Writing in gold. Byzantine society and its icons

259 Pages·1985·127.274 MB·English

by  Robin Cormack

W R I T I N G
I N G O L D
BYZANTINE SOCIETY AND ITS ICONS
ROBIN CORMACK
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK 1985
© Robin Cormack 1985
Published in Great Britain by George Philip,
12-14 Long Acre, London WC2E 9LP
Published in the United States by Oxford University
Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York roo16
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the Publisher.
ISBN 0-19-520486-7
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 85-42886
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cormack, Robin
Writing in Gold: Byzantine society and its icons
r. Art, Byzantine
I. Title
Printing (last digit) 9 8 7 6 5 4 2
Printed in Great Britain
CONTENTS
Preface 6
Acknowledgements 7
The Visible Saint: St Theodore of Sykeon 9
1
2 The Saint Imagined: St Demetrios of
Thessaloniki 50
3 Iconoclasm: the Imposition of Change 95
4 After Iconoclasm: the Illusion of Tradition 141
5 Paradise Sought: the Imperial Use of Art 179
6 Paradise Gained: the Private Use of Art 215
Retrospect 252
Byzantine Emperors 257
Glossary 258
Bibliography 260
Illustration Sources 264
Index 267
PREFACE
B
YZANTIUM is not a lost world. Considerable evidence of its
vast empire remains- documents and works of literature
written in medieval Greek are still available in substantial
numbers and its material remains, dating over a period of
many centuries, are to be found over a great area. Yet all sorts of diffi
culties confront any attempt such as this one to write for non-specialist
readers. How does one select from this vast range of material when
not even professional Byzantinists are agreed on what is important or
even typical? How does one avoid simply skating over the enormous
surface, or on the other hand entering into narrow and hopelessly spe
cialized arguments? I have taken an admittedly cavalier approach and
I have chosen a series of texts and images which seemed to me to offer
a pattern through which it is possible to make sense of the history of
Byzantine art and culture. I have tried to ensure that most of the chosen
texts are available in modern editions, and so can be consulted by those
who can read modern Greek; but I have not of course assumed any
knowledge of Greek on the part of the reader, and, where details of
the text are important, I have included extended English versions of
their content.
The evidence of the Byzantine world and the problems this raises
are of outstanding interest. Its art, for example, cannot easily be studied
along the traditional lines of the history of western European art; and
cannot be seen in terms of a continual attempt to recreate the natural
world in the artificial media of art. Byzantine art needs to be interpreted,
not just to be perceived. Its literature, too, cannot be read in a straight
forward way. In this book I have tried to point to one way of entering
this complex society.
Note on Dates
The Byzantine year ran from September to August of the modern year.
In the text Byzantine years have been translated into modern years
where this has been possible, but in those cases where the month of
the Byzantine year is not known the date is shown as, for example,
681/2, indicating that the event took place some time between Septem
ber 68 I and August 682.
6
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
T
o write acknowledgements is to face the moment of truth
at the end of a book; the assistance that has been given and
its necessity becomes all too clear.
The time to write was granted to me through the British
Academy Readership scheme, which has allowed me to leave most of
my teaching duties at the Courtauld Institute of Art for an extended
period. I am a grateful beneficiary of the scheme and thank Professor
P. Lasko, the Director of the Courtauld, for his agreement to my leave.
During the writing of the book, I was fortunate to have an office
in the Warburg Institute, the best library in London for the Byzantine
J.
art historian, and I thank the Director, Professor Trapp, for this
arrangement. The book was completed in Cambridge, while I was a
Bye Fellow at Robinson College.
In obtaining photographs, I relied on the help of several individuals.
At the Courtauld Institute of Art, particular assistance came from Con
stance Hill, the Conway Librarian, Geoffrey Fisher (Conway Library)
and Jane Cunningham (Photographic Survey); this included access to
the riches of the R.G. Searight Collection (London), some of which
I am glad to be able to reproduce. At the Center for Byzantine Studies,
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC, I owe thanks to Charlotte Kroll
Burk for sending me photographs for use here; without these photo
graphs it would have been impossible to illustrate successfully the wall
paintings of the Enkleistra of S.Neophytos. In the British Museum, I
was helped by David Buckton with photographs of the S.Demetrios
reliquary and by John Kent with photographs of coins. The staff of
the British School at Athens and The Royal Institute of British Archi
tects also gave assistance in providing access to some of the valuable
material in their collections. Other photographs are due to the enter
prises of Ernest Hawkins (St Sophia), Judith Herrin (Thessaloniki),
Timothy Potts (Albania), Beat Brenk (Mar Saba), and Laskarina Bouras.
