church. One of the particularities of Procopius’ account is that it does not say a word about architectural form. The only indication Procopius gives us in this respect is that this church ‘resembled very closely in all respects, and is a rival to, the shrine which he dedicated to all the Apostles in the imperial city’.26 Procopius expects the reader to understand the form of the church of St John through its comparison with the sixth-century phase of the church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople. Rebuilt around 550 by Justinian, and demolished in 1469, this monument constitutes a key point of reference for the visualisation of St John.27 Given the resemblance between the two churches, the description of the Holy Apostles in Procopius’ treatise on buildings seems to offer significant indications for the form of the church of St John at Ephesos after Justinian’s remodelling.28 As the church of the Holy Apostles is lost to us forever, Procopius’ textual representation constitutes our only clue for the form of the church in the sixth century.29 It is therefore very fortunate that, in this particular passage, Procopius’ panegyric becomes unusually detailed, providing interesting 25

  See Cameron, Procopius, p. 107.   Procopius, Buildings, V.I. 6. tr. and ed. by Dewing and Downey. 27   Krautheimer, Architecture, p. 242. 28   See Procopius, Buildings, I. IV. 9–16, tr. and ed. by Dewing and Downey. In addition to Procopius’ account there are also two later descriptions of the church of the Holy Apostles: a tenth-century poetic ekphrasis, by Constantine of Rhodes, and another ekphrasis written in the twelfth century by Nikolaos Mesarites. See T. Reinach, Description des œuvres d’art et de l’Eglise des Saints Apôtres de Constantinople: poème en vers iambiques par Constantin le Rhodien, publié d’après le manuscrit du Mont-Athos (Paris, 1896), pp. 20–27, and G. Downey, ‘Nikolaos Mesarites: Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Association 47.6 (1957), pp. 855–924. 29   According to R. Krautheimer, ‘A Note on Justinian’s Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople’, Mélanges Eugène Tisserant (Vatican, 1964), pp. 265–70, the form of the church of the Holy Apostles changed significantly during the ninth century. 26

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indications about the cruciform plan of the building and its vaults. The author claims that the central vault over the crossing of the Holy Apostles resembled the first dome of Hagia Sophia, which collapsed in 558.30 This vault has been tentatively visualised as a shallow spherical vault, which was raised on a fenestrated drum. The internal design of this drum is uncertain. It was either vertical or co-spherical with the vault.31 According to Procopius, this vault type was not only used over the crossing of the Holy Apostles but over the cross arms as well, this time however, without windows below the shallow domes. Procopius’ claims can be interpreted architecturally in various ways. In my previous publication, I raised the possibility that the crossing of the Holy Apostles was covered by a shallow dome on a drum with windows, and the four cross arms were surmounted by pendentive domes. That St John at Ephesos resembled such a church seems to be confirmed by the vault fragments of the Ephesian church.32 Indeed, according to my reconstruction the cross arms of St John were surmounted by pendentive domes. Concerning the central dome of the Ephesian church, I interpreted the surviving arch and pendentive fragments as evidence for a hemispherical vault with a fenestrated base. This seems to be the sole point of conflict between my reconstruction of St John and Procopius’ account of the Holy Apostles. However, I would now like to add that the same fragments of the central dome of St John could also indicate a vault similar to the central dome of the Holy Apostles as reconstructed by Rabun Taylor as a shallow dome resting on a vertical fenestrated drum with windows.33 Although this vault form is highly atypical, it agrees both with the archaeological evidence from St John and with Procopius. The tentative nature of the above interpretations reflects the difficulty in drawing firm evidence from Procopius’ descriptions of Hagia Sophia, and the Holy Apostles. These descriptions are, perhaps, insufficient for the detailed visualisation of these major Constantinopolitan churches. However, the same documents seem to indicate that both buildings made use of the shallow dome. The latter was either raised on a drum or co-spherical with the pendentives, forming a pendentive dome. According to my reconstruction, which was based on the analysis of vault fragments, this same vault type seems to have also 30

  Procopius, Buildings, I. IV. 14–15, tr. and ed. by Dewing and Downey. According to R. Taylor, ‘A Literary and Structural Analysis of the First Dome on Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, Constantinople’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 55.1 (1996), pp. 66–78, esp. 69, Procopius refers to the Great Church’s short-lived first dome, which collapsed in 558. 31   See R. Mainstone, Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian’s Great Church (London, 1988), p. 90, for the reconstruction of the vault as a pendentive dome whose base, co-spherical with the dome, is pierced by a dense series of windows. On the other hand, Taylor, ‘A Literary and Structural Analysis’, pp. 73–4, visualises the same vault as a shallow dome raised on a vertical drum with windows. 32   Karydis, Early Byzantine Vaulted Construction, pp. 101–5. 33   Taylor, ‘A Literary and Structural Analysis’, pp. 73–4.

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occurred in St John at Ephesos. Perhaps it was the common use of the shallow dome that justified Procopius’ claim concerning the close resemblance between St John and the Holy Apostles. The use of this type of vault in both Ephesos and Constantinople might have been experienced as one of the common threads linking the architectural style of the provinces with the one of the capital. The shallow dome was, perhaps, an architectural element used by the Emperor to mark with his ‘stamp’ the church, the mausoleum of St John in Ephesos, one of his Empire’s most prominently located and symbolic monuments. However, this hypothesis starts from the assumption that the vaulted church of St John is entirely attributed to Justinian. This is by no means certain. Although certain scholars make this assumption, it has never adequately been substantiated. The question regarding the origins of the vaulted church of St John remains open. The new reading of Procopius’ account that follows provides useful information that sheds new light on this problem. Apart from comparing St John with its Constantinopolitan counterpart, Procopius also gives us an important hint regarding the extents of Justinian’s interventions and the earlier phases of the church. Indeed, in one of the most enigmatic parts of his text, he states that, in St John at Ephesos, Justinian demolished an earlier building on the same spot, which was considered too short (‘βραχύν’), and had been in bad condition. This claim seems to be at odds with Hörmann’s reconstruction of the plan of the timber-roofed, ‘preJustinianic church’, which is as long as the one of the vaulted, ‘Justinianic church’ (compare Figs 6.1 and 6.5). However, Procopius’ text clearly suggests that the intervention of Justinian’s architects increased the length of the church.34 That the above claim is accurate seems to be confirmed by the survey of the monument. Indeed, a close observation of the surviving structure reveals a clear line of division between nave and transept. As we have seen already, the differences between the two parts are not only stylistic but also constructional. The structures of the load bearing elements and vaults of the two parts are fundamentally different. As has been pointed out in previous scholarship, this structure seems to have been created in more than one building phase.35 Of these two phases, only the nave preserves evidence for the role of Justinian and Theodora. Indeed, it is only there that we find Imperial monograms adorning the capitals (Fig. 6.6). At this point, we need to establish which of the two parts, nave or transept, is earlier. One could argue that construction started from the nave that was given by Justinian and Theodora, and continued towards the east at a later period. However, this is unlikely. Indeed, as Deichmann has shown, the carved decoration in the capitals and the cornices of the eastern part should 34

  Procopius, Buildings, V. I. 6, tr. and ed. by Dewing and Downey.   Plommer, ‘St. John’s Church’, p. 125; Restle, ‘Ephesos’, p. 188; Deichmann, ‘Spätantiken Bauplastik’, p. 562; Büyükkolancı, Johannes und die Johanneskirche, pp. 48–9. 35

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Figure 6.6

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Church of St John, Ephesos, detail of the south colonnade of the nave; the Imperial monograms of Justinian and Theodora can be distinguished on the faces of the Ionic impost block capitals (author’s photograph)

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be attributed to an earlier period than that of the nave.36 Additional evidence showing even more clearly that building started from the eastern part of the church may be found in the plan of the building complex, and specifically in the relationship between the Justinianic nave and the late fifth-century Baptistery north of it (see Fig. 6.1).37 It is reasonable to expect that the building of a new church would not have started in a way that fails so explicitly to establish an architectural connection with an existing Baptistery. It is more likely that the disconnection and misalignment between vaulted church and Baptistery represented a compromise, which resulted from the need to extend an earlier structure. This west extension must have caused the disconnection of the church with the Baptistery, one of its most important ancillary structures. In this hypothesis, the nave should be seen as an addition to an earlier vaulted structure that included the transept and chancel of the vaulted church. This is confirmed by a detail that has hitherto gone unnoticed: the small pilasters between the west piers of the crossing and the east piers of the nave (Fig. 6.7). It is clear that the pilasters in the west piers of the crossing were meant to establish a transition from a pier to a colonnade, as is the case on all other sides of the crossing. However, the pilasters in the east piers of the nave cannot be justified aesthetically or structurally. There is no colonnade associated with them (see Fig. 6.1). If building had started from the nave, they would not have been there. They serve only to establish a transition from an earlier, eastern structure that required pilasters of this kind, towards a west addition that had no use for them. This interpretation of the remains seems to confirm Procopius’ claim that Justinian’s intervention in St John enlarged an earlier church structure. The new suggestion I introduce here is that this earlier church was vaulted, and that it was not entirely demolished during Justinian’s remodelling. A significant part of the original vaulted church was not only maintained by Justinian’s architects as the transept and the chancel of the new church, but also influenced the design employed in Justinian’s extension.38 Nevertheless, Procopius claims that Justinian razed the original church to the ground, replacing it entirely with a new structure. Of course, this is directly contradicted by the ample archaeological evidence for two building phases already discussed. At this point in his account, Procopius seems to be unreliable. That the author exaggerated Justinian’s role in the construction of St John is hardly surprising in the context of a treatise dictated by panegyrical considerations. 36

  See Deichmann, ‘Spätantiken Bauplastik’, p. 562.   For an attribution of the Baptistery to the late fifth century, see Thiel, Die Johanneskirche, p. 102. 38   The exact date of the Justinianic remodelling remains uncertain. Foss, Ephesus, pp. 44 and 88, claims that construction was begun by Bishop Hypatius in c. 535/6. However, Thiel, Die Johanneskirche, p. 102, considers this unlikely, claiming that Hypatius was often absent from Ephesos and considered the church of St Mary at Ephesos more important than St John. 37

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Figure 6.7

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Church of St John, Ephesos, detail of the passage between the southwest pier of the crossing and the southeast pier of the nave (author’s photograph)

A final question triggered by Procopius’ account concerns the form of the vaulted church before Justinian’s remodelling. I have tried to reconstruct the plan of this church on the basis of three different sources of evidence: the architectural form of its surviving transept and chancel; the location of the Baptistery, with which it must have been associated; and Procopius’ claim that the original building was shorter than the one resulting from Justinian’s remodelling of the nave. Based on this evidence, I would like to raise the possibility of a centralised cruciform church, with five major bays instead of six (Fig. 6.8). In this plan, the position of the Baptistery, until recently inexplicable, now makes perfect sense: the Baptistery now aligns perfectly with the narthex of the church, reflecting a relationship between church and Baptistery that was very common in the early Christian period. The density of information in the few lines of Procopius’ description is much greater than one would expect. This record confirms the interpretations of Plommer, Deichmann and Restle concerning the two phases of the vaulted church, and shows that the design changed considerably from one phase to the other. However, more importantly, Procopius’ account sheds new light on the first phase of the vaulted church. One could argue that proof of the existence of such an early phase has already been published. The present paper adds new

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Figure 6.8

Church of St John, Ephesos, first phase of the vaulted church and Baptistery (author’s reconstruction of plan)

evidence for this phase and improves our understanding of its form. Indeed, the plan of the church of St John before Justinian’s intervention makes its first appearance here. The fact that Justinian’s architects maintained the transept and chancel of the first vaulted church suggests that the Imperial intervention was experienced as a partial modification and not a replacement of an earlier structure. The Early Byzantine evolution of St John is indicative of the role of retrofit and modification in Byzantine architecture, a topic that has been eloquently analysed by Hans Buchwald.39 Procopius described a building that was still in mutation. As one phase succeeded the other, different architectural principles were being confronted, and sometimes combined in a single building. Had this record been a bit more extensive, it would possibly have conveyed more information about the complex character of such a composite building. If Procopius was confronted with a church that was the result of various building campaigns, the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visited a monument that had just undergone a dramatic change of use. What had been one of the 39   H. Buchwald, ‘Retrofit – Hallmark of Byzantine Architecture?’ in H. Buchwald, Form, Style and Meaning in Byzantine Church Architecture (Aldershot, 1999), VIII, pp. 9–17 and 21.

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most important churches in west Asia Minor, by the time of Ibn Battuta’s visit, seems to have been transformed into a mosque. Ibn Battuta’s visit to St John at Ayasoluk, as the town around the church had come to be known by then, was a fragment of a monumental voyage around the Muslim world that took the traveller from North Africa to Palestine and from Asia Minor to India and China. Having concluded his travels, Ibn Battuta returned to Fez, where he dictated an account of his travels to the secretary Ibn Juzayy. This account includes one of the last testimonies on St John. It was written in the middle of the fourteenth century, fifty years after the conquest of Ephesos by the Seljuks, and probably less than a century before the church was destroyed.40 Because of its date and author, this is a document of major importance. The church, which had been converted into the principal mosque of the city, clearly made a major impression on the Moroccan traveller. Devoting most of his account of Ayasoluk to it, he considered it as one of the most beautiful mosques of the world, and noted that it had formerly been a church greatly revered by the Greeks, who had come from great distances to visit it. Battuta seems to have stopped to contemplate the interior decoration, which he found splendid: the walls were covered with marble of different colours; the floor was paved with white marble. Certain parts of Ibn Battuta’s description are contradicted by the archaeological evidence. Although the church probably had six bays covered by spherical vaults, Ibn Battuta counted ‘eleven domes of varying sizes’. This statement, which is in conflict with my reconstruction of the monument, has received various interpretations by scholars. Hörmann regarded it as evidence for a vaulting pattern including six domes over the main bays and five domes over the west gallery.41 This reconstructed form, characterised by an excessive use of the dome, can claim only a vague kinship to the surviving vaulted churches of the Justinianic period. Of course, Ibn Battuta’s reference to such a plethora of domes can be considered as evidence for a final, Turkish modification to the Early Byzantine building. One could even argue that the author’s calculation included the domes of the Baptistery and the Skeuophylakion as well as three domes that possibly covered some of the bays of the narthex or the gallery.42 However, in my view, the number given by Ibn Battuta cannot be considered

40   An excellent English translation of Ibn Battuta’s travel account occurs in Gibbs, Ibn Battuta. The part of the account that refers to St John at Ephesos has been included together with comments in Foss, Ephesus, p. 146, Büyükkolancı, Johannes und die Johanneskirche, p. 39, and Thiel, Die Johanneskirche, p. 108. 41   Hörmann, Forschungen in Ephesos, p. 160. For a refutation of the argument championing the existence of domes over the west gallery, see Thiel, Die Johanneskirche, p. 25. 42   This argument has been refuted in Schneider, ‘Rezension’, p. 181. Schneider correctly indicates that the use of a series of domes in the gallery over the narthex is rare in Early Byzantine church architecture.

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as useful evidence for the visualisation of the narthex of the monument, as the author fails to give any clues about the exact size and location of domes. In addition to this, we should take into account that this description is part of a work that contains many inaccuracies and exaggerated statements.43 Perhaps, one of the most questionable statements in the description of St John by Ibn Battuta is the one that refers to the existence of water basins under each dome.44 According to the Moroccan traveller, the water in these pools, or fountains, was taken from the river. Archaeological evidence suggests that, here, either Ibn Battuta’s memory or his honesty is at fault. We should not forget that this description was written two decades after the visit to the monument. According to Amikam Elad, it is doubtful whether Ibn Battuta kept notes during his visits.45 It is very likely that, to cover lacunae in his memory, Ibn Battuta employed his experience of an architectural language that was much more familiar, and closer to him than that of Byzantium. Indeed, sophisticated hydraulic engineering and architectural use of water such as the ones he describes are more typical of Moorish Andalusia and Morocco than Byzantine Ephesos. Indoor fountains and shallow pools on the floor of monumental halls are typical of living quarters in late medieval palaces of western Islam. Many of these halls are covered by domes. The Lion Court and the Royal Baths in Alhambra (fourteenth century), as well as the hall next to the Patio del Yeso in the Alcázar in Seville (c. twelfth–thirteenth century) are typical examples of this fascinating architecture that so dextrously weaves together water and vaults.46 In spite of some passages that seem inconsistent to the modern reader, Ibn Battuta’s account serves to remind us that cultural background and personal experience play a vital role in the understanding of architectural space and one’s ability to describe it.

Conclusions The confrontation of two entirely different accounts has shown the variety of ways in which a monument can be perceived. At first glance, the two descriptions seem to be as different as the cultural backgrounds of their authors. However, there is also a recurrent theme in them, which deserves to be noted. Our overview of sixth-century testimonies and the fourteenth-century 43

  For one of the earliest papers challenging Ibn Battuta’s credibility see S. Janicsek, ‘Ibn Battuta’s Journey to Bulghar: Is it a Fabrication?’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 61.4 (1929), pp. 791–800. 44   Foss, Ephesus, p. 146. 45   A. Elad, ‘The Description of the Travels of Ibn Battuta in Palestine: Is it Original?’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 119.2 (1987), pp. 256–72, esp. 256. 46   M. Barrucand and A. Bednorz, Moorish Architecture in Andalusia (Köln, 2007), pp. 162–6 and 196–7.

Nikolaos Karydis

Figure 6.9

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San Marco, Venice, view of the nave looking east (author’s photograph)

document seems to indicate that the observation of vaults played a crucial and diachronic role in the experience of a building like St John at Ephesos. The vaults of this major Ephesian church must have been as impressive as the ones of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, a monument whose design seems to have been inspired by that of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople and St John at Ephesos (Fig. 6.9).47 Procopius’ statement concerning the similarity of these two monuments shows that forms of vaulting that were used in St John had a lot in common with early sixth-century Constantinopolitan vaulting practices. The same attention to vaulting is encountered in the account of Ibn Battuta, who has counted the domes of St John. However exaggerated this count may be, it reflects the modular character of the vaulting pattern used in St John, as well as the impression it made on the Moroccan traveller. Besides the important role of vaults in the experience of religious monuments, our survey also demonstrates the difficulty in drawing information 47

  The similarity between Justinian’s church of St John at Ephesos and San Marco in Venice has been noted in F. Forlati, La Basilica di San Marco Attraverso I Suoi Restauri (Trieste, 1975), pp. 62–3, and more recently in E. Concina, Storia dell’Architettura di Venezia dal VII al XX Secolo (Milano, 1995), pp. 34–6.

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from Byzantine and Arab written records. Sometimes, these records can reveal the form of amazing monuments that have disappeared for ever. In other instances, they confuse the scholar with exaggerations and inaccuracies. In both cases, however, they are instructive. Indeed, the re-examination of the two most important written testimonies referring to the form of St John breaks new ground by illuminating unknown aspects of this major monument. The fresh reading of Procopius’ account brings new evidence to the interpretations of previous scholars concerning the building phases of St John. Our analysis of this text indicates that two important parts of what has often been considered as Justinian’s church, namely its chancel and its transept, in fact belong to an earlier phase of the vaulted church that dates back to a period before the time of Justinian. Combined evidence from the archaeological remains and the written word helped to construct a possible model for the plan of this early phase of the vaulted church. The fact that Procopius’ statements seem to be more accurate and specific than those of Ibn Battuta hardly diminishes the latter’s usefulness. If the description of St John by Ibn Battuta seems to be unreliable, his account reveals the author’s perception of the monument and the method he used to record his experience. What seems to be a simple description really constitutes a recreation that relies as much on the author’s experience of the architecture of his motherland as on his reminiscence of his visit to Ephesos.

Section III Experiencing Landscape

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7. Locating Byzantine Monasteries: Spatial Considerations and Strategies in the Rural Landscape* Nikolas Bakirtzis

Dedicated to the memory of Svetlana Popović 

Monastic communities played a diverse role in the rural landscape during the Byzantine period.1 Monasteries controlled strategic locations, influenced rural societies, monitored important trade routes, and helped link cities and towns with the surrounding countryside. The complex role undertaken by monastic institutions relied on important conditions and processes, which included the symbolic and physical taming of a dangerous landscape through ascetic prayer and hardship, the timely exploration of a strategic district or region and the establishment of a strong relationship between the rural areas and related urban centres. Byzantine monastic tradition employed these processes as part of political, social and economic policies and agendas. This paper discusses the *   This essay evolved from the Newcastle Spring Symposium incorporating ideas presented at the 2011 Sofia Congress of Byzantine Studies. Many thanks to Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson for their invitation to participate in the symposium and publication, as well as to Dr Athanasios Papageorgiou for his generous scholarly advice. Research for this essay was supported by a European Commission FP7 Marie Curie Grant in the framework of project TIEM (Tracing Identity in the Eastern Mediterranean). 1   On the still limited scholarly discussion on the geographical and environmental aspects of Byzantine monasticism, see J. Koder, Der Lebensraum der Byzantiner. Historischgeographischer Abriss ihres mettelalterlichen Staates im östlichen Mittelmeerraum (Graz, 1984), pp. 109–112; T. Kiousopoulou, ‘Η γεωγραφία των βυζαντινών μοναστηριών. Παρατηρήσεις για μια τυπολογία’, in O. Gratsiou and C. Loukos (eds), Ψηφίδες: Μελέτες Ιστορίας, Αρχαιολογίας και Τέχνης στη μνήμη της Στέλλας Παπαδάκη-Oekland (Herakleion, 2009), pp. 95–106; T. Papagiannis and E. Simonopetritis, Φυσικός χώρος και μοναχισμός. Η διατήρηση της Βυζαντινής παράδοσης στο Άγιον Όρος (Athens, 1994). On visual perceptions of monasteries and their natural setting, see V. Della Dora, Imagining Mount Athos: Visions of a Holy Place from Homer to World War II (London, 2011).

From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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development and use of these strategies during the Middle, Late and PostByzantine periods based on topographic comparisons and on-site observations. The first half begins with an overview of the ascetic origins of rural institutions, followed by a focused discussion of asceticism in the countryside of Paphos in Cyprus.2 Selected examples will demonstrate the keen awareness with which monastic fathers employed strategic methods to influence the social, political and economic realities of the Byzantine world. In the second half of this essay, the analysis of three examples from Northern Greece, the Skete Prodromou near Veroia, the Chortaitou monastery near Thessaloniki and the monastery of St John Prodromos near Serres, will highlight the ways rural monastic communities defined the countryside and retained close urban links and relationships.3

Planting Relics of Monastic Tradition Driven by their spiritual goals and anchored to the long traditions of Byzantine monasticism, monks battled the natural world. The early beginnings of the practice can be traced in the third and fourth centuries, when hermits withdrew into the Egyptian and the Judean deserts.4 As the phenomenon of monasticism spread, the concept of the ‘desert’ as the desired setting for asceticism was applied to other inhospitable environments providing physical challenges for inhabitation, such as caves, desolate islands or steep mountainous cliffs. In their efforts to meet these challenges, monks built structures designed to control space and to symbolically sanctify the landscape. Implanting a monastery in the rural landscape was an intricate process based on singular devotion to spirituality coupled with a keen awareness of the secular socioeconomic and political realities of the time.5 Textual sources 2   On monasticism in the region of Paphos, see A. Papageorgiou, Ιερά Μητρόπολις Πάφου, Ιστορία και τέχνη (Nicosia, 1996), pp. 23–32. 3   Introductions to the history of the three monasteries are provided at D. Papazisis, Ιστορία της Ιεράς Μονής Τιμίου Προδρόμου (Σκήτη Βερίας) (Veroia, 1995); A.E. Vacalopoulos, ‘Η παρά την Θεσσαλονίκην Βυζαντινή Μονή του Χορταΐτου’, Epetiris Etaireias byzantinon spoudon 15 (1939), pp. 280–288; reprinted in Παγκαρπία μακεδονικής γης. Μελέτες Αποστόλου Ε. Βακαλόπουλου (Thessalonike, 1980), pp. 203–209; S.A. Paschalides and Demetrios Strates, Τα μοναστήρια της Μακεδονίας (Thessalonike, 1996), pp. 355–402. 4   Y. Hirschfeld, The Judean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period (New Haven, CT, 1992); J. Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in Eastern Monasticism. Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1994); C.C. Walters, Monastic Archaeology in Egypt (Warminster, 1974). 5   A.-M. Talbot, ‘Founders’ Choices: Monastery Site Selection in Byzantium’, in M. Mullett (ed.), Founders and Refounders of Byzantine Monasteries (Belfast, 2007), pp. 43–62; also

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and archaeological evidence reveal that during the Middle and Late Byzantine periods, solitary monks followed early monastic strategies in order to conquer the landscape symbolically and to determine a firm setting for their daily activities.6 Among these sources, hagiographies and founding narratives preserved in typika (charters) offer valuable insights as they narrate the steps taken bymonastic founders, known as ktetors to battle the wilderness in order to establish thriving monastic traditions in the most remote and unforgiving landscapes.7 Leading by example, enduring solitude and extreme hardship, monastic founders inspired the formation of communities around them and attracted the support of local populations and patrons, thus acquiring land and influence. Asceticism as a prelude as well as a concurring practice to organised communal monasticism was a widely practised foundational model during the Middle and Late Byzantine periods.8 Monastic sources show that founders explored the natural environment seeking seclusion, frequently inside dark caverns, before establishing rural monastic communities. Important examples see N. Bakirtzis, ‘The Creation of a Hierotopos in Byzantium: Ascetic Practice and its Sacred Topography on Mt. Menoikeion’, in A. Lidov (ed.), Hierotopy: The Creation of Sacred Spaces in Byzantium (Moscow, 2006), pp. 126–149. L. Nixon, Making a Landscape Sacred: Outlying Churches and Icon Stands in Sphakia, Southwestern Crete (Oxford, 2006), and idem, ‘Building Memory: The Role of Sacred Structures in Sphakia and Crete’, in B. Dignas and R.R.R. Smith (eds), Historical and Religious Memory in the Ancient World (Oxford, 2012), pp. 187–214, offers a methodical approach to the topography of sacred landscapes, including the location of monasteries. 6   Regarding the role and position of the holy man in Early Christian and Byzantine societies, see P. Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA, 1982), pp. 103–152; P. Charanis, ‘The Monk as an Element of Byzantine Society’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 25 (1971), pp. 61–84; R. Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium 843–1118 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 7–119; P. Magdalino, ‘The Byzantine Holy Man in the Twelfth Century’, in S. Hackel (ed.), The Byzantine Saint (Crestwood, NY, 2001), pp. 51–66. 7   J. Thomas and A. Constantinides Hero (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents (Washington, D.C., 2000); C. Galatariotou, ‘Byzantine Ktetorika Typika: A Comparative Study’, Revue des études byzantines 45 (1987), pp. 77–138. The factual value and the layered complexity of monastic foundation documents and narratives is increasingly appreciated in archaeological and historical research: see for example, S. Popović, ‘Are Typika Sources for Architecture? The Case of Monasteries of Theotokos Evergetis, Chilandari and Studenica’, in M. Mullet and A. Kirby (eds), Work and Worship at the Theotokos Evergetis (Belfast, 1997), pp. 266–284; A.-M. Talbot, ‘Byzantine Monastic Horticulture: The Textual Evidence’, in A. Littlewood, H. Maguire and J. Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds), Byzantine Garden Culture (Washington, D.C., 2002), pp. 37–41; K. Smyrlis, ‘The Management of Monastic Estates: The Evidence of the Typika’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56, pp. 245–261. 8   S. Popović, ‘The Byzantine Monastery: Its Spatial Iconography and Sacredness’, in Lidov (ed.), Hierotopy, pp. 169–172; Talbot, ‘Founders’ Choices’, pp. 43–62; Bakirtzis, ‘The Creation of a Hierotopos’, pp. 126–149.

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of this practice include Euthymius the Younger on Mt Chortiatis (ninth century), Nikon Metanoeite in the area of Sparta (tenth century), St Paul of Latros (tenth century), St Athanasios of Athos (tenth century), Neophytos the Recluse in Cyprus (twelfth century), Petar of Koriša in Kosovo (early thirteenth century), and Simon the Athonite (second half of the thirteenth century).9 Svetlana and Danica Popović have effectively used hagiographic narratives along with folklore and topographical evidence to establish a more comprehensive understanding of the architectural organisation and development of Byzantine monastic institutions.10 Caverns associated with founders’ ascetic deeds were integral components of the monastic landscapes of important institutions such as the monasteries of St John of Rila…St Petar of Koriša (thirteenth century), to name some instructive examples..11

9

  L. Petit, ‘Vie et office de St Euthyme le Jeune’, Revue de l’Orient chrétien 8 (1903), pp. 168–205; D.F. Sullivan, The Life of St Nikon (Brookline, MA, 1987); P. Armstrong, ‘The Monasteries of St Nikon: The Amyklaion, Sparta and Lakonia’, in C. Gallou, M. Georgiadis and G. Muskett (eds), Dioskouroi: Studies Presented to W.G. Cavanagh and C.B. Mee on the Anniversary of their Thirty-year Joint Contribution to Aegean Archaeology (Oxford, 2008), pp. 352–369; G. Fiaccadori (trans.), ‘Testament of Paul the Younger for the Monastery of the Mother of God tou Stylou on Mount Latros’, in Thomas and Constantinides Hero (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, pp. 135–142; T. Wiegand, Der Latmos (Berlin, 1913); G. Dennis (trans.), ‘Typikon of Athanasios the Athonite for the Lavra Monastery’, in Thomas and Constantinides Hero (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, pp. 245–270; C. Galatariotou, The Making of a Saint; The Life, Times and Sanctification of Neophytos the Recluse (Cambridge and New York, 1991); D. Bogdanović (ed.), Teodosije. Žitija (Belgrade, 1988), pp. 265–288; I. Tarnanidis, ‘Ο Βίος του οσίου Σίμωνα, πρώτου κτίτορα της ιεράς μονής Σίμωνος Πέτρας’, in Άγιος Σίμων ο Αθωνίτης (Athens, 1987), pp. 17–55; S. Papadopoulos, Σιμωνόπετρα. Άγιον Όρος (Athens, 1991). 10   S. Popović, ‘Sabaite Influence on the Church of Medieval Serbia’, in J. Patrich (ed.), The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present (Leuven, 2001), pp. 385–407; idem, ‘Byzantine Monastery’, pp. 150–185; idem, Krst u Krugu. Arhitektura manastira u srednjovekovnoj Srbiji (Belgrade, 1994); D. Popović, ‘Deserts and Holy Mountains of Medieval Serbia: Written Sources, Spatial Patterns, Architectural Designs’, in P. Sustal (ed.), Heilige Berge und Wüsten: Byzanz und sein Umfeld, Referate auf dem 21 Internationalen Kongress für Byzantinistik, London, 21–26 August 2006 (Vienna, 2009), pp. 53–69; D. Popović, B. Todić and D. Vojvodić, The Dečani Desert: The Sketae and Kellia of the Monastery of Dečani (Belgrade, 2011). 11   E. Bakalova and A. Lazarova, ‘A Locus Sanctus in Bulgaria: The Monastery of St John of Rila and its Sacred Topography’, in E. Hadjitryphonos (ed.), Routes of Faith in the Medieval Mediterranean: History, Monuments, People, Pilgrimage Perspectives. International Symposium, Thessalonike, November 7–10 2007 (Thessaloniki, 2008), pp. 309–330; D. Popović, ‘Paying Devotions to the Holy Hermit: The Shrine of St Prochorus of Pčinja’, in Hadjitryphonos (ed.), Routes of Faith, pp. 215–226; idem, ‘The Cult of St Petar of Koriša: Stages of Development and Patterns’, Balkanica 28 (1997), pp. 181–211.

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Cave cells inhabited by founders became the sacred locations for the foundation of churches and subsequently the development of architectural complexes around them.12 Founders enjoyed the support of secular and religious leaders as they led the revival of monastic life in contested regions, assuming influential roles in times of insecurity. Recurrently, the desert, the mountain and the cave functioned as the ideal stage on which to build a monastic complex, where the original ascetic’s cave cell and tomb became deeply rooted relics that reinforced the community’s purpose while attracting pilgrims, who became an important aspect of the monastery’s economy.13 Keenly aware of their role in securing land and influencing social, political and economic trends, monastic founders used their knowledge of tradition and history to promote their agendas. A concrete example of this scheme is shown in the ascetic legacy of the countryside of Paphos where to this day an array of monastic traditions claims the landscape. Specifically, the sites of the monastery of St Neophytos near the village of Tala, the so-called ‘old encleistra’ of Neophytos near Souskiou, and the cave chapel of the Holy Fathers at Archimandrita preserve evidence that points to foundational and organisational patterns (Fig. 7.1). Throughout the Mediterranean island, caverns associated with the lives of holy men are at the centre of local and regional cults.14 Most of them date from the last centuries of Byzantine control in Cyprus.15 Leading by example, ascetics drew from the legacy of early monastic fathers to transform, control and sanctify the island’s landscape. Their activities affected contemporary Cypriot society that saw from the eleventh century until the end of Byzantine rule a proliferation of newly founded monasteries enjoying the support of state

12

  S. Ćurčić, ‘Cave and Church: An Eastern Christian Hierotopical Synthesis’, in Lidov (ed.), Hierotopy, pp. 216–236. 13   The central importance of ascetic tradition in the architectural development of monasteries in Byzantium is further discussed in N. Bakirtzis, ‘Byzantine Architecture and the Monastic Experience’, in A.M. Yasin (ed.), Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture: Cambridge World History of Religious Architecture (Cambridge, forthcoming). 14   A. Papageorgiou, ‘Λαξευτά ασκητήρια και μοναστήρια της Κύπρου’, Epetirida Kentrou Meleton Ieras Monis Kykkou 4 (1999), pp. 33–96. 15   G. Hill, History of Cyprus, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1940), pp. 295-321; C. Mango, ‘Chypre, carrefour du monde byzantin’, XVe Congrès International d’Etudes Byzantines, Rapports et corapports, vol. 5 (Athens, 1976), 3–13; reprinted in C. Mango, Byzantium and its Image: History and Culture of the Byzantine Empire and its Heritage, Variorum Reprints (London, 1984), art. XVII; Spyros Vryonis, Byzantine Cyprus (Nicosia, 1990); A. Asdracha, ‘H Κύπρος υπό τους Κομνηνούς’, in Ιστορία της Κύπρου, Βυζαντινή Κύπρος, vol. 3 (Nicosia, 2005), pp. 293–412; T. Papacostas, Byzantine Cyprus: The Testimony of its Churches, 600-1200 (D. Phil. diss., University of Oxford, 1999). More recently, D.M. Metcalf, Byzantine Cyprus 491–1191 (Nicosia, 2009), pp. 499–578.

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Figure 7.1

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The site of the ‘old encleistra of St Neophytos’, Kouklia, Cyprus (© Nikolas Bakirtzis and Woody Hanson)

and church officials.16 The strength of ascetics’ foundations is demonstrated by their growth during the centuries of Lusignan and Venetian rule, a period during which cave cells became relics of monastic practice and narrative. In the region of Paphos, the ascetic legacy of St Neophytos remains the most prominent example of a Byzantine monastic founder and the focus of the most popular local cult. In 1159, after many years of spiritual trials, Neophytos reached the location of a natural cavern next to a stream inside a mountainous ravine close to the village of Tala approximately 10 km from the town of Paphos. The cave became the holy man’s cage, thus the term encleistra, as he withdrew inside it seeking solitude.17 His ascetic practice and the ensuing support of the Bishop of Paphos, Vasileios Kinnamos, from 1170 until 1191, laid the foundations of the prominent monastic institution and the organised architectural complex that gradually developed on the nearby plateau. The presence of the water source at the site was of key importance 16   Galatariotou, Making of Saint, pp. 57-59; Papacostas, Byzantine Cyprus, pp. 105-106; Metcalf, Byzantine Cyprus, pp. 517–520 17   C. Mango and E.J. Hawkins, ‘The Hermitage of Saint Neophytos and its Wall Paintings’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 20 (1966), pp. 120–206.

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as it supplied the variable needs of the monastic community; to this day it irrigates the monastery’s gardens. The juxtaposition of the encleistra to the monastic complex along the two sides of the mountainous ravine engages a visual dialogue that contains the history of the monastic foundation and constitutes an informative example of the evolution of monastic traditions at the site. The rugged western side of the ravine is a pilgrimage site – a monument to the mythology of the monastery as it provides the physical proof of Neophytos’ presence at the site corroborating the founding narratives of the textual sources and the typikon. The smoother eastern side of the gorge accommodates the buildings of the organised complex, which is the actual living monastery. The holy man’s notable writings, the wall paintings in his encleistra, and the allure of his personality have received the close attention of the scholarly community.18 Even so, little is known about the broader context of asceticism in the region. The landscape of Byzantine and medieval Paphos preserves evidence of the existence of other ascetics leading comparable lives inside caverns that led to the foundation of monastic communities. Northeast of contemporary Paphos and approximately 3 km north of Kouklia (ancient Palaepaphos) and close to Souskiou village, one of three caverns in the steep southern side of the Fatalas river gorge is known as the ‘old encleistra of St Neophytos’ (Fig. 7.2).19 The cave, whose smoothened surfaces bear the evidence of human intervention, is of a rough oval shape (a little under 4 m wide). Its interior is decorated with colourful frescoes that are considered to be some of the best examples of Late Paleologan art in Cyprus with some scanty remains of an earlier cycle, possibly dating to the thirteenth century.20 The iconographic programme and the style of the wall paintings point to a date in the second half of the fifteenth century. The most interesting aspect of the cave cell is the built tomb (approximately 1.5 m in length), situated in a cavity carved in the eastern side of the cavern. A pointed arch tops the tomb in the form of an arcosolium. Nothing remains of the relics that it originally contained. The presence of a tomb is significant as it fits the model of an ascetic’s realm, where his cell becomes his burial ground. The cave bears no specific evidence of its use as a church, although this could be the result of a later development when it acquired its funerary function.

18   C. Galatariotou (trans.), ‘Testamentary Rule of Neophytos for the Hermitage of the Holy Cross near Ktima in Cyprus’, in Thomas and Constantinides Hero (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, pp. 1338–1373. 19   R. Gunnis, Historic Cyprus: A Guide to its Towns and Villages, Monasteries and Castles (London, 1936), p. 290; G.A. Soteriou, Τα Βυζαντινά μνημεία της Κύπρου (Athens, 1935), pl. 46, 57a, 74–77; Papageorgiou, ‘Λαξευτά ασκητήρια’, pp. 57–59. 20   A. Stylianou and J. Stylianou, The Painted Churches of Cyprus (London, 1985), pp. 397–400; Papageorgiou, ‘Λαξευτά ασκητήρια’, p. 59.

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Figure 7.2

The site of the old encleistra of Neophytos (author’s photograph)

Like at St Neophytos monastery, the site preserves evidence of both solitary and organised monastic activity. The existence of two more caverns, which once preserved scanty traces of frescoes, suggests the existence of a small lavra (cluster of cells) at the location. It is reminiscent of the ascetic activity that grew around Neophytos’ original cell. In addition, the presence of a small church and the ruins of nearby buildings less than 300 m north of the old encleistra, point to the existence of an organised monastery. The church is dedicated to Sts Constantine and Helen, and its interior preserves remains from two cycles of fresco decoration, the earliest of which dates from the beginning of the twelfth century and the other from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century.21 Athanasios Papageorgiou identified the monastery as that of St Epiphanios of Kouklia based on a document from 1203/1204.22 From the same source, we also learn of monk and ‘encleistos’ Euthymios, who resided at the site at the 21

  Papageorgiou, Μητρόπολις Πάφου, p. 74. Gunnis, Historic Cyprus, p. 291; Soteriou, Βυζαντινά μνημεία, pl. 38, 74a, 75, 77a. 22   Papageorgiou, ‘Λαξευτά ασκητήρια’, pp. 57–58, refers to a note in fol. 316v document Paris Gr. 301, published by J. Darrouzès, ‘Notes pour servir à l’histoire de Chypre’, Kypriakai Spoudai 23 (1959), pp. 31–32, and C.N. Constantinides and R. Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus (Washington, D.C., 1993), pp. 103–106.

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turn of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth century, and to whom the cave cell and tomb can be attributed. Furthermore, the nearby monastic complex and church could be associated with the community of monks that gathered around him.23 Besides being a contemporary of Neophytos, Euthymios shares the same epithet, encleistos, underlying his choice of ascetic habit. The identification of the cave cell with the old encleistra of Neophytos is a local tradition broadly attributed to the influence of the cult of the Saint in broader Paphos. Even though the association of the cave with Neophytos is difficult to substantiate, there is value to the specific tradition as it links the two asketaria (ascetics’ cells) and the communities that grew around them. Both monasteries appear to share similar patterns in their foundation, organisation and development established around the legacy of a hermit seeking solitude in a cave. There seems to be a more complex relationship between the two locales that needs to be further explored. Pointing to this link is the fact that, in the fifteenth century, the monastery of St Epiphanios is referred to as a metochion (dependency) of the Holy Encleistra of St Neophytos.24 Unfortunately there is no information about the time of the acquisition of this dependency, but it could be placed in the context of Neophytos monastery’s growth under the Lusignans. Approximately 11 km northeast of Kouklia the village of Ano Archimandrita is the location of yet another monastic tradition that evokes those of Neophytos and Euthymios.25 At the southwest edge of the village and on the steep side of a rocky outcrop that offers a commanding view of the surrounding plateau in the Troodos mountain southern foothills, a deep cavern dedicated to the Holy Fathers preserves evidence of its use by ascetics in the medieval period.26 The carved cavern is approximately 2.75 m long and has a maximum width of 1.33 m. Its interior preserves wall paintings representing the standing figures of monks and ascetics. The south end of the cavern accommodates 23

  According to the available evidence, we can only hypothesise on the chronological relation of the cave cells to the nearby monastic complex. Textual evidence on the presence of monk Euthymios and the proposed date of the early painting cycle from the church of Sts Constantine and Helen suggest that both the small lavra and the monastery existed in the early years of the thirteenth century. Nonetheless, considering the known models and traditions of Early and Middle Byzantine monastic foundations, like Neophytos, I believe that ascetic activity at the site, whether initiated or revived by Euthymios, preceded, even for limited time, the foundation of the organised community. 24   According to a note in folio 315v dated to the fifteenth century, Darrouzès, ‘Notes’, pp. 31–32. 25   Papageorgiou, ‘Λαξευτά ασκητήρια’, pp. 44–46. 26   Gunnis, Historic Cyprus, pp. 174–175, describes the cave, identifying it with a reused Roman tomb and relating its dedication to a local tradition about 318 Early Christian Syrian monks who after arriving in Cyprus were led by an archimandrite to this location, where they were later killed by a local pagan population.

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a narrow carved bench that resembles that of Neophytos. At the southern end of the western side of the cave, a metal-framed door opens to a carved rectangular niche that serves as an ossuary containing the skulls and bone remains of several individuals. The identification of the relics remains elusive and suggestions about the date of the preserved wall paintings concentrate cautiously on the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.27 The proximity of the church of St Theodosios Koinoviarchis (meaning ‘leader of a cenobium’), dated to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, located on a plateau just below the rocky outcrop that accommodates the cave, presents us with a topographic arrangement very close to that of the other two monasteries.28 The cave and the church appear to be parts of the same monastic realm. The first was used by one or more ascetics and was possibly the centre of a larger community of monks. The latter, which tradition identifies as the katholikon of an abandoned monastery, could be seen as a part of the organised monastery that succeeded the aforesaid lavra. The very presence of a village at this isolated Paphian locale is linked to this monastic tradition as its name derives from the term Archimandrite. The cavern containing the relics of monastic fathers was a point of reference for the organised community below – a constant reminder of the history and the legacy of its founders, similar to the arrangement at the monastery of St Neophytos and the encleistra of Euthymios. Whether tracing an earlier monastic tradition, or being a newly established one, the monastic activity at the site of the cave of the Holy Fathers could be linked with the thriving monastic activity of the end of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Paphos and Cyprus in general. It fits the patterns discussed earlier in terms of its topography, organisation and development. With little doubt, the caves of Neophytos, Euthymios and the Holy Fathers appear to conform to the same foundational scheme. Other examples from the metropolitan district of Paphos, such as the caves of St Hilarion in Episkopi, St Konon near Alektora and Sts Barnabas and Timon at Vasa Koilaniou preserve Early and Middle Byzantine traditions that demonstrate the region’s legacy of ascetic practice.29 Monks withdrew in rural Paphian settings, as well as in other Cypriot localities, with a high degree of awareness and planning. Their actions secured the central role of orthodox monasticism as the island became a Byzantine outpost in the midst of the momentous military and cultural clash 27

  Papageorgiou, ‘Λαξευτά ασκητήρια’, p. 46; Papageorgiou, Μητρόπολις Πάφου, p.

25. 28   Gunnis, Historic Cyprus, p. 174, refers to the church and to an array of architectural members such as drums of columns scattered around it, suggesting to the existence of an earlier building at the site. Papageorgiou, Μητρόπολις Πάφου, p. 25, has suggested that the cavern could have functioned as the ossuary for a deserted monastery. 29   Papageorgiou, ‘Λαξευτά ασκητήρια’, 40; idem, Μητρόπολις Πάφου, p. 25; C. Kyrris, ‘Πέντε Κυπριακά Αγιολογικά Μελετήματα’, Epetirida Kentrou Meleton Ieras Monis Kykkou 3 (1996), pp. 69–103.

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of the Crusades.30 Leading by example, monastic founders inspired followers, gained the respect of local populations, and won the support of church and state officials. These relations helped monastic communities strategically to retain orthodox and Byzantine tradition over the changing cultural landscape of Cyprus. The resiliency of these monastic foundations is proven by their survival and growth through centuries of Latin and Ottoman rule in Cyprus.

Claiming the Rural Hinterland of Cities and Towns The relationship between rural monasteries and nearby cities and towns, exemplified in the aforementioned examples from Paphos, reflects important aspects of the Byzantine experience of the landscape. Especially during the Middle and Late Byzantine periods, monastic communities confidently served as cultural and institutional bridges among urban centres and their hinterlands. This task was expressed in variable ways that mirror the complex involvement of monks in the religious, social and economic life of Byzantine societies.31 The insertion of relics of ascetic practice in the countryside pointed to the sanctity of the landscape and attracted pilgrims from nearby cities. Communities utilised their surrounding environment and its resources, thus developing an empirical understanding of rural space.32 Moreover, monastic communities assumed defensive and administrative responsibilities in the control of strategic positions along important trade routes or in contested regions. Monasteries strengthened their position as they claimed land through their agricultural work, donations and dependencies as well as through trade and pilgrimage routes thereby extending the realm of their domain.33 30   Offering valuable context for the period are the essays in N. Koureas and J. RileySmith (eds), Cyprus and the Crusades: Papers given at the International Conference ‘Cyprus and the Crusades’, Nicosia, 6–9 September, 1994 (Nicosia, 1995). 31   A. Bryer, ‘The Late Byzantine Monastery in Town and Countryside’, Studies in Church History 16 (1979), pp. 219–241; Charanis, ‘The Monk as an Element of Byzantine Society’; Magdalino, ‘The Byzantine Holy Man in the Twelfth Century’. On the economic role of monasteries, see idem, ‘Monastic Properties and the State in the Byzantine Empire’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 4 (1948), pp. 51–118. The central role of monasteries in the context of the agrarian economy of Byzantium is demonstrated in J. Lefort, ‘The Rural Economy, Seventh–Twelfth Centuries’, in A.E. Laiou (ed.), The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Centuries, 3 vols (Dumbarton Oaks, 2008), vol. 1, pp. 231–310, and A. Laiou, ‘The Agrarian Economy, Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries’, in Laiou (ed.), The Economic History of Byzantium, vol. 1, pp. 311–369. 32   S. Papadopoulos, ‘Ο χώρος’, in Σιμωνόπετρα, pp. 58–76, provides a revealing view of monastic space defined by the daily life of monks. 33   On the complex economy of Byzantine monastic institutions, J.P. Thomas, Private Religious Foundations in the Byzantine Empire (Washington, D.C., 1987), pp. 216–269; K. Smyrlis, La fortune des grands monastères byzantins, fin du X- milieu du XIV siècle (Paris, 2006);

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Finally, urban metochia formed powerful links between the monastic ‘desert’ and the secular urban world.34 This relationship also facilitated the economic activities and production of monastic establishments.35 The examples of Skete Prodromou near Veroia, Chortaitou monastery near Thessaloniki, and St John Prodromos near Serres demonstrate the effectiveness of these strategies. On the slopes of the Pieria mountain range, overlooking the picturesque course of the River Aliakmon in northern Greece, a small monastery recalls one of the most important Byzantine monastic traditions.36 Known as Skete Prodromou and dedicated to St John the Forerunner, the monastic complex was built on a small mountainous ridge that overlooks the ravine of the river (Fig. 7.3). Most of what is preserved today dates from the second quarter of the nineteenth century.37 A more important tradition lies in the monastery’s surroundings. A series of caves featuring traces of ascetic use help to locate the landscape that according to monastic tradition became the training ground for numerous ascetics including Gregory Palamas and his brother Theodosios, Hosios Anthony the Younger, idem, ‘Τα μοναστήρια στο Ύστερο Βυζάντιο. Ο oικονομικός τους ρόλος και σχέσεις με το κράτος (13ος–15ος αιώνας)’, in E. Kolovos (ed.), Μοναστήρια, οικονομία, πολιτική. Από τους μεσαιωνικούς στους νεώτερους χρόνους (Ηράκλειο, 2011), pp. 53–68; M. Živojinović, ‘The Trade of Mount Athos Monasteries’, Zbornik radova Vizantolosˇkog instituta, Srpska akademija nauka 29/30 (1991), pp. 101–116. 34   On the economic presence of rural monasteries inside cities, see T. Kiousopoulou, ‘Η παρουσία των μοναστηριών μέσα στις πόλεις κατά τους Παλαιολόγειους χρόνους’, in N.G. Moschonas (ed.), Χρήμα και Αγορά στην Εποχή των Παλαιολόγων (Athens, 2003), pp. 273–282. I want to thank Prof. Kiousopoulou for providing me with a copy of her essay. Also on the topic, V. Hrochová, ‘Participation des villes et des monastères au surplus dans les exploitations rurales byzantines (XIIe–XVe siècles)’, in Économies Méditerranéennes. Équilibres et intercommunications XIIIe–XIXe siècles, vol. 2 (Athens, 1986), pp. 123–130. An important study of the economy and property of major Byzantine monastic foundations is given in Smyrlis, Grands monastères. 35   The role of monasteries in the economic interaction between cities and countryside is also shown in A. Harvey, Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 225–242; Also, T. Kiousopoulou, ‘Παρουσία μοναστηριών στις πόλεις κατά τους Παλαιολόγειους χρόνους’, in Moschonas (ed.), Χρήμα και Αγορά στην Εποχή των Παλαιολόγων (Athens,2003) pp. 273 and 280–282.. 36   G.Ch. Chionidis, Σύντομη ιστορία του Χριστιανισμού στην περιοχή της Βεροίας (Veroia, 1961), pp. 47–55; S.K. Kissas, ‘Ο Μοναχισμός στη Σκήτη Βεροίας στα Βυζαντινά χρόνια’, Πρακτικά Διημερίδας: Το μοναστήρι του Τιμίου Προδρόμου (‘Σκήτη Βεροίας’), 27– 28 Μαρτίου 1993 (Veroia, 1994), pp. 105–111; Papazisis, Σκήτη Βερίας, pp. 29–59. 37   This period marks the community’s efforts to rebuild the monastery that had been burned to the ground by the Ottomans in 1822 following the Greek uprising in the neighbouring town of Naousa. See G.Ch. Chionidis, ‘Νέα στοιχεία για τη χρονολόγηση του “χαλασμού” της Νάουσας και των μοναστηριών’, Makedonika 21 (1981), pp. 157–160; A.M. Papari, ‘Μακεδονική Μοναστηριακή Αρχιτεκτονική. Μονή Τιμίου Προδρόμου (“Σκήτη Βεροίας”). Αποτύπωση–Ανάλυση–Τεκμηρίωση’, in Πρακτικά Διημερίδας (‘Σκήτη Βεροίας’), pp. 193–254, esp. 201–202.

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Figure 7.3

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Τhe monastery of Skete Prodromou near Veroia, view from the east (author’s photograph)

Athanasios of Meteora, Dionysios of Mt Olympus, Nikanor of Thessaloniki, and Theonas, founder of the monastery of St Anastasia near Thessaloniki.38 Archaeological information about this monastic topography remains limited and little is known about the architecture of the complex before its reconstruction following its destruction by fire in 1822.39 The domed chapel of the Transfiguration preserves post-Byzantine frescoes and is considered the oldest extant part of the pre-1822 complex.40 The chapel is built against a cave that according to tradition is associated with Dionysios of Olympus, the prolific monastic father who revived the complex and established a coenobitic community in the 1520s. Apparently, Dionysios initiated his efforts to re-found

38

  S. Pascalides, ‘Άγιοι συνδεόμενοι με τη Σκήτη Βεροίας και την εν αυτή μονή Τιμίου Προδόμου’, in Πρακτικά Διημερίδας (‘Σκήτη Βεροίας’), pp. 119–140. 39   Papari, ‘Μοναστηριακή Αρχιτεκτονική’, pp. 246–253. 40   Ibid., pp. 212, 244; Papazisis, Σκήτη Βερίας, p. 152; on the painting decoration, C. Charalambides, ‘Η παράσταση της Κοίμησης της Θεοτόκου στο παρεκκλήσιο Μεταμόρφωσης Σωτήρα της Μονής Τιμίου Προδρόμου στην περιοχή του Αλιάκμονα’, in Πρακτικά Διημερίδας (‘Σκήτη Βεροίας’), pp. 99–104.

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the monastery by inhabiting the sacred site of an earlier ascetic’s cave cell, an act of great symbolic importance. The monastery is situated approximately 12 km west of the city of Veroia, an important regional centre since the Roman period.41 During the Middle and Late Byzantine periods, as well as during the Ottoman period, Veroia flourished, benefiting from rich agriculture and commercial activity, a fact demonstrated by the wealth of monumental art and architecture preserved to this day.42 The city is located on a natural plateau on the foothills of Mt Vermion, overlooking the fertile lands irrigated by the River Aliakmon and further by rivers Axios, Loudias, Gallikos, all flowing into the Thermaic Gulf at the Axios delta. The proximity of the Skete Prodromou to the city of Veroia underlines the physical and spiritual relation of ascetic practice to urban life. The existence of a major monastic centre in the city’s rural hinterland enriches our understanding of the ways monks retained an active involvement in secular life, bridging their chosen desert to the city. The presence of charismatic elders inhabiting caverns on the steep slopes of the Aliakmon, attracted great numbers of pilgrims and visitors from Veroia and the surrounding villages seeking their blessing and spiritual guidance. At the same time, monks travelled throughout the region and visited the regional centre to preach and offer advice. The Skete’s ascetics exercised direct spiritual influence over the city. For example, Hosios Antonios the Younger, Veroia’s patron, lived sometime near the turn of the eleventh century.43 Born in Veroia, he chose to join a monastic community and subsequently follow the life of an ascetic on the slopes of the Pieria range along the route of the Aliakmon river. He retreated to a cave, where he remained as a hermit until his death. His remains were removed from the cave and transported to the church of the Virgin Kamariotissa in Veroia, thus establishing two focal points for his cult, one rural and one urban.44 Antonios’ life cycle became a narrative that encapsulated the spiritual relation between the city and the rural monastery. He departed Veroia for the mountain a pious young layman and returned a Saint, thus unifying these two seemingly distant realms. Whereas the example of the Skete Prodromou demonstrates the spiritual role of rural monastic communities in the cultural life of neighbouring urban centres, the case of Chortaitou monastery, dedicated to the Mother of God, 41

  G.Ch. Chionidis, Ιστορία της Βέροιας, 2 vols (Veroia, 1960). Concerning the importance of Veroia in the Christian period, see idem, Σύντομη ιστορία του Χριστιανισμού στην περιοχής της Βεροίας (Veroia, 1961). 42   T. Papazotos, Η Βέροια και οι ναοί της: Ιστορική και αρχαιολογική σπουδή των μνημείων της πόλης (Athens, 1994). 43   G.Ch. Chionidis, Όσιος Αντώνιος ο Νέος εκ της Μακεδονικής Βεροίας (Βέροια, 1965); Kissas, ‘Μοναχισμός στη Σκήτη Βεροίας’, pp. 105–111. 44   Kissas, ‘Μοναχισμός στη Σκήτη Βεροίας’, p. 107, 111.

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on Mt Chortiatis east of Thessaloniki, points to the more practical duties of monastic institutions.45 The region separates the peninsula of Chalkidiki from the Mygdonian plateau and its lakes: Koroneia and Volve. According to Ioannis Kaminiates, Mt Chortiatis was an active monastic centre by the tenth century, while its mountainous slopes are associated with ascetics and monastic founders like Hosios Photios and Euthymios the Younger.46 With its foundation and early life remaining obscure, the monastery of Chortaitou emerged as the central monastic institution on the mountain from the twelfth century to the end of the Late Byzantine period.47 The architectural remains of the complex can be observed around the schoolyard of the contemporary village of Chortiatis on the homonymous mountain.48 What can be traced on the ground is the large size of the monastic enclosure, which is polygonal in shape and encloses approximately 1.5 hectares. Rectangular towers supported the curtain walls, giving it not only the appearance but also the capabilities of a fortress. The small domed octagonal church of the Transfiguration dated to the twelfth century is the only standing building preserved from the Byzantine period.49 Outside the monastic complex and along the western slopes of Mt Chortiatis are the remains of water channels, filtration galleries, and the aqueduct that supplied Thessaloniki.50 The latter features several building phases from the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. The monastery was involved in the regulation of the water supply of the city and thus had 45

  For the history and archaeology of Mt Chortiatis, see M. Manoledakis, Από τον Κισσό στον Χορτιάτη (Thessalonike, 2007); and G. Bakalakis, ‘Κισσός’, Makedonika 3 (1953–1955), pp. 353–362. 46   Ioannis Kaminiates, De expugnatione Thessalonicae, ed. G. Böhlig, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 4 (Berlin, 1973), 5. 5–15. There was an earlier tradition history of monasticism on the mountain: see A.E. Vacalopoulos, Ιστορία της Θεσσαλονίκης, 316 π.Χ (Thessalonike, 1983), pp. 83–84. On Hosios Photios, see E. Kaltsogianni, S. Kotzampase and I. Paraskevopoulou, Η Θεσσαλονίκη στη βυζαντινή λογοτεχνία: ρητορικά και αγιολογικά κείμενα (Thessalonike, 2002), pp. 131–133. On St Euthymios the Younger, Petit, ‘Vie de St Euthyme’, pp. 168–205. 47   On the monastery of Chortaitou, see Vacalopoulos, ‘Μονή του Χορταΐτου’, pp. 280–288; A.E. Vacalopoulos, ‘Ιστορικές έρευνες έξω από τα τείχη της Θεσσαλονίκης’, Makedonika 17 (1977), pp. 285–290; Bakalakis, Κισσός, pp. 361–362; Manoledakis, Χορτιάτης, pp. 109–127. 48   S. Sambanopoulou, ‘Μονή Χορταΐτου’, in Δίκτυο Αρχαιολογικών Χώρων και Μνημείων Κεντρικής Μακεδονίας (Νομοί Θεσσαλονίκης – Κιλκίς – Πιερίας): Πρόσωπο και Χαρακτήρας, Hellenic Ministry of Culture/9th Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities (Thessalonike, 2007), pp. 114–116; Manoledakis, Χορτιάτης, pp. 115–123. 49   N. Nikonanos, ‘Η εκκλησία της Μεταμορφώσεως του Σωτήρος στο Χορτιάτη’, in Κέρνος. Τιμητική Προσφορά στον καθηγητή Γ. Μπακαλάκη (Thessalonike, 1972), pp. 102–110. 50   Manoledakis, Χορτιάτης, pp. 102–104, esp. 116.

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assumed a critical role in its defence.51 This task was directly related to the defence of the city during its most volatile period. Located in the immediate hinterland of the city offering the advantageous position of higher ground to an attacking army, Mt Chortiatis and the monastery itself gained importance during an age where Byzantine control over the surroundings of the city was weak. The absence of a system of fortifications to control what was the most vulnerable part of Thessaloniki’s immediate surroundings, suggests that the monastic institution assumed a key defensive role along with the supervision of the city’s water supply. Control of the mountainous region was further regulated through a network of smaller monastic institutions engaged in an array of economic activities. For example, the Late Byzantine buttressed tower of Agios Vasileios is situated at the point where the northern foothills of Mt Chortiatis meet the banks of Lake Koroneia.52 It is possibly the only visible remnant of a fortified monastery that was active in the exploitation of the fishing resources of the lake and also controlled the road that ran along the southern side of the Mygdonian plateau. Overall, the region of Mt Chortiatis demonstrates the diverse role and engagement of rural monastic institutions in the management of Thessaloniki’s countryside. Northeast of Thessaloniki, the monastery of St John Prodromos (the Forerunner) on Mt Menoikeion, approximately 10 km from Serres, presents a useful example that permits a close understanding of the landscape components that through the centuries helped bridge the rural monastic institution with an important regional centre (Fig. 7.4).53 The existence of the monastery, from at least the twelfth century/early thirteenth century onwards and the continuous flow of pilgrims and monks between the city and the mountain transformed the intermediate countryside

51   N. Bakirtzis, ‘Between the Mountain and the Lake: Tower, Folklore and the Monastery at Agios Vasileios near Thessalonike’, in M. Johnson, R. Ousterhout and A. Papalexandrou (eds), Approaches to Byzantine Architecture and its Decoration: Studies in Honor of Slobodan Ćurčić (Farnham, 2012), pp. 174–175. 52   Ibid., pp. 165–185. 53   On Prodromos monastery’s documents, see A. Guillou, Les archives de saint-JeanProdrome sur le mont Ménécée, Bibliothèque Byzantine (Paris, 1955), and L. Bènou, Le codex B du monastère Saint-Jean-Prodrome Serrès XIIIe–XVe siècles (Paris, 1998). For the monastic typikon, T. Miller (trans.), ‘Typikon of Joachim, Metropolitan of Zichna, for the Monastery of St. John the Forerunner on Mount Menoikeion near Serres’, in Thomas and Constantinides Hero (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, pp. 1579–1612. For the art and architecture of the monastery, see A. Xyngopoulos, Αι τοιχογραφίαι του Καθολικού της Μονής Προδρόμου παρά τας Σέρρας (Thessaloniki, 1973); A. Strati, Η ζωγραφική στην Ιερά Μονή Τιμίου Προδρόμου Σερρών 14ος–19ος αι. (Thessaloniki, 2007); N. Bakirtzis, Hagios Ioannis Prodromos Monastery on Mt. Menoikeion: Byzantine Monastic Practice, Sacred Topography and Architecture (PhD dissertation) (Princeton, NJ, 2006).

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Figure 7.4

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Τhe monastery of St John Prodromos on Mt Menoikeion near Serres, view from the east (author’s photograph)

into a landscape dominated by monastic life.54 The sacred realm of the holy mountain extended all the way to the urban world of the city as the monastery possessed significant real estate in the city and the region.55 According to the monastic typikon, a second monastery dedicated to St John Prodromos was established within the city of Serres in the beginning of the fourteenth century56 – a development similar to the case of the Skete Prodromou in Veroia.

54   The architecture of the monastic katholikon suggests a twelfth-century date, Bakirtzis, Prodromos Monastery, pp. 196–207. Based on the revised dating of monastic documents, Smyrlis, Grands monastères, p. 85, estimates at least an early thirteenth-century foundation date. For the analysis and dating of the monastery’s documents, M. Verture, Recherches sur les actes du monastère Saint-Jean Prodrome sur le mont Ménoikion (Serrès, XIIIe–XVe siècle) (PhD dissertation) (Paris, 2002), and C. Gastgeber and O. Kresten, Sylloge Diplomatico- Palaeographica I: Studien Zu Byzantinischen Diplomatik Und Paläographie (Vienna, 2010), pp. 179–232. 55   Kiousopoulou, ‘Παρουσία μοναστηριών’, pp. 274–280. On the economy of the monastery of Prodromos through its surviving documents, see, Smyrlis, Grands monastères, pp. 85–95. 56   T. Miller (trans.), ‘Typikon of Joachim, Metropolitan of Zichna, for the Monastery of St. John the Forerunner on Mount Menoikeion near Serres’, in Thomas and Constantinides Hero (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, p. 1594; C. Demetriades, Προσκυνητάριον τῆς ὲν Μακεδονίᾳ παρὰ τὰς Σέρρας ἱερᾶς και σταυροπηγιακής και πατριαρχικής μονής του Τιμίου Προδρόμου συνταχθέν παρά Χριστοφόρου ιεροδιδασκάλου και ηγουμένου αυτής (Leipzig, 1904), p. 23.

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This powerful bond between the rural monastery and the city was further expressed outside its walls. Exiting the castle of Serres towards the monastery, networks of paths, bridges, and an array of rural dependencies mirrored the influential presence of monks and the extent of the institution’s property. At the same time, they defined a cultural route that was sustained by the continuous movement of laymen and monks between the city and the holy mountain. The northeastern gate of the city, not preserved today, was identified in relation to the presence of the monks in the city as it led to the road to Mt Menoikeion.57 A fourteenth-century metochion of the monastery, also dedicated to Prodromos, was located in the proximity of the gate, resembling in many ways the physical relation of the monastery of the Holy Apostles to the Litea Gate in Thessaloniki.58 In both cases, it is worth considering the role of monastic communities in the regulation of access to the cities of Serres and Thessaloniki respectively. Close to the monks’ gate and along the road leading east of Serres, an old bridge, not surviving today, allowed safe passage over a river stream running along the eastern curtain of the city’s walls.59 It was known as the ‘bridge of the monks’, identified in relation to the major monastic institution on the mountain and the connection to its urban dependencies. The contemporary road, whose route follows that of its medieval predecessor, continues through the suburb of ‘Katakonozi’, a toponym reminiscent of the property of emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, who was one of the significant ephors (benefactors) of Prodromos monastery.60 A few hundred metres further east, the double church of St George Kryonerites, a Prodromos dependency dating from the early fourteenth century, marks the site where the trail turns north climbing the spurs of Mt Menoikeion towards the monastery.61 The 57   P.N. Papageorgiou, ‘Αι Σέρραι και τα προάστεια. Τα περί τας Σέρρας και η Μονή Ιωάννου του Προδρόμου’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 3 (1894), pp. 19–20. Also, see the plan of the city’s walls by N. Nikolaou, Σκαπανείς της ιστοριογραφίας και προβλήματα της ιστορίας των Σερρών (Thessaloniki, 1964), pl. VI, where the gate is noted as ‘gate of the monks’. 58   Ibid., p. 30; Demetriades, Προσκυνητάριον, p. 32, G. Kountiades, Σύντομος ιστορική επισκόπησις της Ιεράς Μονής Προδρόμου Σερρών, 6th edn (Serres, 1978), p. 14. For the most recent discussion of the Holy Apostles in the context of late Byzantine Architectural developments, see S. Ćurčić, Architecture in the Balkans: From Diocletian to Süleyman the Magnificent (New Haven, CT, and London, 2010), pp. 552–555. G. Varinlioğlu, ‘Urban Monasteries in Constantinople and Thessaloniki: Distribution Patterns in Time and Urban Topography’, in J.J. Emerick and D. Deliyannis (eds), Archaeology in Architecture: Studies in Honor of Cecil L. Striker (Mainz, 2005), pp. 187–198, offers an important study of the location of monastic institutions in the fabric of the two major Byzantine urban centres. 59   Papageorgiou, ‘Αι Σέρραι’, p. 20, 66. 60   Ibid., p. 19, 67–68. 61   For the church of St George Kryonerites, see A. Xyngopoulos, Έρευναι εις τα Βυζαντινά μνημεία των Σερρών (Thessaloniki, 1965), pp. 61–71; for the path to the monastery

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existence and maintenance of this route of communication was important to the monastery as it secured its link to Serres. Along the way, olive groves, gardens, rural chapels, storage units and threshing grounds helped transform the mountainous landscape into a controlled, humanised environment that underlined the presence of the monastic community tending to its property with the help of local populations.62 As exemplified at the Skete Prodromou, Chortaitou monastery and St John Prodromos, Byzantine monastic communities maintained strong ties between their isolated locations, the surrounding countryside, and nearby urban centres. It was through these links that monks exerted influence over economic, political and social developments and phenomena in both rural and urban societies. Monastic communities cultivated numerous strategies to remind leaders and laypeople of their authority. These included embedding relics and pilgrimage sites at strategic locations, defining the urban and rural landscape with built elements such as bridges, gateways and pathways whose names linked them with the monastery, supporting and promoting urban metochia, mentoring and cultivating local leaders to adopt the practices of the church, systematising necessities such as water, roadways and fortresses, as well as controlling local farming and fishing. It was through these strategies that monks mediated the experience of the natural environment and the urban setting.

Conclusion Asceticism and its prototypical battle with the wilderness was a common prelude to monastic foundations and became an integral component of the lives of their communities during the Middle, Late and Post- Byzantine periods.63 Time and again, the desert, the mountain and the cave functioned as the ideal stage to frame and celebrate a holy man’s existence and subsequent monastic foundation.64 In this context, the foundation of rural monasteries was a process that accommodated monks’ religious goals as well as the local and regional interests of the Byzantium. Their strength was tested repeatedly during times of political and socioeconomic instability, as well as in regions contested between the Byzantine Empire and its rivals.Under of Prodromos, see Papageorgiou, ‘Αι Σέρραι’, p. 86. 62   An informative description of the monastery’s setting on Mt Menoikeion is given in Demetriades, Προσκυνητάριον, pp. 5–12. In reference to the location of churches in the rural landscape, Lucia Nixon offers a systematic survey of the region of Sphakia in Crete, proposing a ‘grammar of location’ for the definition of sacred space, see Landscape, pp. 14–116. 63   Popović, ‘Byzantine Monastery’, pp. 169–170. 64   Talbot, ‘Founders Choices’, pp. 50–52, discusses the topos of the wilderness in Byzantine foundation documents.

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precarious conditions the control of cities’ hinterland and communication routes was a complex task for the Byzantine State, which frequently invested in the resiliency of monastic communities as institutions able to serve a diverse role; a function they continued to serve through the Post-Byzantine period. Besides being centers of religious life, monasteries contributed to the organisation of the countryside, secured control of geographic areas and communication routes, and provided access to rural societies and their socioeconomic networks.65 In this context, monastic life contains important aspects of the Byzantine experience of the rural landscape.

65   K. Smyrlis, ‘Τα μοναστήρια στο Ύστερο Βυζάντιο. Ο οικονομικός τους ρόλος και οι σχέσεις τους με το κράτος’, in E. Kolovos (ed.), Μοναστήρια, οικονομία και πολιτική. Από τους μεσαιωνικούς στους νεώτερους χρόνους (Herakleion, 2011), pp. 61–64; N. Bakirtzis, ‘The Practice, Perception and Experience of Byzantine Fortification’, in P. Stephenson (ed.), The Byzantine World (London and New York, 2010), pp. 366–367; Kiousopoulou, ‘Γεωγραφία’, pp. 95–106.

8. Experiencing Politiko: New Methodologies for Analysing the Landscape of a Rural Byzantine Society Katie Green

Landscapes are intricate, complex and multi-layered products of social dynamics and cultural practices. The adoption of new methods and theoretical approaches to the organisation of landscape and how it is experienced is essential to the development of Byzantine studies. This paper draws upon the methods developed in landscape research to present the results of a detailed study of the spatial composition of the settlement and landscape of Politiko in Cyprus, a village with a rich historic landscape in which a succession of sacred and secular spaces can be identified. The results of this analysis will be explored through the application of theoretical approaches that focus on routines and experiences of inhabiting landscape. This is essential to improving our understanding of Byzantine rural society and the landscape as an expression of social identity. The aim of the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies was to explore the Byzantine world by investigating what it was like for a person to experience the monuments, places and ideas of Byzantium. But how can we, inhabitants of a modern world, begin to appreciate Byzantine experience? One of the ways in which researchers today increasingly wish to advance the study of the perceptions and experiences of past people is by studying the organisation of past landscapes that comprise culturally constructed and experienced spaces.1 The principle aim of this paper is to present new methodologies for analysing rural historic landscapes as an expression and effector of social 1

  See works by: R. Bradley, An Archaeology of Natural Places (London, 2000); J.A. Delle, An Archaeology of Social Space: Analyzing Coffee Plantations in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains (New York, 1998); W. Ashmore and A.B. Knapp (eds), Archaeologies of Landscape (Oxford, 1999); G. Nash (ed.), Signifying Place and Space: World Perspectives of Landscape and Rock-art (Oxford, 2000); G. Nash (ed.), Semiotics of Landscape: Archaeology of Mind (Oxford, 1998); N. Roymans, ‘The Cultural Biography of Urnfields and the Long-term History of a Mythical Landscape’, From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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identity. With recent developments in archaeological and remote sensing techniques our knowledge of the rural context of the early Byzantine period can be enhanced. This paper combines the modern techniques of Historic Landscape Characterisation and retrogressive landscape analysis with data from archaeological survey to build up a detailed historic study of the spatial composition of the landscape surrounding the Mediterranean village of Politiko in Cyprus. These modern techniques will provide a framework for how the landscape was structured and organised in the Cypriot Byzantine period (A.D. 965–1453). This framework will include the size, shape and construction of the fields, boundaries, pathways, areas of settlement and sacred space within the landscape. This framework will then be used to explore how Byzantine perceptions and experiences of the landscape can begin to be investigated. This study of the landscape of Politiko is one small area of a larger landscape study of the foothills of the Troodos Mountains undertaken by the author, which aims to compare the historic character and landscape development of southern Turkey with Cyprus.2 This paper’s analysis of Politiko’s landscape is not intended to be a detailed history of Politiko, but to provide an example of how modern techniques can be used to help explore experience in the past.

Why Study Landscape? Landscape itself is a difficult concept that can be illusive and hard to assess.3 The origins of the English expression ‘landscape’ are thought to stem originally from an Anglo Saxon term that referred to an area of land ruled by a feudal lord, such as a river valley or a range of hills.4 However, it was the reintroduction of the term in the sixteenth century by Dutch artists who used the word as a technical term in reference to paintings of rural scenery that had a major impact in our understanding of the word ‘landscape’. From this point onwards, ‘a new awareness of the aesthetic nature of landscape emerged as a new kind of topographical writing flourished’.5 The Romantic poets and writers of the following period were in a large measure responsible for the

Archaeological Dialogues 2.1 (1995), pp. 2–24; C. Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape (Oxford, 1994). 2   K. Green, Rural Byzantine Landscapes and Societies: New Approaches to Characterisation and Analysis, unpublished PhD Thesis (Newcastle University, 2013). 3   R. Kaplan, ‘The Analysis of Perception via Preference: A Strategy for Studying how the Environment is Experienced’, Landscape Planning 12 (1985), pp. 161–76, esp. 161. 4   W. Calder, Beyond the View: Our Changing Landscapes (Melbourne, 1981), p. 6. 5   J.B. Jackson, ‘The Vernacular Landscape’, in E.C. Penning-Rowsell and D. Lowenthal (eds), Landscape Meanings and Values (London, 1986), pp. 65–79, at 70.

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ways we still understand landscape today.6 However, today we know that the expression ‘landscape’ does not only represent the physical picturesque referred to by the early Dutch painters. Over the last few centuries the term ‘landscape’ has developed in meaning to denote a vast and complex variety of ideas that make it difficult to define simply. David Lowenthal has explored the changing Western apprehension of landscape in his article that considers how we live with and look at landscape.7 Tim Ingold has suggested that the use of the suffix ‘scape’, with its origins in Dutch landscape painting, has led generations of scholars to mistake the connotations of the suffix for a particular scopic regime.8 Ingold argues that the resemblance of the word to the Greek skopos meaning the target of the bowman, or the mark to which he aims, is entirely coincidental and the real origins of the suffix ‘scape’ lie in the old English sceppan or skyppan, which means to shape.9 Therefore, we should consider that, during the first use of the term landscape, it would have had associations with shaping the land, and ‘the land was scaped by the people who, with foot, axe and plough, and with the assistance of domesticated animals, trod, hacked and scratched their lines into the earth, and thereby creating its ever-evolving texture’.10 This means that both shape and shapers should be contemplated when defining the term ‘landscape’. Matthew Johnston, a leading landscape archaeologist and theorist, describes the meaning of the term as the natural land itself, the humanly created features that exist objectively across space, and how this land is viewed by people and their cognitive systems and processes of perception.11 This suggests that all senses, not just sight, should be included in an analysis of how people perceive the landscape. Carl Sauer was one of the first significant proponents of this way of thinking and an influential scholar in the development of the concept of cultural landscape. Sauer believed in the ‘establishment of a critical system which embraces the phenomenology of landscape, in order to grasp in all of its meaning and colour the varied terrestrial scene’.12 This is now a much more popular attitude within modern archaeological thought, and over the past decade a number of articles and chapters in edited volumes have explored sensory approaches. These scholars have stressed a need to re6

  D. Cosgrove, ‘Landscape Studies in Geography and Cognate Fields of the Humanities and Social Sciences’, Landscape Research 15.3 (1990), pp. 1–6, esp. 3. 7   D. Lowenthal, ‘Living with and Looking at Landscape’, Landscape Research 32.5 (2007), pp. 635–56. 8   T. Ingold, ‘Landscape or Weather-world?’, in T. Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (London, 2011), pp. 126–35, esp. 126. 9   Ibid. 10   Ibid., p. 126. 11   M. Johnson, Ideas of Landscape (Oxford, 2007), pp. 2–3. 12   C.O. Sauer, ‘The Morphology of Landscape’, reprinted in J. Leighly (ed.), Land and Life (Berkley, CA, 1975), p. 320.

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embody and re-sensualise the past.13 This reflects the growth of understanding that such approaches can provide valuable insights into past societies. This approach cannot provide definitive answers, but it does encourage analysis of the complex relationships between people and the world they live within. Within this phenomenological framework, landscapes can be identified as comprised of culturally constructed and experienced spaces. Space ‘forms the framework of our existence’14 and is consistently interwoven with the process of expressing meaning derived from the human mind and formed according to the functional or cognitive ideal.15 Space is a lived experience, organised in relation to the actions that are conducted within it. Through the symbolic ordering of space we experience our role in society.16 Within space we define our own places. As Christopher Tilley argues, the idea of place is a cultural and social construction, its meaningfulness maintained through human activity.17 Archaeology has been analysing spatial relationships and providing insight into the activities, social relations and cognitive structures of past cultures for as long as the discipline itself has been studied.18 Landscape archaeology, by its nature, is concerned with perception and experience. It investigates relationships between the physical elements of the land and how people navigate landscapes, conceptually and through lived experience,19 and recognises how people’s perceptions shape how they see the environment, and how the environment, in turn, shapes the cultural perceptions of the landscape.20 People do not just live on the land: they live through a series of meaningfully constructed landscapes, ranging from the personal and mundane to the political, economic, ritual and exceptional.21 As a result of this, meaning can be found in the patterns of social relationships that leave discreet

13

  R. Joyce, ‘Archaeology of the Body’, Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005), pp. 139–58; L. Meskell, ‘The Somatization of Archaeology: Institutions, Discourses, Corporeality’, Norwegian Archaeological Review 29.1 (1996), pp. 1–16. 14   B.C. van Fraassen, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space (New York, 1985), p. 3. 15   K. Altenberg, Experiencing Landscape: A Study of Space and Identity in Three Marginal Areas of Medieval Britain and Sweden (Stockholm, 2003), p. 24; D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford, 1989), p. 239. 16   P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, 1977). 17   Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape, p. 217. 18   E.M. Kroll and T.D. Price (eds), The Interpretation of Archaeological Spatial Patterning (New York, 1991). 19   J.D. Seibert, ‘Introduction’, in E.C. Robertson et al. (eds), Space and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology (Calgary, AB, 2006), pp. xiii–xxiii, at xvi. 20   Ashmore and Knapp (eds), Archaeologies of Landscape, p. 6. 21   G. Vavouranakis, ‘Burials and the Landscapes of Gournia, Crete, in the Bronze Age’, in Robertson et al. (eds), Space and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology, pp. 233–42, esp. 237.

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yet intricate and often difficult-to-distinguish marks on the landscape22 with settlements, roads, monuments and earthworks forming the framework for human social cognition. Archaeologists have sometimes used the analogy of the ‘palimpsest’23 of past events to represent the overlaying features within the landscape. People create characteristic individual spaces that can be seen reflected in the material record that varies culturally.24 These can differ according to class and social status – for example, higher status can be reflected in large household space or central location in a settlement. This is frequently seen in the placement and sizing of churches in the Byzantine world.25 Through the symbolism implicit in the organisation of settlements and landscapes, dayto-day social interactions can be observed. The acquisition of these cognitive maps by successive generations transforms this space into a communicator of cultural knowledge, ‘serving as what some neo-Darwinians call a “replicative” device, as well as a stabilizing force on the culture’.26 As Tim Ingold has said, ‘Through living in it, the landscape becomes a part of us, just as we are a part of it’.27 If society is viewed as a dialectic relationship between the agency of people and social structures,28 the landscape is both the conduit and the consequence of it. Over the past decade this concept has rapidly become a substantial aspect of modern archaeological investigation with cosmological and cognitive approaches growing in popularity. Byzantine studies, however, are only just beginning to engage with these kinds of theoretical ideas that have yielded rewards elsewhere. Landscape and rural settlements in particular have been one of the more noticeably neglected subject areas of Byzantine investigation. As Nico Roymans asserts, landscapes are intricate, complex and multi-layered products of social dynamics and cultural practices, and to fully understand a culture in its real dimension it is necessary to identify the perception and organisation of its space.29 It is vital that Byzantine studies adopt new analytical methods, and consider new theoretical approaches to the 22   A.R.H. Baker, ‘Introduction: On Ideology and Landscape’, in A.R.H. Baker and G. Biger (eds), Ideology and Landscape Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 1–14. 23   O.G.S. Crawford, Archaeology in the Field (London, 1953), p. 51. 24   E. Zubrow and P. Dalypp, ‘Symbolic Behaviour: The Origin of a Spatial Perspective’, in C. Renfrew and C. Scarre (eds), Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 157–74, esp. 161. 25   K. Green, Early Byzantine Settlements: Church Placement, Sacred Space and Controlled Movement, unpublished MA Dissertation (Newcastle University, 2008). 26   M. Donald, ‘Material Culture and Cognition: Concluding Thoughts’, in Renfrew and Scarre (eds), Cognition and Material Culture, pp. 181–7, esp. 181. 27   T. Ingold, ‘The Temporality of the Landscape’, World Archaeology 25.2 (1993), pp. 152–74, at 154. 28   Ashmore and Knapp (eds), Archaeologies of Landscape, p. 6. 29   Roymans, ‘The Cultural Biography of Urnfields’, p. 2.

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organisation of landscape and how it is experienced in order to move beyond a dehumanised history. The following section will introduce the case study of Politiko, which will be analysed in light of these landscape approaches.

Politiko The village of Politiko is located in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains in the Nicosia district of Cyprus. This is a landscape of rocky hillsides, green forested slopes and arable valleys dotted with tiny villages and ancient sites. The village and surrounding landscape of Politiko was chosen for this analysis because the area has a rich historic landscape in which a succession of sacred and secular spaces can be identified. Politiko is also located within the study area of the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project (SCSP).30 The information gathered by this survey project provides vital material to aid this historic landscape analysis of Politiko and its surroundings. This paper focuses its study of experience on the Byzantine period landscape of Politiko. To use the HLC methodology and to determine the HLC zones that will be used, a researcher needs to understand how the patterns of physical features in a landscape reflect the landscape’s historical development.31 This requires knowledge of the human interaction with the landscape at all periods in history in order to unravel which landscape features were present during the Byzantine period. The following is a brief history of the region around Politiko using traditional historical and archaeological sources to provide a historical context for the area. Unlike traditional studies, however, this paper does not content itself with this history, but expands upon it by using it to develop the HLC types and by using the results of the historic landscape analysis to explore how this landscape was experienced. The first evidence for human interaction with the landscape surrounding Politiko can be dated to the pre-pottery Neolithic period;32 by the Middle Bronze Age, material recorded by the SCSP attests to more extensive occupation in the area33 and human manipulation of neighbouring areas evident through the remains of mining and metal work.34 Cyprus is well known during this period for its copper production, and the Troodos Mountains are rich in copper ore. The flat fertile plain to the north and east, which we shall see was well cultivated in later periods, presumably sustained the prehistoric 30   M. Given and A.B. Knapp, The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project: Social Approaches to Regional Archaeological Survey (Los Angeles, CA, 2003). 31   J. Crow, S. Turner and A.K. Vionis, ‘Characterizing the Historic Landscapes of Naxos’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 24.1 (2011), pp. 111–37, esp. 112. 32   Given and Knapp, The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, pp. 182–3. 33   Ibid. 34   Ibid., p. 133.

