ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Byzantium and Its Eastern Frontier
Chair: Glen Bowersock
II. Byzantine Chapels
Chair: Cecil Striker
III. Papers in Memory of John Meyendorff
Chair: John Erickson
IV. Byzantine Philanthropy and Philanthropic Institutions
Chair: Demetrius Constantelos
V. Byzantium and the West
Chair: Charles Brand
VI. Art and Ceremony in the Liturgy
Chair: Mary-Lyon Dolezal
VII. Everyday Life in Byzantium
Chair: David Evans
VIII. Expressions of Aristocratic and Imperial Status and Continuity in Late Antiquity
Chair: Jacqueline Long
IX. Instrumenta Studiarum: Collections, Projects in Progress, and New Technologies
Chair: Helen Evans
X. The Slavs in the Balkans
Chair: Ihor Sevčenko
XI. Death and Burial in Late Antiquity
Chair: Fred Paxton
XII. Methodology and Historiography
Chair: Henry Maguire
XIII. Constructing Gender in Byzantium (Part 1): Papers
Chair: Judith Herrin
XIV. Paleologan Society and Culture
Chair: George Dennis
XV. Cliche and Genre: The Place of Rhetoric in Byzantine Literature
Chair: Alan Cameron
XVI. Constructing Gender in Byzantium (Part 2): Notices and Discussion
Chair: Annemarie Weyl Carr
XVII. Artist, Artisan and Artifact
Chair: Gary Vikan
XVIII. Byzantine Music
Chair: Milos Velimirovic
XIX. Papers in Memory of Kurt Weitzmann (Part 1): Monumental Painting and Minor Arts
Chair: Jeffrey Anderson
XX. The Archaeology of Byzantine Palestine
Chair: Lucille Roussin
XXI. Expressions of Ethnicity and Nationalism in Byzantium
Chair: Louis Feldman
XXII. Papers in Memory of Kurt Weitzmann (Part 2): Manuscripts
Chair: Herbert Kessler
XXIII. Constantinople
Chair: Dale Kinney
XXIV. Syriaca
Chair: Susan Harvey
I. BYZANTIUM AND ITS EASTERN FRONTIER
Chair: Glen Bowersock (Institute for Advanced Study)
Who Really Led the Sassanian Invasion of Egypt?
Todd M. Hickey (University of Chicago)
The Sassanian invasion and occupation of Egypt have hitherto received little intensive study, and even some of the most basic questions have not yet been answered satisfactorily. One such question is, "Who led the invasion force?"-A simple query, but one fraught with difficulty.
The problem is that the literary sources for the invasion do not agree: In Nikephoros and al-Tabari, the general is said to have been Shahin, while Michael the Syrian, Eutychius, Bar Hebraeus, and Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam record Shahrbardz as the commander. Such an alignment in the testimony of the sources is somewhat curious-while one might expect Nikephoros to have divergent testimony since he represents a distinct, Constantinopolitan, pro-Monothelite, historiographical tradition, it is strange that the works of al-Tabari, Michael the Syrian, Bar Hebraeus, and Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, which have links to the same textual tradition, give differing information.
Similarly, modern scholars have been divided on the question. For example, A. J. Butler argued in his Arab Conquest of Egypt that Shahin led the invasion force, basing his belief largely on al-Tabari's reliability as a source. A. N. Stratos, on the other hand, stated in Byzantium in the Seventh Century that it was Shahrbaraz who was the commander, the testimony of Michael the Syrian and other Oriental authors, and a belief that Shahin was occupied at the time in Asia Minor, form the basis for his argument.
Though Stratos' arguments are far from compelling, a reconsideration of the evidence reveals that he was probably correct in identifying Shahrbaraz as the commander of the invasion force. For one, the hitherto ignored testimony of Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam is extremely reliable (and is earlier in date than that of al-Tabari). Furthermore, the titulature of Shahrbaraz and Shahin (as reported in Sebeos, al-Mas 'fidi, and Agapius [Mahbub] of Manbij) seems to indicate that Shahrbaraz was an official whose geographic "zone of responsibility" was more likely to include Egypt. Finally, and most importantly, there is the testimony of a piece of previously overlooked non-literary evidence: a cryptic Pahlavi papyrus letter from Sassanian Egypt, now in the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, describes Shahrbaraz riding on a camel and a shortage of horses.
The Battle of Nineveh
Walter E. Kaegi (University of Chicago)
Even though F. Sarre and E. Herzfeld, Archdologische Reise (Berlin 1920), 11 87-9, clarified many aspects of the topography of Herachus' decisive campaign against the Persians in 627-8, they did not reexamine problems of the Battle of Nineveh (12 December 627).
In the early nineteenth century Claudius Rich, misinterpreting Gibbon, believed that the battle took place virtually at the Nineveh terminus of the Mosul-Nineveh bridge, while for George Rawlinson its location was north of Nineveh. Sebeos was unknown to both of them. Later historians vaguely located it in the vicinity of Nineveh. The topography of the Nineveh region requires study in the light of the two basic sources, Sebeos, (Abgaryan edn. p. 126), who specifies that Heraclius lured the Persians west as far as the Nineveh plain, and Theophanes (Syncellus, De Boor edn., 317-20), who reports that Heraclius forded the Greater Zab three miles north of the pursuing Persians' ford, and sent his baggage ahead, and camped near (lesion) Nineveh and found a suitable plain for battle. The battle very probably took place on the plain immediately west of the Greater Zab River, in the center of which ideal plain, about 23 kilometers east of Nineveh, is the large village of Keramles/ Qaramlays. This is the intensively studied plain that from the late eighteenth (C. Niebuhr) to almost the last decades of the nineteenth century, and then again as a result of a 1942 article by Sir Aurel Stein, was erroneously assumed to have been the site of Alexander the Great's Battle of Gaugamela against Darius. Byzantinists failed to utilize these discarded studies, like those of Sarre and Herzfeld. The principal road from Mosul to Erbil (Arbela) and Kirkuk passes through this plain, which I visited on 11 August 1988.
One cannot ascertain precisely where the battle took place in the plain, but after it the Persians fled, together with their baggage, to the foothills of the lofty Jabal 'Ayn al-SafrT for better security against Byzantine attacks, in conformity to Persian preferences reported in the Maurice Strategikon 11.1. The Persians' watch over the dead was probably a very specific minimalist watch in accordance with Zoroastrian ritual requirements, given that they did not practice inhumation. Heraclius had lured the Persians to attack him in open country that was, according to the Maurice Strategikon, excellent terrain for Byzantine cavalry and infantry to engage in close combat with the Persians, if their archers could be neutralized, which the fog that prevailed that morning enabled Heraclius to do. The Byzantines probably watered their mounts after the battle on the field, two arrow-shots away from the Persians' death-watching honor guard, in one of the streams that exist in that plain, perhaps the one at Qaramlays. The reason for Heraclius' march west of the Zab, in the vicinity of Nineveh, was not only to lure the Persians into trying to attack him on an exposed plain, in a vain effort to try to catch him or pen him against the Tigris, but on his part, to hold onto and draw provisions from the Nineveh region. Nineveh was an essential crossing point of the Tigris or escape option northwest if he were defeated, so that he and his troops might retreat through relatively familiar and well-supplied country, for he had exhausted supplies along the route by which he had reached the Zab. Heraclius' operations assumed the benign non-intervention of the formidable Persian general Shahrbaraz, in Syria, whose loyalties were uncertain. Heraclius probably used conventional tactics: heavy cavalry, a closing of the ranks, and a charge, possibly accompanied by a flank attack, that broke the Persian front. The calculations and conduct of both belligerents in this battle are comprehensible in terms of the Strate ' on 11.1, which describes specific fighting techniques of the Persians and the appropriate standard tactics to use against them. In itself it was not a Persian rout, but this battle created a dynamic that led within two months to the overthrow of Khosro II and peace on Heraclius' terms.
Reassessing Nomadic-Sedentary Relations on the Early Byzantine Frontier in Arabia and Palestine
S. Thomas Parker (North Carolina State University)
There has been much recent scholarly controversy about the nature of this frontier in the Early Byzantine period (ca. 284-636). The traditional historical model emphasizes hostility between nomadic pastoralist Arabs and the sedentary provincial populations. The imperial government is thus seen supporting the sedentary population by providing security that permitted settlements to spread to the desert's edge. The government also had a compelling interest in protecting the lucrative caravan traffic. To fulfill these goals, the imperial authorities developed a system of garrisoned fortifications to protect the frontier against nomadic attack.
Recently a revisionist model has appeared, claiming the lack of much literary evidence on any nomadic Arab threat, emphasizing the stereotypical evidence on ancient nomads seen through the eyes of hostile and ethnocentric sources, and pointing to the ambiguity in interpreting archaeological evidence. The revisionists, such as Benjamin Isaac and David Graf, see a different security situation in Syria, Palestine, and Arabia. Both downplay the external nomadic threat and suggest that the major concern was internal, i.e. a restive sedentary provincial population. Isaac stresses problems of brigandage within provincial borders, episodes of unrest among Palestinian Jews, and the army as occupying force. Graf agrees that the threat was principally internal but argues for a wider rebellion by the sedentary provincial population of the Levant.
These alternate models are not without merit. They have raised valid questions about the evidence marshalled by the traditionalists. But Graf's argument that a rebellion by the sedentary provincial population in the mid- to late third century motivated the now unquestioned Tetrarchic military buildup in the region is supported by little evidence. Isaac has rightly stressed the unique Talmudic evidence for insights into the relations between Jews and imperial authorities. But one may question whether the Jews were typical of the provincial population of the Levant. Further, the Jewish threat to imperial order, real enough in the early Roman period, virtually disappeared after the early second century. This is suggested most notably by the disposition of garrisons in the sources, which show that imperial deployment between the Euphrates and the Red Sea aimed against an external threat from the desert, not an inward threat against a restive provincial population.
This paper defends the traditional model in the following sense. Undoubtedly there were frequent episodes of serious hostilities along the frontier that suggest a hostile relationship between nomads and sedentaries. There were periods of mutually beneficial relations, but generally possible only when a strong government policed the frontier. In contrast, the absence of effective policing inevitably led to a decline in security for the sedentary population and growth in the strength of the nomads. This could result in devastating nomadic raids along the frontier, inter-tribal nomadic warfare spilling into sedentary areas, and occasionally a full-scale nomadic invasion of the settled region. This interpretation is based on analysis of a wide array of evidence, including literary, epigraphic, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence. What changed the balance between nomads and sedentaries was the appearance of camel bedouin late in the second millennium B.C. These nomads migrated long distances, lived for long periods far from the reach of governments, and used their extraordinary mobility for raiding. The threat posed by camel bedouin existed as early as the Iron Age (1200-539 B.C.) and was faced by each successive empire that ruled the Fertile Crescent. These conditions prevailed throughout much of the classical, medieval and modern periods, until the early twentieth century.
The Rebellion of Nikephoros the "Twisted Neck" Phokas and Nikephoros Xiphias: An Attempt to Reconcile the Accounts of Byzantine and Eastern Sources
Stephen H. Rapp, Jr. (University of Michigan)
In the last quarter of the tenth century the Byzantine empire was faced with two major rebellions. In both instances a prominent role was played by Davit' of Tao, the prince of southwestern Georgia. Armenian and Georgian troops provided to Bardas Phokas by Davit' proved to be decisive in quashing the uprising of Bardas Skleros in 979. In 987 Phokas and Skleros together rebelled against imperial authority; many of the rebel troops were provided by Phokas' ally, Davit'. Once the revolt was put down, Davit' was forced to promise that his lands (which included the city of Theodosioupolis) would be surrendered to Byzantium upon his death. But during the fifteen years after the death of Davit' of Tao (ca. 1001), King Giorgi of Ap'xazet'i (Gk. A(3a(TyLa) refused to recognize Byzantium's claim to Davit's possessions and in 1020/1021 Basil launched a campaign against Ap'xazet'i. While Basil was away on this campaign a new rebellion was mounted against him in 1022.