The photographs taken by me owe much to the help of travelling com
panions, particularly Ernest Hawkins and Ann Epstein.
To Michael Crawford I owe thanks for setting out a conceptual
framework within which I was able to formulate a book; and later
for his historical observations. At George Philip and Son Ltd, I was
fortunate to have in Lydia Greeves a publisher who no_t only showed
proverbial patience but who was ready to devote her attention to every
aspect of the book and to every detail to which I should have devoted
more attention myself. This book is dedicated to Mary Beard. This
is not the first book to contain an acknowledgement of her constructive
cricitism of a text, but in this case her help included the demonstration
that many of the questions that a historian of ancient history might
ask can inform the Byzantinist too.
7
For Mary Beard
I
THE VISIBLE SAINT·
ST THEODORE
OF SYKEON
'This worthless history contains nothing but declamations and
miracles. It is a disgrace to the human mind.'
So Voltaire described the history of Byzantium, and his senti
ments have been repeated, echoed or regretted by later
historians. The historical facts which this writer denounced in
support of his attempts to reform the established church in
France in the eighteenth century are the same ones which are confronted
in this book; but the aim here is to interpret and to understand, not
to pass judgement on a civilization. The society which is observed in
the following pages is Byzantine. The word Byzantine today immedi
ately conjures up an image of remoteness, obscurity, and labyrinthine
complexity. It is often handled as a useful term of abuse-anybody
frustrated by the machinery of an organization is likely to criticize it
as a Byzantine bureaucracy, and a London University professor who
recently wanted to quote some subject which everyone would instantly
recognize as quite useless hit upon Byzantine botany. As a subject of
possible study, Byzantium therefore may inspire reactions of fascination
or repellence. Why find out about this society? What is still interesting
about an empire which dominated the Eastern Mediterranean from 330
to 1453? What was Byzantium?
This book attempts something more than the correction of conven
tional images of Byzantine society. The evidence on which it will rely
is not principally documentary evidence of economic or political
activity, but to a large extent the works of art produced by Byzantine
artists. None of this material, neither the writings nor the objects of
art, survives from any part of the period in its entirety. For example,
thousands of official documents which once existed in church and state
archives (as can be demonstrated from the lead seals, once attached to
them, which have survived) have been lost through the vicissitudes of
history: after 1453 most regions of the former Byzantine empire were
9
WRITING IN GOLD
for centuries occupied by a new empire with different religious and
political beliefs; under this Islamic Ottoman empire conditions were
not conducive to the survival of medieval Christian material, and this
is one reason why only a fraction of it remains. The survivals of art
are also patchy, though a significant amount is still to be seen; this is
scattered geographically in monuments around the Mediterranean or
in museums and libraries all over the world. The most serious shortage
of material is of that from the capital of the empire itself. From what
is available a selection of material has been made which allows an argu
ment to be constructed not only through the works of art themselves
but also through contemporary written texts.
The aim of this argument is to offer new insights into the way that
the visual arts functioned in this society, and so, by analogy, in many
other societies. Byzantium is not the only society to have been in daily
contact with its art; nor is it the only society in which visual experience
was an integral part of its members' consciousness of the world. The
book provides, in one sense, a case study for the use of art as fundamental
to the understanding of any society. It explores the operation of visual
images within society, approaching art not just as another source of
information somehow on a parallel with literature, but as a means of
opening up levels of understanding inaccessible from the study of writ
ten texts. Of course the writings of Byzantines take a prominent part
in this book, but it is the conjunction of art and literature that offers
the most possibilities for a new analysis.