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settlements in the area. The modern village of Politiko that forms the focal point of this study is located upon the site of ancient Tamassos. It is not known who founded the city of Tamassos, but it is assumed that it was founded around the eighth century B.C.35 Tamassos, during its height, would have been a large and vibrant city. This would have been a landscape of successive sacred spaces with three sanctuaries located within the immediate vicinity of the settlement.36 The remains of the temple to Aphrodite can be seen on the eastern extent of modern Politiko, and not far from here lies a necropolis housing the Tomb of the Kings. One sanctuary was situated on what would have been the outskirts of Tamassos and also has evidence of an associated necropolis.37 This site is now the location for the Ayios Mnason monastery, which suggests the appropriation and continuation of the sacred spaces in this region across time. The settlement activity declined in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, but again peaked during the Late Roman period.38 Marcus Rautman asserts that the most intense period of activity in rural Cyprus was during the Late Roman period when a complex network of settlements covered the island.39 Throughout the Late Roman period, the Cypriot landscape would have been scattered with dispersed farmsteads comparable to the pattern seen across Greece.40 The picture then changes with a decline in activity;41 the city, however, was not entirely in decline. The settlement’s Christian spaces were already well defined by the Byzantine period and the area had a significant Christian population from a very early date. Local tradition claims that Tamassos was visited by the Christian apostle Paul in A.D. 45, when he ordained a young man named Iraklidhios who became the first bishop of Tamassos. Iraklidhios is said to have first taught from a small cave42 with the assistance of his friend Mnason for whom the monastery of Ayios Mnason is named. The exact date of this monastery’s construction is not known, but the name and appropriation of the sanctuary hint at an early date. It is known, however, that when the monk Bars’kj visited the area in A.D. 1735 the Ayios

35

  G.R.H. Wright, Ancient Building in Cyprus (Leiden, 1992), p. 122.   Given and Knapp, The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, p. 276. 37   Ibid., pp. 122–3. 38   Ibid., pp. 277–84. 39   M. Rautman, ‘Villages of Byzantine Cyprus’, in J. Lefort et al. (eds), Les Villages dans l’Empire Byzantin (Paris, 2005), pp. 453–64, esp. 461. 40   S.E. Alcock, Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge, 1993), p. 18. 41   Given and Knapp, The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, p. 285. 42   J. Hackett, A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus from the Coming of the Apostles Paul and Barnabas to the Commencement of the British Occupation (A. D. 45–A. D. 1878) (London, 1901), p. 379. 36

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Mnason monastery was well established.43 A second monastery dedicated to Iraklidhios is located on an adjacent hill-top south of Politiko. Features of this monastery complex can be dated to the fifth century A.D., with the present church built in the fifteenth century A.D., known to be situated on the remains of a ninth-century A.D. basilica. The monastery contains a fourteenth-century A.D. mausoleum where a trapdoor leads to an underground tomb said to be the original burial place of Iraklidhios.44 A third church is located on the southern edge of the modern settlement of Politiko, dedicated to Saint Theodore. The current building was successively renovated in A.D. 1777 and 1888 and most recently in 2001, but local tradition believes the first church on the site was constructed at the beginning of the second century A.D.45 The evidence suggests that these three sites would have been the main areas of sacred space and that significant activity was taking place in the settlement throughout the Byzantine period. The exact date when Tamassos became Politiko cannot be determined, but it is known that the bishop’s seat based here was still referred to by the name of Tamassos until A.D. 1222, after which the seat was annulled.46 This appears to be a defining moment in the area’s history: with the demise of the episcopal headquarters, the city of Tamassos seems to end. In its place, the village of Politiko begins. During the period between the seventh and tenth century A.D., Cyprus experienced repeated attacks by the Arabs that effected widespread devastation. After Richard the Lionheart conquered Cyprus, the island came into the control of Guy de Lusignan, the exiled King of the Crusader state of Jerusalem, who established a Western-style feudal society.47 One of the first records of the settlement as Politiko was by Voustronios.48 Another report can be found in the Chronological History of the Island of Cyprus, which refers to Tamassos as now called the village Politiko.49 Little is known of Politiko during this period and the same can be said for the period after Cyprus was conquered by Venice in A.D. 1489. In A.D. 1571, the island fell to the Turks. The arrival of Ottoman rule ended the feudal social system, banished the Latin hierarchy and recognised Orthodoxy, brought Islamic 43   V. Bars’kyj, A Pilgrim’s Account of Cyprus: Bars’kyj’s Travels in Cyprus. Essay, Translation, and Commentaries, trans. A.D. Grishin (Altamont, NY, 1996). 44   A. Richmond (webmaster), Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, SCY326: Politiko Ayios Iraklidhios Monastery (Glasgow, n.d.), available at http://www.scsp.arts.gla.ac.uk/ [accessed 3 January 2012]. 45   Pers. comm. V. Georgiou, 6 July 2010. 46   G. Jeffery, A Description of the Historic Monuments of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1918), p. 211. 47   G.F. Hill, A History of Cyprus: The Frankish Period 1192–1432, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1972). 48   Georgios Voustronios, The Chronicle of George Boustronios, 1456–1489, trans. R.M. Dawkins (Melbourne, 1964). 49   Archimandrite Kyprianos, Chronological History of the Island of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1902; reprint of 1788 original).

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culture and religion to the island, and began a new system of taxation. This taxation could total a fifth of a farmer’s income,50 but this obligation rather than oppressing rural life ‘stimulated a rural economic system that was often intensive, efficient and sophisticated’.51 Over the past few centuries Politiko has developed from being an agricultural settlement with only a few families to a village with hundreds of people now resident. After the arrival of the British in 1878 A.D. the village went through a slow but steady increase of population. The influence of Europe was felt with the textile industry encouraging the growth of cash crops like Mulberry trees for silk worm cultivation.52 However, the mechanisation of agriculture and the improved communications of the 1920s and 1930s had the most impact on the rural landscape.53 The field systems changed as there was now no need for long strip fields that were conducive to animal-led ploughs. The following sections describe the archaeological methods used to unravel the post-Byzantine manipulation of the landscape and uncover the framework of the Byzantine landscape of Politiko.

Historic Landscape Analysis A unique combination of three archaeological methods is used in this paper’s historic landscape analysis. These methods are Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC), retrogressive landscape analysis, and analysis of archaeological survey data. In order to carry out these techniques, a base map is needed. Politiko has high-resolution Google Earth imagery dating from 2005 and 2008 available.54 To create a suitable base map, these images were loaded into ArcGIS 9.3 and geo-referenced. HLC is a technique developed by English landscape archaeologists in the late 1980s as a response to the deficiencies within the contemporary approaches of this period to acknowledge the importance of the broader historic landscape.55 The HLC method, unlike traditional archaeological recording methods, studies the groupings and 50   H. İnalcık, ‘Ottoman Policy and Administration in Cyprus after the Conquest’, in T. Papadopoulos and M. Christodoulou (eds), Praktika tou Protou Dhiethnous Kiproloyikou Sinedhriou (Nicosia, 1973), pp. 119–36, esp. 128. 51   M. Given, ‘Agriculture, Settlement and Landscape in Ottoman Cyprus’, Levant 32 (2000), pp. 215–36, esp. 228. 52   M. Given and M. Hadjianastasis, ‘Landholding and Landscape in Ottoman Cyprus’ Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 34.1 (2010), pp. 38–60, esp. 53. 53   Given, ‘Agriculture, Settlement and Landscape in Ottoman Cyprus’, p. 216. 54   Google Earth 6.1, Politiko, Cyprus, 35˚ 01’53.35” N and 34˚ 24’24.62” E, elevation 362m (5/21/2005 and 7/9/2008) [accessed 3 January 2012]. 55   G. Fairclough (ed.), Historic Landscape Characterisation: ‘The State of the Art’ (London, 1999), pp. 5–7.

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patterns of all historic features within the landscape, recognising that all elements of landscape, not just specific sites, have historical significance. HLC then uses mapping techniques to categorise individual areas of the landscape into predetermined Historic Landscape Character zones based upon the combination of historic features within the area. This allows different types of historic spaces within a landscape and their relationships to each other to be visualised. The HLC technique can also be used to portray historic time depth, by allowing the categorisation of areas in the landscape using only the features visible at specific periods of time, deconstructing the landscape and creating HLC time-slices of these specific periods. The advantages of HLC are that it analyses all of an area, it can be easily combined with other datasets using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), it allows for continual updating and re-evaluation, and it is flexible, allowing interpretations to develop over time as the landscape changes. The main drawback of HLC is that the grouping of features and categorisation of HLC zones is determined by the individual carrying out the process. However, the existence of the individual can also be seen as a strength because the individual embodies the basic nature of the HLC method, which ‘recognises that landscape is ubiquitous, that it is fundamentally about perception, and that it can be seen in many different ways’.56 The flexible nature of HLC can enable a landscape to be categorised by different individuals with different perspectives and allow the results to be compared alongside each other. Retrogressive landscape analysis can be used to inform a HLC. Retrogressive landscape analysis is a technique that unravels the physical and chronological relationships between different elements in the historic landscape, by studying the relationships of ‘horizontal stratigraphy’ between cultural features such as pathways and field boundaries, to establish the order in which they were created.57 This process of retrogressive landscape analysis can be carried out repeatedly across all landscape features to discover a relative chronology for their construction. When particular features within such landscapes can be dated, it is possible to map out the chronological development of the landscape more exactly,58 allowing the Byzantine landscape to be uncovered. This technique uses the Google Earth imagery as a base map. The benefit of this imagery is its recent time depth. In addition, further time depth was gained by consulting decommissioned CORONA satellite photography59 56

  S. Turner, ‘Historic Landscape Characterisation: A Landscape Archaeology for Research, Management and Planning’, Landscape Research 31.4 (2006), pp. 385–98, at 385. 57   J. Crow and S. Turner, ‘Silivri and the Thracian Hinterland of Istanbul: An historical Landscape’, Anatolian Studies 59 (2009), pp. 167–81, esp. 168. 58   Crow, Turner and Vionis, ‘Characterizing the Historic Landscapes of Naxos’. 59   US Geological Survey, CORONA Image DS009056009DA076_a (1963), available from http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ [accessed 31 March 2011].

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taken in 1963 by the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology during strategic surveillance.60 This provides an image of the 1960s landscape, revealing the changes to the landscape during the intensification of farming and the growth of the villages that has taken place over the last fifty years. The CORONA satellite image of Politiko shows that the village was slightly smaller and that the bridge over the river had not yet been built. However, the image also shows that the field system is very similar to today’s system and reveals relatively little change from the 1960s, indicating that by the 1960s the fields had already been converted into the irregular rectilinear field system visible today. As seen in the initial description of Politiko, past exploration of the area by antiquarians and archaeologists has provided a vast amount of data that can be considered when carrying out the HLC of Politiko’s landscape. Traditionally HLC has taken into account archaeological sites when carrying out the characterisation of landscapes, but directly combining an archaeological survey is an innovative approach that has not yet been exploited fully. The larger study of Cyprus by this author will discover the full potential of this methodology.61 In this paper’s study, an extremely advantageous resource is the data collected by the SCSP, which carried out intensive interdisciplinary survey in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains between 1992 and 1997.62 The data from this detailed survey is publically available online at the Archaeology Data Service63 in GIS-compatible shapefile format, allowing the survey units and the associated data to be overlaid on this paper’s base map. The information that the SCSP recorded on the survey area’s geology, land erosion and land use provides invaluable information for this paper’s deskbased HLC. The data collected by the SCSP project also allows the incorporation of valuable artefact and pottery statistics into the HLC of the area. For example, the SCSP ceramic collection results of the plain north of Politiko village reveal a long history of activity in the area. This ceramic material, when classified by period, largely consisted of Geometric to Classical ceramics spread evenly across the plain. Ceramics from the Hellenistic and Roman periods are sparser and less evenly spread, Byzantine extremely limited, and the medieval to modern period material is greater in density but more irregular 60   U.S. Geological Survey, Declassified Satellite Imagery – 1, available  at http:// eros.usgs.gov/#/Find_Data/Products_and_Data_Available/Declassified_Satellite_ Imagery_-_1 [accessed 3 January 2012]. 61   K. Green, Rural Byzantine Landscapes and Societies 62   Given and Knapp, The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, p. 1. 63   Archaeological Data Service (distributor), The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project: Digital Archive, doi:10.5284/1000208 (York, 2003), available at http:// archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archsearch/record.jsf ?titleId=953566[accessed 3 January 2012].

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in distribution.64 This suggests that the Geometric and Classical spread is the result of manuring. Gradual distribution over time due to ploughing is an unlikely explanation for the even spread of material as field boundaries would have restricted the dispersal. A manuring process is more likely, because the large contemporary metropolis of Tamassos would have produced a large quantity of rubbish for disposal. The later material is less likely to have resulted from manuring, as during Tamassos’ decline more time-effective and less costly methods of manuring, like animal grazing, as seen across the Mediterranean today, were likely used. Through the combination of ceramic data and an understanding of the landscape features, more information and greater time depth can be gained, which analysis of only the landscape features would not provide. All the information available from the SCSP was considered when each area was characterised; however, due to the nature of this paper, it is impossible and unnecessary to record every instance where the SCSP data influenced a HLC decision. Figure 8.1 presents the retrogressive landscape analysis of Politiko. The boundaries of fields are highlighted in shades of grey – the darker the shade, the more recently created the boundary. The bold black line highlights rivers. The thicker dashed line that crosses the river in the top right of the image and runs in a straight line towards the settlement of Politiko is a modern road that cuts through the fields, revealing it to have been built after the field system was established. The thinner dashed black lines show pathways that respect the field boundaries, indicating that they are either contemporary with, or earlier than, the field systems. In the top right-hand corner of the image, light grey lines reveal fields arranged in narrow strips, a common medieval and Byzantine period agricultural method found throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.65 These strip fields were subsequently shortened and combined together to create more rectangular fields appropriate for the advance in agricultural techniques and the change to cash crops. Additional sources such as the descriptions of antiquarian travellers, hagiographic sources and archaeological reports were also consulted during this analysis. Of particular note is a drawing by the monk Bars’kj created during his A.D. 1753 visit, which shows a road leading up to the monastery of Ayios Iraklidhios coming from the east. In the retrogressive landscape analysis, the line of this road, which had to have been created before the drawing in A.D. 1753, is indicated by a grey line. In the modern Google Earth image, it 64

  Given and Knapp, The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, pp. 198–9, 271–3.   G. Chouquer, Entre Bourgogne et Franche-Comté. Histoire d’un paysage, de l’époque gauloise à nos jours (Paris, 1993); X. de Planhol, De la plaine pamphylienne aux lacs pisidiens. Nomadisme et vie pastorale (Paris, 1958); P. Herring, ‘Cornish Strip Fields’, in S. Turner (ed.), Medieval Devon and Cornwall: Shaping the Ancient Countryside, (Macclesfield, 2006), pp. 44–77; S. Turner and J. Crow, ‘Unlocking Historic Landscapes in the Eastern Mediterranean: Two Pilot Studies using Historic Landscape Characterisation’, Antiquity 84.323 (2010), pp. 216–29. 65

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Retrogressive landscape analysis of Politiko results (© author)

is obvious that this is no longer the main approach. Instead, a road leading to the monastery from the north, indicated by a thicker dashed black line, is the principle approach. This road is absent in Bars’kj’s drawing, signifying that it was constructed after A.D. 1753. The eighteenth-century drawing also depicts an olive grove and two field boundaries north of the monastery – consequently, we can determine that these existed in A.D. 1753, and from comparison with the modern Google Earth imagery discover that they have not altered significantly over the last 260 years. More can also be determined about the size of monastery and the village church Ayios Theodhoros, which is also pictured. Using this retrogressive landscape analysis, it is possible to determine that the current landscape originated in an early period, with significant

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recent alterations. These include the straightening of field boundaries and the amalgamation or truncation of strip fields as modern crash crops were introduced, which no longer required long strip fields for ease of ploughing. From the retrogressive landscape analysis, it is also possible to state that the roads in the area generally follow long established pathways through the landscape, which were the most efficient and less arduous routes while respecting the field systems until very recently when modern roads began to cut across field systems. From the retrogressive landscape analysis, it is possible to suggest that the Byzantine landscape was one of small strip fields surrounding the smaller settlement of Politiko with the main approach to the settlement from the north. In this author’s larger study,66 over 25 pre-determined HLC zones were identified following intensive landscape investigation of the region and through comparative study of HLCs in Europe and the Mediterranean. Using all the information available, including the retrogressive landscape analysis, survey data and satellite imagery, the landscape of Politiko was classified into 17 of the most suitable of these HLC types. Figure 8.2 presents the HLC of the current landscape of Politiko, which classifies the ‘current’ historic character of the landscape. In this image, one of the most prevalent character types is ‘postmedieval coaxial fields’, which covers the majority of the plain to the north of Politiko. This area has been classified as such, because the dominant landscape features are the raised scrub boundaries of square and rectilinear fields with two or more boundaries that share a common axis. From the retrogressive landscape analysis, it is known that these landscape features are based on the amalgamation and truncation of earlier Byzantine and medieval strip fields and are likely, from the historical analysis of the region, to date to the post-medieval period. A smaller outlying area of the plain is classified as ‘terraced scrubland’. This character type takes note of the evidence from artefacts collected by the SCSP that this land may have been used for agriculture in an earlier period, but is no longer used in this way. From the retrogressive landscape analysis of these areas, they may have been considered to have no history earlier than the strip fields, but the results of the SCSP surface collection across this plain revealed a considerable quantity of earlier material suggesting otherwise and revealing the usefulness of using survey data when carrying out a HLC. One of the most significant character types is that of the settlement of Politiko. Through the HLC types you can see the changing extent of the settlement visible by the differing settlement HLC types. These refer to different phases of the settlement’s development. The core of the town is classified as ‘settlement 1’ and refers to areas of post-medieval settlement, which are currently occupied and have buildings dating to the post-medieval period. ‘Settlement 2’ refers to the extent of the modern occupied settlement and ‘settlement 3’ refers to abandoned pre-medieval settlement. This mainly 66

  Green, Rural Byzantine Landscapes and Societies.

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Historic Landscape Characterization (HLC) of Politiko (© author)

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encompasses two areas known to have been inside the walls of the ancient city of Tamassos. The exact extent of the Byzantine settlement cannot be definitively determined. The other historic landscape categories found in the area are indicated in the legend. This short explanation of the ‘current’ HLC begins to reveals the historic time depth of the landscape. This also emphasises how, when the post-Byzantine period landscape features are removed, we can also determine HLC zones for a ‘time-slice’ HLC of the Byzantine period. Another interesting area to highlight is the ring of sacred landscape around the settlement. As the historic background indicated, Politiko has several spaces that have been considered sacred through its history. The HLC categorises all the areas as ‘sacred space’. However, the three smaller areas relate in particular to Christian churches considered to have been in operation during the Byzantine period. The two larger areas are pre-Byzantine pagan sacred space. This refers to areas of ancient necropolis or sanctuaries and highlights a reduction in the amount of space determined as sacred over time. This also clearly reveals the close relationship between the locations of the earlier pagan and later Christian sacred spaces, despite an alteration in faith.

Experiencing Politiko From the results discussed above, you can see how the modern archaeological techniques used can help decipher a landscape and provided a framework of how the Byzantine landscape was physically organised. From this, why the landscape was ordered in this way and what this organisation can tell us about the perceptions and experiences of the people living in and travelling through the landscape can begin to be explored. The lives of the Byzantine inhabitants of this area would have revolved significantly around the seasonal changes and labours associated with growing crops. Through the historic landscape analysis of the area, it has been determined that the main agricultural area was in the plain to the north in a bowl of low-lying land, like many other agricultural areas of this kind in the region.67 The fields in this plain were likely to have been constructed in strip field formation and were likely to have been used to cultivate grain and vegetable crops. The settlement is located on a hill looking out over the field systems. With this physical framework, how can Byzantine experience be explored? Several scholars have demonstrated the importance of sound, touch and smell respectively on experience.68 All physical senses should be 67

  Given, ‘Agriculture, Settlement and Landscape in Ottoman Cyprus’.   S. Houston and K. Taube, ‘An Archaeology of the Senses: Perception and Cultural Expression in Ancient Mesoamerica’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10.2 (2000), pp. 261–94; G. MacGregor, ‘Making Sense of the Past: A Sensory Analysis of Carved Stone Balls’, World Archaeology 31 (1999), pp. 258–71; M. Strathern, ‘Environments Within: An Ethnographic 68

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considered when contemplating experience in order to re-embody and resensualise the past.69 The location of the fields in the northern plain and homes in the settlement means that many inhabitants would regularly experience physical travel as they walked to and from the fields each day. The journey to the fields would have elicited specific physical experiences dependent upon the routes taken. This would have been a more tiring experience when, returning home after a day of labour in the valley plain, the labourers would have to climb the hill to their homes in Politiko. The exploration of experience can be taken further to consider how the physical senses may have inspired particular feelings in the worker, as has been explored by Mark Jackson in relation to pilgrimage journeys.70 For example, they may have felt trepidation when travelling to check on their fields or perhaps a welcome on returning home. This could be explored by considering major themes in current theoretical studies such as the significance of place.71 For example, the location of the settlement would have affected how the occupants of the settlement would have experienced the landscape. The location of the settlement allows a view of the agricultural land – this may have evoked a sense of protection over the extremely important agricultural resources. The people who lived in these landscapes would be extremely familiar with the landscape: they would recognise every tree and landscape formation of the countryside in which they lived. The historicity of the landscape encapsulates memories. By virtue of familiarity from repeated interaction with the landscape, memories become engrained within it.72 The HLC and retrogressive analysis show that this landscape was in use for a long period and therefore would have been imbedded with the collective memory of past ancestors and their experiences of the land. The memories evoked by the landscape would affect the experience of the place. The significance of place can also be explored in relation to the sacred spaces revealed in the HLC. From the landscape study, we know that the Byzantine sacred spaces were in high locations, and earlier areas of pagan sacred space were still visible and would have been known. How did the occupants of the landscape experience these sacred spaces? It could be suggested that their locations were chosen because memory of the previous pagan sites was experienced. Appropriation of this type can be seen across

Commentary on Scale’, in K. Flint and H. Morphy (eds), Culture, Landscape and the Environment: The Linacre Lectures 1997 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 44–71. 69   Joyce, ‘Archaeology of the Body’; Meskell, The Somatization of Archaeology. 70   M. Jackson, ‘A Pilgrimage Experience at Sacred Sites in Late Antique Anatolia’, Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference Proceedings 8 (1998), pp. 72–85. 71   Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape. 72   Ingold, ‘The Temporality of the Landscape’, pp. 152–4.

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the ancient world.73 The dominant locations may indicate that the occupants of the settlement experienced a sense of pride in the building and chose the location to show this off.74 The initial choice is then perpetuated by later generations. The location itself may also have provided the settlement with a communal sense of protection. Were they located in these visible places out of reverence? In particular, how these locations affected the experience of procession, an important part of Byzantine liturgy, can be suggested. The locations uphill would have had a physical effect on the senses and the experience of the processors, and the route of the procession would have held a different meaning to each individual as it went past areas special to them such as their home.75 We know from the retrogressive landscape analysis of Politiko that the pathway to the church changed over time, and this change would have had an effect on the experience of the procession. Another area of potential for exploration from the HLC is the roadways and networks. Roads and paths cross spaces and are indicators of how movement and interaction within the landscape took place.76 From the retrogressive analysis, we can say that the Byzantine approach to the settlement was probably from the north beside the river. Knowing this allows us to ask how a traveller to the monastery of Agios Iraklidhos would experience this approach. They would first travel through the organised field system following the contour of the land. What would they think of this, would they consider the crops, would they see people working the fields, would they even be interested or would they be focused on the settlement? They would be able to see the settlement and probably the monastery as they approach. Would they have experienced a sense of anticipation? How would this journey affect them physically as they travel up hill to the settlement? These are just a few questions we can ask. Roads and pathways facilitate movement to the settlement and the monastery may have been a pilgrimage destination or at least a focus for import clergy, so frequent travellers to the site would not be unexpected. If pilgrimage was an aspect of the movement through this landscape, a very different form of force is at play and different senses are often manipulated by pathways.77

73

  R. Bayliss, Provincial Cilicia and the Archaeology of Temple Conversion (Oxford, 2004); H. Saradi-Mendelovici, ‘Christian Attitudes towards Pagan Monuments in Late Antiquity and their Legacy in Later Byzantine Centuries’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990), pp. 47–61; J.-M. Spieser, ‘The Christianisation of Pagan Sanctuaries in Greece’, in Urban and Religious Space in Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 1–13. 74   Green, Early Byzantine Settlements. 75   Jackson, A Pilgrimage Experience. 76   E. Gibson, Negotiating Space: Routes of Communication in Roman to British Colonial Cyprus (Glasgow, 2005). 77   Jackson, A Pilgrimage Experience.

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During the Roman period, the agricultural activity of the inhabitants of Politiko would have been single entities in a much larger enterprise ruled over by a large estate.78 By the medieval period this had changed and the inhabitants would have experienced small-scale peasant agriculture.79 The Byzantine inhabitants would have experienced this change. It is possible that the change may have been achieved in one event or over a period of time. Memory of the large estates may have influenced the experiences and attitudes of the later inhabitants. A sense of community may have been experienced by the Byzantine population and it is possible that, to meet tithes and taxes, neighbours would help each other in the agricultural activities and in turn this may suggest an experience of dependence. Juliet Du Boulay’s ethnography of rural village life in Greece, although not Cypriot or Turkish, is an excellent source of information for understanding community relations in a small Mediterranean twentieth-century rural village.80 These are just a few considerations of how the landscape maybe explored in relation to the experiences of the inhabitants. Much more can be learnt about the Byzantine rural populace if considered in this manner.

Concluding Remarks The suggestions of how people may have experienced the landscape are mainly subjective and cannot be definitively determined. But from considering how just a few HLC types may have been experienced, a whole new avenue of exploration using HLC is opened up. HLC could even be used, because of its flexible nature, to include a suggested experience layer to the HLC itself. Overall, this paper has attempted to show how new technical archaeological methodologies can be used to help decipher the complex and multi-layered products of social dynamics that are landscapes; and how this, in turn, can provide the foundation for exploring how the organisation of that space influenced the experience of people in the past, and how people’s perceptions, experiences and social actions influenced the creation of the landscape. Experience differs cross-culturally and is ultimately unique to every individual. It may ultimately be beyond the full comprehension of archaeological inquiry, but landscape studies do allow us to see real people in the past. By unravelling the modern landscape and attempting to see the 78

  M. Given, ‘From Density Counts to ideational Landscapes: Intensive Survey, Phenomenology, and the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project’, in E. Athanassopoulos and L. Wandsnider (eds), Mediterranean Archaeological Landscapes, Current Issues (Philadelphia, PA, 2004), pp. 165–82, esp. 175. 79   Ibid. 80   J. Du Boulay, Cosmos, life and Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village (Limn, 2009).

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Byzantine landscape, we can begin to see what the Byzantines would have seen and experienced and we can then begin to explore how the Byzantines may have experienced that landscape. This form of exploration is essential to improving the future understanding of Byzantine rural society.

9. Processing Emotion: Litanies in Byzantine Constantinople Vicky Manolopoulou

Introduction Litai are liturgical processions that are a mobile form of prayer. People in the Byzantine capital processed, among other reasons, in order to pray about significant occasions in the life of the city such as enemy attacks and earthquakes. The litanic commemoration of these events was part of civic life. This chapter considers matters of practice, material culture and topography that are linked to these religious processions, in order to illustrate ways of approaching an understanding of how people engaged with material culture and landscape in a Byzantine milieu; to do so, it explores ideas of emotion, memory and personhood that have hitherto been neglected areas in the archaeologies of Byzantium. Cosmology, worldview and history can be materialised in the landscape; such landscapes that can be seen as a world of experiences and meanings can be investigated archaeologically.1 Ceremonial landscapes incorporate specific features that can create and reinforce understandings about the sacred.2 They are formed by humans and they can shape human experience since they become loci of interaction.3 These loci do not exist in a separate milieu; on the contrary, the sacred and the urban milieus coexist in the same landscape. The purpose of archaeology is to approach an understanding of past societies through their material culture. The Byzantine archaeologist goes beyond the analysis of city plans, architecture and material culture, to follow a 1

  C. Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape Places, Paths and Monuments (Oxford, 1994); T. Patterson, ‘The History of Landscape Archaeology in the Americas’, in B. David and J. Thomas (eds), Handbook of Landscape Archaeology (Walnut Creek, CA, 2008), pp. 77–84. 2   W. Ashmore, ‘Visions of the Cosmos: Ceremonial Landscapes and the Civic Plans’, in David and Thomas (eds), Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, pp. 167–75. 3   H. Maschner and B. Marler, ‘Evolutionary Psycology and Archaeological Landscapes’, in David and Thomas (eds), Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, pp. 109–19. From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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holistic approach that recognises that cities are ‘places’, spaces of action and interaction. Urban environments are nuclei of interaction between people and material culture. They are spaces for meanings and understandings4 that are perceived through experience.5 The Byzantine capital had been an important and influential place in medieval times. The experience of the historic landscape of Constantinople permits the perception of intertwined notions of the heavenly and the mundane, the sacred and the profane. One way of experiencing this landscape was by participating in religious processions. Processions in Constantinople have been examined by both historians of liturgy6 and archaeologists.7 These studies have explored the interrelationship of processions and the topography of the city and have focused particularly on the liturgical aspects of human experience. This chapter attempts to illustrate a new way of approaching litanic movement in the landscape of Constantinople. This approach will benefit from existing studies on processions,8 but will seek to go further by using processions as a vehicle to illustrate ways of thinking about emotion and Byzantine archaeology. The examination of the emotionally charged relationship networks created between people, landscape and material culture can lead towards an understanding of the ways people created and perceived meanings and how they engaged with the Constantinopolitan landscape. Until now, approaches towards an understanding of emotion in Byzantium have been through texts,9 or within the framework of artistic representations.10 The reality hidden in written records and the reality mirrored in material 4

  David and Thomas, Handbook of Landscape Archaeology.   C. Tilley, Interpreting Landscapes: Geologies, Topographies, Identities (Walnut Creek, CA, 2010). 6   J. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development and Meaning of Stational Liturgy (Rome, 1987); R. Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History (Collegeville, MN, 1992); R. Taft, Through Their Own Eyes: Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw it (Berkeley, CA, 2006). 7   A. Berger, ‘Imperial and Ecclesiastical Processions in Constantinople’, in N. Necipoğlu (ed.), Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life (Leiden, 2001), pp. 73–88; L. Brubaker, ‘Topography and the Creation of Public Space in Early Medieval Constantinople’, in F. Theuws, M. De Jong et al. (eds), Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2001), pp. 31–43. 8   Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship; J. Baldovin, ‘A Note on the Liturgical Processions in the Menologion of Basil II’, in E. Carr, S. Parenti et al. (eds), Eulogema: Studies in Honor of Robert Taft (Rome, 1993), pp. 25–39; Berger, ‘Imperial and Ecclesiastical Processions’; Brubaker, ‘Topography and the Creation of Public Space’; Taft, Through Their Own Eyes. 9   M. Hinterberger, ‘Emotions in Byzantium’, in L. James (ed.), A Companion to Byzantium (Oxford, 2010), pp. 123–34; N. Tsironis, ‘Emotion and the Senses in Marian Homilies of the Middle Byzantine Period’, in L. Brubaker (ed.), The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium: Texts and Images (Farnham, 2011), pp. 179–98. 10   H. Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow in Middle Byzantine Art’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31 (1977), pp. 123–74. 5

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culture and landscape, are in a dialectical relationship. This chapter will take advantage of the presence and wealth of texts created during the Byzantine period and will use them as material for an interdisciplinary approach to the Constantinopolitan landscape. It will also visit theoretical concepts of emotion, memory and personhood. Analysis of urban religious processions facilitates investigation into performative aspects of the cultural landscape of Constantinople. This paper focuses on processions linked to civic events. A discussion of theoretical approaches to emotion by archaeologists is followed by an exploration of the nature of litai and their effect on the urban populous. Textual evidence will be used to reveal the emotional link between these religious processions and the City, including ideas of the landscape of Constantinople as a Theotokoupoli, the city of the bearer of God. Hence, there will be a discussion of the relationship networks created by performing a lite. This will entail a discussion of the meaning of memory and commemoration, because litai can be repeated annually. Following this, there will be an analysis of the meaning of architecture and material culture involved in litanic movement and the stimulus of the senses. An examination of the emotionally charged relationship networks created during litai enables an understanding of medieval engagement with the landscape and material culture through religious practices and can advance our understanding of the past.

Emotion The discussion of the incorporation of studies of emotion in archaeology started out very tentatively.11 It is currently at its most evident in the work of prehistorians who incorporate notions of emotion and memory into their work and combine these concepts with studies on agency and personhood.12 These studies move towards an understanding of everyday practice and of how people in prehistoric times engaged with the landscape and material culture. Harris and Sørensen rethink emotion and define four terms: emotion, affective fields, attunement and atmosphere. They ‘explore how these terms emerge in conjunction with the material world … and performance’.13 11   C. Gosden, ‘What Do Objects Want?’, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12.3 (2005), pp. 193–211; S. Tarlow, ‘Emotion in Archaeology’, Current Anthropology 41.5 (2000), pp. 713–46. 12   O.J. Harris, ‘Making Places Matter in Early Neolithic Dorset’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 28 (2009), pp. 111–23; O.J. Harris, ‘Emotional and Mnemonic Geographies at Hambleton Hill: Texturing Neolithic Places with Bodies and Bones’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20.3 (2010), pp. 357–71; O.J. Harris and T.F. Sørensen, ‘Rethinking Emotion and Material Culture’, Archaeological Dialogues 17 (2010), pp. 145–63. 13   Harris and Sørensen, ‘Rethinking Emotion’, p. 146.

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Emotion is defined as the ‘embodied act of being moved to move’.14 It is a mental state with a bodily expression. It reflects the outcome of ‘relational engagements’.15 These engagements are an open link with the material world. Emotions are embodied but also interwoven in the relationship that people have with material things. When something is ‘affective’, it causes an emotional response and produces a set of relationship networks: these are the ‘affective fields … that are produced through and are productive of practice; they are dependent on material occurrences in the sense that bodies or things function as the affective constituent’,16 they are ‘produced between people, places and things’,17 and they can also give rise to emotion. People can ‘attune’ themselves to the worlds around them through materiality or practice that is also affective.18 Attunement is defined as the ‘practice of attending to the material world and its emotional qualities’.19 One facet of these emotional worlds is the ‘atmosphere’ that is ‘the emotional experience engendered by being in a particular place and situation’.20 Atmosphere comes to light at the junction of people, places and things, and usually involves architecture and the use of the properties of material things. Different atmospheres can emerge at the same place, as they are the outcome of the affective fields. Atmospheres can be produced also through practice to create new affective fields.21 How can we define emotion in archaeology if it is something immaterial, individual, subjective and internal?22 As Harris has discussed, a naturalistic view of emotions perceives them as internal and biological states of the body not affected by any experiential, social or cultural factors. On the other hand, there is the cognitive school of thought that accepts the idea that emotion is natural and embodied, but recognises that cognition is crucial. These two schools of thought, which are the most dominant, have not been benefited by the interdisciplinary approaches to emotion that see it as socially constructed.23 These social constructivist approaches recognise no dichotomy between mind and body as a locus of emotion and, moreover, ‘how emotions are expressed, felt, valued and understood varies both within and between groups’.24

14

  Ibid., p. 153.   Ibid., p. 149. 16   Ibid., p. 150. 17   Ibid. 18   Ibid., pp. 151–2. 19   Ibid., p. 153. 20   Ibid. 21   Ibid., p. 152. 22   Ibid., p. 149. 23   O.J. Harris, Identity, Memory and Emotion in Neolithic Dorset, unpublished PhD thesis (Cardiff University, 2006), pp. 76–7. 24   Harris and Sørensen, ‘Rethinking Emotion’, p. 147. 15

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The theoretical agenda of the present chapter adopts these conceptions and furthermore focuses on Christian symbolism and the sacred. It intertwines historia (‘the literal exposition of the sense of the rite’) and theoria (‘the contemplation of its underlying mystery’)25 of liturgical traditions in Constantinople. This focus does not imply ignorance of the profane aspects, but recognition of the fact that almost every aspect of the everyday life of people in Byzantium was inscribed with spirituality. Activities that are linked with the sacred are appreciated by those who have the background to understand the meanings that those activities are symbolising.26 In the Byzantine capital by the tenth century, being a Christian was for the majority of the populous part of their identity as a citizen.27 Of course, it should not be ignored that this reality was not shared by all people: various regulations through the centuries, proclaimed severe punishment to those that obstructed or even mocked a lite.28 Many of those people whose actions formed the archaeological record, however, did not see any dichotomy between their social, civic and religious milieu, ‘but rather … formed part of a whole’.29 Such people wished to be in proximity with the sacred; ‘whatever the historical context in which he is placed homo religiosus always believes that there is an absolute reality, the sacred, which transcends this world but manifests itself in this world, thereby sanctifying it and making it real’.30

Emotion and the Symbolic and Representational Paradigm The sacred has anagogical links to the mundane by way of simple, understandable and tangible means that are easily perceptible by the senses. These links, for example, can take the form of allegorical iconographical scenes such as the iconographic programme in a church and sacred symbols such as the cross. Thus the heavenly milieu in a Christian environment is often linked with the earthly through a representational paradigm. Following Harris and

25   R. Taft, ‘The Liturgy of the Great Church: An Initial Synthesis of Structure and Interpretation on the Eve of Iconoclasm’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34/35 (1980/81), pp. 45–75, esp. 47. 26   L.A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context (New York, 1977), pp. 136–9. 27   Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, pp. 259–60. 28   ‘ὁ ὑβρίζων ἐπίσκοπον ἤ κληρικόν ἐν ἁγίᾳ λειτουργίᾳ ἤ ἐν λιτῇ βασανίζεται καί ἐξορίζεται. ὁ δέ ταράσσων τάς θείας λειτουργίας ἤ τάς ἁγίας λιτάς καί κωλύων αὐτάς μή γινέσθαι κεφαλικῶς τιμωρεῖται’ (title 39, section 73); Procheiron Auctum, ed. C.E. Zachariae von Lingenthal, Jus Graeco-Romanum VI (Lipsiae, 1870), p. 345. 29   Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, p. 260. 30   M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York, 1959), p. 202.

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Sørensen’s model,31 however, one could argue that emotions emerge through the affective field between people and the divine. In that case, what does the presence of the symbolic and the representational mean, and what is its relation to emotions and the affective fields? It is accepted that the symbolic and the representational can be materialised and can have an affective power.32 This affective power, though, mirrors the affective field between people and objects. The latter does not mean that this affective power emerges through the material culture. On the contrary, it emerges from the experience that people have of material culture. Religious memory is activated by the senses – not just the five bodily senses, but also the sixth sense described in homilies of the Fathers of the church as another ‘vision’33 that can be interpreted as faith. This activation by the senses allows the perception of the ‘encoded meaning’, the symbol, or else the link with the divine. This link reflects the affective field between people and the divine, through which emotion emerges. Through this link people can attune to the sacred reality of the mundane world. The attunement to this reality permits the completion of the religious experience. Another aspect that merits reference here is materiality and practice as fields of ‘transformation and desire’.34 The presence of the divine in the profane world can be perceptible through the experience of the Eucharist, when the materiality of the bread and wine was transformed for the Byzantine into the body and blood of Christ. According to Christian doctrine and as seen through texts of the Divine Liturgy, the divine is present during the liturgy.35 Materiality and practice become the junction point of the mundane and the sacred.36 The historical reality of the iconoclast period of the eighth to ninth centuries can help us approach an understanding of the affective field between people and material culture linked with the divine because it stimulated debate about the expectation of divine presence and absence in materiality. The presence of the divine was confused with the representation of the archetype as an image and this was considered perilously close to idolatry. The ninth century finds the end of this religious and political dispute, with the official position of the church accepting that the worship is addressed to the essence of the divine represented in the materiality of the icon, and not to the material itself.37

31

  Harris and Sørensen, ‘Rethinking Emotion’.   C. Barber, ‘From Transformation to Desire: Art and Worship after Byzantine Iconoclasm’, Art Bulletin 75.1 (1993), pp. 7–16, esp. 7. 33   L. James, ‘Senses and Sensibility in Byzantium’, Art History 27.4 (2004), pp. 522–37, esp. 528–9. 34   Barber, ‘From Transformation to Desire’. 35   Ibid., p. 14. 36   Taft, The Byzantine Rite, pp. 67–77. 37   L. Brubaker and J. Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast era c. 680–850: A History (Cambridge, 2011). 32

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Whether materiality was perceived as a site of divine presence, expectation, or in Barber’s words, ‘as a site of desire’,38 emotion emerged through the intertwined affective fields between people and the divine, and people and material culture. The analysis of these affective fields can reveal the ways in which meanings and understandings about the archaeological record are created and perceived.

Processions It has been noted that the whole landscape is treated as a liturgical space: as a church.39 ‘But liturgy is not ceremonial. It is a prayer’.40 Hence, lite is the form of the prayer of the city in the City. It is a common supplicatory prayer to the divine that takes place in the urban milieu and is by nature emotional. It will be shown that this form of prayer is both expressive and generative of emotion. Litai are the outdoor ecclesiastical liturgical processions that are part of the stational liturgy in Constantinople. In order to understand the nature of litai, a definition of the stational liturgy merits citation: Stational liturgy is a service of worship at a designated church, shrine, or public place in or near a city or town, on a designated feast, fast, or commemoration, which is presided over by the bishop or his representative and intended as the local church’s main liturgical celebration of the day.41

Τhe word lite (λιτή) is cognate to litaneia (λιτανεία), and the verb litaneuein (λιτανεύειν) means to pray, entreat or supplicate.42 This verb is used in Byzantine literature to indicate ‘supplication made during a procession’ in the stational liturgy. Originally, litany was a form of a prayer in which the populace gave fixed responses to petitions made by a deacon.43 Those processions were participatory activities. People participated not only by means of a bodily and emotional movement, but they were also active participants as they responded to the petitions of the deacon and sang the refrains of the antiphonal psalms depending on the day that was celebrated.44 38

  Barber, ‘From Transformation to Desire’.   Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, p. 268. 40   R. Taft, ‘How Liturgies Grow: The Evolution of the Byzantine “Divine Liturgy”’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica XLIII (1977), pp. 8–30, at 9. 41   Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, p. 37. 42   Phōtiou tou patriarchou Lexeōn synagōgē: e codice Galeano descripsit, ed. R. Porson (Cambridge, 1822), 227.15. 43   J. Grisbrooke, ‘Litany’, in J.G. Davies (ed.), Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (London, 1972), p. 216. 44   Taft, Through Their Own Eyes, p. 56. 39

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Walking in the capital was a way of experiencing its topography.45 These liturgical stational processions were using ‘the urban milieu for purposes of worship’.46 One of the richest sources for these processions is the Typicon of the Great Church, which has information about sixty-eight litai.47 These were feast days dedicated to the memorials of saint’s martydoms, biblical events, and civic events. The last were commemorations of historical events that were particularly related to the city. They were either commemorations of distressful historical moments such as destructive physical phenomena48 or enemy attacks,49 or commemorations of joyful events such as the welcoming of the relics of a saint50 or the dedication (ἐγκαίνια) of the city51 or a church.52 Calamities used to lead the people to perform litanies to pray for their city’s life and thus for their lives (Figs 9.1 and 9.2). After the salvation of the city, the day was commemorated and celebrated annually by the performance of a litany. Physical phenomena were perceived to be linked with the divine. A passage from Chronicon Paschale is characteristic: ‘God showered hail like stones in Constantinople.’53 Theophanes writes about the earthquake of AD 553/4 that struck during the night of 15 August and caused much damage and death. He states that the ‘earth tremors lasted forty days’; he continues, ‘for a while men were overcome by contrition, went on litanies and frequented churches, but after God’s mercy had returned they lapsed again to worse habbits. The commemoration of this earthquake takes place each year in the Campus, with the people performing a litany’.54

45

  Brubaker, ‘Topography and the Creation of Public Space’, p. 38.   Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, p. 205. 47   Le Typicon de la Grande Église. Ms. Sainte Croix n° 40, Xe siècle, 2 vols, ed. and tr. by M. Juan (Rome, 1962, 1963). 48   More specifically natural phenomena such as earthquakes were commemorated on 25 September, 7 and 26 October, 14 December, 9 and 26 January, 17 March, 16 August, and on the Pentecost Monday; the memory of the great fire on 31 August and Cinders on 6 November. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 44–9, 62–5, 78–81, 130–33, 192–3, 212–13, 249–51, 372–5; vol. 2, pp. 143–4. 49   Enemy attacks commemorated on 5 and 25 June and on 7 and 16 August: ibid., vol. 1, pp. 304–9, 362–5, 372–7. 50   Celebrated on 26 December, 16 and 27 January, 24 February, 2 July, 2 and 31 August: ibid., vol. 1, pp. 158–61, 198–201, 212–15, 238–41, 328–31, 356–9, 386–7. 51   Celebrated on 11 May: ibid., vol. 1, pp. 286–91. 52   Celebrated on 17–18 and 22–23 December, 5 June and 9 July: ibid., vol. 1, pp. 136–9, 142–7, 304–9, 334–7. 53   Chronicon Paschale, ed. and tr. by M. Whitby and M. Whitby (Liverpool, 1989), p. 367. 54   Theophanes Confessor, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor AD 284–813, tr. C. Mango and R. Scott (Oxford, 1997), AM6046. 46

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Figure 9.1 Anamnesis of the great earthquake: Commemorative litany illuminated in the Menologion, Vat.gr. 1613, fol. 142 (© 2012 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

Figure 9.2

Anamnesis of the fears of the great and unexpected earthquake: Illumination of the historic litany that is described in the text of the same folio. Vat.gr. 1613, fol. 350 (© 2012 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

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The city suffered more than seventy earthquakes from its foundation until its capture in 1453 by the Ottomans.55 Constantinople was not always the epicentre of these earthquakes, but they were perceptible in the capital, causing uncountable damage and human causalties at the same time. From the beginning of the fifthuntil the tenth century, the city suffered eighteen earthquakes.56 People interpreted earthquakes as a result of divine wrath and as punishment for human sins.57 From an analysis of primary sources related to these calamities,58 the following points can be illustrated. First, earthquakes are understood as an expression of a just divine wrath (e.g. τῆς δικαίας σου ὁργής).59 This emotion is justified as people are thought to be sinners. God is everywhere and aware of people’s sins. People are also aware of their sins, they are repentant, and thus they are praying for forgiveness (e.g. Κύριε, ἠμάρτομεν, ἠνομησαμεν, προσπὶπτομεν, ἐλέησον ἡμάς).60 Salvation is perceived to come through the prayers (e.g. ταῖς γάρ αὐτῆς ἰκεσὶαις) of the Theotokos, the one who birthed God who is personificated as the ultimate shield, the unbreachable Wall (e.g. Τείχος ἀκαταμάχητον ἡμῶν) of the city where she is reigning (e.g. ἡ ἐν σοῖ βασιλεύουσα). Also, God saves the people as he is philanthropos (φιλάνθρωπος): he loves humans. People perform litanies annually in commerating the salvation from the menace of the calamity that was provided by the philanthropia of God and was assured through the prayers of the Theotokos. Thus, there is a perception of an affective field between the heavenly and the earthly millieu. According to Gregory of Nyssa’s writings, the divine is apathes (e.g. Ἐπεὶ οὖν ἀπαθὲς τὸ θεῖον),61 passionless,62 but clearly not emotionless. The liturgical processions linked to civic events can be divided into two categories for analytical purposes. The first consists of the historic litanies that are performed at the time of the event, the second are the commemorative 55

  G. Downey, ‘Earthquakes in Constantinople and Vicinity, AD 342–1454’, Speculum 30.4 (1955), pp. 596–600. 56   Taft, Through Their Own Eyes, p. 31. Also B. Croke, ‘Two Early Byzantine Earthquakes and Their Liturgical Commemoration’, Byzantion: Revue Internationale des Études Byzantines 51 (1981), pp. 127–47. 57   M. Meier, ‘Perceptions and Interpretations of Natural Disasters during the Transition from the East Roman to the Byzantine Empire’, The Medieval History Journal 4 (2001), pp. 179–201. 58   V. Manolopoulou, Processing Emotion: Litanies in Byzantine Constantinople, unpublished Masters dissertation (Newcastle University, 2011). 59   Vatican Library, Vaticanus graecus 1613, fol. 340. See also Il menologio di Basilio II (Cod. Vat. greco 1613), 2 vols (Turin, 1907). 60   Le Typicon de la Grande Église. Ms. Sainte Croix n° 40, Xe siècle, pp. 130–32. 61   Gregory of Nyssa, Gregor’s Bischof’s von Nyssa Abhandlung von der Erschaffung des Menschen und fünf Reden auf das Gebet, ed. G.F. Oehler (Leipzig, 1859), p. 222. 62   For a discussion on pathos see Hinterberger, ‘Emotions’, pp. 127–9.

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litanies that are performed annually and which commemorate the historic litany and the philanthropia of God.

The Body of the City and the Affect of Litany Ritual is seen as a symbolic or expressive action. Asad, referring to relevant scholarship, notes that ‘this meant that a clear separation had to be made between the social meaning of rites and the psychological states of participating bodies’.63 One could think that the study of emotion could be chaotic, as emotions are individual and differ between time and place. For this reason, the study of emotion of the lite could be an endless or pointless procedure, as emotion could differ from person to person according to social rank, age or gender. These factors are formative of self and thus they have an effect on the emotional responses of the individual. There would also be a different experience of litanies in the tenth century than in the sixth, because multiple ‘layers of social memory would have been piled up’.64 Moreover, to return to an individual level, commemorations were part of the civic calendar. Thus, litanies were annual acts. The emotion of a person would differ each year because, from a Turnerist point of view,65 the participant would be a different self. To overcome this problem, it must first be recognised that emotions are embodied and socially constructed; secondly, that lite is a prayer that is emotional and involves bodily movement. It is thus essential to reach an understanding about the body, and more specifically about the body in Christian belief, in addition to an understanding of the motion of the litany – the procession. A social understanding of the body could be used to approach an affective experience, as the latter emerges from the body.

The Body and the ‘Body’ In recent years, the body has been a focal subject of scholarly activity.66 The body is axiomatically under biological laws and it is fundamentally the way in

63   T. Asad, ‘Remarks on the Anthropology of the Body’, in S. Coakley (ed.), Religion and the Body (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 42–52, esp. 44. 64   Brubaker, ‘Topography and the Creation of Public Space’, p. 39. 65   B. Turner, ‘The Body in Western Society: Social Theory and its Perspectives’, in Coakley (ed.), Religion and the Body, pp. 15–41, esp. 20. 66   E.g. C. Fowler, The Archaeology of Personhood: An Anthropological approach (London and New York, 2004); C. Fowler, ‘Personhood and the Body’, in T. Insoll (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion (Oxford, 2011), pp. 133–50; Turner, ‘The Body in Western Society’.

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which humans experience and engage with the world.67 Turner sees multiple bodies that belong to the same individual, descending from the passage of time and its accompanying experiences. He sees the body as a vessel of emotions.68 The flesh in Christianity is linked to ancestral sin. However, as Taft notes, basing his comments on the fifth-century Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius, ‘the liturgy is an allegory of the soul’s progress from the divisiveness of sin to the divine communion, through a process of purification, illumination perfection imaged forth in the rites’.69 During litanies, the person actively participates in prayer for forgiveness. The body is a vehicle for sins, but becomes through prayer a vehicle that leads to salvation. On the other hand, the same body is considered to be the ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’, as St Paul writes in the Bible.70 It is considered a sacred place, ‘a mobile location of prayer’.71 This body is also a vital part of another ‘body’: that of the ecclesia. Ecclesia in the Christian world refers to the church, but it is a notional, not the architectural meaning. Ecclesia as a notion is singular. As one body, it is characterised by unity. It is the flock of God, the ‘body’ of Christ.72 An ecclesiastical procession is the procession of the ecclesia. It is referred to the faithful, as one whole, as one notion.73 So, ecclesiastical processions could be seen as the ‘body’ of the populace that is processing during the liturgical processions that have a supplicatory character and are part of the stational liturgy of the city. As a ‘body’, the ecclesia is praying in the city. However, in the Byzantine world, as has been proven by many scholars, there is no dichotomy between the civic and the spiritual.74 Thus, the body of the individual is part of a bigger body, the ‘Body’ of the city, by means of being part of both the populace and the ecclesia.

The ‘Body’ of the City and Emotion Harris and Sørensen convincingly define emotion as the ‘act of being moved to move’75 and they therefore recognise bodily movement, as a form of reaction. Furthermore there is no separation recognised between mental and bodily 67

  M. Parker Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial (Sutton, 2003), p. 45.   Turner, ‘The Body in Western Society’, p. 20. 69   Taft, ‘The Liturgy of the Great Church’, p. 61. 70   I Corinthians 3:16–17. 71   M. Timothy Prokes, Towards a Theology of the Body (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 135. 72   I Corinthians 12:12–27. 73   B. Sartorius, L’ Église Orthodoxe (Genève, 1968), pp. 237–44. 74   Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship; Taft, Through Their Own Eyes. 75   Harris and Sørensen, ‘Rethinking Emotion’, p. 149. See also M. Sheets-Johnstone, ‘Emotion and Movement: A Beginning Empirical–Phenomenological Analysis of their Relationship’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 6.11–12 (1999), pp. 259–77. 68

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movement: there is only one emotional reaction.76 Thus, if people are attuned to the notion of the city as one ‘body’ by participating in the lite, one could say that the movement by means of motion in the landscape is an active demonstration of the emotions that moved the lite to move. This movement can be seen as a demonstration and creation of emotion. Through that, people ‘become attuned to the emotional worlds around them’.77 Thus, emotional worlds can be experienced en masse,78 by the large crowds of the lite.

The Affect of Litany as a Practice These emotional worlds in Byzantine Constantinople were experienced during the historic litany and then annually through its commemoration. Commemorative litanies have an emotional impact, albeit one different to that experienced during the event commemorated because of the different time periods. However, for those who experienced the actual or a similar event, emotions are evoked because personal memory is activated. Nevertheless, the emotional impact that the practice has per se is affected by social and religious memory. This is because litai reference emotions that are woven into civic memory.

Mnemi, Anamnesis, Emotion and Catharsis Emotions are woven into social memory through texts, buildings, artefacts and practices.79 In texts that refer to litai, both mnemi (μνήμη) and anamnesis (ανάμνησις) are used.80 Mnemi is the regular Greek word for memory. Anamnesis is ‘a calling to mind’.81 Aristotle’s ideas defined the basic scientific thought about memory and anamnesis: memory is the person’s ability to hold records of things, and anamnesis is the ability to recall those records.82 The word ‘commemoration’ as the ‘act of honouring the memory of’, has been used by scholars to characterise the annual repetitive litai. Paul Connerton, in his influential work How Societies Remember,83 argues that ‘commemorative ceremonies and bodily practices … lead us to see that images of the past and recollected knowledge of the past are conveyed and sustained by (more or less 76

  Harris and Sørensen, ‘Rethinking Emotion’.   Ibid., p. 151. 78   Ibid. 79   P. Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989). 80   Manolopoulou, Processing Emotion. 81   H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, Greek–English Lexicon (Oxford, 1940), p. 113. 82   Aristotle, Aristotle Parva naturalia, ed. W.D. Ross (Oxford, 1955), 449b4–453b11. 83   Connerton, How Societies Remember. 77

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Figure 9.3 Litanic use of sites in Constantinople related to civic events, according to the Typicon of Hagia Sophia (author’s copyright) ritual) performances’.84 Thus, the city’s memory and anamnesis of the events is actually activated through the commemoration of the event. The medium of that commemoration as the act of honouring the memory, is the lite. Moreover, it has been noted that litai were performed annually. ‘Repetition implies continuity with the past’,85 a continuity that transfers the emotion that is commemorated (e.g. the memory of the fears of the great earthquake) by ‘re-enacting a narrative of events’.86 By the litanic ‘re-enaction’, the sensory stimulus, that is also affective, was activated, and through memory, people were linked with temporal and spatial localities in the past.87 Hence the recall and commemoration of an emotion has an affect and is generative of new emotions. It has also been illustrated that litai were an active demonstration of emotion. This demonstration, one could argue, is a catharsis. For Scheff, catharsis is defined as ‘the discharge of one or more

84

  Ibid., p. 40.   Ibid., p. 45. 86   Ibid. 87   A. Papalexandrou, ‘The Memory Culture of Byzantium’, in James (ed.), A Companion to Byzantium, pp. 108–22, esp. 108. 85

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of four distressful emotions: grief, fear, embarrassment, or anger’.88 So processing in the city, to commemorate heavily emotionally charged events such as the perils of physical phenomena or enemy attacks, served cathartic purposes. In theatre, people who watch dramas empathise with the actors and experience emotions. By remaining aware of the fact that they are observers, they are distancing themselves. Thus, by the end of the play the emotion is not unpleasant.89 Hence, the repeated experience of the historic litanies of the day that recalled calamity served a dramatic interactional affective purpose that helped Constantinopolitan society to discharge their fears of the constant threat of earthquakes.

Processing in the City of Constantine, Praying in the City of the Mother of God: Litanic Movement in Constantinople as Theotokoupoli Cameron argues that the idea of the Virgin being the ‘Wall’, the ultimate protection of the city, and the medium of God’s mercy, was established by the seventh century.90 After Iconoclasm, the Virgin Mary gains the epithet Theotokos. She becomes the Mother of God.91 This epithet is not an irrelevant creation. Ideas of the emotions of safety and hope linked with the notion of motherhood had been developing since the fourth century and were directly linked to the Theotokos in later centuries.92 The spatial distribution of the architecture involved in the liturgy in the city related to civic events, was not serving just functional purposes (Fig. 9.3). The perception of the protection provided by the divine was achieved through the spatial distribution of a materiality that was thought to carry sacred capacities. As Ousterhout notes when speaking about loca sancta, sacred architecture ‘became part and parcel of the ritual experience’.93 The domus ecclesiae in Byzantine thought escapes from its material capacities and becomes a ‘symbol of the mysteries it houses’.94 It was perceived to be an anagogical

88   T. Scheff, ‘The Distancing of Emotion in Ritual’, Current Anthropology 18.3 (1977), pp. 483–505, esp. 485. 89   Ibid., pp. 485–6. 90   A. Cameron, ‘The Theotokos in Sixth-century Constantinople: A City Finds its Symbol’, Journal of Theological Studies (1978), pp. 79–108, esp. 101. 91   I. Kalavrezou, ‘Images of the Mother: When the Virgin Mary Became Meter Theou’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990), pp. 165–72; V. Limberis, Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the Creation of Byzantine Constantinople (London and New York, 1994). 92   Kalavrezou, ‘Images of the Mother’, p. 166. 93   R. Ousterhout, ‘Architecture as Relic and the Constuction of Sanctity: The Stones of the Holy Sepulchre’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 62.1 (2003), pp. 4–23, at 4. 94   Taft, ‘The Liturgy of the Great Church’, p. 47.

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link of heaven on earth.95 In addition, sacred architecture was a reliquary, as it hosted the relics of saints that were imported to the capital as it had no local martyrs. These relics were welcomed to the city with litai. Thus, the landscape was also protected by the presence of the churches in the city. This source of sacredness combined with the idea that the Mother of God was present within the landscape reflects the perception of the latter being protected by an undefeatable shield. This perception describes the affective field between the sacred landscape and people. Materialised aspects of sacredness were distributed along the city, which people could witness through the litanic movement. Thus, the sacred meanings that had affective capacities had to be understood through experience. Processing in the urban milieu of Constantinople among sacred architecture inscribed with sacredness was a way of creating an understanding of the landscape and experiencing the meanings that it hosted, creating new affective fields. Mapping practice can help us to understand the perception of sacred protection throughout the city. The schematic plan (Fig. 9.3) reveals nuclei of importance within the landscape: sacred centres, created through practice during the liturgical year, ensuring that participants will know and understand that the city was covered with a spiritual shield, from Hagia Sophia to Blachernae and the Golden Gate to Hebdomon.

Litanic Materiality and Affective Symbolism Processional crosses, Gospels, torches and thuribles are objects that are used during litai. As Taft notes, at the beginning of processions a deacon bears a thurible and leads the way.96 Thuribles and incense boats were used to burn incense.97 In the Christian world by the sixth century, it seems that it was a means of a petition and a symbol of prayer.98 The reference in Psalm 140/141:2 is characteristic: ‘Let my prayer succeed like incense before you’. Incense became also a sensual symbol of the Holy Spirit99 that intertwines the earthly

95   K. McVey, ‘The Domed Church as a Microcosm: Literary Roots of an Architectural Symbol’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37 (1983), pp. 91–121. 96   Taft, Through Their Own Eyes, p. 45. 97   H. Evans, M. Holcomb et al., ‘The Arts in Byzantium’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series 58.4 (2001), pp. 1–68, esp. 38. 98   B. Caseau, ‘How did Incense and Perfumes Contribute to Create a Sacred Space in Byzantine Churches?’, in E. Jeffreys (ed.), 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies (London, 2006), pp. 215–16; R.F. Taft and A. Kazhdan, ‘Incense’, in A.P. Kazhdan et al. (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 2 (New York, 1991), p. 991. 99   Taft, ‘The Liturgy of the Great Church’, p. 54.

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with the heavenly milieu.100 The Byzantine Eucharist was never celebrated without incense.101 After the incensing, a cross bearer followed.102 Middle Byzantine crosses are decorated or jewelled (crux gemmata) and often have inscriptions. In his study on the use and function of processional crosses,103 Cotsonis notes that the crosses used in lite ‘became the sign most closely identified with the supplicatory aspect of the lite and served as the focal point of the liturgical movement and its participants’.104 The soteriological meaning of the Cross makes it a symbol of hope, central to the Christian faith.105 The Cross was followed by an Archdeacon carrying a Gospel, the Patriarch, and then the populace carrying torches.106 The Gospel entails the soteriological meaning of the New Testament and it is a symbol of Christ.107 The cover of the Gospel book was decorated with precious materials as it covered the priceless meaning of the Word. Its perception through the senses of vision, touch – as people wanted to touch the Gospel with their lips and hands108 – or hearing, activates religious memory and enabled the affective field between people and the Gospel and, hence, between people and the divine. From these affective fields, emotions emerged. The account of the fourth-century pilgrim Egeria, describing the emotional reactions of hearing the Gospel is characteristic: ‘it is impressive to see the way all the people are moved by these readings, and how they mourn. You could hardly believe how every single one of them weeps’.109 Another aspect of the litany that enforced the hearing too, is the antiphonal psalmody. The use of Psalms in lite also has a symbolic meaning. The Book of Psalms is a book of the Bible, considered to be divinely revealed and used by Christ and the Apostles.110 People participated by repeating small, easily remembered refrains. ‘The sound of this performance, its music, is then linked to the script. The letters on the page then become transformed from a silent

100   Y. Hamilakis, ‘Archaeologies of the Senses’, in Insoll (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, pp. 208–26, esp. 213. 101   J. Grisbrooke, ‘Incense’, in Davies (ed.), Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship, p. 130; Taft and Kazhdan, ‘Incense’, p. 991. 102   Taft, Through Their Own Eyes, p. 45. 103   J.A. Cotsonis, Byzantine Figural Processional Crosses (Washington DC, 1994). 104   Ibid., p. 19. 105   Taft, Through Their Own Eyes, p. 53. 106   Ibid., p. 45. 107   Ibid., pp. 53, 144. 108   Ibid., p. 79. 109   Ibid., p. 76. 110   Ibid., p. 59.

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string of characters to a record of a corporeal experience of sound and sight that can be activated the moment the lips begin to pronounce the poem’.111 The carrying of candles and torches during litai also had sacred meaning. Originally, the use of candles served liturgical purposes, but through the centuries it became a tradition, a devotional action – a declaration of faith. The light of the candles reflects the idea of Christ being the very true light that disperses the spiritual darkness and lights up the way towards salvation: ‘I am the light of the World. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’ (John 8:12). Also, the burning of candles made by wax and olive oil112 emits a very sweet and pleasant odour, of soteriological significance as it symbolically reference paradise.113 It has been noted that crosses and the Gospel were symbols of Christ. Icons and crosses that were used in processions became ‘active participants’ of the lite.114 Either as a site of expectance or desire, icons and crosses gain a personhood. Fowler notes that ‘non-human things can be persons: because they have effects, and because they can be seen as active in social relationships’.115 That explains the hierarchy of the ritual of litanies; the objects, obtaining a personhood through the sacred symbolic reference, are leading the way of the procession and then the populace follows.

Conclusion People feared physical phenomena that were perceived to be expressions of divine emotions as a consequence of human sin. Litanies take a form of a mobile prayer of the city in the City. They also had emotional values, as they were an expression of repentance. The demonstration of this repentance reflects another emotion: the hope for forgiveness. The latter would be assured as the Mother of God provides her mediation through her prayers for Her City. Forgiveness would come, so the distressful emotions of fear would be dissipated. This emotional reassurance stemmed from a different feeling: safety. The City, by means of landscape and populace, felt safe because the Mother of God was perceived to be the beholder of the City, the true ruler of the Byzantine capital. God is perceived to have emotions (e.g. love, wrath) and these emotional expressions affect the earthly. This perception of divine emotions charges the affective field between people, landscape and material 111

  B.V. Pentcheva, ‘The Performative Icon’, The Art Bulletin 88.4 (2006), pp. 631–55, at

648. 112   R.F. Taft and A. Kazhdan, ‘Candles’, in A.P. Kazhdan et al. (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 1 (New York, 1991), pp. 371–2. 113   Caseau, ‘Incense’, p. 215. 114   Taft, Through Their Own Eyes, p. 37. 115   Fowler, The Archaeology of Personhood, pp. 59–60.

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culture, and in people’s minds creates a new one: an affective field between people, God, landscape and material culture. Therefore it can be argued that the lite is perceived as a medium for expressing human emotions and evoking divine emotions. Hence, this religious practice provides an emotional link between the divine and the human. Furthermore, commemorative litanies were not only prayers as a gesture of gratitude for being safe, but were also a public and civic demonstration of piety. Experiencing this atmosphere formed social identities, as people attuned to the notions of the City and the ecclesia. Sacred and profane were sharing the same milieu. The spatial distribution of the churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was a tangible form of the belief in her presence in the profane world. Christian architecture was imbued with symbolism that was enforced by the presence of relics and their sacred properties. Their presence within the landscape created an atmosphere that was proclaiming a continuous sacred presence or expectance of presence, in the City. The use of sacred objects in litanies was also evocative. The emotion that was aroused by their presence can be traced in the affective fields between people and these objects. These networks can be explored by analysing their symbolic meaning. They were aspects of theophaneia, a symbolic presence of the divine in the material world. Their use was engendered a multisensory experience: vision, smell, hearing, touch, were all activated, in their turn initiating memory, and alongside with faith were completing the religious experience, permitting understandings about the sacred. Thus, the affective field between people and sacred objects was charged during litanies. This charged affective field was therefore charging another between people and the landscape, as sacred materiality was an active participant in the movement and transferred its capacities to the landscape, sanctifying it. The celebration of litai has been shown to be an affective practice in a dialectic position between the spatial and chronic locality. When people in Byzantine Constantinople performed litanies throughout the landscape, they were entering specific emotional worlds directly related to ideas about the landscape and the sacred. The atmosphere of the litany in the City became the junction point where the invisible became tangible and sensed. These emotional loci were the key to unlock meanings and understandings about their city. The discussion of litai through a study of emotions goes further than their treatment as processions in the city. It adds to the knowledge of their nature as prayer and approaches an understanding of their social and religious value. Furthermore, it opens new ways of thinking about the relationship between religious practices, material culture and topography within the historic landscape.

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Section IV Experiencing Ritual

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10. The Cross of Light: Experiencing Divine Presence in Byzantine Syria Heather Hunter-Crawley

The cross is the ultimate symbol of Christianity, traditionally interpreted as a representation of Christ’s sacrifice. This paper will show how introducing questions about the experiential, particularly sensory and embodied, aspects of the cross’s ritual context can lead to a reinterpretation of the Byzantine Syrian understanding of it not as a referential symbol but as a divine presence.

The Methodology: ‘Common-Sensory’ Archaeology The methodology I shall use builds on Carl Knappett’s theory of object ‘affordances’, which addresses the uses that are invited by an object’s material qualities (such as a teacup’s affordance for being held and sipped from by means of its handle).1 I investigate the sensory affordances of material culture. This ‘sensory archaeology’ involves asking what sensory interactions are invited by an object – does it lend itself to making particular sounds or smells, to being moved, and so on; ‘what does it do’ rather than ‘what does it mean’?2 From such questions we can begin to observe patterns in the ways that a culture’s objects are produced and used, and, as a result, investigate the cultural understanding of materiality that underpins such production and use. The way that people engage with and experience the world around them, I suggest, functions according to what I term an encultured ‘common sense’ – a shared way of being-in-the-world and understanding of sensation that is the

1

  C. Knappett, Thinking through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Philadelphia, PA, 2005). 2   I understand these sensory affordances in terms of both ‘biology’ and ‘culture’ rather than one or the other. Genetically, human beings have shared biological capacities for sensory experience, but these experiences are also cognitive events, formed by an individual’s adaptation to their cultural and physical environment. From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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consequence of living in a particular shared environment.3 For example, in twenty-first century Western culture vision is commonly understood to be the most objective and accurate sense, and so it is privileged in material culture and our way of life, particularly in screen media and scientific instruments.4 Conditioning in this highly visual environment perpetuates the pre-eminence of the visual in subsequent generations. Western ‘common sense’ is empirical, but different cultures do not necessarily presume empiricism or Cartesian dualism, the separation of body and mind or self and world, in their way of being-in-the-world. Byzantine culture, as I shall suggest below, had a numinous ‘common sense’ in which the existence of divinity was not subject to empirical testing but an indisputable fact of human existence and experience; it infused the whole created world, and material objects afforded experience of its omnipresence.5 My development of this methodology responds to the contradiction perceptible in the literature and material culture of late antique Christianity. The literature often appears to promote sensory austerity and immaterialism, and yet we have strong evidence for a rich material record that can saturate the senses, particularly in liturgical contexts. The contradiction exists because we interpret the material evidence through the literary (an exegetical approach to prove exegetical function!), but a methodology that allows objects to speak for themselves may elicit a different result. In the context of a numinous ‘common sense’, the material practice of ritual is a means of experiencing divinity. For early Byzantine Christians, rather 3   My use of ‘common sense’ to designate experience is a deliberate re-embodiment of a term that became disembodied in Enlightenment thought (however, this use does not explicitly entail Aristotle’s koine aisthesis as the bodily locus of sensory inputs). It is not necessarily a totalising concept. The idea that experience is unique to the individual depends upon the Cartesian concept of a self that is separate from the world. Within network and embodiment theory, particularly the work of Knappett, Thinking through Material Culture and T. Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London, 2000), human existence within its environment (inclusive of fellow human beings) is not discrete but deeply interrelated. Human sensing and experience, I argue, is therefore not restricted to the individual human body but is the means of its interrelation with the world; sensory experience is active, not passive, and it binds cultures together. We can thus legitimately contextualise material culture within a shared mode of being-in-the-world, while also avoiding the pitfall of circular Cartesian reasoning about how the experience of the discrete individual can never be shared, because in this model to sense is to share. 4   C. Classen, Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures (London, 1993), pp. 5–8; R. Nelson, ‘Descartes’s Cow and Other Domestications of the Visual’, in R. Nelson (ed.), Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 1–21. 5   My use of the term ‘divinity’ instead of ‘God’ is intended to reflect the mysterious nature of the Christian God in a period that was still establishing basic theological tenets such as the Trinity.

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than supplementing the ideas imparted through Scripture and exegesis, this experience was how they exercised belief. For these people Christianity was a lived practice, not just a process of abstract intellection, and so it becomes paramount to explore the ritual uses of their material culture via the material evidence itself. Further to this, immaterialism in Christian literature can be questioned on the grounds of culturally specific concepts of symbolism. Twentieth-century semiotics is an abstract system of referents that bypasses materiality altogether by reducing objects and things purely to concepts and ideas, and it is read into early Christian language of signs and symbols. However, this culturally specific semiotics is the product of Enlightenment philosophy and Protestant immaterialism that advocated text over image, Scripture over ritual, and language over experience. The imposition of this later thought on earlier texts is anachronistic. I suggest that early Christian ‘symbols’ can be understood differently, not as abstract referents but rather in non-Cartesian terms as a complex interrelation between the physical and the spiritual – as concrete, sensible things with divine agency that were experienced and practised through ritual rather than just contemplated. ‘Sumbola’, as they might more appropriately be termed, were the presence of divine power in the material world, not abstract referents to the concept of that power. This divine power was mysterious, ineffable, and infused the entire created world with its presence; infinite in its materiality, latent everywhere, it could be activated through particular learned rituals of sensory experience, in particular the Eucharist. Divinity was revealed to Christians through the ritual practice and sensory experience of material sumbola.6 This paper presents my findings regarding a particular aspect of how the sixth-century Syrian Eucharist was practised. By investigating the sensory affordances of liturgical equipment, a particular pattern began to emerge in how the cross was materialised – as light. I shall show material evidence for this trend and then discuss it in view of the period’s numinous ‘common sense’, and late antique literary references.

The Cross of Light in Church Silver A substantial quantity of liturgical implements in precious metals survives from the sixth- and seventh century, much of it from Syria and neighbouring 6

  On semiotics and sensory archaeology see further H. Hunter-Crawley ‘Embodying the Divine: The Sensational Experience of the Sixth-century Eucharist’, in J. Day (ed.), Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology (Carbondale, IL, 2013), pp. 160–176; on ‘infinite materiality’ see H. Hunter-Crawley ‘Pilgrimage Made Portable: A Sensory Archaeology of the Monza–Bobbio Ampullae’, HEROM 1 (2012), pp. 135–156.

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areas. It includes many objects involved in the performance of the Eucharist and adornment of liturgical space, such as patens, chalices, fans, lamps, polycandela, censers, spoons, strainers, ewers, bowls, plaques and pyxides. Predominantly these are silver, though we also find gold, bronze and mixed metal. Crosses are ubiquitous in such objects’ designs and iconography. Whether the main design or an additional detail, these crosses are rarely enamelled or nielloed; rather, they are left unadulterated as plain polished precious metal, suggesting a deliberate drive towards the creation of shining crosses. Focusing on Syrian hoards (particularly the Kaper Koraon, Attarouthi and Ma’arat en-No’man treasures) and the Sion treasure from neighbouring Lycia, I shall draw out some key examples and patterns in this phenomenon.7 With the exception of those in the Attarouthi treasure, chalices tend to be burnished silver and undecorated except for an inscription around the rim. There are a handful of examples decorated with repoussé gilded crosses as part of a broader design scheme.8 What would be the effect of these in use? The Roman and Byzantine periods understood vision to be tactile (a form of cultural synaesthesia) operating through extramission or intromission, an experience by which viewer and viewed came into intimate contact (a logic by which the object of desire could be deemed responsible for the emotion’s incitement, or a jealous gaze do physical harm because the viewed’s properties were imparted to the viewer).9 In tune with extra-/intromission, repoussé is a technique that emphasises both tactility and visuality at once. To view and handle a shining repoussé chalice with cruciform design in the context of this cultural understanding of sight could elicit an intimate tactile–visual experience of an image during which properties of the object were physically absorbed by the viewer. It follows, then, that sensory experience of the cross, if understood to be a divine image, could be understood as a physical encounter with divinity. If the case, this might begin to explain the ubiquity of crosses in

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  While some scholars dispute M. Mundell Mango’s singular label ‘the Kaper Koraon Treasure’ for a collection of hoards, Silver from Early Byzantium: The Kaper Koraon and Related Treasures (Baltimore, MD, 1986), contra A. Effenberger, ‘Bemerkungen Zum “Kaper-KoraonSchatz”’, JAC Ergänzungsband 18 (1991), pp. 241–277, the label has become well used to designate these objects, including in their display (for example at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore), and thus is here considered an appropriate shorthand for these certainly Syrian and Byzantine silverwares. 8   For example ‘Chalice from Kaper Koraon’, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, 57.636. Other examples can be found in the Attarouthi treasure, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; in the Sion treasure, Antalya Archaeological Museum and Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington DC; and in the Marato tes Myrtes treasure, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 9   Nelson, ‘Descartes’s Cow’; S. Bartsch, The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire (Chicago, IL, 2006).

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the implements of Byzantine Christian ritual – the most deeply experiential aspect of religion. The majority of patens from these hoards are similarly decorated. They are plain silver, burnished and incised, with an encircled cross on the interior surface (the area that made direct contact with the eucharistic bread). The cross usually has flared arms and varies in size, from a few inches at the very centre of the plate to filling it to the rim. In use, this image would have been involved in a dynamic process of concealment and revelation, particularly during the Eucharist, because as bread was taken from the paten the shining cross was gradually revealed. Care has been taken in the design of these objects to make such a dynamic possible, from the polish of the interior surface to the restriction of the design to the central area. This conforms to the process of mysterious revelation involved in Christian initiation, whereby catechumenate training built in levels of access to Christian ritual and culminated in full indoctrination into receipt of the Eucharist. These patens strongly afford an experience of revelation of the silver cross through ritual use, and, in combination with the consistency of the style, this suggests not a perfunctory or arbitrary design but rather one understood to have great power and impact. The importance of the light-reflective nature of these crosses is particularly apparent in a paten from the Sion treasure (Fig. 10.1). This example, over half a metre across, has a gilded cross, which creates a two-toned light. The cross is encircled by a pair of gilded bands and a niello inscription, which create a halo effect, and the rim is moulded into alternating striations of gold and silver that radiate outwards. The effect of these features is the appearance that brilliant gold and silver light is radiating from the cross at the centre. As eucharistic bread was taken from this paten, the source of the brilliant rays of light was revealed to be the cross of Christ. A group of four spoons in the Hama treasure are incised similarly to the patens with flared-arm crosses inside the bowl of each.10 The images’ vertical rather than horizontal positioning is unusual; it affords upright use of the spoons because this maintains the cross’s proper orientation, particularly during stirring.11 Shining metal immersed in liquid, whether water or wine, affords gentle glimmers of light that refract throughout, and stirring propels motion in liquid, increasing reflectivity even after the spoon’s removal. Within a culture that understands objects to emit or radiate their integral qualities in being visible, such refraction of glimmering light affords an understanding that the image’s shine is becoming imparted into the liquid. Like water mixing with wine in the process of stirring, so too might the inscribed light-giving cross on these spoons have been understood to infuse its nature into the eucharistic wine during preparation, indeed during the process of its transubstantiation 10   Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, 57.647; 57.649; 57.651; current location of the fourth unknown, see Mundell Mango, Silver from Early Byzantium, p. 125. 11   Mundell Mango, Silver from Early Byzantium, p. 120.

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Figure 10.1 Sion paten, 58 cm diameter, sixth century, Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, DC, BZ.1963.36.2 (author’s photograph) from earthly wine to blood of Christ. If so, then the light-emitting cross does not just have powerful meaning, but even more powerful effect. Like the patens, an experience of revelation can also apply to these crossinscribed spoons. If they were used to feed the Eucharist to congregants, then the shining image was revealed once they had consumed the bread/wine from the spoon, with the possibility that the inscribed design’s texture was felt by tongue and lips prior to any visual encounter.12 Literature from Byzantine Syria, in line with Isaiah 6:6–7, sometimes referred to the Eucharist as a flaming or live coal (imbued with the Holy Spirit).13 Rather than a semiotic abstraction, 12   The precise function of spoons in the Byzantine Syrian Eucharist is not known: see R. Taft, ‘Byzantine Communion Spoons: A Review of the Evidence’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 50 (1996), pp. 209–238; however, their prevalence in liturgical hoards strongly indicates liturgical use. 13   For example, frequently in Ephrem: see especially Hymns on Faith 10.10, translated by S. Brock, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of Saint Ephrem (Kalamazoo, 1992), p. 104; John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith 4.3, in P. Ledrux (ed.), Jean Damascène: La Foi Orthodoxe

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or symbol, I suggest that this ‘coal’ should be understood as a sumbolon – an object through which the divine is materially revealed to humanity via sensory experience. In this context, receiving the Eucharist from atop a brightly shining cross affords the sense that something fiery is being ingested (even more so if the bread and wine were warmed), and that liturgical utensils emblazoned with crosses of light contribute to the ignition of the Eucharist as flaming coal. This suggests a powerful reason for the acute attention to inscribed crosses and choice of precious metals in Syrian liturgical implements of this period. Returning to the idea that crosses of light might infuse eucharistic wine during its preparation, a silver strainer in the Attarouthi treasure is punched with holes that form two series of crosses.14 Here is a shining cross through which, in use, liquid would undoubtedly have been understood to flow, becoming momentarily cruciform in the process. Like the silver spoons, this object affords a sense that a glimmering sumbolon of the cross is infusing the liquid, transforming mundane wine into divine blood through a shift in its sensory properties (from wine-dark shine to divine glimmer). Perhaps the clearest indication of the value placed upon light-emitting crosses is the use of processional or altar crosses. The Kaper Koraon treasure preserves a set of these, including the silver revetment for a wooden cross almost 1.5 metres in height (Fig. 10.2), and two smaller solid silver examples (30–40 cm high) that are plain on one side and inscribed with dedications on the other. The revetment is inscribed on both sides with the Trisagion: ‘God is Holy, the All-Powerful is Holy, the Immortal is Holy, Have mercy on us’.15 Procession would have been occasional due to its size, and most likely the large cross was displayed in the apse or bema with the two smaller examples to each side; three crosses that, like the Trisagion, revealed the Trinity. Rather than representing this as an idea, I suggest that these crosses manifested the reality of the Trinity through the sumbolon of the cross emitting divine light. To be confronted with the bright sheen of precious metal, so clearly moulded into the shape of the cross, was an experience revealed only to those with access to the church building. It was also an experience that could change according to the light levels of different seasons and times of day. The churches of the Dead Cities of Syria (the area from which many of these silver objects supposedly derive) are in part still standing. On summer mornings the warmcoloured limestone creates the impression that the buildings glow amber from within, and in bright daylight stark patches of light and shadow are cast onto 45–100 (Paris, 2011), pp. 160–162; Syrian liturgy of the fifth to eighth centuries, F.E. Brightman and C.E. Hammond, Liturgies Eastern and Western: Being the Texts Original or Translated of the Principal Liturgies of the Church: Volume 1, Eastern Liturgies (Oxford, 1965), p. 484, line 11: ‘τοῦ θείου ἄνθρακος’. 14   ‘Strainer from the Attarouthi treasure’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1986.3.14. 15   Translated by Mundell Mango, Silver from Early Byzantium, p. 194.

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Figure 10.2 Processional Cross, 154 × 102.9 × 5.1 cm, sixth century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1950 (50.5.3) (author’s photograph)

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their interiors. A silver cross displayed in this context would wax and wane in brightness (both according to light levels and the viewer’s position in relation to the object), and reveal subtle changes in colour and tone. The experience of the light effects of these crosses would have been dynamic – moving, changing, revealing and then concealing – and like divinity itself, the effect could not be completely contained or controlled (candles might substitute sunlight, yet levels of sunlight depend on atmospheric conditions), but the impact could be awe-inspiring and mystifying. Through this a Christian might sensually experience in a moment what Scripture and sermon would take thousands of words to communicate – the mysterious and ineffable nature of the infinite and living God. The effect of all the designs discussed above is the issue of light shaped into crosses that reflects and rebounds in dynamic ways from precious metal. Liz James and Rico Franses have shown that Byzantine culture valued and cultivated precious metals, particularly gold but also silver, for their ability dynamically to reflect and to produce light, an effect understood to be caused by, and even to embody, divine agency. Fluid, mysterious and revealing, shining light manifested immanence and bridged heaven and earth.16 Indeed, Christ himself stated, ‘I am the light of the world … the light of life’ (John 8:12). The incomprehensibility of precisely how and in what capacity divinity was present in light would not matter to a culture where the more mysterious and less subject to reasoning an experience is, the more it confirms the allpowerful nature of God, who is beyond human understanding.17 I have argued elsewhere for sumbola as keys that, once revealed, became learned as a means repeatedly to unlock the presence of divinity in the human realm – as a means of experiencing the infinite presence of divinity in the material world.18 An overwhelming encounter with a shining cross of divine light would thus become a means of encountering divinity in a regular and ritualised way, suggesting a reason for the sumbolon’s prevalence in liturgical implements. We might conclude, then, that the cruciform light effect of these objects was not coincidental; rather, it suggests that light, as a form of divine presence, was deliberately moulded into the shape of the cross during the Eucharist. 16

  L. James, Light and Colour in Byzantine Art (Oxford, 1996), esp. p. 70; R. Franses, ‘When all that is Gold does not Glitter: On the Strange History of Looking at Byzantine Art’, in A. Eastmond and L. James (eds), Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium: Studies Presented to Robin Cormack (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 13–24. It could be suggested that precious metal was selected for church objects because of its high economic value, but it is likely that certain metals were economically valuable precisely because they had powerful divine lightreflective qualities. 17   Ephrem’s poetry offers perhaps the most eloquent depiction of the chasm between humanity and divinity, and the joy of partial revelation without expectation of full knowledge. See Brock, The Luminous Eye, chap. 2. 18   Hunter-Crawley, ‘Pilgrimage Made Portable’.

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The Cross of Light in Church Fittings and Architecture Church lamps and light fittings also conform to this trend. Openwork standing lamps and polycandela were designed to cast crosses in myriad ways. A bronze example in the Benaki Museum, Athens (Fig. 10.3), is surmounted by a large handle that projected crosses of light. When lit, the lamp would cast at least six crosses as both light and shadow, via the large central cross, the gaps between its arms, and the four smaller crosses at its extremities.19 The diagonal edging would create the effect of a halo or rays, emphasising the emission of light from the centre. Polycandela create a similar effect; most often they are composed of a ring that holds glass cup lamps, held together by struts formed into crosses. When lit, such objects would project an encircled cross downwards. A polycandelon in the Sion treasure is entirely formed into the shape of a silver cross, the projection from which would be a patterned cross with flared arms.20 Standing lamps and polycandela afforded opportunities to cast cruciform light against walls and floors inside churches, but also into the air if sufficiently full of incense smoke. This trend continues in domestic contexts as well, since hand-held lamps, so ubiquitous in museum collections of late antique objects, frequently feature cross-shaped handles.21 The effect would be such that a cross would be cast upon the hand holding the lamp when lit. The casting of a cross of light upon a body adds a further layer to the sensory experience of see-touching the sumbolon, even where it takes place in a haze of sacredsmelling incense, for this cross can also be experienced cutaneously as warmth and as a form of temporary tattoo on the skin. This suggests an acute interest in physical contact with crosses of light. Light-giving crosses could also feature in church architecture, as revealed by the preservation of cruciform windows among the remains of Dead City churches. The monastery at southern Dana features one in the upper wall of an annex that may have housed a guard or hermit, or have functioned as a side chapel or sacristy (Fig. 10.4).22 That this is the only cruciform window in the building (as it still stands) yet is focally positioned indicates that it was a special feature. Windows can project shaped sunlight onto an interior space, but if it is darker outside they can also cast artificial light externally, shaping 19   It could be argued that a shadowy cross is in fact the absence of light; however, I would suggest that this imposes a modern Western ‘common-sense’ understanding of illumination. Whether it shines through or around a cross shape, light can still be understood as cruciform; a shadow cross affords the appearance that it is emitting a cruciform aura of light. 20   ‘Cruciform polycandelon’, Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington DC, BZ.1965.1.1. 21   E.g. ‘Lamp with cruciform handle’, Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, 1988.25. 22   A hermit cell in Ma’asarte, Jabal al-Ala, also features a cruciform window: I. Peña et al., Inventaire du Jebel el-A’la (Milan, 1990), fig. 90.