There are several eleventh-century sources which describe the rebellion of 1022. In Georgian we have the short accounts of Sumbat Davit'is-dze and the anonymous Matiane k'art lisay, in Armenian Matthew of Edessa (twelfth century) and Aristakes Lasffvertc'i, in Arabic the history of Yahya ibn Sa'id, and in Greek Synopsis Historiarum of Skylitzes, repeated in Kedrenos' Historiarum Compendium, and the history of Zonaras. As I shall demonstrate the sources offer varied, but I believe reconcilable, accounts.
The main leader, and perhaps initiator, of the rebellion was Nikephoros "the Twisted Neck" Phokas, son of Bardas Phokas. Aristakes Lastivertc'i asserts that the rebellion began when several nobles, finding themselves neglected by Basil, banded together and sought a leader; eventually they chose Nikephoros Phokas who initially refused but was later persuaded to their cause. Other accounts merely relate that the rebellion began when some nobles, including Phokas and Nikephoros Xiphias (who had been appointed strategos of the Anatolikon theme after his successes in Bulgaria) became disgruntled when they were not taken on Basil's Caucasian campaign.
It is possible that King Giorgi himself was involved in instigating the uprising although the sources provide no direct evidence of this. Matthew of Edessa and Skylitzes/Kedrenos do claim that contact was established between the rebels and the Georgian king Giorgi; however, if contact was indeed established, Giorgi's support of the rebels would have been severely limited (probably to moral support) because of Basil's invasion of his realm.
However, some Georgians undoubtedly joined the rebellion-in this regard a certain P'erisi "of the race of Tao" (Georgian nat'esavit' taoeli) is named by the Georgian sources as well as by Skylitzes/Kedrenos and Aristakes.
The demise of the rebellion can be attributed to many factors. Skylitzes/Kedrenos claims that rebel forces were recruited in a highly haphazard fashion. If we are to believe Aristakes, Phokas did not want to lead the rebellion in the first place, and thus we may question his ultimate resolve. Skylitzes/Kedrenos further contends that Basil sent letters secretly to both Phokas and Xiphias in an attempt to drive them apart. This may or not have been the case, but Skylitzes/Kedrenos and Yahya clearly state that Xiphias became extremely envious of Phokas' position as the leader of the rebellion and thus Xiphias murdered (or ordered the murder of) Phokas in an attempt to seize control of the rebel forces. Furthermore, I believe we can discount the claim of Matthew of Edessa and Aristakes that it was an Armenian, and not Xiphias, who was responsible for the murder of Phokas. This claim merely represents the attempt by these historians to attribute evidence of patriotic resistance to Caucasian Armenians whose political structures had deteriorated in the face of increasing Byzantine and Georgian influence.
The sources all concur that after the death of Phokas the rebellion quickly collapsed. This uprising, unlike those of Skleros and Bardas Phokas, never seriously threatened the stability of the empire; indeed, as Aristakes wrote, the revolt of 1022 "was not prolonged, but was rather like a structure built on sand and that quickly falls into ruin from the blows of a flood." Once the rebellion was quashed, Basil was able to again direct his full attention to his campaign against Giorgi.
II. BYZANTINE CHAPELS
Chair: Cecil Striker (University of Pennsylvania)
"Elevated Chapels": The Monastery Tower And Its Meaning
Svetlana Popovic (Princeton University)
The majority of Byzantine monasteries on Mount Athos have towers-pyrgoi-whose presence has essentially come to symbolize the monastic establishments themselves. Current scholarship has virtually exclusively defined these towers as fortifications. However, other monasteries throughout the Byzantine world and its sphere of influence had free-standing towers within their complexes. As early as the fifth century, numerous lavras in Palestine (Laura Chariton, the Great Lavra, etc.) had towers situated on the highest point within the monastery complex. This paper will address the question of the meaning and function of these towers within their respective monastery complexes.
Almost every one of these towers contained a chapel. Virtually without exception these chapels were located at the highest level of the respective towers. The towers contained other functions including, among others, living quarters for the monks. In addition to these towers, monasteries contained other buildings of a similar architectural type, but of different functions. These included monastery entrance towers and bell-towers. Generally, both of these tower types also contained chapels. The meaning and the function of all of these chapels were not the same. I propose to examine their symbolic meaning within the context of the monastic complex as a whole. I believe that the monastery pyrgoi have their origins in the first monastic towers built in fifth-century Palestinian lavras. These towers accommodated cells of the monastic founders and later of monks of some distinction. The first towers in Palestine contained "prayer rooms" which subsequently became full-fledged chapels in the Middle Byzantine period and later. These chapels were often dedicated to the Ascension and to the Transfiguration (cf. Hilandar-Hrusija pyrgos, the pyrgos at Spasova voda).
Monastery entrance towers and their chapels, in contrast to the previously mentioned types, had a prophylactic function. This is confirmed by the dedication of several preserved chapels of this type which were dedicated to the Archangels, the Archangel Michael, Sts. Constantine and Helena, etc. Monastic bell-towers also contained chapels. At times, when their function was combined with that of an entrance tower, they would contain two chapels-one serving the symbolic prophylactic roll while the other was related to the function of the bell-tower. Such was the case at the monastery of Studenica, whose early thirteenth-century entrance tower contained a Transfiguration chapel and another dedicated to the Archangel Michael.
What Was the Real Function of Late Byzantine Katechoumena?
Slobodan Curcic (Princeton University)
A fairly large number of Late Byzantine churches have upper-level chambers, generally situated above their narthexes. Few of these chambers have preserved their original decoration, and even fewer their furnishings. Virtually nothing is known about the function of these chambers. They are generally referred to as katechoumena, a term borrowed from an earlier Byzantine context, and applied uncritically to these chambers.
Scholars who have dealt with these issues (G. Millet, Ch. Delvoye, T. Mathews, among them) have observed that the term katechoumena supersedes an older term hvperoa, referring to the full-fledged open galleries in large Early Christian and Early Byzantine churches. The term katechoumena was apparently introduced as early as the seventh century, and was fully established by the tenth century, though still without a precise meaning. As such, it has been indiscriminately applied to later Byzantine examples by modern scholars. This paper seeks to examine a number of chambers whose architectural and decorative characteristics suggest that they were not earmarked for occasional use by high church and state dignitaries, as is the prevalent current opinion.
The main examples of chambers to be examined include those in Bogorodica Ljeviska at Prizren (1306-7), Gracanica (ca. 1311f.), and in Perivleptos at Mistra (third quarter of the 14th century). These three will be related to two other fourteenth-century examples: the early fourteenth-century church at Omorphoklissia, Epiros (the gallery chamber here may belong to an earlier structure, if the dating of frescoes is correct), and the church of the Chora Monastery in Constantinople, of ca. 1320. The upper-level chambers at Bogorodica Ljeviska, Gracanica, and the Perivleptos at Mistra share certain important characteristics: all are situated directly above entrances into the naos proper; all are relatively difficult of access; all have two-light interior windows overlooking the naos; all of these windows are incorporated into the fresco composition depicting the Dormition of the Virgin.
The particular characteristics of the Perivleptos at Mistra, where the upper-level chamber is, in fact, a cave in the cliff against which the church was built, suggest that this chamber may have been a type of enkleistra, a secluded dwelling place reserved for a monk of some distinction. On the basis of earlier precedents (e.g., the katechoumena of St. Athanasios in the Great Lavra on Mt. Athos, and the hagiasterion of St. Neophitos in his Enkleistra near Paphos on Cyprus), I will argue that such chambers were specially made in churches as eventual retreats for their patrons. The patrons in question, on the other hand, were either high-ranking state or church officials who aspired to a monastic form of retirement and eventual burial within their own foundations.
The Iconographic Program of Side Chapels of the Triple Sanctuary
Svetlana Tomekovic (C.N.R.S. Paris)
One of the first studies on the relations between church decoration and the liturgy, published by J. D. Stefanesku in 1936,1 contains much precious information but does not present either the various strata of the rite of the prothesis, for instance, or the precise program of the place in which it was said. In the years 1964 and 1965, two articles, by G. Babic2 and S. Dufrenne,3 were dedicated in part to those questions. The decoration of the eastern chapels was then studied by G. Babic in her well-known work dealing with the whole of the subsidiary chapels.4 According to this author, the programs adopted in churches from the fifth to the twelfth centuries reflect particularly the special services (commemoration of saints, defunct monks, founder of the church). The hagiographical cycles continue to be represented in the chapels near the sanctuary after this date, besides some new representations revealing more links between these annexes and the liturgy. This last aspect attracted also the attention of S. Dufrenne, in her study of the prothesis in the church of the Virgin Peribleptos in Mistra5 Since then, Ch. Walter proposed further consideration of this subject, saying that the programs of the chapel of the prothesis merit further study.6 I took up this question in another way, through the location of the ascetic saints in Byzantine wall painting. It seemed to me, then, if the northeast chapel program remained often close to that of the votive chapel, the close ties between the Christ Sacrifice and the one of saints who followed his example were accentuated. Moreover, in certain churches, at least starting with the tenth century, the program of this chapel referred still more clearly to the Eucharist with the help of the introduction of several subjects with liturgical significance, as it is the case in the New Church of Tokali in Goreme.7
So far as I know, the study of the prothesis and the diaconicon from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, according to the architectural evidence, also remains to be done. Even the known inquiries do not agree about the period of the appearance of these chapels. Did they appear in post-iconoclastic churches,8 or starting with the seventh century in Greece?9 The church of the Dormition in Nicaea10 as the churches of the Sea of Marmara are not strictly dated.11 The other studies are brief, limited often to simple mention or to typology.12 Finally, some studies bear new interpretations on the origin and function of subsidiary chapels in Byzantine architecture.13
Our study aims to present first an investigation of the iconographic program of the side chapels of the triple sanctuary, based on a catalogue including the most significant Byzantine wall paintings and those in the area under its influence, from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. This inquiry leads us to the first classification of several variants of prothesis decoration (8th-12th century): a) isolated effigies of saints only (deacons, bishops, martyrs); b) effigy of Christ or the Virgin as a central panel among the saints; c) scenes of the Virgin's or Christ's life; d) theme with Christ or the Virgin and the hagiographical cycle; e) pure hagiographical variant with the portrait of the saint in the apse with, on the walls, either the illustration of the life of the same saint or of another one; f) Old Testament and ascetic subjects with a Eucharistic meaning. Starting with the thirteenth, and particularly in the fourteenth century, some other subjects are a part of the program of the prothesis (Amnos, Vision of Peter of Alexandria, Celestial Liturgy, etc.) and the representations of the Old Testament prefigurations are more numerous.
Several analyses of the Byzantine commentaries of the Divine Liturgy, from the original composition of the Historia Ecclesiastica to the work of Nicholas Cabasilas, offer us certain knowledge about the prothesis ceremony and its evolution as well as about the texts read during this rite which could be compared with this visual evidence. It seems that the rite of the prothesis, well established as far back as the eighth century, is probably already reflected in some decoration at that time. The successive developments of this rite specify its meaning further. Church decoration follows this evolution freely, in different ways, without illustrating it in detail. In the tenth century several examples testify to a real interest in the subjects with liturgical connotation (Hospitality of Abraham, Communion of the Apostles, Communion of Mary the Egyptian, Last Supper). In the eleventh and twelfth centuries this program could consist as well of the simple representation of the celebrants as in the events of Christ's or the Virgin's life. At the same time the hagiographical illustration also develops. The chronology of the preserved paintings seems to reveal, except for the quoted subjects of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, that it is not a question only of an evolution but also of the parallel existence of the different programs for those chapels.
The diaconicon decoration is, very often, comparable to that of the prothesis. In some other cases they are complementary but they can be also distinct. We intend to conclude this inquiry with the comparison of these two programs, and with the study of their relation, in an attempt to learn more about the significance of the diaconicon chapel of which nothing precise is known from the liturgy.
1 L'Illustration des liturgies clans Part de Byzance et de l'Orient (Brussels 1936), 28-29, 44-55, 132-160.
2 "Simbolicno znacenje zivopisa u protezisu Svetih Apostola u Peci," Zbornik za zastitu spomeni 15 (1964),173-182. See also J. Radovanovic, "Ikonografija fresaka protezisa crkve Svetih Apostola u Peci, " Zbornik za likovne umetnosti 4 (1968), 27-63.
3 "L'enrichissement du program iconographique dans les eglises byzantines du XIIIe siecle, " in L'art byzantin du Xllle siecle (Symposium de Sopocani 1965) (Belgrade 1967), 36-38, note 12.