The visual material has been chosen from the domain of religious
art, not just because this is the area where most has survived, but because
of the active role of Christianity in Byzantium. The period of the Byzan
tine empire can be seen as quite as significant for the development of
modern Europe as the period of classical antiquity. It was here that the
idea of a Christian state was first worked out; one particular version
of that idea was successfully developed and formed the basis of what
is now called Orthodox Christianity. The church was the dominating
intellectual and moral institution, which controlled (or attempted to
control) the patronage of art, and ensured that its range of subject-matter
was limited to Christian themes. Art was one medium through which
it could promote and control allowable emotions and values. Art was
a part of the system through which the church carried out its role in
disciplining and regulating society. The visual environment of Byzan
tium was as a result a carefully constructed one and a study of it offers
a way of decoding values and attitudes, and the ways they were pro
moted and maintained.
So far the visual production of Byzantium has been mentioned in
general terms, but the one particular type of artistic production com
monly supposed to be characteristic of the society is the 'icon'. To some
extent this supposition is justified: icons, in the sense of panel paintings
on a wooden support, were in use in most periods of Byzantine history
and large numbers of these panels have (exceptionally) survived in the
remote monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai, in Egypt. Yet there
is a problem of terms. The widespread modern definition of 'icon',
IO
THE VISIBLE SAINT
which includes only such panel paintings, will be impossible to maintain
throughout this book. The Greek word eikon (of which the modern
spelling 'icon' is only a variant) is used in Byzantine writings to refer
to any image whatsoever, from portable icons in the modern sense to
monumental mosaics set on to walls or vaults. When the word 'icon'
is met in these pages, it will have been used in the Byzantine sense and
will refer to any product of the visual arts, often, but not always, a
panel painting. This is not in fact so broad a usage of the word as it
may at first sight appear. In comparison with the modern world, the
visual production of Byzantium was distinctly limited in its types of
media: there was much painting and mosaic, but a very limited produc
tion of large-scale sculpture. We are dealing with a society which had
less variety of expression than the modern world, but in which, con
versely, each visual production had greater potential influence over
those in its presence.
Art was essential to the functioning of Byzantium-it would have
been a different culture without icons. Moreover as Byzantine society
changed over the centuries, so also did the visual culture of Byzantium.
This study will be concerned with both changes and continuities in the
role of visual images. Underlying its argument is a series of questions
through which (it is hoped) the innovations and the traditions may be
more precisely defined. What was the part played by icons in Christian
worship and prayer? How do icons express beliefs and reflect devotional
practices? How was art used by the church to confirm doctrines and
codes of behaviour? What can be said of the mental habits of the users
and spectators of religious art? These questions are formulated in terms
of the Byzantine material, but the reader will see that they are
fundamental for the study of any society.
* * * *
The heart of the Byzantine empire lay in the coastal reg10ns and
countries of the eastern Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, Cyprus and
Greece (see map, p. 12). In time it extended from the fourth to the fif
teenth century, although the people and their surroundings to be studied
in detail here belong only to the central period between the sixth and
the twelfth centuries. The capital city of the Byzantine empire was Con
stantinople (Constantinopolis), often called simply the polis, the city, or
even the Queen of Cities. This city is now Istanbul, the largest conurba
tion· in modern Turkey, sprawling from the Sea of Marmara to the
Black Sea.
The site of Constantinople had a long history before the Middle Ages.
A city first appears in the historical record with the name Byzantion,
OVERLEAF The Byzantine founded as a colony of the Greek city of Megara, in the seventh century
empire showing its extent ( a)
at the death ofJ ustinian I in BC. Its site was a strategic one on the Bosporus, and it was soon able
565; (b) in the reign of Leo III to derive wealth from levying tolls on passing ships and from fishing.
(717-741); (c) at the death of Later, under its Latin name of Byzantium, it increased in importance
Basil II (1025); and (d) atthe
death of Manuel I Comnenos and status as part of the Roman empire; and it benefited still further
(1180). when as an outcome of the administrative division of the Roman empire
II
WRITING IN GOLD THE VISIBLE SAINT
d
•
Empire at the death of Justinian I (565)
• Empire in the reign of Leo Ill (717-74 1)
~
EmpireatthedeathofBasil II (1025)
• Empire atthe death of Manuel I Comnenos ( 1180)