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Figure 10.3 Bronze open-work standing lamp with cruciform handle from Egypt, 32.1 cm high, sixth–seventh century, Benaki Museum, Athens, ΓΕ 11509 (© 2006 Benaki Museum Athens)

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Figure 10.4 Cruciform window, monastery at southern Dana, Jabal Zawiyye, Dead Cities (© Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University) Note: For a more recent image, see that from H. Atokian’s ‘Syria Looks’ blog: http:// www.flickr.com/photos/200000/377697224 (accessed: 5 April 2013).

perceptions of what is to be found within. The windows of Dead City churches were also filled with stone lattice work, very little of which survives, that further patterned light.23 Given the proliferation of crosses in every other aspect of these buildings’ decoration, it is not unlikely that latticework would also have created crosses of light. Such cruciform sunlight would have manifested not just as light but also as warmth. The crypt of Qasr al-Gharbi monastery church also features cruciform windows. In Dead City churches, crypts housed martyrs’ tombs and were the object of pilgrimage. At Qasr al-Gharbi the crypt was lit only by rows of cruciform windows, and use of this architectural feature for the most holy area of the church is telling. The effect would be such that, as the sun moved across the sky, shifting crosses of light would be projected onto the crypt interior and the objects and bodies within it.24 The design of the windows here emphasised 23

  I. Peña, The Christian Art of Byzantine Syria (London, 1996), p. 73.   Peña, Christian Art, p. 113; 116; Peña et al., Inventaire du Jebel el-A’la, p. 165; H. Crosby Butler, Publications of an American Archaeological Expedition to Syria in 1899–1900, Part II: 24

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the dynamic nature of the sumbolon as it shifted in intensity and position throughout the day and seasons.

The Cross of Light Inscribed The inscription ‘φως ζωη’ (light and life) is frequently found etched or imprinted on domestic and church objects from Late Antiquity, from bread stamps to jewellery.25 The formula references the identification of God and Christ with light (‘God is light’, 1 John 1:5; ‘I am the light of the world’, John 8:12, ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men’, John 1:4), and is usually inscribed as a cross on cruciform objects. This brings us to an important theological connection between the cross and light – it was through the cross (the crucifixion) that Christians could attain eternal life, and knowledge of this, along with divine presence, was the light that Christ brought to the world. In this way cross and light, if not equivalent, were intricately connected. Given what I have argued regarding the anachronism of imposing twentieth-century semiotics on late antique Christianity and for the understanding of embodied sumbola, it is not improbable that a statement such as ‘God is light’ could be understood both metaphorically and literally at once. To use light-infused language to describe the acquisition of knowledge expresses a deep cultural interest in light as a phenomenon with more powerful effect than a Western model of passive vision allows.26 Light might reveal because it contains something divine that is absorbed by the viewer in the experience of seeing. This does not necessarily apply to every experience of seeing, but rather is realised through ritual manipulation of the experience of light, particularly where it is moulded into the shape of the cross. Perhaps it was through ritual that true light was experienced and divinity revealed to Christians; shaping it into a cross would have been an integral part of that ritual manipulation, for it unites the revelation of divinity and divine truth (as light) with the sumbolon or device through which that revelation was made possible (the cross). An inscription of ‘φως ζωη’, particularly on light-reflective surfaces, materialises this idea synaesthetically as an audible and visible cross of light that speaks its

Architecture and Other Arts (New York, 1903), pp. 241–243. 25   E.g. ‘Bronze bread stamp from 6th century Pharos’, Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle upon Tyne, and ‘gold pendant cross’, Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington DC, BZ.1958.40. 26   Besides use in Scripture, such language featured heavily in late antique philosophy, particularly Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and Augustine’s work. See D. Chidester, Word and Light: Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse (Urbana, IL, 1992).

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function while visually manifesting itself. Such a cross of light could be heard as well as seen.27 My analysis so far suggests that there is clear attention to creating crossshaped light effects in early Byzantine liturgy, at least in north-western Syria and possibly in other areas too. Their effect would be an unusual and overwhelming sensory experience, as dynamic moving light, occurring within the context of a full-bodied experience of the church as a liminal space. I have argued elsewhere that sixth-century eucharistic ritual was engineered as a process of revealing divine presence in the earthly realm through sensory experience.28 The ritual as a whole can be understood as an epiphanic process. Both light and cross in this context, and in view of the scriptural references discussed above, can be understood to be, to some degree, epiphanic. Besides this, the cross, as demonstrated by Henry Maguire and Cyril Aphrem Karim, was understood in this period to have apotropaic effect – its inscription materialised divine protective power.29 John Chrysostom, for example, describes its use to cure disease and exorcise demons, and door lintels in the Dead Cities are almost always inscribed with crosses, some of which are accompanied by statements confirming their protective function, such as ‘May the Lord guard thy coming in and thy going out, now and forever. Amen’.30 This adds a further dimension to the epiphanic effect of crosses made of light. In the context of this period’s numinous ‘common sense’, then, we can infer that the sensory experience of a projected or reflected cross of light in ritual practice was one of divine revelation and also protection.

The Cross of Light in Literature Given the trend in material culture outlined above, and its implications, it is surprising to find almost no discussion of the cross of light in scholarship. The exceptions are Jean Daniélou’s and Cyril Aphrem Karim’s somewhat limited treatments of it purely as a symbolic concept rather than a ritually practised sumbolon.31 They view it as a little-used literary symbol with primarily 27   Heard, because reading was aloud in most cases; Augustine famously was surprised by Ambrose’s preference for (and ability to) read silently and privately in Confessions 6.3. 28   Hunter-Crawley, ‘Embodying the Divine’. 29   H. Maguire, ‘Garments Pleasing to God: The Significance of Domestic Textile Designs in the Early Byzantine Period’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990), pp. 215–224; C.A. Karim, Symbols of the Cross in the Writings of the Early Syriac Fathers (Piscataway, NJ, 2004), pp. 127–131. 30   Homily on the Divinity of Christ 9, Patrologia Graeca 48.801–812; inscription on the lintel of a house in al-Bara, Dead Cities, translated in Peña, Christian Art, p. 177. 31   J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (London, 1964), pp. 266–270; Karim, Symbols of the Cross, pp. 131, 149.

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eschatological meaning, and as such it is just one of myriad permutations of the cross’s figurative meanings. Despite this, I found that it is referenced in Christian literature more widely than they acknowledge, and in ways that support its suggested numinous sensational power. The sources are diverse, encompassing Greek, Syriac and Coptic, making references to crosses of light difficult to collate or observe without prior expectation derived from material evidence of the phenomenon. I here present key examples. The most famous instance is Eusebius’ account of Constantine’s ‘conversion’ to Christianity before the battle of Milvian Bridge. Constantine experiences a vision of a cross of light in the sky (‘σταυρὸν ἐκ φωτὸς ἐν οὐρανῷ’), and is instructed by Christ in a dream to use it as an apotropaic device to ensure military triumph.32 Constantine’s military standard thenceforth featured a Chi-Rho, understood to be the sign seen in his vision, and it is important to note that this would have been made of shining metal, as would have been the shields (or shield bosses) of his army, upon which Lactantius claims the sign was also inscribed.33 In this story, a cross of light has the power to protect an entire army. It is also understood to be replicable, not just a phenomenon in the sky but realised in earthly objects too (especially metallic ones). Once learned, this sumbolon continued to manifest its power in no less diminished capacity in different material forms. Subtly suggesting that Constantine’s vision had been surpassed, Cyril of Jerusalem wrote to the successive emperor Constantius to inform him that a huge miraculous cross of light (‘σταυρὸς ἐκ φωτὸς κατεσκευασμένος’) had manifested over the holy city in AD 351.34 The witnesses of this vision ‘had the evidence of their own senses that the holy faith of Christians … is not proclaimed by mere human beings but testified from heaven by God himself.’35 Constantius is encouraged to use this sign, revealed to humans by Heaven, presumably in the same manner as his father. Cyril further interprets the phenomenon in the context of Matthew 24:30 ‘and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky [at his second coming]’, which gives rise to Daniélou’s proposal that the cross of light is an eschatological symbol.36 While this is certainly an aspect of Cyril’s letter, there is much more besides. This sumbolon can be protective, as was Constantine’s, and it fundamentally revealed God’s own presence in the heavens directly to human beings through their senses.

32

  Life of Constantine 1.28, J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca 20.944 (Paris, 1857–66).   On the Deaths of the Persecutors 44.5, J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 7.261 (Paris, 1878–

33

90). 34

  Letter to Constantius 4, Migne, Patrologia Graeca 33.1169.   Letter to Constantius 5, translated by E. Yarnold, Cyril of Jerusalem (London, 2000), pp. 68–70. 36   Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity, pp. 266–270. 35

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Apocrypha also record crosses of light as epiphanic revelation. The Acts of John describes the apostle’s experience of Christ appearing to him at the moment of the crucifixion as a cross of light in a cave on the Mount of Olives: And my Lord stood in the middle of the cave and lit it up … he showed me a cross of light [σταυρὸν φωτὸς] set up … and it said to me, ‘… I have need of someone who will hear. This cross of light [σταυρὸς ὁ τοῡ φωτὸς] is sometimes called the Word by me for your sakes, sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ … this is not the cross of wood … [but] when the nature of man shall be taken up … then he who now hears me shall be united with it’.37

This sensory sumbolon embodies all aspects of Christ’s divinity, revealing in a moment of perception what language struggles to encapsulate over many lines (shortened above), and Christian life culminates in unification with it. This is the only cross of light dealt with in detail by Daniélou, who identifies it as a type of the true cross of Christ’s glory (as opposed to the wooden one of the crucifixion), a ‘divine power’ that reveals his presence and will return with him at the second coming.38 Karim agrees that the cross is here identified with Christ, and it follows therefore that to experience the cross of light may be to experience divine presence. Karim and Daniélou do not address the importance of this cross manifesting as light, but surely this is the means by which the sumbolon fulfils its function – it manifests Christ because it emanates divinity as perceptible divine light directly into the body of the beholder. Indeed, this function is so integral that, not any cross, but the cross of light, is expected to announce Christ’s presence at his second coming. At the end of time, according to this text, Christians can look forward to becoming entirely incorporated into the divine cross of light. Karim argues that, while apocrypha may distinguish between the eschatological cross of light and that on which Christ was crucified, the Syriac fathers, particularly Ephrem, did not; rather, wherever the cross is mentioned it is understood as one and the same entity, at once earthly and heavenly, permuted variously.39 Ephrem refers to the cross of light a number of times in his poetry: indeed, it is one of his numerous leitmotifs.40 This is interpreted again 37   Acta Iohannis 97–99, Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum 1:200, translated by J.K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1993), pp. 320–321. 38   Daniélou, Theology of Jewish Christianity, pp. 285, 266–270. 39   Karim, Symbols of the Cross, p. 149. 40   See Hymns on Virginity 24.3, ‘d­ṣlib nuhrā’, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 223 (Louvain, 1962), p. 85; and 28.4–5, ‘d­ṣlib nuhrā’, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 223, p. 102; Hymns on Julian Saba 14.6, ‘d­ṣlib nuhrā’, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 322 (Louvain, 1972), p. 61; Hymns on Nisibis 69.21, ‘d­ṣlib nuhrā’, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 240 (Louvain, 1963), p. 112.

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as an eschatological symbol, or obliquely as a symbol of paradise, but this does not address the specific conjunction of light and cross.41 In fact, Ephrem’s use of the sumbolon can be found to express the value of its sensory impact in ritual practice. For example, in his Hymns of Faith he identifies a metal ploughshare as a cross of light (‘d­ṣlib nuhrā’) – a revelation of the divine in everyday life.42 Importantly, this shows that cruciform metal could indeed afford an experience of a cross of light in Byzantine Syria. Ephrem also exhorts his audience to sign themselves with the cross of light (‘d­ṣlib nuhrā’) to repel the jealous words of others in his Homily on Admonition and Repentance.43 This shows an understanding that the cross of light effects protection when ritually practised. Jacob of Serugh, another Syrian, also references the cross of light, and in ways that strongly imply ritual practice of the sumbolon. He describes Saint George holding ‘the living sign of the cross of light [‘d­ṣlib nuhrā’]’ (my emphasis) in his hand to repel demons, indicating that it can be manifested by small objects, that it is epiphanic (alive with divinity), and has protective power.44 He further discusses its function in baptism in his Homily on the Assembly of the Bishops, which suggests the practice of immersing a cross of light device in the baptismal font: ‘The flock … saw the cross of light [zqipā d-nuhrā] in the waters / and they loved it. They … desired even to drink it. / From the water they put on His colours to resemble it’.45 It seems that this baptismal water has been infused with a cross of light that can be transferred to Christians through bodily contact, either by drinking or immersion. This is strongly reminiscent of the suggestions made above regarding eucharistic spoons and strainers. Jacob’s Homily on the Reception of the Mysteries explains how the baptised body is altered in baptism, becoming imprinted with the cross of light that marks it as Christian: ‘They signed you with the oil, and your face is signed by the sign of the Cross of light [wa­b­ṣlib nuhrā]’.46 Through baptism the Christian body 41   Karim, Symbols of the Cross, p. 149; K. McVey, Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (New York, 1989), p. 366, note 331. 42   Hymns on Faith 18.11, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 154 (Louvain, 1955), p. 71. 43   Homily on Admonition and Repentance 6, T. Lamy (ed.), Sancti Ephraem Syri Hymni et Sermones: Volume I (Mechliniae, 1882), col. 283. 44   Homily 181, P. Bedjan (ed.), Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis: Volume 5 (Paris, 1910), p. 755, translation by Karim, Symbols of the Cross, p. 129. 45   Homily 135, P. Bedjan (ed.), Homiliae Selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis: Volume 4 (Paris, 1908), p. 790, translation by Karim, Symbols of the Cross, p. 66. My thanks to Scott Johnson for his assistance with this homily. 46   A. Harrak, Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Partaking of the Holy Mysteries (Piscataway, 2009), p. 27; translation in ibid., p. 26. Cf. Ephrem, Hymns on Nisibis 69.21, which mentions Christians shining in the afterlife because they have been signed with the cross of light during earthly life (see above, n. 41). It is possible that a cross of light was inscribed or signed on the body through the drawing of a cross with gleaming baptismal water, understood to

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is made physically different. The cross of light, then, can comprise an integral part of Christian identity and ritual practice, and this is so because it affords perceptible evidence of divine presence. The emphasis on its living nature, furthermore, reminds us of the integrally dynamic nature of the liturgical crosses of light analysed above. The anonymous Hymn on the Cathedral at Edessa further cements practical use of the sumbolon in Syria, when it mentions a cross of light behind the altar, apparently referencing a metallic altar cross: ‘The column that is behind the ambo portrays Golgotha in its form, / And fastened above it is the cross of light [ṣlib nuhrā], like Our Lord between the thieves’.47 The reference to the thieves indicates the presence of three crosses, suggesting an arrangement of altar crosses very like that proposed for the Kaper Koraon examples discussed above, and also enforcing such objects’ suggested affordance for creating lightemitting crosses during the liturgy. That this cross is compared to Christ also hints, again, at the epiphanic power of this sumbolon, particularly in ritual contexts.

Conclusion While this study has been primarily exploratory, certain conclusions can be drawn. The themes that have emerged from the literature – of the cross of light as epiphanic and alive with divinity, a materialisation and revelation of Christian truth, and an apotropaic device – conform to the functions ascertained by conducting a ‘common-sensory’ archaeology of the material culture of the Byzantine Syrian Eucharist. The literature further supports the practical use of crosses of light in ritual, as a powerful sensory sumbolon, an experiential gateway to divine presence rather than an abstract concept, and something that constituted a part of the lived experience of Christianity. These conclusions are not singular; indeed, my methodology does not seek singular answers but rather suggests a range of potential uses and functions that could be realised variously and flexibly for different communities and individuals both temporally and geographically. The evidence addressed primarily derives from Byzantine Syria, but indications are also evident from different periods and areas, suggesting that the cross of light may have been

be imbued with divine light through the immersion into or projection over the water of a metallic cross of light device. This shining mark could be understood to become absorbed into the body through the skin, as indeed was Myron. John Chrysostom also speaks of the newly baptised being marked by light: A. Wenger (ed.), Jean Chrysostome: Huit Catéchèses Baptismales Inédites (Paris, 1970), p. 184. 47   Line 16, Kathleen McVey, ‘The Domed Church as Microcosm: Literary Roots of An Architectural Symbol’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37 (1983), 91–121, esp. 94–95.

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a more widespread phenomenon in the Mediterranean world.48 Indeed, the fluidity of the cross of light’s functions may in part explain why it is only just coming to light. This discovery has been made possible by addressing the material evidence directly, contextualising it within ritual performance and the specific mode of embodiment (the ‘common sense’) unique to its historical location and period, and also by questioning anachronistic assumptions about abstraction in the early Christian understanding of religious symbolism (a consequence of imposing modern Western ‘common sense’ on earlier material cultures). This has enabled exploration of ritual practice’s ability to reveal divine truth directly to the Christian’s senses rather than through the mediation of exegesis, suggesting fruitful further application of the methodology. In Byzantine Syria, then, the cross did not just illuminate Christian minds, but minds and bodies as one.

48

  For example, we might question the ‘iconoclasm’ of replacing figural images with crosses, including shining golden mosaic crosses, such as at Hagia Eirene in Istanbul, during the iconoclastic controversy. This may have been a substitution rather than a rejection of icons.

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11. Experiencing Mid-Byzantine Mortuary Practice: Shrouding the Dead Sophie V. Moore

Can we think about how the events surrounding the death of a person, particularly the practice of shrouding the dead, were experienced by Byzantine communities? Specifically, is it possible to explore the emotional geography1 of Byzantine mourning from the extant material? The topic of emotions in Byzantium has previously been approached through text and art, most recently by Martin Hinterberger in Liz James’s companion to Byzantium.2 In general, previous approaches to the topic have focused either on activity (mourning) or idea (emotion) but have not explored the extent to which the two are inextricably linked. I am interested in the affective properties of the material world and how technologies of mourning, such as shrouding, facilitate specific forms of embodied grief. The textual record gives us access to specific terms used to define normative emotions in the Byzantine period and the artistic record allows us to catalogue how these emotions were depicted. The character of these records does not necessarily encourage discussions of multiplicity of experience. Theoretical approaches from both archaeology and material culture studies might allow us a little more room to talk about how emotions may have been generated, manipulated or controlled in mid-Byzantium. Anthropologies of death and burial over the last thirty years have increasingly come to focus on experience, bereavement and material culture. Perhaps the beginning of the trend to engage with the apparently ephemeral nature of bereavement and grief rather than the ritual surrounding death is Renato Rosaldo’s deeply personal piece entitled ‘Grief and a Headhunter’s

1

  This term is used rather than ‘emotional landscape’, pace O. Harris, ‘Emotional and Mnemonic Geographies at Hambledon Hill: Texturing Neolithic Places with Bodies and Bones’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20 (2010), pp. 357–71. 2   M. Hinterberger, ‘Emotions in Byzantium’, in L. James (ed.), A Companion to Byzantium (Sussex, 2010), pp. 123–34. From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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Rage’.3 Rosaldo argues that anthropology of death has been used as a means to access social structure, a critique that is also perhaps true of many archaeologies of death and burial.4 For Rosaldo, the central problem is that ‘most anthropological studies of death eliminate emotions by assuming the position of the most detached observer. Such studies usually conflate the ritual process with the process of mourning, equate ritual with the obligatory, and ignore the relation between ritual and everyday life’.5 In contrast to this, the goal has become to discuss how experiences are created through relations. This includes discussions of what emotion is, and how it can differ between individuals and societies. In relational approaches there are no a priori distinctions between nature and culture, or concept and action.6 Emotions are not cognitive functions separate from a physical reality, but bio-cognitive experiences within one. This chapter aims to explore how the action and physicality of shrouding may have impacted mid-Byzantine emotional experiences. The key theoretical prompt for this chapter was a 2010 article by Oliver Harris and Tim Flohr Sørensen, entitled ‘Rethinking Emotion and Material Culture’.7 Harris and Sørensen aim to create a new vocabulary for talking about the emotionally generative qualities of the material world. They define their four key terms ‘Emotion’, ‘Affective fields’, ‘Attunement’ (the manner in which we experience being in the world) and ‘Atmosphere’ (which I read as the element of experiencing the world that people can be attuned to) not as four distinct categories, but rather as a means of discussing experienced emotion in the absence of textual specifics. For me, the two key points here are the manner in which emotion is defined and the concept of an affective field. Emotion is defined by Harris and Sørensen as the act of being moved. They apply a bio-cognitive approach where emotion is constructed of both feeling and action: ‘we wish to collapse the discursive awareness of the mental and the bodily, of the felt and the expressed, thus unifying the feeling of being sad and

3

  R. Rosaldo, ‘Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage’, in A. Robben (ed.), Death, Mourning, and Burial: A Cross-cultural Reader (London, 2004), pp. 167–78, reprinted from R. Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston, MA, and London, 1989). 4   The current essential textbook on the topic in Archaeology has chapters on ‘Status, Rank and Power’, ‘Reading the Body’, ‘Gender and Kinship’: M. Parker-Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial (Stroud, 1999). 5   Rosaldo, ‘Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage’, p. 173. 6   The relational school has a number of different factions within it. Key thinkers include J. Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (London, 2010); B. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Brighton, 1993); E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4 (1998), pp. 469–88. 7   O. Harris and T.F. Sørensen, ‘Talk about the Passion’, Archaeological Dialogues 17 (2010), pp. 186–98.

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the tears rolling down the cheek … the movement of being-moved-to-tears’.8 This understanding of emotion as action is perhaps particularly apposite to mid-Byzantine contexts because penthos (grief) cannot be separated from the tears through which sorrow for the sin of mankind is expressed.9 Affective fields are defined as: ‘the relationship between agents, where something or somebody is stimulating an emotional response in a causal set of events’.10 The relationship between thing, person and wider society generates an emotional response. It is not the material culture, person or the event that is affective, but the relationships within the network of actants.11 A number of the actants within this network of mourning are conceptual, for example, common understandings of words used to describe emotions (emotion terms), or people’s memories of other funerals. I am going to move on to a discussion of previous work on Byzantine emotions, and what we can take from it to use as the foundations of an affective field of mourning.

Byzantine Emotion: Text and Art Work on Byzantine emotions has thus far been embedded in a tradition of scholarship that relies on textual analysis and art history. Studies have tended to focus on the depiction of specific emotions known through text in art12 or approach a specific emotional term and explore its meaning within texts.13 Hinterberger suggests a methodology that relies on strict definitions of specifically Byzantine emotions in combination with ‘typical’ emotional episodes as a means for discussing emotional experience. A major issue with this construct is that Hinterberger discusses emotions as ideational, separate from corporeal experience. This is an example of the primacy of the Cartesian dichotomy, and one that I challenge, following the lead of key players in current philosophical and archaeological thought.14 8

  Harris and Sørensen, ‘Talk about the Passion’, p. 149.   H. Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief: Tears of Contrition in the Writings of the Early Syrian and Byzantine Fathers (Leiden, 2004), p. 242. 10   Harris and Sørensen, ‘Talk about the Passion’, p. 150. 11   For the use of the term ‘actant’, see Bruno Latour on Actor–Network theory. This is most clearly summarised in B. Latour, Reassembling the Social (Oxford, 2005). 12   For example, H. Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow in Middle Byzantine Art’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31 (1977), pp. 123–74. 13   For example, Hinterberger, ‘Emotions in Byzantium’; Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief. 14   For archaeologists who are challenging the Cartesian divide, see discussion in C. Conneller, An Archaeology of Materials: Substantial Transformations in Early Prehistoric Europe (London, 2010); O. Harris, ‘(Re)assembling Communities’, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, DOI:10.1007/s10816-012-9138-3 (2012); B. Olsen, In Defence of Things (Plymouth, 2010); C. Knappett, An Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture 9

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A second issue I take with Hinterberger’s methodology for examining emotion in Byzantine contexts is that the precise definitions of the terms themselves are relational, and therefore both flexible and multi-layered. The links between word and meaning are rarely 1:1 and diverse meanings become forefront in different situations. By contrast, Hinterberger translates πένθος (penthos) as ‘mourning’, particularly ‘mourning for a deceased human being’.15 This translation is limited to the classical and ‘secular’ use of the term (if we can ever refer to elements of Byzantine society as secular) and does not encompass its theological meaning that Hannah Hunt has thoroughly explored in her 2004 book on joy-bearing grief.16 Hunt explains that in theological contexts penthos does not refer to grief for the individual dead, but is instead a term related to καταάνυξις (katanuxis), or compunction, and to repentance. The penthos that Hunt discusses (joy-bearing grief) is grief for the fallen state of humanity and is an embodied emotion work that is inseparable from the tears expressing it: ‘a continual state of repentance expressed through physical tears and lamenting’.17 This concept of emotion is very much more in line with a relational mode of thought, as it does not rely on a priori distinction between the idea or feeling of emotion and the embodied action – they are one and the same. I have begun by exploring the meaning of penthos partially to expose some assumptions common in emotion theory that I oppose (specifically the separation of action from thought) and partially because exploring the range of meanings involved in emotion terms, even if we can never translate them accurately for an individual in the past, is one manner in which we can engage with the specifics of Byzantine modes of grief. Involving an understanding of penthos as joy-bearing grief in our analysis does not exclude the possibility that the term still meant mourning of the human dead or for individuals (I shall term this second form of mourning ‘worldly’ rather than ‘godly’ grief after II Corinthians 7:10). A simple translation of penthos is still ‘mourning’ and there is evidence that it did not lose this core meaning going into the mid-Byzantine period. For instance, Hunt suggests that it is the more secular meaning that Corippus uses in his sixth-century poem describing Justinian’s campaign in Africa.18 It is likely that the use of the term in a more secular context would still carry some of the meaning attached to it by its theological use. Even and Society (Oxford, 2011); J. Thomas, Archaeology and Modernity (London, 2004). These archaeological approaches can be generalised as relational, following in the philosophical footsteps of, variously, Bennett, Vibrant Matter; G. Harman, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics (Melbourne, 2009); T. Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (London, 2011); and Latour, We Have Never Been Modern. 15   Hinterberger, ‘Emotions in Byzantium’, p. 129. 16   Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief. 17   Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief, p. 8. 18   Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief, p. 4 quoting Flavius Cresconius Corippus, The Iohannis, or De bellis Libycis, G. Shea tr. (Ann Arbor, MI, 1998), pp. 72, 107, 176 and 196.

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among the illiterate (which after all is a significant proportion of the Byzantine population),19 a Byzantine Christian understanding of the term implies that through some forms of grief (the joy-bearing, godly, kind) comes salvation. The theological meaning of penthos is embedded in the religious texts, from biblical use through to the early desert fathers and the later theology of Klimakos and Christostom.20 It could be argued that the understanding of penthos as related to repentance was as broadly understood as other concepts such as ἀπάθεια (apatheia), the passionless state of God, as a worthy aim; or the concept that tears for the body of the dead are wasted; or that tears of grief (although not of repentance) for the souls of the dead are misguided as the resurrection will happen on Judgement Day. The term penthos was not necessarily highly contested in Byzantine terms, merely heavily layered, as ‘practice’ might be in modern philosophical discussions. In a similar manner, λύπε (lype), another term for grief,21 is qualified by Paul as either ‘godly’ or ‘worldly’,22 where others use it in contrast to penthos as melancholy or inappropriate grieving for the dead. The terms are complex. It cannot be taken for granted that the two forms of grief that we understand to be present in the Byzantine world were separable in Byzantine terms; it is more likely that, in experiential terms, individuals experienced the range of emotions encompassed by penthos to a greater or lesser degree while mourning. This would contradict the Byzantine theological ideal that, in broad terms, sanctioned penthos in the sense of joy-bearing grief, while worldly grief, the lamentation or passion for the individual who had died, was more of an inappropriate departure from the calm and salvation of apatheia.23 The dispassionate theological understanding of grief was unlikely to have been the sole experience of the majority of the population at the graveside (indeed, there was a specific prayer in the funeral liturgy more or less standard by the ninth century that asks compassion of God for those who are grieving, and which I read as referring to worldly grief).24 Knowledge of the more theologically nuanced penthos would, however, have been part of the affective field to which they were attuned.25

19

  R. Browning, ‘Literacy in the Byzantine World’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 4 (1978), pp. 39–54. 20   For biblical use see James 4:9. The penthos of Klimakos and Chrisostom is discussed in detail by Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief. 21   H.G. Liddle and R. Scott translate lype as pain, either of body or mind: A Lexicon Abridged from Liddell and Scott’s Greek–English Lexicon (Oxford, 1891), p. 419. 22   Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief, p. 14; II Corinthians 7:10. 23   Hunt, Joy-bearing Grief, pp. 3–27. 24   E. Velkovska, ‘Funeral Rites according to the Byzantine Liturgical Sources’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001), pp. 21–51, esp. 29. 25   Cf. Harris and Sørensen, ‘Talk about the Passion’.

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The Byzantine affective field of mourning included concepts of grief as joybearing and tears as leading to salvation. A general understating of penthos that included aspects of joy-bearing grief is not necessarily incompatible with depictions of passionate grief at the graveside. Maguire’s study of sorrow in mid-Byzantine art summarises and unpacks numerous depictions of the Lamentation in which it is clear that the Marys are mourning. If any images show the tension between idealised and experienced practice for the everyday, then these images of the exceptional do. The Marys’ tears are penthos in both senses. Their mourning is for the individual Christ as well as for humanity’s need for salvation. At this point we shall leave behind a detailed unpicking of the meanings of specific emotion terms to move towards understanding how the material world in general, and shrouds in particular, contributed to the Byzantine affective field of mourning. The important thing to take forward from this discussion of different forms of penthos is that it is quite likely that, where Byzantine individuals used mourning terms in texts, their references to the grief of an individual overlay an implicit theological understanding that the practices of mourning and lamentation reference grief as salvation. Scales of grey existed where tears might be judged as passionate and melancholy or appropriately godly. In his discussion ‘The Depiction of Sorrow in Middle Byzantine Art’, Maguire assumes the emotion of sorrow to be cross cultural in essentials, at least between a modern ‘us’ and a Byzantine ‘them’.26 The position that different cultures share emotional specifics has been widely critiqued in the anthropological literature.27 A number of scholars, however, most notably Sarah Tarlow, have used empathy, reliant on ‘common humanity’28 to deal with topics of mourning and grief where they feel there is some cultural continuity linking the community being studied with present emotional responses to funerals.29 Tarlow herself has rejected the charge of over-empathising, and although widely critiqued for its empathetic approach, Bereavement and Mourning is a

26

  Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’.   Virtually every current study of past emotions begins with a refutation of the position that emotions are ‘natural’ and cross cultural. For a brief overview of this position, see Harris, ‘Emotional and Mnemonic Geographies at Hambledon Hill’. For a more comprehensive overview, see S. Tarlow, ‘The Archaeology of Emotion and Affect’, Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012), pp. 169–85; C. Lutz, Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and their Challenge to Western Theory (Chicago, IL, 1998); and M. Lyon, ‘Missing Emotion: The Limitations of Cultural Constructionism in the Study of Emotion’, Cultural Anthropology 10 (1995), pp. 244–63. 28   S. Tarlow, Bereavement and Commemoration (Oxford, 1999), pp. 723–4. 29   Tarlow, Bereavement and Commemoration. 27

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text that attempts to engage with the experience of the subject under study.30 Conversely, Tarlow critiqued the approach of Harris and Sørensen as overempathetic, as it relies heavily (too heavily, in Tarlow’s opinion) on bodily experience as a shared aspect of humanity. I do not read Harris and Sørensen in this way, judging their use of phenomenology to stem more productively from a Heideggerian tradition emphasising the embodied nature of beingin-the-world rather than from the phenomenological tradition that grew out of the work of archaeologists such as Chris Tilley, widely critiqued for universalising the human body.31 The phenomenological focus of Harris and Sørensen emphasises that we cannot remove ideas from experience, or separate action from thought, nature from culture; therefore, although human bodies share some physiological reactions, the embodied nature of both reaction and concept means that, while exploration of emotions specific to individuals and moments is beyond the scope of our discipline, an exploration of how emotions are affected by and can be managed through the material world in specific cultural contexts is a productive means of discussing the past. Approaching emotion in the past is fraught,32 and often labelled either ‘impossible’, along with other past emotional experiences, or ‘obvious’33 because grief seems so visceral when we experience it ourselves. Neither of these extremes is true, and while the subject is certainly challenging, I consider that to attempt to look at mortuary practice without thinking about the experience of the people at the deathbed and graveside is to remove an important element of human experience from our understanding of the past. This is not to argue that the response to every death was grief laden as sorrow is not universal here and now or there and then as a response to the death of every person; within our own context, the casual manner in which I can read a newspaper does not make me a callous person who cannot mourn or function properly as a human within this society, but rather one who can protect her emotional state. Nor am I arguing for a homogenous Byzantine response to grief based on apatheia and a learned spirituality where emotions are tightly controlled and channelled into theologically approved expressions. Rather I am suggesting that certain points in the life course of human beings provoke 30

  For a more nuanced review of empathy in archaeology, see S. Tarlow, ‘Emotion in Archaeology’, Current Anthropology 41 (2000), pp. 713–46. For Tarlow’s rejection of criticisms relating to her empathetic approach, see S. Tarlow, ‘Pale Reflections’, Archaeological Dialogues 17 (2010), pp. 183–6, esp. 184. 31   C. Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape (Oxford, 1994). For a critique of this position, see J. Brück, ‘Experiencing the Past? The Development of a Phenomenological Archaeology in British Prehistory’, Archaeological Dialogues 12 (2005), pp. 45–72. 32   For example, see B.H. Rosenwein, ‘Writing Without Fear about Early Medieval Emotions’, Early Medieval Europe 10 (2001), pp. 229–34. 33   ‘Emotionally “obvious” contexts, such as funerals’: Harris and Sørensen, ‘Talk about the Passion’, p. 187.

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strong responses – the specific moments vary, the specific emotions certainly do, but I feel secure in the statement that mid-Byzantine mortuary practices mark a key process of transition and that the emotions associated in texts with the process ranging from penthos to lype to acedia have elements in common with our own experiences that can be explored. Phenomenological understandings of grief are not entirely out of place here, but must be tempered by the specifics of Byzantine context. In Harris and Sørensen’s terms,34 this context is the affective field, and it is this element of emotion theory that I shall explore next.

Affective Fields and Relational Ontologies I read Harris and Sørensen’s concept of the affective field as a means of applying current literature that emphasises relational approaches to the problem of examining experience in Byzantium. In general, relational approaches rely on an understanding that ontology and epistemology are not separate, but collapsed into one another; there is no thinking ‘outside’ the world. This makes ‘things’ (a category that includes objects, animals, knowledge, humans) equally real with an equal potential to be agents in any given society. This is some of the philosophical context within which Harris and Sørensen aimed to integrate the material world into the discussion, moving towards understanding the ‘material world as inherently affective’.35 The Byzantine world is significantly different to my own, and my understanding is mediated not only through the record preserved in textual, artistic and archaeological sources, but also how that knowledge has been translated repeatedly to eventually come to be understood (rightly or wrongly) by me.36 The relations between surviving material culture, textual sources and a nuanced understanding of the varieties of human experience gives us a point of access into a more detailed and hopefully more accurate description of living (and dying) as a Byzantine person. Harris and Sørensen embrace a relatively flat ontology: that is, they aim not to automatically give priority to the human in their study of past emotions, instead focusing equally on the affective nature of the material world. Nonhuman agency is placed on an equal footing with the agency of humans. Although theirs is not an entirely symmetrical archaeology37 (the emotions of the objects within the networks are not discussed), affective fields are 34

  Harris and Sørensen, ‘Talk about the Passion’.   Harris and Sørensen, ‘Talk about the Passion’, p. 145. 36   This concept is developed by Latour as ‘circulating reference’ and is articulated most clearly in B. Latour, Pandora’s Hope: An Essay on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, 1999). 37   For symmetrical archaeology see C. Witmore, ‘Symmetrical Archaeology: Excerpts of a Manifesto’, World Archaeology 39 (2007), pp. 546–62; T. Webmoor and C. Witmore, ‘Things Are Us! A Commentary on Human/Things Relations under the Banner of a “Social” Archaeology’, Norwegian Archaeological Review 41 (2008), pp. 53–70. 35

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generated by the relationships between actants, both human and non-human, and it is the relationships between things that have affect on the world and human experiences of it. A more recent paper by Harris develops the concepts of how non-humans have affect within emotional assemblages.38

Shrouding the Dead in Mid-Byzantine Contexts Aiming to address the affect of material culture (in this case, shrouds) on the affective field of mourning demands that I first address the evidence for the practice of shrouding. Archaeological evidence of shrouds from midByzantine Anatolia is sparse. Pins that might have been shroud pins are rare. Excavated cemeteries have often been on top of prehistoric sites and are, perhaps as a consequence of this, under-studied and rarely published in full. Additionally, even if the graves have been excavated to the highest standards and published well, Byzantine graves are often close to the surface and highly disturbed. The preservation of the human bone in the majority of Byzantine cemeteries in Anatolia is so poor that it is extremely unlikely that shrouds would have survived: for example, within the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic cemetery at Çatalhöyük, the preservation conditions are such that leather shoes (considerably more durable than the linen of shrouds) were reduced to hobnails and an imprint.39 On the other hand, the general lack of dress accessories (such as buckles, hobnails and jewellery) suggests that the bodies were at least dressed in specific clothes for burial if not explicitly shrouded. More positively, a number of graves at Amorium dating to the tenth or eleventh century contained strips of fabric such as those used in shrouding.40 Non-archaeological evidence for shrouding includes a sixth-century image of the death and burial of Jacob, showing Jacob being laid out in clothes and entombed wrapped in an indistinct shroud that left the face exposed.41 MidByzantine images of people in the tomb often (if not always) show shrouding. A twelfth-century illumination within the Vatican Octateuch, for example, shows Jacob being placed into a sarcophagus wrapped in thin strips of cloth woven around his body in a lattice with arms bound to his torso and his legs bound tightly together. His face is uncovered, although the shroud covers the top of his head. It is possible that his face was left uncovered in the image

38

  Harris, ‘(Re)assembling Communities’.   S. Moore and M. Jackson, ‘Late Burials from 4040’, in I. Hodder (ed.), Çatalhöyük Excavations 2000–2008 Seasons, vol. 1 (UCLA, forthcoming). 40   L. Usman, ‘Conservation and Analysis of Organic Material from a Tomb in the Narthex of the Lower City Church’, in C.S. Lightfoot (ed.), Amorium Reports II: Research Papers and Technical Reports (Oxford, 2001), pp. 443–66. 41   Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, fig. 54. 39

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so that it is clear that it is Jacob who is being buried.42 Other figures are also depicted in the same manner, tightly shrouded with crisscrossed strips of cloth with uncovered faces.43 The second manner in which shrouds are depicted shows individuals wrapped in a winding sheet and then bound with string or thin tapes, as in a thirteenth-century image of the Marys at the Tomb.44 The figure of Jesus is shrouded with legs bound tightly together and his arms bound to his torso; his face is exposed, although the shroud continues over the top of his head and his halo is clearly visible. The image shows the body in a dark cloth with white lines crossing it in smooth regular planes. This image seems to show a winding sheet bound to the body by a lattice of thin white tapes. This form of shrouding has parallels in the Medieval West, where ‘parcelling’ a corpse in a winding sheet and twine was common.45 There is additional evidence for Western Medieval shrouds wound in spirals and stitched closed.46 The shroud depicted in the image of the Entombment from the Theodore Psalter of 1066 seems to be of this variety, a swathing band wound round the corpse and secured.47 The image shows Jesus shrouded in thin bands of cloth wrapped round his body binding his arms tightly to his sides and his legs together; his face is exposed and the bands of cloth are not a lattice but wound as if one continuous strip. The funeral clothes in the images looked at here are without decoration with the exception of a twelfth-century image of Lazarus that shows a figure standing in a tightly wrapped crisscrossed shroud of fabric bands, but with a decorated mantle over his head and shoulders.48 The image of The Raising of Lazarus is unusual in this collection of images simply for having a face cloth. It is possible that the presence of the head cloth in this image was a response to John 11:44, where Lazarus is specifically noted as having his hands and feet ‘bound with swathing bands’, where his face is ‘bound about with a cloth’.49 The absence of face cloths in other mid-Byzantine images of people in tombs suggests that either they were the final element of shrouding to be put in place before the tomb was closed or that they were not standard practice. Face 42

  Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, fig. 6.   Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, figs 35 and 40. 44   Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, fig. 19. 45   R. Gilchrist and B. Sloane, Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain (London, 2005), p. 106; also Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, fig. 79 shows a ninth-/tenth-century ivory of the Metz school depicting a shroud constructed of a large piece of cloth held in place by thin bands spiralled around the body of Christ. 46   Gilchrist and Sloane, Requiem, p. 106. 47   Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, fig. 40. 48   Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, fig. 35. 49   John 11:44: καί ἐξῆλθεν ὁ τεθνηκὼς δεδεμένος τοὺς πόδας καί τὰς χεῖρας κειρίαις, καί ἡ ὄψις αὐτοῦ σουδαρίῳ περιεδέδετο. 43

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cloths were, however, common in Western Medieval practice, where Gilchrist and Sloane read their presence as ‘a deliberate attempt to depersonalise the features of the deceased, perhaps in an act of humility’.50 Shrouding continued, possibly as uninterrupted practice, into the Early Sassanid and Islamic period, and remains in use in Muslim contexts today.51 Although by no means comprehensive, this study shows that shrouding was depicted in eleventh- to thirteenth-century art and presents the limited archaeological evidence for their use (although the aphorism that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence is particularly apposite here). Shrouds are referred to in biblical sources and continue in use into the later Medieval period in both the West and in the Islamic East. The archaeological evidence of stitched shrouds from Western contexts52 and Byzantine images of latticed swathing bands used as shrouds (interlaced in the same manner as the swaddling of infants as depicted in two nativity scenes)53 suggest that the absence of shroud pins does not indicate the absence of shrouds, as neither of these techniques would require a pin to remain closed. Shrouding, probably in linen, was in all likelihood widely practised and a key element of mortuary practice in the mid-Byzantine period. I shall now move on to exploring how shrouds functioned as a technology of mourning.

Shrouding as a Byzantine Technology of Mourning After the death of a Byzantine person, the individual was laid out on a funeral couch, or bier, for a variable length of time. At some point prior to funerary procession, the individual was stripped of their clothing and their body was washed, anointed with oil, wine or water, and shrouded, although the face may have been left exposed until the body was placed in the grave.54 This is a descriptive, and to the best of my knowledge accurate, account of the process of shrouding for members of the laity. The monastic rite differs slightly, with the monk laid out in his cell and the body washed and dressed with a prohibition against seeing the naked body of the deceased.55 If we left the interpretation here, we would have a basic understanding of what happened during this process, but not, I think, how it might have been experienced by those involved in the preparation of the body for burial. 50

  Gilchrist and Sloane, Requiem, p. 107.   T. Insoll, ‘The Archaeology of Islam’, in T. Insoll (ed.), Archaeology and World Religion (London, 2001), pp. 123–47, esp. 129. 52   Gilchrist and Sloane, Requiem, p. 107. 53   Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, figs 27 and 28. 54   J. Davies, Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Late Antiquity (London, 1999), p. 199. 55   Velkovska, ‘Funeral Rites’, p. 37. 51

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The Byzantine world view was firmly embedded in (if not synonymous with) Christian theology. It is likely that the individuals at the graveside knew that the individual in the grave had been saved, the deceased having been baptised and only waiting for Judgement Day for resurrection. The surviving community, however, has just had a person removed from their everyday sphere, and if the separation is not permanent, it will last at least a lifetime. There is tension here between what ‘should’ be felt and the experience of individuals. Returning to the previous discussion of different forms of penthos, lamentation and godly or joy-bearing grief were acceptable in a way that passionate mourning was not.56 Within my own experience, the seismic shift that is the emotional response to the death of someone I was close to feeds in to an enormously strong affective field: the surviving community not only does what is proscribed, but also what ‘feels right’. This is not a dispassionate subject and cannot be discussed in purely dispassionate terms. The process of laying out and washing the body, anointing and finally shrouding the body, will not have taken place simply because ‘that is what happens at a funeral’, although memories of other funeral contexts are certainly part of the affective field that is built up surrounding death. Elements of tradition and conformity, perhaps a heightened sense of behaving appropriately for the dead, were part of the affective field, but responses to death are never simply formulaic. It is possible that the relatively protracted length of time taken in laying out and anointing the dead was a response to the tension between a sanctioned mid-Byzantine theological view of death as merely the end of physical life and the rest of the affective field, a complex network of culturally and individually specific emotions that included various forms of penthos, apatheia, katanuxis and lype. The extended laying out period is also a significant shift from Late Antiquity, as the dead body was no longer a polluting substance.57 The atmosphere at this stage was relatively public: acquaintances, friends and relatives visited the bedside as they are shown to do during the last illness.58 This is a different goodbye to that of the funeral: the person is still in their living context, surrounded by the material culture that contributes to the understanding of them as a person. Prior to shrouding (but after the laying out period), people were stripped of their immediate material culture, clothes and personal effects. Mid-Byzantine wills were comprehensive, encompassing nominally all of the movable material culture within the house of the deceased (should he be a householder). The personal effects of the deceased were presumably distributed along with 56

  Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, p. 172 shows that violent passions, although depicted in Old Testament scenes, were not considered appropriate for Christian contexts. Hinterberger, ‘Emotions in Byzantium’, p. 127 refers to passions as human and fallible in contrast to divine apatheia. 57   Davies, Death, Burial and Rebirth, p. 198. 58   C. Walter, ‘Death in Byzantine Iconography’, Early Church Review 8 (1976), pp. 116–23.

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the bathing equipment, jewels, tools, cutlery and sundry other categories of thing.59 Daniel Miller discusses mourning through the act of distribution. Miller’s theory relies on two qualities that he takes to be universal: that the moment of death is often a surprise, and that humans deal with the abrupt nature of the end of life by constructing a social death through a funeral.60 Miller argues that the ‘planned social death’ of a person is mediated through the distribution of their material culture: ‘if you can’t control the way you separate from the living body, you certainly can control the way you separate from or divest yourself from, the objects that were once associated with that living body’.61 Although I disagree with Miller that dispersal of material culture automatically disperses the social person,62 critically examining the distribution of objects in Byzantine contexts is another means of thinking about affective fields of mourning. Within some anthropological traditions, this type of process is seen as distributing personhood.63 Distributed personhood is explicitly ruled out within the highly developed system of Byzantine personhood that involves, in essentials, body and soul, and that does not include material possessions.64 In contrast to sanctioned views of the person, the boundary between human and non-human, or person and thing, is rather more blurred when we think about the tacit knowledge involved in cults of the saints and relics of all kinds. Distribution and circulation of the material culture of the dead may not have been viewed as a distribution of personhood in explicit terms, but items may well have become heirlooms and acted as technologies of memory, in essence, ‘standing’ for the person in society.65 The objects here have affect that goes beyond the surface meaning of the items. This affect is not primary to the object, but emerges from the relationships between the physical thing and the rest of the affective field.

59

  For a summary of the categories of ‘thing’ contained in Byzantine wills, see N. Oikonomides, ‘The Contents of the Byzantine House from the Eleventh to the Fifteenth Century’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990), pp. 205–14. 60   D. Miller, ‘Matter of Life and Death’, in D. Miller, Stuff (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 135– 56; D. Miller, ‘Loss and Material Culture in South London’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 15 (2009), pp. 502–19. 61   Miller, ‘Matter of Life and Death’, p. 146. 62   For a relational critique of the ‘social’ in social archaeologies see Webmoor and Witmore, ‘Things Are Us!’ 63   M. Strathern, The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (London, 1988); C. Fowler, The Archaeology of Personhood (London, 2004). 64   P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988). 65   For further discussion of heirlooms and commemorative objects as person-like, see Fowler, The Archaeology of Personhood, pp. 79–100.

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Immediately after death, the individual was present in the clothes they were wearing at death. The affective field at this point included the body of the person tied up with memories of the items of clothing they are wearing.66 It is likely that the laying out of the corpse was not a private action. Depictions of mourning biers tell us that people visited the clothed body at this stage, explicitly to mourn and remember.67 The next two processes, stripping the body and shrouding, meant that time was taken in the presence of the dead person, who was steadily distanced from the living sphere. After laying out, the next stage is a much more private one: removal of the immediate material culture of the corpse, washing and anointing the body. I suggest that distancing of a mid-Byzantine body from its living context was an act performed by a limited few. This process is not the subject of art or textual sources that I am aware of, but for the fully clothed deceased person to have emerged as a shrouded, anointed and relatively anonymous corpse, the stripping of the body must have taken place. The lack of discussion of the process reinforces the privacy of the act. The act of stripping the dead must have been powerful: the atmosphere here is more closed than the public mourning contexts, and this contributes to a different affective field. The deceased Byzantine person has now been divested of their earthly cares and had been revealed to the view of their shrouders, naked and separate from everyday life, wealth and status, as exposed as they were when they entered it.68 At the next stage, shrouding hides the person from view, wrapping them tightly in cloth bands that obscure the physical body but not the face. The process of wrapping provides another layer of distance, particularly to those who perform the action of interlacing or stitching the shroud. The act of shrouding created a more private sphere in which to experience whatever was being felt (be it passionate grief or anything else on the spectrum of wildly felt emotion that comes with the separation from a person you knew well), space in which to tame emotions and build them into a more socially acceptable form of mourning, which may well have included the more godly elements of penthos and aimed towards apatheia. Once the clothes had been removed from the body and dispersed, perhaps along with other intimate physical possessions, tools, jewellery, cosmetics, the items became less tightly bound to the deceased person. They became part of modulated networks where the objects once associated with the dead created and curated memories of the dead person as well as forging new relationships.69 66   For the importance of clothing to identity and experience, see D. Miller, ‘Why Clothing is not Superficial’, in Miller, Stuff, pp. 12–41. 67   For example, Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow’, figs 54, 70 and 75. 68   As is emphasised in Timothy 6:7 and Psalm 49:17. 69   For more detail on technologies of remembrance, see A. Jones, ‘Technologies of Remembrance’, in H. Williams (ed.), Archaeologies of Remembrance: Death and Memory in Past

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In many cases, the stripping and anointing of the body was followed by shrouding, and although it is by no means certain that the two acts, stripping and wrapping, were one event, it seems highly likely that they occurred in quick succession. The act of shrouding would, however, have had a distinctly separate affective field to the act of stripping the body. Stripping the body started with a situation where almost all of the aspects of the living person were present, although one step removed from their physical life. By the time the person had been stripped of their material culture and shrouding could begin, the person was further removed from their living sphere. The shrouding process hid the body in a steady progression. It is neither the cloth, nor the action, nor knowledge of previous events, nor the bodies of the people alone that generated the affective field within the moment, but the relations between these things.70 The shroud cloth is ‘sticky’ with emotion:71 it must have been woven before being used, and the memory of that act contributed to the affective field. Additionally the action of interlacing or stitching the shroud was complex and would have required someone who had performed the act before. The action of shrouding must have started at either the feet or the shoulders (leaving the head exposed) and worked along the body for both latticed shrouds and winding sheets. The process cannot have been quick, especially for latticed or spiral wound shrouds, and its affective field must have included the privacy and inescapable intimacy of the act of wrapping a dead and naked body in cloth rather than more familiar clothes. The act of shrouding cannot have been undertaken by a large group of people, only as many as could fit round the body, and I judge that, unless a very practised act, it would be difficult to have more than one or two people stitching at once. It would be interesting in cases of extremely good preservation to examine the style, length and consistency of stitches on shrouds for an impression of whether one or many people contributed to the work. In a Byzantine context, the act of shrouding would have been reminiscent of swaddling a child, perhaps bringing to mind the comfort of salvation at baptism and the parallels between baptismal burial and burial of the dead.72 The affective field mourning will also have included aspects of bereavement specific to individuals that we cannot access: the precise relationship of the mourner to the dead individual, memory of other acts of mourning, and the relationship between the mourner and God; however, the presence of unknowable factors in the Byzantine network is no reason to ignore the implications of other aspects of the affective field. Societies (New York, 2003), pp. 65–88. 70   As well as Latour, We Have Never Been Modern for discussion on relational approaches, see T. Ingold, ‘When ANT Meets SPIDER: Social Theory for Arthropods’, in Ingold, Being Alive, pp. 89–94. 71   S. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York, 2004). 72   See Velkovska, ‘Funeral Rites’, pp. 35–6 on the liturgical similarities between funeral and baptismal rites.

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Conclusions If the act of stripping, washing and shrouding the body was undertaken by an individual or group of individuals who knew the deceased person (as seems likely in small Byzantine rural communities if not necessarily large urban ones), then the slow progression from a clothed body, recognisable as the person they were in life, to a more emotionally distant, wrapped and hidden corpse could have functioned as an affective technology of mourning creating a more private space in which to feel and express emotion prior to a more public funeral. Within the sequence of mortuary practices, shrouding would have separated those whose role it was from those who viewed the clothed form during the period of laying out and the shrouded one during the procession to the gravesite but were not part of the process. The act transformed a person embedded in the day-to-day context of life to a shrouded and relatively anonymous corpse, and the time taken to prepare the body for burial created an affective field specific to the shrouders. Approaching Byzantine emotion from a perspective that takes in recent developments in archaeological theory provides a new means of joining up detailed textual analysis of specific emotion terms and the material culture associated with significant life events. This does not further our understanding of individual emotional responses, but it does allow us to talk more broadly about the factors that impacted the Byzantine emotional experience. The incorporation of shrouds in this analysis, and thinking about the experienced differences between the person laid out on a bier and the shrouded person ready to be placed in the grave, opens up the possibility of talking about how these actions, these objects, affected Byzantine experiences of grief. We emerge with a fuller understanding of the process of mourning in the days between death and burial, the slow removal of the deceased from the living sphere through distribution of objects and partial concealment of the body by shrouding before absolute concealment through burial. We also gain a means of understanding Byzantine emotions that encompasses a range of emotions at death, from penthos, which is worldly, to godly grief, and how the private affective field of shrouding might have been used by some of those closest to the dead to move their emotional response from one to the other. These methods perhaps offer a means of peopling our understanding of the Byzantine world not with cold agents but with human actants who felt and experienced the world in which they lived.

Section V Experiencing Self

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12. How Icelanders Experienced Byzantium, Real and Imagined Scott Ashley

Introduction In the early decades of the eleventh century, in the west of Iceland, the twentyyear-old Bolli Bollason, having just settled final terms with the men who had killed his father in a feud, made known his desire to visit Byzantium. His father-in-law, Snorri the Goði, one of the most famous and powerful chieftains in Iceland, tried to dissuade him by offering him a farm and a chieftainship of his own. But Bolli was not to be dissuaded. ‘For a long time now I have wanted to make a journey south’, Bolli told Snorri. ‘A man is to grow considered ignorant if he has explored no more than the shores of Iceland.’ He left home that summer, sailing to Norway and then Denmark. After a year among the Danes, Bolli began his journey through foreign countries, not stopping until he reached Constantinople. After a short time there he entered the company of the Varangian guard, and we know of no reports of northerners having entered the service of the Byzantine emperor [Old Norse Garðskonungr] before Bolli Bollason. He spent many years in Constantinople, where he was regarded as the most valiant of fighters in any perilous situation, where he was among the foremost of them.1

1   Laxdœla saga, Íslenzk Fornrit 5, ed. E. Ól. Sveinsson (Reykjavík, 1934), chapters 72–3; tr. in V. Hreinsson et al. (eds), The Complete Sagas of Icelanders 5 (Reykjavík, 1997), pp. 111– 12. Garðskonungr, from garðr, a yard or enclosed space and applicable to Constantinople as a walled city, was one of the most favoured Old Norse terms for the Byzantine emperor; others were keisar (caesar), Grikkjakonungr (king of the Greeks) and stólkonungr (throne-king). Skaldic poetry also uses the term stólþengils (throne-prince): J. Jesch, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse (Woodbridge, 2001), p. 100.

From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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This paper has two overlapping questions, stimulated by Bolli’s journey. The first is very simple: how can a place be experienced that neither you nor anyone else has either been to, or even seen? When Bolli’s great adventure was turned into saga in the mid-thirteenth century, Icelanders had in reality long since stopped travelling in any numbers to what they called Miklagarðr, the ‘great city’ of Constantinople.2 But they continued to experience it vicariously, through stories like that of Bolli, as an imagined place. My second question is concerned with the ‘real’ Byzantium of my title: how is a place experienced, which in terms of appearance, politics, economics and culture, bears no relationship to the home you have left behind? In Laxdæla Saga, Bolli leaves his family’s farms at Helgafell and Tunga looking for knowledge and experience to counter the isolation and marginality Icelanders felt, sitting on their island in the north Atlantic. How might the real ‘far-farers’ and the audiences of their sagas have conceptually experienced the radical transitions from the journey’s beginning to its end? From an extreme rural landscape to the largest city in Europe? From a world build of turf and wood to one constructed from stone and marble? From a society without kings or government to one that has become a byword for sophistication and hierarchy? This article uses two of the major sub-genres of medieval Icelandic literature, the ‘Sagas of Icelanders’ (or ‘Family Sagas’) and the ‘Kings’ Sagas’, written from the early thirteenth- through to the fifteenth century, to explore these questions.3 The ‘saga Iceland’ represented in the literary material was not identical with the real Iceland, just as there was a difference between the simplified Byzantium of historians like Theophanes or Psellos and that of the complex society in which they lived. However, there were connections. Latemedieval Icelanders never forgot that both their direct ancestors and more distant Norwegian kin had once taken the austrvegr, the ‘east-way’, to the great city on the Bosphorus in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Although the Bolli Bollason we encounter in Laxdæla Saga is a textual construct, a piece of narrative, Icelanders thought Bolli had also been a real person, and tried to represent him as such.4 The sagas idealised and fictionalised the historical past, but they did not invent it, nor were they able to ignore the boundaries 2

  For a general survey of eleventh- and twelfth-century journeys to Byzantium from the north, see K. Ciggaar, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium, 962–1204 (Leiden, 1996), chapter 4; also K. Ciggaar, ‘Visitors from North-western Europe to Byzantium. Vernacular Sources: Problems and Perspectives’, in M. Whitby (ed.), Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, 1025–1204, Proceedings of the British Academy 132 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 123–55. 3   The literature on the sagas is extensive; for recent introductions with bibliography see R. McTurk (ed.), A Companion to Old Norse–Icelandic Literature and Culture (Oxford, 2005); M. Clunies Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse–Icelandic Saga (Cambridge, 2010). 4   S. Blöndal, The Varangians of Byzantium: An Aspect of Byzantine Military History, tr., revised and rewritten by B.S. Benedikz (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 206­–9, suggests some of the pathways by which the Bolli of history became the Bolli of saga.

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of the plausible in Icelandic culture. As such, the sagas are no better or worse than many of the sources used by medieval historians.5 It is true that medieval Icelanders did not always draw the boundary between the plausible and the implausible at the same point as does the modern world. Any full study should also include discussion of the riddarasögur (‘Sagas of Knights’), the body of chivalric, romantic and legendary tales, popular in Iceland and Scandinavia from the thirteenth century. Several of these works contain fantastic and exotic travels to the east of the known world, including Constantinople.6 It is not clear that Icelanders would have made the sharp distinction between those stories and the more overt realism of the ‘Sagas of Icelanders’ and ‘Kings’ Sagas’. Many of these sagas that claim – and have often been granted – some kind of historical veracity are interwoven with the folkloric and the magical. The most famous of all the historical Varangians, Harald Sigurdarson ‘Hardrada’, who was king of Norway from 1047 to 1066, was remembered in the earliest Icelandic accounts (and in more general European tradition) as fighting a shape-shifting serpent and full-blown dragon while in Constantinople.7 Surrounded by this hinterland of the magical, Bolli Bollason’s apparently sober experiences may not have seemed any less fantastic than those of Eiríkr vídförli (‘the far-travelled’), who journeyed from Norway in pursuit of the Earthly Paradise, and was lectured in Miklagarðr by the emperor on Christian learning and cosmology.8 Nevertheless, I concentrate here on the more consciously historical genres partly because of space, but also because for all their romantic trappings they did retain memories of Byzantium as a real place, even if it was a semi-fictionalised reality. The experiences of Scandinavians were located and understood within verifiable events and processes, such as the Varangian Guard, the Crusades, 5   W.I. Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (Chicago, IL, 1990), pp. 43–51, offers a guide to the uses and problems of the sagas as historical sources. 6   M. Schlauch, Romance in Iceland (London, 1934), esp. chapter 4, still offers some useful ways into this theme; however, F. Amory, ‘Things Greek and the Riddarsögur’, Speculum 59 (1984), pp. 509–23, revises some of Schlauch’s assumptions about direct Byzantine influence. See also, G. Barnes, ‘Byzantium in the Riddarsögur’, in A. Ney, H. Williams and F.C. Charpentier Ljungqvist (eds), Á Austrvega: Saga and East Scandinavia, 1, Preprint Papers of the 14th International Saga Conference (Gävle, 2009), pp. 92–8. 7   Morkinskinna, 2 vols, ed. Ár. Jakobsson and Þórður I. Guðjónsson, Íslenzk Fornrit 23–4 (Reykjavík, 2011), vol. 1, chapter 13. For a composite English text and edition, see Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings (1030–1157), ed. and tr. T.M. Andersson and K.A. Gade, Islandica LI (Ithaca, NY, 2000), with references to the serpent tradition at p. 428, n. 7. 8   S. Jakobsson, ‘On the Road to Paradise: “Austrvegr” in the Icelandic Imagination’, in J. McKinnell, D. Ashurst and D. Kick (eds), The Fantastic in Old Norse/Icelandic Literature: Sagas and the British Isles, Preprint Papers on the 13th International Saga Conference 2 (Durham, 2006), pp. 935–43; S. Jakobsson, ‘The Schism That Never Was: Old Norse Views on Byzantium and Russia’, Byzantinoslavica 66 (2008), pp. 173–88.

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and the topography and rivalries of the imperial capital, rather than through purely legendary ones. It is true that these accounts constitute only a small body of material in the greater corpus of medieval Icelandic literature. Unlike the more formal saga-narratives of travel to Norway and northern Europe, organised around scenes of departure, testing and homecoming, journeys to Byzantium are much less central to the drive of the story and less patterned in their structure.9 They often sit at the edges of the main narrative threads, which tend to be much more interested in local events. Indeed, sometimes they are quite literally at the edges of sagas, a journey to Constantinople being a convenient way to get characters off stage and tidy up loose ends. But as I hope to show, they nevertheless remain significant, both as ways in which Icelanders came to understand themselves, and as legitimate, and in their own way sophisticated, experiences of Byzantium.

Experiencing Byzantine Objects Iceland began to be settled by Scandinavians from Norway and the northern and western parts of the Celtic British Isles around the year 871.10 It was within a relatively short window during the first few decades after 1000 that most Icelanders travelled along the ‘northern arc’ to the Byzantine Empire.11 Like Bolli Bollason, many of them took service in the Varangian guard, the imperial bodyguard initially made up of Scandinavian Rus, whose position within the Byzantine state was formalised by Basil II after 988.12 But these eleventh-century links between Byzantium and Iceland were only one of the last outbursts of a much larger and longer pattern of connectivity stretching back to late antiquity. A variety of Byzantine objects – coins, shards of glass and pottery, bronzes, mosaic scrap, weapon fragments – have been found over the years scattered across Scandinavia, primarily in Sweden and the Baltic islands.13 Repeated pulses of exchange between the eastern Roman Empire and 9

  For a classic formalist readings of these ‘travel patterns’, see L. Lönnroth, Njál’s Saga: A Critical Introduction (Berkeley, CA, 1976), pp. 71–6. 10   For the dating and early history of the settlement of Iceland, see J. Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London, 2001), pp. 89–91; O. Vésteinsson, ‘The Archaeology of Landnám: Early Settlement in Iceland’, in W.W. Fitzhugh and E.I. Ward (eds), Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga (Washington DC, 2000), pp. 164–74. 11   For the origins and routes of the ‘northern arc’, see R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe (London, 1983), chapter 5; M. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD300–900 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 562–4 and 606–12. 12   Blöndal, The Varangians, pp. 45–6. 13   For general overviews, see B. Arrhenius, ‘Connections between Scandinavia and the Eastern Roman Empire in the Migration Period’, in D. Austin and L. Alcock (eds), From the

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Scandinavia over the best part of seven hundred years must have created a very physical and immediate experience of Byzantium, complementary to those of stories. We may well wonder what effects these had on the imaginations of mainland Scandinavians. Perhaps we can get some clues by looking to their insular kinsfolk in Iceland. They too experienced Byzantium through objects, although no actual things brought from there have as yet been found in Iceland.14 However, there are plenty of fine examples described in texts. After a decade with the Varangian guard, Bolli Bollason finally returned to Iceland. His triumphant return was told in a famous passage in Laxdæla Saga: Bolli had brought with him a great deal of wealth from abroad and many treasures given him by princes. He had become such a fine dresser by the time he returned from his journey abroad that he wore clothes of scarlet or silk brocade and all his weapons were decorated with gold. He became known as Bolli the Elegant. … He wore a suit of silk brocade given to him by the emperor, with a cloak of red scarlet outermost. About his waist he had girded the sword Leg-biter, now inlaid with gold at its top and shank, and gold bounds wound about its hilt. On his head he wore a gilded helmet and he had a red shield at his side with the figure of a knight drawn on it in gold. He had a lance in his hand, as is common in foreign parts.15

In a society without gold – silver was the only precious metal of any significance in Viking-Age Scandinavia – and in which sheep’s wool was so basic and ubiquitous that it became the standard Icelandic unit of exchange, Bolli cut

Baltic to the Black Sea: Studies in Medieval Archaeology (London, 1990), pp. 118–37; U. Näsman, ‘The Justinianic Era of South Scandinavia: An Archaeological View’, in R. Hodges and W. Bowden (eds), The Sixth Century: Production, Distribution and Demand (Leiden, 1998), pp. 255– 78; E. Piltz, ‘Varangian Companies for Long-distance Trade: Aspects of Interchange between Scandinavia, Rus’ and Byzantium in the 11th–12th Centuries’, in E. Piltz (ed.), Byzantium and Islam in Scandinavia, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 126 (Jonsered, 1998), pp. 85–106; M. Roslund, ‘Crumbs from the Rich Man’s Table: Byzantine Finds in Lund and Sigtuna, c.980– 1250’, in H. Andersson, P. Carelli and L. Ersgård (eds), Visions of the Past: Trends and Traditions in Swedish Medieval Archaeology, Lund Studies in Medieval Archaeology 19 (Stockholm, 1997), pp. 239–97. For the reconstruction of one possible ninth-century Byzantine journey to the north, see J. Shepard, ‘The Rhos Guests of Louis the Pious: Whence and Wherefore?’, Early Medieval Europe 4 (1995), pp. 41–60. 14   Although the Bjarnastaðahlíð wooden panels, most likely originally from the cathedral at Hólar, show clear Byzantine stylistic influences: S. Jónsdóttir, An 11th-century Byzantine Last Judgement in Iceland (Reykjavík, 1959). 15   Laxdœla saga (chapter 77), ed. Sveinsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 5, p. 118.

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quite a figure.16 It is no wonder that Laxdæla Saga ends with him as the most prominent chieftain in western Iceland.17 This trope of exotic weapons, clothes and ornaments brought back from overseas figures repeatedly in the sagas. Byzantine objects were not unique in this regard. Distant origins and association with kings or other powerful figures were what mattered most. Laxdæla Saga tells how, long before Bolli travelled south, his kinsman, Olaf Hoskuldsson, known as ‘the Peacock’ specifically because of his fine dress and weapons, travels to the British Isles and Norway. On his return he appears at the Althing, ‘wearing the suit of scarlet which King Harald [Grey-cloak of Norway] had given him, a goldplated helmet on his head and the sword given to him by King Myrkjartan [of Ireland].’ In the Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-poet, Hallfred himself receives fine gifts – an axe, sword, clothes, arm-rings and helmet – in mainland Scandinavia from both earls and kings, objects so valuable that they play an ongoing role through the rest of his saga.18 Byzantine objects, loaded with the prestige of antiquity and distance, were perceived as very well suited to convey status. Hallfred’s rival Gris Saemingsson returns from Constantinople with a sword given to him by the emperor and a gold-inlaid spear.19 In the Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Goði the directionless and rather fey Thorkel Thjostarson, who after six years in Miklagarðr seems lost back in Iceland, stands out at the Althing as a high-status person by his fine green clothes and ornamented sword. Later in the same saga, the merchant Eyvind Bjarnason is signalled as a worthy object of vengeance for Hrafnkel against Sámr, Eyvind’s upstart brother, because of his colourful clothes and fine weapons, acquired during six years abroad, including time in Byzantium. In a typical Icelandic saga scene, a servant woman goads Hrafnkel: ‘[T]hey go from country to country and are thought of as being terribly important wherever they travel. And then they come back home and they’re thought of as being greater than chieftains. Eyvind Bjarnason, who just

16

  Byock, Viking Age Iceland, pp. 45–6.   Laxdœla saga (chapter 78), ed. Sveinsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 5 has Bolli take over the farm at Tunga of his father-in-law Snorri the Goði, over Snorri’s own sons. This is contradicted in Eyrbyggja saga, ed. E. Ól. Sveinsson and M. Rórðarson, Íslenzk Fornrit 4 (Reykjavík, 1935), chapter 65, where Snorri Snorrason inherits the farm; see also Blöndal, The Varangians, p. 207. 18   Laxdœla saga (chapter 23), ed. Sveinsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 5, p. 32; Hallfreðar saga, in Vatnsdæla saga, ed. E. Ól. Sveinsson, Íslenzk Fornrit 8 (Reykjavík, 1939), chapters 5–7, 9, 11 for their fate on Hallfred’s death, recycled into ecclesiastical objects at Iona. 19   Ibid., chapters 4 and 10. 17

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rode over the river at Skalavad with a shield so beautiful that it shone, is so accomplished that he’d make a worthy object for revenge.’20

In Íslendinga Saga by Sturla Thordarson (1214–84), which deals with events in Iceland between 1183 and 1264, a famous Byzantine sword called ‘Mail-biter’ (Brynjubít) sparks violence when its owner refuses to sell it to Sturla Sighvatsson, who then tries to take it by force. ‘Mail-biter’ was believed to have come to Iceland around 1197 with Sigurd Oddsson, nicknamed ‘the Greek’, who may well have been the last known Icelander to serve in the Varangian guard.21 Not that all Icelanders were thought to have returned with wealth and finery. Sigurd the Greek appears in person in the Saga of Guðmund dýri, where he is explicitly said to be penniless and in need of hospitality on his return to Iceland.22 In the Tale of Halldor Snorrason, the eponymous hero has been in Constantinople with Harald Hardrada.23 Despite being the son of Snorri the Goði, and hence Bolli Bollason’s brother-in-law, and the reputed main source of the Icelandic oral tradition about Harald’s exploits in Byzantium, Halldor is so poverty stricken that he has only his old clothes and no money to get home; ‘A long service and many perils have received little reward then’, comments the king.24 Yet it needs to be stressed that, for those Icelanders who were more fortunate, their Byzantine objects did not define who they were; they did not provide the focus of their stories. Only ‘Mail-biter’, the sword of Sigurd the Greek, has anything approaching its own biography, with a genealogy of ownership back to Svein Jónsson, who fought bravely with it at the Battle of Víðines in 1208, to Thorvard Örnólfsson, who refused to sell it; or indeed social agency, when it provoked a feud situation requiring compensation.25 Even then it was the human honour and shame that swirled around the sword that lay at the heart 20

  Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, in Austfirðinga sogur, ed. J. Jóhannesson, Íslenzk Fornrit 11 (Reykjavík, 1950), chapter 4 (Thorkel Thjostarson), chapters 3 and 8 (Eyvind Bjarnason), tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 5, p. 277. 21   Íslendinga saga (chapter 32), Sturlunga Saga (1), ed. J. Jóhannesson, M. Finnbogason and K. Eldjárn (Reykjavík, 1946); Blöndal, The Varangians, pp. 221–2. The saga does not explicitly say that Sigurd had been a Varangian. 22   Guðmundar saga Dýra (chapter 18), Sturlunga Saga (1), ed. Jóhannesson, Finnbogason and Eldjárn. 23   For Halldor and Harald in Byzantium, see Blöndal, The Varangians, pp. 210–14 and chapter 4. 24   Halldórs Þáttr Snorrasonar, in Morkinskinna (vol. 1, chapter 32), ed. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 5, p. 224. For Halldor’s role as an oral informant, see Íslendings Þáttr sogufróða, in Morkinskinna (vol. 1, chapter 44), ed. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson. 25   For the current archaeological interest in object biographies and agency, see L. Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400–1000 (London, 2011), pp. 137–40, with references to the theoretical literature.

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of the saga and was remembered. Men and women that had so little in terms of material possessions had an eye for a fine suit of clothes or a good weapon when they saw one, but they also knew not to invest too much of their identity in them. Halldor had a role in the sagas as the son of a chieftain and a man with personal authority, despite his failure to enrich himself. Gris was a local big-man not because he had a Byzantine sword and golden spear, but because ‘he had travelled abroad as far as Miklagarðr and won great honour there’.26 Bolli moved up the ladder of power and authority in Iceland because he had won renown, not riches, during his time in Constantinople. Eyvind Bjarnarson was ultimately killed by Hrafnkel and his men because he ‘had developed greatly in character and become the bravest of men’ during his travels.27 Their Byzantine possessions were external markers, the physical mnemonics, for an under-institutionalised society with a relatively flat hierarchy, of what really matters: a man’s personal and social honour.28 Foreign and exotic objects, and so foreign and exotic places, including Byzantium, were experienced within the already-existing values of Icelandic society. They made a man worthy of attention; the author of Laxdæla Saga said, ‘the women could do nothing but gaze at Bolli and the finery which he and his companions bore.’29 But they could not give a man honour and make him a full social actor within Icelandic society. That came from his character, his actions, and the social relationships within which he was embedded. Miklagarðr may have been the greatest of cities, but it was also just another foreign place. While medieval Icelanders were acutely conscious that geographically they lived at the edges of Europe, imaginatively Iceland remained the centre of their world.

Experiencing the City All the Icelanders we have looked at so far are returnees, men who have come home to re-establish themselves in society. The sagas very rarely contain stories about Icelanders actually in Byzantium. Other than telling the reader that they have been there and more often than not served in the Varangian guard, both Constantinople and its empire remain resolutely off stage. Yet there are wellknown Icelandic narratives that are actually set there, though they are about Norwegians: Thorstein Ásmundarsson in Grettir’s Saga; and from the ‘Kings’ Sagas’, Harald Hardrada and Sigurd Jerusalem-farer. Let us turn to them now. 26

  Hallfreðar saga (chapter 3), tr. in V. Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas of Icelanders 1 (Reykjavík, 1997), p. 229 (slightly emended). 27   Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða (chapter 8), tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 5, p. 125. 28   For the importance of honour in the sagas, see Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, pp. 26–34, esp. 29, for the relationships between honour and objects. 29   Laxdœla saga (chapter 77), ed. Sveinsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 5, p. 118.

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The fourteenth-century Grettir’s Saga is one of the most famous of all the Icelandic sagas, and is concerned with the life and death of the outlaw and monster-killer, Grettir Ásmundarsson. The last eight chapters (minus one short final summative chapter) constitute a sub-story or tale usually known as Spesar Þáttr (the Tale of Spes) and initially tell of the efforts of Grettir’s half-brother, the Norwegian Thorstein drómundr, to avenge his death. The saga claims that his nickname, the galleon or warship, came from the fact that he was tall and moved rather slowly, but the fact that it is a Byzantine Greek term (δρόμων), is central to Thorstein’s story. For after Grettir is killed in Iceland, the man responsible, Thorbjorn Hook, flees to Norway and then on to Constantinople, ‘attracted by the idea of going there to earn fame and fortune and of keeping away from the northlands and Grettir’s kinsmen.’30 The idea of Byzantium as a place to escape from trouble back in Iceland is a recurrent concept. In Heiðarvíga Saga Gest Thorhallason fled to Norway from Thorstein Styrsson, whose brutal father he had killed: ‘Gest realized that he would not be able to stay in Norway due to the danger of ambush by Thorstein and next spring he travelled south to Miklagarðr where he entered the Varangian guard, expecting to be somewhat more secure there.’31 In Njál’s Saga (c.1280) Kolskegg Hamundarson, was exiled from Iceland for helping his brother, Gunnar of Hliðarendi, in his feud with Thorgeir Otkelsson. In a dream a man gleaming with light approached the sleeping Kolskegg and told him in a nice Icelandic mixture of the practical and the idealistic that he should head south where, ‘I shall find you a wife, and you shall be my knight.’ Kolskegg duly headed for Russia and then Byzantium, where the prophecy was fulfilled.32 Even Bolli Bollason took himself off on his travels in Laxdæla Saga after reaching an arbitrated settlement with the killers of his father. Given the precariousness of such settlements in the world of the sagas, Bolli’s decision to withdraw from Iceland can also be seen as an example of escape from a potential feud situation.33 The unjust could not escape their fate, however, even in Byzantium. In Grettir’s Saga Thorstein drómundr secretly followed Thorbjorn Hook to Constantinople, where they both enrolled in the Varangian guard. Once there, an interesting experience of disorientation enters his story. There were so many people in the city that Thorstein could not find his target: ‘He could 30   Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (chapters 13, 85–92), ed. G. Jónsson, Íslenzk Fornrit 7 (Reykjavík, 1936), tr. in V. Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas of Icelanders 2 (Reykjavík, 1997), p. 181 (slightly emended). 31   Heidarvíga saga, in Borgfirðinga sogur (chapter 11), ed. S. Nordal and G. Jónsson, Íslenzk Fornrit 3 (Reykjavík, 1938), tr. in V. Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas of Icelanders 4 (Reykjavík, 1997), p. 86 (slightly emended). 32   Brennu-Njáls saga (chapter 81), ed. E. Ól. Sveinsson, Íslenzk Fornrit 12 (Reykjavík, 1954), tr. in V. Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas of Icelanders 3 (Reykjavík, 1997), p. 93. 33   Laxdœla saga (chapter 71), ed. Sveinsson.

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not sleep and was very displeased with his lot, feeling that he had suffered a great loss.’ Unlike in saga Iceland, a society of small farms and interlinked families, where everyone was known, Constantinople was anonymous, a sea of faces. Thorstein did eventually get his man on the Varangians’ parade ground, after Thorbjorn boasted of killing Grettir at their kit inspection (Old Norse – vápnaþing, ‘weapon assembly’). Thorstein asked to see Grettir’s own sword, which Thorbjorn Hook had taken from Iceland and was showing off: ‘Hook passed it over, since most of them praised his courage and exploits and he thought that this man would do so too, naturally unaware that Thorstein or any of Grettir’s kinsmen were present.’34 It was his last mistake. After Thorstein kills Thorbjorn in front of the whole guard, the sense of disorientation intensifies. Both Varangians and the imperial treasurer (Old Norse – gjaldkeri staðarins) are left speechless and Thorstein is arrested and thrown into jail. In saga Iceland such a killing, if properly witnessed and openly acknowledged, would be regarded not as a crime, but as an act of just vengeance, generating legal or extra-legal settlement. Thorstein tries to act according to Icelandic rules, naming himself as the brother of Grettir and advertising that this was an act of legitimate vengeance taking.35 But this is a different world. Thorstein is vulnerable because he has no kindred or neighbours in Byzantium to support his case, and is left isolated before a different form of law: but there was no one there to corroborate Thorstein’s story and it was their law that any man who killed another should pay with nothing less than his own life. Thorstein was given a quick, harsh sentence: he was to be confined to a dark cell in a dungeon and await execution there if no one paid a ransom to free him.36

Then suddenly the story takes off in a different direction, away from the negotiations and hatreds of the blood feud into a world of courtly romance and fairy tale. As has been noted, Byzantium was a central location of the fantastic and the magical in the medieval Icelandic imagination, alongside the more realistic. The last part of Grettir’s Saga weaves these threads together. In a piece 34   Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (chapter 86), ed. Jónsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 2, p. 182. 35   For the rules of the Icelandic feud, see J. Byock, Feud in the Icelandic Saga (Berkeley, CA, 1982); Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, esp. chapters 6–7. 36   Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (chapter 86), ed. Jónsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 2, p. 182 (slightly emended). The historical Varangian guard appears to have operated its own law within that of the Byzantine state: Blöndal, The Varangians, pp. 24, 118– 19 and 202–3. The ‘experience’ here remains one of strangeness and difference from Iceland, however, no matter who is exercising judgement.

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of typically Icelandic stoicism, Thorstein decides to sing through the night to alleviate his misery. A noble Byzantine woman named Spes hears his voice and ransoms him. All named Icelanders who travel to Constantinople are men, so perhaps it is no great surprise that one of the themes in the sagas is their sexual allure for Byzantine women. In the Icelandic tradition dating back to the early thirteenth century, Harald Hardrada was supposedly desired by both the empress Zoe (c.980–1050), wife to three emperors, and by her niece, Maria. When he is thrown into prison, a rich and pious Byzantine widow comes to his rescue.37 These tropes reappear and are reworked in the tale of Thorstein. So, of course, Spes is unhappily married (to a man who is not said to be Scandinavian, but has the classic Germanic name of Sigurd); of course she falls in love with Thorstein, of course she is wealthy and spends all her gold on her lover, and of course the two repeatedly dupe the poor husband. The Icelanders knew the tricks of European courtly romance, and motifs from the Tale of Spes can be found scattered across the literature of the later middle ages.38 But what is particularly interesting for our theme is the sense of the saga author trying to find a way to represent the social world of Constantinople and its customs for an Icelandic audience. So despite being a rich Byzantine noblewoman, Spes acts and thinks more like a classic saga heroine.39 She despises her low-born and (rightly) suspicious husband and dispenses his wealth lavishly, engaging in gift giving like all high-born Icelanders should. Her treasures are such that Icelanders would have had an eye for: gold, fine clothes and uncut cloth (woven wool, or vadmál, was the common unit of exchange in Iceland by the thirteenth century).40 The conflict between Sigurd the husband and Spes is structured by classic Icelandic legal mechanisms: accusation, shame and oath taking. As if she was in Iceland, Spes takes a cunning and spurious oath, after Thorstein disguises himself as 37   See, for example, Morkinskinna (vol. 1, chapter 15), ed. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson. For the sexual theme, see L. Lönnroth, ‘The Man-eating Mama of Miklagard: Empress Zoe in Old Norse Saga Tradition’, in E. Piltz and P. Åström (eds), Kairos: Studies in Art History and Literature in Honour of Professor Gunilla Åkerström-Hougen (Jonsered, 1998), pp. 37–49. Blöndal, The Varangians, pp. 97–8, questions the existence of any ‘Maria’. 38   For Icelandic knowledge of European courtly literature, see M.E. Kalinke (ed.), Norse Romance, 3 vols, Arthurian Archives III–V (Cambridge, 1999); G. Barnes, ‘Romance in Iceland’, in M. Clunies Ross (ed.), Old Icelandic Literature and Society (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 266–86. Also, Blöndal, The Varangians, pp. 202–5. 39   Debate surrounds the exact nature of the saga heroine and her connections to reality. For two classic analyses, see J. Jochens, ‘The Medieval Icelandic Heroine: Fact or Fiction?’, Viator 17 (1986), pp. 34–50; C.J. Clover, ‘Hidigunnr’s Lament’, in J. Lindow, L. Lönnroth and G.W. Weber (eds), Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism (Odense, 1986), pp. 141–83. Also, J. Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 182–202. 40   For the importance of cloth to Icelandic women, see J. Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca, NY, 1995), chapter 6.

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a beggar.41 She swears before witnesses that her husband’s accusations are slanderous and untrue. Spes then enlists the legal support of her powerful kinsmen to plead her case. In Iceland women were unable to participate in public legal life and male kin were routinely brought in to act as advocates, as they do here. This is a ‘Byzantine’ case run according to Icelandic principles of honour, negotiation, male power and compensation.42 Thanks to her kinsmen’s help, Spes is able to divorce Sigurd, seize most of his property, and force him to leave Byzantium. Icelanders were well aware of the injustice of settlements such as this; by the thirteenth century their fragile system of consensual, openair law had become victim to external forces.43 The author of Grettir’s Saga intervenes in the story to comment sadly: ‘In this case, as in others, the weaker was forced to yield. He [Sigurd] did not manage to have his way even though he was in the right.’44 Save for the fact that these events take place in a church before a bishop rather than at the Althing or a local spring assembly (and the fact that Spes does not simply have one of her kinsmen put an axe in Sigurd’s head), we are in Iceland. A protective sense of personal honour in a society that never has enough to go around, the constant need to prove oneself in the public arena, a refusal to bow before the unworthy: these are all qualities that the Icelander believed were necessary to survive and prosper. But in Byzantium the northerner also needed to become a trickster figure, utilising disguise and cunning that can sometimes cross over the line into treachery to escape the traps and subvert the defences of the established order.45 Thorstein drómundr took on this role to get his man and then his woman. The ultimate Scandinavian trickster in these stories is undoubtedly Harald Hardrada, however, whose historical experiences while serving in the Varangian guard are given narrative shape in the Icelandic and Norwegian tradition around themes of disguise, taunts and deceits. Harald used these trickster weapons literally to undermine the defences of cities in Sicily where he campaigned with the Byzantine army and, supposedly, to infiltrate the very heart of the establishment in Constantinople, where he wooed members of the imperial family, only to disappear almost 41

  Taken from the Arthurian story of Tristram and Iseult, translated into Norwegian in the early thirteenth century: Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, ed. and tr. P. Jorgensen, in Kalinke (ed.), Norse Romance, vol. 1. Chapters 58–9 deal with the Tristan legend. 42   For rules of arbitration in the sagas and the legal roles offered to women, see Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, p. 27 and chapter 8; Byock, Viking Age Iceland, pp. 196–7. 43   For the lawlessness of the so-called ‘Sturlung Age’ in Iceland, see E. Ól. Sveinsson, The Age of the Sturlungs: Icelandic Civilization in the Thirteenth Century, Islandica XXXVI (Ithaca, NY, 1953). 44   Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (chapter 89), ed. Jónsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 2, p. 188. 45   The classic study is P. Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (New York, 1956).