4 Les chapelles annexes des eglises byzantines: Fonction liturgique et pro rg amme iconographique (Paris 1969).
5 "Images du decor de la prothese," REB 26 (1968), 297-310.
6 Art and Ritual of the Byzantine Church (London 1982),190-191, 212-214, 232-238, note 253.
7 S. Tomekovic, "Place des saints ermites et moines dans le decor de l'eglise byzantine," in Liturgie, conversion et vie monastique (Conferences Saint-Serge, XXXVe Semaine d'etudes liturgiques, 1988), Edizioni Liturgiche (Rome 1989), 318-320.
8 T. F. Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople. Architecture and Liturgy (University Park, Pennsylvania 1971), 94,144,161-162,179.
9 P. L. Vocotopoulos, "Paratereseis sten legomene basilie tou Hagiou Nikonos," in First Congress of Peloponnesian Studies, II, (Athens 1976), 277-279.
10 Before 730? See Th. Schmidt, Die Koimesis-Kirche yon Nikaia (Berlin-Leipzig 1927), pl. IV; and C. Mango, Architecture bvzantine (Paris 1981), 165-172.
11 Late eighth or early ninth century? See C. Mango and l. Sevčenko, "Some Churches and Monasteries on the Southern Shore of the Sea of Marmara," DOP 27 (1973), 236-277.
12 For San Saba in Rome see R. Krautheimer, S. Corbett, and W. Frankl, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae IV The Early Christian Basilicas of Rome (IV-IX Century) (Vatican City 1970), 70-71. For Greece see P. L. Vocotopoulos, He ekkIesiastike architektonike eis ten dutikes steran Hellada kai ten Eperon apo tou telous tou 7ou mechri tou telous tou 10ou aionos (Byzantina mnemeia 2) (Thessaloniki 1975), 52,130,132.
13 S. Curcic, "Architectural Significance of Subsidiary Chapels in Middle Byzantine Churches," JSA 36 (1977), 94-110; and T. F. Mathews, "'Private' Liturgy in Byzantine Architecture: Toward a Re-appraisal," CA 30 (1982), 125-138.
Middle Byzantine Narthexes with Adjacent Chapels
Ida Sinkevic (Princeton University)
In Middle Byzantine times many churches exhibited separate chapels adjacent to the narthex in a variety of layouts. The chapels either occupy the place between the arms of the cross, or flank the main chamber of the narthex and expand laterally beyond the body of the church, or flank the main chamber, yet are incorporated in the body of the narthex. In most instances, these chapels are segregated from the main body of the church and communicate freely only with the narthex. Despite their close relationship with the narthex, the chapels have been considered by scholars as separate entities.
This paper maintains that the adjacent chapels are an integral part of the narthex, because they are related to it not only architecturally but also functionally. Both the narthexes and the chapels adjacent to it accommodated, among other functions, baptismal and funerary rites. This is attested by archaeological findings, painted programs, and literary evidence.
Considering archaeological evidence, baptismal fonts and arcosolia are found in a number of western chapels, such as in the church of St. Panteleimon, Nerezi, at Hosios Loukas, and in the church of the Assumption in Yeletsky Monastery. In the churches without western chapels, such as the Pantokrator Monastery and the church of St. Mary of the Admiral, the tombs and baptismal fonts were located in the narthex. As far as painted programs are concerned, the scenes related to the burial and baptism, displayed in the narthexes of the churches without chapels, such as H. Anargyroi, Kastoria, and Daphni, are also found in the western chapels of Hosios Loukas. Above all, preserved Typica clearly indicate that narthexes and adjacent chapels housed related functions. A good example is provided by the church of the Virgin Kosmosoteira, Pherrai. Neither the Typicon of this church, nor its painted program, make any distinction between the narthex proper and the chapels adjacent to it.
The integration of the separate architectural units of the western end of the church, evident in the Middle Byzantine times, is further developed during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This integration was likely necessitated by the development of funerary and baptismal rites in post-Iconoclastic times.
III. PAPERS IN MEMORY OF JOHN MEYENDORFF
Chair: John Erickson (St. Vladimir's Seminary)
John Cassian As A Source On Egyptian "Semi-Pelagianism"
John V. A. Fine (University of Michigan)
Father Meyendorff was interested in distinctions between Eastern and Western Christianity and particularly in those concerning the related issues of the Fall, so-called Original Sin, God's Grace, human merit, and free will. It is often said that Church positions emerge from controversy and that a position relating these issues came only in the early fifth century, growing out of the dispute between Augustine and Pelagius, a dispute which, while receiving peripheral and passing notice in the East, chiefly had impact in the West.
Yet in the course of the fourth century the issue was much discussed (generally without rancor) in the East, and we can find the ingredients of a more or less semi-Pelagian consensus position already existing there before 400. It is very visible in the writings of John Cassian and his summaries of the teachings of various prominent Egyptian holy ascetics whom he visited in the 380s and 390s, in particular in the "conferences" by Abbas Theonas and Chaeremon, but also in those of Paphnutius, Joseph, Moses, Serapion, Serenus, Isaac, and Pinufius.
Since Cassian was writing his Conferences in the 420s and 430s when in the midst of his defense of a semi-Pelagianism against the Augustinians, one might argue that Cassian was placing his own views into the mouths of these holy Egyptians to give these views greater weight or to avoid trouble for himself. Moreover, it might also be more charitably argued that since Cassian was presenting the views of these Egyptians some 25 years after his conversations with them, his memory may have blurred their views, making the positions of those he so admired gibe with those he himself had reached. Thus the reader of Cassian must wonder whether Cassian was later justifying his own semi-Pelagian position by putting his 430 views into the mouths of these holy teachers. However, it also might be reasonable to argue that he was citing them more or less accurately; for after all it is quite conceivable that he may have drawn his own semi-Pelagian views from the instruction he had received in Egypt as a young man. My paper will strongly argue for the second of these two alternatives.
My paper shall briefly lay out the views of these Egyptians as given by Cassian, then turn to other sources on Egypt (materials on Pachomius and other Egyptian saints, including the writings of Athanasius) to confirm to the degree possible what Cassian says about these particular Egyptian abbas and to a greater extent to show that the views he attributes to them can be found for several other prominent Egyptian Christians all the way back to Clement of Alexandria and in the fourth century for such major figures as Pachomius, Antony, Macarius of Egypt and Athanasius. The paper will then conclude by showing that one also should not limit fourth-century semi-Pelagianism to Egypt, for one can find it among Greek ascetics as well-e.g., Gregory of Nyasa and Pseudo-Macarius. For the former, the reader is referred to the beautifully documented recently-published study Grace and Human Freedom According to St Gregory of Nyssa by Verna Harrison.
In fact, it is a pity that the very reasonable and Scripturally sound position that combines God's Grace and human free choice in a partnership to effect human salvation, a position well established in the Orthodox Church before the aberrant views of Augustine emerged and also a position which has remained basic to the Orthodox Church thereafter, should have acquired the negative label (implying some sort of heresy) of "semi-Pelagianism" and have put so many recent Orthodox thinkers and scholars on the defensive. Augustine's influence on Western thinkers is, of course, responsible for this. But had he (or someone else) appeared in the East in the early fifth century with his doctrine of predestination and Original Sin, he would have been anathematized as a heretic. It is time
that Eastern Christians stop trying to explain things away and stop trying to argue that Cassian or Gregory did not mean what they seem to say; they meant every bit of it and had the support of Scripture behind them. We no longer use Athanasius' loaded polemical term of "semi-Arian" as an accurate one to describe the views of Basil of Ancyra. Maybe the negative label "semi-Pelagian" should also be dropped as a summary term to describe the perfectly orthodox views of Cassian and his Eastern colleagues.
Acacius of Melitene and the Presence of Dyophysites in Armenia in the Early Fifth Century
Nina G. Garsoian (Columbia University)
During the quarrels between the Dyophysite or Nestorian party of Antioch and the Monophysite followers of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus in 431, Bishop Acacius of Melitene in Armenia II emerged as one of the most ardent partisans of Cyril of Alexandria. Even after the council, he persisted in his extremist views and reproached Cyril for being too accommodating in accepting a reconciliation with his opponent John of Antioch in 433. Acacius is further known through his correspondence with the Armenian patriarch Sahak I over the presumed appearance of the works of the master of the Antiochene school, Theodore of Mopsuestia, in Armenia. These letters led to Sahak's request for the opinion of the patriarch Proclus of Constantinople, who condemned the Dyophysite doctrine in his Tome to the Armenians, which was to serve as one of the basic texts at the Council of the Three Chapters in 553. Another document presented to Proclus and purporting to document the presence of Dyophysitism in Armenia was a Libellus brought by two Armenian priests named Leontius and Abellius. This treatise laid the blame for the appearance of heresy in their country on a mission come from Cilicia, which attacked Acacius for having acted not through doctrinal zeal, but "from enmity and hatred" of Theodore. Although writers in the VIth century reused its material, their information and consequently the Libellus itself have been attacked as tendentious and distorted.
Two episodes from Acacius's life brought out by Armenian sources and by the episcopal correspondence following the Council of Ephesus increase our knowledge of the bishop's career and support the authenticity of the information in the Libellus. From the Armenian Life of Mastoc' we learn that this inventor of the Armenian alphabet and collaborator of Sahak, had left his pupils in the care of Acacius of Melitene during his journey to Constantinople. Mastoc"s earlier career in the East, however, clearly shows that he was part of the Antiochene milieu found at Edessa, Amida, and Samosata in Mesopotamia. If so, it is curious that he should have entrusted his disciples to Acacius, if the latter held diametrically opposed Christological views.
Secondly, the post-Ephesian correspondence shows that Cilicia remained a focus of Antiochene anti-Alexandrian opposition, even after Cyril and John's reconciliation of 433, and only submitted at last under threats from the imperial authorities. One of the outstanding leaders of this opposition was Bishop Meletius, Theodore's successor in the see of Mopsuestia. Recusant to the last, Meletius was expelled from his see manu militari and exiled to Melitene, where he died after great suffering at the hands of the Bishop Acacius. Given this information, it is hardly surprising that some of his Cilician followers came to Armenia, according to the Libellus and attacked Acacius as an enemy. Consequently it seems possible that Acacius of Melitene, like his colleague Rabbula of Edessa, had originally belonged to the Antiochene school and changed sides at Ephesus, so that his later extremist views may well reflect the excessive zeal of a convert. The evidence of Cilicia's loyalty to Antioch and of Meletius' sad end, under the torments of Acacius of Melitene, support the information of the Libellus, and its focus on Cilicia, as correct, whatever later distortion was brought in for subsequent ends, as well as its warning to Proclus that the doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia had indeed spread to Armenia early in the fifth century.
Anarchy vs. Hierarchy?: Dionysius Areopagita, Saint Symeon the New Theologian, and Nicetas Stethatos on the Hierarchical Vision
Alexander George Golitzin (Marquette University)
Nicetas Stethatos' striking dependence on the works of Dionysius Areopagite, as evidenced for example in his attempt to assimilate the Hymns of Symeon the New Theologian to the theme of sacred eros and the figure of Hierotheos in Chapter IV of the Divine Names has occasioned some curiosity among scholars over the past thirty years. How, they wonder, could Nicetas as the devoted disciple and biographer of a man who spent much of his career battling ecclesiastical authorities in the name of an authority derived from personal experience of the Spirit, and whose whole being breathed potential opposition to the established order of hierarchical command, be at the same time the convinced admirer of the mysterious author whose writings (ca. 500 A.D.) consecrated the very word, "hierarchy," and whose concerns for "good order" in the church explicitly subordinated in the strongest terms-the monastic order to episcopal guidance? Dionysius and Symeon, in this typical reckoning, are taken as polar opposites, with Nicetas' position appearing thus as, at best, paradoxical. In this paper I try to present a reading of both Symeon and Dionysius which sees the former as acutely conscious of, and working with the latter's thought. The impress of the Areopagitica on the New Theologian has been little noted, and that little has been confined chiefly to references to the Mystical Theology and apophaticism. The influence is much more pervasive, and to demonstrate this I shall focus particularly on links between two different textual pairings: Dionysius' Epistle VIII and Symeon's famous (or infamous) Letter on Confession, together with the New Theologian's XIVth Ethical Discourse and Celestial Hierarchy 1,3. Far from an absolute opposition, the two writers will display surprising parallels which, I believe, may at once illumine the particular case of Nicetas himself as his master's pupil and, more generally, the relation between the charismatic in-especially-Byzantine monasticism and the societal dimensions of church and liturgy.
