The Material and the Ideal: Essays in Medieval Art and Archaeology in Honour of Jean-Michel Spieser

303 Pages·2007·7.06 MB·English

by  Anthony Cutler

The Material and the Ideal
The Medieval Mediterranean
Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400–1500
ManagingEditor
Hugh Kennedy
SOAS,London
Editors
Paul Magdalino,St.Andrews
David Abulafia,Cambridge
Benjamin Arbel,TelAviv
Larry J. Simon,WesternMichiganUniversity
Olivia Remie Constable,NotreDame
VOLUME70
The Material and the Ideal
Essays in Medieval Art and Archaeology in
Honour of Jean-Michel Spieser
Editedby
Anthony Cutler and Arietta Papaconstantinou
LEIDEN•BOSTON
2007
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TheMaterialandtheIdeal:AnIntroduction ............................... 1
AnthonyCutler
PublicationsbyJean-MichelSpieser.................................. 9
ZurApsisalsBildort................................................... 15
BeatBrenk
DivineorHuman?SomeRemarksontheDesignandLayoutof
LateAntique Basilicas.............................................. 31
Arietta Papaconstantinou
UrbanandRural FuneraryPracticesinEarlyMedieval Illyricum.
SomeGeneralConsiderations ..................................... 47
EtlevaNallbani
L’orfèvreetl’architecte:autourd’ungrouped’édifices
constantinopolitainsduVIesiècle.................................. 63
BrigittePitarakis
Δι’(cid:4)νδει(cid:8)ιν:DisplayinCourtCeremonial(DeCerimoniis II,15) ...... 75
Jeffrey Featherstone
ARecentlyDiscoveredIvoryofSt.IgnatiosandtheLions..........113
AnthonyCutlerandNancyPattersonSˇevcˇenko
Lenouvelordredumondeoul’imageducosmosàLesnovo .......129
IvanaJevtic´
TheSacredVesselandtheMeasureofaMan.......................149
SharonE.J. Gerstel
OnthePersonalLifeofObjectsinMedieval Byzantium............157
MariaParani
DespotiersdeNicéeauxfaïenciersd’Iznik: traditionmaintenue
oufaussecontinuité?................................................177
VéroniqueFrançois
vi tableofcontents
Untétraévangile provinciald’origine syro-palestinienne:Florence,
BibliothèqueLaurentienneConv.Soppr.gr. 160..................189
ElisabethYota
Uneprétendue relique deConstantinople:la«Véronique»de
Corbie...............................................................205
JannicDurand
Àproposdesinfluencesbyzantinessurl’artduMoyenÂge
occidental ...........................................................219
JeanWirth
Index ...................................................................233
Illustrations.............................................................241
THE MATERIAL AND THE IDEAL:
AN INTRODUCTION
Anthony Cutler
Noch eine Festschrift? Encore de Mélanges? Yet another collection of essays
by many scholars in honour of one of their kind? The response to
the scepticism implied in the question will, of course, depend on the
respondent.Ifyouaskthereader—mostlikelysomeonewhohasturned
to a particular paper for information on a particular topic—you will
hear, we trust, an endorsment of its utility. If you ask one of the
individual authors—probably someone who, in the midst of producing
his or her own book, has felt the need to thank the honorand for
stimulus previously received—you will hear similar assent. But if you
ask the destinataire, you will almost surely be met with denial: like
Ammianus Marcellinus’ Cato on the subject of statues, Jean-Michel
Spieserwouldreply“Iwouldratherthatgoodmenshouldwonderwhy
I did not deserve one rather than that they should mutter, ‘why was he
givenone?’”(XIV. 6,8)
Spieser’s modestyis even better known than the extraordinary range
of topics in late antique and Byzantine art and archaeology on which
he has written. Yet it is the latter that we celebrate in this book, written
by his pupils, colleagues and friends whose own diverse topics express
and, we hope, expand upon his areas of interest. Before turning to
those, it may be useful for one of the book’s editors to comment on
Spieser’s own achievement. Impossible, for the reason just stated, to
encompass, I prefer to look in the main at one of his papers on the
late antique city,1 written a mere six years ago, that reflects his own
work, that of others in the field, and the developments that both have
undergone. Ever mindful of their mutual impact (and thus implicitly
recalling a dictum of Susan Sontag’s),2 he pointed first to the problem
involved in the term polis that the ancients and we ourselves use for
1 “TheCityinLateAntiquity:ARe-Evaluation”inJ.-M.Spieser,UrbanandReligious
SpacesinLateAntiquityandEarlyByzantium(Aldershot,2001),studyI.
2 “Whatweagreewithleavesusinactive,butcontradictionmakesusproductive.”
SeeS.Sontag,TheVolcanoLover,aRomance(NewYork,1992),p.57.
2 anthonycutler
the phenomenon in question: “In a time of fundamental change,”
he observed, “it is in the nature of language to preserve for a more
or less long period of time the same word to describe a changing
world, or to lose the link between a word and the reality to which