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before the eyes of the defenders of propriety and order.46 It is telling that exactly the same anecdote was used of both Thorstein drómundr and Harald Hardrada during their sojourns in Byzantium. Thorstein was secretly visiting Spes in her husband’s house; Harald – in Morkinskinna (c.1220), the earliest Icelandic royal chronicle – secretly visited the Princess Maria, niece to the empress Zoe. In both cases an angry male figure, husband in one, emperor in the other, unexpectedly turns up. In both cases, the women lower their lovers through a trapdoor in the room, which in both cases juts out over the sea, leaving those who should be policing the sexual boundaries between Greek and Norwegian outwitted and perplexed. The author of the tale of Thorstein and Spes was clearly copying from Morkinskinna, but the use of that episode was relevant to both stories.47 In the lessons such stories conveyed to their Icelandic audience, these tales approach the classic ‘travel pattern’ in the ‘Sagas of Icelanders’ identified by Lars Lönnroth, ‘that young men of good family should go abroad, be honored at foreign courts, and prove their valor in Viking adventures.’48 Here young men of good or even royal family go abroad, are honoured through service in the Varangian guard, and prove their valour in outwitting the imperial and private inhabitants of Constantinople. If the relationship between Byzantine and Scandinavian was asymmetrical in terms of power, it could be evened up by the use of native boldness and wit. Classic trickster figures, as known from anthropology and folklore, patrol the borders between the known and unknown, looking to subvert and articulate the norms of society. We have seen that when Icelanders experienced Byzantium they experienced themselves, they saw the known. Was there any corresponding sense of the unknown, of otherness? We have already seen the sense of alienation an Icelander might have felt away from the reassuringly protective wrapping of kin and neighbours in the way Thorstein is treated after he takes his revenge on Thorbjorn Hook. That sense of the strangeness of Constantinople continues to haunt the back alleys of the tale of Thorstein and Spes, despite the familiar Icelandic thoroughfares. When Spes leaves her home to go to take her fateful oath against Sigurd, the author makes an attempt to give an experience of life in Constantinople to 46

  The key texts are: Morkinskinna (vol. 1, chapters 11–15), ed. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson; Fagrskinna – Nóregs konunga tal, in Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sogum. Fagrskinna – Nóregs konunga tal, ed. B. Einarsson, Íslenzk Fornrit 29 (Reykjavík, 1985), chapter 51; an English edition is available in Fagrskinna, a Catalogue of the Kings of Norway, ed. and tr. A. Finlay (Leiden, 2004); ‘Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar’, in Heimskringla 3, ed. B. Aðalbjarnarson, Íslenzk Fornrit 28 (Reykjavík, 1951), chapters 3–15; with English translation in Snorri Sturluson: Heimskringla, tr. L.M. Hollander (Austin, TX, 1964), pp. 578–89. 47   Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (chapter 88), ed. Jónsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 2; Morkinskinna (vol. 1, chapter 15), ed. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson. 48   Lönnroth, Njál’s Saga, p. 102.

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the non-urban Icelanders. She leaves for the church in her finest clothes, with a procession of wealthy women in her train. They walk along a paved road, itself a novelty in Iceland, in which there are standing pools of stagnant water after rain. The author notes how there are lines of beggars along this main street, who greet Spes as a familiar face. The scene is theatrical as one of the beggars is Thorstein in disguise (as part of their plan to dupe Sigurd), but nevertheless we do get a sense of a very different place to Iceland.49 In Byzantium courtly people in fine clothes will do anything to avoid getting dirty, including being carried across puddles by beggars. In saga Iceland even chieftains are shown as farmers, gathering their own hay, seeing to their animals, sowing and managing their fields. In Byzantium the relationship of the rich to the poor (and all those of lower status) is one of arrogance and disdain. In saga Iceland all freemen had rights and access to law that had to be respected, no matter how circumscribed those rights might have been in reality. This is no ethnography of a real Byzantium. For one thing, the Icelanders’ city is resolutely secular, effectively stripped of its great churches. Hagia Sophia did not dominate the skyline of Miklagarðr. But it is an attempt to imagine a society politically, economically and culturally organised along very different lines to Iceland.

The World as Farm In 1108 the king of Norway went on crusade to the Holy Land. Sigurd jórsalafari, ‘Jerusalem-farer’, fought his way down the coast of Spain and Portugal before sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar, heading for the Holy Sepulchre. After bathing in the River Jordan and fighting the Saracens in Syria, Sigurd made his way to Constantinople. The fullest surviving account of Sigurd’s time in Byzantium was in the now lacunae-ridden Morkinskinna (a seventeenth-century name, which means ‘rotten parchment’).50 This was in turn the quarry from which was hewn the latter parts of the most famous of all the Icelandic histories, the majestic Heimskringla, from the 1220s or early 1230s and usually attributed to Snorri Sturluson (1178/9–1241).51 In these histories, Sigurd is represented as a Scandinavian trickster figure like Harald Hardrada, 49

  Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (chapter 89), ed. Jónsson, tr. in Hreinsson et al., The Complete Sagas 2. 50   Morkinskinna (vol. 2, chapters 68–70), ed. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson. The text detailing Sigurd’s arrival in Constantinople is missing. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson reconstruct the text from the late fourteenth-century Hulda manuscript, Andersson and Gade from the early fourteenth-century Fríssbók: Morkinskinna, ed. and tr. Andersson and Gade, pp. 8 and 320–23. See also, M.E. Kalinke, ‘Sigurðar saga jórsalafara: The Fictionalization of Fact in Morkinskinna’, Scandinavian Studies 56 (1984), pp. 152–67. 51   ‘Magnússona saga’, in Heimskringla 3 (chapters 12–13), ed. Aðalbjarnarson. For Snorri’s role in the creation of Heimskringla, see D. Whaley, Heimskringla: An Introduction

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constantly having to use ingenuity, cunning and duplicity to find a place for himself in the world of Constantinople. Yet these accounts also stress the exoticism, the otherness, of this world. As Sigurd is sailing to Byzantium he encounters a density of settlement – villages, towns and fortifications ­– totally foreign to any Icelander. The king knows he needs to make an impression on the Byzantines and his adventus is carefully planned. He waits for a crosswind before heading up the Dardanelles so the sails on his ships can be positioned in such a way that the watching Greeks can only see one side, the decorated side, leaving the plain side hidden.52 When Sigurd reached the city, the Icelandic histories carefully laid out the wonders to their audience: Emperor Kirjalax [Alexios Komnenos, 1081–1118] had heard of the approach of King Sigurd, and had the castle gate of Miklagarðr opened which is called Gullvarta [the Golden Gate]. That gate the emperor is to ride through when he has been away for a long time from Miklagarðr and returns victorious. Then the emperor had precious stuffs laid on all streets of the city from Gullvarta to Laktjarnir [Blachernae]. There is the most splendid imperial palace. … With such pomp King Sigurd and all his men rode into Miklagarðr.53

It is unlikely that a minor northern king was in reality given such an imperial welcome, entering through the great triumphal gate of Constantinople. The point of the account is to stress the grandeur of the city and the reactions of Sigurd and his men. For good Icelanders – and Norwegian kings – do not show how impressed they are by foreigners. All the histories agree that Sigurd ordered his men to ignore the spectacles surrounding them, ‘even if they saw things not often seen in northern lands’. Morkinskinna appears to have had Sigurd deliberately plan for one of his horses to shed a golden shoe as they enter, and to pay it no attention.54 But good Icelanders – and Norwegian kings (London, 1991), chapter 1. Fagrskinna, ed. Einarsson, chapters 90–91, offers a summary version of the same story. 52   ‘Magnússona saga’, in Heimskringla 3 (chapters 11–12), ed. Aðalbjarnarson. 53   Ibid., chapter 12; Snorri Sturluson, tr. Hollander, p. 698 (slightly emended). For the material realities, see C. Mango, ‘The Triumphal Way of Constantinople and the Golden Gate’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000), pp. 173–88. 54   Fagrskinna, ed. Einarsson, chapter 90; translated in Fagrskinna, ed. and tr. Finlay, p. 256 (‘northern lands’). For the golden horseshoes, see Morkinskinna (vol. 2, chapter 68), ed. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson. The textual lacuna ends in the middle of the tale. The story was a widespread European motif of visits to Constantinople by westerners: The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni (vol. 2, Books V–VIII), ed. E.M.C. Van Houts (Oxford, 1995), pp. 82–3. There are several parallels between the trials of Duke Robert of Normandy in this text and those of Harald Hardrada and King Sigurd. For full discussion, see E.M.C. Houts, ‘Normandy and Byzantium in the Eleventh Century’, Byzantion 55 (1985), pp. 544–59.

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– are also acutely attuned to the honour and material wealth (the two were never clearly differentiated in the sagas) they can win in such a situation. Once seated in the palace, the emperor and king engage in competitive gift giving, Kirjalax raising the stakes as Sigurd deliberately refuses to accept his generosity, until honour and status is satisfied by tubs (cisterna) of gold and (a nice Scandinavian touch) two golden arm-rings: King Sigurd stood up, took the rings, and drew them on his arms. Then he made a speech in Greek and thanked the emperor with fair words for his generosity. He courteously distributed the treasure among his men and was greatly honoured for this by the emperor. After that it was customary for the emperor and King Sigurd to occupy the same elevated seating.55

And with that last detail, we are suddenly no longer in the imperial palace but back in an Icelandic farmhouse, which in reality we have never left. The reception rooms of Blachernae dissolve into a skáli, the Scandinavian hall, where men exchange gifts and drink (the accounts explicitly say the gifts are given just before the drinking begins) and where status is determined by the patterns of seating and proximity to the chieftain’s high seat (the most murderous feuds begin in the sagas around seating precedence).56 After a while, the emperor offers Sigurd a choice: more gold, or games at the paðreimr, the Icelandic term for the hippodrome. Sigurd chooses the games. The description from Morkinskinna of the great stadium of the east Roman state, at least claimed to be based on eye-witness accounts, is extraordinary: Those who have been in Miklagarðr say that the paðreimr is constructed in such a way that there is a high wall enclosing a field that might be compared with a huge circular homefield (túns kringlótts). There are tiers along the wall for people to sit on while the games are played on the field. The walls are decorated with all sorts of ancient events. You can find the Æsir, the Volsungs, and the Gjukings fashioned in copper and iron with such great skill that they seem alive. With this arrangement people have the impression that they are participants in the games. The games are staged with great ingenuity and visual deception so that men look as though they are riding in the air. There are also displays of Greek fire, to some extent with magical effects. In

55

  Morkinskinna (vol. 2, chapter 69), ed. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson; translated in Morkinskinna, ed. and tr. Andersson and Gade, p. 324. For Sigurd’s facility in Greek as a trope of Icelanders abroad, see M.E. Kalinke, ‘The Foreign Language Requirement in Medieval Icelandic Romance’, The Modern Language Review 78 (1983), pp. 850–61. 56   For the Icelandic hall, see Byock, Viking Age Iceland, pp. 34–42; for feuds developing from arguments over seating: Brennu-Njáls saga (chapter 35), ed. Sveinsson.

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addition, there are all sorts of musical instruments, psalteries, organs, harps, violins, and fiddles, and all sorts of stringed instruments.57

Here we have wonder and magic. Yet when Icelanders experienced their vicarious tour of the hippodrome they saw not the emperors and culture heroes of the Roman empire, but the gods, dragon slayers and kings of Old Norse legend, the Æsir, the Volsungs and the Gjukings.58 They saw not an ancient stone arena, but an Icelandic homefield, the tún, surrounded by its turf wall, túngarður, on which Icelanders lounged while they watched their own horse fights and ball games.59 There is a sense in which the Icelandic worldview was a series of concentric circles, from which reality drained away as saga characters moved towards the outer limits, ‘exotic places such as Miklagard, Holmgard, or the open sea of Viking adventures – strange places where reality is mixed with fancy.’60 But equally even the very farthest reaches of the world remained, in a strange way, home. Men like Bolli Bollason or Thorstein drómundr travelled from their own yards, their garðar, through Russia, Garðariki as the Icelanders called it, via Holmgarðr (Novgorod) and Kænugarðr (Kiev), to Miklagarðr, with its palaces, hippodrome and great walls. There they entered into the service of the emperor or king of the city, the Garðskonungr. Sometimes, back in Iceland, they named their turf homes Miklagarðr, perhaps in honour of Constantinople itself.61 When they thought about their world, what they thought about was a farm.62

57

  Morkinskinna (vol. 2, chapter 69), ed. Jakobsson and Guðjónsson; translated in Morkinskinna, ed. and tr. Andersson and Gade, p. 324 (slightly emended); Fagrskinna, ed. Einarsson, chapter 91, appears to have a similar account, but there is a textual lacuna at this point. Snorri gave a much condensed version of these events in Heimskringla, with the more fantastic elements – the golden horseshoes, the gift giving and the Hippodrome description – removed. 58   For a reconstruction of the statuary of the real site, see S.G. Bassett, ‘The Antiquities in the Hippodrome of Constantinople’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991), pp. 87–96. 59   For the topography of the Icelandic farm, see G. Ólafsson and H. Ágústsson, The Reconstructed Medieval Farmhouse in Þjórsárdalur and the Development of the Icelandic Turf House (Reykjavík, 2003); Byock, Viking Age Iceland, pp. 34–42. 60   As argued in Lönnroth, Njál’s Saga, p. 57. 61   Blöndal, The Varangians, p. 222, n. 1, lists three farms in modern Iceland named Mikligarður. That in Eyjafjördur was the home of Thorvard Örnólfsson, third Icelandic owner of ‘Mail-biter’, the Byzantine sword brought north by Sigurd the Greek in Íslendinga saga (chapter 32): Sturlunga Saga (1), ed. Jóhannesson, Finnbogason and Eldjárn. 62   E.A. Melnikova, ‘Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions as a Source for the History of Eastern Europe’, in R. Zeitler (ed.), Les Pays du Nord et Byzance (Scandinavie et Byzance), Actes du colloque nordique et international de byzantinologie, tenu à Upsal 20–22 Avril 1979 (Uppsala, 1981), p. 171, notes the association between -garðr names and the Russian/ Byzantine world in the Scandinavian imagination.

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The Icelandic accounts of Sigurd’s experience of Byzantium are a good place to conclude, as they simultaneously bring together a number of themes touched on here, as well as marking a profound change. For Sigurd and the other crusading Scandinavians of the twelfth century, King Eirík the Good of Denmark in 1103 and Earl Rognvald of Orkney in the early 1150s, travelled to Constantinople and back home again not along the old routes through Russia, as Scandinavians, real and imagined, had done for centuries, but through the western kingdoms.63 Between c.1145 and 1154 Abbot Nikulás Bergsson of Munkaþverá undertook his pilgrimage from Iceland to the Holy Land via western Germany and Italy.64 The Scandinavian character of the Varangian guard had been diluted during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the regiment itself appears to have gone into a slow but steady decline. It effectively ceased to exist after the sack of Constantinople by western crusaders in 1204.65 The landscape of the old Viking world was beginning to break up. Byzantine amphorae probably containing wine and oil could still reach the Baltic via Russia until the end of the twelfth century, but the silver coins and most of the other luxury objects had long gone. By 1240 even the residual contacts between Byzantium, Rus and Scandinavia were over, as changing patterns of trade and the Mongol invasions severed the last links.66 Yet as these real connections faded, so memory and story in mainland Scandinavia and

63

  Knýtlinga saga, in Danakonunga sogur, ed. B. Guðnason, Íslenzk Fornrit 35 (Reykjavík, 1982), chapters 79–81; Orkneyinga saga, ed. F. Guðmundsson, Íslenzk Fornrit 34 (Reykjavík, 1965), chapters 86–9. Both texts refer to the travels of King Sigurd to Byzantium as a precedent to be matched and surpassed. For Scandinavian crusaders, see Blöndal, The Varangians, pp. 130–41 and 154–7, although the statement that both Eirík and Sigurd travelled via Russia, ibid., pp. 135 and 139, is definitely wrong in the case of the latter, and probably of the former. The early thirteenth-century Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus, did indeed believe that Eirík went through Russia, but this is likely to be a mistake. For his account and a review of all the evidence, see Saxo Grammaticus, Danorum Regum Heroumque Historia, Books X–XVI, 1: Books X, XI, XII and XIII, ed. and tr. E. Christiansen, BAR International Series 84 (Oxford, 1980), pp. 102–4 and 275–6. 64   For Abbot Nikulás and his surviving itinerary, Leiðarvísir, see F.P. Magoun, ‘The Pilgrim Diary of Nikulás of Munkathverá’, Medieval Studies 6 (1944), pp. 314–54; B.Z Kedar and C. Westergård-Nielsen, ‘Icelanders in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Twelfthcentury Account’, Medieval Scandinavia 11 (1978–79), pp. 193–211; J. Hill, ‘From Rome to Jerusalem: An Icelandic Itinerary of the Mid-twelfth Century’, Harvard Theological Review 76 (1983), pp. 175–203. 65   R.M. Dawkins, ‘The Later History of the Varangian Guard: Some Notes’, Journal of Roman Studies 37 (1947), pp. 39–46; Blöndal, The Varangians, chapters 6–7. 66   Roslund, ‘Crumbs from the Rich Man’s Table’, esp. pp. 286–92. For the northern wine and oil trade, see T.S. Noonan and R.K. Kovalev, ‘Prayer, Illumination and Good Times: The Export of Byzantine Wine and Oil to the North of Russia in Pre-Mongol Times’, in Byzantium and the North, Acta Byzantina Fennica 8 (Helsinki, 1997), pp. 73–96.

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especially in Iceland bloomed, transforming real traders, kings and exiles into the heroes of saga. We need to remember that, if those composing and listening to the sagas of the Icelandic far farers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries never really left home, either physically or imaginatively, their predecessors’ real encounters with Byzantium had nevertheless once been played out on the grand stage. They were part of a set of contacts that accessed routes and knowledge within what we might term a Viking ‘world system’, which eventually stretched from the eastern coasts of North America and Greenland in the west, to the River Volga and the Caspian Sea in the east. We might conceptualise this in terms of two sub-systems, just as Janet Abu-Lughod has characterised the thirteenth century Eurasian world system; or as overlapping circles, as Jonathan Shepard has recently described Byzantium’s own imperial horizons.67 In the east we have what we might call the ‘Rorikid System’, after Rorik, the semi-legendary culture hero of Scandinavian Rus. The circuit contained primarily mainland Scandinavia and the Baltic, European Russia to the Volga, the Caucasus, Constantinople and the Black Sea littoral, stretching in the tenth century as far as Samanid Iran. It was active from c.700 to c.1200, although drawing on older, Late Antique connections.68 In the west we have the ‘Eiríkssonian System’, after Leif Eiríkson, another semi-legendary figure, chieftain in Greenland and first settler of Vinland, the Norse name for Newfoundland and/or the Gulf of St Lawrence in Canada. This circuit contained primarily western Scandinavia, and the islands of the north Atlantic, the British Isles, Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland, and those parts of North America visited by the Norse Greenlanders. It was fully active by c.1000, although it had its roots in the classic Viking expansion of the ninth century, and lasted until destroyed by Iberian, French and English Atlantic colonialism after 1450.69 While looking in opposite directions from each other for most of their existence, these two links in a proto-world system hooked onto each other for a few decades in the late tenth and eleventh centuries as Scandinavians travelled the austrvegr, the Old Norse ‘east-way’, to Miklagarðr and Serkland (the Old Norse term for the Islamic world) while simultaneously nosing their ships 67

  J. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New York, 1989); J. Shepard, ‘Byzantium’s Overlapping Circles’, in E. Jeffreys (ed.), Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, London, 21–26 August 2006, vol. 1, Plenary Papers (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 15–56. 68   For reliable routes into the vast bibliography on this ‘system’, see S. Franklin and J. Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (London, 1996); T.S. Noonan, The Islamic World, Russia and the Vikings, 750–900 (Aldershot, 1998). 69   The bibliography on this western ‘system’ is, if anything, even larger than for the east; for introductions, see G. Bigelow (ed.), The Norse of the North Atlantic, Acta Archaeologica 61 (1991); K. Seaver, The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America ca. AD 1000–1500 (Stanford, CA, 1996); Fitzhugh and Ward (eds), Vikings.

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west overseas into the bays of Atlantic America. It was in the Icelandic stories inspired by these far farers that the memory of this Viking ‘world system’ survived. The two momentarily overlapping circles met in the experiences of real Icelanders something like the Bolli Bollason of Laxdœla saga, who could look out of his homefield westward to the Norse settlements of Greenland and America, yet who could also take the long road east to experience Byzantium.

13. Experiencing Physical Beauty in Byzantium: The Body and the Ideal Myrto Hatzaki

Standing on either side of the blessing Christ, in the mosaic panel from the east bay of the South Gallery of the Church of St Sophia in Constantinople, the Empress Zoe and her third husband Constantine IX Monomachos are recorded for posterity in an act of piety – a donation of funds to the Great Church (Fig. 13.1). The imperial couple is portrayed with the familiar Byzantine formula chosen to demonstrate imperial authority, to evoke ‘the emperor’s God-given and Godlike power’; they are depicted in the sphere in which the divine is represented, their bodies shown frontally, in all the splendour of their imperial dress.1 In images such as this, where ‘the personal becomes political’, viewers expected to see the emperors’ two bodies, both public and private, representing both the person of the emperor and the power of the imperial office.2 But there is more to be seen in this pair of imperial portraits. This paper will focus on the way the physical body of the emperor, and empress, is represented in the light of a physical ideal that is dominant in Byzantium – the ideal of physical beauty. In depicting the likeness of emperors, how does imagery and writing speak about the emperor’s body in relation to contemporary perceptions of the ideal, beautiful body? How, in turn, does physical beauty relate to the ideal image of the emperor and empress and negotiate the balance between

1

  R. Cormack, ‘The Emperor at St Sophia: Viewer and Viewed’, in A. Guillou and J. Durand (eds), Byzance et les Images (Paris, 1994), pp. 225–53, esp. 234. See also P. Magdalino and R. Nelson, ‘The Emperor in Byzantine Art of the Twelfth Century’, Byzantinishen Forschungen 8 (1982), pp. 123–83. 2   L. James, Empresses and Power in Early Byzantium (London, 2001), p. 145. On the ‘office’ of the Byzantine empress and the scope of her power see D. Smythe, ‘Behind the Mask: Empresses and Empire in Middle Byzantium’, in A.J. Duggan (ed.), Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe: Proceedings of a Conference held at King’s College, London, April 1995 (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 141–52. From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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the ideal persona of an imperial figure and the depiction of its physical self?3 This paper will first look into the special role ascribed to physical beauty as an attribute of the imperial body in Byzantine writing. In this light it will then set written likenesses of Zoe and Monomachos against the broader context of contemporary writing on the ‘beautiful body’, and discuss the issue of reality versus idealisation before juxtaposing imagery and texts to discuss beauty as a quality of the gendered body. In the St Sophia mosaic the element of portraiture is essential to allowing the scene to function as a visual commemoration of the imperial donation. Originally representing Zoe and her first husband Romanos III Argyros, the mosaic was ‘updated’ between 1042 and 1055 by changing the inscriptions to identify the emperor as Monomachos, and also by replacing the heads (though not the bodies) of the figures.4 Yet, though it was clearly important for viewers to recognise the imperial pair depicted as representing Zoe and Monomachos, as likenesses their representations are problematic – a fact that has been noted since the 1940s particularly in the case of the empress, whose flawless complexion and wrinkle-free skin had led scholarship to doubt that it was possible that this image was actually a representation of Zoe in her midsixties.5 But how did they appear to a Byzantine viewer? Michael Psellos’ Chronographia offers a literary account of the physical ‘likenesses’ of Zoe and Monomachos. The text describes the emperor as ‘a marvel of beauty … so justly proportioned, so harmoniously fashioned that there was none who could compare with him’.6 The emperor’s comeliness is likened to the mythical beauty of Achilles and Nireus, the handsomest of 3

  On the emperor’s two bodies see A. Eastmond, ‘Between Icon and Idol: The Uncertainty of Imperial Images’, in A. Eastmond and L. James (eds), Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium. Studies Presented to Robin Cormack (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 73–85. 4   On the alterations to mosaic and their significance see R. Cormack, ‘Interpreting the Mosaics of St Sophia at Istanbul’, Art History 4.2 (1981), pp. 131–49. 5   Various explanations have been proposed, from the suggestion that Zoe seized the opportunity of improving her own image: see T. Whittemore, The Mosaics of Hagia Sophia at Istanbul, Third Preliminary Report: Work Done in 1935–8: The Imperial Portraits of the South Gallery (Oxford, 1942), pp. 19–20. On the argument that the head of Zoe was taken from an earlier mosaic depicting her as a younger woman see N. Oikonomides, ‘The Mosaic Panel of Constantine IX and Zoe in Saint Sophia’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines 36 (1978), pp. 219–32. 6   ‘Ἄγαλμα κάλλους ἐκεῖνον ἡ φύσις τῷ βίῳ παρέδωκεν, οὕτω μὲν ἐμμελῶς συναρμόσασα, οὕτω δὲ εὐρύθμως ἀποτυπώσασα, ὡς μηδένα ἔχειν ἐν τῷ καθ’ ἡμᾶς χρόνῳ τὸν παρισούμενον … ‘ἕκάστοις ἤ ἑκάστῳ τὰ προσήκοντα καταχεαμένη χρώματα, τὴν μὲν κεφαλὴν ἡλιῶσαν ἀπέδειξε καὶ πυρσήν, τὸ δ’ ὅσον ἐν στήθεσι καὶ γαστρὶ ἄχρι ποδῶν καὶ τοῖς ἀντιθέτοις μέρεσιν, τῆς ἀκραιφνεστάτης λευκότητος ὁποσα δὴ μέτρα λαβοῦσα ἀπέδειξεν ἔμπλεων. … κάλλεσι μὲν ἄν ἡλίου τὴν κεφαλὴν εἴκασεν, οἷα δή τισιν ἀκτῖσι ταῖς θριξὶ διαλάμπουσαν, κρυστάλλῳ δὲ τὸ λοιπὸν σῶμα τῷ καθαρωτάτῳ καὶ διαυγεῖ.’ Michael Psellos, Chronographia (VI.125–126), ed. and tr. D. Del Corno, S. Impellizzeri et al., Imperatori di Bisanzio: Cronografia (Milan, 1984), vol. 2, pp. 66, 69–70, translated in E.R.A.

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Figure 13.1 Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Empress Zoe before Christ, mosaic, Church of St Sophia, Constantinople (1042–1055) (photographed by Flavia Nessi)

Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers; the Chronographia of Michael Psellus (London and New York, 1966), pp. 220–21.

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the Greeks who fought at Troy. In Monomachos, Psellos adds, Nature had outdone the poet: the emperor’s limbs were perfectly proportioned, his hair was ruddy and gleaming like the rays of sunlight, his white body appeared like clear and translucent crystal. Describing Zoe, Psellos notes that her eyes were large, set wide apart, with imposing eyebrows. Her nose was inclined to be aquiline, without being altogether so. She had golden hair, and her whole body was radiant with the whiteness of her skin, which remained taut and unwrinkled well into her old age.7 In the Chronographia Psellos not only dwells on the beauty of Zoe and Monomachos and describes it in detail, but also notably ascribes considerable importance to this quality in the context of the narrative. Zoe’s beauty is discussed already in her first introduction to the reader, when the author presents the three daughters of Constantine VIII. He notes that Eudokia, marred by disease, was not particularly beautiful and Theodora too was less beautiful than the comely Zoe, who is described as ‘a woman of great beauty, most imposing in her manner and commanding respect’ – in short, ‘the one who was most like an empress’.8 Presented in these terms, Zoe’s beauty is thus seen as a physical characteristic that not only distinguishes her from her sisters, but marks her as the one most destined to rule. Equally, when the women of Constantinople take to the streets, furious to see Zoe’s crown threatened by the machinations of Michael V, they shout and lament, proclaiming Zoe as legitimate ruler and acclaiming her physical beauty: ‘“where can she be”, they cried “she who alone is noble of heart and alone is beautiful [eueidis] … the mistress of all the imperial family, the rightful heir to the Empire”’?9 In the mind of the people, as this is voiced in Psellos’ writing, Zoe’s beauty is not only listed among her virtues, but appears almost to enhance her lawful claim to the throne. The beauty of Monomachos is granted equal importance by Psellos, albeit indirectly, as his comeliness is described as having played no small part in his ascension to power. Both in the Chronographia and in Zonaras’ Epitome Historion, physical beauty is presented as a key factor in Zoe’s quest for a third husband, both authors notably dwelling on the beauty of the other men also considered for the throne. Psellos notes that Constantine Artoklinis possessed looks that had already charmed Zoe when he was acting as secretary to Romanos III Argyros, so much so that she was accused of meeting with him in secret. Otherwise undistinguished by fortune, Artoklinis was most dignified and splendid in appearance, acclaimed as a man who could have attained the throne had he not died unexpectedly.10 Constantine Dalassenos too is an ‘extraordinarily handsome man’ who appeared as if prepared by 7

  Psellos, Chronographia (VI.6–8), tr. in Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, p. 158.   Psellos, Chronographia (II.6), tr. in Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, pp. 55–6. 9   Psellos, Chronographia (V.26), tr. in Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, p. 138. 10  Psellos, Chronographia (VI.13), tr. in Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, p. 161. 8

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Nature herself ‘for the supreme position in the Empire’.11 The good looks of Monomachos thus make him a match for the other two Constantines. Zonaras notes that the scales tilted in his favour, for he was descended from a noble family, was related to the Emperor Romanos, and possessed glowing beauty (tin oran hyperlambron), making this feature an important factor in leading him to the throne.12 In this light, it is tempting to see Zoe’s choice, which makes physical beauty the deciding factor in the choice of an imperial husband, as turning the tables on a Byzantine institution – that of the imperial bride show. The ‘reality’ of Byzantine bride shows has been much debated by scholarship since the late 1990s, and stories of imperial mothers peering at young candidates in the bath (as in the Life of St Theophano) or of imperial scouts measuring girls on the basis of height, shoe size and resemblance to an ideal portrait (as in the Life of St Philaretos) are increasingly seen as literary construct rather than historical fact; yet their logic is not that far removed, at least in principle, from that of Zoe and her choice among the three Constantines.13 The candidates may be male, but the choice of who will wear the crown is between the handsomest men of the land. Readings of the Byzantine bride show underline the political power game at play and, equally, in Zoe’s case, political machinations may have been more complex than Psellos suggests, but it is evocative of Byzantine attitudes that physical beauty is considered important enough to present itself as sufficient justification for imperial spouse selection.14 This is presumably a point on which Byzantine authors and audiences would have agreed and the fact that the bride show is a Byzantine construct is in itself evocative; in the culture that ‘invented’ bride shows, beauty can be the deciding factor that ‘makes’ an emperor, or an emperor’s consort.15

11

  Psellos, Chronographia (VI.12), tr. in Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, p. 160.   John Zonaras, Epitome Historion (XVII.20), ed. L. Dindorf and C. Du Cange (Leipzig, 1868–75), p. 156. 13   See W. Treadgold, ‘The Bride-shows of the Byzantine Emperors’, Byzantion 49 (1979), pp. 395–413, esp. 398, and L. Garland, Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527–1204 (London, 1999), pp. 110–11. On the historicity of bride shows see L. Rydén, ‘The Bride-shows at the Byzantine Court – History or Fiction?’, Eranos 83 (1985), pp. 175–91 and W. Treadgold, ‘The Historicity of Imperial Bride-shows’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 54 (2004), pp. 39–52. 14   On beauty versus power see M. Vinson, ‘Romance and Reality in Byzantine Bride Shows’, in L. Brubaker and J.M.H. Smith (eds), Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300–900 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 102–20. See also S. Tougher, The Reign of Leo VI (886– 912): Politics and People (Leiden, 1997), pp. 134–5. 15   Bride shows notably do not take hold among the Franks: see M. de Jong, ‘Bride Shows Revisited: Praise, Slander and Exegesis in the Reign of the Empress Judith’, in Brubaker and Smith (eds), Gender in the Early Medieval World, pp. 257–77. 12

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‘An appearance worthy of Empire’: Beauty worthy of the Crown The cases of both Artoklinis and Dalassenos underline a belief often found in Byzantine writing – that beauty could both provide one with the means of attaining power (by inciting admiration or even love) and simultaneously serve to physically distinguish those pre-destined to rule. Psellos writes somewhat alarmingly of Constantine Dalassenos, that he was a man of such beauty that ‘even before his tenth birthday, rumour had it that he was destined for the highest honours. It was inevitable, of course, that the emperors should fear such a man and all of them refused him access to the palace’, while a desperate Michael IV was forced to imprison him, fearing that upon seeing him the populace would act on his behalf and place him on the throne, ‘for there was great excitement in the city when he was seen … that revolution seemed imminent’.16 A similar claim is made for Constantine Artoklinis, variously acclaimed in historical writing as a ‘good looking man’ and ‘of pleasing appearance’; John Zonaras in the Epitome Historion notes that, despite not being among the most well born, he was nonetheless ‘in appearance worthy of kingship [to eidos axion tyrannidos]’.17 A characteristic case is yet another of Zoe’s husbands, the otherwise undistinguished young courtier who was to become Michael IV. Psellos notes that his radiant, blossoming beauty melted the heart of the empress who idolised and admired him, deciding to crown him emperor by her side. It is thus no surprise to find that, when the future Michael IV appears in historical writing, sources universally praise his dazzling good looks: both Skylitzes and Glykas note that he was very handsome, Zonaras speaks of the beauty of his face as so exceptional that it appeared to have been sculpted by Nature itself, and Manasses exalts him as pleasing to look upon (kalliprosopos euoptos) – a man dripping with the dews of love.18 Beauty is equally important in changing the fortunes of Romanos IV Diogenes. Condemned of treason, he is brought before the Empress Eudokia, who is overwhelmed by a feeling of clemency, for, Attaleiates notes, the man was not only distinguished by his virtues, but was also exceedingly handsome. Tall, broad-shouldered and broad-chested, he possessed a noble appearance, eyes that shone with beauty superior to all, a complexion neither too white, 16

  Psellos, Chronographia (VI.12), tr. in Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, p. 160.   Zonaras, Epitome Historion (XVII.19–20), ed. Dindorf and Du Cange, p. 155. On Artoklinis’ beauty see also Michael Glykas, Biblos Chronike (IV), ed. I. Bekker, Michaelis Glycae Annales, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae 21 (Bonn, 1836), p. 593, and John Skylitzes, ed. I. Thurn, Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae (Berlin– New York, 1973), p. 422, tr. in J. Wortley, John Skylitzes: A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811– 1057 (Cambridge, 2010), p. 397. 18   Constantine Manasses, Synopsis Chronike, ed. O. Lampsidis, Constantini Manassis Breviarium Chronicum (Athens, 1996), pp. 6003–5. 17

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nor too dark, but ruddy – in short, blessed with the appearance worthy of kingship. Eudokia pities the man and weeps, and Diogenes is granted pardon only to then ascend to the throne at her side.19 When Zonaras tells the same story, he presents the good-looking Diogenes standing before the imperial throne, winning over the crowd of onlookers by his strength and beauty. Like all those present, the empress too is swayed, though ‘if she also fell in love with him, that I cannot say’.20 If public opinion and the hearts of queens were equally influenced by the sight of a comely face and a fine physique, it is no surprise to find beauty in Byzantium described as the fear and envy of kings. As Choniates eloquently states: within the Empire, ‘should there exist someone endowed with the beauty of a statue and the lyrical eloquence of a nightingale in song … then the wearer of the crown can neither sleep nor rest … with wicked tongue he curses Nature for fashioning others suitable to rule and for not making him the first and last and the fairest of men’.21 Whether paving the way to the throne or marking a man out as destined for the crown by virtue of his regal or beautiful physique (or both), beauty was regarded as an important aspect of the imperial image, and exceptions to the rule underline this point. For all his florid descriptions of physical beauty in the Chronographia, Psellos suspiciously omits any reference to the handsome looks of Romanos Diogenes, so eloquently described by other authors such as Attaleiates and Zonaras.22 Could Psellos have kept intentionally quiet about Diogenes’ beauty to further diminish the image of an emperor he disliked, whose reign he criticised, and in whose undoing he may well have had a hand? More importantly, the fact that the notion of an ugly emperor was seen as an anomaly is noted. John Zonaras, for instance, describes the evil iconoclast Emperor Zeno as being poorly suited to the throne, ‘for he had neither the temperament nor the physique that befitted a king – on the contrary, he was very ugly, and as for his personality, that was worse than his appearance’.23 That emperors with physical faults acquired nicknames to reflect them equally underlines the belief that ugliness was incongruous to the imperial image. Choniates describes John Komnenos as ‘the Fat’, ‘potbellied and with a body shaped like a barrel’, sweating heavily as he sits on the throne.24 John II Komnenos, viciously portrayed by his sister Anna as a dark-skinned (melan), thin-cheeked baby, was later in life (and despite his general popularity) 19

  ‘ἄξιον εἶδος κατὰ τὸν κωμικὸν τυραννίδος ἐπιδεικνύμενος’. Michael Attaleiates, Historia (99), ed. and tr. I. Pérez Martín, Miguel Ataliates, Historia (Madrid, 2002), p. 75. 20   Zonaras, Epitome Historion (XVIII.10), ed. Dindorf and Du Cange, p. 204. 21   Niketas Choniates, Historia (II.4), tr. H.J. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium, Annals of Nicetas Choniates (Detroit, MI, 1984), p. 81. 22   On Romanos’ good looks that made him worthy of the crown see also Manasses, Synopsis Chronike, ed. Lampsidis, pp. 6356–9. 23   Zonaras, Epitome Historion (XIV.1), ed. Dindorf and Du Cange, p. 254. 24   Choniates, Historia (VI.2), tr. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium, p. 289.

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derided for his dark complexion, a feature that earned him the name ‘Black John’ (Mavroioannes).25 Byzantine writing suggests, albeit indirectly, that, far from being indifferent to beauty, the public would have expected to see this prized quality manifested on the body of the emperor and empress not only in real life but also when depicted in an image. When discussing the campaign of image manipulation undertaken by Andronikos I Komnenos to undermine the legitimacy of his predecessors, Niketas Choniates notes that Andronikos notably ‘ordered that the paintings of empress [Xene Maria of Antioch], Emperor Alexios’ mother, whom he had ordered strangled, be done over, so that she appeared as a shrivelled-up old woman because he was suspicious of the pity elicited by these radiant and very beautiful portrayals worthy of the admiration of the passers-by’.26 By attacking the empress’s beauty depicted in her image, Choniates presents Andronikos not only attempting to protect himself (from the power of beauty to sway public opinion against him), but also endeavouring to strip Xene from part of her own, legitimate imperial power – that which is manifested in her ideal, beautiful body, which marks her as an exceptional being set apart from the mundane world. To take away her beauty, it is implied, is also to strip the representation of an essential quality that is ascribed to the empress’s ideal body. That this is done to the body of a female empress, and is achieved by adding wrinkles to age the likeness, casts Zoe and her flawless face in a different light. It suggests the possibility that the depiction of female power (itself an anomaly, as Liz James has noted27) in particular necessitated the display of physical beauty, thus also linking physical beauty and gender – a point that will be examined further at the end of this paper.

The Emperor’s New Body: Between Reality and Idealisation Psellos, writing about Zoe and Monomachos, plays upon Byzantine beliefs and expectations when he dwells on the beauty of both figures. His narrative portrays physical beauty as a part of the emperors’ ideal image, as a means with which to evoke the uniqueness of the imperial pair. As to the specifics of his descriptions, however, setting Psellos’ account not only in the context of his own works but also in that of Byzantine writing, one notes that the ‘likeness’ put forward by the author, rather than being a highly personalised or original description of physical appearance specific to Zoe or Monomachos, 25

  M. Jeffreys et al., Prosopography of the Byzantine World, Ioannes 2, available at http:// db.pbw.kcl.ac.uk/id/person/107259 (accessed 30 June 2012). 26   Choniates, Historia (IV.2), tr. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium, p. 183. On image manipulation by Andronikos Komnenos see A. Eastmond, ‘An Intentional Error? Imperial Art and “Mis”-Interpretation under Andronikos I Komnenos’, Art Bulletin 76.3 (1994), pp. 502–10. 27   James, Empresses and Power.

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actually echoes a familiar topos, a dominant, canonical ideal of beauty and the stereotyped wording with which this appears in Byzantine texts. From emperors to commoners, from real-life historical characters to the fictive heroes of Byzantine literary writing, from the protagonists of narratives to minor figures, beautiful men and women are ascribed a number of characteristic physical features that appear to have identified the beautiful body in Byzantium. These include: white skin, often likened to ivory or snow, a rosy complexion, hair that is abundant, preferably curly and either blond or ruddy in hue, eyebrows that arch symmetrically over brilliantly gleaming eyes, tall, slender bodies (often likened to cypress trees) graced with wellproportioned limbs, and, in the case of men, a powerful build manifested in a broad chest and shoulders. Accounts of physical beauty, from Psellos’ own descriptions of his beautiful relations and his pen-portraits in the Chronographia to the broader context of Byzantine historic and literary writing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, are dominated by these familiar features of the ideal. Psellos speaks of his beautiful mother’s fair complexion, of his sister’s undulating, luxuriant golden tresses, of his father’s cypress-like, well-proportioned figure and graceful eyes, of his daughter’s rose-coloured cheeks, shining eyes, ivory-coloured neck and long, curly, golden hair.28 In the Chronographia, Maria, daughter of Isaac Komnenos, has reddish hair (pyrsi) and a complexion likened to amber (ilectrodis); Monomachos’ Alan princess is distinguished by her white skin and beautiful, brilliant eyes, and Michael IV is praised for his blossoming complexion, bright eyes and truly red cheeks.29 Described by Constantine Manasses, the same Michael IV is both white-skinned (kataleukos) and ruddy (exerythros) in complexion, as is the handsome John Tzimiskis in John Skylitzes’ Synopsis Historion, who also has fair, blond hair (komin xanthin), a red moustache (pyrsi), lively eyes, and a broad chest despite his small frame.30 In Anna Komnene’s Alexiad, the Emperor Alexios I, like ‘a fiery whirlwind’, is ruddy, radiant and red-cheeked with a broad-shouldered, well-proportioned body, while the Empress Eirene possessed a face that ‘shone with the soft light of the moon’, with ‘rose blossoms on her cheeks’, gleaming eyes, ivory-like 28

  On Psellos’ Encomium for his Mother see A. Kaldellis, ed. and tr., Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters: The Byzantine Family of Michael Psellos (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), pp. 54, 56, 67 and 123–7 for Psellos’ description of Styliane. See also Michael Psellos, Εἰς τὴν θυγατέρα Στυλιανὴν πρὸ ὥρας γάμου τελευτήσασαν, ed. K. Sathas, Bibliotheca Graeca Medii Aevi (Paris, 1876), vol. 5, pp. 62–87 for the Greek text. 29   Michael IV is described in Psellos, Chronographia (ΙII.18), ed. and tr. Del Corno, vol. 1, pp. 96 and 98; tr. in Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, p. 76. On Maria and the Alan princess see Psellos, Chronographia (VII.79) and (VI.151), tr. in Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, pp. 324 and 235 respectively. 30   On Michael IV see Manasses, Synopsis Chronike, ed. Lampsidis, pp. 5988–9. Skylitzes echoes Leo the Deacon in the description of Tzimiskis: Synopsis Historion, ed. Thurn, p. 312.

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hands and a body ‘like some young sapling, erect and evergreen’.31 In literary writing, figures like the fictional characters of the Byzantine romances are equally praised; of Niketas Eugenianos’ protagonists in Drosilla and Chariclis we are told that the handsome hero is blond, curly-haired and broad-chested, while the lovely Drosilla is white-skinned like snow, with milk and roses appearing to mingle in her complexion, golden-blond hair, arching brows and the fine posture of a cypress.32 In this light, Psellos’ descriptions of Zoe and Monomachos, in their insistence on features such as gleaming golden hair and white skin, appear canonical and stereotyped rather than specific. But by using the familiar vocabulary of the ideal of beauty to paint a picture of the imperial couple, how does Psellos’ stereotyped wording affect the ‘likenesses’ he creates? Where does the balance lie between reality and idealisation? Spatharakis suggests that Psellos allows rhetoric rather than reality to dominate his account of what Monomachos and Zoe looked like, his physical descriptions tinted by his desire to present a flattering likeness of the emperor who first raised him to a position of distinction at court. Setting the visual evidence of the imperial panel at St Sophia against the text, Spatharakis places his faith in the image, arguing that it challenges Psellos’ account particularly in his reference to both Zoe and Constantine as ‘blond’.33 Yet such an argument is largely dependent on how both texts and images were read and interpreted by a contemporary audience. That the likenesses presented by Psellos, however idealised, were at least intended to appear truthful among contemporaries is suggested by the fact that less-than-perfect features of the emperor and empress are also noted in both descriptions. In a world that admired men of heroic stature, blessed with an impressive physique, and equally revered women with tall and slim bodies eloquently paralleled to cypress trees, Psellos admits that Monomachos was moderately built by proclaiming (a little feebly) that ‘size does not matter’: the man’s strength was not manifested in the size of his limbs, but hidden deep in his heart, for his body-parts were ‘more distinguished for their beauty 31   ‘γοργωπὸν σέλας ἀφήσει τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν, πρηστὴρ ἐδόκει καὶ ἄμαχον αὐγὴν ἀποστέλλειν καὶ του προσώπου καὶ τῆς ὅλης διοργανώσεως. μέλαινα μὲν γὰρ ἡ ὀφρῦς ἑκατέρωθεν ἐκυρτοῦτο, … τῶν τε ὤμων ἡ εὐρύτης καὶ τῶν βραχιόνων τὸ στερρὸν καὶ τῶν στέρνων ἡ προβολὴ ἡρωικὰ πάντα’. Anna Komnene, Alexiad (III.3.2), ed. D.R. Reinsch and A. Kambylis (Berlin, 2001), p. 93, tr. in E.R.A. Sewter, The Alexiad of Anna Comnena (London and New York, 1969), p. 109; for Eirene Komnene see also p. 110. 32   ‘παρειὰς ἐξέρυθρος ὡς ῥόδον· … πυρσὴ παρειά … χιὼν δὲ τἆλλα τοῦ προσώπου τῆς κόρης· ὁ βόστρυχος χρύσειος, αἱ πλοκαμίδες ξανθαί, μελιχραί, χρυσοειδεῖς, κοσμίαι … ἔοικεν ὡς ἔμιζε γάλα καὶ ῥόδα, καὶ συνδιεχρώσατο καθὰ ζωγράφος ταύτης τὸ σῶμα λευκέρυθρον ἡ φύσις’. Niketas Eugenianos, Τὰ κατὰ Δρόσιλλαν καὶ Χαρικλέα (I.124–6, 134–8, 145–50), ed. and tr. F. Conca, Il Romanzo Bizantino del XII Secolo; Teodoro Prodromo, Niceta Eugeniano, Eustazio Macrembolita, Constantino Manasse (Turin, 1994), pp. 313–14. 33   See I. Spatharakis, The Portrait in Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts (Leiden, 1976), p. 102.

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and proportion’ than for their size.34 Equally, in the case of the empress, we are told that, compared to the taller, slender Theodora, Zoe was shorter and also naturally plumper than her sister. Moreover, while her face is praised for remaining youthful and unwrinkled late in life, the empress’s body is portrayed as betraying signs of old age: she was a little stooped, Psellos notes, and her hands quivered. If Zoe and Monomachos are portrayed in the stereotyped wording of the ideal of beauty, their descriptions, by including distinctive physical shortcomings, could be seen to maintain a balance between reality and idealisation. There is also the possibility that Psellos’ physical accounts of the emperor and empress are more nuanced than we may at first acknowledge. When Psellos speaks of Zoe’s blond tresses (xanthi komi) and Monomachos’ ruddy hair that shone like rays of sunlight (iliosa kai pyrsi kefali), he not only evokes a valued physical feature – fair hair – but also chooses words that would have additional meaning for his audience. These physical characteristics both in themselves and in the specific Greek terms used to describe them were not unique to Byzantium, but rather reflected the traditions of a (Graeco-Roman) world where heroes were blond, like Homer’s Achilles and Menelaus, and great men distinguished by their brilliantly shining eyes, like Polemon’s Alexander and Hadrian.35 The Byzantines inherited much of the aesthetics of the ideal from the classical past, in the fascination with fair complexions, the interest in qualities of luminosity and radiance whether seen in the skin, the eyes or the hair of the bearer, and even the colour words used to describe all of the above: Philostratus’ fair hair (xanthin kommin), fiery hair (pyrsin) and sunny hair (iliosan) ring familiar in Byzantine writing.36 Byzantine authors and their erudite audiences were clearly aware of such classical parallels. Anna Komnene suggests as much when she quotes the Iliad, speaking of the goldenhaired Constantine Doukas as another ‘blond Menelaus’.37 Yet, shaped in a way that is particular to the Byzantines, the ideal presents elements familiar from the classical world in a different light. For instance, the Byzantine fascination with white and rosy complexions applies equally to both men and women, breaking from the ‘Greek’ distinction between ‘fair’ women and ‘dark’

34

  See above note 6.   On Polemon’s Physiognomics and the descriptions of the Alexander the Great and the Emperor Hadrian see J. Elsner, ‘Physiognomics: Art and Text’, in S. Swain (ed.), Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford, 2007), pp. 203–24, esp. 220. 36   On Philostratus see Elsner ‘Physiognomics’, p. 221. On colour perception and colour words in Byzantium see L. James, Light and Colour in Byzantine Art (Oxford, 1996), pp. 72–90. On the use of xanthos (and also pyrros) see also M. Bradley, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 2–4. 37   Komnene, Alexiad (III.1.2), eds Reinsch and Kambylis, p. 87. 35

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men.38 Equally, the classical fascination with proportion, though reflected in Byzantine tastes (even to the point of aligning the praised symmetry and fine proportions of beautiful bodies to the Canon of Polykleitus) nonetheless does not extend to an interest in outlining the proportional systems or perfect ratios that should govern the ideal (Byzantine) body.39 In the same way the interest in physiognomic theories that allowed a ‘reading’ of physical characteristics to reveal the character of the bearer, though they are inherited by the Byzantines (and can be traced, for instance, in Psellos’ own writing), do not appear to be an overriding consideration in descriptions of physical appearance, most notably in the case of physical beauty that, ascribed equally good and evil characteristics, reveals nothing of the bearer’s inner self.40 Byzantine authors admire beauty, identify it on the body through a series of identifiable physical features, but rarely persistently decode these features to reveal the temperament of the bearer, which means that one must attempt a ‘reading’ of these features in a different way.41 Liz James has noted the lack of an organised colour symbolism in Byzantium, and the fact that the ‘meaning’ of colours appears instead to relate mainly to the context in which they appear. Psellos’ description of Monomachos’ ruddy and sunny hair (iliosa kai pyrsi kefaliii) is thus all the more evocative given its context: it appears as an attribute of the imperial body in a passage written by Psellos in praise of the emperor’s fine physique. The description plays on notions of luminosity, radiance and light with all their symbolic connotations, which were customary in contemporary eulogistic writing associating the emperor with all that was brilliant, luminous and beautiful. Elsewhere in the Chronographia, for instance, the author directly parallels Monomachos’ beauty to the sun: when illness dimmed his former comeliness, he notes, it was like seeing the sun obscured by clouds. Verses by Christopher of Mytilene draw upon similar parallels, praising the emperor’s beauty as surpassing the false beauty of jewels – his whiteness (leykon) outshines the loveliness of pearls,

38

  On skin colour in Byzantium see also James, Light and Colour, pp. 82 and 87.   On Alexios I and Eirene rivaling the Canon of Polykleitus see Komnene, Alexiad (III.3.1), eds Reinsch and Kambylis, p. 93. 40   Among the numerous pen-portraits in the Chronographia only those of Basil II and Michael Doukas offer a ‘physiognomic’ reading of facial features: see Psellos, Chronographia (I.35) and (VII.3.5), ed. and tr. Del Corno, vol. 1, p. 50 and vol. 2, p. 368 respectively. On physical beauty ascribed to both good and evil characters see M. Hatzaki, Beauty and the Male Body in Byzantium: Perceptions and Representations in Art and Text (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 33–48. 41   On the need for further research on physiognomics in Byzantium and a reading of Pachymeres’ ethnological physiognomics see A.K. Petrides, ‘Georgios Pachymeres between Ethnography and Narrative: Συγγαφικαί Ιστορίαι 3.3–5’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 49 (2009), pp. 295–318, esp. n. 16. 39

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his blondness (xanthon) makes gold redundant.42 In describing Monomachos through such exaggerated parallels, the verses not only play upon what a Byzantine audience would have recognised as beautiful but also build up an image of Monomachos that evokes the emperor’s (physical) uniqueness. The ideal of beauty thus also becomes a rhetorical allusion to the emperor’s quasidivine status embodied in his super-human body that is likened to the sun and the imperishable beauty of gems: beautiful, gleaming, truly golden-haired and surpassing the whiteness of pearls, the emperor appears as a being set apart from the rest of the world. Descriptions of another emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, make a fitting parallel, suggesting that such attitudes are evocative of Byzantine perceptions. Baldwin has pointed to a passage in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad where the author presents an ‘unusual’ physical description of her father who loses his helmet in the tumult of battle, allowing his ‘ruddy and sunny locks’ (pyrsi kai iliosa komi) to fall into his eyes.43 This allusion to the red-haired Alexios has been set against Anna’s better-known pen-portrait of him as the darkbrowed figure thundering at onlookers from his throne.44 The implication drawn by scholarship was that Anna’s personal fascination with fair hair led her to embellish the former description, attributing her father with this prized feature.45 Yet when Nikephoros Bryennios describes Alexios I Komnenos as a young soldier destined for glory, he portrays him in strikingly similar terms. Lauded for being handsome and the best among young men, ‘full of grace, and with a graceful face’, Alexios is described as causing admiration wherever he goes: ‘his beard is hardly grown and he is still fresh as green shoots and gold-coloured (chrysizon)’.46 Bryennios even has the army, grateful soldiers rescued by Alexios’ military prowess in 1073, acclaim him in similar terms; they proclaim him, their saviour, as ‘golden youth’ (chrysous neanias), and the populace gapes at him in admiration. In sketching a written ‘likeness’ of emperors like Alexios and Monomachos, words such as blond, golden-haired, 42   Christopher of Mytilene, ed. E. Kurtz, Die Gedichte des Christophoros Mitylenaios (Leipzig, 1903), p. 54. For a translation see F. Bernard, The Beats of the Pen: Social Contexts of Reading and Writing Poetry in Eleventh-century Constantinople (Ghent, 2010), p. 249. 43   Komnene, Alexiad (IV.6.8), eds Reinsch and Kambylis, tr. in Sewter, Alexiad, p. 149. See B. Baldwin, ‘Physical Descriptions of Byzantine Emperors’, Byzantion 51 (1981), pp. 8–21. 44   For the Greek text see above, note 30. 45   See Baldwin, ‘Physical Descriptions of Byzantine Emperors’, p. 12, n. 18. For an alternative reading see C. Head, ‘Physical Descriptions of the Emperors in Byzantine Historical Writing’, Byzantion 50 (1980), pp. 226–40. On the imperial portrait see also C. Head, The Imperial Byzantine Portrait: A Verbal and Graphic Gallery (New York, 1982). 46   Nikephoros Bryennios, Yli Historias, ed. P. Gautier, Nicéphore Bryennios: Histoire. Introduction, Texte, Traduction et Notes (Brussels, 1975), p. 281, tr. Jeffreys et al., Prosopography of the Byzantine World, Alexios 1, available at http://db.pbw.kcl.ac.uk/id/person/106238 (accessed 30 June 2012).

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ruddy and gleaming, are used as much to relate to physical appearance and the need for idealisation as to build an image of these men that marks them out (physically) from the rest of the world. Such eulogised physical descriptions appear written and interpreted less with an interest in strict adherence to ‘realism’ and more for what they would have conveyed about the emperor or empress’s superior status. They navigate carefully between the ‘real’ and the ‘ideal’, making concessions to the former and playing on the latter in order to evoke the physical uniqueness expected of the imperial body.

Beauty and the Gendered Body In Psellos’ descriptions of Zoe and Monomachos, Byzantine audiences would have recognised the familiar topos of the ideal and the identifiable physical features that constitute it. But how does the written description qualify our understanding of the image? In its stereotyped wording, Psellos’ account does not appear to create a likeness of the emperor and empress that would necessarily help one identify them on sight, or guide the hand of an artist to depict their likeness. And yet Byzantine writing such as the eleventh-century Life of St Nikon suggests that artists at times were expected, and consented in attempting, to depict portrait likenesses based on verbal descriptions in which the body (much like in accounts of physical beauty) was broken down into a list of physical features, such as stature and hair colour.47 Maguire has shown in the case of the holy portrait that the notion of ‘likeness’ for the Byzantines was codified in a series of distinctive physical and facial characteristics that identified a saint.48 Beauty worked in a similar way: a tangible quality, it was ‘written’ on the body through a series of physical features that served as visual signs aiding the recognition of the beautiful body. This perception of beauty conditions us to look at the likeness of Zoe and Monomachos in the same way, feature by feature, when faced with their image. Maguire has suggested that portraits such as those of the imperial couple in St Sophia, ‘which are lofty, stiff, and straight, which lack any movement or expression’, allow for the notion of (divine) power to be manifested in the stylistic handling of the emperor’s body – frontality, immobility and lack of expression emphasising the closeness between emperor and God.49 Yet viewers clearly also expected to see beauty manifested on the ideal body of the 47

  See P. Chatterjee, ‘Problem Portraits: The Ambivalence of Visual Representation in Byzantium’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 40.2 (2010), pp. 223–48, esp. 226. 48   See H. Maguire, Icons of their Bodies; Saints and their Images in Byzantium (Princeton, NJ, 1996), esp. 1–47. 49   On the shift from the tilted heads of Monomachos and Zoe to the fully frontal faces of John II Komnenos and Eirene in St Sophia see H. Maguire, ‘Style and Ideology in Byzantine Imperial Art’, Gesta 28.2 (1989), pp. 217–31.

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Figure 13.2 Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Empress Zoe (detail) (photographed by Flavia Nessi) emperor and empress portrayed in their likeness. Examined feature by feature, the faces of both Monomachos and Zoe would certainly allow for a Byzantine viewer to see the dictates of the ideal reflected in the likeness of the imperial pair (Fig. 13.2), their features as depicted in the mosaic enabling such a reading to be projected into the image.50 Monomachos is portrayed with fair tresses, his hair and beard accentuated with highlights of lighter-coloured tesserae. He also sports rosy cheeks, his face brightened by a pair of pink curving lines. As for Zoe, her face appears as a carefully modelled oval, the smoothly rounded contour of her cheek denoted with a gradation of colour. The large eyes and imposing brows for which she was praised by Psellos can also be seen in her likeness: her almond-shaped eyes are particularly accentuated by exaggerated eyelids that stretch decoratively past the right corner of her eye, and are crowned by bold, arching brows. She is notably depicted with an elegant, small mouth and a rosy complexion evoked by the pink circle on her cheek. To this is added what has become the defining feature of her likeness, the flawless, wrinkle-free skin that evokes nothing of her 64 years of age. Yet the likenesses of the male emperor and the female empress are distinguished from each other in one important respect. In the case of Monomachos, distinctive physical characteristics bestow a sense of individuality on his likeness. The figure’s ‘trimmed’ beard is characteristically full around the mouth and thinning at the sides of the face, while on his forehead two arched lines evoke the bone structure of his brow – incidentally a feature that Monomachos appears to share with Christ, depicted between 50

  For this logic in the imagery of the second sophistic see Elsner, ‘Physiognomics’, p. 208.

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the imperial couple.51 By contrast, Zoe’s features, from her smoothly rounded face to her chin, which is modelled into a decorative half-moon, are in fact so perfect that they hardly appear distinctive. Her nose, for instance, much less individualised than that of her consort, is rendered as a delicate, straight line. Even her unblemished, wrinkle-free skin can be seen in a similar way: scholarship has noted that, rather than appearing youthful, in Zoe’s visage indications of youth or of age are equally lacking.52 While the faces of both figures reflect the familiar features of the ideal of beauty, the face of Monomachos is more individualised than that of Zoe, who appears more heavily idealised, her facial features more generalised than his. An image commissioned and paid for by the imperial couple, the image of Zoe and Monomachos has been seen as motivated by the need to ensure, besides divine goodwill (and the display of imperial power), ‘the immortality bestowed by public portraiture’, a logic implying that the emperor and empress would have their likeness represented as they wished it to be recorded for posterity.53 Yet Robin Cormack has shown that Byzantine imperial images were conditioned more by public expectations of how emperors should be represented, than by the latter’s own intentions – that the imperial image was the product of a dynamic exchange between emperors and subjects.54 Zoe may not have influenced the image of herself to the extent implied by Wittemore – of having her likeness removed and a more appealing version set in its place – yet it is clear that the kind of ‘likeness’ expected as much by the empress as by the public was one in which it was idealisation rather than characterisation that was paramount, creating in the face of Zoe a visage that was perfect, beautiful, ageless, and also featureless.55 In the case of Monomachos’ more ‘individualised’ likeness, the image appears to be expected to strike a balance between idealisation and characterisation. Byzantine writing suggests as much by noting how the likenesses of emperors could communicate lineage and confer legitimacy, and do so through the

51

  On the physical similarity between Monomachos and Christ see Cormack, ‘Interpreting the Mosaics of St Sophia’, pp. 144–5. 52   Cormack, ‘Interpreting the Mosaics of St Sophia’, p. 144. 53   See L. Brubaker, ‘Gifts and Prayers: The Visualization of Gift-giving in Byzantium and the Mosaics at Hagia Sophia’, in W. Davies and P. Fouracre (eds), The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 33–61, esp. 39. On the function of imperial imagery see also Eastmond, ‘Between Icon and Idol’. 54   See Cormack, ‘The Emperor at St Sophia’, pp. 225–53. 55   For a parallel in Georgian royal imagery, Tony Eastmond notes that the likeness of Queen Tamar in Vardzia evokes a Persian ideal of beauty rather than any sense of portrait realism: A. Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia (University Park, PA, 1998), pp. 110 and 210.

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facial features of the figures depicted.56 When Michael Attaleiates attempts to bolster the image of Nikephoros Botaneiates in the Historia, the author notably uses the evidence of a portrait as proof of illustrious lineage: Attaleiates claims that Botaneiates was descended from the Phokas family and that this is proved by his physical resemblance to a likeness of Nikephoros Phokas depicted in a church in Crete.57 Attaleiates’ statement could only be credible in a world that recognised that, in the likeness of a (male) emperor, the identification of specific physical features could serve to underline a blood-bond, thus making image (and likeness) into an evocation of legitimacy. In the twelfth-century mosaic image in St Sophia depicting Emperor John II Komnenos, Empress Eirene and their heir Alexios, the likenesses of father and son equally use the vocabulary of facial features to communicate lineage. John’s likeness, though idealised in displaying a complexion surprisingly white for one known as ‘the Moor’, depicts characteristic, individualised facial features: a longish, oval face, thick, black, perfectly arching eyebrows over dark eyes, and characteristic wavy, long hair. All are equally visible in the likeness of Alexios, who resembles his father in everything but the beard.58 The empress by contrast appears as a paragon of ideal beauty. Rich plaits of blond hair symmetrically frame her rounded face, which is marked by features arranged with geometrical precision; a thin, linear nose divides her visage neatly into halves, while red lines arranged to form circles evoke her rosy cheeks. Eirene’s likeness conveys her regal status through its generalised beauty that makes her appear as a perfect, stylised beautiful mask.59 The likeness of John and Alexios, by contrast, blends idealisation with the need to proclaim the latter’s right to succeed to his father’s throne, an effect achieved through idealised but also physically individualised facial features.60 In depicting the likeness of emperors, imagery and writing link the imperial body to contemporary perceptions of the ideal, beautiful body. Both images and texts address physical beauty as an attribute of the ideal persona of emperors and empresses, while their imperial bodies can be seen to echo the 56

  Physical resemblance is treated as proof of lineage in real life too – Psellos speaks of the two (male) heirs of Constantine Doukas as perfect likenesses of the deceased emperor: Chronographia (VII.1.28), ed. and tr. Del Corno, Impellizzeri et al., vol. 2, p. 318. On Anna Komnene’s self-proclaimed resemblance to her father see P. Magdalino, ‘The Pen of the Aunt: Echoes of the Mid-twelfth Century in the Alexiad’, in T. Gouma-Peterson (ed.), Anna Komnene and her Times (New York and London, 2000), pp. 15–43, esp. 21. 57   Attaleiates, Historia (228–9), ed. and tr. Pérez Martín, p. 166. 58   William of Tyre claims John was average in height, ugly-looking, and known as the Moor for his dark skin and hair: Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon (xv, 23), ed. R.B.C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 63 (Turnholt, 1986). 59   On the face of Eirene as a mask see Smythe, ‘Behind the Mask’, p. 142, n. 6. 60   On this image reinforcing the hereditary principle see Eastmond, ‘Between Icon and Idol’, pp. 81, 85 and n. 50.

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prescription of the ideal. In negotiating the balance between the ideal persona of an imperial figure and the depiction of its physical self, images and texts draw a distinction that links the emphasis on beauty and the balance between idealisation and characterisation to gender. At St Sophia, Zoe is portrayed as a paragon of physical perfection, her features more idealised than real, more decorative than individualised. Like Eirene or Xene, her perfect beauty also becomes political: it communicates the empress’s uniqueness and embodies her power. In the likeness of Monomachos, idealised facial features evoke the emperor’s ‘special’ body, convey the physical beauty expected in the imperial image, but also communicate a sense of physical individuality. Monomachos’ power can be read as much in his idealised body as in his recognisable facial features that appear even to align his face with that of Christ by his side, further emphasising his God-given authority, just as the individualised likenesses of John II Komnenos and his son Alexios proclaim legitimacy and family ties. This said, however, it is clear that the likenesses of both men and women, whether visual or verbal, negotiate a role for beauty as part of the imperial (ideal) persona. Admired rather than ignored, beauty mattered, and Byzantine texts, as much as images, attempted to find a middle ground between fact and fiction, the real and the ideal.

14. Experiencing Self: How Mid-Byzantine Historians Presented their Experience Dion C. Smythe

This paper explores three concepts – self, experience and presentation – and their expression in three middle-Byzantine historians who span the eleventh and twelfth centuries – Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene and Niketas Choniates, focusing exclusively on their ‘histories’, Psellos’ Chronographia, Komnene’s Alexiad, and Choniates’ Narrative.1 Discussions of Byzantine historiography – the writing by Byzantines about their past – must now begin with two articles by Ruth Macrides.2 In her first article, Macrides unites two apparently conflicting views of Byzantine history writing, while at the same time distinguishing between them.3 On the one hand she goes back to Krumbacher, crediting him with the ‘unchanging view’4 that 1   Michel Psellos, Chronographie, ed. and tr. E. Renauld (Paris, 1967); Michael Psellus, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia of Michael Psellus, tr. E.R.A. Sewter (Harmondsworth, 1966); Anne Comnène, Alexiade, ed. and tr. B. Leib (Paris, 1967), with a fourth index volume by P. Gautier (Paris, 1976); The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, tr. E.R.A. Sewter (Harmondsworth, 1969); Nicetas Choniatae Historia, ed. J.A. van Dieten (Berlin and New York, 1976); O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates, tr. H.J. Magoulias (Detroit, MI, 1984). For these three authors representing the ‘climax of Byzantine historiography’, which in turn is ‘regarded as the highest achievement of Byzantine culture’, and ‘a striking testimony of Byzantine humanism’, see J. Chrysostomides, ‘A Byzantine Historian: Anna Comnena’, in D.O. Morgan (ed.), Mediaeval Historical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds (London, 1982), p. 30. 2   R.J. Macrides, ‘The Historian in the History’, in C.N. Constantinides, N.M. Panagiotakes, E. Jeffreys and A.D. Angelou (eds), ΦΙΛΕΛΛΗΝ: Studies in Honour of Robert Browning (Venice, 1996), pp. 205–24, and R. Macrides, ‘Editor’s Preface’, in R.J. Macrides (ed.), History as Literature in Byzantium (Farnham, 2010), pp. ix–xi. 3   Macrides, ‘The Historian in the History’, p. 205. 4   K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byzantinischen Literatur von Justinian bis zum Ende des ost-römischen Reiches (527–1453) (Munich, 1891), p. 38, cited in Macrides, ‘The Historian in

From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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to understand Byzantine historiography requires an understanding of classical historiography. In doing so she refers back to the 1981 collection of essays that has done so much to shape the agenda of English-speaking Byzantine Studies in relation to ‘classicism’,5 most notably in the context of this paper, Roger Scott’s article.6 Macrides in both her articles provides useful checklists of these classicising features: ‘use of classicising language … prooimia, descriptions of military campaigns, learned digressions, formal speeches, discussions of causation and in their many statements on what is appropriate to history and what is not’7 and ‘classicizing language, figures of speech, topoi, mimesis’.8 On the other hand, Macrides draws attention to the alleged downside to this classicising tendency, set out most forcefully in Mango’s inaugural lecture of 1975.9 The classicising features that to Krumbacher made Byzantine historiography worth studying, and to a degree detached and objective,10 were for Mango the very features that made it a ‘distorting mirror’, requiring the layers of literary artifice, pretension and rhetoric to be peeled away like an onion11 to get at the nuggets of historical truth.12 While re-reading Mango’s provocative article once caused bile and blood pressure to rise in equal measure, it now seems scholarly detachment is in the ascendant, and we see beyond it: We are no longer deceived by classicizing features such as the use of ancient names for Byzantium’s neighbours and enemies, or awkward periphrases for Christian terms. We have learned too that mimesis can take many forms and is hardly ever slavish.13

Elsewhere Macrides appears less confident of the outcome, feeling perhaps that she has been too long in the vanguard, bearing aloft the banner with the strange device: Yet, as a whole, historians of Byzantium are still not won over. Although we have perhaps stopped despising many, if not most, of the elements of Byzantine historical texts that have traditionally been considered intrusive and unhelpful – classicizing language, figures of speech, topoi, mimesis – we the History’, p. 205. 5   M. Mullett and R. Scott (eds), Byzantium and the Classical Tradition (Birmingham, 1981). 6   R. Scott, ‘The Classical Tradition in Byzantine Historiography’, in Mullett and Scott (eds), Byzantium and the Classical Tradition, pp. 61–74. 7   Macrides, ‘The Historian in the History’, p. 205. 8   Macrides, ‘Editor’s Preface’, p. xi. 9   C. Mango, Byzantine Literature as a Distorting Mirror (Oxford, 1975), pp. 3–18. 10   Macrides, ‘The Historian in the History’, p. 205. 11   Macrides, ‘The Historian in the History’, p. 205. 12   Macrides, ‘Editor’s Preface’, pp. x–xi. 13   Macrides, ‘The Historian in the History’, pp. 205–6.

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have not yet been persuaded of the need to undertake literary analyses of the works that are the backbone and substance of our own narratives. Texts are still edited and translated with no discussion given to their method of composition. Meanwhile, although chronicles are not impaired by all the features of classicizing histories, they are not deemed worthy of literary analysis, since they are considered to lack literary pretension.14

Macrides presents an open-ended project, carried through by some of the contributors to her collection of edited papers.15 There are studies of Byzantine history writing that are literary in character; there are also historical studies of Byzantine history writing that follow the onion-peeling route. Macrides advocates the reading of historical sources as literature to determine and understand how the Byzantines wrote about their past: ‘For some, history studied as literature can be an end in itself. For others, it will be a means of determining how our knowledge of the past changes when the historical sources are read as literature.’16 Reading historical sources as literature can best be understood in terms of Roman Jakobson’s analysis of the speech event.17 The addresser is the author, the addressee the reader. The context is the social system and physical environment in which the communication act is located.18 The contact is the physical meeting of the addresser and the addressee, which in Byzantium may have always been mediated by the physicality of the manuscript, though all three texts I discuss in the present paper may have received public readings.19 The code is expertise, both linguistic – high-style Atticising Byzantine Greek – and literary – knowledge of rhetorical forms and classical models.20 The content is the meaning that the author wished to convey to the reader.

14

  Macrides, ‘Editor’s Preface’, p. xi.   B. Croke, ‘Uncovering Byzantium’s Historical Audience’, in Macrides (ed.), History as Literature in Byzantium, pp. 25–53; and M. Jeffreys, ‘Psellos and “his Emperors”: Fact, Fiction and Genre’, in Macrides (ed.), History as Literature in Byzantium, pp. 73–91, for example. 16   Macrides, ‘Editor’s Preface’, p. xi. 17   R. Jakobson, ‘Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics’, in R.T. de George and M. Fernande (eds), The Structuralists: From Marx to Lévi-Strauss (New York, 1972), p. 353. The six constituent aspects of the speech-event are: addresser, addressee, context, content, contact and code. 18   For historians of an empirical bent, this is the objective reality ‘out there’, or ‘the past’. 19   C. Mango, Byzantium: Empire of New Rome (London and Phoenix, AZ, 1998), p. 237. 20   The literary quality – the intention to last – is present in all three of the texts: Chronographie (VI.xxii), Renauld 1, pp. 127–8; Alexiade, ‘Prooimion’ (i–ii), Leib 1, pp. 3–4; Narrative, ‘Prooimion’, van Dieten, pp. 1–2. 15

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The three concepts of ‘self’,21 ‘experience’ and ‘presentation’ are not simple, and defy definition. It should come as no surprise that I start from Scott’s 21

  Cultural theorists provide jargon-laden circumlocutions, but they do not really define what ‘self’ means: ‘[A]n encompassing domain term that includes within it virtually all aspects of personhood and subjectivity. The self is constituted by acts of identification with internal elements of experience and with persons, groups and representations in the cultural world. As such it is irrevocably implicated in power relations’ – J.M. Mageo and B.M. Knauft, ‘Introduction’, in J.M. Mageo (ed.), Power and the Self (Cambridge, 2002), p. 3. Elsewhere in this volume, more detailed use has been made of Charles Taylor’s idea of the ‘buffered self’: C. Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2007). See also the review by D. O’Brien, ‘Twenty Centuries of Conversation’, America: The National Catholic Weekly 22 (2007), available at http://cf.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_ id=10289 [accessed 16 April 2013], or S. Jeffreys review, available at http://www.guardian. co.uk/books/2007/dec/08/society1 [accessed 5 December 2012]: ‘Taylor doesn’t so much turn a phrase as let it curdle in philosophical jargon.’ Taylor draws a distinction between the premodern and modern worlds, postulating that human actors of the pre-modern period (in Europe) are ‘porous selves’. ‘By definition for the porous self, the source of its most powerful and important emotions are outside the “mind”; or better put the very notion that there is a clear boundary, allowing us to define an inner base area, grounded in which we can disengage from the rest, has no sense’, and may be contrasted with the ‘buffered selves’: ‘As a bounded self I can see the boundary as a buffer, such that the things beyond don’t [sic] need to “get to me” to use the contemporary expression. That’s [sic] the sense to my use of the term “buffered” here. This self can see itself as invulnerable, as master of the meanings of things for it’ of the non-enchanted, modern world. See Taylor, Secular Age, pp. 33–8. In his complex thesis, Taylor appears to be arguing that modern (by which he means North Atlantic European, post-renaissance, post-reformation) human actors have an interior sense of ‘self’ (‘buffered’ in his terminology), which allows individuals to distance themselves from the sensorium of experiences ‘out there’. (Taylor, Secular Age, p. 38: ‘For the modern, buffered self, the possibility exists of taking a distance from, disengaging from everything outside the mind. My ultimate purposes are those which arise within me, the crucial meanings of things are those defined in my responses to them.’) Taylor contends that this separation between the self and the experience was lacking in the pre-modern world. In contrast, I have found Anthony Cohen’s work in Anthropology useful: A.P. Cohen, Self Consciousness: An Alternative Anthropology of Identity (London and New York, 1994). Cohen starts by asking how self-aware we are of our own selves and how able we would be to describe the totality of our ‘self’ on paper – even if we could bear as individuals, socially and psychologically, such intimate, full and frank disclosure. Other anthropologists have suggested that the notion of ‘self’ is not part of universal human experience but a cultural construct that belongs to the societies of the ‘developed west’ (usually contrasted with the Japanese ‘socially-constructed self’): see C. Lindholm, Culture and Identity: The History, Theory and Practice of Psychological Anthropology (Oxford, 2007), p. xx. Cohen’s construction opens up analysis: ‘The self is not a monolith; it is plastic, variable and complex’: Self Consciousness, p. 2. Cohen presents a structure of three ‘selves’: the neglected self – the ‘self’ ignored by social anthropologists (Cohen, Self Consciousness, pp. 1–22, for the definition at p. 5), the creative self (Cohen, Self Consciousness, pp. 23–54), and the indulgent self (Cohen, Self Consciousness, pp. 168–71). Cohen seeks to redress the balance between the anthropological construct of the human ‘actor’ focused

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article in my own turn: For Roger Scott the greatest single difference between classical Greek historians and their Byzantine successors is the intrusion of the Byzantine author’s person into his subject. By ‘intrusion’ he (Scott) means both the explicit authorial intervention and more generally the authors’ personal orientation to their subject. He dates the appearance of this fundamentally different approach mainly to the period after the seventh century, citing Anna Komnene’s Alexiad as his foremost example.22

On one level the presence of the historian in his or her history has clear classical antecedents, going back to Thucydides.23 This is the construction of authorial authority (auctoritas). Marincola suggests that this construction is twofold. Firstly, the claim to ‘competence to narrate and explain the past’24 is advanced. Secondly, the creation of ‘a literary persona that the audience will find persuasive and believable’25 is achieved. As Macrides so arrestingly puts it, ‘We expect Byzantine authors of historical texts to be like us: serious, hardworking scholars.’26 The first aspect of auctoritas, of ‘competence to narrate and explain’, is the author’s ‘personal inquiry and investigation’.27 Part of the ability to understand and explain events was to have had experience of those or similar events ‘in governing and leading armies and states.’28 Thucydides adds ‘experience’ to Herodotus’ intellectual items of inquiry, perceiving and understanding, set out most clearly in his so-called ‘second preface’.29 This is taken up by his successors: ‘The historians after Thucydides begin to assert more practical experience, especially that of participation.’30 The second aspect

‘wholly on what a person does socially to the exclusion of who the person is’ (Cohen, Self Consciousness, p. 7, second emphasis added). 22   Macrides, ‘The Historian in the History’, p. 206. 23   J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), p. 133. 24   Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. 1. 25   Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. 1. 26   Macrides, ‘Editor’s Preface’, p. x. 27   Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. 5. 28   Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. 133. Marincola notes, however, that for Herodotus the only experience required was experience in inquiry about events, not in the events themselves. 29   Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. 133. 30   Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. 134. Compare this with Marincola’s evaluation of Polybius: ‘Although he mentions his participation often enough, what makes Polybius unique is that more than any other historian he gives many details of his own life and experiences and consistently emphasises their importance as part of his authority’: Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. 136.

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of the creation of auctoritas is the creation of the literary persona of the author as a valid narrator, a purveyor of truth:31 This sense of [literary] authority is the rhetorical means by which the ancient historian claims the competence to narrate and explain the past, and simultaneously constructs a persona that the audience will find persuasive and believable.32

In part this involves Selbstdarstellung, self-presentation or self-display, as the means by which the author claims to be a trustworthy and authoritative narrator.33 This Selbstdarstellung – or indeed its antithesis Selbstauslöschung34 – is a presentation for a purpose (establishing auctoritas), rather than the perhaps overly modern view that self-presentation should be of the authentic congruent self in the psychoanalytic manner. In her analysis of Psellos’ Chronographia, Efthymia Pietsch asserts that it is composed of three strands: imperial history, autobiography and apology.35 By her definition, autobiography is a form of ‘autorialen Selbstdarstellung’.36 However, while these three elements may be discerned within Psellos’ Chronographia, this threefold identification does not move our understanding forward in any significant way.37 For all the near overwhelming presence of Psellos within his own history-text, it is impossible to construct from it a biography.38

Michael Psellos In his text Psellos presents his ‘self’ as central to the life of the court. His text is full of anecdotes that begin, ‘As I was telling the emperor…’.39 In his portrayal of the ‘lower sort’, however, Psellos shows his own origins as a ‘self-made man’ 31   Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. 6. For a more detailed analysis of one of the authors considered here see Jeffreys, ‘Psellos and “his Emperors”’. 32   Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. 1. 33   Marincola, Authority and Tradition, p. xi. 34   S. Papaioannou, ‘The Aesthetics of History from Theophanes to Eustathios’, in Macrides (ed.), History as Literature in Byzantium, pp. 3–21. 35   E. Pietsch, Die Chronographia des Michael Psellos: Kaisergeschichte, Autobiographie und Apologie (Wiesbaden, 2005). 36   Pietsch, Kaisergeschichte, Autobiographie und Apologie, p. 13. 37   For different approaches and conclusions see Jeffreys, ‘Psellos and “his Emperors”’; and A. Kaldellis, The Argument of Psellos’ Chronographia (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 1999). 38   Kaldellis, The Argument of Psellos’ Chronographia, pp. 8–9 and A. Kaldellis, ed. and tr., with contributions by D. Jenkins and S. Papaioannou, Mother and Sons, Fathers and Daughters: The Byzantine Family of Michael Psellos (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), pp. 3–20. 39   Jeffreys, ‘Psellos and “his Emperors”’, p. 74.