The Eschatological Vision as a Source for Byzantine Popular Religion
Jane Bann (Princeton University)
Eschatological and apocalyptic speculation flourished throughout the entire Byzantine millennium, in every corner of the Empire; texts survive in numerous recensions and translations, in hundreds of manuscripts. The genre's fecundity testifies to its enduring popularity and usefulness. Apocalyptic texts were seldom copied word-for-word, but rather credulously adapted by each redactor, who modified the vision or prophecy according to each new set of temporal, spiritual, or territorial circumstances. Works such as the revelations within the Lives of Andrew the Fool and Basil the Younger, and the Apocalypses of the Theotokos and of Anastasia, witness to the apprehension felt by Byzantine men and women over issues of salvation and morality, both personal and corporate. They also provide insight into the spiritual formation and level of religious knowledge of their authors and audiences, in many cases suggesting that official church doctrines were poorly or only partially understood.
This paper will examine one such text, the circa eleventh-century Apocalypse of Anastasia, as a case study in the methodological, interpretative, and typological challenges of the genre. Its form, content, and text tradition will be analyzed, and its usefulness as a source for popular belief and morality assessed. The nature of its relationship to other named apocalypses will also be considered. Known manuscripts of Anastasia number three in Greek and five in Slavic languages. True to the nature of the genre, the manuscripts preserve multiple text traditions.
Whether the pious nun Anastasia, whom the Greek texts place in a nameless monastery at the beginning of the sixth century, was an actual historical person is doubtful. Most likely she was created as an allegorical, typological figure of resurrection. Three days after her death, Anastasia awakes, and is taken by the Archangel Michael on a tour of the heavenly places. These encompass not only heaven, but also something suspiciously akin to purgatory. The purpose? She is to return to earth, to warn all men concerning the fearsome judgement to come. In particular, she is begged by sinners being tormented in various fiery pools, rivers, and ovens to carry messages of repentance and almsgiving back to their loved ones. The sins named, mostly economic and sexual, constitute a vice catalogue of popular morality. They include excessive interest, price speculation, counterfeiting, corruption, sorcery, going to church inebriated, adultery, prostitution, and abortion. Anastasia also sees the angelic intelligence-gathering operation in action, and the heavenly records office. Most importantly, she supplies inside information on the all-important process of intercession for sinners: who stands closest to the throne? Whose voice carries the most weight? All these were pressing questions for the middle Byzantine believer, and are therefore urgent as well for the historian of Byzantine religion and culture.
Notes on Popular Religion in Thirteenth-Century Constantinople
George P. Majeska (University of Maryland)
Anthony of Novgorod's "Pilgrim Book" description of Constantinople, circa A.D. 1200, is an excellent source not only for the topography of the city and for its inventory of sacred shrines and relics before the sack of the city by the Latins in 1204, but also, it turns out, for elements of popular religion as practiced in the Byzantine capital in the early thirteenth century. Leaving aside Anthony's often studied notes on churches, monasteries, icons and relics (the stories connected with which would certainly form the basis of any broad study of popular religion at this time), his data falls easily into broad categories: miracles, emotional response to religious ceremonies, and private rites and cures.
Anthony describes, for example, two contemporary miracles witnessed by large numbers of people, at least one of which he saw himself, namely the miraculous ascent of a cross-shaped candelabrum behind the high altar at St. Sophia on May 21, 1200. He also signals the appearance of a cheese-colored flower on an image in a suburban church on Cheesefare Sunday. In both cases he goes on to record what he felt was the response of the faithful to these manifestations of divine power.
Similarly, he attributes very specific thoughts and feelings to the people present at the liturgy in St. Sophia when the Patriarch is present and suggests similar emotions prevailed among the multitudes that joined with the Eparch of the city in carrying the head of St. Stephen the Younger around the city in an all-night procession on his annual feast. Perhaps most interesting to modern scholars, however, is his routine descriptions of what people did to heal their ills. Eye maladies, for example, were treated by binding the eyes with the cord from the lamp before St. Stephen's image in St. Sophia. Poison and serpent venom were drawn out of the victim by the brass bolt of the doors of the Great Church. In the same church, people rubbed their chests and shoulders on the column of Gregory the Theologian seeking cures. Other people who were ill were healed by drinking from the marble chalice that St. Theodore Seciote once used. But there were also mass healing services available in the city. For example, the bodies of St. Theodosia and of St. Mary the Patrician were carried in procession and during the circuit the relics were laid on people in the hope of curing them.
Anthony's notes on popular religious customs are particularly useful because he himself was apparently well educated as well as devout. (He was raised to the second see of the Russian Church within a decade of his return from Constantinople and later assigned to a diocese recently retrieved from the Latin Church.) He was, moreover, the ideal reporter, a stranger who recorded what was new to him (although possibly quite standard in Byzantium) and who could understand what he saw because he shared much of the cultural background through his Eastern Orthodox background.
The Logos of Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos on the Miracles at the Shrine of the Zoodochos Pege in Constantinople
Alice-Mary Talbot (Dumbarton Oaks)
The shrine of the Zoodochos Pege, located just outside the walls of Constantinople, was founded, according to tradition, by the emperor Leo I (457-474) and functioned until the end of the empire; its spring waters, famed for their miraculous healing power, attracted numerous pilgrims, including emperors and members of the royal family who gave lavish gifts in thanksgiving, and restored or embellished the buildings of the complex. In the mid-10th century an anonymous hagiographer recounted 47 miracles which had occurred at Pege, dating from the 5th century to the reign of Constantine VII.
In the early 14th century, at a time of revival of the cult of the Virgin of the Source (which had lapsed during the Latin occupation of Constantinople, from 1204-1261, and during the reign of Michael VIII), the ecclesiastical historian Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos wrote a greatly expanded and reworked version (the Logos) of the Miracula anonyma. The text of the LOCOS, which is available only in an unsatisfactory and extremely rare publication of 1802, deserves more attention than it has received up to this point, for the light it sheds both on a miracle-working shrine and on the reworking of hagiographical texts by later Byzantine authors. Not only did Xanthopoulos develop the accounts of the original 47 miracles, but he added substantial new material, including ekphraseis of Constantinople, Hagia Sophia, and the original church built by Leo I, and 16 new miracles, one dating to the reign of Isaac II Angelos, the others to the reign of Andronikos II. The focus of this paper will be an analysis of Xanthopoulos' rewriting of the old miracles and his account of the miracles which occurred in his time.
Xanthopoulos' Logos is written in a much higher stylistic level than the Miracula anonyma (which was deliberately aimed at the masses), suggesting a learned audience. In retelling the earlier miracles he adds many vivid details invented out of whole cloth, and reveals a proclivity for developing the description of the illnesses which afflicted the pilgrims to Pege. Not only does he relate in detail their symptoms, but frequently attempts to explain the causes of their illness, and, most striking, to provide a rational explanation of how and why the waters of Pege were efficacious in producing a cure. He alludes to discussions with medical specialists, for example, Joseph the Philosopher, and clearly reveals himself as a member of the intellectual and humanist circle of Andronikos II, although at the same time he was a priest at Hagia Sophia.
The contemporary miracles recounted by Xanthopoulos are again marked by the length of the account and the vivid medical case histories provided, in several instances documenting the progress of a disease over a period of months or years. Xanthopoulos often had heard the stories of miraculous healing from the patients themselves or had seen the pilgrims at the church, or saw the paintings depicting their cure which they presented as exvotos. The precise figures which he provides (the circumference of the waist or thigh of a victim of dropsy, the height of a column that fell) give one confidence in his account.
Demetrios Kydones and the Early Italian Renaissance
Frances Kianka (Reston, Virginia)
The attraction of Italy as an intellectual center, as the seat of papal power, and as the source of a crucial alliance for Byzantium was very strong for Demetrios Kydones and others of his circle in the generations preceding the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453. In the 1360s, in his first Apology Kydones mentions the "armies of philosophers" in the "papal forces" and what he considered the thriving life of Old Rome. But although he once had plans to live in Venice, he never settled permanently in Italy, and did not even fulfill his intention of returning after 1371 to continue his Latin studies. Instead, Kydones' few visits there were brief and seem to have been mainly for diplomatic purposes. He pursued his political and intellectual goals in Constantinople, remaining throughout his life a mediator of Latin culture for a younger generation of Byzantine intellectuals who, unlike himself, took up residence in Italy in the late 1390s and early 1400s.
Kydones also maintained some contacts with Italians who traveled to Constantinople. In 1386 he wrote to the higoumenos of a monastery there to introduce a young Milanese named Paul who wanted to study Greek in the capital. Paul had some knowledge of Plato and Aristotle, preferred Greek literature to Latin, and was aware that Latin literature and learning had their source in Greek philosophers and writers such as Plato and Demosthenes. He was also conversant with some of the Greek church fathers. Apart from Barlaam the Calabrian, Paul is perhaps the earliest Italian known to have traveled to Constantinople to learn Greek literature at the source.
Kydones traveled to Italy again in 1389-90, on a diplomatic mission with Manuel Chrysoloras, who was the first Byzantine to teach Greek in Florence. In 1391, not long after returning from this trip, Kydones wrote to Maximos Chrysoberges, a Greek Dominican in Pera who studied in Venice and Padua. In his letter Kydones explains why he did not venture to go to Rome and why he returned to Constantinople. Both Kydones and Chrysoloras continued to look toward western Europe for military aid against the Turks. In 1406 Chrysoloras went to Venice and Padua on further diplomatic missions. The political needs of the dwindling empire were greater than its intellectual curiosity in the decades before the fall.
Was Kydones "born too early"? His intellectual interests might well have appealed to later generations of Italian humanists such as Leonardo Bruni and Marsilio Ficino, who were so fascinated with Plato that they studied and translated his work. With the empire nearly a thing of the past, Kydones might well have emigrated to Italy, as some of his younger followers did. Instead he remained in Constantinople until he was an old man, and when he left he was reproached by Emperor Manuel II for his lack of patriotism in deserting a city under siege. He settled in Venetian-controlled Crete in 1398 and died there, leaving behind among his books and papers a copy of the Greek Bible and a copy of the works of Plato. Bessarion, in the fifteenth century, would have appreciated the symbolism of these Possessions: his goal and that of many Italian humanists was to reconcile the great pagan Philosopher of fifth-century Athens with Christianity and the new learning of the Renaissance.
IV. BYZANTINE PHILANTHROPY AND PHILANTHROPIC INSTITUTIONS
Chair: Demetrius Constantelos (Stockton State College)
Social Responsibility and the Stewardship of Wealth
Ronald J. Weber (University of Texas at El Paso)
According to the scriptures there was little room for compromise between the possession of wealth and the path to holiness: "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter he kingdom of heaven." With that in mind, writings on Christian virtue like the topos-laden Vitae Sanctorum emphasize the total dispersal of all personal wealth as an obvious demonstration of holiness. But in the uncertain days of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., the finality of total denial neither met the standards of Roman practicality nor the needs of the emerging social order. This paper will discuss how the practice of Christian stewardship, by advocating the maintenance of accounts for charitable work, overcame the contradiction between the pious disregard for wealth and the need in Roman society for financial responsibility.
In direct contravention of the gospel's invocations to poverty, the Church rapidly became one of the wealthiest institutions in the Empire. Moreover, among the very wealthy the private dispersal of money for charity was not the simple act which Christian literature idealized. For example, the charity of the younger Melania instigated a number of riots, in part because of the economic disruption of the liquidation of her assets. In response to the difficulties, Paulinus, the wealthy Bishop of Nola, fostered the image of Joseph of Arimethea, the rich man who employed his wealth to aid Christ and achieve holiness. The image of Joseph, the steward, offered a rational adaptation to the practices praised in the written saints' lives and the instructions of clerical sermons.