it referred and use it for something new; likewise, different words are
used for the same object or the same word for different objects.”3
The reason for this dialectic between continuity and difference is that
“thoseresponsiblefor[the]innovationswerenotalwaysawareofthem;
traditional historiography told the story with the traditional frame of
thecity,withoutsuspectingthat‘lifehadchanged.’”4
So widely established now is the notion of urbanism that it is easy
to forget that the concept was unfamiliar until Paul Lemerle, Spieser’s
teacher, used it with respect to Philippi,5 followed forty years later by
Spieser who applied it to Thessaloniki6 and, even earlier, to Greek
cities generally.7 Until that time “archaeologists were more aware of,
and more interested in, the history of isolated buildings than in the
evolution of their context, the city that surrounded them; and, as
regards a building, more interested in chronology in itself rather than
in explaining its evolution.”8 Like Spieser, historians of art and archi-
tecture employ this “Darwinian” term,9 a word that in fact the Victo-
rianscientistusedrarely,preferringthephrase“descentwithvariation.”
Given the diverse experiences of late antique towns and objects, this
term may actually be more appropriate. Of this understanding there
is now a hint in Spieser: “The decay of one or a few cities does not
automatically mean the decay of cities in general, nor does the contin-
uinglifeandpreservationofimportantmonumentsinothersmeanthat
nothinghaschanged.”10
3 Spieser,“TheCityinLateAntiquity,”p.4.
4 Ibid.,p.9.
5 P.Lemerle,PhilippesetlaMacédoineorientale(Paris,1945).
6 J.-M. Spieser, Thessalonique et ses monuments du IVe et VIe siècle. Contribution à l’étude
d’unevillepaléochrétienne(Athens,1984).
7 Spieser, “La ville en Grèce du IIIe au VIIe siècle” in Villes et peuplement dans
l’Illyricum protobyzantin. Actes du colloque organisé par l’École française de Rome (Rome, 12–16
mai1982),Collectiondel’ÉcolefrançaisedeRome77(Rome,1984),pp.315–340.
8 Spieser,“TheCityinLateAntiquity,”p.5,idem,“LavilleenGrèce,”p.333:“une
villeestautrechosequ’unesériedemonumentsisolés.”
9 Thusthetitleofhispaper,“L’evolutiondelavillebyzantineàl’époquepaléochré-
tienneàl’iconoclasme”inHommesetrichessesdansl’Empirebyzantin,vol.1,IVe–VIIesiècle,
ed.J.LefortetC.Morrisson(Paris1989),pp. 97–106.
10 Spieser,“TheCityinLateAntiquity,”p.6.
thematerial andtheideal:anintroduction 3
Peculiar to that which he calls “the mutated society of Late Antiq-
uity,” and of his insights into this set of phenomena, is Spieser’s appre-
hension of the transformative part played by Christianity. “Churches,”
for example, “can even be seen as a new kind of monumental build-
ing, adding to the traditional types and not as a substitute for them.”11
Responsible for this innovation were bishops who “claimed for them-
selves the role of evergetes, traditionally in the hands of those [local
aristocrats] who [had] held power in the cities.”12 And, supporting his
conclusion that “the system was held together by material conditions,
…but also—the other side of the same coin—by a set of human rela-
tionships, by human considerations of what the world was or should
be,” he adduces the role of charity in a new economy that displayed
“preoccupation with one’s own salvation.” Here he could have men-
tioned the way this model set an example not only for the donor’s
Christian peers but also for Islamic institutions such as zakat (alms giv-
ing) and the waqf (endowed foundation). But the principle involved is
the same: religious faith “became an aspect of social behaviour,”13 a
synergyunknown intheclassicalworld.
It is no surprise that the inter-relationship of personal and collective
action would finally affect ritual and artistic performance. “New places
invert[ed] the characteristics of the older one[s]: cemeteries became
places to assemble; gold and the lavishly decorated internal space of
the church, where man faces his God represented in the vault of the
apse, took the place of the open space, sub divo, of antiquity. In a struc-
tural parallel, the man who is preoccupied with his soul, who scruti-
nizes his self, takes the place of the man whose body was inscribed
in the word.”14 More is involved here than the recognition of analo-
gies between architecture, ideology and socio-economic organization.
Each is symptomatic, indeed constitutive of the others, even when the
first two aspects are considered “superstructures” conceived and con-
structed on the basis of the last. My use, not Spieser’s, of the Marxist
term, clumsy as it is, serves to remind us that his initial concern has
always been with the fabric, the materia prima of an object—be it a pot15
11 Ibid.,p.7.
12 Ibid.,p.8.
13 Ibid.,p.13.
14 Ibid.,pp.11–12.
15 See, e.g., the deceptively “objective” report that is J.-M. Spieser, Die byzantinische
KeramikausderStadtgrabungvonPergamon,PergamenischeForschungen9(Berlin,1996).