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and the need to insulate himself from the promotion of those who come behind him. Psellos’ description of Basil the Parakoimomenos as ‘most outstanding in the Empire of the Romans, elevated according to his understanding, bodily stature and with the appearance fit for a tyrant (morphen turanno)’40 suggests someone far removed from the underclass of lower orders. The parakoimomenos, the offspring of an imperial concubine, had been castrated as an infant, so that he could not displace from the succession and government the legitimate heirs.41 The Emperor Basil II learnt from the parakoimomenos, not just as a spectator, but as an athlete being coached.42 However, after the successive rebellions of Skleros and Bardas Phokas, which Psellos presents as the transforming events for Basil II, the parakoimomenos is dismissed from his position of power and influence.43 In response to his sudden downfall, this man, the parakoimomenos, who had been ‘so great’44 became unable to control himself,45 and sickened and died. Basil the parakoimomenos behaved much as Psellos would have expected anyone to have done in the face of such complete and utter destruction – and this may have appeared to Psellos as a possible fate for himself. The author of Romanos III Argyropoulos’ downfall is introduced as a certain eunuch (tis aner ektomias),46 who was of poor and most dreadful fortune, but he was most awesome in his active understanding; he was the familiar of Basil II, and was privy to his secrets. Basil II had not advanced him to high command, but had treated him most honestly.47

The eunuch’s brother, the stripling Michael, was introduced to court, and caught Zoe’s eye.48 In chapter 13 of Book IV, Psellos returns to the description of the eunuch: ‘His spirit was many-sided and it was changed for every individual with whom he conversed.’49 He criticised people when they were far off, but was nice to them when they came near.50 He wished to live life very magnificently, and to conduct the government in a very imperial fashion,51 but

40

  Chronographie (I.3), Renauld 1, 3, 6–9.   Chronographie (I.3), Renauld 1, 3, 11–13. 42   Chronographie (I.3), Renauld 1, 3, 19–22. 43   Chronographie (I.19), Renauld 1, 12, 9–13. 44   Chronographie (I.21), Renauld 1, 13, 5. 45   Chronographie (I.21), Renauld 1, 13, 6. 46   Chronographie (III.18), Renauld 1, 44, 5. 47   Chronographie (III.18), Renauld 1, 44–45, 6–10. 48   Chronographie (III.18), Renauld 1, 45, 20–22. 49   Chronographie (IV.13), Renauld 1, 60, 2–3. 50   Chronographie (IV.13), Renauld, 1, 60, 7–10. 51   Chronographie (IV.13), Renauld 1, 60, 12–13. 41

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his nature prevented him as he was an inveterate drinker. Even in his cups, however, he never forgot his care for the empire and his beastly glare.52 When the scheme of John the eunuch had come to fruition and he had seen his brother eventually replaced with his nephew Michael V, Psellos rounds out his negative portrayal of the new emperor by describing Michael’s use of eunuchs in the imperial bodyguard: Concerning his bodily safety, he undertook to transfer it to Skythian striplings whom he had bought a long time ago. All had been cut off [apotetmemena, i.e. were eunuchs] and knew his thinking, and were fit for the purpose he intended. This was because he could rely on their loyalty as he had raised them up to higher ranks. Some he used ta peri to soma, others he used to cover whatever he wanted [done].53

They have been promoted by the emperor, which is why he trusts them; they are cut off, literally as eunuchs but also metaphorically from society, because they are emblems of Michael V’s tyrannical overthrow of the established order.54 When finally it came to a head and Michael V accused Zoe of being a poisoner, The person from elsewhere, the most basely-born, plucked her, the best-born, who until then had known nothing of daring plans [i.e. plots], from the room where she was born [implying the porphyra chamber of the palace], and fabricated charges against her and interrogated her about things of which she knew nothing.55

Zoe was placed on a ship and sent into exile. When this forces the city rebellion against Michael V, Psellos describes its unnaturalness, with women being involved with the mob, but says his account is true for it is an eye-witness account.56 Psellos’ account is true because he saw it with his own eyes. Psellos’ portrayal of upwardly mobile career bureaucrats reflects his own insecurities. This is the method of advancement he used, and when the accounts come closer to his own time and the persons are his own rivals he becomes more and more negative about them. Psellos first mentions these upwardly mobile careerists in the reign of Basil II. The emperor developed a policy of ruling utterly by himself; circumspect in his dealings with people, he was feared rather than loved.57 As he grew older and more experienced, he relied less and less on those more able 52

  Chronographie (IV.13), Renauld 1, 60, 18–19.   Chronographie (V.15), Renauld 1, 95, 11–17. 54   Chronographie (V.15), Renauld 1, 95, 1–7. 55   Chronographie (V.21), Renauld 1, 98, 12–20. 56   Chronographie (V.26), Renauld 1, 102, 4. 57   Chronographie (I.29), Renauld 1, 19, 3–6. 53

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than himself.58 He alone decided what measure to take and he alone decided the allocation of troops.59 With regard to the civil government, he governed not in accordance with the written laws but by the dictates of his conscience.60 As he was naturally equipped for this, this seems not so much a criticism of Basil II, as the introduction to the section on scholarship. Not requiring their expertise, Basil II paid no attention to men of learning, but treated them with scorn.61 People were drawn to scholarship with pure motives, with no ulterior goal. Psellos contrasts this with his own day, when people were drawn to learning in the expectation that it would lead to preferment. If they did not achieve their goal immediately, they gave up their studies right away.62 Basil, however, surrounded himself with men not known for brilliance of learning, nor for eminence of birth, nor for depths of knowledge in literature. To them were entrusted the imperial rescripts and he was accustomed to discuss the most secret matters of state with them. Thus Basil II replaced the leaders of the great families and brought them down to the level of others, relative outsiders, forcing out those who regarded the circles of power as their rightful place.63 Basil II reflected the officials he used. His replies were simple, without adornment, dictated directly to secretaries.64 It was more like the speech of a peasant than of a free (understood: educated) man.65 Psellos’ opening description of Constantine VIII shows clearly that he was not to be admired. Foreign barbarians were held in check by grants of dignities and bribes,66 while any of the Byzantines who dared revolt were punished severely.67 He turned free Byzantines into slaves by fear. The major element in this criticism of Constantine VIII is that he did not recognise the differentials of place between the various elements of society. Describing the generosity of Constantine VIII, Psellos says that this attribute – usually a positive for a Byzantine emperor – was directed to the wrong sort of people. The emperor’s generosity was focused on the habitués of the Great Palace, while those at a remove from the Palace received imperial largesse in greater moderation. Wealth was showered on the eunuchs of the palace, who served as chamberlains and eunuchs of the bedchamber.68 They are neither of well-born (eugenous) or leisured (eleutheras) fortune (tyches), but rather of ethnic (ethnikes) 58

  Chronographie (I.29), Renauld 1, 18, 6–8.   Chronographie (I.29), Renauld 1, 18, 8–10. 60   Chronographie (I.29), Renauld 1, 18, 10–12. 61   Chronographie (I.29), Renauld 1, 18, 12–14. 62   Chronographie (I.29), Renauld 1, 18, 24–25. 63   Chronographie (I.30), Renauld 1, 18–19, 4–6. 64   Chronographie (I.30), Renauld 1, 19, 1–14 and 16–17. 65   Chronographie (I.36), Renauld 1, 23, 21–24. 66   Chronographie (II.2), Renauld 1, 25, 5–11. 67   Chronographie (II.2), Renauld 1, 25, 7–8. 68   Chronographie (II.3), Renauld 1, 27, 6–8. 59

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or barbarian (barbarou) fortune.69 Psellos criticises Constantine VIII for elevating these people, not drawn from the true elite of Byzantium (which in Psellos’ eyes at least included himself), merely because they flattered the emperor. Psellos’ description of Kalaphates’ family origins places him at the bottom of the heap. His father’s family was completely unknown and most inconspicuous.70 His father came from utterly deserted countryside or from some place at the farthest edge.71 Michael Kalaphates’ father later became the plaything of fortune,72 but everything about him remained out of kilter; like a pygmy attempting to play Hercules, everything about him was wrong. Kalaphates’ mother’s line was equally unsuitable.73 There is much in these descriptions that follows the prescription of Menander Rhetor for psogos, so perhaps they should be given limited credence. Under Constantine IX, Psellos was promoted to the Senate74 and it would appear that he became very conscious of those snapping at his heels. Constantine IX’s profligacy with honours showed that those who had gained honours from him (like Psellos of course) had gained little.75 Psellos accuses Constantine IX of overturning the due and established order. ‘He opened the Senate to the market crowd and all the common people.’76 Constantine IX’s favourite, described by Psellos as a ‘barbarian outcast’77 so enraged our courtly courtier that he was ready to strangle the man himself.78 What prompted Psellos’ enmity was the man’s rapid promotion, ‘mingling with the nobility of our senate’,79 that is, with Psellos himself. He was of unknown family, ignorant and most foul,80 and yet he was promoted rapidly to a rank Psellos felt he himself had achieved through merit alone. The man then betrayed the trust placed in him as he decided to assassinate Constantine IX and replace him as emperor. Captured and tortured, he named as accomplices men well known for their loyalty.81 Psellos never names this barbarian outcast who sought to replace Constantine IX on the throne. We can be sure of very little, though he was probably higher on the social scale than Psellos allows. The dispatch of one worthless fellow merely cleared the way for the next. Constantine IX was amused by people 69

  Chronographie (II.3), Renauld 1, 27, 8–9.   Chronographie (IV.26), Renauld, 1, 69, 2–3. 71   Chronographie (IV.26), Renauld 1, 69, 3–4. 72   Chronographie (IV.27), Renauld 1, 69, 2. 73   Chronographie (IV.28), Renauld 1, 70, 1–4. 74   Chronographie (VI.14), Renauld 1, 124, 9–11. 75   Chronographie (VI.30), Renauld 1, 133, 2–3. 76   Chronographie (VI.29), Renauld 1, 132, 18–21. 77   Chronographie (VI.134), Renauld 2, 35, 1–2. 78   Chronographie (VI.135), Renauld 2, 36, 8–10. 79   Chronographie (VI.136), Renauld 2, 36, 2. 80   Chronographie (VI.136), Renauld 2, 36, 5–6. 81   Chronographie (VI.137), Renauld 2, 37, 17–20. 70

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who misused words, or who had speech impediments, rather than by music, dance or mimes. Psellos introduces a half-dumb outcast,82 who emphasised his defect so that no one could understand him when he spoke. He insinuated himself into the emperor’s affections so that Constantine IX could not bear to be parted from him. The main criticism was that the emperor brought him into the administration and gave him rapid promotion.83 The clown fell in love with Constantine IX’s Alanian mistress, and decided to murder the emperor.84 He was encouraged in this ridiculous undertaking by the flatterers who surrounded him, who said that his rebellion would be greeted with joy by the people.85 He was betrayed and took sanctuary. A show trial followed and he was exiled to the Princes’ Islands but was recalled within ten days.86 The final encounter with rapidly promoted outsiders in Constantine IX’s reign comes in the complex section dealing with the end of the reign. Psellos opens the section with a statement of intent: ‘I do not wish to write a history nor to be known as a friend of truth, but rather to write an enkomion of this emperor.’87 Psellos distinguishes between history, where deeds are recorded purely and simply,88 and eulogy, where the orator, influenced to a positive or negative aspect, can use one incident alone to construct a speech. Psellos concludes that a history that admits its subject’s faults, but which allows the nobility to shine through, is superior to an enkomion, where the perfection rings false and all becomes suspect.89 Psellos then discusses various points of Constantine IX’s character. Having dealt with his piety, generosity and sense of justice, Psellos then says he will relate some anecdotes about the emperor, which a historian would omit, but an orator would use to good effect.90 The stress here on distinguishing between history and oratory is to trigger memories of the earlier discussion in the text. The description of Constantine IX is veiled criticism, underlined when Psellos says that he is using minimalist rhetoric.91 An example of a minor quirk in Constantine IX’s mostly good character was his childish response to a certain most brazen and most mindless youth,92 who until the year previous had never touched pen and ink. What outrages Psellos so much is not that the youth came from the depths and the

82

  Chronographie (VI.139), Renauld 2, 38, 2.   Chronographie (VI.140), Renauld 2, 38, 8–13. 84   Chronographie (VI.145), Renauld 2, 41, 5–9. 85   Chronographie (VI.145), Renauld 2, 42, 25. 86   Chronographie (VI.147–50), Renauld 2, 43–5. 87   Chronographie (VI.161), Renauld 2, 50, 3–4. 88   Chronographie (VI.161), Renauld 2, 50–51, 16–17. 89   Chronographie (VI.162), Renauld 2, 51, 10–11. 90   Chronographie (VI.173), Renauld 2, 56, 2–5. 91   Chronographie (VI.176), Renauld 2, 58. 92   Chronographie (VI.177), Renauld 2, 58, 3–5. 83

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street corners to the centre of the Roman government,93 but that this outcast was promoted rapidly to leadership of the Senate without the hard-earned education that was Psellos’ passport to power and influence. Constantine IX promoted the ‘sweetest boy’ in preference to Constantine Leichoudes, but more tellingly Constantine IX promoted him in preference to Michael Psellos himself.

Anna Komnene Reference has been made by both Scott and Macrides to the two direct references to Anna herself when writing. Anna Komnene draws attention to the fact that her own birth had been associated with a miraculous event (even though her grandmother was scathing and perhaps scandalised by Anna Komnene’s mother’s action).94 When her dark-avised brother John was born, his birth was greeted with joy. All the subjects were glad to see their rulers so happy. There then follows a curious comment on the attitudes of the ‘lower orders’, as it seems they cannot be trusted. This is because Anna Komnene feels she was cheated of her birthright by the crowds of the ruling city when her father died. Thus, while the palace was en fête over the birth of the male heir, those who were fondly attached to the imperial couple were jubilant; others, however, merely affected joy.95 Anna draws from this the rather bitter conclusion: ‘For citizens are generally ill-disposed to their rulers, but most pretend, and through flattery win their betters’ favour.’96 Anna Komnene describes her life as one of storms and insurrections97 despite her fortunate birth. In Book 1, when discussing Robert Guiscard’s folly in believing that he could seize the throne in Constantinople, Anna Komnene says that the very idea made her smile as her pen scratched in the lamplight.98 There is no explicit statement that Anna Komnene views herself as isolated and wronged here, but the suggestion is that she is alone. When she describes her birth, in the family section of Book 6, she goes on to describe her life as composed of ‘many contests, troubles and dangers which I myself endured because of my love for them [Alexios and Eirene], having no care for honour, money nor life itself’.99 This is just before her acclamation as heir-presumptive with Constantine ‘her Caesar’. In Book 14, Komnene returns to the theme of all the troubles that befell her at the hands of aliens, the evil that people did 93

  Chronographie (VI.177), Renauld 2, 58, 5–6.   Alexiad (VI.viii.2), Leib 2, 61, 9–19. 95   Alexiade (VI.viii.4), Leib 2, 62–3, 29–2. 96   Alexiade (VI.viii.4), Leib 2, 63, 2–5. 97   Alexiade, ‘Preface’ iv.1, Leib 1, 7, 13. 98   Alexiade (I.xv.6), Leib 1, 56, 13–15. 99   Alexiade (VI.viii.2), Leib 2, 61, 22–5. 94

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to her.100 Even now, as she writes, a sea of misfortunes comes in on her, one wave after another.101 As well as her own misfortunes, Anna Komnene mourns the deaths of her parents and husband. She spends her time devoted to her books and to God.102 No one, even out of the more insignificant of men, is allowed to visit her, never mind those from whom she might have learnt how things were turning out, or her father’s old retainers.103 For thirty years, Anna tells us her experience has been in effect one of house arrest, prevented from seeing her father’s friends, some because they had died, but many because they feared the flood of events.104 The masters of these events – by implication her brother John II Komnenos – decreed the absurdities that she was not only not to be seen, but to be abhorred by the many.105 These feelings of isolation rendered Anna Komnene’s experience one of alienation.106 A more detailed episode, where Anna Komnene’s account stresses the dramatic possibilities of the story, casts some light on how Anna Komnene wants us to view her experience of her father Alexios. The punishment of the rebel Michael Anemas is heavily stage managed. Unmanned by their shaven heads and beards, they are paraded through the agora of Constantinople before a public blinding. The procession of humiliation is to be seen by people of every age – not least the emperor’s daughters, who ‘went out to see it secretly.’107 Anna says that she appealed to her mother to come and see the procession, hoping perhaps that the spectacle would move Eirene Doukaina to save Anemas. The procession was moving slowly, which implies that it was all a show, and that the condemned would be saved at the last moment – but by the emperor. Alexios and Eirene, however, were engaged in that most pious of Byzantine occupations – prayer – and could not, or would not, be disturbed. Finally the empress comes to see the sight and prevails upon Alexios to pardon Michael Anemas.108 Within the classical canon, this could be seen purely as an attempt on Anna Komnene’s part to establish her own credentials as an eye-witness to the events she recounts, even though that must perforce reduce her standing as an objective observer. However, much more is going on here, in what social scientists would term this ‘thick description’ of a sequence of events, than establishing auctoritas. An explicit feminist analysis raises several points. The action appears to be divided on gendered lines. The victims are male, though 100

  Alexiade (XIV.vii.4), Leib 3, 174, 18–21.   Alexiade (XIV.vii.4), Leib 3, 174, 27–9. 102   Alexiade (XIV.vii.6), Leib 3, 175, 14–19. 103   Alexiade (XIV.vii.6), Leib 3, 175, 19–22. 104   Alexiade (XIV.vii.6), Leib 3,175, 22–27. 105   Alexiade (XIV.vii.6), Leib 3, 175, 27–29. 106   Alexiade (XV.xi.22), Leib 3, 242, 21–29. 107   Alexiade (XII.vi.6), Leib 3, 73, 16–17. 108   Alexiad (XII.vi.6), Leib 3, 73, 15–28, especially lines 23–5 for Anna calling to her mother by signs. 101

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with the overt signs of masculinity (beard and hair) shaved off. They ride their oxen side-saddle (like women), not astride like men. The implication is that the attendants to this procession (the masters of ceremonies and the lictors) are male. The path of the parade of shame is through the palace but then through the agora of the city, through the public and therefore signified male part of Constantinople. The emperor Alexios whose andreia has been so assiduously built up and maintained throughout the narrative of The Alexiad is in seclusion, with his wife, in prayer in a palace chapel; far from being the action-man hero fresh from the battlefield, he is presented in that most unmanned of situations, at prayer and weak, before his God through the Theotokos, if not before his women. Who acts? It is the daughter; admittedly purple-born and one used to command, but Anna takes the initiative. She goes to the door of the chapel and signals to her mother. Anna does not approach her father directly, and her mother Eirene Doukaina does not respond immediately. For the purplefixated Anna it shows that she, Anna Komnene, was able to save for the empire (not for any ‘soft’ reasons of pity or squeamishness) a valiant fighter. However, Anna Komnene was not as clever as she thought. The whole affair is stage managed and it may be that Alexios knew to the second when he had to make his intervention without his daughter’s input. On the other hand, experience can often be what one feels, not an objective reality.109

Niketas Choniates Like Psellos, Choniates is sensitive to movements in the scale of honours. The rapid elevation of persons for no reason served as a devaluation of the entire system:110 Not only were the dregs of Byzantine society, the members of street-corner society and the markets, the money-changers and the flax-weavers ennobled as sebastoi, but Skyths and Syrians, held in contempt by those who formerly served emperors [perhaps Choniates himself here], found they could pay to become sebastoi.111

What this showed was Alexios Angelos’ weak understanding and failure to govern properly.112 For all that his Narrative deals with the large sweep of Byzantine history from the mid-point of the twelfth century to the immediate 109   Alexiad (XII.vi.6), Leib 3, 73, 17–20 Michael in fear of his fate; 20–22 crowd bewailing Michael’s fate; 23–5 Anna calls several times to her mother to come and look at the spectacle; 25–8 desire was to save such a brave warrior for the empire and Alexios the emperor. 110   Historia, van Dieten, 454, 34–43. 111   Historia, van Dieten, 484, 62–65. 112   Historia, van Dieten, 484, 66–68.

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aftermath of 1204, rather than the convoluted history of his response to the Latins with all its alleged explicit xenophobia (though that in itself is well worth the telling), it is Choniates’ own experience of the sack of the city that produces the self in experience. The tone of Choniates’ Narrative is religious, a jeremiad, and Niketas accepts for himself some of the blame for what had befallen his society. When Isaak and Alexios Angelos took gold from the churches to give to the Latins of the Fourth Crusade, Niketas and his ilk stayed silent.113 With the fall of the city, the Byzantines became the ultimate outsiders.114 With one house lost,115 Choniates rested in his other house, with a ‘certain acquaintance’, his Venetian-born116 helpmeet, his wife and household. Dressing like a soldier, the wine merchant was able to claim that he was a crusader who had seized the house first. With the arrival of the French soldiers imminent, they were forced to flee, managing as best they could as their own servants had inhumanely abandoned them.117 They moved first to another house occupied by Venetians friendly to the Byzantines, but then were forced to move on again, with the scholar Niketas carrying his infant child in his arms. Called upon by an old and sick father, Choniates acted to save the judge’s daughter.118 For Niketas, the experience is clearly traumatic. The account is immediate and vivid. The world has been turned upside down and the urbane Niketas forced into headlong flight with his family. The first image of the wine merchant strapping on some armour (perhaps little more than a sword and dagger to appear armed) and holding the marauding French at bay has some humour in it, but then the reality of the ‘act’ – for Domenicus could not engage the crusaders in battle – forced a strategic retreat upon them. The dangers are clear and only too real: slavery and rape. The experience has shattered Niketas’ settled view of the world. He has been used to an established order that placed the Venetian wine merchant as his servant and client (though between the lines the vertical distance here seems too overstated). A cool head and quick action allowed the Venetian to assume the role of saviour. The Byzantine servants abandoned Niketas and his family, and so he was forced to rely on this outsider to gain safety. The description of Domenicus as a ‘good and former household servant and client’ is done to stress his subordinate position originally. Niketas is shown having to flee his home and be led through the streets in mean clothes as if he were a captive and a slave. The people he thought he could have relied on – his own domestic servants – had abandoned him and it was the foreigner who came to the rescue of Niketas and his young

113

  Historia, van Dieten, 552, 71–76; see also 569, 7–10.   Historia, van Dieten, 575, 68–69; see also 579, 77–78. 115   Historia, van Dieten, 587, 4–6. 116   Historia, van Dieten, 588, 13–14. 117   Historia, van Dieten, 588, 33–36. 118   Historia, van Dieten, 590–591, 65–11. 114

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family. The final ‘indignity’ perhaps was Niketas forced in this final flight to become a ‘New Man’, carrying his infant son.

Conclusions That the experiencing self is present in Byzantine historiography is not a surprise. The experiencing self is present because of the role of classical historiography in the writing of Byzantine history. Autopsy – a personal eyewitness account – is a way of establishing one’s credentials and validating the account one provides of events in the past. This reason for the presence of the personal experiencing self is valid for Byzantine historiography of the middle period, but it is far from the whole story. The experiencing self is present in mid-Byzantine historiography because of the desire for self-disclosure: one writes about what one knows, but also by writing one makes oneself known – both to contemporaries and to posterity. Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene and Niketas Choniates are all regarded as strong personalities in their texts, where the ‘facts’ of the past have been shaped and directed by the authors of the texts to express particular viewpoints of the authors of those texts. In very abbreviated summary: for Psellos, ‘I’m the best in this, the best of all possible worlds’; for Komnene, ‘It should have been me’; and for Choniates, ‘We brought it on ourselves by abandoning the ways of God.’ The personalities of these authors are so strong that it is no wonder that the personalities ‘leak’ over into their works and the authors are participant–observers rather than objective observers only. However, in this leakage, Psellos, Komnene and Choniates are not the exceptions. They are, it is true, the most colourful of the exponents of the genre, but the presence of the experiencing self is there to be found in almost all of the Byzantine writings about history – as Roger Scott is increasingly teaching us, to see in the ‘Chronicle’ by Malalas, previously caricatured as ‘simple’ and therefore as ‘simplistic’. Understanding these presences of the experiencing self is fraught with difficulties. The richness and depth of the personal self-disclosure of Psellos, Komnene and Choniates are distinctive. In this, they are not ‘typical’. However, nor are they so separate from the ‘norm’ of Byzantine history writing that they form a distinct category. The presence of the experiencing self in middle Byzantine history writing is an expression of self as well as an experience of self, and from close examination of the texts we can gain a closer understanding of the people we study.

Section VI Experiencing Stories

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15. Experiencing the Byzantine Text, Experiencing the Byzantine Tent Margaret Mullett

The editors of this volume cleverly left their contributors plenty of scope in which to address their concerns. Textual scholars can look at reception theory or reader-response criticism,1 art historians can address ‘the viewer’s part’ or phenomenology,2 we are urged to think about sensory perception,3 and to engage with the affective and emotive aspects of life in Byzantium.4 There is also scope for considering modern experience of life in Byzantium, just as valid as Byzantine experience.

Receiving the Text It is easy enough to envisage how Byzantines encountered their literature. Sermons and hymns and readings from the scriptures and synaxaria they

1

  Despite the easy availability of W. Iser, The Implied Reader (Baltimore, MD, 1974); W. Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore, MD, 1980); H.R. Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (Minneapolis, MN, 1982), and the brilliant accessibility of S. Suleiman (ed.), The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (Princeton, NJ, 1980), Byzantinists have not yet taken the bait in large numbers. 2   See B. Pentcheva, ‘The Performative Icon’, Art Bulletin 88.4 (2006), pp. 7–13; B. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park, PA, 2010). 3   Byzantinists have only recently begun to consider the senses: see L. James, ‘Senses and Sensibility in Byzantium’, Art History 27 (2004), pp. 522–37; S. Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation; Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 42 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 2006). 4   On emotion, Byzantinists were ahead of the trend with M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge, 1974); H. Maguire, ‘The Depiction of Sorrow in Middle Byzantine Art’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31 (1977), pp. 125–74, though there is still work to be done to catch up with recent advances in classics and medieval studies. From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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heard in church.5 Basilikoi logoi and ceremonial verse they heard in the palace.6 Progymnasmata they wrote and heard at school.7 Acclamations were heard and participated in at the hippodrome or on the streets.8 At home they might hear texts written for birthdays or deaths or weddings,9 and read privately (but probably aloud) from the scriptures, the fathers, or from the illustrated Metaphrastes.10 In theatra in private houses they might hear little plays or perhaps satiric verse, or sections of fictional works or previews of longer prose works.11 In monastic refectories they heard sections of saints’ lives, and monastic classics like the Ladder of John Klimakos, and perhaps there or in the abbot’s lodgings the wonderful stories of the gerontika and texts like the Athonite epistolary narrative the Diegesis merike.12 Inscriptions they read or performed as they walked the streets, walked around churches, stared at wallpaintings, or reflected on the content of books.13

5   M.B. Cunningham and P. Allen (eds), Preacher and Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics (Leiden, 2003). 6   On performance of basilikoi logoi, see many of the papers in M. Grünbart (ed.), Theatron: Rhetorische Kultur in Spätantike und Mittelalter, Millennium-Studien, 13 (Berlin and New York, 2007). 7   R. Webb, ‘The Progymnasmata as Practice’, in Y. Lee Too (ed.), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Leiden, 2001), pp. 289–316. 8   A. Berger and N. Necipoğlu (ed.), ‘Imperial and Ecclesiastical Processions in Constantinople’, Byzantine Constantinople (Leiden, 2001), pp. 73–87. 9   See the examples in Theodore Prodromos, poems 13, 14, 43 (marriage), 44 (birth), 2, 7, 25, 26, 28, 29, 39, 48, 49, 50, 54, 58, 60, 64, 65, 66, 67, 75, 76 (death), W. Hörandner (ed.), Theodoros Prodromos, Historische Gedichte, Wiener byzantinistische Studien, 11 (Vienna, 1974), pp. 265–70, 399–404, 405–12, 185–90, 229–32, 335–47, 382–9, 435–42, 449–58, 471–2, 489–91, 497–506 and 537–43. 10   On private reading in antiquity see J.P. Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity (London and New York, 1997), pp. 19–25; this work remains to be done for Byzantium. 11   P. Marciniak, ‘Byzantine Theatron – a Place of Performance?’, in Grünbart (ed.), Theatron, pp. 277–86; M. Mullett, ‘Aristocracy and Patronage in the Literary Circles of Comnenian Constantinople’, in M. Angold (ed.), The Byzantine Aristocracy IX–XIII Centuries, Papers of the Sixteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (Edinburgh, March 1982), British Archaeological Reports, int ser., 221 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 173–201. 12   M. Mullett, ‘Typika and Other Texts’, in M. Mullett (ed.), Founders and Refounders of Byzantine Monasteries, Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations, 6.3 (Belfast, 2007), pp. 182– 209; for the epistolary narrative, Diegesis merike, P. Meyer (ed.), Die Haupturkunden für die Geschichte des Athosklöster (Leipzig, 1894), pp. 163–84; P. Uspenskij, Istorija Afona, II.1 (Kiev, 1877), pp. 37–78. 13   See two views in L. James, ‘“And Shall these Mute Stones Speak? Text as Art”’ and A. Papalexandrou, ‘Echoes of Orality in the Monumental Inscriptions of Byzantium’, in L. James (ed.), Art and Text in Byzantine Culture (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 188–206 and 161–87.

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It is harder to establish how they reacted to the experience of reading, or being read aloud to, or of performance. If we are to collect direct evidence for reception of Byzantine literature we need to go beyond the mapping of performance indicators,14 which in fact we still need to collect. But we can of course easily recall examples of Byzantine engagement with a Byzantine text. Here is the reception of a letter: I thought that the season was already autumn and not spring. Where then did this nightingale of spring come from? Listening to the liquid notes I stand spellbound. Yet though the voice of this most beautiful bird is that of a nightingale, its form is of a swallow: its song is clear and melodious like the nightingale’s, but on its body two contrasting colours are wonderfully blended together like the swallow’s. Whether a nightingale or a swallow, this marvellous letter filled me with complete joy.15

This text involves all the senses: the feel of the parchment or of a book brought with it, the sound of the text as read aloud, the marks of ink on the page, ‘like rich purple embroidery on a shining and translucent material’, the scent of gifts like perfume or spices or stinking sheepskin or cabbage or of course fish.16 Equally familiar is the experience of the Russian ambassadors in the Russian Primary Chronicle: Then we went on to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.17

In the twelfth-century images of the ascension in the Kokkinobaphos manuscripts, the dramatis personae, the heavenly beings, have stepped out of the frame and, along with the prophets, appear to experience on earth that beauty.18 14   See for example A. Stone, ‘Aurality in the Panegyrics of Eustathios of Thessaloniki’, in Grünbart (ed.), Theatron, pp. 419–28. 15   John Mauropous, ep. 1, A. Karpozilos (ed.), Ioannis Mauropodis Euchaitorum metropolitae epistulae, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 34 (Thessalonike, 1990), p. 43. 16   On the multi-sensory experience of letter-exchange, see M. Mullett, ‘Writing in Early Mediaeval Byzantium’, in R. McKitterick (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 159–60. 17   S.H. Cross and O.P. Shobowitz-Wetzor (eds), The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text (Cambridge, MA, 1953), p. 111. 18   James Kokkinobaphos, Homilies on the Life of the Virgin, ms Vat.gr.1162, fol. 2v (cf Paris gr. 1208), see H.C. Evans and W.D. Wixom (eds), Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture

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On the streets we can see another outsider’s view of acclamation in imperial ceremony both in text and image. The image shows the stoning of Nikephoros Phokas in the Madrid Skylitzes through a probably colonial and possibly subversive eye,19 and in the text the parody of a diplomat determined not to go native: Come, burnt cinder, old hag in your walk, elfin in your expression, boor, jungle-wanderer, goat-footed, horned, double-limbed, bristly, wild, bumpkin, barbarian, hard and hairy one, rebel and Cappadocian!20

And in the theatron, though we have slight evidence for music and dance and acrobatics coexisting with the reading of literature,21 we do hear of reactions to letters read or works performed: What you wrote was read before a small but not undistinguished audience. Its members were well versed in the art of speaking to the point, and their judgment counted for much among serious men of letters. Among them, one admired the arrangement of the words, another the beauty of expression, and they were struck by the ideas and by the fact that so many of them were nicely enclosed within the compass of a few words. Everyone had something different to applaud, and all joined in applauding the whole work. I too found everything to be excellent, even though I sat in silence while the others stamped their feet and shouted with joy.22

And another kind of text offers us a direct (and rare) view of the process of narration: dream narratives can only survive for us to consider through the sharing of the dream and the reaction of the interpreter. Performance and

of the Middle Byzantine Era, AD 843–1261 (New York, 1997), fig. 62; see also G. Frank, this volume. 19   Madrid Codex vitr.26–2, fol. 155r, see V. Tsamakda, The Illustrated Chronicle of Ioannes Skylitzes in Madrid (Leiden, 2002), fig. 390. On the Sicilian as against Constantinopolitan origin of the illuminations see B. Bjørnholt, ‘The Use and Portrayal of Spectacle in the Madrid Skylitzes’ (PhD Diss., Belfast, 2002), and on their subversive nature see E. Boeck, ‘The Art of Being Byzantine: History, Structure and Visual Narrative in the Madrid Skylitzes Manuscript’ (PhD Diss., Yale, 2004). I use ‘colonial’ here in a rather archaic sense of ‘Byzantine-influenced’, not a metropolitan product. 20   Liudprand of Cremona, Legatio, 10, ed. P. Chiesa, Liudprandi Cremonensis Opera, Corpus christianorum. Continuatio mediaevalis, 156 (Turnhout, 1998), p. 191, tr. P. Squatriti, The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona (Washington, DC, 2007), p. 245. 21   Nicholas Kataphloron in Esc.Gr.Y–11.10, fol. 324rff, transcribed by Paul Magdalino, to whom I owe many thanks. 22   Manuel II, ep. 27 to Theodore Kaukadenos, ed. and tr. G.T. Dennis, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 8, Dumbarton Oaks Texts, 4 (Washington, DC, 1977), pp. 70–71.

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reception here are more organically connected than audience and chorus or audience and rhetor: When she awoke, she recounted the vision to one of those pious women, who encouraged her to rejoice on her son’s account for, interpreting the dream, she declared that he would become emperor of the Romans.23

These are all familiar cases. I want in what follows to explore a setting and a set of reactions that are rather less familiar. Let’s first hear from a riddle recorded in several middle Byzantine collections, but best known from Christopher of Mytilene: Ἄπετρος εἰμὶ καὶ κινούμενος δόμος, ἐν γῇ βεβηκώς γῇ δὲ μὴ συνημμένος∙ οὐ πηλός οὐκ ἄσβεστος ἐξήγειρέ με, πρίων δὲ καὶ σκέπαρνος οὐ τέτμηκέ με, ὲὶ μὴ κορυφὴν καὶ τὰ βάθρα μου λέγεις. φῶς ἔνδον ἕλκω, καίπερ ὢν πεπραγμένος, λοξοὺς συνιστῶντάς με κίονας φέρω. τῶν κιόνων μοι πάντοθεν κλονουμένων, τὸ σχῆμα σῴζων ἀβλαβὴς ἑστὼς μένω. τὸ καινόν∙ εἴ με καὶ καταστρέψεις βίᾳ, οὐκ ἂν καταρράξῃς με, σῷός εἰμί σοι∙ ἀνίσταμαι γὰρ καὶ μένω πάλιν δόμος. I am a house with no stone and I move about. I go on the earth, but I’m not attached to it. Neither mud nor plaster raised me. Neither saw nor axe cut me – Unless you’re speaking of my head or my base. I draw light in though I am fenced all about. The columns I bear stand together obliquely. Though on every side my columns are disturbed I remain, keeping my shape and standing undamaged. Here’s what’s new about me: if you use force to cast me down, You wouldn’t shatter me; I am safe for you For I stand up and again remain a house.24 23   Skylitzes on Basil I’s mother, John Skylitzes, Synopsis Chronike, ed. H. Thurn, Joannae Scylitzae Synopsis historiarum, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 5 (Berlin, 1973), pp. 121.35–45, tr. J. Wortley, A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811–1057 (Cambridge, 2010), p. 122, ill. Matr.vitr.26–2, fol. 84r top, see Tsamakda, fig. 203. 24   Christopher of Mitylene, poem 71. On a Tent, ed. E. Kurtz, Die Gedichte des Christophoros Mitylenaios (Leipzig, 1903), p. 45. The tent riddle is also found in the following collections: Michael Psellos, poem 45 (no solution), L.G. Westerink (ed.), Michael Psellus, Poemata (Stuttgart

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The answer? A tent. The riddle emphasises the resilience and strength of the tent as architecture, and its domestic nature; in what follows I want to see tents as temporary theatre for text.

A Theatre of the Senses The account in Michael Psellos’ Chronographia of the embassy to Isaac I Komnenos and the transition to power is seen entirely in terms of Psellos and his fellow ambassadors entering tents. First (a) they are brought to the tent of Isaac, given a drink, and allowed to go to their own tents for the night. Then (b) at daybreak they are brought to a bigger tent with a silent retinue, and finally (c) we get a sense of how a tent full of words might impress itself on the person who experienced it, text preceding (d) spectacle: when we had drawn near, the captain of the emperor’s personal bodyguard told us to stand at the entrance while he himself went inside the tent. After a short pause he came out again, and without a single word to us, threw open the tent door, suddenly. The sight that met our eyes within was astonishing. It was so unexpected, and truly it was an imperial spectacle, capable of overawing anyone. First our ears were deafened by the roars of the army, but their voices were not all raised at once: the front rank acclaimed him first, then the second took up the cry, then the next rank and so on. Each rank uttered its own cry with a different intonation from the rest. Then after the last circle had shouted there was one united roar which hit us almost like a clap of thunder.25

When they eventually became quiet, they gave us leisure to observe what was inside the tent, for we had not immediately entered when the door was thrown open, but stood at some distance waiting for the signal to go in. I will describe the scene. The emperor himself was seated on a couch decorated with two head rests. The couch was raised on a high platform and overlaid with gold. Under his feet was a stool. A magnificent robe gave him an air of great distinction. Very proudly he held up his head and Leipzig, 1992), p. 301; Basil Megalomytes, riddle 7, Tent, J.F. Boissonade (ed.), Anecdota Graeca, III (Paris, 1831), p. 440 (a four-line version); Eustathios Makrembolites, riddle 5.2, On a Tent, M. Treu (ed.), Eustathii Macrembolitae quae feruntur aenigmata, CXXIIX Programm des Königl.Friedrichs–Gymnasiums zu Breslau 1893, II, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlung (Breslau, 1893), pp. 16–17; Aulikalamos, cf. Parisinus Graecus 2991 A, p. 443; many thanks to Simone Beta for the parallels and happy discussion. 25   Michael Psellos, Chronographia, 7. 23, ed. and tr. E. Renauld, Michel Psellos Chronographie, 2 vols (Paris, 1926), II, 96, tr. E.R.A. Sewter, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia of Michael Psellus (Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 288.

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and puffed out his chest while his eyes, with the far away gaze, showed plainly that he was thinking profoundly and wholly given up to his own meditations. Then the fixed gaze relaxed, and it was as if he had come from troubled deeps to the calm of some heaven. All around him were circles on circles of warriors….26

To sound and spectacle we can add scent: in Digenes’ tent Around the bed were burning spices of all kinds, Musk, nard and ambergris, camphor and cassia, and great was the pleasure and the scent of joys. Such were the delights this garden offered. At the hour of noon I turned to sleep, While the high-born girl sprinkled rosewater over me and the nightingales and other birds sang.27

Constantine Porphyrogennetos tells us what had to be brought on campaign by the minsourator. For a start, two pavilions and double the number of tents, so that, within the empire at least, an advance party can get ahead and set up. Benches, rugs, cushions, a Turkish bath, an imperial chapel with sacred furniture, and this does not include food, vessels encased in purple leather, robes, gift-robes or books. There were to be eight silver coolers for scented wine, rose-water and water, copper pails, sacred vessels for the chapel, a medicine chest of theriac, serapium juice, antidotes against poisons, oils and unguents and ointments, two chairs for the cortege, chairs for the chamberpot (metal gilded with beaten gold, plus two silver equivalents for guests), chalices, swords, perfumes, incense, mastic, frankincense, sugar, saffron, musk, amber, bitter aloes, cinnamon; silken sheets, linen blankets, towels, patchwork covers and towels.28 Here it is not very clear what is to be smelt and what tasted, but the mastic, the sugar, the cinnamon would certainly have contributed to the taste of the beans, rice, pistachio, almonds, lentils, cheese, salted fish, sheep with lambs, cows with calves, carp, sturgeon and shellfish, chicken in nets and geese, good wine (Nicaean) and oil and vegetables taken along or foraged for feasting, to be enjoyed with the four solid gold plates, two gold vases, two solid gold jugs ‘to be used when foreign guests eat with the emperor’.29

26

  Michael Psellos, Chronographia, 7.24, ed. Renauld, II, 96–8, tr. Sewter, pp. 288–9.   Digenes Akrites, Grottaferrata VI, 38–43, ed. and tr. E. Jeffreys, Digenis Akritis: The Grottaferrata and Escorial Versions, Cambridge Medieval Classics, 7 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 154–5. 28   Osa dei ginesthai tou megalou kai ypsilou basileos ton Romaion mellontos phossateusai (Text C), ed. and tr. J.F. Haldon, Constantine Porphyrogenitus: Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 28 (Vienna, 1990), pp. 104–8. 29   Text C, ed. Haldon, p. 112. 27

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As for the sense of touch, tents could also be felt. Tents were clearly rich in colour and material, and the interior, highly decorated, tent, may well have been of silk like surviving Ottoman tents.30 If so, light effects must have been impressive, as well as the movement of the tent in wind and rain remarked on by Arab poets:31 If the wind strikes it, it undulates, as if its old horses travel round and its lions stalk prey. (line 22)

What Did a Byzantine Tent Look Like? Tents in general figure in the military taktika. Where to place them,32 how to organise them (rations in the middle of the tent, spears in the ground right at their feet)33 where the captain’s awning goes on a boat,34 who should share tents (a file should eat and sleep and prepare to die together).35 In the taktikon of Leo VI the strategos has his own entourage including the domestic of the theme and the komes tes kortes autou, the count of his tent.36 And tents are the setting for many episodes of Byzantine historiography, sometimes when it is clear that a tent has been chosen as a venue rather than an easily accessible built structure. But it is hard to envisage a Byzantine tent, since we do not actually have one.37 Without Byzantine examples we shall need to fall back on (1) representations of Byzantine tents, (2) Byzantine representations of historic

30

  For example, Istanbul Harbiye Military Museum and Cultural Complex, 26379, see no. 411 in From Byzantium to Istanbul: 8,000 Years of a Capital, June 5 – September 4, 2010, Sabanci Museum Istanbul (Istanbul, 2010), p. 409 (plate), p. 495 (catalogue entry). 31   See Al-Mutanabbi, ekphrastic passage describing the tent of Sayf al-Dawlah Abu Ali b.Abd-allh b. Hamdan (944–966), in ‘Your faithfulness is like the abode’, tr. M. Pomerantz, lines 18–24, between an opening lament of lost love and youth (ll. 1–18) and a concluding section on praise of the patron (ll. 25–42). For a reading of the poem, Dīwān al-Mutanabbī (Beirut, 1994), pp. 256–60, see M. Larkin, Al-Mutanabbi (Oxford, 2008), pp. 35–41. I am very grateful to Maurice Pomerantz for allowing me to use his translation, and to him and to Sharon Gerstel and Margaret Larkin for (independently) pointing me in this direction. 32   Peri strategias, 28, ed. and tr. G.T. Dennis, Three Byzantine Military Treatises, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 25, Dumbarton Oaks Texts, 9 (Washington, DC, 1985), pp. 86–9. 33   Peri strategias, 27, ed. and tr. Dennis, p. 85. 34   Leo VI, 19.8, ed. and tr. G.T. Dennis, The Taktika of Leo VI, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 49, Dumbarton Oaks Texts, 12 (Washington, DC, 2010), p. 506. 35   Peri strategias, 27, ed. and tr. Dennis, p. 85. 36   Leo VI, 4.32, ed. and tr. Dennis, p. 54. 37   This is not to say that fragments of Byzantine textile in museums and cathedral treasuries may not in future prove to be from tents.

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tents, (3) Byzantine representations of Byzantine tents, (4) descriptions of tents, Byzantine and other, (5) surviving tents from other cultures. Tents, eastern and western, figure in representations of warfare, notably in a Sicilian view of what eastern and western tents might look like. As so often in the Madrid Skylitzes, tents participate in a formulaic set piece: no siege is complete without the tents of the besieging army – Nikephoros Phokas at Mopsuestia,38 and again with different kinds of tents,39 on Crete;40 Carthaginian Arabs besieging Messina;41 Byzantines besieging Chelidonion.42 Another formula is of diplomatic exchange, so the letter-exchange between Mamoun and the emperor Theophilos starts and ends in a tent.43 We see tents in the context of a camp.44 We see courtly retinues in a camp45 and we see ritual activity in camp with tents, here the Byzantine soldiers’ oath before battle.46 Events play out inside tents, hard though it is to represent, so Romanos Argyros receives Arab envoys from Aleppo at Azazion.47 And in 873 the Arab sultan besieging Benevento and Capua interrogates a messenger in his tent.48 An issue is, of course, whether any of these are at all like Byzantine tents, even if we agree that they are in any case seen from the outside, from Sicily. In general there are three main shapes: first a rather generic canopy (nine examples), over a ruler, the strategos, an ambassador, a meeting, which can be Byzantine or Arab; second is a single example of a brown ridge tent in the siege of Mopsuestia, seen together with a simple unribbed semicircular tent, echoed elsewhere at 163r, 224r, 25v, 226r to suggest a tent in the background of a scene; finally (12 examples, 33 tents in all) a circular domed bell tent in red or blue (but also purple, orange, pink, brown), which has a metal fitting at the top (sometimes a cross), with two or three bands of decorated fabric (at the top, half-way down, and at the hem), and guy-ropes, from the top but also from half-way down. Arab tents tend to be slightly more elaborate than Byzantine ones, with possibly kufic decoration (and carpets); Bulgarian tents are indistinguishable from Byzantine ones in 217r top, though the camp of Samuel in 186v is represented (in a western hand) by a kind of communal square tent. One Byzantine tent (again drawn by one of the more western artists) is shown elaborately unrolled and folded back to reveal the emperor inside, but it is 38

  Fols 151r and 151v, Tsamakda, figs 381–2.   Fol. 140r, Tsamakda, fig. 339. 40   Fol. 214r, Tsamakda, fig. 507. 41   Fol. 214r, Tsamakda, fig. 507. 42   Fol. 229r, Tsamakda, fig. 543. 43   Fol. 75v, Tsamakda, fig. 184. 44   Fol. 217r, Tsamakda, fig. 512. 45   Fol. 11r bottom, Tsamakda, fig. 4. 46   Fol. 121r, Tsamakda, fig. 281. 47   Fol. 201v, Tsamakda, fig. 479. 48   Fol. 92r top, Tsamakda, fig. 217. 39

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clearly the same kind of tent. There are no examples of figurative decoration or silk roundels. Other, more clearly Byzantine, manuscripts show images of non-Byzantine tents, whether biblical or classical. The Vatican Book of Kings49 shows roundels with pairs of warriors in a war context; the Vienna Genesis50 dark ridge-tents, and the Venice Alexander Romance51 shows no knowledge of Alexander’s amazing reception tent(s),52 but includes tents whenever the idea of a camp is evoked in the text, and on one occasion when lodging is being offered to Kandaules and his household – they appear to be receiving two tents, one red with corner fittings and another white with floral decorations.53 Many, whether circular or rectangular, have stripes or bands, usually red on white. The Octateuchs54 yield very few tent images, unless the tabernacle (sometimes but not always shown as tent-like) counts. Two Byzantine images of contemporary Byzantine tents – although one of the texts illustrated was not Byzantine – suggest a more decorative fabric. One, the Marciana ps.-Oppian Kynegetika,55 shows a hunter’s tent in a bucolic wooded landscape; the scene in two registers shows the trapping of birds, a falconer, hunting birds with decoys, and an elite figure sitting outside a tent with a segmented dome, six guy-ropes, an entrance painted scarlet, and the wall of the tent showing a pard chasing a deer above a bird chasing a rabbit. The other, the illustration of the Eiseterioi56 probably addressed to Marie de 49

  For the Book of Kings, Vat.gr.333, fol. 18v, J. Lassus, L’illustration byzantine du livre des rois, Vaticanus Graecus, 333, Bibliothèque des Cahiers archéologiques, 9 (Paris, 1973), fig. 31. Many thanks to Timothy Dawson for discussion here, and for his ‘Tents, Daily Life’, via http://www.levantia.com.au/ (accessed 09/12). 50   Fols 10r, 10v, 13v, see B. Zimmermann, Die Wiener Genesis im Rahmen der antiken Buchmalerei, Spätantike–Frühes Christentum-Byzanz: Kunst im Ersten Jahrtausend, B, Studien und Perspektiven, 13 (Wiesbaden, 2003), Abb. 19, 20, 26. 51   Fols 42r, 62r, 68r, 105v, 109r, 128r, 136r, 152r, 165r, see A. Xyngopoulos, Les miniatures du roman d’Alexandre le grand dans le codex de l’Institut Hellénique de Venise, Bibliothèque de l’Institut Hellénique de Venise, Études byzantines et post-byzantines, 2 (Athens and Venice, 1965), figs 48, 74, 82, 126, 132, 146, 158, 186 and 204. 52   A.J.S. Spawforth, ‘Appendix: Alexander’s State Tents’, The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 112–20. 53   Fol. 152r, Xyngopoulos, fig. 186 and plate XIII. 54   For the Octateuch images see J. Lowden, The Octateuchs: A Study in Byzantine Manuscript Illumination (University Park, PA, 1992), p. 131, fig. 129 (Aaron and sons); K. Weitzmann and M. Bernabo, The Byzantine Octateuchs (Princeton, NJ, 1999), pp. 762–5; 1372–5 (Tabernacle). 55   Ps.-Oppian, Kynegetika, Marc.gr.Z139, fol. 2v, in I. Spatharakis, The Illustrations of the Cynegetica in Venice: Codex Marcianus Graecus Z 139 (Leiden, 2004), fig. 4. 56   Vat.gr.1851, fol. 6r. On the poem see M. Jeffreys, ‘The Vernacular Eiseterioi for Agnes of France’, Byzantine Papers: Proceedings of the First Australian Byzantine Studies conference, Canberra, Byzantina Australiensia, 1 (Canberra, 1981), pp. 101–15; on the manuscript and the

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France in 1180, shows two tents, or perhaps two views of the same tent, a clearly ceremonial tent where the new bride meets her female relatives in liminal space. The smaller, crimson, tent is shown at the top left, circular, domed, and its exterior view shows a band of roundels round the dome above rectangular panels containing trees on either side of the door flap. The larger tent, which takes up the rest of the picture space, appears to be of the same shape and is shown in section so that the interior is visible. At the top we see the greeting of two women, at bottom left the same women in conversation on a bench covered by a canopy, all covered in a gold-and-red silk with a tree motif inside a roundel, and at bottom right three women stand in attendance. Apart from this we are thrown back on descriptions of tents in Byzantine and other texts. Two poems of Manganeios Prodromos are fairly well known thanks to the brilliant 1994 article of Michael Jeffreys and Jeffrey Anderson.57 The first, long, poem describes the Sebastokratorissa holding court while on campaign in Macedonia with the emperor in a tent decorated with cupids, satyrs, centaurs, muses and nereids dancing, with various kinds of birds including parrots and peacocks, and with foxes playing and dancing. The shorter poem describes tents, collapsed on the ground as an image of the mutability of human life on earth. Two slightly earlier poems58 reflect the later pair: the longer poem describes reception in an aristocrat’s tent and the shorter one expresses an eternal truth about hospitality; neither gives any sense of the appearance of the tent.59 The description of Digenes’ wedding present from the Strategos’ lady, on the other hand, details a beautiful tent, very large, embroidered with gold and decorated with multiform shapes of animals (or shapes of multiform animals) – the ropes were of silk and the poles of silver ….

The Russian version offers an abbreviated version: ‘an enormous tent all sewn with gold and guy-ropes of silk and grommets of silver’: there is no help here in deciding whether the animals are hybrid or not. There is also information about the Emir’s tent: ‘the tent of our tsar emir is crimson and it has a green illuminations see C.J. Hilsdale, ‘Constructing a Byzantine augusta: A Greek Book for a French Bride’, Art Bulletin 87 (2005), pp. 458–83; see her excellent discussion on p. 472. 57   Manganeios Prodromos, 145, 146, ed. and tr. M. Jeffreys, in J.C. Anderson and M.J. Jeffreys, ‘The Decoration of the Sebastokratorissa’s Tent’, Byzantion 64 (1994), pp. 8–18 at 11–13. 58   Theophylact poems 11 and 12, ed. P. Gautier, Théophylacte d’Achrida: discours, traités, poesies, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 16.1 (Thessalonike, 1980), pp. 366–7. 59   For a reading of these tent poems see M. Mullett, ‘Reading the Tent: Four Komnenian Tent Poems’, in T. Shawcross, I. Toth and N. Gaul (eds), Reading Byzantium (Cambridge, forthcoming).

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trim along the bottom, and the entire tent is sewn with gold and silver and pearls and decorated with precious stones’. His brother’s tent was ‘deep blue with a green trim and this tent is also decorated with gold and silver’.60 Tents were international favourites for diplomatic gift-exchange: Pachymeres61 talks of the tent decorated with saints that went to the Mongols; Joinville of a scarlet tent with scenes from the gospels that St Louis sent to the Tartars.62 Such gifts were not sent only to nomadic recipients: Haroun al-Rashid had sent a ‘wonderfully large and beautiful pavilion with atrium awnings made in many colours’ to Charlemagne. And they were not only gifts. Al-Rashid’s own tent was pure black,63 and in Al-Mutanabbi’s poem, his patron, Sayf al-Dawlah, is represented on his tent: In the picture of the Byzantine with a crown, there is obeisance [lit. = humiliation], to the one of shining visage who wears no crowns but his turbans; The mouths of kings kiss [the hem of] his shroud, for his sleeve and fingers are too exalted ….

The tent also shows trees in a garden and opposed animals at peace, and drips with pearls. Better than the lost freshness of youth altogether, is the water of the lightning cloud in a tent upon which I fix my hopes; [i.e. the patron] Upon it [i.e. the tent] are gardens which no cloud has created [lit. = woven], And branches of tree upon which no doves sing;

60

  Grottaferrata Digenes, IV, 908–10, ed. and tr. Jeffreys, Digenis Akritis, pp. 120–21; for the Russian version see V.D. Kuz’mina, Devgeno Deianie (Moscow, 1962), tr. J.V. Haney, The Deeds of Devgenii, via nauplion.net/Devgenii-Akrit.html (accessed 09/12), pp. 2, 3, 21 and 23. 61   George Pachymeres, Chronikon, III.3, ed. A. Failler, tr. V. Laurent, Georges Pachymerès. Relations historiques, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 24.1 (Paris, 1984), p. 235. 62   Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, 29, 93, ed. A. Pauphilet (Paris, 1952), pp. 235 and 311, tr. M.R.B. Shaw, Chronicles of the Crusades, pp. 198 and 282–3. The images may have been three-dimensional and sent with the tent, but I believe that it is possible that it was a figured tent. 63   For Haroun al-Rashid’s own tent, Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf, Book of Gifts and Rarities, para. 355, tr. G. Al-Hijjawi al-Qaddumi (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 233; for Charlemagne’s, Annales regni francorum, ed. F. Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum ex Monumentis Germaniae historicis separatim editi, VI (Hanover, 1895), p. 123, s.a. 807. By the time of Saladin, crimson appears to be reserved for rulers, as was true of the Ottomans.

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And upon the margins of every two-sided fabric, there is a string of pearls which have not been bored by their arranger; You see pictures of animals that upon it have come to a truce, an enemy fights his opponent, and makes peace with him….

In another story about Sayf al-Dawlah, his tent is described as brocade, though this may not be the same tent.64 The description by Clavijo of Timur’s tent is extremely detailed. It is clearly not a yurt but A very large high pavilion, in fact a very huge tent, and it was four-square in shape. In height it was the measure of three long lances such as used by a horse soldier and the side was a hundred paces from angle to angle, it being as said four-cornered. The ceiling of the pavilion was made circular to form a dome, and the poles supporting it were twelve in number each as thick round as is the chest of a man breast high.

It was two-layered, the outer being ‘crimson tapestry very beautifully worked in patterns of diverse designs, hung with silk stuffs of many colours, worked over with embroidery of gold thread’. The inner was silk sarsenet in bands of white and black and yellow. The dome had four eagles with wings closed, one at each corner. Each of the outer corners had a staff with a burnished copper apple with a crescent on top, and the whole pavilion was surrounded by an enclosure with another round tent, a corridor of four tents and a domed tent with a silver gilt eagle (wings open) inside.65 And we do have surviving tents from other cultures, notably the Ottoman empire, where they, images of tents, and documentation of the tents in store in 1714 have been brought together with very satisfying results.66 The earliest surviving tent appears to be from 1525, a gift to Francis I captured by Charles V at Pavia and now housed in Madrid, but tents preserved in Topkapı and in the Military Museum in Istanbul, as well as captured or gift tents in Italy, Austria, Poland and Sweden allow a rich reconstruction of the tent life of the Ottomans with their imperial tent complex, their ‘supreme commander tent’, their marquees, terracotta-coloured kitchen-tents, rectangular bath- and 64   The story is told about Sayf al-Dawlah Abu Ali b. Abd-allh b. Hamdan (944–966), who possessed a brocade tent that accommodated 500 persons: ‘Once he made a truce with the Byzantine emperor stipulating that he could enter the latter’s country with a tent (khaymah) and this was the tent [he brought]’, Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf, Book of Gifts and Rarities, ch. 95, tr. Al-Hijjawi al-Qaddumi, p. 113. 65   Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane 1403–1406, tr. G. le Strange (London, 2009), pp. 238–9. 66   N. Atasoy, Otağ-ı Hümayun: The Ottoman Imperial Tent Complex (Istanbul, 2000).

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lavatory-tents, and parasol-like execution-tent. Some elements of continuity with Byzantium may be seen, as for example where it is clear that two sets of everything were taken on campaign so that no time was wasted in settling into the new camp. The Ottoman evidence suggests that there were often two layers of tent: what has often survived is the multi-coloured light silk interior tent, not the weather-proof heavier outer shell. So what may be decided about Byzantine tents? First, size. Although all the tents represented are small, it is clear that size did matter, for an imperial tent at least. The story told about Sayf al-Dawlah turned on the insult of pitching on Byzantine territory a tent that could accommodate 500 persons. Devgenii’s wedding-present tent held many thousands of warriors. Alexios I Komnenos’ tent was, according to Anna, ‘a tent more vast than any other in living memory’, and she clearly believed that Tancred coveted the tent as well as the money he demanded to be put into it.67 Next, shape. The vast majority of representations show a round tent, something like the single-column Ottoman tents; eleventhcentury diagrams of camps show small circles each with eight sections, presumably tents.68 Timothy Dawson suggests that Roman ridge tents gave way to bell tents some time before the eleventh century, and that they ‘moved rapidly into Western use with the advent of the Crusades’.69 Next, material and decoration. There is really not enough evidence to determine whether there were special military tents as against hunting tents or ceremonial tents, but what there is suggests that there were no specialised tents. The roundels of the Eiseterioi tent (ceremonial) and the Book of Kings (war), the animals and personifications of the Marciana Kynegetika (hunting) and the Manganeios poem (war) argue for all-purpose inner tents, some more decorated than others (nothing matches the elaborate propaganda of al-Mutanabbi). The suggestion by Jeffrey Anderson that the shorter Mangana poem might have been embroidered onto the tent, possible also for the shorter Theophylact poem, finds support in Ottoman practice.70 The exceptions to non-specialisation are, of course, church tents like those described in Pachymeres and Joinville, which were presumably recognisable as such, and imperial tents. That there 67

  Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf, Book of Gifts and Rarities, ch. 95, tr. Al-Hijjawi al-Qaddumi, p. 113. Al-Mutanabbi’s tent (possibly the same?) with a humiliated emperor would have been even more insulting. The Deeds of Devgenii, tr. Haney, p. 21; Anna Komnene, Alexiad, XI.iii.2, ed. D.R. Reinsch and A. Kambylis, Annae Comnenae Alexias, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 40.1 (Berlin and New York, 2001), pp. 329–30, tr. E. Sewter and P. Frankopan, The Alexiad by Anna Komnene, Translated, with Notes and Introduction (Harmondsworth, 2009), p. 305. 68   Dennis, Three Byzantine Military Treatises, pp. 257–60. 69   T. Dawson, ‘Tents’, at http://www.levantia.com.au/daily/tents.html (accessed 04/13). 70   In Anderson and Jeffreys, ‘The Decoration of the Sebastokratorissa’s Tent’; Atasoy, The Ottoman Imperial Tent Complex, p. 44: a ‘supreme command tent’ made during the reign of Sultan Ahmet I in 1611 had an outer shell of crimson and an inner shell of satin with a small pattern and couplets of verse in needlework.

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was a recognisable imperial tent is clear from Psellos’ account of the accession of Isaac Komnenos; as well as a crown, exercising power with the emperor, sharing in the appointment to offices, and an amnesty for his supporters, ‘a special imperial tent will have to be set aside for his use and a noble bodyguard must be allowed for his protection’.71 Finally, some of the texts give some sense of furnishing: Constantine Porphyrogennetos of course, but also Grottaferrata Digenes where Digenes’ bed is surrounded by ‘burning spices of all kinds, musk, nard and ambergris, camphor and cassia’, and Devgenii, where the Kore is surrounded by fine silks decorated with gold, with her face covered with a precious coverlet, and sitting on a gold chair.72 We should now perhaps consider that the tents of the Komnenian emperors and their relatives may have looked more like an Ottoman imperial tent73 than the Vienna Genesis’ idea of patriarchal wandering in deserts74 or a yurt.75 And a campaign tent, one of the 15,000 captured at the siege of Vienna in 1683,76 suggests something not unlike the elegance of an imperial woman’s temporary residence, such as Henry Maguire posits for the Philopation.77 What we can be very clear about is two things. First, tents do not represent ‘camping’, even ‘glamping’, in Byzantium, ‘roughing it’, a holiday from settled existence, ‘getting back to nature’ or a search for a nostalgic self-sufficiency; they represent very much business as usual, a home away from home with certain adaptations to everyday life, but everyday life all the same. Second, tents do not automatically suggest nomadic origins; they read in Byzantine

71

  Psellos, Chronographia, 7.33, ed. Renauld, II, 103, tr. Sewter, p. 295.   Grottaferrata Digenes, 6.38–9, ed. and tr. Jeffreys, Digenis Akritis, pp. 154–5; The Deeds of Devgenii, tr. Haney, p. 5. 73   Süleymannâme, 1558, TSM H.1517, 109a, see Atasoy, The Ottoman Imperial Tent Complex, p. 134, fig. 77. 74   Fols 10r, 10v, 13v, see Zimmermann, Die Wiener Genesis im Rahmen der antiken Buchmalerei, Abb. 19, 20, 26, showing dark ridge tents. 75   For a Hunnic yurt see the representation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute, reproduced in C. Stone, ‘Movable Palaces’, Saudi Aramco World 61 (2010), p. 37. For an Ottoman yurt-like tent see the representation of an audience granted to Stephen the Hungarian by Süleiman the Magnificent, Nuzhet Asrar al-Ahbar der Sefer-I Sigetvar, 1568–69. Topkapı Sarayı Muzesi H.1339.16b, see Atasoy, The Ottoman Imperial Tent Complex, p. 56, fig. 6. 76   Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Wien, Inv. No. N.I. 4688, see Atasoy, The Ottoman Imperial Tent Complex, p. 272, no. 135 – it seems is not one of these; but see no. 99 (Cracow), p. 243; no. 102 (Warsaw), p. 246; no. 120 (Dresden), p. 261; no. 127 (Karlsruhe), p. 264; possibly no. 128 (Bad Wildungen), p. 265; no. 131 (Berlin), p. 267; no. 132 (Coburg), p. 269; no. 136 (Wagenburg), p. 273; no. 149 (Stockholm), p. 286; and nos. 133 and 134 (Vienna), pp. 270–71. 77   H. Maguire, ‘The Philopation as a Setting for Imperial Ceremonial and Display’, in C. Bakirtzis, N. Zekos and X. Moniaros (eds), Byzantine Thrace: Evidence and Remains; Komotini 18–22 April 2007: Proceedings, Byzantinische Forschungen 30 (2011), pp. 71–82. 72

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texts as temporary and versatile elegance, a compressed and portable courtly household with its own rules of access and body language.

So, Why Tents? Functionally tents appear in three Byzantine contexts: military, hunting and ceremonial. But they also appear in contexts where the option of a built structure was spurned. We have seen already the sensuality of the tent, the richness of colour and material, the effects of light and wind. We’ve seen the practice of perfuming the tent in Digenes, and also in the spices taken along in the imperial baggage-train. The use of tents for feasting is established from the time of Alexander, even if the Byzantine provisions appear to be less allembracing. So feeling, smelling, seeing, hearing and tasting were all involved in the experience of the tent. But there were other reasons why a tent might be favoured over built structures. One reason is that a tent is the way to impose control in an uncertain environment.78 Its security can be controlled if it has only one entrance, and it maintains a similar appearance wherever it is pitched. Its mobility allows the ruler to pitch it to the best effect in terms of the environment, whereas an already-existing building might be ill positioned, or simply not provide the desired interior. A tent is a constant environment for the ruler wherever he is. Two cases, one modern, one Komnenian, illuminate. Colonel Gaddafi used to take a tent with him on his travels; he pitched it in the Villa Pamphili Park in Rome, but had difficulty with planning permission on Donald Trump’s land in New York. It is clear that he was taking with him a portable audience hall, and his aides reacted in a very puzzled way to Italian journalists’ suggestion that he might sleep in it (they in turn were offended that he should act as host in a city where he was a guest).79 And the sebastos John pitches his tent with its red couch inside the monastery to provide him with an alternative power-base to the cell of St Cyril Phileotes, which he then proceeds to take over; the ageing Cyril is bamboozled into allowing a devilish vision to use his cell for a devil’s mass:80 John the sebastos, nephew of the blessed emperor and brother-in-law of the protostrator, was in the habit of coming to do proskynesis to the elderly saint and of putting to good use his conversation and holy prayers. The Devil 78

  Rebecca Darley points out to me that there may simultaneously be an illusion of neutrality, thus favouring the owner of the tent. 79   La Repubblica, 31 May 2009, p. 16. Many thanks here to Francesca dell’Acqua. 80   Nicholas Kataskepenos, Bios kai politeia kai merike thaumaton diegesis tou osious patros emon Kyrillou tou Phileotou syngrapheis para tou osiou ikolaou tou Kataskepenou, ed. E. Sargologos, La vie de saint Cyrille le Philéote, moine byzantine (+1110), SubsidHag, 39 (Brussels, 1964) (‘VCyrilPhil’), ch. 53.

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knew it. Since he saw that the saint was paralysed by old age and weakness, and had ended his askesis which was famous for his freedom from passions, and that he was on good terms with God and had reduced to powerlessness the most cunning of devilry, he showed him through his senses, in the monastery and near his cell, an erected tent. Inside it was a couch, strewn and covered with red rugs, where the sebastos was sitting, surrounded by a crowd. Seeing him opposite him, the saint was amazed. He blamed the sebastos at once for behaving like this against custom, and his brothers for not preventing him. The so-called sebastos came towards the geron and said: ‘Greetings.’ He greeted him in his turn and invited him to sit. But when he approached, the reason of the old man began to trouble him. The more the so-called sebastos redoubled his words, the more the saint was troubled in his reason until he became as it were outside of himself. For the venom of the words of the Devil was able to produce this effect, and worse, through the permission of God. Then the sebastos said to the saint, ‘You know what faith I have in you’, and the saint replied, ‘Yes.’ The sebastos replied, ‘It is for this reason that I wish for a liturgy to be celebrated in your cell and that I take communion.’ The saint, not realizing what he was saying, replied: ‘Here is the cell; do as you propose.’81

Some time later, When this abominably wicked event was over, the sebastos went out with his demons and went into the tent which appeared to be there.82

And the saint learns that he has been tempted and has fallen, that not everyone can see the tent, and that it is therefore an illusion, a phantasia. The saint, much wearied by this mindless combat, sat in great distress and darkness of imaginings. Since he had knocked, his disciple came and the saint said to him, ‘Aren’t you Christian, aren’t you going to die? Don’t you pity my old age? Don’t you see my exhaustion? Can I really be bothered in this way by people of the world and have liturgies said in my cell?’ The disciple said to him, ‘Excuse me, Father, I don’t understand what you are saying.’ The other said, ‘If you don’t believe me, trust the reality.’ The disciple said, ‘What reality?’ And the saint said, ‘Don’t you see the sebastos with his retinue and his tent?’ Then he related everything which had happened. The disciple protested, ‘I don’t see anything you describe.’83

81

  VCyrilPhil, ch. 53.2, ed. Sargologos, pp. 249–50.   VCyrilPhil, ch. 53.3, ed. Sargologos, pp. 250–51. 83   VCyrilPhil, ch. 53.4, ed. Sargologos, p. 251. 82

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It is the sebastos with the retinue and the tent that Cyril believes is reality, though an undesirable reality in the monastery. But we are allowed to see the body language of greeting and reception in the tent, where the sebastos claims the advantage of making the saint visit him. It is also possible that a tent could be instantly recognisable as that of a particular individual. A tent, like the sebastokratorissa’s, or the emir’s in the Russian Devgenii, might contribute to defining identity, perhaps a reason (as well as portability) why tents made such desirable diplomatic gifts: desirable for the receiver as rich and exotic and unlike those of the ruler’s followers; desirable to the giver in that identity was being crafted by them. It is perhaps notable that Haroun al-Rashid’s own tent was black, but the tent he sent to Charlemagne was brightly coloured. Another reason is the intimacy provided by a tent. It is not surprising that many of the tent-stories are family stories where we see the Komnenoi ‘off duty’, throwing themselves onto a couch, carping at their brother. Close relatives can be seen in less supportive mood during the Komnenian family argument of 1094. John, son of the sebastokrator Isaac, serving as doux of Dyrrachion, had been denounced by the local archbishop. Alexios, then in Philippopolis, devised a plan to recall him to render account of his stewardship. Isaac got wind of it and got to Philippopolis two days and two nights later. Alexios was asleep, so Isaac took the other bed in his tent. Isaac woke up to find Alexios already risen and watching him. They embraced and greeted each other. The emperor asked why he had come; Isaac replied, ‘You are the reason.’ ‘You have worn yourself out with this exertion to no purpose,’ said Alexios. Isaac withdrew to his own tent, then a message arrived from Dyrrachion to say that John was on his way and soon a family council was under way in the imperial tent with the Caesar Nikephoros Melissenos, brother Adrian ‘and certain other close relatives’. The fur flew, beards were threatened, and then the young man arrived, was accused, and then Alexios made peace and sent his brother back to Constantinople and young John to his post.84 And it is clear that they were associated by the Byzantines with love, the pleasure palaces of the court.85 Here we should remember the wonderful story of Andronikos Komnenos’ escape in the winter of 1154–55 which deserves to be told in full. Once when he was lying in the woman’s embraces in his tent at Pelagonia, Eudokia’s blood relations, on being so informed, surrounded the tent with a 84

  Anna Komnene, Alexiad, VIII.vii–viii, ed. Leib, 147–51, ed. Reinsch, pp. 252–5, tr. Sewter and Frankopan, pp. 262–4. 85   C. Cupane, ‘Orte der Liebe: Bäder, Brunnen und Pavillons zwischen Fiktion und Realität’, in P. Odorico and V. Vavŕinek (eds), Ekphrasis. La representation des monuments dans les littératures byzantine et byzantino-slaves, Byzantinoslavica, 69.3 suppl. (Prague, 2011), pp. 167–78.

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large number of armed troops and stood guard over the exit, intending to cut him down on the spot. Eudokia was well aware of the plot, even though her mind was occupied with other matters for she had either been alerted by one of her kinsmen or warned in some other way of the ambush planned against her corrupter. Contrary to the nature of women, she was quick-witted and gifted with sagacity. While in the embraces of Andronikos, she informed him of the plot. Shaken by what he heard, he leaped out of bed and girding on his long sword, deliberated on what he should do. Eudokia proposed to her lover that he don female attire and that she should order aloud and by name one of her maidservants to bring a lantern to the tent, and that as soon as the ambushers heard her voice he should exit and make his escape. However he was not convinced by her persuasive argument, afraid that he might lose his way, be taken captive, and be led before the emperor, ignobly dragged by the hair, and worse, made to suffer a womanish and inglorious death. Hence, unsheathing his sword and taking it in his right hand, he cut slantwise through the tent, leaped forth and in one mighty bound, like a Thessalian, hurdled the barrier that chanced to be standing in front of the tent and the space occupied by the stakes and ropes; the ambushers were left agape: by escaping both obstacles the prey transformed defeat into a marvel.86

Tents were not traps, at least for their owners. Their mutability and resilience aided the escaping trickster. Tents were versatile too: it is now thought that the various references to Alexander the Great’s 90-bed marriage tent, 100-couch dining tent, and a massive reception tent were to one and the same.87 There is a sense also that versatility also contributes to multivalence. In the two pairs of Komnenian poems, the classical imagery of the Mangana poem coexists and contrasts with the heavier Old Testament cast of Theophylact’s poems; in each pair the more occasional and complex subject matter of the longer poem contrasts with the timeless wisdom of the shorter poem.88 But their defining characteristic was their ephemerality. Tents were above all ephemeral architecture, which has recently found a new vogue as ‘the common ground between architecture and art’,89 defined by R.B. Chappel as ‘a class of building designed to be distinguished by

86   Niketas Choniates, Chronike diegesis, ed. J.A. van Dieten, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 11.1 (Berlin and New York, 1975), pp. 104–5, tr. H.J. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates, Byzantine Texts in Translation, 1 (Detroit, MI, 1984), p. 60. 87   Spawforth, ‘Appendix: Alexander’s State Tents’, pp. 112–20. 88   Manganeios Prodromos, poems 145 and 146, ed. and tr. Jeffreys, in Anderson and Jeffreys, ‘The Decoration of the Sebastokratorissa’s Tent’, pp. 11–13; Theophylact, poems 11 and 12, ed. Gautier, Théophylacte d’Achrida, pp. 366–7. 89   A. Manzo, The Place of Dreams (blog), at anammanzo.wordpress.com (accessed 10/12).

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impermanence and its physical departure from the site’.90 Chappel suggests various classes of building as fulfilling this criterion: as well as the nomadic, he includes the seasonal, like ice buildings; the time limited, like Patrick Dougherty’s architectural sapling sculptures;91 and structures created for events, whether Japanese tea-ceremonies or biennale or world fairs, structures such as Jean Nouvel’s 2010 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion92 or Arne Quinze’s 2010 installation for the Burning Man Festival in August in Nevada.93 Recent studies stress the striking, the elegant, the flexible, the portable nature of such buildings, their lightness, transience and practicality.94 All these characteristics can be applied to Byzantine tents, though they were not so much nomadic (one of Chappel’s categories) as the elective equivalent to a palace.95 We have seen that tents are perceived as representing rich colour, and luxurious, sensuous materials, as being intimate but ceremonious, the scene of regime change but also family arguments. They offer the experience of being protected but close to the elements, of feeling wind and enjoying diffused light, an elegant site for music and story-telling, with scented candles and other incense. They are practical, and portable, and you can put them where you want them; they made it so much easier to create the right impression, to be able to hold meetings on the tent-dweller’s own terms. Their mutability and their versatility were much in demand. And they were ephemeral theatres for text.

90   B.D. Chappel, Ephemeral Architecture: Towards a Definition (published ephemerally and in various versions in PDF), p. 23. 91   P. Dougherty, Stickwork (New York, 2010). 92   J. Nouvel, Red: Summer in Kensington Gardens: Serpentine Gallery (Cologne, 2012). 93   See also A. Quinze, Cityscape (Berlin, London, New York and Tokyo, 2008). 94   J. Siegal, Mobile: The Art of Portable Architecture (New York, 2002); S.J. Armijos, Fabric Architecture: Creative Resources for Shade, Signage and Shelter (New York, 2008); R. Kronenburg, Portable Architecture: Design and Technology (Basel, Boston and Berlin, 2008); R. Kronenburg, Flexible: Architecture that Responds to Change (London, 2007); A. Bahamon, The Magic of Tents: Transforming Space (New York, 2004); G. Brown, ‘Freedom and Transience of Space (TechnoNomads and Transformers)’, in R. Kronenburg, J. Lim and W. Yunn Chii (eds), Transportable Environments, 2 (New York, 2003), pp. 2–13. 95   I am grateful to Scott Redford for conversations on this topic: his appreciation of ephemerality is clear from his ‘Thirteenth-century Rum Seljuq Palaces and Palace Imagery’, Ars Orientalis, 23, Pre-modern Islamic Palaces (1993), pp. 219–36. See also B. O’Kane, ‘From Tents to Pavilions: Royal Mobility and Persian Palace Design’, loc. cit., pp. 249–68. See also M. Mullett, ‘Tented Ceremony: Ephemeral Performances under the Komnenoi’, in A. Beihammer, S. Constantinou and M. Parani (eds), Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in the Medieval Mediterranean (Leiden, forthcoming).

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Texts in Tents What kind of texts might be experienced in a tent? We have already seen that letters were envisaged as being both written in and delivered to tents. The process of letter-exchange, or the reception and reading of a letter, was shown in conjunction of tents, and at least some of the 50 letters of the general Nikephoros Ouranos were written on campaign.96 And we have seen some traces of not one but two genres of tent-poems in Byzantium, the occasional poem (perhaps to be delivered in the tent) about the recipient receiving visitors in a reception tent, and a shorter poem (perhaps to be inscribed on the tent) about eternal truths, transience of human life, or the virtues of hospitality.97 It is clear that books went along on campaign. The De Cerimoniis text includes liturgical texts, military manuals, siegecraft, histories, an oneirokritikon, books of chances and occurrences, weather-lore, a treatise on thunder, a treatise on earthquakes.98 Anna describes Alexios as taking military lessons from Aelian,99 and Eirene, ever the intellectual snob, as reading Maximos confessor.100 But we need also to envisage prayers before battle,101 special liturgies that take place in portable churches,102 tented ceremonies of various kinds as well.103 We can speculate on texts that cry out to have been delivered in tents as entertainment.104 The Kekaumenos stories, ‘Do you know the one about the

96

  Skyl.Matr., fol.75v, Tsamakda, fig. 183; fol. 224r, Tsamakda, fig. 530; Ven.Alex., fol. 136r, Xyngopoulos, fig. 158. For Nikephoros Ouranos see J. Darrouzès, Épistoliers byzantins du Xe siècle, Archives de l’Orient chrétien, 6 (Paris, 1960), pp. 217–48. 97   Manganeios Prodromos, poems 145 and 146, ed. and tr. Jeffreys, in Anderson and Jeffreys, ‘The Decoration of the Sebastokratorissa’s Tent’, pp. 11–13; Theophylact poems 11 and 12, ed. Gautier, Théophylacte d’Achrida, pp. 366–7. 98   Text C, 196–204, ed. and tr. Haldon, Constantine Porphyrogenitus: Three Treatises, pp. 106–7. 99   Anna Komnene, Alexiad, XV.iii.6, ed. Reinsch, p. 469, tr. Sewter and Frankopan, p. 439. 100   Anna Komnene, Alexiad, V.ix.3, ed. Reinsch, p. 165, tr. Sewter and Frankopan, p. 150. 101   A. Pertusi, ‘Una acolouthia militare inedita del X secolo’, Aevum, 22 (1948), pp. 145–68. 102   G. Dennis, ‘Religious Services in the Byzantine Army’, Eulogema. Studies in Honor of Robert Taft, Studia Anselmiana, 110 (Rome, 1993), pp. 107–17. 103   See M. Mullett, ‘Tented Ceremony’. 104   See M. Mullett, ‘Performing Court Literature in Byzantium: Tales told in Tents’, in M. Pomerantz and E. Birge Vitz (eds), Courts and Performance in the Premodern Middle East, 700–1600 (New York, forthcoming).

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strategos and the toparch?’;105 animal fables like Stephanites kai Ichnilates;106 framestory tales like Syntipas;107 edifying little stories from gerontika;108 lays of the frontier like Digenes;109 episodes from histories like Theodosios and the apple; stories in Anna;110 court episodes in saints’ lives;111 even satirical episodes from monastic narrative112 – all could have circulated in the Byzantine court on the move. So Byzantine tents were places where people held court, welcomed visitors and received clients, and on campaign may have been the setting for alternative receptions and other ceremonies, as well as councils and decisions. They are regarded as rich but temporary, solemn but intimate, versatile and resilient, light and capable of infinite reinvention. The stories told in them 105

  On Kekaumenos, ed. B. Wassiliewsky and V. Jernstedt, Cecaumeni Strategicon et incerti scriptoris de officiis libellus (St Petersburg, 1896); see P. Lemerle, Prolégomènes à une edition critique et commentée des ‘Conseils et Récits’ de Kekauménos (Paris, 1959), and many recent articles by Charlotte Roueché, including ‘The Literary Background of Kekaumenos’, in C. Holmes and J. Waring (eds), Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond (Leiden, 2002), pp. 111–38; ‘The Rhetoric of Kekaumenos’, in E. Jeffreys (ed.), Rhetoric in Byzantium, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, 11 (London, 2003), pp. 23–37; ‘The Place of Kekaumenos in the Admonitory Tradition’, in P. Odorico (ed.), ‘L’éducation au gouvernement et à la vie’: La tradition des ‘Règles de vie’ de l’antiquité au Moyen-Âge. Actes du colloque international, Pise, 18 et 19 mars 2000, Autour de Byzance, 1 (Paris, 2009), pp. 129–44, which places the first reception of Kekaumenos among the toparchs; Charlotte Roueché is preparing a comprehensive web edition with multiple modern language translations including the English version of her grandmother Georgina Buckler and herself. 106   L.-O. Sjöberg, Stephanites und Ichnilates: Überlieferungsgeschichte und Text, Studia Graeca Upsaliensis, 2 (Uppsala, 1962); A. Noble, ‘Cultural Interchange in the Medieval Mediterranean: Prolegomena to a Text of the Eugenian Recension of Stephanites kai Ichnelates’, 2 vols (PhD thesis, Belfast, 2004); H. Condylis-Bassoukos, Stephanites kai Ichnelates, traduction grecque (XIe siecle) du livre Kalila wa-Dimna d’Ibn al-Muqaffa’ (VIIIe siecle). Etude lexicologique et litteraire (Leuven, 1995). 107   A. Eberhard (ed.), Fabulae romanenses graece conscriptae, I, De Syntipa et de Aesopo narrationes (Leipzig, 1872), pp. 1–135. 108   H. Chadwick, ‘John Moschos and his Friend Sophronios the Sophist’, Journal of Theological Studies 25 (1974), pp. 41–74. 109   For Digenis as five heroic poems see D. Ricks, Byzantine Heroic Poetry (Bristol, 1990); whether there was a medieval prose Digenes is unclear, though the Andros manuscript, Thessalonike UL 27, fols 1–101, dated to 1632, is in prose, and episodes, perhaps even more and shorter than Ricks’s, could have circulated independently as stories. 110   On stories in Byzantine chronicles, R. Scott, ‘Text and Context in Byzantine Historiography’, in L. James (ed.), A Companion to Byzantium (Oxford, 2010), pp. 256–9. 111   For example VCyrilPhil, ch. 47.14, ed. Sargologos, p. 235; ch. 34, ed. Sargologos, pp. 143–6; ch. 35, ed. Sargologos, pp. 146–53, but also episodes in the Life of St Philaretos and the Life of Basil the Younger. 112   For example Diegesis merike, ed. Meyer, Die Haupturkunden, pp. 163–84; Uspenskij, Istorija Afona, II.1, 37–78; M. Mullett, Diegesis epistolike: narration et communication à Byzance au XIIe siècle, Séminaires byzantins, Les belles lettres (Paris, forthcoming).

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crossed cultural boundaries like the tents themselves, and the poems delivered in them or embroidered on them encapsulate danger and security, threat and obeisance, frivolity and learning. This is the closest we can get, I think, to experiencing the Byzantine tent.

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16. Sensing Ascension in Early Byzantium Georgia Frank

In Late Antiquity, the story of Jesus’ ascent to heaven stirred the imagination. As the final episode in Luke’s gospel and the opening episode in the Acts of the Apostles, the ascent marked a ‘last look’.1 Yet, this near-doublet raised mixed emotions. How to reconcile, on the one hand, Luke’s euphoric outlook celebrating Jesus’ affectionate assurance of ongoing presence, with Acts’ somewhat dysphoric ‘men in white’ confronting the disciples with the ‘wakeup call’ of separation and absence?2 Rituals such as the eucharist played an 1

  I thank the conference organisers, doctors Mark Jackson and Claire Nesbitt, for their invitation, as well as Derek Krueger, Columba Stewart, François Bovon, and Richard W. Bishop for guidance at critical stages, Dr Catherine Playoust for sharing her dissertation prior to publication, Ms Lauren Kerby for valuable research assistance, and anonymous readers for astute suggestions. Despite these generous efforts, any shortcomings or errors that remain are entirely my own. 2   Luke 24.50–52:    Ἐξήγαγεν δὲ αὐτοὺς [ἔξω] ἕως πρὸς Βηθανίαν, καὶ ἐπάρας τὰς χεῖρας αὐτοῦ εὐλόγησεν αὐτούς.  καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ εὐλογεῖν αὐτὸν αὐτοὺς διέστη ἀπ’ αὐτῶν καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν.  καὶ αὐτοὶ προσκυ‑ νήσαντες αὐτὸν ὑπέστρεψαν εἰς Ἰερουσαλὴμ μετὰ χαρᾶς μεγάλης, (Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.) Acts 1.9–11: καὶ ταῦτα εἰπὼν βλεπόντων αὐτῶν ἐπήρθη, καὶ νεφέλη ὑπέλαβεν αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν αὐτῶν. καὶ ὡς ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο παρειστή‑ κεισαν αὐτοῖς ἐν ἐσθήσεσι λευκαῖς, οἳ καὶ εἶπαν, Ἄνδρες Γαλιλαῖοι, τί ἑστήκατε βλέποντες εἰς τὸν οὐρα‑ νόν; οὗτος ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὁ ἀναλημφθεὶς ἀφ’ ὑμῶν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν οὕτως ἐλεύσεται ὃν τρόπον ἐθεάσασθε αὐτὸν πορευόμενον εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν. (When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’) All Bible translations are taken from the New From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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important role in mediating absence and presence of Christ’s physical body.3 Storytelling and sermons also acknowledged that ‘painful breach’.4 For Irenaeus of Lyons, the ascent was an eruption of sight and sound. Although the Word had ‘descended invisible to creatures’, its incarnation could not escape the notice of lower angels. As Jesus ascended, they cried, ‘Lift up your gates, [O, Princes], and be lifted up, you everlasting gates; that King of Glory shall enter in’.5 Likewise the Ascension of Isaiah imagined how the descending Christ eluded the notice of the angelic powers, yet appeared in plain sight to the earthly disciples.6 Suspended between the earth-bound disciples and the heavenly hosts, Jesus showed little if any emotion. For his disciples, however, it was another matter entirely, as they anticipated and witnessed Jesus’ departure.7 The ‘never more’ of their last look led preachers to ponder the disciples’ grief, fear and wonder. By the late fourth century, when the Feast of the Ascension became celebrated apart from the Pentecost, preachers found a liturgical setting in which to highlight the mixed emotions the event elicited. As this paper suggests, the Feast of the Ascension relied on biblical psalmody to navigate the full range of emotions surrounding Jesus’ departure. To demonstrate this, relation of psalmody to affect, this paper focuses on two ritual settings: the holy place associated with Jesus’ Ascension in Jerusalem beginning in the fourth century and the churches of Constantinople in subsequent centuries. Revised Standard Version. I cite psalms according to the Septuagint (Greek) numbering, with the corresponding Hebrew (Masoretic) psalm numbering in parentheses. 3   On the eucharistic, eschatological and ecclesiological dimensions of the ambiguity between presence and absence of Christ’s physical body, see D. Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On The Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Edinburgh and Grand Rapids, Mich., 1999), pp. 1–14. 4   A phrase borrowed from F. Bovon, Luke the Theologian: Fifty-five Years of Research (1950-2005), 2nd rev. edition (Waco, Tex., 2006), p. 149. 5   Irenaeus (Dem. 84), tr. J. Behr, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching (Crestwood, N.Y., 1997), p. 91. 6   Ascension of Isaiah 10.24–26, 11.25–26 and compare, discussed in J. Daniélou, Bible et Liturgie (Paris, 1951), translated in J. Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame, Ind., 1966), pp. 304–5. Cf. Ps. 23 (24), 7–9. 7   The phrase is borrowed from F. Bovon, ‘The Lukan Ascension Stories’, Korean New Testament Studies 17 (2010), pp. 563–93, esp. 577. On patristic discussions of the relation between Luke’s and Acts’ versions, see F. Bovon, Das Evangelium nach Lukas vol. 4, Lk 19,28–24,53 (Dusseldorf, 2009), pp. 621–5; now in English translation, Luke 3: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 19:28-24:53 (Hermeneia), J. Crouch (trans), H. Koester (ed) (Minneapolis, 2012) pp. 376-81. On heterodox Christians’ efforts to suggest that some disciples were privy to ongoing access to Jesus, as for instance, in the Secret Book of James in Nag Hammadi Codex I, see L. Jenott and E. Pagels, ‘Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I: Sources of Religious Conflict in Fourth-century Egypt’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 18 (2010), pp. 557–89, esp. 585–7; on later Christological debates regarding the Ascension, see Bovon, Evangelium, pp. 625–6.