In keeping with this image, Paulinus managed his assets to facilitate his charities. He was not alone, and by the sixth century such activity was institutionalized. The laws of Justinian dictate a framework for the administration of charitable work. A. H. M. Jones, among others, has shown the outlines of his work. But little has been done to investigate the process whereby the practical handling of investment and dispersals became preferable to the conversion handouts. As a start this paper looks at how the legal development of charitable administration and the moral justification of the use of wealth came to support both the holy life and the practical operation of the social order. Primary attention will center on the writings of Ambrose of Milan, the poetry of Paulinus, and the laws of the Codex Theodosianus. Ambrose's instructions to his brother, plus his guidance for the deacons of the church in the De Officiis outline a plan of Christian stewardship. In turn, Paulinus discussed the social obligations of stewardship. Proof that such ideas were being applied comes from the directive assigned to stewards and foundation directors in the Codex Theodosianus.
Concern for the Peasantry in the Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents
John Philip Thomas (Walnut Creek, California)
The Marxist division of the Byzantine monastic foundation documents into "Aristocratic" and "Non-Aristocratic" ika first proposed by Galatariotou (1987) and accepted by Thiermeyer (1992) unfortunately is of only marginal utility for analysis of these texts because most of their authors, regardless of their social class, shared a deep-felt belief in the principle of monastic equality, isonomia. This, however, is not the only reason to question the relevance of class-based analysis to the philosophical and ideological content of these documents.
An increased interest in institutional philanthropy among the founders of Byzantine monasteries beginning in the late tenth century preceded their emerging interest in the well-being of the peasants, tenants, and other dependents of their foundations. The imperial agrarian legislation, generally thought to have been ignored or at least of diminished importance after the death of Basil II in 1025, may also have had a surprisingly enduring impact. The Testament of Nikon Metanoeite (early 11th century) orders that villagers on the foundation's lands were to be left "untouched and undisturbed." The Testament of Michael Attaleiates (1077) guarantees the dependents of the foundation for which it was written freedom from increases in payments and services. The Testament of Lazarus of Mount Galesios (1053) provides that peasants should not be oppressed in the event that the foundation's estates failed to yield a surplus. In his ikon of 1083, Gregory Pakourianos asserts that he erected the various components of his monastic foundation with his own money, not as "the result of any wrong doing or even forced labor, additional impositions, or the service of peasants, with them being forced to suffer for the building of holy churches or for the building of the monastery around them."
Nikon the Metanoeite was the son of a provincial landowner. Attaleiates was a man of modest origins who became a senator and a judge. Pakourianos was a senior general descended from an aristocratic Georgian or Armenian family. Only Lazarus of Galesios was of peasant stock. Therefore, in the eleventh century, concern for the peasantry among Byzantine Philanthropists appears to have cut across class lines.
In the twelfth century, three documents that serve as exhibits of imperial or (Norman) royal patronage, the ikon of Luke for the Monastery of Christ Savior in Messina (1131 / 32), the ikon of Empress Irene Doukaina for the convent of Kecharitomene (early 12th century), and the ikon of her son the sebastokrator Isaak Komnenos for the monastery of the Mother of God Kosmosoteira (1152), all show solicitude for the well-being of the peasant dependents of their foundations. Such concerns are absent, however, from four other twelfth-century documents authored by four non-imperial (though still high-born) authors, including a bishop.
In Palaiologan times, the typikon of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos for the monastery of St. Michael on Mount Auxentios asks "how can they [the monks] enrich themselves while others in the world are poor and worn out by the deprivation of necessities?" Therefore, it appears that aristocratic or even imperial status was no automatic bar to sympathy with the lower classes in middle and late Byzantium.
Another Perspective on Byzantine Philanthropy
Timothy S. Miller (Salisbury State University)
Studies of Byzantine philanthropic institutions-medical hospitals xenones), old-age homes, alms houses-have emphasized the highly developed, almost "modern system" of welfare institutions East Roman society maintained in Constantinople and other important cities of the Empire. These studies have universally praised Byzantium for maintaining well-organized and well-financed social services for poor and even middle-class people. Is it possible, however, that there were some negative effects of the Byzantine welfare system? Did it produce individuals who could not break away from these philanthropic institutions and in effect became wards of society?
There are two possible examples of such people. The first is an obscure youth named Stephen Hexapterygos, a young man who had been an orphan student at the Orphanotropheion in Constantinople during the late twelfth century. One of Stephen's teachers at the orphanage, Constantine Stilbes, preserved Stephen's story in a short elegiac poem. After praising his former student's intelligence, Stilbes described the youth's sad death at a philanthropic foundation located in the provincial town of Patras. Stephen died a stranger, an orphan, a man without a city, but he did receive care from the Christ-loving hands of those who served the needy, i.e., the monks or laymen who staffed this charitable foundation.1 Did his death in a xenon or gerokomeion in Patras have anything to do with his having been educated in the Orphanotropheion?
The second example is the life of the most famous twelfth-century poet and master of prose, Theodore Prodromos. As Alexander Kazhdan has stressed, very little is clear concerning the life of this renowned writer.2 In one of his poems Prodromos reveals that his father had advised him to become a scholar when Prodromos was very young. In another poem, however, Prodromos states that he had been raised by his relatives3 In other works of his, he addresses Stephen Skylitzes, one of the leading teachers at the Orphanotropheion, as his father and his teacher.4 In none of his works does he refer to his mother. One possible interpretation from these scattered statements would be that Prodromos' father had died when the poet was still a young boy. His relatives then raised him, but at some point they sent him to the Orphanotropheion to continue his education. Other sources indicate that Prodromos spent much of his adult life as a teacher at this same orphanage5 When he fell seriously ill, he was treated in one of Constantinople's xenones. perhaps the one attached to the Orphanotropheion 6 When he became chronically sick, he was cared for at a gerokomeion of the capital where he presumably died.7 Despite his fame as a poet, orator, and commentator of religious hymns, he seems never to have left the shadow of Constantinople's philanthropic agencies. Was this by choice, or was it difficult for a man who had spent some time in the orphanotropheion to leave the ambit of these institutions?
1 Stilbes' poem is available in a typescript edition, ed. J. Diethart, Der Rhetor and Didaskalos Konstan tinos Stilbes (Vienna Dissertation, 1971).
2 Alexander Kazhdan, Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 87-114.
3 Theodoros Prodromos: Historische Gedichte ed. Wolfram Horandner (Vienna: Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften,1974), introduction, pp. 21-32.
4 Epistola metropolitae Trapezuntis, PG, 133, cal. 1255.
5 Robert Browning, "Unpublished Correspondence between Michael Italicus, Archbishop of Philippopolis, and Theodore Prodromos," Byzantinobul arica 1 (1962), 284, 287 and 290 (commentary).
6 Prodromos, ed. Horandner, poem 46, pp. 431-33.
7 "Monodie de Nicetas Eugenianos sur Theodore Prodrome," ed. Louis Petit, Vizantiiskii Vremennik 9 (1902),459-60.
Text and Context: The Pantolcrator Hospital in its Middle Byzantine Setting
Peregrine Harden (All Souls College, Oxford)
The hospital of the Pantokrator Monastery, founded in 1136 by John II Komnenos and his wife Irene, has usually been interpreted in one of two ways: either the hospital has been seen as the culminating point of a long evolution in the history of Byzantine hospitals that can be traced back to the time of Justinian, or it has been treated as a strange aberration from the run of smaller, much less elaborately provided, and less 'medicalized' hospices. In either case, the monastery's extensive typikon our only detailed source for the hospital's intended facilities, is likely to be seen as an unproblematic, clear window onto the care and healing actually available.
The purpose of this paper is thus, first, to set the hospital in an immediate, twelfth-century, context that neither leaves it isolated and inexplicable, nor yet finds it an unsurprising product of centuries of steady development. Precedents, both Byzantine and Islamic, for such an elaborate foundation will be considered. Evidence for its continued functioning will also be rehearsed.
The second task of the paper is a review of the problems that a contextual approach leaves unsolved, by means of a close analysis of the typikon. This will involve 'problematization' of a text commonly read at face value, and also an enquiry into the means by which the typikon's character may be explained by reference to other texts, both medical and non-medical. Issues examined will include: the prominence of the medical profession, possible institutional models for the hierarchy envisaged, and the extent to which the style and organization of the text suggest that the imperial couple had a clear idea of what they wanted.
As a result, the Pantokrator will be seen against a perhaps more realistic scale. While its typikon cannot be taken as evidence for the 'birth of the clinic' in Byzantium, nor is it wholly inexplicable. The explanation required is, however, a local, precise, twelfth-century explanation, not an appeal to a distant past. Finally, it must be an explanation that steps outside the usual bounds of medical and philanthropic history.
V. BYZANTIUM AND THE WEST
Chair: Charles Brand (Bryn Mawr University)
A Western Adjustment to the Anastasian Currency Reform
F. M. Clover (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
A recent coin find, presently in the hands of a private collector, may enhance the modern understanding of the nature and limits of Anastasian Currency Reform. In A.D. 498 (according to the chronicler Count Marcellinus) Emperor Anastasius I began issuing large bronze coins, commonly called foles in response to economic pressures within the Eastern Roman Empire. Numismatists associate a series of bronzes, valued at 40 and 20 nummi and smaller in size than the big bronzes common to the age of Justinian, with Anastasius' orders of 498. Many of these early folles are countermarked-that is, revalued; the purpose of this extensive counter-stamping is uncertain.
The same numismatists who study the early currency reform of Anastasius are quick to point out that the Eastern Emperor's economic advisors derived inspiration from slightly earlier experiments in large bronze coinage in the West-specifically, in Italy (Rome and Ravenna) and Africa (Carthage). The new find comes from Vandal Carthage, which (according to arguments which I have presented in the Revue numismatique [Paris, 1991]) began issuing folles and half-folles valued at 42 and 21 nummi soon after A.D. 476. The coin in question, a 21-nummi piece, bears on obverse and reverse the name and badges (for these see my discussion in DOP 1986) of Carthage. The original valuation on the reverse, however, has been obscured by a counterstamp which resembles a Maltese Cross. There is no other known issue from the mint of Vandal Carthage with a countermark. On the other hand, the Maltese Cross is a common countermark superimposed on the first folles emissions of Anastasius.
How can the modern critic interpret this new find? I will offer a guess, based on two assumptions: 1) that the Anastasian counterstamps are nearly contemporary with the first eastern emissions; and 2) that the Carthage countermark soon followed the eastern practice of counterstamping. I will argue that the Carthage countermark betrays an effort to adjust to the more widespread and successful Anastasian Currency Reform. In effect, the new find tells what we know from other sources-that at the beginning of the Age of Justinian, East Rome wielded considerable economic influence in the West.
Four Embassies of Emperor Theophilus
Leonora A. Neville (Princeton University)
The last three years of Emperor Theophilus' reign (829-842) saw a striking increase in Byzantine diplomatic activity in the Mediterranean. Theophilus dispatched embassies to Emperor Louis the Pious at Ingelheim in 839, to the Umayyad caliph ar-Rahman II at Cordova in 840, to Doge Pietro Tradonico at Venice in 840 and to Emperor Lothar I at Trier in 842.
These embassies are generally considered to have been sent in response to the sack of Amorium by the caliph Mu'tasim in 838. This view needs to be reconsidered. It is supported only by the testimony of Genesius and Theophanes Continuatus that Theophilus sent the embassies to round up help for an attack on Mu'tasim to avenge Amorium. But we know from the history of al-Tabari as well as Genesius and Theophanes Continuatus that Mu'tasim returned to Bagdad immediately after taking Amorium to suppress a rebellion in favor of his nephew. Theophflus did not need to attack Mu'tasim to restore the empire's borders and Theophilus' reforms of the western defence systems can more logically be seen as his response to the sack of Amorium.
The western sources indicate that Theophilus, far from recruiting armies for a fight in Asia Minor, was concerned to increase the Byzantine political presence in the Mediterranean. These sources, which include the eye-witness account of Prudentius in the Annals of St-Bertin, a letter probably from Theophilus to Louis the Pious known as the papyrus of St. Denis, and the text of ar-Rahman's letter to Theophilus in response to his embassy allow us to glimpse the mechanics of Byzantine diplomacy in action and to speculate as to Theophilus' aspirations in the west. Combined with studies in Byzantine prosopography, these sources partially reveal the identity, family background and skills of the Byzantine ambassadors.
This paper attempts to re-evaluate the military significance of the fall of Amorium on Theophilus' policy and assess his possible ambitions in the west as well as discover what can be known about the identity and training of Theophilus' ambassadors.
Patzinaks and Normans: The Development of Alexius' Tactical Doctrine
John W. Birkenmeier (Catholic University of America)
The attacks of the Normans, Patzinaks and several usurpers all forced Alexius I Comnenus into defensive wars. These were fought almost entirely within the empire, where failure threatened both the Byzantine state and personal political survival. The army the emperor inherited when he came to power had the same weaknesses of the army defeated 25
at Manzikert a decade before, with the added liability of being unable to draw manpower from most of Anatolia. Nevertheless, Alexius managed to win all his wars, if not all of his battles, and the army which emerges from the latter pages of The Alexiad is a very different one from that of Botaniates.
I plan to discuss one aspect of that transformation, the development of Alexius' tactical doctrine as exemplified by four battles. The first, against Nicephorus Bryennius, was at the beginning of Alexius' career, when he was Grand Domestic. Alexius attempted to ambush Bryennius' left flank, failed, and was routed. The future emperor only obtained victory through a good bit of luck and a gross lack of discipline in Bryennius' pursuit. In 1082 Alexius, as emperor, fought Robert Guiscard in a battle which highlighted the weaknesses of the Byzantine army. Deployed in a shield wall in front of his left flank, Alexius' Varangians were soon routed by a combined Norman cavalry and infantry assault, carrying the 'Immortals' and the rest of the army with them. In contrast, when Alexius fought Bohemond during the last Norman Invasion, he avoided pitched battles and followed a policy of harassment and skirmishing. This restricted the Norman ability to forage, and the invading army soon deteriorated. In the years between these two battles Alexius fought the Patzinaks and Cumans, and learned the tactics he used so effectively against Bohemond. Against these highly mobile armies the emperor's problem was to bring them to battle while his own army was mustered and ready to campaign. At Anchialos his position with flanks anchored on hills and the sea enabled him to force the Cumans to melee, rather than maneuver and skirmish, while at Aenos he used superior numbers and initiative to surround and annihilate a Patzinak horde.
Alexius gradually developed successful methods of fighting both the Normans and the steppe peoples. This is all the more impressive because the emperor was forced to employ such different tactics against each opponent, while the types of troops he had available remained relatively constant. Alexius' increasingly intelligent use of combined cavalry and infantry formations, his use of Patzinak style skirmishing against Bohemond, and his choice of terrain in the Patzinak-Cuman wars all show a mind which had become well aware of the capabilities and limitations of his forces, and which continually sought better methods of defeating Byzantium's enemies.
Hellenistic and Byzantine Elements of the Twelfth-Century French Romance
Leon D. Stratikis (University of Tennessee at Knoxville)
This paper summarizes my research treating the question of possible influence of the Hellenistic and Byzantine romance on the Old French romance of the twelfth century. Adopting a traditional historical approach, along with a consideration of symbols and motifs, it hopes to trace the coherent development of a genre from the Hellenistic world of the beginning of our era to the religious milieu of early Christianity and ultimately to the translation centers of monasteries and ports and the courts of Western Europe at the time of the Crusades. I conclude that, far from composing their works in a vacuum, inspired only by half-forgotten, obscure Celtic tales, the twelfth-century authors were part of a tradition which helps to account for some puzzling motifs in their works.
VI. ART AND CEREMONY IN THE LITURGY
Chair: Mary-Lyon Dolezal (University of Oregon)
Mandylion and Eucharist
Sharon E. Gerstel (University of Missouri at Columbia)
The entrance of the Mandylion, the miraculously-made image of Christ, into the mainstream of Byzantine iconography most likely accompanied the relic's translation to Constantinople in 944. A single icon from Mount Sinai, dated by Kurt Weitzmann to the middle of the tenth century, constitutes the earliest known extant image of the Mandylion. In the mid-eleventh century, the image also appeared for the first time in monumental painting in three Cappadocian churches. In Karanlik Kilise, and in Chapel 21 and the Church of St. John (Sakli Kilise) in Goreme, the image is situated in the diakonikon or over a prothesis niche in the central sanctuary.
In the period following these initial eleventh century representations, the Mandylion is normally positioned in one of two locations in the church: between the two eastern pendentives of the dome, or on the "triumphal arch" above the opening of the sanctuary. This paper will examine the second placement of the Mandylion, and its position within the sanctuary program. While Andre Grabar in his book, La Sainte Face de Laon, has suggested that the absence of a dome forces the displacement of the image to the east wall of single-aisled or basilican churches, this paper will demonstrate that the placement of the relic in such a conspicuous position within the church program was intentional and corresponds to the new direction of the graphic depiction of the liturgy in sanctuary decoration following the end of the eleventh century.
While the Mandylion has often been interpreted as an image concerned with the Incarnation, written and painted sources suggest that the relic had another meaning within the sanctuary program directly related to its position over the altar. As with other scenes in the sanctuary following the eleventh century, the Mandylion is an image of the sacrifice of Christ.
Metochites' "Place in the Land of the Living" in His Monastery Chora, Constantinople
N. Teteriatnikov (Dumbarton Oaks)
This paper aims to identify and interpret the context and arrangement of the mosaic program in the monastery church Chora commissioned by its ktetor Theodore Metochites.
There are two groups of mosaic panels in the church which have unusual inscriptions, and I would like to suggest that they are the key for understanding the entire program. The first group includes a bust of Christ above the main door (outer narthex), Christ enthroned with a ktetor above the main door and Christ Emmanuel in the lunette of the vault above the tomb in the north wall (both in the inner narthex), as well as a figure of Christ to the north of the apse in the naos; all have the same inscription "Jesus Christ the land of the living." The second group includes the Virgin above the western door (outer narthex) and the figure of the Virgin with Christ Child to the south of the apse (naos); these images are inscribed as "The Mother of God the place of the uncontainable." Although Underwood published and partially identified these images, the context of these inscriptions in the panels and why they were repeated in the panels throughout the church was overlooked together with the understanding of the entire context of the mosaic program.
Our examinations of the inscriptions in the panels of the first group shows that they came from the two psalms, Ps. 142.5 and Ps. 116.9. Significantly, these psalms were chanted ' during the funeral service for the layman; Ps. 142.5 was read in the deceased's house. The second inscription is an ending of the 15 stroph of the akathistos hymn which was also used for the funeral service. Thus, the funeral service for the dead appears as a source for these panels. Through these texts Metochites identifies his "place in the land of the living," the eternal Paradise.
This paper will further illustrate the funeral context of the mosaic program, and, especially, the scenes, their choice and arrangement in the entrance bays of the outer and inner narthexes (the Marriage at Canna and Presentation of the Virgin into the Temple). Both scenes were a part of the funeral service as well. Moreover, both scenes visually correspond to the actual tradition which is found in the Orthodox church to this day: after the liturgy the wine and bread were distributed to people at the door of the church to remember the dead. Thus the mosaic program which is also derived from the context of the funeral service directed the viewer through the ktetor's place "in the land of the living." The arrangement of the scenes from the Life of Christ and the Virgin further emphasize this message.
Finally, this paper will discuss social, political and cultural significance of the Chora-a place where new theological ideas about direct communication with God developed. It is these ideas which can be seen behind the personal creation of Metochites who lost everything he worked for in his life, but who indeed succeeded in creating his place for eternal living.
More on this subject will appear in a forthcoming publication. Liturgy, Symbols, and Byzantine Religion
Tia M. Kolbaba (Colgate University)
The division of modem scholarly disciplines has greatly influenced our study of relations between Byzantine East and Latin West in the Middle Ages. Such a division is necessary, of course. It is unlikely that the same person could master both the social history of relations between Greeks and Latins in the Peloponnese and the theological history of the Filio ue debate.
Nevertheless, some lines have been drawn which have hindered, rather than helped, our understanding of the history of Byzantine religion. Among these is the distinction between theological issues and liturgical or disciplinary issues in the churches. Scholars have frequently suggested that these are two distinct sets. On the one hand, there are theological disputes between the two churches; on the other hand, there are complaints about liturgy. Moreover, the latter are often seen as petty. They are called "mere differences of custom," in contrast to the theological complaints, which have some religious substance.
Such a distinction between theology and liturgy is too rigidly conceived. A study of various authors who write about heresy, especially if they explicitly address the issue of distinctions between heresy and "mere custom," forces a more nuanced view of the theological symbols of the liturgy. One such author is Peter of Antioch. In a letter to Michael Cerularius in 1054, the patriarch of Antioch reprimands Cerularius for dividing the church over trivial matters: e.g., dietary habits or bearded priests. Nevertheless, Peters own distinction between essential and unessential matters of the faith is far from clear, since he has previously strongly opposed the use of unleavened bread in the eucharist. This lack of clarity in Peter's discussion of differences between eastern and western churches stems from Peters profound sense that some objects and actions are very important-the eucharistic bread included.
This paper discusses Peters letter to Cerularius and its implications for our understanding of relations between symbol and referent in the Byzantine liturgy. A fuller understanding of such symbolism also leads to the understanding that liturgical complaints were not mere trivialities, the results of the political and economic hegemony of the Latins or of the fevered imagination of fanatical monks. Rather, such symbolic concerns were both deeply religious and deeply cultural in ways which make them worthy of serious attention.
Easter, St. Mark and the Doge: The Deposition Mosaic in S. Marco
Thomas E. A. Dale (Columbia University)
The mosaic program of San Marco in Venice displays a complex hybrid of Byzantine and Western ideas, shaped by the multiplicity of the basilica's functions as ducal chapel, martyrium and state church. This paper explores the particular Venetian circumstances that dictated the unusual placement of a (now fragmentary) feast image, the Deposition of Christ.
Discovered in 1954 beneath the marble revetment on the righthand pier of the choir, the Deposition is distinguished by its small scale and its curious isolation from the Passion cycle on the vaults of the crossing. Measuring the Venetian mosaic by Middle Byzantine standards, Renato Polacco has recently sought to explain its "anomalies" by connecting it with the tenth-century decoration of the previous, smaller church erected at a lower level on the
same site. The mosaic fragment would thus represent a chance survival of a feast cycle, that was later truncated to form the new eleventh-century pier.
However, both the style of the mosaic and the conformity of its borders to the existing pier contradict a dating prior to the construction of the present church. Indeed, the very "anomalies" that Polacco sought to explain-the mosaic's small scale and close proximity to the viewer-suggest that the Deposition was designed from the outset as a special devotional image. This paper, drawing on the sixteenth-century Ritum ecclesiasthicorum cerimoniale of San Marco, contends that the Deposition mosaic served as the backdrop for the Easter "sepulcrum" wherein the consecrated Host was deposited under ducal supervision on Good Friday. It is also proposed that the Deposition of Christ was designed to highlight the site that the Venetians associated with the deposition of Mark by Doge Justianian Partecipacius in 828/29. The typological association of Mark's relics with those of Christ is confirmed pictorially by the depiction of the Reception of the Relics in the vault of the Cappella S. Clemente immediately above the Deposition mosaic. Mark's tomb and the Sepulchre of Christ would also have been assimilated liturgically in San Marco by the commemoration of the Evangelist's martyrdom during the Easter season itself. To Venetian eyes, the Doge's role as custodian of both tombs and leading participant in both liturgical feasts confirmed the sacrosanct nature of his office.
The Schism and Byzantine Church Decoration
Alexei Lidov (Center for Eastern Christian Culture, Moscow)
As pointed out in the scholarly literature of the last several decades, the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw major changes in Byzantine iconographic programs as new purely liturgical themes were introduced in Church decoration. The first to draw attention was the appearance in altar murals of those centuries of the scenes "The Communion of the Apostles" and "Officiating Bishops." Both directly portrayed liturgies-the service in the Heavenly Temple officiated by Christ as High Priest with the Apostles and the bestrevered holy bishops participating. The author of the present project singled out several more subjects which receive explanation in the same context-the rare iconographic type of "Christ Archiereus Consecrating the Church" and "Christ as the Priest"-both appeared in mid-eleventh-century iconographic programs. We can also regard other rare themes in this connection.