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Through the singing of psalms in vigils, Christians learned to chart the emotional landscape of biblical events and thereby enter them empathetically. I am not claiming that psalmody was unique to this festival; there is no doubt that psalmody permeated early Byzantine experiences of initiation as well as the entire liturgical year.8 Instead, I propose to focus on one feast as a way to better understand how specific biblical psalms might shape the affective experience of biblical narrative. A better grasp of how early Byzantines experienced one festival, namely the Ascension, may deepen our understanding of how biblical narratives might be inflected and redirected by biblical poetry. Whereas previous studies have considered the growing importance of psalm-singing and the psalter in monastic spirituality,9 this essay adopts another approach: a focus on the particularities of one feast as a way to explore how psalmody can shape the lay experience of liturgical time.

The Ascension as Feast and Place Before turning to psalmody, it is important to recall that, for several centuries, the Feast of the Ascension was celebrated as part of Pentecost on the fiftieth day after Easter. Towards the final decades of the fourth century, however, the Feast of the Ascension appeared more frequently on lists of festivals, despite some criticisms against those who separate the Ascension from Pentecost.10

8   On patristic approaches to the psalms, see B. Daley, ‘Finding the Right Key: The Aims and Strategies of Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms’, in H.W. Attridge and M.E. Fassler (eds), Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Liturgical, and Artistic Traditions (Atlanta, Ga., 2003), pp. 189–205. Jean Daniélou calls attention to the messianic and prophetic value of the psalms for ancient Christians in J. Daniélou, ‘Les psaumes dans la liturgie de l’Ascension’, La Maison-Dieu 21 (1950), pp. 40–56, and later in Daniélou, Bible and the Liturgy, esp. pp. 177–90. 9   Athanasius’ Letter to Marcellinus, see Daley, ‘Finding the Right Key’, pp. 200–202, and C. Stewart, ‘The Use of Biblical Texts in Prayer and the Formation of Early Monastic Culture’, American Benedictine Review 62 (2011), pp. 188–201. See also L. Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford, 2005). 10   According to the canons of the Synod of Elvira (ca. 300–306), those who celebrate the fortieth day after Easter shall be liable to the charge of heresy. Canon 43, translated in L.J. Johnson (ed.), Worship in the Early Church: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 4 vols (Collegeville, Minn., 2009), vol. 2, p. 120. The dating of this canon is a matter of debate. According to M. Meigne, ‘Concile ou collection d’Elvire?’ Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 70 (1975), pp. 361–87, only canons 1–21 were from the Synod; remaining canons originated at later Councils and were eventually published as part of the Elvira canons. The motivations are also unclear. According to T. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, Minn., 1991), pp. 66–7, celebrating Ascension on the fortieth day (rather than on the fiftieth) shortened the period of post-Easter rejoicing and prompted the resumption of fasting. There is no evidence that any

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The Feast of the Ascension became the occasion for sermons by the likes of John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine and Filastrius of Brescia.11 Along with a separate Feast of the Ascension ten days before Pentecost, the traditional site of the event, the Mount of Olives, became the focus of intense early imperial benefaction. Constantine and his mother Helena took an interest in the site of the Mount of Olives, where a small church (the Eleona) was built on the site of a cave associated with Jesus teaching the disciples.12 For Eusebius, the cave completed a topographical triad connecting the main attempt at biblical historicism is driving this shift. See the methodological caveats of R. Taft, ‘Historicism Revisited’, Studia Liturgica 14 (1982), pp. 97–109. 11   It does not appear in lists by Origen (Contra Celsum 8.22), Tertullian, Cyprian, Paulinus of Nola; see F. Cabrol, ‘Ascension (Fête)’, in F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq (eds), Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1928), cols 2933–43, esp. 2936. Yet, allusions as a stand-alone feast, appear in John Chrysostom (J. P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca 50.441–52), Gregory of Nyssa, Socrates (on celebration of Ascension near Constantinople in early fifth century), Augustine (Serm. 242.3; 245.1). Filastrius of Brescia (fl. 385–91), Diversarum Hereseon Liber, 140 (112) 2, lists the feasts of Christ as Nativity, the Epiphany, Pascha and the Ascension, which takes place the fortieth day after Pascha: 149(121) 3; translated in Johnson, Worship, vol. 2, p. 81. On the ‘Pentecost … fully dismantled’, by the end of the fourth century, see Talley, Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 66–70, esp. 67 on Apostolic constitutions (ca. 400), 5.20.2. On continued celebrations of the Ascension as part of Pentecost feast on the fiftieth day in Alexandria and perhaps in Jerusalem, see Cabrol, ‘Ascension (Fête)’, cols 2937–9. Gregory of Nyssa preached a sermon celebrating the Ascension on the fortieth day in 388: see E. Gebhardt (ed.), Gregorii Nysseni Opera, vol. IX: Sermones (Leiden, 1967), pp. 324–7. See J. Daniélou, ‘Grégoire de Nysse et l’origine de la fête de l’Ascension’, in P. Granfield and J.A. Jungman (eds), Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, 2 vols (Münster, 1973), pp. 663–6. Although Egeria mentions celebrating a vigil in Bethlehem on the fortieth day after Easter, rather than the Mount of Olives, commentators find little support to infer that the Ascension was connected to Bethlehem: see P. Devos, ‘Égérie à Bethléem: le 40e jour après pâques à Jérusalem, en 383’, Analecta Bollandiana 86 (1968), pp. 87–108, and the discussion in ed. and tr. P. Maraval, Égérie, Journal de Voyage (SC 296) (Paris, 1982), pp. 296–301; and J. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome, 1987), pp. 88–90. Yet, in Egypt as well as Milan and Aquileia, Ascension continued to be celebrated as part of the Pentecost on the fiftieth day: see R. Cabié, La Pentecôte: L’évolution de la Cinquantaine pascale au cours des cinq premiers siècles (Tournai, 1965), pp. 185–97, esp. 195. Current scholarship on Ascension sermons is likely to alter some of Cabié’s claims. A special issue of Question Liturgiques/ Studies in Liturgy 92:4 (2011) is devoted to this topic, as R. W. Bishop and J. Leemans (eds), God Went Up Today: Preaching the Ascension in Late Antique Christianity (Leuven, 2011). Contributions focus on Gregory of Nyssa (R W. Bishop,), Diadochus of Photice (J. Leemans), Augustine (A. Dupont), and Severus of Antioch (P. Allen). Sadly, this issue appeared in print after it was possible to incorporate its rich analyses into this paper. 12   Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica (6.18.23), in I.A. Heikel, Eusebius Werke, vol. 6: Die Demonstratio evangelica, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 23 (Leipzig, 1913), p. 278. Vita Constantini (3.41–3) in F. Winkelmann, Eusebius Werke, vol. 1.1: Über das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 57 (Berlin, 1975), pp. 101–2.

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events of salvation history: the nativity at Bethlehem, the death at the Holy Sepulchre, and the Ascension at the Mount of Olives.13 An even fuller sensory engagement with the site became possible with the construction of a church near the summit in the final years of the fourth century by the noblewoman Poemenia.14 The structure was a rotunda church, consisting of three concentric roofed porticoes, with the centre open to the sky.15 Beneath this opening, the ground remained uncovered and pilgrims were shown the footprints of Christ in the dirt. In fact, as Paulinus of Nola, writing in 403, reported: That single place and no other is said to have been so hallowed with God’s footsteps that it has always rejected a covering of marble or paving. The soil throws off in contempt whatever the human hand tries to set there in eagerness to adorn the place … The sand is both visible and accessible to worshippers, and preserves the adored imprint of the divine feet in that dust trodden, so that one can truly say: We have adored in the place where His feet stood.16

13   Although early on Eusebius praised Constantine for building opulent basilicas on ‘three mystical caves’, in later writings Eusebius credited the emperor’s mother, Helena, with actually carrying out the plan: see P.W.L. Walker, Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1990), p. 184. On Eusebius’ changing perceptions of the Mount of Olives in relation to Jerusalem and Cyril’s response, see Walker, Holy City, pp. 184–229. Not all pilgrims recognised the Mount of Olives’ significance immediately, as the Bordeaux pilgrim associates it with the Transfiguration rather than the Ascension: see P. Geyer and O. Cuntz (eds), Itinerarium Burdigalense, Itineraria et Alia Geographica, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 175–6 (Turnhout, 1965), vol. 175, pp. 1–26, using standard page numbers found in P. Wesseling, Vetera Romanorum Itinera (Amsterdam, 1735) pp. 595.4–596.1. Pierre Maraval does not see this as an error, but as a vestige of Jerusalem’s liturgical calendar: see P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient: Histoire et géographie des origines à la conquête arabe, 2nd edition (Paris, 2004), p. 265, n. 112; compare with Walker, Holy City, pp. 213–14 on the Bordeaux Pilgrim’s ‘notorious error’. In the 380s the pilgrim Egeria referred to the site as Imbomon: see Itinerarium Egeriae, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 175 (31.1; 35.4; 36.1; 39.3; 43.3, 5), cited in Maraval, Lieux saints, p. 266, n. 113. 14   P. Devos, ‘Egérie n’a pas connue d’église de l’Ascension’, Analecta Bollandiana 87 (1969), pp. 208–12. 15   See the sketches from the late seventh century On the Holy Places by the Irish monk Adomnan to picture this structure. Reproduced in J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims: Before the Crusades (Warminster, 2002), pp. 373–4. 16   Ep. 31.4, G. de Hartel (ed.), Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 29–30 (Vienna, 1894); translated in Letters of St. Paulinus of Nola, P.G. Walsh, Ancient Christian Writers 35–6, 2 vols (Westminster, Md., 1966–67), vol. 2, pp. 129–30. See also: Psalm 131(132).7; Maraval, Lieux saints, p. 266; Sulpicius Severus, Historia sacra 2.33; Augustine, translated in Joh. 47.4, cited in Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, p. 334. On monastic settlements see Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, p. 335; on Melania the Younger’s donation of a martyrium for the relics of Stephen at the site, see Gerontius, Vita S. Melaniae Iunioris (37), ed. and tr. D. Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, 57, 64 (Paris, 1961), pp. 240 and 258.

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Thus, by the early fifth century, visitors to Jerusalem could spot the Mount of Olives by its colossal cross atop the church, ascend it, peer over to Jerusalem, see the footsteps of Christ from a 360-degree view, and gaze up through the opening in the rotunda to contemplate Christ’s path to heaven. By about 518, the pilgrim Theodosius reported there were some twenty-four churches on the Mount of Olives.17 The open roof inspired the seventh-century Abbot of Iona, Adomnan, to record the bishop–pilgrim Arculf’s report that, on one Ascension feast, a gale burst through the basilica on the Mount of Olives. It was so forceful that everyone fell prostrate, to avoid being knocked down.18 In addition to legends about the Mount of Olives, scenes of the Ascension would adorn lamps and eventually pilgrims’ souvenirs, such as flasks, or ampullae.19 Such Ascension imagery may appear driven by some desire to ‘picture’ the biblical event commemorated at the site. As the pilgrim Egeria reminds us, there was a particular thrill to hearing scripture read in its actual setting. Yet, she adds that hymns and antiphons – that is to say, selected verses from biblical psalms20 – were also vital to her experience of the holy places. As she put it, ‘What I admire and value most is that all the hymns and antiphons and readings they have, and all the prayers the bishop says, are always relevant to the day which is being observed and to the place in which they are used. They never fail to be appropriate’.21 To be ‘appropriate’, then, suggests that a particular psalm somehow resonated with the event remembered at a holy

17   Theodosius, The Topography of the Holy Land (6); in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 175, pp. 113–25; Trans. in Ioh. in Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, p. 107. 18   Adomnan, De locis sanctis (23.15–19), in Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, pp. 180–81, esp. 181. Familiar with Sulpicius Severus and quite possibly Paulinus of Nola’s and Jerome’s descriptions of the site, Adomnan also mentions the role of lamps (1.10–13), notably one suspended round the clock over the footprints. On Adomnan’s ‘mental maps’, see T. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places: The Perceptions of an Insular Monk on the Locations of the Biblical Drama (London, 2007), pp. 123–4, including O’Loughlin’s insight into gazing heavenward as a ‘counterpoint to the crater on Vulcano’ that opens onto the netherworld. 19   A. Grabar, Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza–Bobbio) (Paris, 1958), Monza ampullae nos. 1 (pl. 3); 2 (pls 5 and 7); 10 (pl. 17), 11 (pls 19 and 20); 14 (pl. 27), 16 (pl. 29), and Bobbio nos. 2 (pl. 33), 19 (pl. 50), 20 (pl. 53). For an overview of iconographic types, see J. Hermann and A. van den Hoek, ‘“Two Men in White”: Observations on an Early Christian Lamp from North Africa with the Ascension of Christ’, in D.H. Warren, A.G. Brock and D.W. Pao (eds), Early Christian Voices in Texts, Traditions, and Symbols: Essays in Honor of François Bovon (Leiden, 2003), pp. 293–318. 20   On types of antiphons and responses in psalmody, see J. Mateos, ‘La psalmodie dans le rite byzantin’, Proche-Orient chrétien 15 (1965), pp. 107–26. 21   For example Itinerarium Egeriae (47.5), Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 175, p. 89; translated in J. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels (Warminster, 1999), p. 146. See also Itinerarium 3.6. On this pattern, see J.Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago, Ill., 1987), pp. 89–91.

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place. Egeria’s comment is a helpful reminder to bear in mind the many psalms pilgrims sang and heard in the course of their journeys to holy places. To appreciate the role of psalmody requires us to look closer at Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, who delivered a series of sermons to candidates for baptism in Jerusalem some thirty years earlier.22 Cyril often took pride in pointing out how physical features in the landscape bore traces of biblical events.23 His tenth catechetical sermon delivered during Lent closes with a list of the ‘true testimonies’, as Cyril calls these witnesses of Christ. The list is long; it includes figures such as God, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mother, Simeon, Anna, John the Baptist, those who were healed, and the twelve Apostles. This cloud of witnesses mentions places (the manger, Egypt, Gethsemane, Golgotha, the Holy Sepulchre and the Mount of Olives), bodies of water (the Jordan and Sea of Tiberias), and objects (the holy wood of the Cross, and ‘the handkerchiefs and aprons, which of old worked cures through Paul by the power of Christ’24), all bearing witness. Here the ‘rain-bearing clouds which received their Lord’ bear witness to the Ascension.25 By contrast, Homily 14 recounts the Ascension quite differently. Here, he notes the stone that was rolled back as testifying still to the Resurrection, but offers little else in the way of topography.26 This later catechetical sermon seems more concerned with biblical typology than with biblical topography. Cyril marshals no fewer than 125 biblical quotations to retell the how, where and when of Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension. In the tenth sermon, however, topography is cued to memory of psalms, as Cyril exhorts the candidates for baptism to recall previous ‘expositions’: I take it for granted (νομίζω) that you remember (μνημονεύειν) our exposition (ἐξηγήσεως); still I shall remind (ὑπομιμνήσκω) you, in passing, of what was then said. Remember (μνημόνευε) what is clearly written in the Psalms: ‘God mounts his throne amid shouts of joy’ [Ps. 46(47).6]; remember (μνημόνευε) that the divine Powers also said to one another ‘Lift up your gates, you princes’ [Ps. 23(24).7]; remember (μνημόνευε) too the Psalm 22

  For example Itinerarium Egeriae (24.1, 2 and 9), translated in Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, pp. 55–6, 60, 64–6. On Cyril and the liturgy in Jerusalem, see J.W. Drijvers, Cyril of Jerusalem: Bishop and City (Leiden, 2004), pp. 7–77. 23   Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, Catechetical Homily (14.22), in W.K. Reischl and J. Rupp (eds), Cyrilli Hierosolymorum archiepiscopi opera quae supersunt omnia (Munich 1860; reprinted Hildesheim, 1967), pp. 136–8. 24   Catechetical Homily (10.19), in Reischl and Rupp, Cyrilli Hierosolymorum, vol. 2, p. 286, translated in L. McCauley and A.A. Stephenson, The Works of Cyril of Jerusalem, 2 vols, Fathers of the Church 61, 64 (Washington D.C., 1969–70), vol. 1, p. 209; see also Acts 19.12. 25   Catechetical Homily (10.19), in Reischl and Rupp, Cyrilli Hierosolymorum, vol. 2, p. 286, translated in McCauley and Stephenson, Works of Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 1, p. 209. 26   Catechetical Homily (14.22), in Reischl and Rupp, Cyrilli Hierosolymorum, vol. 2, pp. 136 and 138.

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which says: ‘He has ascended on high, he has led captivity captive’ [Ps. 67(68).19]; remember (μνημόνευε) the prophet who said: ‘He that builds his ascension in heaven’.27

Every exhortation includes a call to remember specific verses from Psalms 46, 23 and 67, as well as a series of Old Testament ascensions in the following section; and all use the same imperative, μνημόνευε. The imperative ‘remember’ followed by a verse from the psalms may seem odd to those mining the scriptures for a place or event; yet they are apt to the rituals. Cyril’s choice of psalms is not unique to him. The same psalms appear in later liturgical instructions associated with the Feast of the Ascension in Jerusalem in the early fifth century. The Armenian Lectionary, a fifth-century collection of liturgical instructions, can help us probe the importance of these versions. This lectionary proceeds through the liturgical year, starting with the Feast of the Epiphany. For each feast, the rubric includes the name of the feast, its day of the week or of the month, the location of the gathering in or near Jerusalem, and the ensemble of biblical texts, to be sung or recited in sequence. The canon, or ensemble of biblical passages cued to a feast day, consists of at least four readings:

1. a psalm with antiphon, typically a verse that the congregation will sing as a refrain 2. a biblical passage, not taken from the gospels 3. an ‘alleluia’ followed by another psalm number28 4. a gospel reading. Thus for the Feast of the Ascension, the Armenian Lectionary prescribes:

5. 6. 7. 8.

Ps. 46, with the antiphon: verse 6 a reading from the opening chapter of Acts of the Apostles Alleluia with Psalm 23 the final verses of the Gospel of Luke.

Not only does this list follow the pattern of other canons (psalm, non-gospel biblical pericope, alleluia – psalm, gospel reading), but the two psalms prescribed for the Feast of the Ascension correspond to two of the psalm verses Cyril quoted and exhorted his audience to remember. If these two psalms were already part of the rites at the Mount of Olives in the mid-fourth century, his 27

  Catechetical Homily (14.24), in Reischl and Rupp, Cyrilli Hierosolymorum, vol. 2, pp. 140 and 142, translated in McCauley and Stephenson, Works of Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 2, p. 48; see also Amos 9.6. 28   Athanase Renoux, Le Codex arménien, Jérusalem 121, Patrologia Orientalis 35 (Turnhout, 1969–71), fasc. 1, p. 163; Patrologia Orientalis 36 (Turnhout, 1969–71), fasc. 2, p. 168; fasc. 2, p. 38. Since both volume and fascicle pagination appear on each page, my citations include both.

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instructions are as liturgical as they are creedal. For Cyril’s call to remember is a call to feel the Ascension: to feel the joy of clapping, singing praises ‘under the feet’, despite the distress and sorrow of separation, rupture, and even grief reflected in Acts. The insertion of Psalm 23(24) between the sorrow of Acts’ account and the euphoria in Luke’s, allowed the congregation to bridge the conflicting emotions. By singing these mixed emotions, the congregation could more fully experience the drama of the Ascension. As pioneering theorist of collective memory Maurice Halbwachs noted over a century ago, ‘If a truth is to be settled in the memory of a group it needs to be presented in the concrete form of an event, of a personality, of a locality’.29 That concreteness was readily available to pilgrims who walked through the round structures of Poemenia’s church, peered through openings, gazed down at footprints, and held image-bearing souvenirs. What the liturgical texts remind us is that vividness is about more than the imitation of events from the past. Also required is an affective register, by which to probe and fix the memories. If we limit ourselves to matching gospel text to place (as Halbwachs did), we run the risk of losing sight of evidence for the liturgical experiences: the refrains with which Christians processed their responses to, and anticipation of, the events retold. Pilgrims and worshippers may have delighted in the occasional alignment of story and place, but, as the lectionary suggests, place and story were awakened through the psalter, a trans-historical web in which the worshipper experienced gospel events through a more complex set of memories, emotions and perceptions. Just as art historians have analysed how art created in the Holy Land reflected pilgrims’ experiential responses to the holy places and the events commemorated there,30 I have suggested ways in which psalmody shaped the response. A closer look at the liturgical instructions can offer a wider context for the role of psalmody in directing the affective responses to these events. Not only did place and story converge within liturgical time, but psalmody had the power to recast a story about absence into a celebration, by calling congregations to ‘sing and clap’ (Ps. 46[47]) and to lift up their souls in the ascent up the hill (Ps. 23[24]). With psalmody to reflect and reshape experience, the biblical story of rupture found a means of repair. The ‘never more’ of absence viewed from below would allow the refrain of heavenly celebration to ring in worshippers’

29

  M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, tr. L.A. Coser (Chicago, Ill., 1992), p. 200.   I am building upon insights from the groundbreaking studies of G. Vikan, ‘Pilgrims in Magi’s Clothing: The Impact of Mimesis on Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art’, in R. Ousterhout (ed.), The Blessings of Pilgrimage (Urbana and Chicago, Ill., 1990), pp. 97–107. Reprinted in G. Vikan, Sacred Images and Sacred Power in Byzantium (Aldershot, 2003); R. Deshman, ‘Another Look at the Disappearing Christ: Corporeal and Spiritual Vision in the Early Middle Ages’, Art Bulletin 79 (1997), pp. 518–46; Hermann and van den Hoek, ‘“Two Men in White”’. 30

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ears. psalmody in proximity and procession to the holy places repaired the breach and demanded a re-education of affect.31 Yet, the power of psalmody was hardly confined to the holy places. Cyril’s evocation of specific verses from the psalms anticipates a more widespread ‘psalmodic movement’, which took root in the final part of the fourth century. Musicologist James McKinnon describes it best as ‘an unprecedented wave of enthusiasm for the singing of psalms that swept from east to west through the Christian population’.32 Although frequent psalmody began in monastic settings, lay Christians, such as the pilgrim Egeria, witnessed its power; she described the monks and nuns who sang hymns and responded to psalms with antiphons.33 Notable for our purposes, was the rise of lay participation in vigils. Basil of Caesarea defended monastics who ‘arise at night and go to the house of prayer; in pain, distress, and anguished tears they make confession to God, and finally getting up from prayer they commence the singing of psalms’. Two groups alternate singing psalms, with the effect of ‘intensifying their carefulness over the sacred texts, and focusing their attention’. One person leads the chant as the ‘rest sing in response’.34 Basil’s description suggests that responsorial psalmody was witnessed, if not performed, by nonmonastic Christians. John Chrysostom mentions that Christian laypeople sang in response (ὑποψάλλειν) during Communion, Psalm 117.24, ‘This is the day, which the Lord has made’, he notes, to an ‘aroused many’.35 As Athanasius counselled the ailing layman Marcellinus, melodious psalmody had positive effects on one’s tranquillity of mind and the ‘harmony of the soul’.36 Although 31

  On the frequency of antiphons in the stational liturgy, see Itinararium (31.2), cited in Renoux, Codex Arménien, 174, p. 36, n. 15. On the varieties of responsorial psalmody and antiphons, see Mateos, ‘La psalmodie dans le rite byzantin’; E. Nowacki, ‘Antiphonal Psalmody in Christian Antiquity and Early Middle Ages’, in G.M. Boone (ed.), Essays in Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), pp. 287–315, esp. 294–301; R.F. Taft, ‘Christian Liturgical Psalmody: Origins, Development, Decomposition, Collapse’, in Attridge and Fassler (eds), Psalms in Community, pp. 7–32. 32   J. McKinnon, ‘Desert Monasticism and the Later Fourth-century Psalmodic Movement’, Music and Letters 75 (1994), 505–21, esp. 506. Further discussion in J. McKinnon, ‘The Fourth-century Origin of the Gradual’, Early Music History 7 (1987), 91–106, esp. 98– 100, both reprinted in J. McKinnon, The Temple, the Church Fathers and Early Western Chant (Aldershot, 1998) selections XI and IX, respectively. A valuable sourcebook: J. McKinnon, ed. and tr., Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 1987). 33   Itinerarium Egeriae 24.1; cited in McKinnon, ‘Desert Monasticism’, p. 511. 34   Basil, Ep. 207.3, translated in McKinnon, ‘Desert Monasticism’, 514 and in McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, 139. 35   In psalmum 117.1, Patrologia Graeca 55.328, translated in McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, 170. 36   Epistula ad Marcellinum de interpretatione psalmorum 27, Patrologia Graeca 27.37–40; translated in McKinnon, ‘Desert Monasticism’, 518 and McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, 98.

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much scholarship on fourth-century psalmody focuses on monastic settings, lay Christians joined in on occasion and witnessed its collective effects. As Athanasius imagines Temple psalmody, ‘[t]he priests sang in this manner, summoning the souls of the people to tranquillity and to unanimity with the heavenly choir’.37 Cyril’s catecheses and descriptions of the holy places suggest that psalmody awakened the power of biblical events. Propelled by monastic psalmody, the rise of lay pilgrimage, imperial construction of churches, and the development of the stational liturgy, responsorial psalmody would inflect Christian experiences of events from the sacred past.38 The psalmody’s power to stir, as well as to reorder, the emotions was not confined to the holy land. As the Christian liturgical calendar expanded to include more feasts in the fourth and fifth centuries,39 verses from the psalms would further shape Christians’ affective experiences of events from the biblical past in more remote places. Thus, we turn to Constantinople.

The Ascension in Constantinople Two sermons composed for the Feast of the Ascension in Constantinople suggest that psalmody played no less an important role in redirecting grief. Two festal sermons, from the fifth and sixth centuries, respectively, illustrate the use of psalmody to reshape the emotional dynamics of these feast days: a discourse delivered by Proclus of Constantinople (d. 446) and a chanted metrical sermon by Romanos the Melodist (fl. 550). Several of Proclus’ festal discourses celebrate the powers of feasts as well as of psalmody: ‘Many different festivals brighten our manner of living, transforming by festive cycles the pain of the hardships of life’, he proclaims at the outset of a homily delivered on the day after the Feast of the Nativity.40 37

  Epistula ad Marcellinum 29, Patrologia Graeca 27.40–41; translated in McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, p. 100. 38   Baldovin, Urban Character of Christian Worship, pp. 100–102, and McKinnon ‘Desert Monasticism’, p. 520: ‘the very architectural setting of the fourth-century liturgy must have contributed to musical development, as the modest domestic meeting rooms of the early Church were replaced almost overnight by great stone basilicas, a virtual architectural revolution … These new buildings would seem to have required the enhancement of ecclesiastical song both for practical acoustical considerations and for considerations of aesthetic incongruity’. 39   On the association of Epiphany with the baptism of Jesus and the adoption of Christmas in the Eastern churches, see Talley, Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 126–9 and 134–41. On the role of Psalm 97(98), associated with the Feast of Tabernacles, in connection with feast of the nativity, see Daniélou, Bible and the Liturgy, pp. 344–7. 40   Homily (3.1), in ed. and tr. N. Constas, Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Homilies 1–5, Texts and Translations (Leiden, 2003), pp. 198–9.

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He counted the Ascension as one of the three (or five) principal feasts of the Christian calendar; on another occasion, he counted it among the top five.41 In one Ascension homily, Proclus noted how the entire cosmos and not just humans reacted to the event.42 He focused on earth’s grieving witness to the devil’s work, just as the devil periodically ‘looks up to the heavens’ and sees Christ, a nagging reminder that Christ’s Resurrection signalled the devil’s defeat. One of the most interesting characters in this homily, however, is earth, who ‘lamented through her sufferings as if they were voices’.43 She buried and lamented Adam, Abel, Lamech’s victim (Genesis 4.23), the victims of the great flood, and the Sodomites. Engulfed by so much loss, earth’s grief turned to rejoicing upon the arrival and departure of Christ. As Proclus describes the scene, the earth sees Jesus taken away on a cloud from mountain to mountain, gloriously going his way through the air, accompanied by bands of angels. For some were hastening beforehand, proclaiming to the heavenly porters the entrance of Christ … and others were following joyfully behind, singing hymns; and others were glorifying him with other songs.44

Amid this spectacle, the disciples’ eyes ‘were lifted up’, while ‘the incorporeal powers in the heavens were gaping from the heavens toward heaven’.45 Thus, all eyes, cosmic and human, were on Jesus’ body as it ascended. Gathering the gaze of the astounded, Proclus exhorts earth to ‘Sing … again an ode instead of a dirge, O earth! … Fix your eyes on heaven that is welcoming your children’, he assures the grieving mother. When he is out of sight, there are the angels: ‘If your eye cannot observe his entrance, listen to the angels announcing his

41

  Migne, Patrologia Graeca 52.791: ‘There are three paradoxical wonders that were unknown from the beginning of time. … the birth pang of an unwed mother; resurrection after a three-day passion; and the ascension of flesh into heaven’, translated in Constas, Proclus, p. 207. See also Homily (3.4), in Constas, Proclus, pp. 200–201, which counts five principal feasts: Nativity, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. 42   The multi-layered cosmic response found elsewhere in Proclus; see ‘clouds in terror became a vehicle for his Ascension’, Homily (5.2), in Constas, Proclus, pp. 260–61. 43   Homily (21.2); Patrologia Graeca 65.833–37, esp. 833c, in tr. J.H. Barkhuizen, Proclus of Constantinople, Homilies on the Life of Christ (Brisbane, 2001), pp. 193–7, esp. 194. 44   Homily (21.3), Migne, Patrologia Graeca 65.836c; translated in Barkhuizen, Proclus, pp. 195–6. 45   Proclus, Homily (21.3), Migne, Patrologia Graeca 65.836d, translated in Barkhuizen, Proclus, p. 196. See also Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Homily (14.22), in Reischl and Rupp, Cyrilli Hierosolymorum, vol. 2, pp. 136 and 138, translated in McCauley and Stephenson, Works of Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 2, p. 46, who reminded candidates for baptism that ‘the night, and the light of the full moon, the rock of the sepulcher … the stone which was rolled back’ and the ‘angels of God’ were all witnesses to the Resurrection.

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ascension’.46 After quoting the angelic messengers’ assurances from Acts 1.11, Proclus closes the discourse by quoting no fewer than five separate verses from the psalms, including three verses from Psalm 46(47) (vv. 1, 2, 5). Of all these verses, the most fitting response to earth’s lament and bewildered gaze is verse 2: ‘All you nations, clap your hands!’ This catena of verses resonates with the witnesses’ grief, lament and bewilderment, yet also allows room for joy. Thus Proclus overturns deep and sustained grief through the eruption of psalmody, including verses already bound up elsewhere to the feast day of the Ascension. By the following century, another homilist, Romanos the Melodist, drew the congregation into a more participatory response to Ascension. His metrical sermon was chanted as part of the urban vigils held on the eve of feast days in Constantinople.47 As best we can tell, these metrical sermons were performed in public, non-monastic vigils, by a soloist. These nocturnal assemblies for the laity included responsorial psalmody, prayer and readings from scripture as well as some non-scriptural sources.48 Not exactly ‘dramas’, but certainly dramatic, the kontakion, as the genre became known, consisted of two parts: at least one short preface, followed by twenty or so metrically identical strophes, called oikoi, each one closing with an identical refrain. Often, various biblical characters, whether biblical protagonists or characters who are silent and marginal to the biblical episode, retold their versions of events from Jesus’ life as the feast day dictated. Thus, the magi and Mary recounted the Nativity on 25 December; the following day, the angel and Mary discussed the Annunciation; John the Baptist and Jesus extended their dialogue from Matthew 3 on the feast commemorating the baptism of Jesus; Judas was at the centre of the kontakion 46   Homily (21.4), Patrologia Graeca 65.837a, translated in Barkhuizen, Proclus, p. 196. See also Acts 1.11. 47   The Greek text of Romanos used here is J. Grosdidier de Maton’s five-volume edition in the Sources Chrétiennes series (vols 99, 110, 114, 128, 283) Romanos Melodos, Hymnes, texte critique, traduction et notes (Paris, 1964). Another fine edition, P. Maas and C.A. Trypanis (eds), Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica: Cantica Genuina (Oxford, 1963), numbers the hymns differently. I follow the Sources Chrétiennes edition hymn and strophe number (48), with the Oxford (Oxf.) hymn number supplied in brackets in the first citation of any given hymn. I follow the fine translation by E. Lash, St. Romanos the Melodist, Kontakia: On the Life of Christ (San Francisco, Calif., 1995). On the kontakia, J. Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode et les origines de la poésie religieuse à Byzance (Paris, 1977); M. Arranz, ‘Romanos le Mélode’, Dictionnaire de Spiritualité (Paris, 1988), vol. 13, cols 898–908; J. Grosdidier de Matons, ‘Liturgie et Hymnographie: Kontakion et Canon’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34–5 (1980–81), 31–44; H. Hunger, ‘Romanos Melodos, Dichter, Prediger, Rhetor – und sein Publikum’, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 34 (1984), pp. 15–42. 48   A. Lingas, ‘The Liturgical Use of the Kontakion in Constantinople’, Byzantinorossica 1 (1995), pp. 50–57, esp. 52, citing R. Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West (Collegeville, Minn., 1986), pp. 171–2. Compared to ninth-century kontakia composed for monastic settings, the earlier kontakia incorporated more drama and narrative associated with the feast day for which it was composed: Lingas, ‘Liturgical Use’, p. 53.

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commemorating the Last Supper; and personified versions of Death and Hell narrated events on Good Friday. Through this chorus of witnesses, audiences could share in the characters’ joys, confusion, lament, and even shame. The kontakia also had a participatory quality: every part was sung by a soloist, who was probably joined by the audience in a one-line refrain closing each stanza.49 Although little is known about how the melodies of these hymns sounded,50 their power to conjure the musings, apprehensions and doubts of biblical characters so vividly is undeniable.51 The kontakion sung on the eve of the Feast of the Ascension follows this pattern in important ways. It opens the feast to release multiple voices: those of the congregation reminding Jesus of that day, the disciples addressing him, and the angels comforting the disciples. The monologues transport the audience from Jesus’ last moments on earth, up to heaven, and then back again to earth. Yet whatever the voice in a given stanza, the last word belongs to Jesus. Depending on the context, the refrain is either spoken by him or quoted by another character: ‘I am not parting from you, I am with you and there is no one against you’. The refrain was immediately preceded by words connoting some declarative speech. Words such as ‘crying’ (βοήσας), saying (λέξας, εἰπών) or revealing (ἐδήλωσεν) could have cued the audience to join in. Through song, Romanos infuses this gospel account with additional bodily gestures and sensory details. He exhorts the congregation, ‘Let us come to our senses (αἰσθήσεις) and raise on high our eyes and minds’.52 Having summoned the senses, the preacher calls upon those senses to fly: ‘Mortals,’ he bids them, ‘let us make our sight together with our senses fly to heaven’s gates’.53 The preacher exhorts them, ‘imagine … standing on the Mount of Olives’, while 49   On the importance of dialogue for Romanos’ retelling of biblical stories, see D. Krueger, ‘Romanos the Melodist and the Christian Self in Early Byzantium’, in E. Jeffreys and F.K. Haarer (eds), Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies: London, 21–26 August, 2006 (Aldershot, 2006), vol. 1, pp. 255–74; M.B. Cunningham, ‘The Reception of Romanos in Middle Byzantine Homiletics and Hymnography’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 62 (2008), pp. 251–60, esp. 251–3. On the refrain, see H. Hunger, ‘Der Refrain in den Kontakia des Romanos Melodos : Vielfalt in der Einheit’, in I. Vassis et al. (eds), Lesarten : Festschrift für Athanasios Kambylis zum 70. Geburtstag (Berlin, 1998), pp. 53-60. 50   C. Hannick, ‘Le Kontakion dans l’histoire de la musique ecclésiastique byzantine’, Ostkirchliche Studien 58 (2009), pp. 57–66. 51   D. Krueger put it well: ‘Romanos does the Gospels in different voices’. See D. Krueger, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia, Pa., 2004), p. 168. See also G. Frank, ‘Romanos and the Night Vigil in the Sixth Century’, in D. Krueger (ed.), A People’s History of Christianity, vol. 3: Byzantine Christianity (Minneapolis, Minn., 2006), pp. 59–78. 52   Romanos, Hymn. (48.1), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 140, translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 195. 53   Romanos, Hymn. (48.1), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 140, translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 195.

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‘bend[ing] our gaze on the Redeemer as he rides upon a cloud’.54 Sense and stances converge, as the audience finds where to direct their gaze (upward) and where to plant their feet (on the site itself). By these postural and sensory instructions, a deep somatic identification between the congregation and the disciples sets in. Gesture in this kontakion has an associative pull. Christ speaks from the heavens, yet his gestures evoke ritual actions. Thus, Christ reassures the disciples with his touch: ‘I stretch out my palms, which the lawless stretched out, bound and nailed. And so, as you bow your heads beneath my hands, understand, know, my friends, what I command. For, as though baptizing, I lay my hands (χειροθετῶ) upon you now’.55 This gesture captures both Jesus’ crucifixion and the congregation’s baptism in a single touch, as Christ reaches down from heaven to touch the bowed heads of his disciples. Yet, this tactile reassurance cannot dissipate the disciples’ distress. The preacher describes their ‘great grief’ (πολλὴν … λύπην) as they ‘wept and groan[ed] deeply’: ‘Are you leaving us, O Compassionate? Parting from those who love you?’56 Their query (χωρίζῃ) uses the same verb as the refrain (οὐ χωρίζομαι; ‘I am not parting from you’). They cannot bear the thought of a separation, voicing their anguish with the psalms and the Song of Songs: ‘we seek your face (Ps. 23[24].6), for it delights our souls. We have been wounded (ἐτρώθημεν), bound by the most sweet sight of you (cf. Cant. 2.5). There is no God but you (Ps. 17[18].31)’.57 Their anguished pleas continue for two more stanzas, as they imagine their enemies mocking them as they grieve the departed Christ: ‘Let them not cry out to us, “Where then is he? Who said, ‘I am not parting from you’”’.58 The mocking enemy launches the refrain of another psalm (41[42].2b, 4): ‘When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually “Where is your God?”’ In response, Jesus exhorts the disciples to ‘sing a new song’, an allusion to Psalm 32(33), as well as the openings of Psalms 95(96), 97(98) and 148(149).

54

  Romanos, Hymn. (48.1), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 140, translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 195. 55   Romanos, Hymn. (48.3), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 142, translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 196. On χειροθετέω as gesture of blessing catechumens (for example Hom. Clem. 3.73; Const. App. 2.18.7; 2.41.2) and ordination (for example Const. App. epit. 13), G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961), p. 1522, col. B. 56   Romanos, Hymn. (48.4), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 144, translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 197. 57   Romanos, Hymn. (48.4), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 144, translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 197. 58   Romanos, Hymn. (48.5), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 156, translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 198.

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The psalter also infuses Jesus’ farewell, as he instructs the archangels to prepare his paths, crying out (ἔκραζον) to the principalities on high: ‘Lift up the gates and fling wide the heavenly and glorious doors’.59 As the preacher describes the scene, ‘They all raised their faces to the heights as they watched his taking up’.60 The spectacle is no less theriomorphised, as the cloud ‘lowers its back’ (ὑποθεῖσα τὰ νῶτα), like an animal that Christ mounted with his ‘unblemished foot’.61 Even the sky appears as a clothed body, which the cloud ‘rent apart like a tunic’ as choirs of angels cried. Together these bodily details join psalmic phrases to liturgical gestures and gazes to shape liturgical action.62 However extraordinary the heavenly events, the onlookers never abandon ordinary gestures, gazes and postures. Upon witnessing these events, the ‘faithful’, as the disciples are now called, break into psalmody, chanting ‘like David’ in unison, as they ‘looked on high’, as two angels approach them ‘in the way that the book of Acts teaches’.63 Like the psalmist, the congregation would find the songs with which to look up and turn fresh grief into boisterous song, and thereby become attentive to the Ascension. As Basil of Caesarea noted, ‘O, the wise invention of the teacher, who devised how we might at the same time sing and learn profitable things, whereby doctrines are somehow more deeply impressed upon the mind!’64 That connection between anagogy, pedagogy and song was a familiar one in Mediterranean religions of Late Antiquity. If we consider that many ritual texts from Late Antiquity combined breath, song and ascent,65 these chanted 59

  Romanos, Hymn. (48.10), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 144; translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 200, an echo of Psalm 23(24), 7–9. On the use of Psalm 23 as antiphonal psalm transformed into dialogue between priest and deacons, see R. Taft, The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfer of Gifts and Other Pre-anaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 200 (Rome, 1978), pp. 105–12. On Romanos’ use of language from the psalter, see J. Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode et les origines (Paris, 1974), pp. 255–63. 60   Romanos, Hymn. (48.12), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 158, translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 201. 61   Romanos, Hymn. (48.12), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 158, translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 201. 62   A. Georges Martimort et al. (eds), The Church at Prayer: An Introduction to the Liturgy (Collegeville, Minn., 1983), vol. 1, pp. 183–7. 63   Romanos, Hymn. (48.13), Sources Chrétiennes 283, p. 160; translated in Lash, St Romanos, p. 202. 64   Hom. in psalmum 1, Patrologia Graeca 29.209–13; translated in W. Strunk, Jr., O. Strunk and J. McKinnon, in O. Strunk and L. Treitler (eds), Source Readings in Music History, vol. 2 (New York, 1997), p. 11. 65   These examples of hymnic ascent are taken from N. Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews and Christians (London, 2001), pp. 80–82. Further examples in M. Himmelfarb, ‘The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World’, in J.J. Collins and M. Fishbane (eds), Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys (Albany, N.Y., 1995), pp. 123–37.

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sermons, sung refrains, psalms and antiphons take on a special efficacy. Already in the second century some Chaldean Oracles instructed worshippers to seek out angels who could teach breathing techniques by which to ascend through the heavens. The fourth-century Mithras Liturgy began its ascent with breathing techniques and a hymn. The Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice instructed worshippers to sing the very words the heavenly chorus utters. Let us be clear: Cyril, Proclus,and Romanos did not evoke psalmody to deify the grievers. But they did draw from specific psalms that would allow those below to sing as if from above.66 They could have turned to the psalms of lamentation to express their anguish, just as some gospel writers quoted from Psalm 21(22) to give voice to Jesus’ agony on the cross.67 Instead, they chose psalms for ascent. Cyril of Jerusalem’s abundant evocation of psalmody, Proclus’ cosmic chorus, and Romanos’ portrayal of the grieving-turned-rejoicing disciples all served a similar purpose: to re-educate the affective response to the events of the Ascension. In liturgy, a story of separation and palpable grief drew upon psalmody to draw up the eye, to lift up the hand, and to gesture towards the story’s true ending. Liturgy, and specifically psalmody, revealed anew what the cloud obscured.

On the Mithras Liturgy’s breathing ritual (ll. 537–8) and sense perception, see H.D. Betz, The ‘Mithras Liturgy’: Text, Translation, and Commentary, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 18 (Tübingen, 2003), pp. 130–34. 66   My thinking here is shaped by recent work on the efficacy of song in Late Antique Mediterranean religions, as in G. Schimanowski, ‘“Connecting Heaven and Earth”: The Function of the Hymns in Revelation 4–5’, in R.S. Boustan and A. Yoshiko Reed (eds), Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 67–84, esp. 83: ‘Revelation not only records that the angels sing but actually presents the text – the very words – of their songs’ (emphasis in original). 67

  H.W. Attridge, ‘Giving Voice to Jesus: Use of the Psalms in the New Testament’, in Attridge and Fassler, Psalms in Community, pp. 101–12.

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17. From Earth to Heaven: The Changing Musical Soundscape of 1 Byzantine Liturgy Alexander Lingas

Introduction The sound of human voices raised in song – in other words, that of people performing what most modern listeners grounded in Western culture would recognise as forms of unaccompanied (a cappella) music2 – was integral to 1

  The completion of this article was made possible thanks to the gracious support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (for a year of research leave) and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies of Princeton University (for a visiting research fellowship). The original lecture– demonstration on which this study is based was delivered with the musical aid of Spyridon Antonopoulos. All English translations of service texts, most of which have been published previously in liner notes to CD recordings by Cappella Romana, are by Archimandrite Ephrem Lash. 2

  Since, as Bohlman has observed, approaches to the description of musical activity may be rooted in distinctive ontologies of music, we should note that the Byzantines spoke and wrote about singing in church in ways that differ subtly from those customary today. Unlike Muslims, who traditionally have excluded the recitation of the Koran (qirā’ah) from their definitions of music (mūsīqā/mūsīqī), Byzantine authors were not averse to describing Christian liturgical singing as ‘μουσική’. Indeed, mousike (literally, something pertaining to the Muses) is but one of a host of terms and phrases derived from pagan Greek Antiquity found in Byzantine literature, including treatises of music theory in which the theoretical terminology of Ancient Greek music was resumed, as well as homilies and hymns, where such terms were often deployed for rhetorical effect. Nevertheless, one finds in Byzantine service rubrics and monastic literature a distinct technical vocabulary for ecclesiastical chanting that serves both to distinguish it from other forms of music making and to indicate its continuity with what might also be non-musical activities. Examples of such multivalent terms are the nouns psalmody (ψαλμῳδία), ecphonesis (ἐκφώνησις) and reading (ἀνάγνωσις), as well as the verb to say (λέγειν). On the varieties of musical ontologies, see P.V. Bohlman, World Music: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions 65 (Oxford and New York, 2002), pp. 5–9; From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

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public worship in Byzantium. Celebrations in cathedrals, parochial churches and coenobitic monasteries of the eucharistic Divine Liturgy and the major daily offices of morning and evening prayer – that is, Orthros and Vespers – featured, at least in theory, nearly continuous singing.3 This was performed in alternation between groups of singers arranged into ecclesiastical and musical hierarchies, whose precise configuration in a particular place and time was governed by such variables as the liturgical occasion, the rite being served – for example, monastic or cathedral, of Constantinople or Jerusalem – and the financial and human resources that were locally available. The full range of singers heard in Byzantine churches encompassed ordained soloists (including the higher clergy of deacons, priests and bishops), permanently resident choirs (in cathedrals generally consisting of ordained choristers who were members of the lower clergy, but functionally comparable to modern English lay clerks), various secondary ensembles (choirs of children, deaconesses and monastics), and entire congregations.4 At the top of this hierarchy were bishops and priests, who intoned blessings, the concluding doxologies of presidential prayers, and in some instances the prayers

and P.V. Bohlman, ‘Ontologies of Music’, in N. Cook and M. Everist (eds), Rethinking Music (Oxford and New York, 1999), pp. 17–34. An overview of Byzantine musical terminology is R. Schlötterer, ‘Der kirchenmusikalische Terminologie der griechischen Kirchenväter’ (Ph.D. diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, 1953). 3   The amount of singing performed in minor daily offices or occasional services varied considerably according to the context. The lesser daily and seasonal offices of the rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia were musically similar to its major services in being sung throughout – hence, perhaps, the origin of the popular name of the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite in later Byzantium: the ‘Sung Office’ (‘ᾀσματικὴ ἀκολουθία’). The lesser hours of the Palestinian monastic rite of St Sabas, on the other hand, were constructed in such a way as to permit their celebration with little or no singing and, if so desired, in private (a practice actually mandated on some occasions by rubrics in monastic service books). The Office of Preparation for Holy Communion and other services of devotion or supplication that were not, strictly speaking, part of the daily cycle of offices could likewise be celebrated in private or in common with or without singing. For an overview of the minor hours of the Byzantine Divine Office, see C. Lutzka, Die Kleinen Horen des byzantinischen Stundengebetes und ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung, 2nd edn, Forum orthodoxe Theologie 7 (Berlin, 2010). The relative importance of music within the Constantinopolitan and Neo-Sabaïtic liturgical traditions is examined in A. Lingas, ‘How Musical was the “Sung Office”? Some Observations on the Ethos of the Byzantine Cathedral Rite’, in I. Moody and M. Takala-Rozsczenko (eds), The Traditions of Orthodox Music. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Orthodox Church Music, University of Joensuu, Finland 13–19 June 2005 (Joensuu, 2007), pp. 217–34. 4   For a comprehensive inventory of the musical forces employed in the churches of Byzantium, see now E.C. Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν κατὰ τὴν Βυζαντινὴ παράδοση, Institute of Byzantine Musicology Studies 14 (Athens, 2008). A compact but older survey is ‘The Byzantine Choir’, ch. 3 in N.K. Moran, Singers in Late Byzantine and Slavonic Painting, Byzantina Neerlandica 9 (Leiden, 1986), pp. 14–50.

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themselves.5 Deacons chanted litanies, the Gospel, and such commands as ‘Let us attend’ (‘Πρόσχωμεν’, effectively ‘Pay attention!’) and ‘Stand upright’ (‘Ὀρθοί᾽).6 Among the lower clergy, solo cantors (for whom the generic term was ψάλται, that is ‘psalmists’) chanted melodically florid settings of hymns and psalm verses, whilst readers (ἀναγνῶσται) cantillated Old Testament lessons. When not singing as soloists, these psaltai and anagnostai also served as members of choirs that performed choral versions of hymns and psalms. The doxologies, litanies and psalms of the higher clergy and professional singers were punctuated regularly with responses and refrains that were mostly brief and easily memorable. This facilitated their performance by larger and less skilled bodies of singers that, in some times and places, included the entire liturgical assembly (ὁ λαός). Musical continuity in major public services was interrupted only occasionally for the reading of catechetical material (saints’ lives, homilies and other patristic texts) and, in some versions of the Palestinian Divine Office, the non-festal recitation of the Psalter.7 Given the almost seamless musicality of public worship in Byzantium, it is curious how rarely modern scholarly writing has taken account of its ‘soundscape’. Taking this term in the broad sense given to it by its inventor, Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, the soundscape of Byzantine worship 5   ‘Presidential’ refers here to prayers usually cast in the first person plural that were recited on behalf of the entire assembly by a presiding priest or bishop. Originally these were performed aloud, but by the sixth century many of them were recited either silently or softly (μυστικῶς) in a voice audible, if at all, only to nearby concelebrating clergy. Celebrants, however, have continued until modern times to sing the concluding doxologies of many presidential prayers. Labelled ‘exclamations’ (ἐκφωνήσεις) already in the earliest surviving Euchology (Prayerbook) for the Constantinopolitan rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (the late eighth-century MS Barberini gr. 336), these serve musically as cues for other singers, signalling when they should chant their ‘Amen’ and begin the next item in the liturgical sequence. From the perspective of an ordinary congregant, the reduction of the audible portion of what were often lengthy prayers to brief sung ecphoneseis could have only enhanced musical continuity in Byzantine services. The fading of most Byzantine prayers into inaudibility is documented in R.F. Taft, S.J., ‘Was the Eucharistic Anaphora Recited Secretly or Aloud? The Ancient Tradition and What Became of It’, in R.R. Ervine (ed.), Worship Traditions in Armenia and the Neighboring Christian East: An International Symposium in Honor of the 40th Anniversary of St. Nersess Armenian Seminary (Crestwood, NY, and New Rochelle, NY, 2006), pp. 15–57. The Barberini Euchology has been published with commentary and Italian translation as S. Parenti and E. Velkovska (eds), L’Eucologio Barberini Gr. 336, 2nd edn, Bibliotheca ‘Ephemerides liturgicae’ Subsidia 80 (Roma, 2000). 6   In the absence of a deacon, a priest would sing most of these items himself. 7   Differences in the musical performance of the Psalter in the traditions of Constantinople and Palestine are discussed in O. Strunk, ‘The Byzantine Office at Hagia Sophia’, Essays on Music in the Byzantine World (New York, 1977), pp. 112–50, at pp. 130–31; and A. Lingas, ‘Festal Cathedral Vespers in Late Byzantium’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 63 (1997), pp. 421–59, at pp. 445–7.

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would have been its ‘acoustic ecology’, encompassing every intentional and circumstantial aspect of its sonic environment.8 As a matter of course it would have included all the variable and invariable elements of vocal performance in particular times and places: the acoustics of individual churches, the texts and musical forms contained in the psalmodic and hymnodic repertories of a given rite, and the number of available singers together with their levels of musical knowledge and skill. Furthermore, it would have embraced sonic elements that were incidental or otherwise not under the direct control of those responsible for planning and celebrating services: the ambient noise generated by crowds and nature as heard both inside churches and, during stational processions, in courtyards, monastic compounds and on city streets.9 In recent years it has also become common to employ the term ‘soundscape’ in a narrower way to denote primarily those aspects of an acoustic ecology that are the result of conscious human efforts at what Schafer calls ‘acoustic design’: From the arts, particularly music, we will learn how man creates ideal soundscapes for that other life, the life of the imagination and psychic reflection. From these studies we will begin to lay the foundations of a new discipline—acoustic design.10

Studies of these sorts of soundscapes in ethnomusicology, for example, typically proceed from the identification of the components of acoustic design – the performers, their instruments (if any), their music, and the context for its performance – to investigate how musical performance simultaneously shapes and reflects the belief systems of those who produce and consume it within a particular cultural setting.11

8   R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT, 1994); originally published as The Tuning of the World (Toronto, 1977). 9   Bissera Pentcheva, without actually using the word ‘soundscape’, engages with its importance for Byzantine worship in her discussion of the Hagia Sophia as an ‘icon of sound: a space filled with human breath and the perfume of burning incense experienced as reverberating divine pneuma in the glitter of the golden cupola and semidomes’: see B.V. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park, PA, 2010), pp. 45–56. The importance of the sense of smell for the study of Byzantine religious practice was anticipated by S.A. Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination, The Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature 42 (Berkeley, CA, 2006). Recent studies by Robert Taft approaching the study of Byzantine liturgy ‘From the Bottom Up’ are replete with details about the sounds generated by (often unruly) congregations. For an overview, see R. Taft, Through their Own Eyes: Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw It (Berkeley, CA, 2006), pp. 4–16 and 29–120. 10   Schafer, The Soundscape, p. 4. 11   For example, K.K. Shelemay, Soundscapes: Exploring Music in a Changing World (New York and London, 2006).

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Despite major gaps in the documentary record and the complete absence of sound recordings from the middle ages, it is still possible for us to draw meaningful conclusions about the soundscapes of Byzantine worship from those elements of its acoustic design that may be at least partially recovered. Where medieval churches survive, their acoustics may be measured and even duplicated electronically, as is currently being done, for example, by the Icons of Sound project at Stanford University.12 The sonic outlines of individual services may be traced from the study of liturgical manuscripts by determining the order in which individuals or vocal groups chanted their appointed texts from particular locations in the sacred topography of an ecclesiastical complex or city. In some cases it is possible to enrich the texture of these data with visual depictions of liturgical singers.13 Further testimony regarding the sonic landscape of Byzantine liturgy may be gleaned from scattered references to chanting in hymns, homilies and hagiography.14 Yet perhaps the most neglected resources for understanding the soundscape of worship in Byzantium are the very ones that were consciously created as literary tools of acoustic design: the hundreds of liturgical manuscripts containing forms of Byzantine musical notation that survive from the ninth century onwards.15 Essentially two types of notation were used in middle and 12   B.V. Pentcheva, Icons of Sound: Aesthetics and Acoustics of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, at http://iconsofsound.stanford.edu (accessed 07/12/12). 13   For numerous examples of this approach, see Moran, Singers. 14   The hymns of St Romanos the Melodist, for example, have been to shown to contain valuable information about the original contexts for their performance at popular vigils in Late Antique Constantinople: J. Grosdidier de Matons, ‘Liturgie et Hymnographie: Kontakion et Canon’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34/35 (1980), pp. 31–43, at pp. 37–42. Numerous intentional and incidental aspects of Byzantine liturgical soundscapes are addressed in Taft, Through their Own Eyes. 15   The earliest manuscripts containing forms of notation recognised by modern scholars as ‘Byzantine’ were copied within a few decades of the earliest musically notated documents of Latin plainchant. In both cases, the appearance of musical notation is separated by over six hundred years from our single example of a Christian hymn with Ancient Greek musical notation, the papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786, the alphabetic notation of which is unrelated to either Byzantine or Latin neumes. The significance of a few, mostly fragmentary, sources from the seventh to ninth centuries containing what appear to be non- or ‘proto’-Byzantine musical notations is unclear and, at all events, most singers learning to chant presumably relied exclusively on oral means of transmission. On the possible use of musical notation in Byzantium prior to the ninth century, see I. Papathanasiou and N. Boukas, ‘Byzantine Notation in the Eighth–Tenth Centuries: On Oral and Written Transmission of Early Byzantine Chant’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin 73 (2002), pp. 3–12; and E. Gertsman, Пропавшие столетия византийской музыки / The Lost Centuries of Byzantine Music, tr. S. Buko (St Petersburg, 2001). The Oxyrhynchus hymn is given an exhaustive treatment in C.H. Cosgrove, An Ancient Christian Hymn with Musical Notation: Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786. Text and Commentary, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 65 (Tübingen, 2011).

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late Byzantium: a system of so-called ‘ekphonetic’ signs (neumes) employed by readers for the cantillation of scriptural pericopes that is found in lectionaries, and families of ‘melodic’ neumes recording the hymns and psalms chanted by soloists and choirs. Originally both types of notations were adiastematic: incapable of encoding with precision a sequence of melodic intervals, they relayed information about the performance of musical figures that still had to be learned by ear. Whereas Byzantine lectionary notation remained melodically ambiguous until it fell out of use in the fourteenth century, the intervallically imprecise ‘Chartres’ and ‘Coislin’ systems of melodic notation gave way during the later twelfth century to a fully diastematic ‘Middle Byzantine’ or ‘Round’ notation.16 Although it left some aspects of performance practice – in particular, rhythmic subdivision of the basic beat, chromaticism, ornamentation, vocal timbre and the realisation of ornaments – largely within the realm of oral tradition, Middle Byzantine notation proved to be a powerful tool and remained in use until the early nineteenth century, when it was transformed into the so-called ‘New Method’ of neumatic notation employed in modern churches. During the middle ages, Byzantine melodic neumes facilitated the consolidation and dissemination of more or less standardised repertories of hymns and melodically florid psalms. From the thirteenth century onwards, cantors cultivating distinctly personal styles of composition also employed it to create new chants of unprecedented length and complexity.17 Knowledge of Byzantine neumatic notations thus potentially enables a scholar to recover information about musical design in Byzantine liturgy, the amount and quality of which will depend on both the availability of notated sources and the extent to which the form of notation used depended on oral tradition for its realisation. In this regard, the sonic implications of ecphonetic notation have proven particularly resistant to analysis, although in recent studies Sandra Martani has shown that it is still possible to draw meaningful conclusions 16   On lectionary notation, see S.G. Engberg, ‘Greek Ekphonetic Notation. The Classical and the Pre-Classical Systems’, in C. Troelsgård and G. Wolfram (eds), Palaeobyzantine Notations II: Acta of the Congress Held at Hernen Castle, The Netherlands, in October 1996 (Hernen, 1999), pp. 33–55. A compact survey of early Byzantine melodic notations is C. Floros, Introduction to Early Medieval Notation (with an Illustrated Chapter on Cheironomy by Neil K. Moran), enlarged 2nd edn, tr. N.K. Moran, Detroit Monographs in Musicology 45 (Warren, MI, 2005). The Middle Byzantine system of notation and the major issues surrounding its transcription are treated comprehensively in C. Troelsgård, Byzantine Neumes: A New Introduction to the Middle Byzantine Musical Notation, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Subsidia 9 (Copenhagen, 2010). 17   The consequences of the shift to diastematic notation in Byzantium are discussed in K. Levy, ‘Le “Tournant Décisif” dans l’histoire de la musique Byzantine 1071–1261’, XVe Congrès International d’études byzantines, Vol. 1 (Athens, 1979), pp. 473–80. Regarding the continuing importance of oral tradition and the degree to which notated sources served as repositories of ‘paradigmatic’ renderings of melodies, see C. Troelsgård, ‘Musical Notation and Oral Transmission of Byzantine Chant’, Classica et Mediaevalia 50 (1999), pp. 249–57.

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about the musical rendering of text from Byzantine lectionaries.18 Manuscripts with Middle Byzantine notation, on the other hand, offer comparatively full melodic profiles of their chants that may serve as a basis for study or, more controversially, transcription and modern performance.19 Congruities between Middle Byzantine notation and its forbears have also enabled modern scholars to use it as a tool for deciphering, at least in part, melodies recorded in some earlier non-diastematic ‘Palaeo-Byzantine’ notations.20 Hitherto most scholarly discussions of medieval Byzantine melodies, in harmony with the disciplinary norms of musicology during the latter half of the twentieth century, have been examinations of their musical form and style analysing such elements as their vocal range, modality, quantities of notes per syllable, and use of stereotypical melodic formulas.21 Yet much of this same information may serve reflection on sonic or performative aspects of chants, revealing ways in which their musical design may have contributed to the contours of worship as experienced in Byzantium. Jørgen Raasted showed how this might be done on a small scale in a series of pioneering 18   S. Martani, ‘Words and Music in the Greek Gospel Lectionaries’, in N.-M. Wanek (ed.), Psaltike: Neue Studien zur Byzantinischen Musik. Festschrift für Gerda Wolfram, Praesens Byzantinistik (Vienna, 2011), pp. 219–31; S.G. Engberg, ‘Ekphonetic Chant: The Oral Tradition and the Manuscripts’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 32.7 (1982), pp. 41–7. Two studies that also take into account the witness of received oral traditions of cantillation in the Byzantine rite are A.T. Vourles, Ὁ τρόπος ἀναγνώσεως-ἐκφωνήσεως τῶν ἁγιογραφικὸν ἀναγνωσμάτων (Athens, 2004); and A.E. Alygizakes, ‘Ἡ ἐκφωνητικὴ ψαλτικὴ πράξη· τὰ “χῦμα” καὶ τὰ “ἐκφώνως” ἀναγνώσματα’, in G.T. Stathis (ed.), Θεωρία καὶ Πράξη τῆς Ψαλτικῆς Τέχνης. Πρακτικὰ Α´ Πανελληνίου Συνεδρίου Ψαλτικῆς Τέχνης (Ἀθήνα, 3–5 Νοεμβρίου 2000) (Athens, 2001), pp. 89–140. 19   The fullness of these melodic profiles has been debated extensively over the last century. Some scholars and practitioners of received traditions of Byzantine singing have argued on the basis of post-Byzantine sources that Middle Byzantine notation was fundamentally stenographic in its use, with written groups of signs serving as a form of shorthand for often lengthy melodic formulas learned by ear. Most other scholars, however, have concluded that medieval neumations of chants were essentially self-sufficient with regard to their melodic shape and length, an interpretation that will be followed in this present study. About these controversies over the interpretation and transcription of medieval Byzantine chant, see Troelsgård, Byzantine Neumes, pp. 35–40; and A. Lingas, ‘Performance Practice and the Politics of Transcribing Byzantine Chant’, Acta Musicae Byzantinae 6 (2003), pp. 56–76. 20   Floros, Introduction to Early Medieval Notation, pp. 17–71. 21   Recent examples of such approaches are Σ.Σ. Ἀντωνίου, Μορφολογία τῆς Βυζαντινῆς Μουσικῆς Ἐκκλησιαστικῆς Μουσικῆς (Thessalonica, 2008); and most of the contributions to G. Stathis (ed.), Θεωρία καὶ Πράξη τῆς Ψαλτικῆς Τέχνης: Τὰ γένη καὶ τὰ εἴδη τῆς Βυζαντινῆς Μελοποΐας. Πρακτικὰ Β´ Διεθνοῦς Συνεδρίου Μουσικολογικοῦ καὶ Ψαλτικοῦ: Ἀθήνα, 15–19 Ὀκτωβρίου 2003 (Athens, 2006). On the tendency towards formalism in musicology during the twentieth century, see J. Kerman, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge, MA, 1985).

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examinations of text–music relationships.22 Somewhat more broadly based are investigations by Moran and Schiødt of the musical roles played by eunuchs in Byzantine liturgy,23 or the historical treatment of the eucharistic anaphora by Giannopoulos.24 Only a few studies, however, have begun to exploit the significant advances made over the last few decades in our knowledge of medieval Byzantine chant in order to address in detail questions of musical design at the levels of whole services or even entire rites.25 Building on the work of Raasted and his successors, in the remainder of this study I shall consider some ways in which acoustic design contributed to the soundscapes of worship in the liturgical rites of Constantinople and Palestine. In particular, I shall look at how particular musical forms and styles were applied in these regional traditions to their respective versions of the Christian cycle of daily prayer, what is known in Greek as the ‘Ἀκολουθία τοῦ νυχθημέρου’ and to Western scholars as the ‘Divine Office’ or ‘Liturgy of the Hours’. Although differing in detail, the Divine Offices of the imperial capital and the Holy City shared with other urban rites of the Late Antique 22

  J. Raasted, ‘Some Reflections on Byzantine Musical Style’, in M.M. Velimirović (ed.), Studies in Eastern Chant, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1966), pp. 57–66, at pp. 57–6; J. Raasted, ‘Byzantine Liturgical Music and its Meaning for the Byzantine Worshipper’, in R.C. Morris (ed.), Church and People in Byzantium, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies: Twentieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Manchester, 1986 (Birmingham, 1986), pp. 49–57; J. Raasted, ‘Compositional Devices in Byzantine Chant’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin 59 (1989), pp. 247–70; and J. Raasted, ‘Length and Festivity: On Some Prolongation Techniques in Byzantine Chant’, in E.L. Lillie and N.H. Petersen (eds), Liturgy and the Arts in the Middle Ages: Studies in Honour of C. Clifford Flanigan (Copenhagen, 1996), pp. 75–84. A brief but systematic discussion of musical style in the major genres of medieval Byzantine chant is Troelsgård, Byzantine Neumes, pp. 76–90. 23   Especially N. Moran, ‘Byzantine Castrati’, Plainsong and Medieval Music 11 (2002), pp. 99–112; and N. Schiødt, ‘From Byzantium to Italy: Castrato Singers from the 4th to the 20th Centuries’, in Wanek (ed.), Psaltike, pp. 301–11. These studies and other studies of Byzantine eunuch cantors should now be read in the light of the cautionary remarks of C. Troelsgård, ‘When Did the Practice of Eunuch Singers in Byzantine Chant Begin? Some Notes on the Interpretations of the Early Sources’, in Wanek (ed.), Psaltike, pp. 345–50. 24   E.S. Giannopoulos, ‘Οἱ ὕμνοι τῆς Ἁγίας Ἀναφορᾶς. Ἀναδρομὴ στὸ παρελθὸν καὶ σκέψεις γιὰ τὴν ψαλμωδία με αφορμὴ τὰ λεγόμενα “λειτουργικά”’, Ἡ ψαλτική τέχνη. Λόγος καὶ μέλος στὴ λατρεία τῆς ὀρθόδοξης ἐκκλησίας (Thessalonica, 2004), pp. 49–63. 25   On the Divine Liturgy, for example, see G. Stathis, ‘Ἡ ψαλτικὴ ἔκφραση τοῦ Μυστηρίου τῆς Θείας Εὐχαριστίας’, Τὸ Μυστήριο τῆς Θείας Εὐχαριστίας· Πρακτικὰ Γ´ Πανελληνίου Λειτουργικοὺ Συμποσίου (Athens, 2004), pp. 253–75. Extended comparative discussions of musical form and liturgical function in Byzantine cathedral and monastic rites are to be found in D.K. Balageorgos, Ἡ ψαλτικὴ παράδοση τοῦ Βυζαντινοῦ Κοσμικοῦ Τυπικοῦ, Institute of Byzantine Musicology, Studies 6 (Athens, 2001); and Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν. See also my ‘Sunday Matins in the Byzantine Cathedral Rite: Music and Liturgy’ (Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1996), an updated and expanded version of which is forthcoming from Ashgate.

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Mediterranean a common basis in the antiphonal and responsorial chanting of biblical psalms and canticles.26 From the times of their emergence the psalmodic cores of each rite began to be elaborated in ways that were in part adaptations to local circumstances, as well as markers of shifts in liturgical or artistic sensibilities. Since a comprehensive historical treatment of music in these services could easily fill several volumes, I shall limit my discussion of each rite to a survey of their most conspicuous features and a brief examination of the evening office of vespers as it was celebrated on feast days.

The Sung Office of the Great Church Distinctive features of the liturgical soundscape of Late Antique Constantinople stemmed from its topography, the ecclesiastical architecture of its major churches, and the lavish musical establishments that were attached to them. The urban landscape became especially important during the archiepiscopacy of St John Chrysostom, when Orthodox and Arians processed through the streets of the city in competing processions, their participants singing psalms with refrains advancing their theological positions.27 These processions, as Baldovin has shown, left indelible marks on Constantinopolitan worship by forming the basis for an elaborate stational liturgy uniting the city’s major churches and public sites into a single sacred topography.28 In addition, stational elements came to be incorporated into all the services of the rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia even on days when worshippers did not venture beyond the confines of their own church complex. These elements are best known from the ceremonial entrances of the three Constantinopolitan eucharistic liturgies celebrated in the modern Byzantine rite, namely the Divine Liturgies attributed to St Basil and St John Chrysostom, and the Lenten Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. Processions were also integral to the major morning and evening services of the Divine Office of Hagia Sophia, a cycle of 26   An overview of the basic types of Late Antique psalmody and their fate in Byzantine Christianity is R.F. Taft, S.J., ‘Christian Liturgical Psalmody: Origins, Development, Decomposition, Collapse’, in H.W. Attridge and M.E. Fassler (eds), Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Liturgical, and Artistic Traditions, Society of Biblical Literature symposium series (Atlanta, GA, 2003), pp. 7–32. On the spread of psalmody from desert ascetics to urban congregations, see J. McKinnon, ‘Desert Monasticism and the Later Fourthcentury Psalmodic Movement’, Music & Letters 75 (1994), pp. 505–21. 27   The descriptions of these events by the church historians Socrates and Sozomen are provided in English translation with commentary in J.W. McKinnon (ed.), Music in Early Christian Literature, Cambridge Readings in the Literature of Music (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 101–02 (#218) and 104 (#223). 28   J.F. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome, 1987), pp. 167–226.

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daily prayer originally known as ‘ὁ ἐκκλησιαστής’ but cited by late Byzantine authors as the ‘ᾀσματικὴ ἀκολουθία’ or ‘Sung Office’.29 Imperial patronage aided the erection of churches designed to accommodate the movements of clergy and congregants in the evolving local rite, a process that climaxed with the Justinianic cathedral of Hagia Sophia.30 The architecture of Hagia Sophia today serves as a tangible monument to the apogee of what Taft has called the ‘Imperial Phase’ of Constantinopolitan liturgy, but some sense of its equally magnificent sonic scale may also be discerned from textual sources. In AD 612 Herakleios issued a novella assigning a total of 525 clergy to Hagia Sophia and its three dependent churches.31 At least 415 of these clergy – namely the 80 priests, 150 deacons, 160 readers and 25 cantors enumerated by Herakleios – exercised a liturgical ministry that potentially involved singing.32 The cantors constituted an elite vocal ensemble from which would emerge soloists, some (or in certain periods and places perhaps even a majority) of whom were high-voiced eunuchs.33 As a group they were divided into a pair of semi-choruses that alternated weekly in their 29

  S. Parenti, ‘The Cathedral Rite of Constantinople: Evolution of a Local Tradition’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 77 (2011), pp. 449–69, at pp. 451–4. 30   The classic treatment is T.F. Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy (University Park, PA, 1971). For preliminary remarks on experiencing chant in the acoustics of Hagia Sophia, see Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon, pp. 52–5. Technical details regarding the acoustic properties of the monument are addressed in C.A. Weitze, J.H. Rindel, C.L. Christensen and A.C. Gade, ‘The Acoustical History of Hagia Sophia Revived through Computer Simulation’, ODEON Room Acoustics Software, at http://www.odeon.dk/pdf/ ForumAcousticum2002.pdf (accessed 24/07/10). 31   Novella I in J. Konidaris, ‘Die Novellen des Kaisers Herakleios’, in D. Simon (ed.), Fontes Minores V, Forschungen zur byzantinischen Rechtsgeschichte 8 (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), pp. 62–72 and 94–100. 32   Taft has argued that the singing ‘myrrhbearers’ observed by a Russian pilgrim during his visit to Hagia Sophia in 1200 AD were in fact deaconesses. Adding the 40 deaconesses in Novella I to the list of musical personnel brings the total number of clerical singers under Herakleios to 455. Furthermore, based in part on the late (fifteenth-century) witness of Symeon of Thessalonica to Constantinopolitan cathedral liturgy (Περὶ χειροτονιῶν, J.P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca 155, cols 365–69), Spyrakou has concluded that the subdeacons, whose number was set at 170 by Herakleios, acted musically as readers when they were not performing their unique duties as assistants to the celebrants. See R.F. Taft, ‘Women at Church in Byzantium: Where, When – And Why?’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 52 (1998), pp. 27– 87, at pp. 67–8; and Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν, pp. 165–6. 33   The twelfth-century canonist Balsamon reports that eunuchs dominated the ranks of soloists in his day, but the degree to which this was generally true in Byzantium during the centuries that preceded 1204 (after the Fourth Crusade references to eunuch singers become extremely rare) is far from certain. Maximalist and minimalist assessments of the prevalence of castrati are, respectively, Moran, ‘Byzantine Castrati’; and Troelsgård, ‘When Did the Practice of Eunuch Singers’.

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precedence and were often directed by deacons.34 The cantors also provided leadership for the larger corps of readers, who followed their division into two groups and a system of weekly alternation. Readers, although confirmed in their ministry with the same prayer employed in the ordination (χειροθεσία) of cantors, nevertheless occupied a lower place in the musical hierarchy, performing simpler choral chants and leading the congregations in the singing of refrains.35 Choirs of monks, nuns and orphan children added further sonic diversity to worship in the great urban churches of Byzantium. Communities of monks (ἀσκητήρια) stationed permanently near Hagia Sophia regularly assisted the secular clergy of the Great Church with the task of maintaining a full roster of services at the cathedral, whereas other vocal ensembles seem to have appeared occasionally to enhance the splendour of major solemnities.36 To fill out our outline of the soundscape of Constantinopolitan cathedral liturgy, we must now consider the music actually sung in its services. Nearly all of the surviving manuscripts containing texts sung in the rite of Hagia Sophia postdate the traumas of Iconoclasm, whilst those featuring diastematic Middle Byzantine notation are later still.37 Indeed, the only musically notated sources for the ordinary two-week cycle of psalmody sung at the vespers and matins in the Sung Office are a pair of codices from late Byzantine Thessalonica: Athens EBE 2062 (late fourteenth century) and Athens EBE 2061 (first quarter of the fifteenth century).38 Products of the twilight of Byzantium, these 34   It is known from his vita that the great sixth-century Constantinopolitan poet– composer Romanos the Melodist was a deacon. Only in the past few years, however, have scholars revealed the extent to which deacons played important musical roles in Late Antique worship, especially in the rites of Old and New Rome. See Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν, pp. 203–11; and ‘Deacons as Readers and Psalmists in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries’, ch. 7 in C. Page, The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, CT, and London, 2010), pp. 155–71. 35   Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν, pp. 117–24; and Moran, Singers, pp. 15–16. 36   Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν, pp. 178–203. Regarding the musical training and liturgical contributions of children at the Orphanotropheion said to have been founded by St Zotikos in late fourth- or early fifth-century Constantinople, see T.S. Miller, The Orphans of Byzantium: Child Welfare in the Christian Empire (Washington, D.C., 2003), pp. 209–46. Musical parallels between Old and New Rome are explored in Page, The Christian West and Its Singers, Chapter 12 ‘Schooling Singers in Rome’, pp. 243–59. 37   The earliest surviving service book for the rite of the Great Church is the eighthcentury Euchologion MS Barberini 336 cited above: Parenti and Velkovska (eds), L’Eucologio Barberini Gr. 336. Extant sources for musical practice in the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite are surveyed in my ‘Sunday Matins’, pp. 48–61. 38   The texts of the cycles of cathedral psalmody in Athens 2061 and Athens 2062 have been edited in K.I. Georgiou, ‘Ἡ ἑβδομαδιαία ἀντιφωνικὴ κατανομὴ τῶν ψαλμῶν καὶ τῶν ᾠδῶν εἰς τὰς ᾈσματικὰς Ἀκολουθίας ἑσπερινοῦ καὶ ὄρθρου. Ἑλληνικοὶ Μουσικοὶ Κώδικες 2061–2062 Ἐθνικῆς Βιβλιοθήκης Ἀθηνῶν’ (Ph.D. diss., Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1976). Overviews of their music are Strunk, ‘The Byzantine Office’, pp. 112–50; and

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manuscripts were copied at a time when the Sung Office was regularly served only in Thessalonica, it having been relegated elsewhere to occasional festal use.39 Despite all of this, many of the musical settings in these Thessalonian codices faithfully preserve archaic patterns of call and response that had been established a millennium ago to facilitate congregational participation in Late Antiquity. Some of these antiphonal forms explicitly require the participation of a cathedral’s full range of singing personnel: celebrants, deacons, elite choirs together with their soloists, and choirs of readers that at times either lead or stand in for the congregation. Musically elaborate responsorial chants such as prokeimena, settings for which first appear with Middle Byzantine notation in manuscripts of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, generally employ only one or two classes of participants, namely solo psaltai and choristers.40 Additional musical texture was provided by changes of mode, vocal register or timbre, and variations in the rate of interchange between spatially separated singers, from vigorous in litanies and ferial antiphons from the Constantinopolitan Psalter to glacial in melismatic responsorial chants. Progression through the weekly and yearly liturgical cycles for the rite of the Great Church reveals additional layers of acoustic design that invested each gathering for worship with a unique aural topography marked by peaks and valleys of vocal range, sonic density, musical complexity, and changes of acoustical environment. Rubrics record variations in the identity and number of singers (including the participation of guest ensembles of orphans or monastics), as well as in their patterns of deployment to locations both inside and outside of churches. Each one of these alterations to the means of musical

Balageorgos, Ἡ ψαλτικὴ παράδοση, pp. 292–335. For additional details about the contents and dating of these manuscripts, see Lingas, ‘Sunday Matins’, pp. 211–16; and Balageorgos, Ἡ ψαλτικὴ παράδοση, pp. 187–93. 39   Symeon, Archbishop of Thessalonica from 1416 or 1417 until his death in 1429, reports that his Thessalonian cathedral of Hagia Sophia was the last church to maintain daily celebration of the Sung Office, its performance elsewhere having been limited to the performance of asmatic vespers in the Great Church of Constantinople on the eves of three feasts: the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September), St John Chrysostom (13 November), and the Dormition of the Mother of God: De sacra precatione, Migne, Patrologia Graeca 155, cols 553–56; English translation in Symeon of Thessalonike, Treatise on Prayer: An Explanation of the Services Conducted in the Orthodox Church, tr. H.L.N. Simmons, The Archbishop Iakovos Library of Ecclesiastical and Historical Sources 9 (Brookline, MA, 1984), pp. 21–2. Yet the transmission of asmatic festal vespers in late Byzantine musical manuscripts indicates, as I have shown elsewhere (‘Festal Cathedral Vespers’, pp. 428–48), that this service was more widely performed in Paleologan Byzantium both on feasts and Saturday evenings. 40   The complete repertory of melodies from twelfth- and thirteenth-century manuscripts has been edited in G. Hintze, Das byzantinische Prokeimena-Repertoire Untersuchungen und kritische Edition, Hamburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 9 (Hamburg, 1973). See also S. Harris, ‘The Byzantine Prokeimena’, Plainsong and Medieval Music 3 (1994), pp. 133–47.

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production, which included the propagation of sound in particular acoustical environments, in some way reshaped the soundscape of worship. Despite regularly noting the assignment of chants to a particular mode of the Octoechos, only rarely do rubrics for services of the Great Church contain qualitative or technical musical terms, so it is primarily notated chantbooks that enable us to discern how changes of musical style related to the daily, weekly and seasonal rhythms of Byzantine cathedral worship. Where custom endowed a psalmodic text of the Sung Office with multiple melodies, their relative solemnity may fruitfully be charted along a spectrum marking the relative prominence of their text or music. Placing these melodies at their appropriate points between the spectrum’s extremes of unmodulated speech and wordless singing, we find that festal chants tend to be both longer and musically more varied in melodic contour than their ferial counterparts. The same procedure may be applied cumulatively to the musical content of entire services, leading one to the complementary conclusion that festal services were generally invested with greater musical sophistication. How this worked in practice may be seen from the outline of the festal asmatic vespers in Table 17.1. This service differed structurally from its ferial weekday counterpart mainly in its omission of the additional variable antiphons that were customarily sung between the first and final antiphons of its opening section, and in the inclusion of chanted readings from the Old Testament at its end. For their celebration both the festal and ferial versions of Constantinopolitan cathedral vespers required the participation of representatives of the higher clergy, a double-choir of cantors led by soloists, and complementary choirs of readers. Whereas the Prokeimenon was assigned only to the most accomplished singers of the elite choir of psaltai, Table 17.2 shows how the invariable opening antiphon of the service incorporated all singers present. Although soloists drawn from the psaltai and higher clergy began and ended the antiphon, the bulk of its biblical text was delivered by the choirs employing a stereotyped melodic formula (‘psalm-tone’), each iteration of which was punctuated by a brief refrain. In performance this hierarchically ordered alternation of singers and melodic styles would have yielded a soundscape characterised by sonic, musical and spatial variety.

Table 17.1

Musical styles in the chants of festal vespers celebrated according to the rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (the Sung or Asmatic Office)

Sung Item

Lesser Feasts

First Antiphon (Psalm 85)

• A soloist chants musically florid introductions before the final petition of the deacon and after the ecphonesis of the celebrant • The stichologia: the two choirs of cantors perform alternate verses of the main body of the psalm using a syllabic musical formula (psalm tone). • The appropriate choir of readers punctuates each verse with a brief syllabic refrain • Florid solo coda • Florid solo introductions as in the First Antiphon • The cantorial choirs employ a syllabic psalm tone for the stichologia, which is often abbreviated. • Each psalm verse is followed by a moderately florid refrain (‘Alleluia’)

Final Antiphon (Teleutaion)

Ps. 140 with Kekragarion and Entrance’

• Florid solo introduction • Syllabic choral psalm tone • Syllabic ‘Kekragarion’ (poetic refrain of one or two sentences) • Solo verse at the Entrance • Syllabic choral psalmody resumes • [In some late sources: stichera from the Palestinian rite] • Florid solo coda

Saturdays and Greater Feasts As on lesser feasts, but generally set in a more elaborate musical idiom and/or different mode

As on lesser feasts, but set in a more elaborate musical idiom and/or different mode As on lesser feasts, but set in a more elaborate musical idiom and/or different mode

Comments With the exception of settings of the Kneeling Vespers of Pentecost transmitted in South Italian copies of the Psaltikon, the choral psalmody of asmatic Vespers is found only in psalmodic anthologies (Akolouthiai) of the 14th and 15th centuries.

Sung Item Prokeimenon

First ‘Little’ Antiphon: Ps 114 w/ refrain ‘At the prayers of the Mother of God’ Second ‘Little’ Antiphon: Ps. 115 w/ refrain ‘O Son of God’ +2 troparia (‘Onlybegotten Son’ and ‘Let us sing the praise of the most glorious Mother of God’) Third ‘Little’ Antiphon: Ps. 116 + Trisagion

Lesser Feasts Melismatic responsorial psalmody led by a soloist from the ambo.

Syllabic refrains (Neumatic in some MSS) Syllabic (Neumatic in some MSS)

Syllabic (Melismatic in some MSS) + a florid solo coda

OT Readings

Sung w/ lectionary notation

Concluding Hymns (Apolytikia)

Syllabic, with some exceptions

Saturdays and Greater Feasts As on lesser feasts

Comments The initial refrain and its verses are notated in the Psaltikon. A more elaborate final choral refrain (dochē) is transmitted for some chants in the Asmatikon.

Neumatic refrains Neumatic refrains with syllabic concluding troparia

MSS provide only incipits of the troparia

• Florid solo intro- Trisagion replaced by ‘Christ has risen’ for Paschal Vespers duction • Melismatic refrains • Florid solo introduction to the final refrain Sung from lectionary From the Prophetologion notation Syllabic, with some exceptions

Table 17.2

Outline of the invariable opening psalm of Asmatic Vespers

1. Litany of Peace Ὁ Διάκονος. ᾿Εν εἰρήνῃ, τοῦ Κυρίου δεηθῶμεν. Ὁ Λαός. Κύριε, ἐλέησον. Ὁ Διάκονος. Ὑπὲρ τῆς ἄνωθεν εἰρήνης καὶ τῆς σωτηρίας τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν, τοῦ Κυρίου δεηθῶμεν. Ὁ Λαός. Κύριε, ἐλέησον. … Κτλ. …

Deacon: In peace, let us pray to the Lord. People: Lord, have mercy. Deacon: For the peace from on high and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord. People: Lord, have mercy. … Etc. …

Ὁ Διάκονος.᾿Αντιλαβοῦ, σῶσον, ἐλέησον καὶ διαφύλαξον ἡμᾶς, ὁ Θεός, τῇ σῇ χάριτι.

Deacon: Help us, save us, have mercy on us, and keep us, O God, by your grace.

2. Antiphon Solo Intonation #1 Ὁ Δομέστικος. Καὶ ἐπάκουσόν μου· δόξα σοι, ὁ Θεός. 3. Conclusion of the Litany, Prayer and Ecphonesis Ὁ Διάκονος. Τῆς Παναγίας, ἀχράντου, ὑπερευλογημένης, ἐνδόξου, Δεσποίνης ἡμῶν Θεοτόκου καὶ ἀειπαρθένου Μαρίας, μετὰ πάντων τῶν ἁγίων μνημονεύσαντες, ἑαυτοὺς καὶ ἀλλήλους καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν ζωὴν ἡμῶν Χριστῷ τῷ Θεῷ παραθώμεθα.

The Choir Leader: And hear me. Glory to you, O God.

Deacon: Commemorating our all-holy, pure, most blessed and glorious Lady, Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary, with all the Saints, let us entrust ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.