The new liturgical theme came down to us in non-contemporaneous documents of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Hence different expert datings for the emergence of individual subjects. However, it is possible to prove that the emergence or final consolidation of the majority of these themes took place in the mid-eleventh century as a result of a well-considered "liturgical version." Such a version would seem somewhat unexpected in an era when the liturgy had stayed without considerable change for a long time. In my opinion, the explanation can be found in the history of the 1054 schism.
As we know, the theological polemic started immediately, and centered around the azyme controversy-the use of leavened or unleavened communion bread. This issue never acquired such tremendous importance before or after. Its extreme topicality and necessity for new arguments made Latin and Byzantine theologians reappraise the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper and the numerous texts of patristic interpretation. The Orthodox polemicists saw the Latin communion in unleavened bread as condemnably following the Jewish rite, and based their defense of leavened bread on the essential premise that the special New Testament priesthood of Christ was above the Old Testament priesthood, and negated it. In this, they proceeded from Chapter 7 of the Pauline Epistle to the Hebrews as their fundamental text.
The overwhelming interest in the theme of Christ officiating and the rite of the Eucharist was reflected in mid-eleventh-century murals, of which the iconographic program of St. Sophia at Ochrid provides the most graphic example. Characteristically, Leo, Archbishop of Ochrid (1037-1056), was the most probable author of this program. He is known as an immediate initiator and active participant of the schism. In his first epistle to John of Trani, which opened the polemic, he gave detailed substantiation to the theme of the special and supreme priesthood of Christ as connected with the azyme issue. None other than the murals of St. Sophia at Ochrid pioneer the new liturgical themes, including 'The Communion of the Apostles,' 'The Liturgy of St. Basil the Great;' "Christ Archiereus Consecrating the Church," and "Christ as the Priest." The special concept also determined the choice of the holy bishops portrayed in the diaconicon of the church, who included a unique row of six Popes. The unusual interpretation of the central scene, "The Communion of the Apostles," portraying Christ behind the altar as he demonstrated the communion bread, was pointed out earlier. On the whole, the iconographic program of St. Sophia at Ochrid can be interpreted as yet another treatise by Archbishop Leo on the schism topic.
The influence of the theological polemic can be traced to many other Byzantine murals of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Among the most significant of these, we ought to name the mosaics and frescoes of St. Sophia at Kiev, whose program has a clearly discernable Constantinopolitan source. Of major interest among twelfth-century monuments are the paintings of Nerezi (1164), Kurbinovo (1191), Lagoudera (1192), and Nereditsa (1199), whose iconographic programs could have been directly linked with the decisions of the Constantinopolitan Church Synod of the second half of the twelfth century, which finished the elaboration of the special Orthodox concept of Christ's priesthood and gave it a new emphasis.
Patronage and Church Decoration in Kievan Rus': A Study of the Church of St. Cyril in Kiev
Olenka Pevny (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
The Church of St. Cyril, a princely foundation, preserves the most complete specimen of twelfth century frescoes from Kievan Rus', including the unprecedented life cycle of St. Cyril of Alexandria. The presence of this cycle in the Kievan church discloses the intricacy
of Byzantino-Rus' cultural relations. However, available publications concerning this important monument are introductory, repetitive and sparsely, if at all, illustrated. They rationalize the depiction of the life cycle of St. Cyril of Alexandria solely in terms of princely patronage. While the princely patronage of the monument cannot be denied, it should not be used as an a priori explanation for the dedication of the church. Such an approach masks the compositional nuances of the scenes. It also fails to take into account other local concerns that may have influenced the inclusion of the cycle in the church decoration.
Distributed in the five registers of the south apse are twelve scenes from the Life of St. Cyril. Although Cyril was an important church father no other depictions of his life survive in Byzantine art. The limited number of literary sources for the saint's life, and the scarcity of long hagiographical cycles in the illustration of texts casts doubt on the possibility that the scenes in the Kievan church were modeled on a preexisting manuscript cycle. There occurs a similar lack of evidence when it comes to historiated icons and monumental painting. In the case of St. Cyril, we have no knowledge of a sanctuary dedicated to him or containing his shrine where monumental representations of episodes from his life would have been appropriate. The singularity of the life cycle of St. Cyril in the Kievan church indicates that it was not part of a widespread iconographic tradition, and signifies a local reverence of the saint.
Although no direct model for the fresco cycle is known, compositional counterparts for each of the specific scenes can be found in a variety of Byzantine sources. The individual images indicate that creativity took the form of selective copying, remixing and reworking of appropriated models. It is not the compositional vocabulary of the frescoes, so much as the indication of local devotion to St. Cyril of Alexandria that is exceptional in the Kievan monument.
The selection of St. Cyril of Alexandria as the titular saint for the monument is usually associated with prince Vsevolod Ol'hovych's succession to the Kievan throne. It is assumed that St. Cyril's was built by prince Vsevolod on the site and in honor of his victory for the throne of Kiev, and that it was dedicated to his patron saint-Cyril of Alexandria. However, the location of the church cannot be identified with the victory site and there exists no documentation corroborating that Cyril was prince Vsevolod's patron saint. Moreover, the Hypatian Chronicle credits Maria Mstyslavivna, the wife of prince Vsevolod Ol'hovych, with the foundation of the church.
The attribution of the distinctive dedication of the Kievan monument to the patronage of Vsevolod Ol'hovych reveals little about the surviving fresco images and their immediate architectural context. The location of the cycle in the south apse associates it with an enigmatic compartment which opens onto the face of the south pillar of the south wall of the apse and is accessible through a passageway in the thickness of the apse wall. It is my hypothesis that the function of this compartment should be related to the use of the south apse as a chapel dedicated to the saint. In this case the compartment could have been used for the display of a relic associated with St. Cyril. Although no documentation for the existence of relics in the church survives, such a solution offers a possible explanation for the distinctive dedication and the appearance of such features in the monument as the fresco life cycle and the mysterious compartment of the south apse.
VII. EVERYDAY LIFE IN BYZANTIUM
Chair: David Evans (St. Johns University)
Marriage and Urban Social Structure in Late Antiquity as Evidenced by John Chrysostom
Douglas A. O'Roark (Ohio State University)
This paper examines the institution of marriage in the late antique period based on the evidence from the sermons and essays of Saint John Chrysostom. Scholarship on Roman marriage has focused on the west (Rome) in the period of the republic and early empire, and has used primarily non-Christian sources. The period of late antiquity (4th-7th century) marks a transition between the ancient and medieval world and scholars generally agree that an important aspect of this transition was the transformation of cities; a phenomenon that must have had a significant impact on the family.
An examination of the works of Chrysostom reveals evidence for the continuation of an essentially secular and public marriage ceremony in this early Christian period. A central aspect of this ceremony included a parade through the streets and markets of the city. The public celebration of marriage, which is most essentially the creation of a new family, is symbolic of the close relationship between city and family; a characteristic shared with classical antiquity. Chrysostom was vehement in his condemnation of this, proposing instead a Christianization of wedding ceremonies. In the Byzantine period this is, of course, exactly what occurred and the Christianization of the marriage ceremony is representative of the changing relationship between the family and the city. What had once been a public spectacle became more of a private affair between church and family.
Another issue that is examined is the possible reversal of marriage terms in late antiquity. David Herlihy has conjectured that in the late antique period, due to changing demographics and societal attitudes, women became more independent and the terms of marriage were reversed. Bridegrooms were forced to pay increasingly expensive "reverse dowries" as more women delayed or put off marriage entirely. The evidence of Chrysostom contradicts this hypothesis and possibly reveals a fundamental difference between the east and west in the late antique period. This issue is significant in regard to late antique demographics and societal attitudes such as sexual renunciation, as well as the methodology of using Roman law codes as evidence for social phenomenon.
The extensive works of John Chrysostom present a unique perspective on late antique society. This paper offers a possible model for the use of Christian rhetoric as evidence for late antique social history.
Patterns of Disease and Death Among Women and Children in Early Byzantine Times
George Contis (Medical Service Corporation International, Arlington, Virginia)
The patterns of disease and death among women and children in early Byzantine times reflect the dynamic relationship between health, socioeconomic, political, religious and environmental forces.
The sources for this study, the classical literature, the arts, and the findings of paleopathologists, were reviewed in light of current medical knowledge and disease epidemiology. The writings of Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, Oribasius, and Aristotle of Tralles include clinical descriptions of many diseases and conditions. Infections such as pneumonia, mumps, tuberculosis, puerperal sepsis, septicemia, empyema, gangrene, and gastroenteric diseases, were well known.
In addition to the written descriptions of these conditions, and occasional illustrations on pottery or mosaics, we have paleopathologic evidence of some of these disorders. Diseases such as leprosy, syphilis, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis affect bones or can be detected in tissues from mummies.
From a public health perspective we have little indication of how prevalent these diseases may have been during this time. Nor can we be certain about the etiologic agents involved in epidemics, such as cholera and typhoid fever, from the clinical descriptions that have come down to us.
From the majority of excavated grave sites of the period, however, it is clear that the average life expectancy of adults was considerably shorter than that of adults in the developed world today. In addition, women died at a younger age than men. It is also well documented that there was a high infant and child mortality, especially in the first two years of life. Today, we would characterize this life expectancy pattern as one associated with a developing country which has a high level of poverty, illiteracy, economic instability and malnutrition.
Malnutrition was common. It occurred disproportionately in women and children, especially girls. Common findings in skeletons from this period are enamel hypoplasias in teeth and Harris lines in the long bones. These have been associated with stress such as malnutrition and infection during childhood when the teeth and bones are growing and developing.
The high infant mortality rate was caused, in large part, by malnutrition that occurred during the weaning period. This problem was exacerbated by contaminated water and the enteric diseases that are associated with it. As is unfortunately still common in the developing world today, infant boys probably received better care and more food when they were being weaned or when they were ill, than did infant girls. This resulted in a disproportionately lower survival of girls.
Anemia was quite common. It was more prevalent in women and children, and was usually the result of poor nutrition. Some hereditary anemias probably existed, notably thalassemia, although clearcut evidence is not available at this time. There were other causes of anemia also, such as malaria and the widespread medical practice of bleeding patients for therapeutic purposes.
The cycle of malnutrition, anemia, a high infant death rate, and the shortened life span of women is still common today in many less developed parts of the world. The etiology of this pattern then, as it is today, was related to socioeconomic, political, and environmental conditions.
John Moschus in Alexandria
Christopher Haas (Villanova University)
The Leimonarion of John Moschus has been utilized frequently to shed light on the evolution of the monastic ideal in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. It has also provided a mine of information on the grand game of ascetic one-upmanship between
Chalcedonians and Monophysites in their bid to win over the populations of the eastern Mediterranean. Moschus displays the enthusiasm of a Herodotus in collecting wondrous tales designed to charm the reader. Yet like Herodotus, Moschus has a keen eye for local detail. This attention to detail gives the Leimonarion a richly textured quality which allows this tapestry of ascetic stories to be used profitably as a historical source for the period just prior to the Arab conquests.
Moschus and his disciple/friend Sophronius sojourned in Alexandria twice, the first in the period 578-581 and the second during the patriarchate of John the Almsgiver (609-619). Hence, Moschus' offhand observations concerning Alexandria are of far greater historical
value than many of the second- or third-hand tales which tend to fill his work. The Alexandrian anecdotes in the Leimonarion provide vivid details of the city's social structure and economic life. His reminiscences of the episcopates of Apollinarius and Eulogius help reveal the contours of patriarchal patronage in the late sixth century. Moschus's stories also help to fill in some important gaps in our knowledge of the city's topography. Moreover, the Leimonarion proves to be an invaluable source for understanding the communal consciousness of the Chalcedonian party in Alexandria, especially when it is set against Monophysite sources for the same period. In addition, various aspects of Moschus' depiction of urban life in Byzantine Alexandria have found surprising confirmation in the city's material remains, due in large part to excavations undertaken during the last thirty years at Kom el-Dikka, near the city's center. Like Herodotus, the charm of the storyteller does not obviate the historical worth of certain details contained in the text.