Ὁ Λαός. Σοί, Κύριε. ΕΥΧΗ ΑΝΤΙΦΩΝΟΥ Α´ Ὁ Ἱερεύς [μυστικῶς]. Κύριε οἰκτίρμον καὶ ἐλεῆμον… ᾿Εκφώνησις· Ὅτι πρέπει σοι πᾶσα δόξα, τιμὴ καὶ προσκύνησις, τῶ Πατρὶ καὶ τῷ Υἱῷ καὶ τῷ Ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι, νῦν καὶ ἁεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων.

People: To you, O Lord. Prayer of The First Antiphon Priest [softly]: O Lord, compassionate and merciful… Aloud: For to you belong all glory, honour and worship, to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, and to the ages of ages.

4. Antiphon Solo Intonation #2 Ὁ Δομέστικος. ᾿Αμήν. Κλῖνον, Κύριε, τὸ οὖς σου, καὶ ἐπάκουσόν μου· δόξα σοι, ὁ Θεός.

The Choir Leader: Amen. Incline your ear, Lord, and hear me. Glory to you, O God.

5. Antiphon Stichologia Οἱ χοροὶ ἐναλλάξ. Ὁ Α´χορὸς τῶν ψαλτῶν· Κλῖνον, Κύριε, τὸ οὖς σου, καὶ ἐπάκουσόν μου· Ὁ Α´ χορὸς τῶν ἀναγνωστῶν· δόξα σοι, ὁ Θεός. Ὁ Β´χορὸς τῶν ψαλτῶν· Ὅτι πτωχὸς καὶ πένης εἰμὶ ἐγω· Ὁ Β´ χορὸς τῶν ἀναγνωστῶν. δόξα σοι, ὁ Θεός. Ὁ Α´χορὸς τῶν ψαλτῶν· Φύλαξον τὴν ψυχήν μου, ὅτι ὅσιός εἰμι· σῶσον τὸν δοῦλόν σου, ὁ Θεός μου, τὸν ἐλπίζοντα ἐπὶ σέ· Ὁ Α´ χορὸς τῶν ἀναγνωστῶν·. δόξα σοι, ὁ Θεός. … Κτλ. … 6. Antiphon Solo Coda Καὶ ὁ Δομέστικος περισσήν. Δόξα σοι, ὁ Θεός· δόξα σοι, ὁ Θεός· δόξα σοι, ὁ Θεός.

The choirs alternately. Cantors Choir #1: Incline your ear, Lord, and hear me. Readers Choir #1: Glory to you, O God. Cantors Choir #2: For I am poor and in penury. Readers Choir #2: Glory to you, O God. Cantors Choir #1: Preserve my soul, for I am holy. Save your servant, my God, who hopes in you.

Readers Choir #1: Glory to you, O God. … Etc. …

The Choir Leader. Glory to you, O God. Glory to you, O God. Glory to you, O God.

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Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Byzantine manuscripts with music for festal cathedral vespers reveal that on commemorations of the Mother of God and other saints – a level of solemnity they designate with the generic rubric ‘εἰς ἐπισήμους ἑορτάς’ (‘for notable feasts’) – the psalmodic antiphons sung during the first half of the service were sung in syllabic or mildly decorated melodic styles.41 Diverging only slightly from the stylistic norms of their ferial counterparts in the weekday offices of the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite, these antiphons feature choral melodies that remain generally sober and utilitarian (characteristically, solo passages are of greater melodic interest). Versions of cathedral vespers for solemnities of Christ in the same sources, on the other hand, tend to endow their antiphons with chants that are musically more substantial, melodically distinctive and challenging for their singers to perform. This difference in musical style may be glimpsed in Example 17.1, which contrasts three settings from a late Byzantine manuscript of the choral refrain for Psalm 85, the invariable opening psalm of asmatic vespers: (a) a stunningly unimaginative version in Mode Plagal 2 for the feasts of saints; (b) a melody in Mode 1 for Easter; and c) a setting in Mode Plagal 4 ascribed variously to the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September) and ordinary Saturdays, the latter of which have a paschal theme due to their position on the eve of the Sunday commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ. The tendency within the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite to manifest heightened solemnity on great feasts with more elaborate music is perhaps expressed most strikingly in notated settings of the asmatic Kneeling Vespers of Pentecost (gonyklesia) that are transmitted in South Italian manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.42 Copied for use in Stoudite monasteries of Magna Graecia that extraordinarily celebrated vespers according to the rite of the Great Church each Pentecost, these settings represent the most technically sophisticated vocal traditions cultivated at the Great Church of Hagia Sophia prior to 1204.43 Their music for Psalm 18 (‘The heavens declare the glory of 41

  I analyse these settings in ‘Festal Cathedral Vespers’, pp. 421–59.   Overviews of these musical settings are D. Conomos, ‘Music for the Evening Office on Whitsunday’, Actes de XVe Congrès International d’Études Byzantines (Athens, 1979), pp. 453–69; and S. Harris, ‘The Byzantine Office of the Genuflexion’, Music and Letters 77 (1996), pp. 333–47. 43   These traditions are preserved in three musical collections – the Asmatikon, the Psaltikon and the Asma – that survive mainly in South Italian copies. The Asmatikon contains the elaborate choral chants performed in the rite of the Great Church by elite choirs of cantors, whilst the music for their soloists is included in the Psaltikon. The Asma is a collection of florid chants that are stylistic forerunners of the kalophonic repertories of Paleologan Byzantium. For an overview of these collections, see A. Doneda, ‘I manoscritti liturgicomusicali bizantini: Tipologie e organizzazione’, in Á. Escobar (ed.), El palimpsesto grecolatino como fenómeno librario y textual, Colección Actas. Filología (Zaragoza, 2006), pp. 103–10; as well as the detailed inventories in P.B. Di Salvo, ‘Gli asmata nella musica bizantina’, Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata XIII, XIV (1959–60), pp. 45–50, 127–45 [XIII] and 45–78 [XIV]; P.B. 42

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Example 17.1 Choral refrains for Psalm 85 from MS Athens EBE 2061

Example 17.1a For the Feasts of Saints (fol. 50r)

Example 17.1b For Easter Sunday (fol. 48r)

Example 17.1c For Saturday Evenings (and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross) (fol. 21r) God’), the final variable antiphon (Teleutaion antiphonon) of Pentecost vespers, is particularly remarkable for its florid melodic style, monumental scale and hybrid formal construction. An outline of the musical setting in an appendix to the Psaltikon Florence Ashburnhamensis 64, a manuscript copied at the monastery of Grottaferrata near Rome in the year 1289, is shown in Table 17.3.44

Di Salvo, ‘Asmatikon’, Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata XVI (1962), pp. 135–58; and C. Thodberg, Der byzantinische Alleluiarionzyklus: Studien im kurzen Psaltikonstil, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Subsidia (Copenhague, 1966), pp. 9–31. 44   Fols 259r–264v. This manuscript has been published in facsimile as C. Høeg (ed.), Contacarium Ashburnhamense: Codex Bibl. Laurentianae Ashburnhamensis 64 phototypice depictus, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae 4 (Copenhagen, 1956). Conomos offers a slightly different analysis of this chant in ‘Whitsunday’, pp. 459–69.

Table 17.3

The final Antiphon (‘Teleutaion’) prior to the Lamplighting Psalms as sung at the asmatic Kneeling Vespers of Pentecost according to the Psaltikon MS Florence Ashburnhamensis 64. With additional rubrics from the Euchologion MS Grottaferrata Γ.β. 35 (GROT) and the Typikon of San Salvatore di Messina MS Mess. gr. 115 (MES)*

Liturgical Unit and Additional Rubrics

1. Continuation of Small Litany

2. Antiphon Solo Intonation #1

Musical Style

Vocal Range (relative pitch)

Improvised cantillation

Melismatic chant

d–c’

Improvised cantillation and congregational response

A

Greek Text with Intonations and Asmatic Letters from MS Ashb. 64

Translation (Intonations and asmatic letters omitted)

Ὁ Διάκονος.᾿Αντιλαβοῦ, σῶσον, ἐλέησον καὶ διαφύλαξον ἡμᾶς, ὁ Θεός, τῇ σῇ χάριτι.

Deacon: Help us, save us, have mercy on us, and keep us, O God, by your grace.

Ὁ Δομέστικος. Νεανενανω. Τὴν οἰκουμέ-νε·νενενηγγην. Ἀναγϊα·

The Choir Leader: The Universe.

c–b

B

Ἀχαουα χαουα· λεχεουεγγε- ενανε νενε· ελούνουϊα· Ἀναγϊα.

Alleluia.

d–c’

C

Ἀλλενανενεουε· νενανελουια· αγγα. Νεανες:

Alleluia

e–d’

D(ab)

g–e’

3. Conclusion of the Litany, Prayer and Ecphonesis

Musical Form

Ἀναγγα· αουαναναουα· αναναουαναναουα. (Νεανες)** Ἀναλλεχεουγγε: ενεχενεουεουε·λουνουϊαγγα. Ὁ Διάκονος. Τῆς Παναγίας…Χριστῷ τῷ Θεῷ παραθώμεθα. Ὁ Λαός. Σοί, Κύριε. Ὁ Ἱερεύς. …νῦν καὶ ἁεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων.

Alleluia

Deacon: Commemorating…to Christ our God. People: To you, O Lord. Priest …now and for ever, and to the ages of ages.

4. Antiphon Solo Intonation #2 = Ps 18:1a

Melismatic chant

d–d’

A’

GROT and MES: The choir of psaltai enters at ‘διηγοῦνται’

c–b

B’

5. Antiphon Stichologia

d–b

A’’

Ὁ Δομέστικος. [᾿Αμήν.] Νεανες. Οἱ οὐρανοὶ διηγοῦνται δόξαν Θεοῦ. Ἀναγϊα. Ἀχαουα χαουα λλεχεουεγγε ενανε.νενε ελουνουϊαγγα. (Νεχεανες.) Ποίησιν δὲ χειρῶν αὐτοῦ  ἀναγγέλει τὸ στερέωνωνωμαγγα. Ἀναγϊα

The Choir Leader: Amen. The heavens declare the glory of God Alleluia

The firmament proclaims the work of his hands.

d–c’

C’

Ἀλλενανενεουε· νενανε· λούνουϊα.

Alleluia.

d–b

A’’’

(Νεχεανες). Ἡμέρα τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐρεύγεται ῥῆμα καὶ νὺξ νυκτὶ ἀναγγέλει γνῶνωνωνωσιγγιν. Νεανες.

Day to day produces speech and night to night proclaims knowledge.

e–d’

D(a’b’)’

Ἀναουα αναναουα αναναουα (Νεανες.) ἀναλλεχεουε ενεχενεουε χεουε λούνουϊνια

g–e’ d–c’

A’’’’

c–b

B’’

d–c’

A’’’’’

d–b

C’’

d–c’

A’’’’’

e–d’

D(a’’b’’)’’

g–e’

(Νεχεανες). Οὐκ εἰσὶ λαλιαί, οὐδὲ λόγοι, ὧν οὐχὶ  ἀκούονται αἱ φωναὶ ἀναυτῶγγων. Ἀναγϊα. Ἀχαουα χαουα λεχεουεγγε ενανε νε λούνουϊα. (Νεχεανες). Εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν ἐξῆλθεν ὁ φθόγγος αὐτῶν, καὶ εἰς τὰ πέρατα τῆς οἰκουμένης τὰ ρήματα ἀναναναναυτῶγγων. Ἀλλενανενεουε· νενανε λούνουϊνιαγγα. (Νεχεανες.) Ἐν τῷ ἡλίῳ ἔθετο τὸ σκήνωμα αὐτοῦ, καὶ αὐτὸς ὡς νυμφίος ἐκπορευόμενος ἐκ παστοῦ ἀναναὐτοῦ. (Νεανες.) Ἀναουαναναουα· αναναουα (Νεανες) Ἀναλεχεουε ενεχεουε χεουε λούνουϊνιαγγα.

Alleluia.

There are no sayings or words in which their voices are not heard.: Alleluia Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world:. Alleluia. He has pitched his tent in the sun; and he is like a bridegroom who comes out of his marriage chamber.

Alleluia.

(c–e’)

(ABCD(ab))x

6. Doxology and Coda

d–c’

A’’’’’’’

(Νεχεανες.) Δόξα Πατρί, καὶ Υἱῷ, καὶ Ἁγίῳ Πνεύμανανατιγγι.

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

c–b

B’’’

Ἀχαουα χαουα ἀλλεχεουεγγε ενανε νενενελούνουϊαγγα.

Alleluia.

d–c’

A’’’’’’’

(Νεχεανες.) Καὶ νῦν, καὶ  εί, καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀναναναναμήγγην. Ἀναγϊα.

Both now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.

d–c’

C’’’

Ἀλλενανανεουε ενενανε λούνουϊνινινιαγγα Νεανες.

Alleluia.

e–d’

D(a’’’b’’’)’’’

Ἀναναουαναναουα αναναουα Νεανες Ἀναλλεχεουεγγε ενεχενεουε χεουε λούνουϊαγγα.

g–e’

Εἶτα στιχολογεῖται τὸ ἐπίλοιπον τοῦ ψαλμοῦ [MES (=GROT): Καἰ λέγει στίχους ὅσους θέλει.]

And then the stichologia of the rest of the psalm is performed [or, in MES and GROT: And he performs as many verses as he wishes.]

(5a. Optional continuation of the Stichologia)

Alleluia.

*  Høeg (ed.), Contacarium Ashburnhamense, fols 259r–64v; O. Strunk (ed.), Specimina notationum antiquiorum: Folia selecta ex variis codicibus saec. x, xi, & xii phototypice depicta, Monumenta musicae Byzantinae 7 (Copenhagen, 1966), plates 38–42; and M. Arranz, Le Typicon du monastère du Saint-Sauveur à Messine: Codex Messinensis gr. 115, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 185 (Rome, 1969), p. 279. **  Intonations in parentheses are indicated in the manuscript by martyriai (intonation signs).

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In this festal Teleutaion the standard format for Constantinopolitan antiphonal psalmody serves as a framework for a cycle of modified repetitions of a sequence of three Alleluias – each of which has been extended through the interpolation of additional syllables, a stylistic trait characteristic of melismatic choral chants in the repertories of the Great Church – that is heard without interruption only once as the conclusion to the first solo intonation. This threefold Alleluia is constructed in three distinct musical segments, the third of which (D) is divided into two parts (a and b) that together are roughly equal in length to the first two segments combined (B and C). When sung in sequence (BCD(ab)), the Alleluias execute a gradual ascent in vocal register (tessitura) to a cadence a sixth above their starting pitch. When the antiphon resumes after the diaconal litany, its second intonation is elided both musically and textually into the stichologia of the psalm, where the components of the triple Alleluia appear separately with minor melodic variations as refrains to successive verses. Psalm verses following the second solo intonation begin with a traditional choral psalm-tone, but substitute the next florid Alleluia in the sequence for the customary simple choral refrain. At the end of every third refrain the music reaches a sonic and registral climax, after which the melodic ascent begins anew with further melodic variations. Before moving on to Palestinian traditions, it is worth pausing here briefly to consider how listeners whose musical and temporal expectations had been shaped by the daily psalmody of the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite might have perceived this extraordinary antiphon for Pentecost vespers, which lasts nearly thirty-five minutes on a recent recording by Cappella Romana.45 On ferial occasions, as we have noted above, antiphons sung during the opening section of Sung Vespers (and, incidentally, Sung Orthros as well) consisted mainly of a highly repetitive stichologia in which the choirs alternated in rendering verses syllabically to a simple musical formula that led always to the same (and usually brief) refrain. Congregants familiar with ordinary asmatic antiphonal psalmody who attended Pentecost vespers would have had their stylistic expectations initially satisfied when they heard a soloist begin the Teleutaion’s first intonation at the usual point in the diaconal litany, but might well have experienced some disorientation as the music continued to unfold and ascend in tessitura over the approximately six minutes required for its performance. 45

  Cappella Romana, Byzantium in Rome: Medieval Byzantine Chant from Grottaferrata, dir. Ioannis Arvanitis and A. Lingas (Cappella Romana 403-2CD, 2007), Disc 2. Although the manuscript offers the option of repeating music to achieve a complete rendition of the psalm in the stichologia, the recording features only the notated six verses actually provided with musical notation. Ioannis Arvanitis edited the music for modern performance without recourse to the traditions of ‘long exegesis’ employed by Greek cantors during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which would have produced a musical work at least quadruple in length.

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Yet it was only once listeners were well into the antiphon’s stichologia that they would have begun to apprehend its unusually expansive sonic and temporal proportions. Although each psalm verse after the second intonation was rendered musically with a traditional syllabic psalm-tone, it was dwarfed in scale by the Alleluia appended to it. The normal function of a stichologia – that of efficiently conveying the bulk of a psalmic text in a musically repetitive (and therefore, arguably, affectively unobtrusive) manner – was not so much ignored as overshadowed by the goal of offering extravagant praise to God. This purpose would, of course, have been inherent to any antiphon that featured ‘alleluia’ as a refrain due to the literal meaning of the word, but here in the Teleutaion it was being pursued through primarily musical means. One sign of this was the way in which ‘alleluia’ was brought to the edge of intelligibility with ecstatic melismata and the intercalation of so-called ‘asmatic’ letters. Another was the presence in the antiphon of elements of musical design that operated independently of its psalmic text: the unusual formal construction of the first solo intonation, its division into a cycle of three Alleluias during the stichologia, the repeated slow ascent in tessitura, and the melodic variations that distinguished each cycle of Alleluias as being in some way unique. Byzantine liturgical commentaries unfortunately do not explicitly deal with matters of musical form and style, but it seems reasonable to assume that the reactions of listeners to this Pentecost antiphon would have been shaped by what Metropolitan Kallistos Ware calls the ‘dominant “model”’ of liturgical interpretation in Byzantium: an anagogical vision in which earthly worship is seen as an icon of heaven through which human beings participate in the perpetual angelic ministry of praise.46 Bearing this in mind, it is not hard for one to see the elaborate music of the Teleutaion as an attempt to depict in sound the notion that ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God’ with music that is more angelic than human in form and scale. Reflections of the interpenetration of heavenly and earthly worship in this antiphon may be discerned not only in such obvious features as the periodic suspension of normal speech, but also in its combination of cyclical and teleological formal devices. The three Alleluias ascend melodically to a particular goal, the achievement of which brings about a repetition of their sequence accompanied by melodic variations. A limit is placed on their potentially endless repetition by the text of Psalm 18, the doxology of which is interwoven with the final modified recapitulation of the refrains. 46   Bishop [now Metropolitan] Kallistos of Diokleia, ‘The Meaning of the Divine Liturgy for the Byzantine Worshipper’, in Morris (ed.), Church and People in Byzantium, pp. 8–11. General introductions to the origins and importance of anagogical vision within Byzantine liturgy are J.A. McGuckin, Standing in God’s Holy Fire: The Byzantine Tradition, Traditions of Christian Spirituality Series (London, 2001), pp. 23–32 and 131–49; and R.F. Taft, S.J., ‘The Liturgy of the Great Church: An Initial Synthesis of Structure and Interpretation on the Eve of Iconoclasm’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34–35 (1980–81), pp. 45–75, at pp. 59–62.

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The Palestinian Divine Office in Middle and Late Byzantium The catechetical homilies of St Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386) and the diary of the Spanish pilgrim Egeria show that by the end of the fourth century A.D. the Holy City of Jerusalem had developed its own distinct system of public worship.47 At its centre was the great cathedral of the Anastasis constructed by Constantine I, which served as hub for a stational liturgy that recalled events in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus through the performance of prayers, readings and psalmody at sites associated with those events. Monasticism flowered during the same era both in Jerusalem itself and in the Palestinian deserts that surrounded it, with the Great Lavra of St Sabas soon emerging as the preeminent extramural community.48 Whereas some ascetics cultivated musically austere forms of prayer and worship, others embraced to varying degrees the popular and melodious psalmodic practices of the cathedral. The monks and nuns (monazontes and parthenae) that Egeria witnessed chanting at the Anastasis were forerunners of the Spoudaioi, a resident community of monastics that, like the asketeria of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, contributed to the cycles of cathedral liturgy.49

Despite the upheavals and losses of imperial control brought about by the Persian and Arab conquests of the seventh century, Jerusalem retained and further developed its own system of cathedral worship throughout the first millennium and in so doing profoundly influenced other liturgical traditions, including those of Constantinople, Rome, Armenia and Georgia.50

47   Compact surveys of the sources and forms of early Hagiopolite liturgy are J.F. Baldovin, Liturgy in Ancient Jerusalem, Alcuin/GROW liturgical study 9 (Bramcote, Nottingham, 1989); and S. Verhelst, ‘The Liturgy of Jerusalem in the Byzantine Period’, in O. Limor and G.G. Stroumsa (eds), Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 5 (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 421–62. See also the explanatory essays and commentary in J. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 3rd edn (Warminster, 1999). 48   On these monasteries, see Y. Hirschfeld, ‘The Monasteries of Palestine in the Byzantine Period’, in Limor and Stroumsa (eds), Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land, pp. 401–19. 49   Their establishment is briefly described by J. Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in Eastern Monasticism, Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 32 (Washington, D.C., 1995), p. 5. On their contribution to cathedral psalmody in the centuries after Egeria, see J.-M. Garrigues, ‘Les caractéristiques du monachisme basilical (Ve–VIIIe siècle)’, in J.-M. Garrigues and J. Legrez (eds), Moines dans l’assemblée des fidèles à l’époque des Pères, IVe-VIIIe siècle (Paris, 1992), pp. 151–221, at pp. 166–8. 50   Armenians and Georgians adopted the urban rite of Jerusalem with only fairly minor structural modifications, leading to the survival in their languages of Palestinian liturgical sources representing stages of development for which evidence in the original Greek is fragmentary or non-existent. It is from the Georgian sources in particular that the nature and extent of influence of Hagiopolite worship on the liturgical practice of the Late Antique

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Whilst a detailed account of the dissemination of Hagiopolite liturgical forms is beyond the scope of this study, it is worth noting two musical innovations that profoundly altered the soundscape of Byzantine worship. Like the Great Church of Hagia Sophia, the cathedral of the Anastasis possessed a Divine Office rooted in biblical psalmody. The scriptural core of Hagiopolite worship was expressed in the Palestinian Psalter (which differed from that of Hagia Sophia in its shorter verses and division not into antiphons, but kathismata and doxai), the fixed psalms and canticles of the Book of the Hours (Horologion), and seasonally appropriate psalmodic chants attached to the temporal cycles of its lectionaries.51 Whereas, as we have already seen, the Sung Office of Constantinople continued to provide its worshippers with a fairly strict diet of biblical psalmody, the musical repertories of Jerusalem were transformed at an early stage by a movement to adorn its psalms and canticles with ever-increasing quantities of newly composed hymns that served not only as vehicles of praise, supplication and thanksgiving, but also of scriptural exegesis and catechism. The development of hymnody moved in parallel with the adoption in Jerusalem of a system of eight musical modes (the Octoechos), the first signs of which Frøyshov discerns in the fifth (or perhaps even as early as the later fourth) century.52 The Octoechos provided Palestinian churches with a shared vocabulary of scales and melodic formulas to be exploited by cantors and composers, as well as a principle of liturgical organisation manifested most prominently in the establishment of an eight-week cycle of Sundays on which one of the modes would predominate.53 An initial and early medieval Greek East and Latin West are now being revealed. Key studies of these patterns of influence include C. Renoux, ‘De Jérusalem en Arménie. L’héritage liturgique de l’Église arménienne’, in T. Hummel, K. Hintlian and U. Carmesund (eds), Patterns of the Past, Prospects for the Future: The Christian Heritage in the Holy Land (London, 1999), pp. 114–23; S.S.R. Frøyshov, ‘The Georgian Witness to the Jerusalem Liturgy: New Sources and Studies’, in B. Groen, S. Hawkes-Teeples and S. Alexopoulos (eds), Inquiries into Eastern Christian Worship: Selected Papers of the Second International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgies, Rome, 17–21 September 2008, Eastern Christian Studies 12 (Leuven, 2012), pp. 227–67; and P. Jeffery, ‘Rome and Jerusalem: From Oral Tradition to Written Repertory in Two Ancient Liturgical Centers’, in G.M. Boone (ed.), Essays on Medieval Music: In Honor of David G. Hughes (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 207–47. 51   See G.R. Parpulov, ‘Toward a History of Byzantine Psalters’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2004), pp. 11–12 (on the Palestinian Psalter); and Frøyshov, ‘The Georgian Witness’, pp. 244–56 (Horologia and lectionaries). 52   S.R. Frøyshov, ‘The Early Development of the Liturgical Eight-Mode System in Jerusalem’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 51 (2007), pp. 139–78. 53   Regarding the musical aspects of the early Octoechos and the dissemination of the eight-mode system to Syriac, Latin, Byzantine and Slavic traditions of chant, see P. Jeffery, ‘The Earliest Oktōēchoi: The Role of Jerusalem and Palestine in the Beginnings of Modal Ordering’, in P. Jeffery (ed.), The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West. In

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synthesis of these developments is preserved in the ‘Ancient Iadgari’, a Georgian translation of a lost sixth-century Greek hymnal that includes a modally ordered group of eight sets of Sunday hymns celebrating the resurrection of Christ.54 Christian efforts to regroup following the Persian sack of Jerusalem in 614 brought Palestinian cathedral and monastic traditions into even closer alignment, adding new momentum to the process of musically and textually enriching Palestinian liturgy. The outstanding early figure in this second wave of liturgical creativity was Patriarch Sophronios (d. 638), a bishop with monastic formation whose contributions to Hagiopolite worship include homilies, prayers and hymns with original melodies (idiomela).55 Among the latter are chants for the services of Great Friday, Christmas and Theophany that are still used today in the Byzantine rite (albeit with newer melodies). Sophronios proved to be the first of many of eponymous ‘melodists’ (poet–composers) associated with the church of Jerusalem, the list of which includes Andrew of Crete (d. 720), John of Damascus (d. 749) and Kosmas of Maïouma (d. 787). Their hymns were incorporated during the eighth century into a revised hymnal for the Holy City that in the original Greek bore the generic title ‘Tropologion’, the crowning glory of which were the complex strophic poems known today as kanons.56 For insertion between the verses of the canticles or ‘odes’ of Palestinian morning prayer (up to the full set of nine might be appointed on a given day), the Ancient Iadgari had only provided heterogeneous collections of thematically appropriate hymns comparable to those still used in the modern Byzantine rite for Lauds Honor of Kenneth Levy (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 147–209. Jeffery’s discussion of the emergence of the Octoechos in Hagiopolite liturgy should be read in the light of Frøyshov, ‘The Early Development’, pp. 164–9. 54   French translation and commentary in C. Renoux, Les hymnes de la Résurrection: I. Hymnographie liturgique géorgienne. Introduction, traduction et annotation des textes du Sinaï 18, Sources Liturgiques 3 (Paris, 2000). 55   A summary of his life and works is C. v. Schönborn, Sophrone de Jérusalem: Vie monasitque et confession dogmatique, Théologie historique 20 (Paris, 1972), pp. 53–117. Regarding the conflicting attributions for the Royal Hours of Great Friday, see S. Janeras, Le Vendredi-Saint dans la tradition liturgique byzantine: Structure et histoire de ses offices, Studia Anselmiana 19; Analecta Liturgica 13 (Rome, 1988), pp. 250–59. 56   The surviving Georgian sources of the Tropologion (the ‘New Iadgari’) and the fragmentary counterparts of their Greek originals discovered among the New Finds of Sinai are surveyed in Frøyshov, ‘The Georgian Witness’, pp. 237–40; and R. Krivko, ‘Синайскославянские гимнографические параллели’, Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета. Серия 3: Филология 1 (2008), pp. 56–102. Krivko (pp. 73–4) observes that the appellation κανών was originally a Palestinian synonym for ‘service’ (‘ἀκολουθία’), which explains why both terms are attached to the hymnographic genre in early sources.

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and the Lamplighting Psalms.57 With the advent of the kanon, however, a single author assumed the task of writing and perhaps composing music for a single multi-section poem in which each ode was supplied with a set of hymns (‘troparia’) that were metrically and melodically identical to a model stanza (‘heirmos’). The heirmoi could be either originally composed for that kanon (as was usual on great feasts), or borrowed from the extant repertory of model tunes. Listeners to the performance of a kanon would have been oblivious to acrostics formed by the initial letters of its troparia, but they would have discerned as marks of unity the development of a single topic in its text and the use of a single mode – and, according to Arvanitis, duple metre58 – in its music. At the same time, they would have been conscious of the variety created by the sequence of biblical canticles, the efforts of the poet to echo the scriptural language of each ode’s host canticle, the use of multiple tunes, and shifts between pitch and stress accent as heirmoi were applied to successive troparia.59

57   The nine canticles (odes) of Palestinian orthros are: (1) Exodus 15:1–19; (2) Deuteronomy 32:1–43; (3) 1 Kings (=1 Samuel) 2:1–10; (4) Habakkuk 3:1–19; (5) Isaiah 26:9–20; (6) Jonah 2:3–10; (7) Daniel 3:26–56; (8) Daniel 3:57–88; and (9) Luke 1:46–55, 68–79. Eventually the Second Ode fell from use on non-penitential occasions, about which see L. Bernhard, ‘Der Ausfall der 2. Ode im byzantinischen Neuenodenkanon’, in T. Michels and A. Rohracher (eds), Heuresis. Festschrift für Andreas Rohracher, 25 Jahre Erzbischof V. Salzburg (Salzburg, 1969), pp. 91–101; and R. Krivko, ‘К истории второй песни гимнографического канона: утраты и интерполяции’, in D. Christians, D. Stern and V.S. Tomelleri (eds), Bibel, Liturgie und Frömmigkeit in der Slavia Byzantina. Festgabe für Hans Rothe zum 80. Geburtstag, Studies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe 3 (Munich, 2009), pp. 229–42. For an example of a heterogeneous collection of anonymous hymns intended for use with the full Palestinian sequence of Nine Odes, see the texts for Palm Sunday translated by Renoux from the Ancient Iadgari: C. Renoux, L’hymnaire de Saint-Sabas (Ve-VIIe siècle): Le manuscrit géorgien H 2123. I. Du Samedi de Lazare à la Pentecôte, Patrologia Orientalis 50, Fascicule 3, No. 224 (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 298–312. 58   I. Arvanitis, ‘The Rhythmical and Metrical Structure of the Byzantine Heirmoi and Stichera as a Means to and as a Result of a New Rhythmical Interpretation of the Byzantine Chant’, Acta Musicae Byzantinae 6 (2003), pp. 14–29; and, in much greater detail, I. Arvanitis, ‘Ὁ ῤυθμὸς τῶν ἐκκλησιαστικῶν μελῶν μέσα ἀπὸ τὴ παλαιογραφικὴ ἔρευνα καὶ τὴν ἐξήγηση τῆς παλαιᾶς σημειογραφίας. Ἡ μετρικὴ καὶ ῥυθμικὴ δομὴ τῶν παλαιῶν στιχηρῶν καὶ εἱρμῶν’ (Ph.D. diss., Ionian University, 2010). Several decades before, Jan van Biezen had reached a similar conclusion about the use of duple rhythms in kanons in his study The Middle Byzantine Kanon-notation of Manuscript H (Bilthoven, 1968). 59   For a theological analysis of three kanons (those for Easter, Transfiguration and the Dormition of the Mother of God) by John of Damascus, see A. Louth, St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford and New York, 2002), pp. 258–82. The rhythmical and metrical issues arising from the application of medieval heirmoi to their troparia are analysed in Arvanitis, ‘Ὁ ῤυθμὸς τῶν ἐκκλησιαστικῶν μελῶν’, pp. 277–328.

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The cumulative effect of these developments in hymnody was a reordering of the liturgical soundscape in the cathedral rite of Jerusalem, as well as in those nearby monasteries where melodious chanting was viewed with favour.60 Originally, as witnessed by Egeria, the antiphonal psalms and canticles of Hagiopolite worship had resembled those found in the Sung Office of Constantinople, consisting mainly of their scriptural texts with the addition of a small number of refrains. With the emergence of the hymnodic repertories compiled in the Tropologion, biblical psalmody in the festal offices of Palestine was demoted textually and musically to a supporting role of providing a framework for ever-increasing quantities of through-composed or strophic proper hymns. The consistency and familiarity afforded to worshippers by the chanting of important fixed scriptural elements of morning and evening worship – the nine canticles and Lauds (Psalms 148–50) at orthros, and the Lamplighting Psalms (Psalms 140, 141, 129 and 116) at vespers61 – was increasingly replaced by variability and novelty, characteristics that Stoudite monasticism later extended systematically to ferial offices. Patriarch Germanos I of Constantinople (reigned 715–30) not only aligned himself with Chalcedonian Christians of the Holy Land by sharing their opposition to Monothelitism and Iconoclasm, but he also composed hymns that appear in the Jerusalem Tropologion.62 Palestinian hymnody became a permanent feature of the Constantinopolitan liturgical scene 60

  As famously portrayed in Narration of the Abbots John and Sophronios, some Middle Eastern ascetics of the sixth to eighth centuries resisted the importation of musical repertories and practices from cathedral liturgy, arguing that they were worldly and generally inappropriate to monastic life. For the text of the Narration and analyses of its liturgical content and relationship to other witnesses of resistance to the musical enrichment of monastic liturgy, see A. Longo, ‘Il testo integrale della “Narrazione degli abati Giovanni e Sofronio” attraverso le Ἑρμηνεῖαι di Nicone’, Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici n.s. 2–3 (1965–66), pp. 223–67; В.М. Лурье, ‘‘Повествование отцов Иоанна и Софрония’ (BHG) как литургический источник’, Vizantijskij Vremennik 54 (1993), pp. 62–74; and S. Frøyshov, ‘La réticence à I’hymnographie chez des anachorètes de I’Égypte et du Sinaï du 5e au 8e siècles’, in J. Claire, A.M. Triacca and A. Pistoia (eds), L’hymnographie: Conférences Saint-Serge, XLVIe Semaine d’études liturgiques, Paris, 29 juin-2 juillet 1999, Bibliotheca Ephemerides Liturgicae Subsidia 105 (Rome, 2000), pp. 229–45. 61   Regarding the use of these items as core elements of public evening and morning worship in Late Antiquity and the early middle ages, G.W. Woolfenden, Daily Liturgical Prayer: Origins and Theology (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 280–91. 62   On the life and works of Germanos, see L. Lamza, Patriarch Germanos I. von Konstantinopel (715-730): Versuch einer endgültigen chronologischen Fixierung des Lebens und Wirkens des Patriarchen mit dem griechisch-deutschen Text der Vita Germani am Schluss der Arbeit, Das östliche Christentum n.F. 27 (Würzburg, 1975). The contributions of Germanos to the Tropologion as reflected in copies of the Georgian Iadgari are discussed in Jeffery, ‘The Earliest Oktōēchoi’, pp. 198–202.

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after 799, when Abbot Theodore of Sakkoudion in Bithynia moved his community to the monastery of St John of Stoudios and began celebrating in its church the monastic Divine Office of St Sabas.63 Like Germanos before him, St Theodore the Stoudite (as he later became known) was a prominent iconophile and his embrace of the hymns of the Tropologion was motivated in part by his admiration for their doctrinal orthodoxy. Yet Theodore and his monks did not rest after transplanting the Sabaïtic Divine Office to Stoudios, but used its Horologion and Tropologion as the basis for a creative synthesis incorporating elements of the rite of Hagia Sophia and vast quantities of new hymnody.64 From the Great Church they borrowed the office prayers of its Euchology, the readings and responsorial psalmody of its lectionaries, the florid solo and choral chants of its elite choirs, and the paraliturgical cycles of kontakia sung at its vigils. To varying degrees they also adopted cathedral traditions of melodious antiphonal psalmody, most completely in some Stoudite monasteries on Pentecost when the Kneeling Vespers (Gonyklesia) was, as we noted above, celebrated according to the rite of Hagia Sophia.65 Having thus enriched their worship with music from the Sung Office, Stoudite monks then made seminal contributions to a multi-generational project to fill out the repertories of the Tropologion, especially its provision for lesser feasts and ferial days.66 Although St Theodore the Stoudite is 63

  T. Pott, Byzantine Liturgical Reform: A Study of Liturgical Change in the Byzantine Tradition, Orthodox Liturgy Series Book 2 (Crestwood, NY, 2010), pp. 118–42. 64   On the musical aspects of the Stoudite reform, see Lingas, ‘Sunday Matins’, pp. 145–9. 65   Pott, Byzantine Liturgical Reform, pp. 132–3. The celebration of Pentecost vespers in the Stoudite communities of Southern Italy is addressed in Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν, p. 227; M. Arranz, S.J., ‘L’office de l’Asmatikos Hesperinos (“vêpres chantées”) de l’ancien Euchologe byzantin, IIe Partie: La psalmodie’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 44 (1978), pp. 391–419, at pp. 412–15; Conomos, ‘Whitsunday’, pp. 457–69; and Harris, ‘Office of the Genuflexion’. 66   The contents of the so-called ‘Typikon of the Anastasis’ – Jerusalem Hagios Stauros 43, a Greek manuscript dated ‘1122’ but containing Holy Week and Eastertide services celebrated in the cathedral rite of Jerusalem prior to the year 1009 – suggest that efforts to expand the repertories of Palestinian hymnody were initially not limited to Stoudite monasticism, but involved more complicated patterns of artistic production and exchange. Evidence for this may be seen in the inclusion of Stoudite hymns in Hagiopolite services, variations between the two regional traditions in the liturgical assignment of certain shared texts, and the relative superabundance of hymns for some occasions in the Typikon of the Anastasis. Hagios Stauros 43 provides, for example, not only idiomela but also a set of three prosomoia for Lauds on Great Friday for a total of ten stichera. See ‘Τυπικὸν τῆς ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις Ἐκκλησίας. Διάταξις τῶν ἱερῶν ἀκολουθιῶν τῆς μεγάλης ἑβδομάδος τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, κατὰ τὸ ἀρχαῖον τῆς ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις ἐκκλησίας ἔθος, ἤτοι τὸ ἐν τῷ ναῷ τῆς Ἀναστάσεως’, in A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus (ed.), Ἀνάλεκτα Ἱεροσολυμιτικῆς Σταχυολογίας ἢ Συλλογὴ Ἀνεκδότων καὶ σπανίων ἑλληνικῶν συγγραφῶν περὶ τῶν κατὰ τὴν Ἑῴαν ὀρθοδόξων ἐκκλησιῶν καὶ μάλιστα τῆς τῶν Παλαιστινῶν (St Petersburg, 1894), pp. 1–254, at pp. 141–4.

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credited with the creation of the antiphons of the Octoechos, he and his successors mainly wrote in existing Palestinian genres.67 The task of filling the liturgical cycles with hymnody was essentially complete by the twelfth century, the time by which fifteen volumes of proper hymnody employed in the modern Byzantine rite had come into existence – the Parakletike or Great Octoechos, the twelve volumes of Menaia (one for each calendar month), and for the movable Penitential and Paschal seasons, the Triodion and the Pentecostarion. Containing a total of over 60,000 hymns in their published forms, these collections consist mainly of contrafacta sung to a circumscribed body of model melodies that were transmitted either by ear or, in the case of kanons, with the aid of an Heirmologion, a musically notated reference book of model stanzas (heirmoi).68 The Sticherarion, another notated chantbook, was a vehicle for disseminating stichera and other office hymns with unique melodies (idiomela).69 The proportion of idiomela to prosomoia appointed to be sung was generally a function of liturgical significance, with the most important occasions featuring the highest percentage of through-composed stichera and weekdays without a major commemoration the lowest.

In adapting for monastic use hymnody from the developed urban rite of Jerusalem, the Stoudites extended certain principles of liturgical design to their logical conclusions. Thanks to the proliferation of proper hymns, Hagiopolite services came to be marked by musical variety, textual particularity and exegetical loquacity. As the Stoudites continued to augment the repertories of hymnody attached to the Horologion, a form of reductio ad absurdum was eventually reached when every day of the year came to possess multiple sets of proper hymns and psalms. The need to choose from among this surfeit of material stimulated the creation of liturgical Typika, separate books of rubrics

67

  Strunk, ‘The Antiphons’, pp. 165–90. The prolific Joseph the Hymnographer is an example of a poet who seems to have written only contrafacta, with all 466 of the hymns attributed to him by Tomadakes relying on existing melodies. See E.I. Tomadakes, Ἰωσὴφ ὁ Ὑμνογράφος: Βίος καὶ ἔργον, Ἀθηνᾶ σύγγραμμα περιοδικὸν τῆς ἐν Ἀθῆναις Ἐπιστημονικῆς Ἑταιρείας. Σειρὰ διατριβῶν καὶ μελετημάτων 11 (Athens, 1971). 68   The number of proper hymns in the liturgical books in the modern Byzantine rite is from K. Levy and C. Troelsgård, ‘Byzantine Chant’, in S. Sadie and J. Tyrell (eds), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 2001), p. 743. Model melodies for hymns other than kanons are ‘automela’, with their contrafacta called ‘prosomoia’. A small number of manuscripts include notated versions of automela, about which see C. Troelsgård, ‘The Repertories of Model Melodies (Automela) in Byzantine Musical Manuscripts’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin 71 (2000), pp. 3–27. 69   C. Troelsgård, ‘What Kind of Chant Books Were the Byzantine Sticheraria?’, in L. Dobszay (ed.), Cantus planus: Papers Read at the 9th Meeting, Esztergom & Visegrád, Hungary, 1998 (Budapest, 2001), pp. 563–74.

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that governed the selection of proper chants and readings by establishing relative priorities among their liturgical cycles.70 The influence of the Sung Office was evident in the way that some Stoudite houses sought to make their offices musically seamless by chanting almost everything.71 It was customary in some places, for example, for the entire community to sing at the beginning of every orthros its fixed set of Six Psalms (the Hexapsalmos: Psalms 3, 37, 62, 87, 102 and 142).72 Stoudite monasteries also imitated the Rite of the Great Church in their arrangement, albeit on a much reduced scale, of their designated singers into semi-choirs around a central ambo. These choirs were assisted in their renditions of hymns by a canonarch, an official whose role was to prompt them audibly from a scroll or book with their next line of text, a practice similar to ‘lining out’ in some Protestant traditions of hymnody.73 Respites from the steady patter of texts rendered in syllabic or neumatic styles were occasionally provided by interludes consisting of either catechetical readings or melismatic chants, both solo and choral, borrowed mainly from the rite of Hagia Sophia: kontakia, hypakoai, prokeimena, Alleluiaria and the great responsories of Christmas and Theophany.74 70   E. Velkovska, ‘Byzantine Liturgical Books’, in A.J. Chupungco (ed.), Introduction to the Liturgy, Handbook for Liturgical Studies Vol. 1, tr. E. Hagman (Collegeville, MN, 1997), p. 232. 71   M. Arranz, ‘Les grands étapes de la Liturgie Byzantine: Palestine-Byzance-Russie. Essai d’aperçu historique’, Liturgie de l’église particulière et liturgie de l’église universelle, Bibliotheca Ephemerides Liturgicae, Subsidia 7 (Rome, 1976), pp. 43–72, at p. 64. Rubrics directing the melodious chanting of festal psalmody occur frequently in the Typikon of the Stoudite monastery of San Salvatore in Messina: Arranz, Le Typicon du monastère du SaintSauveur à Messine: Codex Messinensis gr. 115, pp. xxxvi, 186, 328 and 85. 72   Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν, p. 227. 73   Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν, p. 462–66; Troelsgård, ‘What Kind of Chant Books’, pp. 565–70; and, on the similar Protestant practice, ‘Lining Out’, in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, at http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/16709 (accessed 21/09/12) 74   Their melodies were transmitted with musical notation in the Psaltikon and Asmatikon. Interestingly, kontakia (and possibly hypakoai as well) were originally syllabic chants that had been transformed through musical elaboration – a medieval counterpart to ‘long’ exegesis? – into occasions for musical contemplation. Some idea of the differences between the syllabic and melismatic styles may be gained by listening to the two versions of the kontakion for St Bartholomew of Grottaferrata included on Cappella Romana, Byzantium in Rome, disc 1). The ordinary version sung to a melody from MS St Petersburg gr. 674 (fol. 14r) takes only 2:34 to perform, whilst the florid setting from the Psaltikon Ashburnhamensis 64 lasts 9:40. If the even longer oikos for St Bartholomew that follows the kontakion in Ashburnhamensis had been performed at the same tempo, the liturgical unit of Kontakion and Oikos would have provided a musical interlude of approximately twenty-three minutes between Odes 6 and 7 of the kanon.

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The turn towards more rigorous forms of monasticism evident in some Byzantine founders’ typika (ktetorika typika) of the later eleventh century was accompanied in liturgical documents by what Taft has identified to be ‘a large infiltration of second-generation Sabaïtic material into the monasteries of Constantinople’.75 Two trends shaping the soundscape of worship may be observed in this new layer of Sabaïtic material: a tendency to substitute solo recitation for choral singing in renditions of non-festal psalmody, and the revival of the Palestinian all-night vigil (agrypnia) on Saturday nights and the eves of major feasts.76 A few of the reform ktetorika typika also revive suspicions about the dangers or efficacy for monastics of chanting, especially when practised in its more musically elaborate forms, that previously we saw articulated by Sinaïte and Palestinian ascetics of the sixth to eighth centuries.77 A closer look at the sources reveals that late Byzantine monks celebrating a reformed ‘Neo-Sabaïtic’ rite managed both to share certain presuppositions about the need for performing psalmody with compunction, and to display significant diversity in thought and practice regarding their liturgical soundscapes. One end of the ideological spectrum was represented by the great hesychast St Gregory of Sinai (c. 1265–1346), who viewed melodious chanting as something, along with discursive language, that spiritually mature ascetics should ultimately transcend.78 Yet before we are seduced by the etymology of hesychasm (= ‘quietude’) into assuming that the soundscapes of Neo-Sabaïtic offices were uniformly less varied or musical than their Stoudite counterparts, it is necessary to consider what was actually being sung at Athonite all-night vigils. Thanks to musical developments advanced by the cantor, composer, theoretician and Athonite monk St John Koukouzeles (c. 1280–c. 1341), the

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  R.F. Taft, S.J., ‘Mount Athos: A Late Chapter in the History of the Byzantine Rite’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988), pp. 179–94, at p. 190. On the reforms advanced by these ktetorika typika, see ‘Early Reform Monasteries of the Eleventh Century’, ch. 4 in J.P. Thomas, A.C. Hero and G. Constable (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders’ Typika and Testaments, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 35 (Washington, D.C., 2000), pp. 441–53. 76   Taft, ‘Mount Athos’, pp. 187–92. 77   Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν, pp. 212–17; R.T. Dubowchik, ‘Singing with the Angels: Foundation Documents as Evidence for Musical Life in Monasteries of the Byzantine Empire’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002), pp. 277–96, at pp. 289–90. 78   Gregory of Sinai, ‘Different Ways of Psalmodizing’, translated in G.E.H. Palmer, P. Sherrard and K. Ware, The Philokalia: The Complete Text compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth (London and Boston, 1995), pp. 266–74; discussed in A. Lingas, ‘Hesychasm and Psalmody’, in A. Bryer and M. Cunningham (eds), Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism: Papers from the Twenty-eighth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, March 1994, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine, Studies 4 (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 155–68, at p. 158.

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restored agrypnia became in late Byzantium a showcase for sonic variety.79 As codified in the rubrics of the Diataxis of Divine Service attributed to the Athonite abbot and later patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos (c. 1300–1379), the Neo-Sabaïtic all-night vigil was largely an amalgamation of the festal versions of Palestinian vespers and matins.80 It rested on a musical foundation of the received repertories of anonymous psalmody and Stoudite hymnody as recently edited by Koukouzeles.81 Overlaying these revised traditional chants were new musical works composed as their alternates or supplements. Usually bearing the names of their composers, some are distinctly personal re-workings of earlier material, whilst others employ original melodies that in some cases also set new texts. Many are lengthy compositions cast in a virtuosic ‘kalophonic’ (‘beautiful sounding’) idiom marked variously by textual repetition or troping, melismatic passages, and vocalisations on nonsense syllables (‘teretismata’).82 Mature kalophonic works first appear in significant quantities integrated with traditional material in a new chantbook attributed to the editorship of Koukouzeles entitled the ‘Akolouthiai’ or ‘Orders of Service’, the earliest surviving copy of which is Athens EBE 2458, dated ‘1336’.83 Subsequent generations of late and post-Byzantine composers further enriched the repertories of Koukouzelian chant, leading not only to the compilation of 79

  On Koukouzeles and his musical innovations for the Byzantine Divine Office, see E.V. Williams, ‘John Koukouzeles’ Reform of Byzantine Chanting for Great Vespers in the Fourteenth Century’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1968); and E.V. Williams, ‘A Byzantine Ars Nova: The 14th-century Reforms of John Koukouzeles in the Chanting of Great Vespers’, in H. Birnbaum and S. Vryonis, Jr. (eds), Aspects of the Balkans: Continuity and Change: Contributions to the International Balkan Conference held at UCLA, October 23–28, 1969, Slavistic Printings and Reprintings (The Hague and Paris, 1972), pp. 211–29; and Lingas, ‘Hesychasm’, pp. 159–68. 80   ‘Διάταξις τῆς ἱεροδιακονίας’, Migne, Patrologia Graeca 154, cols 745–66; and Taft, ‘Mount Athos’, pp. 191–2. 81   Discussions of Stoudite collections of hymnody edited by Koukouzeles are S.S. Antoniou, ‘La tradition de l’Heirmologion de Jean Koukouzeles’, Byzantion: Revue Internationale Des Études Byzantines 74 (2004), pp. 9–16; and J. Raasted, ‘Koukouzeles’ Revision of the Sticherarion and Sinai gr. 1230’, in J. Szendrei and D. Hiley (eds), Laborare fratres in unum: Festschrift László Dobszay zum 60. Geburtstag, Spolia Berolinensia: Berliner Beiträge zur Mediävistik (Hildesheim, 1995), pp. 261–77. 82   The emergence of these techniques in ‘proto-kalophonic’ repertories of the earlier thirteenth century is discussed in C. Troelsgård, ‘Thirteenth-century Byzantine Melismatic Chant and the Development of the Kalophonic Style’, in G. Wolfram (ed.), Palaeobyzantine Notations III: Acta of the Congress held at Hernen Castle, The Netherlands, in March 2001 (Leuven, 2004), pp. 67–90. 83   This manuscript is described in G.T. Stathis, ‘Ἡ ᾀσματική διαφοροποίηση ὅπως καταγράφεται στόν κώδικα ΕΒΕ 2458 τοῦ ἔτους 1336’, Χριστιανικὴ Θεσσαλονίκη: Παλαιολογεῖος ἐποχή. Πατριαρχικὸν Ἵδρυμα Πατερικῶν Μελετῶν, Ἱερὰ Μονὴ Βλατάδων, 29–31 Οκτωβρίου 1987 (Thessalonica, 1989), pp. 167–241. For a brief general treatment of the contents of Akolouthiai manuscripts, see Doneda, ‘I manoscritti’, pp. 108–10.

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expanded versions of the Akolouthiai, but also to the appearance of specialised collections devoted to particular genres of kalophonic chant: the Kalophonic Sticherarion (Mathematarion), the Oikoimatarion and the Kratematarion.84 The use of particular musical styles and genres in Stoudite and Neo-Sabaïtic versions of festal vespers is compared in Table 17.4, from which it can be seen that both traditions shared a common core of psalms and hymns generally set in closely related musical idioms.85 84

  The emergence of these books is discussed by C. Adsuara, ‘Textual and Musical Analysis of the Deuteros Kalophonic Stichera for September’ (Ph.D. diss., Universidad Complutense, 1998), pp. 127–43. 85   The extent to which continuity of musical style in a repertory or genre may be securely documented varies widely according to the availability of notated sources. Continuities of musical style in stichera and prokeimena may be verified by comparing their neumations in manuscripts copied before and after the beginning of the fourteenth century. On the prokeimena, see Hintze, Das byzantinische Prokeimena-Repertoire; and Harris, ‘Prokeimena’; and C. Troelsgård, ‘The Prokeimena in the Byzantine Rite: Performance and Tradition’, in L. Dobszay (ed.), International Musicological Society Study Group Cantus Planus: Papers Read at the 6th Meeting Eger, Hungary 1993 (Budapest, 1995), pp. 65–77. Since the Invitatorium ‘Come, let us worship’ (‘Δεῦτε, προσκυνήσωμεν’) and the music for many psalms first appear with notation in fourteenth-century manuscripts, the reconstruction of their performance in earlier periods must rely on a combination of these notated sources (mainly Akolouthiai manuscripts such as Athens EBE 2458) and Middle Byzantine rubrics. The earliest notated settings of the Invitatorium and Psalm 103, however, appear as appendices to copies of the Koukouzelian Heirmologion in MS Sinai 1256 (dated ‘1309’) and MS Sinai 1257 (‘1332’). See Williams, ‘John Koukouzeles’ Reform’, pp. 109–42; and M. Velimirović, ‘The Prooemiac Psalm of Byzantine Vespers’, in L. Berman (ed.), Words and Music, the Scholar’s View: A Medley of Problems and Solutions Compiled in Honor of A. Tillman Merritt (Cambridge, MA, 1972), pp. 317–37. Music for the Lamplighting Psalms is surveyed in A. Jung, ‘The Settings οf the Evening and Morning Psalms According to the Manuscript Sinai 1255’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin 47 (1984), pp. 3–63 (Sinai 1255 is mainly a Kalophonic Mathematarion, but also includes traditional settings of the eight-mode cycle of Sunday stichera with their psalm verses); and S. Kujumdzieva, ‘The Kekragaria in the Sources from the 14th to the Beginning of the 19th Century, Eger 1993’, in Dobszay (ed.), International Musicological Society Study Group Cantus Planus, pp. 449–63. On the late Byzantine neumations of simple forms of psalmody and their relationship to earlier oral traditions, see Strunk, ‘The Antiphons’, pp. 170–74; and S. Harris, ‘Byzantine Psalmody: An Interim Report’, in L. Dobszay (ed.), Cantus Planus: Papers Read at the 7th Meeting, Sopron, Hungary, 1995 (Budapest, 1998), pp. 273–81; and C. Troelsgård, ‘Simple Psalmody in Byzantine Chant’, in L. Dobszay (ed.), Cantus Planus: Papers Read at the 12th Meeting of the IMS Study Group, Lillafüred/Hungary, 2004. Aug. 23-28 (Budapest, 2006), pp. 83–92. Ironically, the melody of what is probably the most ancient extra-scriptural hymn of the Palestinian evening office, ‘Joyful Light’ (‘Φῶς ἱλαρόν’), sometimes entitled the ‘Thanksgiving at the Lighting of the Lamps’ (‘Ἐπιλύχνιος εὐχαριστία’), is not transmitted by any source from the middle ages, evidently having been so well known as to have rendered its written transmission superfluous. The simple melody that finally does appear with notation in seventeenth-century manuscripts would not have been out of place in the sound

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Most chants in the Stoudite office were rendered in syllabic or neumatic styles in which the text remained clearly audible. Monotony over the course of the service was avoided by periodic changes of musical mode and melodic idiom from the simple, syllabic and repetitive patterns of psalm-tones to through-composed idiomela. Additional variety was provided by frequent alternations between the semi-choruses, their soloists, and – in responses to litanies and ecphoneseis not indicated in Table 17.4 – the higher clergy. Stoudite vespers reached a peak of sonic and visual interest with the interwoven hymnody and psalmody of the Lamplighting Psalms, the singing of which was followed by the hymn Φῶς ἱλαρόν and the ritual entrance of the higher clergy into the sanctuary. Sonic interest was sustained after the entrance when a soloist ascended the ambo to lead the solemn chanting of what was probably the most elaborate music used in most Stoudite celebrations of festal vespers: a melismatic prokeimenon borrowed from the repertories of the Sung Office of Hagia Sophia. Table 17.4 Musical styles in festal vespers celebrated according to the Palestinian Horologion; musical styles in brackets have been inferred from rubrics and/or later notated sources

Sung Item

Stoudite (through the 13th c.)

Neo-Sabaïtic (from the 14th c.)

Invitatorium ‘Come, let us worship’

[Neumatic]

Neumatic

Psalm 103

[Psalm-tone with florid introduction and coda. In some traditions the verses are performed with cathedral-style refrains.]

A psalm-tone is employed until the Anoixantaria, which are melodically elaborated verses with Trinitarian tropes in neumatic or melismatic styles. These commence at verse 28b and are followed by a florid coda.

Comments

Most psalmody evidently remained unnotated until the appearance of Akolouthiai MSS in the 14th c.

world of medieval Byzantine psalmody, being limited in its vocal range and constructed from the repetition of a few short motives. Modern chantbooks transmit a melismatic version of this melody labelled ‘Mέλος ἀρχαίον᾽ that has been transcribed into the Chrysanthine ‘New Method’ of Byzantine notation through the application of exegesis. See Williams, ‘John Koukouzeles’ Reform’, pp. 403–11.

Alexander Lingas Sung Item

Stoudite (through the 13th c.)

Neo-Sabaïtic (from the 14th c.)

Stasis 1 of the 1st Kathisma of the Psalter: Psalms 1–3 (‘Blessed is the man’)

[Psalm-tone, in some traditions with refrains]

Through-composed neumatic settings of individual verses with Alleluia refrains proliferate, as do optional kalophonic versions for selected verses of Psalm 2

Opening 2 Verses of the Lamplighting Psalms (140, 141, 129 & 116)

[Semi-florid settings with Semi-florid settings a cathedral refrain sung with a cathedral refrain in the mode of the first sung in the mode of the first sticheron sticheron]

Stichologia of the Lamplighting Psalms

[Psalm-tone in the mode Psalm-tone in the mode of the first sticheron with of the first sticheron cathedral refrains] sung without cathedral refrains

347 Comments

Up to 10 Stichera

Syllabic (most prosomoia) or neumatic (idiomela) settings interpolated between psalm verses. Modal variety is common in sets of idiomela.

As in the Stoudite rite with optional kalophonic substitutes

Introit (‘Phos hilaron’)

[Neumatic]

[Neumatic]

Prokeimenon

As in the rite of Hagia Sophia: Melismatic responsorial psalmody led by a soloist from the ambo

Melismatic with optional kalophonic codas

The traditional anonymous melismatic settings are borrowed or adapted from the Great Church

OT Readings

Cantillation from lectionary notation

[Cantillation?]

Borrowed from the Prophetologion of the Great Church

Stichera of the Lite

Neumatic idiomela

As in the Stoudite rite with optional kalophonic settings

Melodies for idiomela are transmitted in the Sticherarion; the model melodies (automela) of prosomoia appear as appendices in a small number of MSS. Not notated until the 17th c.

Melodies from the traditional or kalophonic Sticherarion

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Sung Item

Stoudite (through the 13th c.)

Neo-Sabaïtic (from the 14th c.)

Aposticha

Syllabic (most prosomoia) or neumatic (idiomela) settings, all but the first of which are preceded by scriptural verses set to a syllabic psalm tone

As in the Stoudite rite, but with optional kalophonic substitutes

Apolytikia

[Syllabic, with some exceptions]

Syllabic, with some exceptions

Comments Idiomela are transmitted in the Sticherarion; Prosomoia model melodies (automela) appear as appendices in a small number of MSS.

A substantial portion of the music for Neo-Sabaïtic vespers contained in notated manuscripts of the Paleologan period consists of more or less lightly retouched versions of hymns from Stoudite collections and psalms rendered according to traditional melodic formulas. On feast days, however, the sonic contours and temporal dimensions of the service’s opening psalmody could be radically altered by the performance of new compositions intended as festal alternatives to traditional psalm-tones. Drawing on thirteenth-century precedents for through-composed melismatic psalmody in the Sung Office, their composers transformed the concluding section of Psalm 103 – the Anoixantaria, thus named because it commences with verse 28b, ‘Ἀνοίξαντός σου τὴν χεῖρα’ – and Stasis One of the First Kathisma of the Psalter (= Psalms 1–3) into sprawling and stylistically heterogeneous suites of traditional and innovative music.86 Their traditional elements consist of anonymous verse settings that are sometimes labelled ‘old’ or supplied with such titles indicating geographic provenance as Hagiosophitikon or Thessalonikaion. Most verses, however, are attributed individually to Koukouzeles, his contemporary Xenos Korones and other late Byzantine composers. Almost all settings begin with a traditional psalm-tone that soon dissolves into original and often virtuosic music. Eponymous composers of Anoixantaria generally augmented the psalm’s original refrain ‘Δόξα σοι ὁ Θεός’ (‘Glory to you, O God’) with Triadika, tropes in honour of the Holy Trinity. Those ascribed to Koukouzeles in MS Sinai 1257 are: 86   The precedents include the Pentecost Teleutaion discussed above and stylistically similar collections of melismatic verses for the first antiphon of the Sung Office of orthros transmitted in South Italian manuscripts. I discuss the settings for Constantinopolitan cathedral orthros and their relationship to the Trinitarian tropes of the Koukouzelian Anoixantaria in ‘The First Antiphon of Byzantine Cathedral Rite Matins: From Popular Psalmody to Kalophonia’, in Dobszay (ed.), Cantus Planus: Papers Read at the 9th Meeting, pp. 479–500.

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V. 29b – Ἀντανελεὶς τὸ πνεῦμα αὐτῶν, καὶ ἐκλείψουσι. Δόξα σοι Πάτερ, δόξα σοι Υἱε, δόξα σοι τὸ Πνεῦμα τό ἅγιον, δόξα σοι. (F. 169r, ‘You will take away their spirit, and they will perish. Glory to you, O Father, glory to you, O Son, glory to you, O Holy Spirit. Glory to you!’) V. 31a – Ἤτω ἡ δόξα Κυρίου εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. Δόξα σοι ἅγιε· δόξα σοι Κύριε· δόξα σοι, βασιλεῦ οὐράνιε. Δόξα σοι, δόξα σοι ὁ Θεός. (F. 169v, ‘May the glory of the Lord endure to the ages. Glory to you, Lord, glory to you, heavenly King, glory to you, glory to you, O God!’) V.35a – Ἐκλείποιεν ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς. Δόξα σοι Τριὰς ἄναρχε· δόξα σοι ὁ Θεός. (F. 169r, ‘O that sinners might perish from the earth. Glory to you, Trinity without beginning, glory to you [O] God!’)87

Composers limited themselves to the biblical text and its traditional refrain ‘Alleluia’ in their music for the psalms of Stasis One, the verses of which they set in what were essentially two musical styles. The first is a semi-florid melodic idiom comparable to that of the Anoixantaria that they applied to verses of all three psalms. Their ‘Alleluia’ refrains, like those of the older Pentecost Teleutaion, are variously lengthened through melismata, textual repetitions – audibly prompted in some cases by the sung commands ‘Λέγε!’ (‘Say!’) or ‘Πάλιν!’ (‘Again!’) – and the insertion of small groups of extra syllables. A setting attributed to Koukouzeles on folio 15r of the Akolouthiai Athens 2458, for example, renders the word ‘Ἀλληλούϊα’ as ‘ἀλλη- ἀλληλούϊα· ἀναλληλούϊαναχαχα ἀλληχηναλληλούϊα’.88 Marked by the application techniques of musical and textual extension on a grand scale to produce longer examples of kalophonia, the second style was employed by Koukouzeles and his colleagues in Stasis One only when composing settings of selected verses from Psalm 2. These vast compositions, which functioned as ad libitum substitutes for ordinary semi-florid settings of the same psalmic text, would in some sense have stood outside the normal liturgical order as constituted in both unnotated service books and the minds of congregants. This is in part due to their sheer length. With the performance of each kalophonic composition lasting, if one assumes a similar tempo, 87

  In the ‘Musical Supplement’ appended to ‘John Koukouzeles’ Reform’, Williams offers staff-notation transcriptions of all of the semi-florid verses for Psalm 103 and the First Stasis attributed to Koukouzeles, as well as of a pair of highly kalophonic compositions for Psalm 2. A mensural transcription by Ioannis Arvanitis of the anonymous traditional verses and five Koukouzelean Anoixantaria of Psalm 103 has been recorded on the CD Voices of Byzantium – Medieval Byzantine Chant from Mt Sinai, Cappella Romana, dir. A. Lingas (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012). 88   Transcribed as ‘Koukouzeles melody 5’ in Williams, ‘Musical Supplement’ to Williams, ‘John Koukouzeles’ Reform’, p. 9.

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approximately six to seven times as long as even the most expansive semiflorid verse, even a single substitution would have altered significantly the temporal flow of worship established during the singing of Psalm 1. The composers of kalophonic settings for Psalm 2 also extended or violated traditional techniques for setting texts to music that continued to prevail elsewhere in the service in order to create vast structures governed to a large extent by the formal logic of their music.89 Not only did they regularly dissolve words into teretismata, but they also manipulated the psalmic text in startling ways. Williams has identified their use of the following techniques: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Repetition of syllables Repetition of words and phrases Inversion of words Juxtaposition of successive lines (in their regular or inverted order) Interpolation of fragments from different lines.90

Koukouzeles and other late Byzantine composers employed essentially the same techniques of musical construction and textual alteration in their kalophonic stichera, some of which they based on traditional chants from the Sticherarion whilst others set new texts, including a significant number in fifteen-syllable verse.91 Those based on traditional chants often divide the hymn into two or more sections, giving the choirmaster freedom to make partial or total kalophonic substitutions. Here, for example, is the complete text of a sticheron in honour of St Katherine sung at the vespers on the eve of 25 November after the Trinitarian Doxology of the Lamplighting Psalms: Χαρμονικῶς τὴ πανηγύρει, τῆς θεοσόφου Μάρτυρος Αἰκατερίνης, συνδράμωμεν ὧ φιλομάρτυρες, καὶ ταύτην τοὶς ἐπαίνοις, ὡς ἄνθεσι καταστέψωμεν, Χαίροις βοῶντες αὐτή, ἡ τῶν φληνάφων Ῥητόρων, τὴν θρασυστομίαν ἐλέγξασα, ὡς ἀπαιδευσίας ἀνάπλεων, καὶ τούτους πρὸς πίστιν θείαν χειραγωγήσασα, * Χαίροις ἡ τὸ σῶμα πολυπλόκοις βασάνοις ἐκδοῦσα, δι’ ἀγάπην τοῦ Ποιητοῦ σου, καὶ μὴ καταβληθεῖσα, ὦς ἄκμων ἀνάλωτος, Χαίροις ἡ ταῖς ἄνω μοναῖς, ἀντάξια τῶν πόνων εἰσοικισθεῖσα, καὶ δόξης αἰωνίου κατατρυφήσασα, ἢς ἐφιέμενοι οἱ ὑμνῳδοί σου, τῆς ἐλπίδος μὴ ἐκπέσοιμεν.

89

  E.V. Williams, ‘The Treatment of Text in the Kalophonic Chanting of Psalm 2’, in M.M. Velimirović (ed.), Studies in Eastern Chant, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 173–93. 90   Ibid., p. 180. 91   The repertories of kalophonic stichera are surveyed in G.T. Stathis, Οἱ ἀναγραμματισμοὶ καὶ τὰ μαθήματα τῆς βυζαντινῆς μουσικῆς (Athens, 1979); and G.T. Stathis, Ἡ δεκαπεντασύλλαβος ὑμνογραφία ἐν τῇ Βυζαντινῇ μελοποιΐα (Athens, 1977).

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Lovers of martyrs, let us joyfully run together for the festival of the Martyr Katherine, wise in God, and let us garland her with praises as with flowers, as we shout, ‘Hail, you that confounded the insolence of the chattering Rhetors, as infected with stupidity, and led by the hand to divine faith. * Hail, you that surrendered your body to countless torments through love of your Maker, and like an unassailable anvil you were not cast down. Hail, you that dwell in the dwelling places on high, worthy of your pains, and enjoy eternal glory. Would that we, who long for it and sing your praise, might not fail in our hope.

A kalophonic setting of this hymn composed by the fifteenth-century theorist and scribe Manuel Chrysaphes, who served as Lampadarios in the chapel of the last two Paleologan emperors, divides its text into two ‘feet’ at the point marked above by an asterisk. Here is the text as set by Chrysaphes in the second ‘foot’: Δεύτερος πούς· Ποίημα κυροῦ Μανουὴλ μαΐστορος τοῦ Χρυσάφη: Ἦχος πλ. β Χαίροις, χαίροις ἡ τὸ σῶμα πολυπλόκοις, πολυπλόκοις βασάνοις ἐκδοῦσα, δι’ ἀγάπην τοῦ Ποιητοῦ σου, καὶ μὴ καταβληθεῖσα, ὦς ἄκμων ἀνάλωτος, Χαίροις ἡ ταῖς ἄνω, ἡ ταῖς ἄνω μοναῖς, ἀντάξια τῶν πόνων εἰσοικισθεῖσα, καὶ δόξης αἰωνίου κατατρυφήσασα· Λέγε· ἢς ἐφιέμενοι· Πάλιν· ἢς ἐφιέμενοι οἱ ὑμνῳδοί σου, τῆς ἐλπίδος μὴ ἐκπέσοιμεν· μὴ ἐκπέσοιμεν τῆς ἐλπίδος· τοτοτοτοτοτοτοτο … [τερέτισμα] … τοεανε· τῆς ἐλπίδος μὴ ἐκπέσοιμεν.92 Second foot, by Manuel Chrysaphes the Lampadarios: Mode Plagal 2 Hail, hail you that surrendered your body to countless, countless torments through love of your Maker, and like an unassailable anvil you were not cast down. Hail, you that dwell in the dwelling places on high, worthy of your pains, and enjoy eternal glory. Would that we, who long for it and sing your praise, may not fail in our hope; may not fail in our hope: tototototo … [teretism] … toeane: may not fail in our hope.

Here the textual alterations made to the original hymn are relatively minor: Chrysaphes chooses to repeat only selected words or phrases, doing so always with a clear sense of musical and rhetorical purpose that only becomes fully evident during a performance of this approximately eight-minute work.93 92

  MS Sinai 1234, fols 125r–v.   As edited by Ioannis Arvanitis, this Second Foot lasts for eight minutes and twentyfour seconds in a performance Cappella Romana on Voices of Byzantium. 93

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Each repetition brings with it a sense of increasing emotional intensity that builds gradually until reaching a climax with the teretisms that emerge out of the reiterated prayer that we ‘may not fail in our hope’. More radical manipulations of texts are found in kalophonic stichera labelled anagrammatismos or anapodismos. Composed as optional codas to hymns in traditional styles, these musical anagrams recapitulate the texts and, in some cases, elements of the melodies of the sticheron to which they may be attached. How this worked in practice may be seen from Table 17.5, which presents the texts of two versions of a hymn for the Blessing of the Waters on Theophany (6 January): (1) the original sticheron for the occasion by Sophronios of Jerusalem; and (2) the anagrammatismos written some seven centuries later by Koukouzeles to be performed at its conclusion.94 The latter begins by proceeding backwards through the text of Sophronios, making it also an anapodismos. The remainder of its text features several repetitions as its music follows a trajectory similar to that of the Chrysaphes setting discussed above. In this case, however, the teretismata are followed not only by a return of the text, but also the recapitulation of the final phrase of its traditional setting.

94

  Both versions – the traditional hymn from the Sticherarion MS Ambrosianus 139 A sup. (14th cent.) and the anagrammatismos from the Kalophonic Sticherarion MS Sinai 1234 (an autograph of John Plousiadenos, dated ‘1469’) – have been recorded on Cappella Romana, Epiphany: Medieval Byzantine Chant, dir. I. Arvanitis (Gothic G 49237, 2004).

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The texts of a sticheron by Sophronios of Jerusalem and the Anagrammatismos based on it by John Koukouzeles

1. Στίχηρον Πρὸς τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ Ἑτοιμάσατε τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ Κυρίου· ἦλθες Κύριε, μορφὴν δούλου λαβών, Βάπτισμα αἰτῶν, ὁ μὴ γνοὺς ἁμαρτίαν. Εἴδοσάν σε ὕδατα, καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν· σύντρομος γέγονεν ὁ Πρόδρομος, καὶ ἐβόησε λέγων· Πῶς φωτίσει ὁ λύχνος τὸ φῶς; πῶς χειροθετήσει δοῦλος τὸν Δεσπότην; ἁγίασον ἐμὲ καὶ τὰ ὕδατα Σωτήρ, ὁ αἴρων του κόσμου τὴν ἁμαρτίαν.

1. Sticheron At the voice of the one crying in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’, you came, Lord, having taken the form of a servant, asking for Baptism, though you did not know sin. The waters saw you and were afraid. The Forerunner trembled and cried out, saying, ‘How will the lamp enlighten the Light? The servant place his hand on the Master? Saviour, who take away the sin of the world, make me and the waters holy’.

2. Ἀναγραμματισμός

2. Anagrammatismos

Ὁ αἴρων τὴν ἁμαρτίαν του κόσμου, ἦλθες Κύριε, μορφὴν δούλου λαβών, Βάπτισμα αἰτῶν, ὁ μὴ γνοὺς ἁμαρτίαν. Εἴδοσάν σε ὕδατα, καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν· πάλιν· εἴδοσάν σε ὕδατα, Κύριε, καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν, ἐφοβήθησαν· σύντρομος γέγονεν ὁ Πρόδρομος, καὶ ἐβόησε λέγων· Πῶς φωτίσει ὁ λύχνος τὸ φῶς; πῶς χειροθετήσει δοῦλος τὸν Δεσπότην; ἁγίασον ἐμὲ καὶ τὰ ὕδατα, καὶ τὰ ὕδατα Σωτήρ· τιτι… [τερετίσματα]· ἁγίασον ἐμε, Σωτήρ, καὶ τὰ ὕδατα…

You Lord, who take away the sin of the world, came in the form of a servant asking for baptism, though you did not know sin. The waters saw you and were afraid; again: the waters saw you, Lord, and were afraid, were afraid. The Forerunner trembled and cried out, saying, ‘How will the lamp enlighten the Light? The servant place his hand on the Master? Make me and the waters holy, and the waters, O Saviour; titi… [teretismata]; make me holy, O Saviour, and the waters,

[…ὁ αἴρων του κόσμου τὴν ἁμαρτίαν.]

[returning to the original hymn by Sophronios: …who take away the sin of the world’.]

Conclusion We have seen how the nearly constant performance of song in Byzantine traditions of urban and monastic worship formed soundscapes consisting of a number of elements. Fundamental to the aural qualities of any given service or rite were its singing personnel, whose identity, training and number determined its sonic palette of vocal timbre, register and volume. The cathedral

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rites of Late Antiquity possessed rich and varied vocal resources: soloists chosen from among the higher and lower clergy chanted in alternation with men, eunuchs, children and women who sang either together as congregations or were deployed in ensembles of various sizes and competencies. At the opposite end of the spectrum of sonic variety were the dwellings of ascetics living alone or in small sketes, whose inhabitants were repeatedly discouraged by spiritual authorities from partaking in the sorts of singing cultivated in cathedrals. Falling somewhere in between were parochial churches, about which we know very little, and coenobitic monasteries, about which we know a great deal. Foundational and liturgical typika reveal that the musical establishments of monastic communities waxed and waned according to their economic resources, contemporary spiritual trends, and the liturgical preferences of their founders or administrators.95 The performance of Stoudite worship in strict accordance with liturgical rubrics would have required the presence of musical personnel roughly equivalent in skill and organisation to the ensemble of specialist cantors at the Great Church, whose lectionaries and collections of florid solo and choral psalmody the Stoudites had borrowed. A Neo-Sabaïtic vigil celebrated according to the Diataxis attributed to Philotheos Kokkinos required a musical foundation resembling that of a Stoudite house, consisting of a priest, a deacon, a canonarch, two readers, and a pair of choirs led by soloists.96 Noticeably missing in both monastic traditions, however, were the opportunities for sonic contrast afforded by the multiplicity of choirs that were permanent or seasonal fixtures of a cathedral soundscape, although one might catch echoes of Hagia Sophia’s large ensemble of readers in the chanting of psalms by an entire Stoudite community. If singers provided the range of colours available for acoustic design in Byzantine worship, the sonic contours and temporal dimensions of individual services were determined largely by their texts, rubrics and music. The Constantinopolitan Sung Office remained throughout its long history textually and musically conservative at heart, with the melodically chanted portions of its services of vespers and orthros consisting almost exclusively of antiphonal and responsorial biblical psalmody.97 Sonic variety within these archaic psalmodic forms was created chiefly through the carefully coordinated alternation of multiple soloists and groups of singers, each of which was 95

  Dubowchik, ‘Singing with the Angels’, pp. 278–96.   Migne, Patrologia Graeca 154, cols 745–66. 97   Arranz, ‘Les grandes étapes’, p. 45 has observed that the Divine Offices of Constantinople and Palestine, despite copious borrowing from each other, were ultimately irreducible. For examples of such borrowings in the rite of the Great Church, see Parenti, ‘The Cathedral Rite’, pp. 454–66; and A. Lingas, ‘Late Byzantine Cathedral Liturgy and the Service of the Furnace’, in R.S. Nelson and S.E.J. Gerstel (eds), Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 183–230. 96

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allotted music suited to their vocal gifts and hierarchical rank. Aural contrast between units of psalmody relied in part on differences of modal assignment, textual form, choice of vocal personnel, and prevailing melodic idiom. Melodic styles could be distinguished from one another by a host of means, including extensions or contractions of ambitus, changes to the prevalence of conjunct or disjunct intervals, and modifications to the relative prominence of text or music. In some instances, especially important or solemn points within individual services or liturgical cycles of the Great Church were marked by the singing of chants that were, as is the case with the Pentecost Teleutaion, extraordinary in their vocal demands, musical form, and length. The cathedral rite of the Anastasis in Jerusalem initially shared patterns of musical organisation with its Constantinopolitan counterpart that were, for urban churches throughout the Roman world, the common legacy of the Late Antique ‘psalmodic movement’: a hierarchically arranged multiplicity of musical ministries, the singing of biblical texts with congregational participation facilitated through the addition of refrains, and the involvement of urban monastics.98 In the Holy City and its surrounding monasteries, however, this inheritance underwent profound musical and textual development marked by the introduction of the Octoechos and the gradual replacement of fixed refrains with successive layers of extra-scriptural hymnody. Modal variety and textual variability having already become well established in the urban and monastic rites of Palestine, at the turn of the ninth century St Theodore the Stoudite initiated the further musical enrichment of the Sabaïte Divine Office at his monastery in Constantinople by fusing to it elaborate chants from the Great Church and continuing with renewed vigour the process of filling out its liturgical cycles of hymnody. As the Palestinian morning and evening offices were approaching total saturation with kanons, stichera, and other hymns, important new currents emerged in Byzantine worship and chant: the consolidation of Neo-Sabaïtic liturgy, the perfection of Middle Byzantine Notation, and the rise of kalophonia. On the basis of these developments, Koukouzeles and his colleagues renewed the soundscape of Paleologan worship by re-working established repertories and, more importantly, creating new ones of unprecedented melodic and formal complexity. Their suites of eponymous compositions for the festal psalms of the all-night vigil created new centres of musical gravity within the Neo-Sabaïtic Divine Office, whilst their vast repertories of optional kalophonic substitutes and codas for traditional chants introduced significant contingencies to late Byzantine liturgy. Each kalophonic hymn was invested with latent potential to suspend and restructure the customary musical, textual and temporal orders of worship, but this would only be actualised when a choirmaster, ecclesiarch or celebrant authorised its performance.

98

  About which, see McKinnon, ‘Desert Monasticism’.

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There were, of course, other variable factors that helped to shape the sonic landscape in particular times and places. The urban rites of Constantinople and Jerusalem, as we briefly noted above, were closely wedded to their respective native physical environments through the medium of stational liturgy. That of Jerusalem was closely integrated with the Holy City’s network of shrines commemorating events in the life of Christ and his followers, whilst worship in the capital acquired distinctive characteristics in tandem with the development of its own sacred topography and church architecture. Transposition of either rite to a new environment inevitably altered the soundscape of worship, affecting it perhaps through the use of other singers or by being situated within the acoustics of a different church. Compromises of various sorts were also inescapable, particularly when local resources failed to match those required for the celebration of a rite in its native environment. In the case of the Stoudites, their transplantation of usages from Palestine and Constantinople to their urban monastery proved to be a fruitful synthesis, eventually yielding offices richly adorned hymnody and cathedral psalmody that were performed in churches that were physically and, with their iconographic programmes, visually matched to their celebration.99 Other such adaptations accompanied the consolidation of Neo-Sabaïtic liturgy, including the building of monastic churches without an ambo, which had been the traditional location of the singers in Hagia Sophia and in earlier Stoudite worship. Thus displaced from their former central location, the two choirs normally stood apart in Neo-Sabaïtic services, facing each other across the nave from new positions along opposing walls.100 There would, of course, have been other sorts of discrepancies between the ideal presentation of Byzantine worship in service books and its sonic realisations. Temporary ones would have arisen from such vagaries of life as singers who fell ill and were therefore either absent or vocally impaired on a particular day. Although we know very little about Byzantine parochial worship prior to the influx of Palestinian hymnody, it is probably safe to assume that in smaller churches the elaborate antiphonal and responsorial formats of Late Antique cathedral psalmody would have been adapted to local resources, perhaps even to the lowest common musical denominator of syllabic call-and-response led by a single cantor (as occurs today in some village or mission churches celebrating the modern Byzantine rite). Along the same lines, it was probably no more likely in the middle ages than it is today that every church performing Stoudite or Neo-Sabaïtic vespers or orthros possessed the full complement of musically trained personnel presupposed 99

  Taft, ‘The Liturgy of the Great Church’, pp. 67–74, has identified a ‘Middle Byzantine Synthesis’ embracing iconography, church architecture, and post-Iconoclast liturgical piety. I address the theological links between this ‘Middle Byzantine Synthesis’ and Stoudite hymnody in ‘Sunday Matins’, pp. 151–4. 100   Spyrakou, Οἱ χοροὶ ψαλτῶν, pp. 432–43.

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by their rubrics and notated chantbooks. We find confirmation of this from Symeon of Thessalonica, who, in the preface to a defence of the Sung Office, observed somewhat sarcastically that one advantage the Palestinian Divine Office possessed over that of Hagia Sophia was that it could be performed by a single person: In the monasteries here, and in almost all of the churches, the order followed is that of the Jerusalem Typikon of Saint Sabas. For this can be performed by one person, having been compiled by monks, and is often celebrated without chants [xωρὶς ᾀσμάτων] in the cenobitic monasteries.101

Given what we have already learnt about the music of a Neo-Sabaïtic allnight vigil, these remarks should not read as being universally applicable to the soundscape of late Byzantine monastic liturgy. The absence of chanting, however, does correspond well to what we know of ascetic devotions. Gregory of Sinai, for example, advises, When you stand and psalmodize by yourself, recite the Trisagion and then pray in your soul or your intellect, making your intellect pay attention to your heart; and recite two or three psalms and a few penitential troparia but without chanting them [ἄνευ μέλους]: as St John Klimakos confirms, people at this stage of spiritual development do not chant.102

Since the devotional performance of hymns, psalms, and even entire offices with little or no singing was also facilitated in Byzantium, as Parpulov has shown, by the production of Psalters and Horologia for private use, we should not assume that chants were always rendered melodically, let alone in strict accord with their notated exemplars.103 On the other hand, there would have been little point in devoting so much effort towards the documentation of worship if their texts, rubrics and chants found in Byzantine liturgical manuscripts were not performed with diligence in at least some Byzantine churches. The potential for the existence of significant gaps between acoustic design and actual practice that we have just identified can perhaps be most profitably viewed as another variable for the student of Byzantine liturgical soundscapes to consider alongside the significant changes over time we have already noted 101   Symeon of Thessalonike, Treatise on Prayer, p. 22, Migne, Patrologia Graeca 155, col. 556. I examine the claims that Symeon makes in his comparison of the two rites in Lingas, ‘How Musical was the “Sung Office”?’ 102   Gregory of Sinai, ‘Different Ways of Psalmodizing’, tr. in Palmer, Sherrard and Ware, The Philokalia, p. 267. 103   G.R. Parpulov, ‘Psalters and Personal Piety in Byzantium’, in P. Magdalino and R.S. Nelson (eds), The Old Testament in Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia (Washington, D.C., 2010), pp. 81–93.

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in musical forms and styles, vocal resources, and physical settings for worship. Due in part to the wide geographic and chronological span of this information, in this study we have been able to engage only in passing with the question of how particular soundscapes might have been perceived as promoting or manifesting particular theologies. To do so more fully, we would need first to consider the interpretive frameworks that shaped the experiences of participants in Byzantine worship, which ranged from the notion, inherited from Ancient Greek philosophy and science, that music possesses important ethical and cosmic properties to theological traditions of interpreting earthly worship anagogically as a living icon of the perpetual heavenly liturgy served by angels.104 I have argued elsewhere that the proliferation of Palestinian hymnody and kalophonia are, for their respective eras, developments that reflected contemporary theological understandings, best known to modern readers from writings on icons, of how the material world might serve as an agent of theophany.105 The vast repertories of Hagiopolite and Stoudite hymns did this by rendering God and his saints incarnate in exegetical songs sung by human voices, the texts of which supplemented or replaced Old Testament psalmody in which events relating to Christ’s new dispensation could be evoked only indirectly through typology. The transformations of the usual temporal, musical and textual orders of Byzantine liturgy effected by kalophonia, on the other hand, offered a musical analogue both to hesychast theology’s vigorous reassertion of divine immanence and to the tendency in late Byzantine iconography to collapse the boundaries between human and angelic worship, most strikingly when singers transcended human speech in the performance of teretismata.106 Despite employing different musical and textual means, the soundscapes of Stoudite and Neo-Sabaïtic liturgy shared a common goal of leading worshippers from earth to heaven.

104

  Starting points for considering these frameworks are: A.T. Vourles, Ἡ ἱερὰ ψαλμῳδία ὡς μέσον ἀγωγῆς (Ἠθικομουσικολογικὴ μελέτη) (Athens, 1995); A.T. Vourles, Δογματικοηθικαὶ ὄψεις τῆς Ὀρθοδόξου ψαλμῳδίας (Athens, 1994); E. Ferguson, ‘Toward a Patristic Theology of Music’, Studia Patristica 24 (1993), pp. 266–83; E.A. Moutsopoulos, ‘Modal “Ethos” in Byzantine Music: Ethical Tradition and Aesthetical Problematic’, Jahrbuch der Osterreichischen Byzantinistik 32 (1982), pp. 3–6; C. Stapert, A New Song for an Old World: Musical Thought in the Early Church (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, 2007), pp. 42–59, 105– 8 and 203–9; and J. Begbie, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Grand Rapids, MI, 2007), pp. 77–95. 105   Lingas, ‘Hesychasm’, pp. 167–8; and Lingas, ‘Sunday Matins’, pp. 137–54. 106   The connection between teretismata and angelic praise is finally made explicit in a post-Byzantine treatise by the Cretan Hieromonk Gerasimos Vlachos. The theological and pastoral history of kratemata is summarised in G. Anastasiou, Τὰ κρατήματα στὴν ψαλτικὴ τέχνη, Institute of Byzantine Musicology Studies 12 (Athens, 2005), pp. 98–119.

Index

Illustrations and Tables indexed in bold Abbot Adomnan 70 Abbot Nikulás 230 Abbot Theodore of Sakkoudion 340 Abegg–Stiftung, Bern 47–9 Abel (referred to in Ascension homily by Proclus) 304 Abraham 76 Abu-Lughod, Janet 231 acoustic designs 314–15, 318, 322, 354, 357 actants, networks of 197, 203 Aelian 289 aesthetic nature of landscape 134 affective fields 3, 155–6, 158–9, 162, 168–71, 196–7, 199, 202–3, 206–10 charged 171 intertwined 159 new 156, 168 private 210 and relational ontologies 202–3 strong 206 agency, human 12, 26, 202 Agora 43n36 agriculture 126, 141, 146, 148 Ágústsson 229n59 Akathist Hymn 85 Akolouthiai also referred to Orders of Service 344 Alcázar (indoor fountain next to the Patio del Yeso, Seville) 108 Alektora 122 Aleppo 277 Alexander the Great 243, 278, 284, 287 Alexandria 72, 74, 87–8, 296 ‘Alexandrian’ allegorical interpretation of symbolic imagery 87–8

The Alexiad 241, 264 Alexios I Komenos 245, 249–50, 262–4, 282, 286, 289 Alfred Gell’s concept of the ‘enchantment of technology’ 36 Alleluiaria 342 Alleluias 334 Allen, R.C. 30n47 altars 28, 62–3, 74–6, 86, 192 Althing 218, 224 Amathonte 72 ambergris 275, 283 ambo 62–3, 325, 342, 346–7, 356 Amorium 203 anagrammatismos 352, 353 analysis 6, 11–13, 41, 54, 100–1, 133–6, 138, 141–2, 144–6, 148–50, 155, 196–8, 210, 253–4, 256 academic 6 of archaeological survey data 141 classic 223 explicit feminist 263 historic landscape 138, 141, 146, 148 literary 253 retrogressive landscape 134, 141–2, 144–6, 149–50 textual 197, 210, 223 theological 338 of urban religious processions 155 anamnesis 165–6 anamnesis of the great earthquake: Commemorative litany illuminated in the Menologion 161 Anastasiou, G. 358n106 Anastasis Cathedral 335–6, 340, 355 Anastasius I 39 ancient Greek music 311n2, 315n15 ancient Greek philosophy and science 358

360

Index

Ancient Iadgari 337–8 Anderson, Jeffrey 279, 282, 287n88, 289n97 Andrew of Crete (poet-composer) 337 Andronikos 240 angels 5, 29, 85, 87, 294, 304–6, 308–9, 343, 354, 358 Annunciation 23n17, 49, 305 anointing the body 206, 208–9 Anoixantaria 346, 348–9 anthropologies of death and burial 195 Antioch 69, 87–8, 240 Antiochene (literalist) approach to symbolic imagery 87–8 Antiphon (‘Teleutaion’) prior to the Lamplighting Psalms 330 antiquity, pagan Greek 311 apatheia, concept of 199, 201, 206, 208 Aphrodito 74 Apostles 49, 77, 100, 139, 169, 293, 299–300 Apostolic Constitutions 74, 77, 296 aqueducts 127 Arab envoys 277 Arab poets 276 Arab tents 277 Arabic invasions 72 Arabs 43, 110, 140, 277 Arcadius, bust of 39 archaeological evidence 89–90, 101, 104, 107–8, 205 concerning monastic topography 125 for the presence of curtains in between columns 67 reveals that solitary monks followed early monastic strategies in order to conquer the landscape 115 of shrouds 203 archaeological methods in historic landscape analysis 141 archaeology 1, 3–5, 9, 11, 127, 130, 136–7, 148, 153, 155–6, 195–6, 198, 201 prehistoric 8 sensory 175, 177, 192 symmetrical 202

Archaeology Data Service 143 Archangel Gabriel 82 Archimandrita 117 Archimandrites 311 architectural historians 5 architectural space, concept of 91, 108 architecture 5, 11, 63, 100–1, 107–8, 110, 115, 125–6, 128–30, 153, 155–6, 167, 184, 287–8, 320 church 184, 319, 356 domestic 66 ephemeral 287–8 interior 60 sacred 167–8 Areobindus 38–9, 41 Argyros, Romanos 277 Ariadne 39, 41–2 Arians 319 Aristotle 59, 165, 176n3 Armenia 335 Armenian Lectionary 300 Armenians 335n50 Armstrong, P. 63n13, 116n9 Arsenius, Saint 76 art 5, 11, 13, 17–33, 36, 38, 50, 54, 59–60, 66–7, 73, 181–2, 197, 243–4, 270–2 experiencing of 17 historians 17, 35, 269, 301 Islamic 35 monumental 126 thirteenth-century 205 artifacts 12, 18, 22, 26, 143, 146, 165 artistic duplication of icons 37 Artoklinis, Constantine 236, 238 Arvanitis, Ioannis 333, 338, 349, 351–2 Asad, T. 163 Ascension 294–301, 303–6, 308–9 imagery 298 of Isaiah 294 sermons 296 asceticism 114–15, 119, 131 ascetics 117–19, 121–2, 124, 126–7, 335, 354 Ashley, Scott 213–32 experiencing Byzantine objects 216–20 experiencing the city 220–6

Index journey of Bolli Bollason 213–18, 220 the world as farm 226–32 Asia Minor 90 early Byzantine buildings 90, 98, 107 to India and China 107 Æsir 228–9 asmatic ‹kneeling› vespers of Pentecost 328 Ásmundarsson, Grettir 221–2 Ásmundarsson, Thorstein 220–3, 225–6 Athanasios of Meteora 124–5, 302–3 Athens 10, 43, 184 Athonite 116, 270, 343–4 Attaleiates, Michael 238–9, 249 Attarouthi and Ma’arat en-No’man treasures 178, 181 Augustine’s sermon 69 Austria 281 Austrian excavations 95 Avars 28 Axios delta 126 axonometric reconstruction 96 Ayasoluk 107 Azazion 277 Bakirtzis, Nikolas 113–32, 283 claiming the rural hinterland of cities and towns 123–31 monastic communities played a diverse role in the rural landscape during the Byzantine period 113 planting relics of monastic tradition 114–23 Baldovin, J. 84, 296, 303n38, 319, 335n47 Baldwin, B. 245 Baltic islands 216–17, 230–1 Bamberg Cathedral 44 baptisms 191, 209, 299, 303–5, 353 Baptisteries 93, 104–7 Bardas Phokas rebellion 257 Bars’kj (monk) 139, 144 Bars’kj’s drawings 145 Bartholomew, Saint 342 Basil, Saint 37, 55, 83, 85, 319

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Basil II 216, 257–9 Basil of Caesarea 70, 302, 308 Battle of Víðines 219 Battuta, Ibn 89–91, 98, 106–10 description contradicted by the archaeological evidence 107 journey to Bulghar 108n43 Moroccan traveller 106 in Palestine 108 reference to vaulted churches 107 beards 245, 247, 249, 263–4, 286 beggars 224, 226 Benjamin, Walter 54 bereavements 195, 200, 209 Bergsson, Abbot Nikulás 230 Berman, L. 345 Beta, Simone 274 Bethany 293 Bethlehem 296–7 Betz, H.D. 309n65 Bible 164, 169, 294–5, 303 biblical events 160, 295, 298–9, 303 biblical psalmody 294, 336, 339 Birnbaum, H. 344n79 birth 5, 81–2, 238, 259, 262, 270 Bishop Arculf 70 Bishop of Jerusalem 189, 299–300, 302 Bishop of Paphos 118 bishops 6, 53, 77, 84, 159, 191, 224, 296, 298–9, 312–13, 334, 337 Bithynia 340 Blachernae 168, 227–8 ‘Black John’ 240 Black Sea 231 body of Christ 74–6, 88, 204 Boicheva, Juliana 50 Book of Ceremonies 77 Book of Psalms 169 Bosphorus 214 Botaneiates 249 bread 73–7, 158, 179, 181 blessed 74–5 consecrated 74 eucharistic 74, 179 tasting of 73 brick walls between transept and nave 97 ‘bridge of the monks’ 130

362

Index

British Museum 19, 21, 23, 27, 31 bronze 70, 178, 185, 216 automata 36 bread stamps 187 hooks 64 open-work standing lamp with cruciform handle from Egypt 185 Bronze Age 136 Brown, Peter 69 Brubaker, L. 84, 237 Bryennios, Nikephoros 245 Buchwald, Hans 106 building phases of the vaulted church 90–1, 95, 97, 100, 102, 104, 110, 127 buildings 5–6, 64, 66–7, 75, 77, 83, 85, 87, 90–1, 93, 97–102, 104, 106, 109, 287–8 already-existing 284 church 4–5, 11, 60–1, 69, 83–4, 87–8, 98, 181 earlier 122 full-scale 100 ice 288 original 105 single 106 vaulted 97 Bulgarian tents 277 burials 11, 26, 136, 164, 195–6, 203, 205–6, 209–10 Burning Man Festival 288 bust of Arcadius 39 busts 39–41, 50 Byzantine aesthetics 66, 77 Byzantine amphorae 230 Byzantine and Islamic cemetery, Çatalhöyük 203 Byzantine and Ottoman periods 127 Byzantine archaeologists 5, 153 Byzantine archaeology 4, 154 Byzantine architecture 106 Byzantine army 224 Byzantine artists 50 Byzantine attitudes to art 23, 23–4, 237 Byzantine audiences 245–6 Byzantine authorities 10 Byzantine authors 237, 243–4, 255, 311

Byzantine beliefs 240 Byzantine bread stamps 75, 75n62, 187 Byzantine brides 237 see also imperial bride show Byzantine ‘case,’ run according to Icelandic principles of honour 224 Byzantine cathedral worship 323 Byzantine cemeteries in Anatolia 203 Byzantine Christianity 306, 319 Byzantine Christians 59, 69, 77, 79–80, 83, 85–6, 88, 176, 179, 199 Byzantine Church Architecture 3, 184, 319, 356 Byzantine Churches 4, 66, 86, 312, 357 Byzantine communities 195 Byzantine Constantinople 162, 165, 171 Byzantine control in Cyprus 117–18 Byzantine control over the surroundings of the city 128 Byzantine countryside 12 Byzantine courts 46, 70, 290 Byzantine culture 4, 17–18, 59, 75, 176, 183 Byzantine defenders of sacred images 37 Byzantine emotions 197, 210 see also emotions Byzantine emperors 67, 213, 237, 245, 259, 281 see also emperors Byzantine emperor’s subjects 11 Byzantine Empire 6, 10, 74, 131, 216 Byzantine engagement with a Byzantine text 271 examples of 271 Byzantine Ephesos 90, 108 Byzantine experience of the landscape 123, 132–3, 148, 269 Byzantine experience of time 82 Byzantine experiences of grief 210 Byzantine fascination with white and rosy complexions 243 Byzantine founders’ typika (ktetorika typika) 343 Byzantine graves 203 Byzantine Greek term (δρόμων) 221

Index Byzantine historiography 251–2, 266, 276, 290 see also mid-Byzantine historiography Byzantine history 7, 73, 251, 253, 264, 266, 336 see also middle Byzantine history Byzantine icons 18, 24, 26n30 see also icons Byzantine images 22, 203 of contemporary Byzantine tents 278 of latticed swathing bands 205 Byzantine individuals used mourning terms in texts 200 Byzantine inhabitants 148, 151 Byzantine institutions 237 Byzantine ivories bearing imperial portraits 42 Byzantine landscape 119, 142, 146, 148, 152 chronological development of the 142 one of small strip fields surrounding the smaller settlement of Politiko 146 physical organisation of 148 of Politiko 141 preserves evidence of the existence of other ascetics 119 studies allow an understanding of what the Byzantines would have seen and experienced 152 Byzantine lectionaries 316–17 Byzantine life 1–2, 4–6, 9–10, 18, 22, 26–32, 47, 84–5, 187, 210, 221–2, 255–6, 262, 269, 314 civic 153 cultural 126 daily 123, 278 earthly 127, 191 economic 123 eleventh–century 246 eternal 72, 187 household 12 human 279, 289 monastic 117, 129, 132, 339 public legal 224 religious 132

363

rural village 151 social 19, 46 urban 126 Byzantine literary writing 241 Byzantine literature 159, 252, 271, 311 Byzantine liturgical commentaries 334 Byzantine liturgical manuscripts 357 Byzantine liturgical soundscapes 315n14, 357 Byzantine Liturgy 84, 150, 315–16, 318, 358 early 188 late 355 Byzantine melodic neumes 316 Byzantine middle ages, and the distinction between catechumens and baptised Christians 61 Byzantine modes of grief, specifics of 198 Byzantine monastic communities 114, 131 Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents 115n7, 116n9, 119n18, 128n53, 129n56, 343n75 Byzantine monastic founder (St Neophytos) 118 Byzantine monastic institutions 116, 123 Byzantine monastic traditions 113 Byzantine monks 343 see also monks Byzantine mourning, exploration of 195 Byzantine music 1, 10, 169, 302–3, 311–14, 317–19, 321, 328, 333–4, 338, 340–1, 345–6, 348–50, 354–5, 357–8 allotted 355 anagrams 352 content 323 design 316–18, 334 elaboration 342 enrichment 339, 355 forms 314, 317–18, 334, 355, 358 innovative 348 instrumental 86 virtuosic 348 Byzantine musical formula 324

364

Index

Byzantine musical notation 315, 333, 342 Byzantine musical styles 318, 323, 324, 328, 345–6, 349 Byzantine mysticism 2 Byzantine network 209 Byzantine neumatic notations 316 Byzantine noblewoman 223 Byzantine objects 216, 218–19 Byzantine occupations 263 Byzantine parochial worship 356 Byzantine people 1, 8 Byzantine perceptions 19, 134, 245 Byzantine period 8, 113–14, 127, 138– 40, 144, 148, 155, 178, 195, 335 landscape of Politiko 138 late 50 and the rise of a new class of woven textiles 52 Byzantine personhood 207 Byzantine persons 202, 205, 208 Byzantine pilgrimage sanctuaries 71 Byzantine population 151, 199 Byzantine possessions 220 Byzantine romances (fictional characters) 242 Byzantine rulers 43 Byzantine servants 265 Byzantine service rubrics 311 Byzantine services 313 Byzantine settlements 148 Byzantine silks 36, 45, 49 Byzantine singing 12, 85–7, 301–2, 313, 321, 346, 350, 354–5, 357 Byzantine societies 115, 123, 198, 264 Byzantine soldiers 277 Byzantine State 132, 216, 222 Byzantine studies 6, 13, 47, 70, 113, 133, 137, 244 Byzantine successors 255 Byzantine sword called ‘Mail-biter’ (Brynjubít) 219–20, 229 Byzantine Syria 175, 180, 191–3 Byzantine tastes 244 Byzantine Technology of Mourning 205 Byzantine tents 13, 269, 276, 276–88, 290–1 Byzantine terminology 38

Byzantine terms 199 Byzantine territory 282 Byzantine Textiles 44, 276 Byzantine texts 241, 250, 271 Byzantine thought-world 18, 33 Byzantine throne room 36 Byzantine traditions 77, 123, 353 Byzantine Vespers 345 Byzantine viewers 234, 247 Byzantine works of art 23 Byzantine World 1, 4, 6, 10, 86, 114, 133, 137, 164, 199, 202, 206, 210, 313 Byzantine worship 313, 315, 336, 354–6, 358 Byzantine worshippers 77, 80, 318, 334 Byzantines 9–10, 43–4, 60–1, 74–7, 151–2, 158–9, 199–200, 237–8, 240–1, 243–4, 246, 251–3, 265–6, 277–80, 314–15 besieging Chelidonion 277 early 75, 146, 295 large urban communities 210 small rural communities 210 Byzantium 1–2, 6, 9, 18–19, 32–3, 35–6, 91, 153–4, 195, 213–22, 224–7, 230–1, 243–4, 252–3, 269 birth 5, 81–2, 238, 259, 262, 270 death 5, 26, 81, 126, 160, 164, 189, 195–6, 201, 203, 205–8, 210, 221, 263, 270 display a superfluity of skilled workmanship 36 experiences of ‘self’ in 6, 163, 176, 178, 251, 254, 256, 265–6 experiencing physical beauty in 13, 233–50 of icons 26 and the Islamic Middle East possess the technology of the drawloom 35 neighbours and enemies 252 scholars of 4, 6, 10, 13 simplified compared with the complex society of 214 Caesar Nikephoros Melissenos 286 Cameron, Alan 18–19, 30, 33, 98–9, 167

Index Cameron, Averil 17, 99 camphor 275, 283 candles 84–5, 170, 183, 288 Canon of Polykleitus 244 canons 63, 300 canticles 319, 336–9 cantors 313, 316, 320–1, 323–4, 336 Cappadocia 59, 272 Cappella Romana 10, 10n49, 311n1, 333, 333n45, 333, 342n74, 349, 352n94 Carl Knappett’s theory of object ‘affordances’ 175 Cartesian concept of a self that is separate from the world 176 Cartesian dichotomy, primacy of the 197 Cartesian dualism 176 Cartesian reasoning 176 Carthaginian Arabs 277 Caseau, Béatrice 2–3, 59–77, 168, 170 Caseau, Beatrice access to the sanctuary forbidden to the laity 62–3 active participation in church rituals and liturgy involves touching 64–6 Antique and Byzantine Christians enjoy contact with sacred objects or places 69–77 Byzantines and the hierarchical value of different spaces inside their churches 60–1 church going and ritual participation involving the senses 59 Didascalia apostolorum one of the first texts discussing the proper place for each group of Christians 61 distinguishes between catechumens and baptised Christians 61 gifts of curtains and an altar cloth became an imperial tradition 67–9 older boys were placed in the nave, very close to the sanctuary 63

365

processions, such as the great entrance, were moments of particular importance 63 recapturing some of the sensory experiences of Byzantine Christians 59–60 separation of men and women inside church buildings 61–2 special area in church for the deaconesses 62 touching and kissing icons or the reliquaries becomes common gestures of sanctification 76–7 use of the galleries for upper-class women 62 caskets 4, 19–23, 26–7, 30–1 Caspian Sea 231 cassia 275, 283 Çatalhöyük, Byzantine and Islamic cemetery at 203 catechetical sermons 299 catechumens and baptised Christians, distinction between 61 catharsis, emotion of 165–6 cathedrals 192, 217, 312, 321–2, 335–6, 354 Catherine, Saint 23, 25, 29 Caucasian leaders 41 Caucasus 231 cave cells 117–19, 121 caverns 116–17, 119–22 caves of St Konon 122 CDs 79 cells 119–21, 205, 284–5 Celtic British Isles 216 cemeteries in Anatolia 203 Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Science & Technology 143 Chalcedonian Christians 339 Chaldean Oracles 309 Chalkidiki, Peninsula of 127 chancels 77, 95, 97, 104–6, 110 chanted metrical sermons 303 chants choral 321, 328, 333, 340 experiencing in the acoustics of Hagia Sophia 320

366

Index

festal 323 of festal vespers 324 kalophonic 345 liturgical 50 new 316 proper 342 psalmodic 336 responsorial 322 soloist 324 syllabic 342n74 traditional 350, 355 Chappel, R.B. 287–8 Chariclis 242 Charles V 281 ‹Chartres› systems of melodic notations 316 cheese 74, 275 Chi-Rho (sign seen in Constantine›s vision) 189 chieftains 213, 218, 220, 228, 231 children 6, 41, 61–2, 72, 75, 304, 312, 321, 354 orphan 321 would-be imperial 41 young 61–2 choirs cantorial 324 complementary 323 elite 322–3, 328, 340 leaders 326–7, 330–1 resident 312 choirs of monks 321 Choniates 239–40, 264–6 Choniates’ Narrative 251, 265 choral chants 321, 328, 333, 340 choral refrains 328 customary simple 333 for Easter Sunday 329 for the Feasts of Saints 329 final 325 for Psalm 85 329 for the Saturday Evenings (and Feasts of the Holy Cross) 329 Choricius of Gaza 60 Chortiatis (village) 127 Christ 37–8, 49–50, 53–5, 70–1, 73–6, 82, 88, 169–70, 179–80, 187–90, 247–8, 294, 296–9, 304–5, 307–8

being the true light 170 blessing 233 departed 307 descending 294 figure of 86 greet at the Second Coming 84 as High Priest 53 image of 55 individual 200 life of 88, 356 as martyr 76 Pantokrator 87 Christian Apostles 49, 77, 100, 139, 169, 293, 299–300 Christian architecture 171 Christian body and baptism 191 Christian Byzantine experience 82 Christian churches 82–3, 148 Christian cycle of daily prayer 318 Christian environment 157 Christian identity 192 Christian initiations 179 Christian learning and cosmology 215 Christian literature 177, 189 Christian liturgical calendar 303 Christian liturgical ceremonies 59 Christian liturgical singing 311n2 Christian subjects 53 Christian symbolism 85, 157 Christian terms, periphrases for 252 Christian world 164, 168 Christianity 164, 175, 189, 192 Christians 59–61, 69, 72, 74, 76, 80, 82–4, 177, 187, 189–91, 295, 301–3, 308, 335, 338 ancient 295 baptised 3, 61, 73 Byzantine 59, 69, 77, 79–80, 83, 85–6, 88, 176, 179, 199 early 83, 86 heterodox 294 non-monastic 302 Christmas 337, 342 Christology 87 Christopher of Mytilene 244–5, 273 Christus 53 Chronicle of John Malalas 41 Chronicon Paschale 41

Index Chronographia Psellos 42, 234–9, 241, 244, 249, 251, 256, 274–5, 283 Chronological History of the Island of Cyprus 140 Chrysaphes, Manuel 351–2 Chrysostom, St John 50, 59, 86, 319, 322 Chungul Kurgan burial 50, 52 church 3–5, 59–64, 66–7, 69, 71–7, 82–107, 109–10, 115–23, 157–60, 183–4, 186–8, 294–9, 311–16, 318–24, 354–8 architecture 3, 184, 319, 356 buildings 4–5, 11, 60–1, 69, 83–4, 87–8, 98, 181 early 76, 295, 303, 358 fittings 184 great pilgrimage 91 historians 83 major Constantinopolitan 101 new 104 objects from Late Antiquity 187 parochial 312, 354 pre-Justinianic 95–6, 102 rituals 64, 76 services 88, 159, 225, 318–19, 321–3, 328, 337, 346, 350, 354 small 120, 296 tents 282 Church Fathers 74 Church of Hagia Sophia 50, 59–60, 62–4, 67–8, 70, 76, 85, 99, 101, 312–15, 319–22, 335–6, 340, 346–7, 356–7 Church of San Marco, Venice 109, 109n47 Church of St George Kryonerites 130 Church of St John, Ephesos 89, 92, 93–4, 96, 103, 105, 106 Church of St Mary, Ephesos 104 Church of St Sophia 60, 233, 242, 246, 249–50 Church of St Theodosios Koinoviarchis 122 Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople 90, 100, 109 Church of the Holy Apostles at Procopius 100, 102

367

Church of the Virgin Kamariotissa, Veroia 126 churches 30, 59–64, 66–7, 69, 71–4, 76–7, 83–98, 100–7, 117, 119–23, 130–1, 157–60, 297–9, 318–20, 356–7 of the Dead Cities of Syria 181, 184, 186, 188 east facing 83 Palestinian 336 urban 321, 355 vaulted 91, 95, 97–8, 100, 102, 104–7, 110 civic events 155, 160, 162, 166–7 classical historiography 252, 266 clergy 47, 49, 54–5, 62–3, 70–1, 73–4, 77, 84–5, 312–13, 320, 323, 346 import 150 lower 312–13, 354 secular 321 cloth 39, 71, 203–5, 209, 223 clothes for the laity 49, 203, 206, 208–9, 218–20, 265 coeval buildings 95 Cohen, Anthony 254 ‘Coislin’ system of melodic notations 316 collections 20, 45, 184, 273, 328, 337, 341, 344–5, 348, 354 fifth-century 300 heterogeneous 337–8 museum 4, 184 musical 328 specialised 345 Stoudite 344, 348 Collingwood, R.G. 7–8 columns (walls) 67, 69, 97, 122, 192, 273 commodities 19, 27, 29–32 communion 63, 74–7, 285, 302 see also Holy Communion communities of monks 321 composers 336, 343–4, 348–50 of Anoixantaria 348 late Byzantine 348, 350 post-Byzantine 344 congregations 86, 300–1, 305–8, 312, 321–2, 354 Constantine 25, 30, 70, 167, 189, 237, 242, 262, 296–7, 335

368

Index

Constantine IX 234, 260–2 Constantine VII 43–4 Constantine VIII 236, 259–60 Constantinople 11, 28, 59–60, 70–3, 85–7, 100–2, 154–5, 159–60, 213–15, 218–27, 229–31, 262–4, 303, 335–6, 355–6 early fifth-century 321 landscape of 154–5 St Germanus of 87–8 Constantinopolitan 70, 102, 355 antiphonal psalmody 333 cathedral liturgy 321 cathedral rites 312, 321, 328, 333 cathedral vespers 323 eucharistic liturgies 319 landscape 154–5 liturgical scene 320–1, 339 and Neo-Sabaïtic liturgical traditions 312 Psalter 322 rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia 313 society discharge their fears of the threat of earthquakes 167 Sung Office 354 worship 319 Constantius 189 consular diptychs 32, 32–3 contemporary Byzantine tents 13, 269, 276, 276–88, 290–1 Corippus 198 CORONA satellite image of Politiko 143 corpses 204, 208, 321 cosmos 80–2, 85, 87, 304 Council of Nicaea II 76 courts 36, 46, 62, 87–8, 242, 256–7, 279, 286, 290 creation 6, 36, 82, 151, 165, 167, 178, 255–6, 341 Crete 115, 131, 136, 249, 277, 337 cross of light in church fittings and architecture 184–6 in church silver 177–83 inscribed 187–8 in literature 188–92

cruciform timber based basilica 95–6, 184–5 cruciform windows 184, 186 Crusades 71n38, 123, 123n30, 123, 215, 226, 280n62, 282, 297n15 ‘cultural biography,’ concept of 19 cultural theorists 254n21 Cuntz, O 297n13 curtains 64, 65, 66–9 eastern 130 hanging 69 of the narthex 68 precious 67 village church 67 Cypriot Byzantine period 134 Cypriot landscapes 139 Cypriot localities 122 Cyprus 71, 114, 116–23, 133–4, 138, 140–1, 143 conquering of 140 rural 139 villages of Byzantine 139 Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem 189, 299–300, 302 Cyrus of Edessa 74 Dalassenos, Constantine 236, 238 Dalton, O.M. 21 Daniélou, Jean 188, 190, 294–6, 303 Dardanelles 227 De Cerimoniis text 289 de Lusignan, Guy 118, 121, 140 De Officiis of Pseudo-Kodinos 77 deaconesses 62, 312, 320 deacons 61, 64, 77, 85, 159, 168, 312–13, 320–2, 324, 326, 330, 354 death 5, 26, 81, 126, 160, 164, 189, 195–6, 201, 203, 205–8, 210, 221, 263, 270 Deichmann, F.W. 97, 105 Demetrius 72 Devgenii 282–3 devotions 69–70, 76–7, 312 Diataxis of Divine Service 344, 354 Didascalia Apostolorum 61 Diogenes 239 Diogenes, Romanos 239 Dionysios of Mt Olympus 124–5

Index Diptych of Areobindus 38 Diptych of Stilicho 39, 41 diptych portrait 40 disciples 285, 293–4, 296, 304, 306–8 divine light 183, 192 emitting of 181 perceptible 190 Divine Liturgy 79, 82–4, 88, 158–9, 318–19, 334 eucharistic 312 thought of as a text by scholars 79 Divine Office 318–19, 336 see also Liturgy of the Hours divine truth 187, 193 see also truth divinity 4, 176–8, 183, 187, 190–2 of Christ 188, 190 encountering of 183 and the material practice of ritual 176 Domenicus 265 domes 86–7, 93, 95, 97–8, 101–2, 107–9, 279, 281 doorway of the narthex 68 Dougherty, Patrick 288 Doukaina, Eirene 263 Doukas, Constantine 243 doxologies 312–13, 334 drawloom, technology of 35 Drosilla 242 Du Boulay, Juliet 9, 151 dualism, Cartesian 176 duplication of icons 37 see also icons Dura-Europos 83 Dutch artists 134–5 Dutch landscape painting 135 Dyrrachion 286 eagles 36, 38, 43–4, 46, 281 Early Byzantine 90 Early Byzantine buildings 107 Early Byzantine churches 90 Early Byzantine evolution of the Church of St John 106 Early Byzantine period 82, 134 Early Christian 60, 75, 90, 105, 115, 117, 177, 270 language of signs and symbols 177 normative literature 60

369

early Christian, ‘symbols’ 177 Early Christian, Syrian monks 121 Early Christian, understanding of religious symbolism 193 earthquakes 153, 160–2, 166–7, 289 interpreted by people 162 unexpected 161 east facing churches 83 Easter 70 eastern Roman Empire 216 see also Roman Empire Eastmond, Antony 32, 32–3 ‘ecclesia’ 69, 164, 171, 294 ecclesiastical processions 153–4, 159, 162, 164, 270 textiles 35–8, 41, 43, 47, 49, 52–5, 67, 69 see also textiles ecclesiastical and musical hierarchies 312 ecclesiastical chanting 311 ecclesiastical hierarchy 60, 164 Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of PseudoDionysius 164 ecclesiastical objects 218 ecclesiastical textiles 35–8, 41, 43, 47, 49, 52–5, 67, 69 Edessa 71, 74, 192 ‘edible icons’ 73 Egeria (fourth-century pilgrim) 169, 296–9, 302, 335, 339 Egypt 47, 66, 185, 296, 299 Eiríkson, Leif 231 ‘Eiríkssonian System’ 231 Eiseterioi 278 Eiseterioi tent 282 Elad, Amikam 108 Eleona Church (Mount of Olives) 296 Elvira canons 295 embodied grief 195 see also grief embodied nature of being in the world 201 embroidery 49, 52, 281 figurative 67 purple 271 ‘emotional agencies’ 3 emotional experiences 156, 196–7, 201, 210

370

Index

emotions 2–3, 13, 153–9, 162–7, 169–71, 195–202, 206, 208–10, 269, 294, 301, 303 of catharsis 165–6 divine 170–1 terms of 197–8, 200, 210 understanding of 154, 197 Emperor Alexios I 240–1, 264 Emperor Anastasius 100 Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Empress Zoe before Christ, mosaic, Church of St Sophia 233–4, 235, 236–7, 240, 242–8, 250 Emperor Constantius 67, 189 Emperor Hadrian 243 Emperor John II Komnenos 249 Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos 130 Emperor Justin 42 Emperor Romanos 237 Emperor Theodosius 67 Emperor Theophilos 277 Emperor Theophilus 24 emperors 7–8, 32, 36–9, 41–4, 46–7, 54–5, 63, 7—1, 77, 227–9, 233–4, 237–50, 256, 260–1, 273–5 Byzantine 67, 213, 237, 245, 259, 281 Komnenian 283–4 Paleologan 351 empire 36, 41, 46, 98, 102, 220, 236–9, 257–8, 264, 275 Empress Ariadne 39 Empress Eudokia 28, 238 Empress Irene 67, 73 Empress Judith 237 Empress Sophia 39 Empress Zoe 223, 225, 233, 235, 247 empresses 7, 22, 39, 62, 70, 233–4, 236, 238–40, 242–3, 246–9, 263 ‘enchantment of technology,’ Alfred Gell’s concept of 36 encleistra of Neophytos 119–22 Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy 80 Entombment, image of the 204 environment 134, 136, 149, 176, 284 acoustical 322 humanised 131

native 356 natural 115, 131 new 356 physical 175, 253 rural medieval 6 sonic 314 ephemeral nature of bereavement and grief 195 see also bereavements, see also grief Ephesian church 99, 101, 109 Ephesians 90 Ephesos 89–90, 92–7, 99–107, 109–10 Ephesus 90, 93, 97, 104, 107–8 Ephrem 180, 183, 190–1 Epiphanios, St, of Kouklia 120 Epiphanius 67 Epiphany 296, 300, 303–4, 352 Epitome Historion 236, 238 Epitrachelion (vestment) 50 Epitrachelion of Photios 51 Esquiline Treasure 19–22, 27, 31 Eucharist 70, 73, 177–81, 183, 293 see also Holy Communion experience of the 158 as an offering 76 sixth-century Syrian 177 touching and tasting 73 eucharistic wine 179, 181 Eucherios 39, 40 Euchology (Prayer book) 313, 340 Eudokia 236, 239, 286–7 Eufrasiana 64 eulogia breads 74 see also bread eunuch singers 318, 320 eunuchs 7, 257–9, 318, 320, 354 high-voiced 320 Eusebios (church historian) 83 Eusebius 83, 189, 296–7 Euthyme, St 116 Euthymios the Younger 121n23, 127 examples of Byzantine engagement with a Byzantine text 271 excavations 11–12, 93, 95 exchanging of gifts 228 exegetical songs 358 exhibitions 23–4, 27, 29, 36 exotic weapons 218 see also weapons

Index experience 1–6, 8–13, 17–20, 22, 24–6, 79–81, 83–4, 108–10, 131–4, 148–51, 175–8, 201–2, 214–16, 254–5, 263–6 architectural 91, 98 bio-cognitive 196 in Byzantium and experience of Byzantium 9–11 corporate 79, 84 corporeal 170, 197 deconstructed 3 divine 190 embodied 3–4, 10 emotional 156, 196–7, 201, 210 human 6, 8, 153–4, 201–3 of icons 18–19 individual 5–6, 79, 83, 206 intimate tactile–visual 178 of the landscape 123, 132–3, 148, 269 of life 5, 225 lived 9, 136, 192 multisensory 171 as a phenomenon 2–4 religious 2, 11, 25, 75, 77, 85, 87–8, 158, 171, 301 of ‘self’ in Byzantium 6, 163, 176, 178, 251, 254, 256, 265–6 sensory 59–60, 69, 175–8, 181, 184, 188 experiencing art 17 experiencing Byzantine objects 216 experiencing physical beauty in Byzantium 13, 233–50 experiencing self 266 exploration 113, 143, 149–52, 155, 193, 201 faith 25, 33, 52, 76, 116, 148, 158, 170–1, 180, 191, 242, 285 families 74–5, 265–6, 316 interlinked 222 noble 237 royal 225 unknown 260 farms 213, 229 Fathers of the Church 81, 86, 158 feast days 319–34

371

Feast of Pentecost 294–6, 328 Feast of the Ascension 294–301, 303–6, 308–9 imagery 298 sermons 296 feasts 67, 82, 85–7, 294–6, 300, 303, 305–6, 322, 328 Ascension 294–301, 303–6, 308–9 designated 159 greater 328, 338 lesser 324–5, 340 major 83, 343 festal vespers 324, 345–6 festal vespers celebrated according to the Palestinian Horologion 346 festivals 63, 295, 351 field boundaries 142, 144, 146 field systems 141, 143–4, 146, 148 irregular rectilinear 143 organised 150 fields 74, 134, 143–4, 148–50, 226, 228 post-medieval coaxial 146 rectangular 144 rectilinear 146 figural motifs 35 filtration galleries 127 food 12, 74, 275 bread 73–7, 158, 179, 181 cheese 74, 275 olives 74 wine 73–4, 76, 158, 179, 181, 205, 230 foreigners 7, 44, 227, 265 forgiveness 162, 164, 170 Fourth Crusade 265, 320n33 Fowler C. 170 Francis I 281 Frank, Georgia 309 Ascension as feast and place 295–303 Ascension in Constantinople 303–9 ascension in Early Byzantium 293–5 French colonialism 231, 279 Frøyshov, S.R. 336 funerals 197, 200–1, 206–7, 209–10 Gabriel, Archangel 82 Gaddafi, Colonel 284

372

Index

Galatariotou, C. 8–9, 115–16, 118–19 galleries 29, 60, 62–3, 107 filtration 127 upper 62 Gallikos River 126 garments 40–1, 43–4, 46, 53–4 silk 44 single 47 Garðariki 229 Gell, Alfred 25, 36 Gendlin, E. 2 George, St 52 Georgia 335 Georgian sources 335 Georgian translations 337 Georgians 335n50, 335 Germanus, St 87–8 gestures 64, 69, 76, 84, 171, 307, 309 bodily 306 common 76 corporate 84 of devotion 69, 77 evoking ritual actions 307 first active 64 important 77 individual 84 liturgical 308 mundane 67 ordinary 308 personal 76 Giannopoulos, E.S. 318, 318n24 gifts 28, 30, 43–4, 46, 59, 67, 72, 76, 207, 223, 228–9, 248, 271, 280–2, 308 competitive 228 diplomatic 36, 286 exchanging of 228 imperial 43 textile 46 transforming food into a sacrificial offering 74 vocal 355 Gilchrist, R. 204–5 Gjukings 228–9 glory, concept of 36, 38, 245, 294, 326–8, 331–2, 334, 348–9 Glykas, Michael 238

God 62, 73–5, 82–6, 88, 160, 162, 170–1, 187, 189, 199, 307, 325–7, 329–31, 334, 348–9 angels of 304 birthed 162 Christian 176 living 183 philanthropia of 162–3 gods 5, 82, 229 gold 30–1, 41, 178–9, 183, 217, 223, 228, 245, 265, 274, 279–80, 283 chairs 283 threads 67, 281 vases 275 golden cupola 314 Golden Gate 227 Gonosová, Anna 49 Good Friday 306 Gospel 169–70, 294, 300, 313 see also Bible Grabar, Oleg 35 Grammaticus, Saxo 230 graves 203, 205–6, 210 Great Church 77, 86, 99, 160, 233, 319, 321–3, 324, 328, 333, 336, 340, 342, 347, 354–5 Great Friday 337 see also Good Friday Greece 139, 150–1, 271 Greek 47, 70, 107, 189, 213, 219, 225, 227–9, 236, 243–4, 270–1, 294, 318 bronze siphons belching 36 high-style Atticising Byzantine 253 original 335, 337 philosophy and science 358 terms 243 text 70, 98, 241, 245, 305 Green, Katie 133–52 experiencing Politiko 148–51 historic landscape analysis 141–8 landscapes as intricate, complex and multi-layered products of social dynamics and cultural practices 133–8 the village of Politiko 138–41 Green Chasuble of St Ulrich 45 Gregory of Nyssa 69–71, 162, 296, 357 Gregory of Sinai 357

Index Gregory of Tours 71 Grenf, P. 64 Grettir’s Saga 221–2, 224 grief 167, 195–202, 210, 294, 305 earth’s 304 embodied 195 godly 198, 210 lamentation reference 200 palpable 309 passionate 200, 208 phenomenological understandings of 202 redirecting of 303 sustained 305 worldly 199 Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage 195–6 groups 2, 5–6, 10, 60–1, 63–4, 156, 179, 210, 254, 301–2, 320–1 large 209 ordered 84, 337 social 60, 62, 73 vocal 315 Guiscard, Robert 262 Gulf of St Lawrence 231 Gullvarta (Golden Gate) 227 Gunnar of Hliðarendi 221 Hadrian 243 Hagia Sophia, Istanbul 68 Hagiopolite liturgical forms 336 Hagiopolite services 340–1 Hagiopolite worship 335–7, 339 Haldon, John 44 Hamundarson, Kolskegg 221 Hardrada, Harald 219–20, 223–7 Harris, Oliver 3, 13, 155–8, 164–5, 195– 7, 199–203, 322, 328, 340, 345 Hatzaki, Myrto 233–50 ‘an appearance worthy of empire’ beauty worthy of the crown 238–40 beauty and the gendered body 246–50 the emperor’s new body: between reality and idealisation 240–6 physical beauty relates to the ideal image of the emperor and empress 233–7

373

heaven 55, 85, 87–8, 168, 189, 271, 275, 293, 298, 300, 304, 306–7, 309, 334, 358 Heirmologions 341, 344n81 Helgafell 214 Hell 306 Hellenistic and early Roman periods 139, 143 Herakleios 320 Hercules 260 Herodotus 255 Hinterberger, Martin 195, 197–8 hippodromes 228–9, 270 historians 7–8, 154, 214, 251–3, 255, 261 historic landscape characterisation see HLC historical texts 4, 252, 255 HLC categorises 148 current 148 decision 144 desk-based 143 method 141–2 methodology 138 of Politiko’s landscape 143 techniques 142 time-slices of specific periods 142, 148 types 138, 146, 151 zones 138, 142, 146, 148 Hodder, Ian 8 Hodegetria icon 24, 29, 37 Hodegon icon 32, 37 Hodegon Monastery 28 Holy City of Jerusalem 189, 297, 318, 335, 337, 355–6 Holy Cross 70, 119, 322, 328–9 Holy Encleistra of St Neophytos 121 Holy Fathers 117, 121–2 holy figures 49, 54, 67 holy gifts 85–6 see also gifts Holy Land 226, 230, 297–8, 301, 303, 335–6, 339 holy mountain 66, 116, 129–30, 343, 354 holy places 71, 88, 113, 294, 297–9, 301–3 Holy Sepulchre 5, 167, 226, 297, 299

374

Index

Holy Spirit 164, 168, 180, 299, 326, 332, 349 holy waters 72–3, 353 homilies 83, 158, 191, 299, 303–4, 311, 313, 315, 337 ascension 304 catechetical 335 Homily on Admonition and Repentance 191 Honorius 39, 41 Hook, Thorbjorn 221–2, 225 Hörmann, Hans 89, 93, 95–7, 102, 107 Hosios Antonios the Younger 124, 126–7 Hoskuldsson, Olaf 218 host 12, 64, 83, 284, 311, 355 Hrafnkel 218, 220 human agency 12, 26, 202 human beings 13, 24, 80, 176, 189, 334 human experiences 6, 8, 153–4, 201–3 humanity 181, 198, 200–1 Hunt, Hannah 198 Hunter-Crawley, Heather 175–92 ‘common-sensory’ archaeology 175–7 the cross of light in church fittings and architecture 183–6 the cross of light in church silver 177–83 the cross of light in literature 188–92 the cross of light inscribed 187–8 Hussey, Joan 79 hymnody, development of 336, 339, 341–2, 344, 355 hymns 180, 190–1, 269, 298, 305–9, 311, 313, 315–16, 325, 337–8, 340–2, 345, 348, 350–2, 355 anonymous 192, 338 appropriate 337 composed 336, 339 extra-scriptural 345 kalophonic 355 traditional 352 I Komnenos, Alexios 245 I Komnenos, Isaac 274, 286 I Lekapenos, Romanos 43

Iceland 213, 215–24, 226, 229–31 modern 229 real 214 romance in 215, 223 western 218 women 224 Icelanders 214–16, 219–20, 223–30 consider Bolli Bollaso to be a real person 214 experience of marginality and isolation 214 high-born 223 last known 219 medieval 214–15, 220 non-urban 226 sagas of 214–15, 225 Icelandic 219, 231 audiences 223, 225 classic 223 culture 215 farmhouses 228 farms 229 feuds 222 histories 226–7 knowledge 223 narratives 220 rules 222 sagas 218, 221 stoicism 223 stories 232 women 223 Iconoclasm 47, 49, 54, 85, 157, 167, 193, 321, 334, 339 iconography 17, 20–1, 28–9, 31, 37, 178 late Byzantine 358 religious 54 iconostasis 23, 75–6, 87 icons 17–19, 23–9, 31–3, 37–8, 43, 49, 54, 59, 69, 73, 76, 85–6, 115, 170, 234 double-sided 23 early thirteenth-century biographical 52 embroidered 29 failed 29 finite 55 living 358 miraculous 28 original 28, 32

Index paired 23 sixth-century 29 idiomela 337, 340–1, 347–8 see also hymns II Corinthians 198–9 II Komnenos, John 263 III Argyropoulos, Romanos 257 III Argyros, Romanos 234, 236 imagery 5, 142–3, 233, 247, 249 Ascension 298 classical 287 imperial 248 modern Google Earth 145 religious 47 satellite 146 symbolic 87 images 17–18, 22, 25, 27–9, 37–9, 41–3, 49–50, 52–5, 70–1, 143–4, 177–9, 203–4, 233–4, 245–50, 278–81 acheiropoietas 27, 29 clay 73 emperor’s 32 ideal 233, 240 manipulation 240 mid-Byzantine 204 multiple 42–3 repeating 38, 50, 54–5 repetitive 54 replacing figural 193 sixth-century 203 thirteenth-century 204 twelfth-century 204, 271 twelfth-century mosaic 249 imperial bride show 237 imperial gifts 43 imperial imagery 248 imperial motifs 44 imperial portraits 39, 41, 44, 46, 53, 233–4, 245 incense 11, 84–5, 87, 168–70, 184, 275, 288, 314 The Infancy of the Virgin 48 Ingold, Tim 135, 137, 149, 176, 198, 209 inhospitable environments 114 inscriptions 21, 46–7, 50, 55, 74, 169, 178, 187–8, 234, 270 interactions 2–3, 66, 150, 153–4, 197

375

between Byzantine people and objects, images, texts and places 1 economic 124 human 138 repeated 149 sensory 175 social 137 interlinked families 222 interpretations 1, 4, 6, 35, 39, 42, 87–8, 91, 97–8, 101, 104–5, 107, 110, 142, 317–18 biblical 87 experiential 3 new 91, 95 inventories of gifts 43–4, 64, 328 see also gifts Iona 70, 218, 298 Iraklidhios 139–40 Irenaeus, St, of Lyons 294 Islam 35, 71, 108, 205, 217 Islamic art 35 Islamic culture 140 Islamic Middle East 35 Islamic world 35, 231, 251 Italy 230, 281, 318 Ithaca 43, 215, 223–4 IV Diogenes, Romanos 238 ivories 31, 39, 42, 241 Jackson, Mark argues Byzantium studies requires specialisation in many areas 12–13 experience as a phenomenon 2–4 experience in Byzantium and experience of Byzantium 9–11 new agendas required for Byzantine research 4–9 understanding texts, landscapes, music and people in the Byzantine world 1 James, Liz 17–33 Antony Eastmond and consular diptychs 32–3 art historians engaging with the idea of art as material culture 17

376

Index

Byzantine attitudes to art involve its functionality rather than its aesthetic appearance 23–4 considering works of art in terms of their physicality 23–7 cultural biography of icons 27–33 material culture 17–19 Patricia Cox Miller use of the ‘thing theory’ in her discussion of relics 24–7 and the physical nature of icons 23–30 reciprocal relationships between people and their things 19 theories concerning the discussion of material culture assist the understanding the thoughtworld of the Byzantines 18 Jeffreys, Michael 279 Jerusalem 67, 74, 88, 140, 189, 230, 293, 296–300, 304, 309, 312, 335–7, 355–6 Jesus 71, 190, 204, 293–4, 304–7, 309, 335 Jewish Passover 82 Jewish system of a week of seven days 82 John II Komnenos (‘Black John’) 239–40, 250 John of Damascus 337 John of Damascus (poet-composer) 337 John the Almsgiver 72 John the Baptist 50, 299, 305 John the Sebastos 284–6 Johnston, Matthew 135 Joseph the Hymnographer 341n67 Judas 305 Judean deserts 114 Judgement Day 199, 206 Jung, A. 345 Justin I 41, 97n19 Justinian 91, 98–100, 102, 103, 104 church extension design of 104 intervention 91, 93, 95, 102, 104, 106 intervention in Ephesos 99 intervention in the sixth century 91 remodelling 97, 100, 104–5 time of 97, 110

work carried out by Emperor Anastasius 100 Justinianic cathedral 320 Justinianic period 64, 107 Justinianic phase 98 Justinianic remodelling 104 Justinian’s, building campaigns 98–9 Justinian’s Bridge 98 Justinian’s campaign in Africa 198 Justinian’s church 92, 93, 100, 109–10 see also Church of St John Kalaphates, Michael 260 kalophonic stichera 350, 352 Kalophonic Sticherarion (Mathematarion) 345 Kandaules 278 kanons 337–8, 341–2, 355 Kænugarðr (Kiev) 229 Karbonopsina, Zoe 73 Karim, Cyril Aphrem 188 Karydis, Nikolaos 89–110 considers the change in the way the church was perceived in two periods as distant and different as those of Procopius and Ibn Battuta 91–110 considers whether all the present church ruins should be attributed to Justinian’s intervention in the sixth century 91–8 examines the written testimonies from Procopius to Ibn Battuta 98–108 experience of religious space in Byzantium 89 focuses on the definition of the building phases that generated the vaulted edifice of St John’s 90–1 Procopius 89–91, 98, 106–10 reconstruction of the sixth-century church of St John at Ephesos 89–98 references to the form of St John found in the fourteenth-century writings of Ibn Battuta 90

Index references to the form of St John found in the sixth-century writings of Procopius 90 reveals the influence of different cultural backgrounds on the perception of the great pilgrimage church 91–8 Katakonozi, suburb of 130 Katherine, St 350 Kilise Tepe, Isauria 12 King Eirík the Good 230 King Harald 218 King Sigurd 227–8 Kinnamos, Vasileios, Bishop of Paphos 118 kissing 69, 74, 76–7 as an act of ritual 76 of bishop by clergy 77 of columns 69 of icons 69, 76 of Jesus by the Apostoles 77 of laymen by laymen 77 of laywomen by laywomen 77 as an of peace 76–7 Klimakos, St John 357 Knappett, Carl 175 Kokkinobaphos manuscripts 271 Komnenian emperors 283–4 Komnenian family arguments 286 Komnenian poems 287 Komnenoi 286, 288 Komnenos, Alexios 227 Komnenos, Andronikos 240, 286 Komnenos, Isaac 241, 283 Komnenos, John 239 kontakion 305–7, 342 Kopytoff. Igor 19, 26–7, 29, 32 Koran 311 Kore 283 Koroneia 127 Korones, Xenos 348 Kosmas of Maïouma (poet-composer) 337 Kouklia (ancient Palaepaphos) 119 Koukouzelian chant 344 Kratematarion 345 ktetorika typika 343

377

laity 49, 63, 205, 305 clothes for the 49, 203, 206, 208–9, 218–20, 265 forbidden access to the sanctuary 62 wearing textiles with religious imagery 47 Lake Koroneia 128 Laktjarnir 227 Lamech’s victim 304 Lamplighting Psalms 330, 338–9, 345–7, 350 landscape ceremonial 153 changing Western apprehensions of 135 of Constantinople 154–5 emotional 195, 295 features of the 138, 142, 144, 146 historic 133, 138, 141–2, 154, 171 Landscape Characterization (HLC) of Politiko 147 Laodicea 25 Lash, Ephrem 311 Last Supper 306 late Byzantine monks 343 late Byzantine periods 50, 115, 123, 126–7 Latin and Ottoman rule in Cyprus 123 lattice 203–4 Lauds on Great Friday 340 Laxdæla Saga 214, 217–18, 220–1 lectionaries 300–1, 316, 336, 340, 354 Leibniz 80 Leichoudes, Constantine 262 letters 43, 50, 169, 271–2, 289 Life of St Philaretos 237, 290 light 2, 4, 8, 11–12, 22–3, 59, 66, 85–7, 91, 170, 175–84, 186–93, 233–4, 242–4, 353 artificial 184 cast cruciform 184 glimmering 179 horizontal 86 radiating 87 symbolism 87 Limoges 39n18 lineage, communication of 248–9

378

Index

Lingas, Alexander 311–58 the centralness of music to public worship in Byzantium 311–19 the Palestinian divine office in Middle and Late Byzantium 335–58 ‘soundscapes’ of worship 313–53, 355, 357–8 the ‘sung’ office of the church 319–34 Lion Court 108 Litanic use of sites in Constantinople related to civic events 166 litanies 2, 10, 159–60, 162–5, 169–71, 313, 322, 326, 330, 346 chanted 313 commemorative 161, 165, 171 diaconal 333 historic 161–3, 165, 167 performed 171 liturgical celebrations 83–4, 159 liturgical chants 50 liturgical gestures 308 liturgical manuscripts 315 liturgical rituals 59, 76 liturgical scholars 87 liturgical singers 315 liturgical soundscapes 319, 339, 343 liturgical stational processions 160 liturgical traditions 157, 335 liturgical Typika (books of rubics) 270, 341, 354 liturgical vestments 52–3 liturgy 2, 4, 9, 55, 59, 63–4, 74–7, 79–80, 82–6, 154, 157–9, 285, 294–6, 308–9, 318 cathedral 335, 339 early Hagiopolite 335 enriching Palestinian 337 eternal 55 eucharistic 61 fourth-century 303 funeral 199 monastic 339 Lönnroth, Lars 225 Loudias River 126 Louis, St 280 Louth, Andrew 79–88

ancient cultures give shape to time by liturgical celebrations 83 the centrality of the notion of diastema to ancient understanding of space and time 81–2 Christian churches built facing east 83 the church as ‘Alexandrian’ 87–8 the church as ‘Antiochene’ 87–8 church buildings as the destination of processions 84–5 and the concept of ‘theological triangulation’ 88 the cosmos and a human being seen as mutually reflecting one another human kind being 80–1 an element in the construction of such a Christian church was orientation 83 experience of Divine Liturgy takes place in space and time 79–80 frames of reference in terms of which Byzantine Christians interpret their experience 80 Timaeus reveals the cosmos as a living entity is not a primæval being 81 understanding and experience of space and time 80 lovers, same-sex 7 Lowenthal, David 135 Luke, St 28–9, 37 Lusignans 121, 140 Macedonia 279 Macrides, R.J. 252–3, 255, 262 Macrides, Ruth 251 Magister Militum 39 Magnaura 43 Maguire, H. 37, 47, 200, 246 Mamoun 277 Manasses, Constantine 238–9, 241 Mangana poems 282, 287 Mango, Mundell 11, 25, 28, 60, 67, 89, 117–18, 160, 178–9, 181, 227, 252–3 Manolopoulou 153

Index Manolopoulou, Vicky 2, 153–71 the affect of litany as a practice 165 the body and the ‘Body’ 163–4 the ‘Body’ of the city and emotion 164–5 the body of the city and the affect of litany 163 emotion and the symbolic and representational paradigm 157–9 litanic materiality and affective symbolism 168–70 mnemi, anamnesis, emotion and catharsis 165–7 processing in the city of Constantine, praying in the city of the mother of God: litanic movement in Constantinople as Theotokoupoli 167–8 processions 23, 28, 63, 76, 84–7, 150, 154–5, 160, 163–4, 168, 170–1, 181, 210, 263–4, 319 studies of emotion in archaeology 155–7 understanding of emotion in Byzantium 153–5 Manuel I Megas Komnenos 50 manuscripts 253, 278, 317, 322, 329, 332–3, 338, 341, 344–5 Map of the region of Paphos 118 Maraval 70, 296–7 Marcellinus 295, 302 material culture 3–5, 10, 13, 17–19, 22, 26, 137, 153–5, 158–9, 171, 175–7, 192–3, 195–7, 202–3, 206–10 contextualising of 176 experiencing Byzantine 10 immediate 206, 208 movable 206 quantifiable 4 studies of 195 surviving 202 material objects 2, 19, 176 materiality 9, 18–19, 22, 25, 33, 156, 158–9, 167, 175, 177, 219 medieval Byzantine Chant 318 medieval west 204 Mediterranean 144, 146, 319

379

Melissenos, Caesar Nikephoros 286 memory 113–32 Menaia 341 Messina 277 Metanoeite, St Nikon 116, 246 metrical sermons 303, 305 Metropolitan Kallistos 79, 334 Metropolitan Photios of Moscow 50 Michael IV 238, 241 Michael V 236, 258 mid-Byzantine historiography 266 Middle and Late Byzantine periods 115, 123, 126 Middle Bronze Age 138 Middle Byzantine history 266 Middle Byzantine notation 316–17, 322, 355 Miklagard 229 Milan 37, 85, 184, 234, 296 Minor Sakkos of Photios 49 miracle stories 63, 71–3 miracles 25–6, 28–9, 64, 72–3 The Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 25 modern scholars 315, 317 monasteries 23, 29, 37, 59, 72, 113–17, 119–32, 139–40, 144–5, 150, 184, 186, 284–6, 329, 343 role of 123–4 rural 123–4, 126, 130–1 Monastery of Agios Iraklidhos 150 Monastery of Agios Vasileios 128 Monastery of Chortaitou 114, 124, 126–7, 131 Monastery of St Anastasia 125 Monastery of Theotokos of Pege 72 monastic communities 113, 119, 123, 126, 130–2, 354 monastic foundations 119, 123, 131 monastic institutions 113, 118, 127–8, 130 see also monasteries monastic traditions 114, 119, 121–2, 124, 337, 354 claiming of the landscape 117 earlier 122 most important Byzantine 124 thriving 115

380

Index

monks 6, 29, 72, 114–15, 120–3, 126, 128, 130–1, 205, 302, 321, 335, 340, 357 community of 121–2 fchoirs of 321 solitary 115 Stoudite 340 Monomachos 234, 236–7, 240, 242–8, 250 Monothelitism 339 monuments 5, 90–1, 93, 99–100, 102, 106–10, 119, 133, 137, 320 Moore, Sophie V. 195–210 affective fields and relational ontologies 202–3 Byzantine emotion: text and art 197–202 shrouding as a Byzantine technology of mourning 205–9 shrouding the dead 195–7 shrouding the dead in midByzantine contexts 203–5 Mosaic of the Visitation, Basilica Euphrasiana, Poreč 65 mosaics 5, 64–5, 67, 234–5, 247–8 earlier 234 floors 69 panel at Sant’Apollinare, Classe 68 panels 68, 233 scrap 216 St Sophia 234 Mother of God icon Constantinople 85 Hodegetria 28, 37 motifs Christian 47 figural 35 imperial 44 ornamental 35 religious 47, 49, 54 repeated 38, 43 Mount of Olives 190, 296–300, 306 mourning 195–200, 205, 207–10 affective field of 197, 200 biers 208 demands of 203 passionate 206 process of 196, 210

movable Penitential and Paschal seasons 341 Mt Chortiatis 127–8 Mt Menoikeion 128–31 Mt Sinai 23, 52, 349 Mt Vermion 126 mulberry trees 141 Mullett, Margaret 269–91 Byzantine tents 13, 269, 276, 276–88, 290–1 and the collection of Christopher of Mytilene 273 and Constantine Porphyrogennetos 275 receiving the text, sermons and hymns 269–74 and the shapes of the Byzantine tents 277 a theatre of the senses 274–6 Mullett, Margaret, Byzantine engagement with a Byzantine text 271 Munkaþverá 230 musical contemplation 342 musical notation 315, 333, 342 musical styles 318, 323, 324, 328, 345–6, 349 musicology 317 musk 275, 283 myron 71–2, 192 Mystagogia 87 nard 275, 283 Narration of the Abbots John and Sophronios 339 narthex (of church) 3, 60–1, 63, 66, 68, 105, 107–8, 203 nativity 297, 303, 305 nativity silks 49 nature 239 nave (of church) 3, 60–4, 66, 69, 76, 85, 87, 95, 97, 102–5, 109, 356 Neo-Sabaïtic offices 343 Neo-Sabaïtic services 356 Neo-Sabaïtic vespers 348, 356 Neo-Sabaïtic vigils 354 Neophytos, St 118 Neoplatonism 87

Index Nesbitt, Claire 1–12 argues Byzantium studies requires specialisation in many areas 12–13 experience as a phenomenon 2–4 experience in Byzantium and experience of Byzantium 9–11 new agendas required for Byzantine research 4–9 understanding texts, landscapes, music and people in the Byzantine world 1 networks of actants 197, 203 New Agendas for Byzantine Research 4, 4–9 Nicene Creed 49 Nikanor of Thessaloniki 124–5 Nikephoros Phokas 249 noble families 237 Northern Europe 216 Northern Greece 114, 124 see also Greece Norway 218 notation, musical 315, 333, 342 Nouvel, Jean 288 odes 304, 337–8, 342 Oikoimatarion 345 Oikonomedes 11–12 Old Testament 287, 300, 323 olives 74 On the Consulship of Stilicho 41 oral traditions 219, 316–17 ornamental motifs 35 orphan children 321 orphans 7, 322 Orthodox Church 50 Otkelsson, Thorgeir 221 Ottoman empire 281 Ottoman imperial tents 283 Ottoman period 126 Ottoman rule 54, 123, 140 pagan Greek antiquity 311 pain 25, 81, 199, 302–3, 351 Palaiologoi 46 Palamas, Gregory 124 Palamas, Theodosios 124

381

Paleologan emperors 351 Paleologan period 348 Palestinian all-night vigil (agrypnia) 343 Palestinian churches 336 Palestinian deserts 335 Palestinian genres 341 Palestinian morning and evening offices 345, 355 Palestinian traditions 333, 337 Palestinian vespers 344 Palm Sunday 338 Parakletike also referred to as Great Octoechos 341 Parani, Maria 22 Pascha 82, 296 see also Jewish Passover patens 178–80 Patio del Yeso in the Alcázar, Seville 108 patrons 18, 35–6, 50, 115, 276, 280 Paul the Silentiary 60, 86, 199 Paulinis of Nola 69 peace 77, 83, 280–1, 286, 326 pearls 52, 244–5, 280–1 pendentive domes 93, 95, 101 Pentecost 294–6, 328 Pentecost vespers 328–30, 333, 340 Pentecostarion 341 penthos (grief) 197–200, 202, 206, 208, 210 perfumed oil 71–2 Petar, St, of Koriša 116 phenomenological understandings of grief 202 Phokas, Nikephoros 249 Photios, Hosios 127 see also Epitrachelion of Photios physical beauty 233–4, 236–7, 239–41, 244, 246, 249–50 physical nature of an object 19 Pietsch, Efthymia 256 pilgrimage 5, 28, 70, 76, 90, 150, 177, 186, 230, 301, 303 pilgrims 117, 126, 128, 297–8, 301 poems 1, 170, 270, 273, 276, 278–9, 287, 289–91 poet–composers 337 Politiko 134, 138–41, 143–4, 146–9, 151

382

Index

Cyprus 134 develops from being an agricultural settlement to a village with hundreds of people 141 landscape of 133–4, 146 village of 138, 140, 143 polycandela 22, 178, 184 poor people 6, 11, 62, 66, 74, 203, 223, 226, 239, 257, 327 Pope Damasus 30 Porphyrogenitus, Constantine 37, 85, 275, 283 portable nature of buildings 288 portraits 38–9, 42, 44, 246, 249 pottery 22, 143, 216 power 3, 7, 24–5, 28–9, 32, 35, 37–9, 47, 69, 189, 233–4, 236–8, 240, 250, 301–3 affective 158 angelic 294 appetitive 81 curative 73 dynastic 41 epiphanic 192 female 240 healing 71–3 incorporeal 304 male 224 miracle-working 29 protective 188, 191 psalmody’s 303 praise 41, 237–8, 244, 276, 325, 334, 336, 351 angelic 358 extravagant 334 prayers 10, 27, 63–4, 69, 83–6, 159, 162–4, 168, 170–1, 263–4, 295, 312–13, 321–2, 325–6, 335 ascetic 113 common supplicatory 159 daily 318, 320 evening 312 holy 284 mobile 170 office 340 presidential 312–13 special 61 pre-pottery Neolithic period 138

preachers 73, 270, 294, 306–8 priests 7, 64, 76–7, 308, 312–13, 320, 326, 330, 354 primacy of the Cartesian dichotomy 197 Processional Cross 182 processions 23, 28, 63, 76, 84–7, 150, 153–5, 159–60, 162–4, 168, 170–1, 181, 210, 263–4, 319 competing 319 ecclesiastical 153–4, 159, 162, 164, 270 funerary 205 public 85 stational 314 urban religious 155 Procopius 89–91, 98, 106–10 claims that Justinian razed the original church to the ground 104 Prodromos, Theodore 270n9 Prodromos dependency 130 Prodromos monastery’s documents 128 Projecta’s Casket 4, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22–3, 26–7, 30–2 prokeimena (chants) 322–3, 342, 345, 347 prosomoia 340–1, 347–8 Psalm of asmatic vespers 327 psalm verses 313, 324, 333–4, 345, 347 psalmic texts interpolation of fragments from different lines 350 inversion of words 350 juxtaposition of successive lines (in their regular or inverted order) 350 repetition of phrases, syllables and words 350 psalmody 294–5, 298, 301–3, 305, 308–9, 319, 335, 345–6, 348, 355–6 anonymous 344 cathedral 321, 335, 356 choral 324, 354 daily 333 festal 342 fourth-century 303

Index melodious 302 renditions non-festal 343 replaced Old Testament 358 responsorial 302–3, 305, 340 role of 299, 301 sung at Vespers 321 psalmody permeated early Byzantine experience 295 see also psalmody psalms 85, 168–9, 208, 294–5, 299–303, 305, 307–9, 313, 324, 328–9, 332–4, 339, 341–2, 345–50, 357 antiphonal 159, 308, 339 biblical 295, 298, 319 festal 355 florid 316 singing of 295, 302 psalter 295, 301, 308, 313, 347–8, 357 Psaltikon Florence Ashburnhamensis 329 Psellos, Michael 214, 236, 239, 241, 244, 249, 251, 253, 256, 262, 266, 283 accounts of physical beauty 241 and the beauty of Monomachos 236 use of eunuchs 258 writes of Constantine Dalassenos 238 writing about Zoe and Monomachos 240 publications Chronological History of the Island of Cyprus 140 Akolouthiai 344 Alexiad 241, 264 Armenian Lectionary 300 Chronicle of John Malalas 41 Chronicon Paschale 41 Chronographia Psellos 42, 234–9, 241, 244, 249, 251, 274–5, 283 De Officiis of Pseudo-Kodinos 77 Diataxis of Divine Service 344, 354 Didascalia Apostolorum 61 Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of PseudoDionysius 164 Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy 80 Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage 195–6

383

Homily on Admonition and Repentance 191 Laxdæla Saga 214, 217–18, 220–1 Life of St Philaretos 237, 290 Life of St Theophano 237 The Miracles of Cosmas and Damian 25 Mystagogia 87 Narration of the Abbots John and Sophronios 339 Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-poet 218 Self Consciousness: An Alternative Anthropology of Identity 254 The Tale of Halldor Snorrason 219 Theodore Psalter 204 The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 54 Pulcheria (Eudokia’s sister-in-law) 28 Raasted, Jørgen 317–18 Al-Radi, Abbasid Caliph 43 Raising of Lazarus 204 Al-Rashid’s tent 280 Rautman, Marcus 139 Ravenna 64 relationships 17–19, 24, 26, 37, 44, 82, 84, 104–5, 114, 123–4, 142, 197, 203, 209, 225–6 chronological 142 close 148 complex 121, 136 dialectic 137, 155 reciprocal 19 social 136, 170, 220 spatial 136 text–music 318 relics 7, 24–5, 69–71, 76, 118–19, 122–3, 160, 168, 171, 207 embedding of 131 of a monastic tradition 114–23 pilgrims worshipping 69 religious experience 2, 11, 25, 75, 77, 85, 87–8, 158, 171, 301 religious motifs 47, 49, 54 religious processions 84, 153–5 see also processions religious symbolism, understanding of 193 see also symbols

384

Index

reliquaries 69–70, 72, 74, 76, 168 repeated motifs 38, 43 repentance 170, 191, 198–9 repertories 333, 338–41, 344–6, 350, 355, 358 repetition of syllables 350 responsorial chants 322 responsorial psalmody 303, 325, 347 Restle, Marcell 44, 95, 97, 102, 105 Resurrection 82, 199, 206, 299, 304, 335, 337 retrogressive landscape analysis 141–2, 144–6, 149–50 carried out repeatedly across all landscape features 142 of Politiko 144–5, 150 and strip fields 146 and technologies of historic landscape characterisation 134 unravels the physical and chronological relationships between different elements in the historic landscape 142 revelation 12, 179, 187, 309 of the divine in everyday life 191 of divinity 187 experience of 179–80 Richard the Lionheart 140 ritual practices 177, 188, 191–2 rituals 10–11, 17, 38, 63–4, 136, 163, 166–7, 169–70, 176–7, 187–8, 192, 195–6, 269, 288, 293 annual Akathistos 28 liturgical 59, 76 manipulation of 187 participation 59 particular learned 177 performance 193 processes of 196 roads 128, 130, 137, 144–6, 150, 215, 226 Rognvald, Earl 230 Roman and Byzantine periods and the view that vision is tactile 178 Roman Empire 30, 38, 41, 46, 229 romance 222–3 Romanos the Melodist 303

Rome 20, 27, 40, 59–60, 63, 67, 71, 84, 86, 90, 154, 160, 332–3, 335–7, 342 Rorik 231 ‘Rorikid System’ 231 Rosaldo, Renato 195–6 roundel images 50 roundels 39, 44, 52–3, 278–9, 282 multiple 55 repeating 40 silk 278 Royal Baths in Alhambra 108 Roymans, Nico 133, 137 rubrics 300, 323, 330, 341, 344, 354, 357 rulers 36, 42, 86, 170, 262, 277, 284 rules 38, 41, 60, 62, 236, 238–9, 284 rural landscapes 113–14, 131–2, 141 rural societies 132–3, 152 Russia 215, 221, 229–31 Russian ambassadors 271 Russian Devgenii 286 Russian pilgrims 24, 73, 320 Russians 229, 279–80 Sabaïtic material 343 Sabas, St 340 sacred images 37, 52, 55, 73 sacred objects 33, 59, 69, 171 sacred sites 4, 126, 149 sacredness 63, 115, 168 Saemingsson, Gris 218 ‘saga Iceland’ 214–15, 222, 226 Saga of Guðmund dýri 219 Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-poet 218 sagas 214–16, 218–21, 223–4, 228, 231 saints 7, 22, 29, 37, 47, 49–50, 53, 70–5, 83, 87, 116, 118, 246, 285–6, 328–9 elderly 284 myroblite 72 warrior 47, 50 salvation 74, 160, 162, 164, 170, 199–200, 209 same-sex lovers 7 San Vitale, Ravenna 65 sanctuary (church) 60–3, 66, 72–3, 76, 85, 87, 97, 139, 148, 261, 346 Sangarius River 99

Index Sant’Apollinare 64, 68 Saracens 226 Sauer, Carl 135 Sayf al-Dawlah Abu Ali 276, 280–2 Scandinavia 215–17, 230 character 230 crusaders 230 imagination 229 mainland 218, 230–1 western 231 Scandinavians 215–17, 223, 225, 230–1 Schiødt 318 scholars 9–10, 13, 59, 79, 93, 95, 97–8, 102, 107, 110, 135, 148, 164–5, 200, 316–17 of Byzantium 4, 6, 10, 13 liturgical 87 modern 315, 317 textual 269 Western 318 scholarship (see also scholars) 26, 102, 163, 188, 197, 234, 237, 245, 248, 259, 296, 303 Scott, Roger 42, 255, 266 scriptures 12, 87, 177, 183, 187, 269–70, 300, 305 Self Consciousness: An Alternative Anthropology of Identity 254 senate 77, 260, 262 sensory experience 59–60, 69, 175–8, 181, 184, 188 Serena 39, 40 sermons 61, 63, 69, 183, 269, 294, 296, 299, 303, 309 Ascension 296 catechetical 299 chanted 308 chanted metrical 303 festal 303 metrical 303, 305 Serres 114, 124, 128–31 servants 265, 353 services, church 88, 159, 225, 318–19, 321–3, 328, 337, 346, 350, 354 Shanks, M. 4, 217 shining crosses 178–9, 181, 183 shrouding 11, 195–6, 203–6, 208–10 shrouds 200, 203–5, 208–10, 280

385

sick persons 71, 73, 265 Sighvatsson, Sturla 219 Sigurd the Greek 219, 223–30 silk and metallic textiles 53 silk worm cultivation 141 silks 36–7, 42, 44, 46–7, 48, 49, 53, 276, 279 brocade 217 drawloom-woven 47 fine 283 garments 44 gold-and-red 279 griffin 36 imperial portrait 46 imperial rider 44 multi-coloured light 282 nativity 49 roundels 278 sarsenet 281 surviving 36, 49 silver 26, 30–2, 178–9, 181, 183, 217, 279–80 caskets 24, 30 gilt eagles 281 largitio dishes 43 pound of 30 silver coins 230 silver crosses 179, 183–4 silver largitio 32 silver spoons 181 singers 59, 84, 312–13, 315, 321–3, 328, 354, 356, 358 available 314 clerical 320 designated 342 eunuch 318, 320 groups of 312, 354 liturgical 315 most accomplished 323 professional 313 singing choral 343 continuous 312 wordless 323 Sion paten 179, 180 Sion treasure 178–9, 184 site of the encleistra of Neophytos 120 Skete Prodromou, Veroia 125, 129

386

Index

Skleros rebellion 257 Smythe, Dion C. 251–66 Anna Komnene and her life as one of storms and insurrections 262–4 articles of Ruth Macrides 251–6 and the experiences of Niketas Choniates 264–6 writings of Michael Psellos 256–62 Snorri the Goði 213 ‘social death’ 207 soloists 305–6, 313, 316, 320, 322–3, 325, 328, 333, 346–7, 354 songs 9, 239, 271, 283, 303–4, 306–9, 311, 353 boisterous 308 constant performance of 353 eternal of the heavenly beings 86 sonic environment 314 Sophronios of Jerusalem 353 Sørensen, Tim Flohr 13, 155, 196, 201–2 sorrow 23, 154, 197, 200–1, 203–6, 208, 269, 301 Sotiriou, Georgios A 93 souls 28, 70, 74, 80–1, 199, 207, 243, 301, 303, 307, 326–7, 357 sources, textual 114, 119, 202, 208, 320 space 3–4, 11–12, 17, 38, 59–60, 64, 66, 69, 79–83, 88, 135–7, 148, 154, 287–8, 314 enclosed 213 experienced 133, 136 historic 142 individual 137 interior 66, 184 liminal 3, 188, 279 monastic 123 monumental 5 private 210 rural 123 secular 133, 138 spices 71, 271, 275, 283–4 spoons 75, 178–80 cross-inscribed 180 eucharistic 191 silver 181 St Arsenius 76 St. Arsenius the Patriarch 76

St Athanasios of Athos 116 St Bartholomew of Grottaferrata 342 St Basil the Great 37, 55, 83–5, 257, 259, 319 St Catherine 23, 25, 29 St Catherine’s Monastery 29, 66, 354 St Cyril, Bishop of Jersulam 74, 189, 286, 299, 301, 309 St Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem 299, 335 St Cyril of Jerusalem 335 St Cyril Phileotes 284 St Damian’s miracles 71 St Epiphanios of Kouklia 120 St Eugenios 50 St Eugenios of Trebizond 72 St Euthyme 116 St Euthymios 127 St Euthymios the Younger 121n23, 127 St Germain, shroud of 36 St Germanus of Constantinople 87–8 St Irenaeus of Lyons 294 St John 89–96, 98–110, 116, 124 St John Klimakos 357 St John Koukouzeles 343–4, 344n79, 344, 348–50, 352, 353, 355 St John of Stoudios Monastery 340 St John Prodromos (the Forerunner) 124, 128 St John Prodromos Monastery 114, 124, 128–9, 131 St John the Forerunner 124 St Katherine 350 St Konon 122 St Louis 280 St Luke 28–9, 37 St Luke’s gospel 293 St Maximos the Confessor 87 St Neophytos 118 St Neophytos Monastery 117, 122 St. Nersess Armenian Seminary 313 St Nicholas of Myra 72 St Nikon Metanoeite 116, 246 St Paul 164 St Paul of Latros 164 St. Paulinus 297 St Petar of Koriša 116 St Sabas 340 St Sophia Church 234

Index St Sophia mosaic 234 St Spyridon 50 St Theodore the Stoudite 32, 340–1, 343, 346–8, 354–6, 358 St Vladimir 336 stational liturgies 84, 159, 164, 303, 335, 356 sticheron 353 stichologia 324, 331–4, 347 Stilicho ambitions and aspirations 41 clothed 41 garments on diptych encode 41 ivory 39, 41 Stoudite collections 344, 348 Stoudite monks 340 Stoudites 340–1, 343, 346–8, 354–6, 358 strategies 114, 124, 131 to remind leaders and laypeople of their authority 131 in the rural landscape 113 strip fields 144, 146 long 141 medieval 146 small 146 sumbolon 177, 181, 183–4, 187–92 ‘Sung Office’ 312, 319–23, 336, 339–40, 342, 346, 348, 357 Sweden 216, 281 swords 218–19, 222, 265, 275, 287 Sydney Cyprus Survey Project see SCSP syllabic chants 342n74 symbols 2, 12, 54, 85, 158, 167–70, 177, 181, 191 eschatological 189, 191 little-used literary 188 principal 87 referential 175 sacred 157 sensual 168 ultimate 175 Symeon of Thessalonica 357 Syria 59, 177, 181, 186, 192, 226 Taft, R. 59, 62–3, 75–7, 154, 157–9, 162, 164, 167–70, 180, 296, 302, 305, 313–15, 319–20, 343–4

387

Tala 117–18 Talley, T. 295–6, 303 Tamassos 139–40, 144, 148 Tarlow, Sarah 200–1 tastes 10, 12, 61, 73, 77, 81, 275 taxes 60, 141, 151 Taylor, Charles 254 Taylor, Rabun 101 technologies 35, 195, 205, 207 Temple to Aphrodite 139 tents 270, 272–91, 331 90-bed marriage 287 100-couch dining 287 aristocrat’s 279 beautiful 279 brocade 281 brown ridge 277 Byzantine 276–7, 282, 288, 290–1 campaign 283 ceremonial 279, 282 church 282 circular domed bell 277 communal square 277 dark ridge 283 descriptions of 277, 279 domed 281 erected 285 non-Byzantine 278 single-column Ottoman 282 surviving Ottoman 276–7, 281 teretismata (vocalisations on nonsense syllables) 344, 350, 352–3, 358 tessitura (vocal register) 333–4 textiles 35–8, 41, 43, 47, 49, 52–5, 67, 69 early Byzantine 44, 47 woven 38, 47, 52–4, 223 texts 5–6, 8–11, 42–4, 154–5, 197, 200–2, 226–7, 242–4, 253, 266, 269–72, 274–5, 278–9, 288–90, 350–5 psalmic 334, 349–50 textual alterations 350–1 textual analysis 197, 210, 223 textual evidence 115, 121, 155 textual lacuna 227, 229 textual orders 358 textual repetition 344, 349 textual scholars 269 textual sources 114, 119, 202, 208, 320

388

Index

Theodora 97, 102, 236, 243 Theodore 29, 32, 74, 85, 340 Theodore, St, the Stoudite 32, 340 Theodore Psalter 204 Theodosian Code 7, 30 Theodosian dynasty 41 Theodosios 290 Theodosius 39, 298 pilgrim 298 theology 33, 37, 164, 199, 339 Theonas, founder of the monastery of St Anastasia, Thessaloniki 124 Theotokos of Blachernai 70, 72–3, 162, 167, 264 Theotokos of Pege 72 Theotokos Zoodochos icon 73 Theotokoupoli 155, 167 Thermaic Gulf 126 Thessalian 287 Thessalonian cathedral 322 Thessalonian manuscripts 322 Thessalonica 317–18, 320, 322, 344 Thjostarson, Thorkel 218 thrones 22, 236–9, 245, 260, 262 Tilley, Christopher 136, 201 tombs 44, 71, 117, 119, 121, 139, 186, 203–4 tools and equipment 12, 207–8, 316–17 topography 115, 122, 153–4, 160, 163, 171, 216, 229, 298–9, 319 Torp, H. 39–41 touch 10, 19, 59, 62, 66–7, 69–71, 73, 77, 148, 169, 171, 276, 307 of holiness 71 sacred 70 single 307 Tower of Agios Vasileios 128 traditional chants 350, 355 traditions 2, 69, 77, 88, 117, 121–2, 125, 170, 197, 206, 217, 243, 255–6, 333–4, 345–7 adopted cathedral 340 anthropological 207 ascetic 117 liturgical 157, 335 local 121, 140, 320 monastic 114, 119, 121–2, 124, 337, 354

oral 219, 316–17 Palestinian 333, 337 phenomenological 201 regional 318, 340 theological 358 vocal 328 written 28 transepts 95, 97, 102, 104, 106, 110 Transfiguration 125 trickster weapons 224 Trinity 76, 176, 181, 349 Triodion 341 Triodion 341 Trisagion 181, 325, 357 Troodos Mountains 121, 134, 138, 143 troparia (hymns) 338 ‘Tropologion’ 337, 339–40 Trump, Donald 284 truth 26, 82, 196, 256, 261, 301 historical 252 revelation of Christian 192 truths, eternal 279, 289 Turkish baths 275 Turks 29, 140 typika (charters) 4, 115, 119, 343 Tzathe, King of the Laz 41–2 understanding of interactions between Byzantine people 1 unknown families 260 urban churches 321, 355 urban environments 154 urban religious processions, analysis of 155 value 3–4, 19, 25–31, 33, 90–1, 99, 121, 134, 181, 191, 298 artistic 30–1 commercial 18 emotional 170 factual 115 hierarchical 60 high economic 30–1, 183 prophetic 295 religious 75, 171 Varangian guards 213, 215–17, 219–22, 224–5, 230

Index Varangians 214–16, 218–19, 222–3, 229–30 Vatican 100 vault fragments 93, 94, 95, 101 vaulted churches 91, 95, 97–8, 100, 102, 104–7, 110 vaulting, fragments of 93, 95, 109 vaults 91, 93, 95, 97–8, 101–2, 108–9 Venetian wine merchants 265 Venetians 265 Venice 109, 140, 251, 278 Veroia 114, 124–6 verses 85, 244–5, 282, 300, 302–3, 305, 324–5, 332–3, 337, 346–9 vestments 49–50, 53 see also liturgical vestments Vienna 36–7, 39–40, 44, 89, 116, 129, 270, 275, 283, 297, 317 vigils 295–6, 302, 306, 340, 343–4, 355, 357 Neo-Sabaïtic 354 non-monastic 305 popular 315 urban 305 Viking Age, Iceland 216, 218, 223–4, 228–9 Viking-Age, Scandinavia 217 Viking world 230–1 Vikings 216, 231–2 villages 64, 121–2, 133, 138, 141, 143, 227, 356 Virgin Hodegetria 28–9 Virgin in Byzantine Art 37, 85 Virgin in Late Antiquity 303 Virgin Mary 82, 167, 171 Volsungs 228–9 Voustronios 140 wallets 23, 25 walls 24, 67, 69, 93, 97, 107, 130, 148, 167, 184, 228, 278, 356 city’s 130 curtain 127 turf 229 unbreachable 162 upper 184 waters 11, 72–3, 81, 108, 131, 179, 191–2, 205, 275, 280, 299, 352–3

389

baptismal 191 healing 72 holy 72–3, 353 stagnant 226 ‘weapon assembly’ 222 weapons 217–18, 220 carrying contemporary 22 exotic 218 fine 218 fragments of 216 trickster 224 Western Roman Empire 39 see also Roman Empire Western scholars 318 wine 73–4, 76, 158, 179, 181, 205, 230 earthly 180 eucharistic 179, 181 good 275 merchants 265 northern 230 scented 275 transforming mundane 181 witnesses 168, 189, 224, 299, 304–6, 317, 320, 339 wives 25, 39, 221, 223, 264–5 women 6–7, 54, 60–3, 69–70, 207, 220, 223–5, 236–7, 241, 243, 250, 264, 279, 287, 320 celibate 62 high-ranking 62 menstruating 63 pious 273 revered 242 wealthy 62, 226 Woodfin, Warren T. 35–55 Alfred Gell’s concept of the ‘enchantment of technology’ 36 Byzantine ivories bearing imperial portraits 42 Byzantium and the Islamic Middle East possess the technology of the drawloom 35 embroideries on the front side of the Minor Sakkos of Photios 49 gifts of garments bearing imperial images to foreign rulers 43 mechanical reproduction suddenly becomes an intricate problem

390

Index when the repeated motif is the icon of Christ or the portrait of the emperor 38 Mother of God, Hodegetria icon 28, 37 physical multiplication of the image as a means of symbolising eternity 55 power of the icon resides in its fidelity to its prototype 37 relationship between ‘implied investiture’ at home and abroad 44 repetition has bearing on meaning 35 significance of repetition to the textile medium 35 some impressive Byzantine silks surviving depict threatening creatures 36 technique of multiple busts 52 use of repeated religious motifs on textiles in the Late- and postByzantine periods 54 use of the imperial image as a badge of delegated authority 41

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 54 worship 4, 84, 87–8, 115, 158–60, 169, 271, 295–6, 317–18, 321–2, 326, 335, 340, 345–6, 355–8 angelic 358 cathedral 335 evening 339 monastic 353 morning 339 normal Sunday 84 public 312–13, 335 soundscape of 315, 323, 343, 356 worshippers 69, 76, 297, 301, 309, 319, 336, 339, 358 woven textiles 38, 47, 52–4, 223 Zoe 234, 236–7, 240, 242–3, 246–8, 250, 258 beauty of 236 choice of an imperial husband 237 features of 248 husbands of 238 Zonaras, John 237–9 Zoodochos Pege (church) 73