Psellos on Life in Eleventh-Century Sykeon
Elizabeth A. Fisher (The George Washington University)
This paper will exploit Michael Psellos' "Oration on the Miracles of the Archangel Michael" (Kurtz/Drexll, 120-141) as a source of evidence for everyday experience during the mid-eleventh century in the region of Sykeon (cf. C. Mango, Cahiers archeologigues [1988147-48). The oration describes various miracles performed by the Archangel in his church and addresses an audience evidently familiar with the church, its monastery, and its surroundings. In the course of his exposition, Psellos reveals the areas of daily life which his audience considered so dangerous and uncontrollable as to require divine intervention. He also discusses various features of life particular to the region of Sykeon but incidental to his account of the Archangel's miracles.
Illness was, of course, the area of experience most frequently referred to the Archangel for his intervention when human measures had failed. Natural disasters were also occasions for his attention, however; a flood so powerful it threatened to destroy the stone bridge across the River Siberis (K/D 127,18ff.), a very local infestation of locusts (128, 26ff ), and a lightning storm which resulted in the paralysis of a traveller (133, 17ff.) were all natural events bringing consequences beyond the competence of human agency to ameliorate. In fact, the rigors of the climate were a recurring concern in the area of Sykeon; Psellos credits the Archangel with protecting his people from heat, plague, and disease (141, 4-11).
Psellos mentions in passing various features of life more particular to Sykeon than disease and natural disaster. Because Sykeon is located upon a major military road, travel figures in the narrative. The church acquired its miracle-working cross when Herachus and his army stopped on their return from the Persian front to resupply themselves at Sykeon (126,14ff.). In the eleventh century local businessmen travelled in large groups to Nicomedia for purposes of trade (133,17), and solitary travellers passed through the town as well (137, loff.). Particular residents of the area are also mentioned, for powerful individuals sometimes tried to ignore the restraints of the law and the Church for their own imagined advantage. Psellos describes a landowner punished only by the Archangel for murder (134, 20ff.), and a thieving supporter of a rebel whose activities the Archangel overlooked (135, 20ff.).
Aspects of everyday experience centered in the monastery itself also figure in Psellos' narrative. Details of its personnel emerge: children pledged to the monastery as infants or youths (131,14;129, 24), a layman serving as porter (137,15), a monk with a clairvoyant servant (138,13), and a monk-steward who embezzled monastery resources (138,13ff.). Aside from the regular liturgy, other religious observances are mentioned as well. Several officials in the monastery advised pilgrims on various procedures for healing, and a yearly feast commemorated the return of the Prodigal Son (132,24-8).
Restoration of Taxes on Abandoned Peasant Land: Law and Practice
Danuta Gorecki (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
The Taxation Treatise informs that a peasant who abandoned his land retained its ownership for the next thirty years, while taxes due from that land were paid by other members of his community. In case of their extreme poverty, the abandoned property was exempted from taxes by an imperial inspector. After the thirty years, any abandoned land became state property. Thus, there were in a rural community two kinds of unproductive land: the abandoned and tax exempted property of a peasant (sympatheia) and the abandoned land escheated after extinction of its owner's proprietary rights (klasma).
The Zavorda Treatise shows fiscal practices of restoring revenues from these lands by means that deviated either from regulations of state agencies or from positive law. Yet, because the legal status of sympatheia and klasma did vary, these means had to vary as well. Klasma, being property of the state, could be sold by the fisc, who was bound only by procedural restrictions of preemption law. Sympatheia, being property of its absent owner, could not be sold because norms of property law a priori excluded any transaction that would change the subject of its ownership. Hence, in order to justify sale of klasma to outside buyers, state officials had only to bend procedural provisions of preemption, while in case of transactions involving sympatheia, the officials had to circumvent substantive law. These practices might be dictated by vital interests of the state as well as by greed of the wealthy. The state, for instance, strove to revitalize enormous supplies of poor quality klasma in areas devastated and depopulated by wars. Prof. N. Oikonomides reconstructed a system by which the state made acquisition of this land attractive to big investors by dramatically lowering its official price and tax, and offering easy payments.' Certainly, there was no problem of preemption in such cases. Yet, in sale of klasma in a rural community, the preemption rights of its members were notoriously violated by corrupted officials for the sake of the interests of the wealthy.
The Zavorda Treatise indicates that revenues from sympatheia could be restored either by its sale as klasma, i.e., by mere violation of property law, or by the practice of opisthoteleia, i.e. by circumvention of the law. What was the opisthoteleia? When peasants, whose poverty was conducive to exempting from taxes the land abandoned by their neighbor, became economically stronger, the inspector could reinstate the tax on this land "in their name." When the peasants refused, he could do it "in name of another person." Whoever accepted the restoration had to pay back taxes due from this land for three years, i.e., 1/8 of its official price, and acquired ownership of the land after extinction of its absent owner's proprietary rights. In case of the owner's return, the land passed immediately to his possession. As far as the buyer's rights were concerned, the Zavorda Treatise mentions only indirectly his title to recover the price that he paid to imperial treasury.
The lack of provisions concerning the legal solution of a conflict between a rightful possessor of someone else's abandoned land and the returning owner of this land cannot be explained by a primitive character of the Zavorda Treatise. I do believe that this solution was offered by norms of positive law of that era and expounded in Art. 21 of the Nomos Geor ikon. This article entitled the buyer to offer another piece of equal quality land antito ia) to the returning owner. However, if the owner refused, the conditional buyer had no legal means to recover any of his investments on the owner's property. Hence, it is clear that only the rightful owner enjoyed full protection against any legal and economic consequences of the transaction of opisthoteleia.
TN . Oikonomides, "Das Verfalland in 10:11. Jahrhundert: Verkauf and Besteuerung" in Fontes Minores 7(1986),161-168.
A Byzantine Commercial Premises in Roman North Africa
L. L. Neuru (University of Waterloo)
The Roman villa at Sidi Ghrib is located some 35 km southwest of Carthage, the capital of the Roman province of Africa and well situated for transport and communications of goods and persons. The site is a true rural villa complex, composed of a villa urbana with a colonnaded peristyle, a large paved courtyard linking the villa urbana, and an adjacent bath building and associated outbuildings, olive oil presses, vats, tanks, and a grinding pit. The site is an excellent example of the monumentale complexe a juxtaposition of the villa aulique type as classified in J. G. Gorges' masterful study of some 1200 villa and possible villa sites on the Iberian peninsula, where the closest parallels may be found; other examples exist in Italy and southwest Gaul. The residents were thought to have been imperial officials, and although many of these structures have earlier phases, the principal and most elegant phase is generally the fourth century or later, probably related to the increase in government officials associated with the reigns and reforms of Diocletian and Constantine.
This luxurious late Roman villa complex was destroyed by a fire which occurred at about the end of the first quarter of the sixth century, which is temptingly close to the reconquest of Africa by the Byzantine Roman Army under Justinian's general Belisarius. Whether or not the Byzantines were actually responsible for the destruction of this villa will probably remain forever an unprovable, but alluring possibility.
The elegant villa building, once destroyed, was reused as a commercial premise perhaps in response to the reimposition of taxes by Justinian mentioned by Procopius. The ash from the fire was raked out over the interior of the villa now an elegant shell, and the rooms were subdivided, with dirt-and-ash floors. The apse at the end of the peristyle, previously with a polychrome mosaic of an onager hunt, became a set of small and dingy storerooms, with an upright from an olive press reused as part of the foundation of one of the dividing walls.
At least one set of rooms excavated to the east of the peristyle had been transformed from the elegant, columned entryway to the arcaded corridor running around the peristyle, into a shop with mixing vat hearths cut into the floors and a counter-top with cutting marks, at which patrons standing in the peristyle corridor could order whatever was for sale, perhaps Byzantine 'fast-food' items. At the back of a room adjoining this establishment was a downturned Corinthian capital and a short plinth reused as makeshift table and chair.
There is a series of shallow limestone vats in the peristyle which have yet to be investigated but certainly were for commercial use perhaps counter-top bins. They are in any case not associated with the domestic phase of the luxurious villa but with the period of Byzantine reuse of the building.
In 1993 the entrance, courtyard, and several adjacent rooms of the villa urbana were investigated, yielding mosaic floors, a cistern and drain complex, and a series of small rural huts reusing the standing walls of the villa, plus added dividing walls and dirt floors. Some of these date to antiquity and some to the twentieth century. The reuse of late Roman villas for a variety of other purposes, such as cemeteries, monasteries, churches, and rural or urban settlement and associated needs is attested widely throughout the area of the Roman Ernpire in the post-Roman period.
The elegant level of the villa below the Byzantine commercial premises corresponds to the fifth-century level in the adjacent bath house. The bath building had one burial in it and had been sealed off and apparently not used after the fire. This building had been completely redecorated by the owner in the late fourth to early fifth century. The redecoration included a splendid set of figural mosaics which were excavated and published by A. Ennabli, "Les Thermes du Thiase Marin de Sidi Ghrib," Monuments Piot 68 (1986),1-59. A paper on this site given to the Association internationale pour l'Etude de Mosaiques anciennes,16-17 October 1992 at the University of Virginia, focused on the mosaics and general plan of the villa complex, and suggested that the last decorated phase was completed in the bath house but not in the villa urbana.
VIII. EXPRESSIONS OF ARISTOCRATIC AND IMPERIAL STATUS AND CONTINUITY IN LATE ANTIQUITY
Chair: Jacqueline Long (University of Texas, Austin)
The Senate of Constantinople and the Foundation of Byzantium
John Vanderspoel (University of Calgary)
Though the city of Constantinople was (re)founded on the site of Byzantium during the reign of Constantine and many writers have suggested or implied that the Byzantine Empire began at that time, the true foundation of Byzantium as an administrative entity occurred somewhat later. Arguably, the change in status of the senators of Constantinople in the late 350s represents an important break between West and East in the administration of the Roman Empire. Before this, the senators who met at Constantinople are to be regarded as senators of Rome who happened to meet in the East. In the late 350s, Constantins changed this arrangement. Senators whose origins lay in the East now gathered in a senate of a different nature in the East. In a rescript from 357 (CTh 6.4.11), Constantins proclaims that a search for senators to produce praetorian games was to be conducted in Achaea, Illyricum and Macedonia. Areas to the East are excluded, indicating that these senators were no longer responsible to Rome. In the same year, Themistius was given the task of finding new members for the Senate at Constantinople, to bring the number up to two thousand, and embarked on at least one journey through Asia Minor to find (or perhaps, convince) possible candidates. The process was complete or sufficiently complete by 359: Constantinople was given a praefectus urbi like Rome to replace the proconsular government it had hitherto experienced. The Senate at Constantinople now became a separate entity instead of an appendix of the Roman Senate. These changes in the status of the senators of the East and the civic government of Constantinople are the key factors which transformed the city from an important imperial residence into the capital of the East. One
question remains: were Rome and Constantinople capitals of a single empire or of two? In this paper, I shall argue that the changes outlined above were of sufficient importance to permit, or even require, the view that, administratively at any rate, two empires existed from 359, even when the same emperor ruled both entities.
Religion and Politics at the Court of Valens
Lawrence A. Tritle (Loyola Marymount University)
It was first asserted by Ammianus Marcellinus that the emperor Valens was little more than a cipher for his brother and patron Valentinian I (Amm. Marc. 26.4.3). This view continues to be argued in recent scholarship, as J. Matthews claims that "none doubted his submissiveness to the superior authority of Valentinian" Q. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus [Baltimore, 19891, p. 190). It is a perception, however, that should be viewed skeptically as it reflects Ammianus' anti-Valenian bias. Yet more striking-hence again the need to be critical of Ammianus-is the well-known fact that the brother emperors took divergent paths in matters of religion: Valens is, after all, the "ardent Arian" emperor. Analysis of Valens' staff suggests that the ready assumption of Valens' subordination to his brother is mistaken. A significant number of his staff officers, particularly the influential magistri militum, as well as others in the bureaucracy, date their commissions to the reign of Constantius, that other great Arian emperor of the fourth century. In other words Arianism provides a heretofore neglected key to interpreting Valens' reign. While an investigation of these officers and others demonstrates that Arians served alongside Catholics, the link to Constantius, his court and its politics, remains clear. This paper will suggest then that Ammianus was wrong about the relationship between these imperial brothers; this conclusion would also raise the question perhaps of a need to reappraise Valens' reign and policies.
Among Valens' commanders were officers such as Sebastianus and Traianus, both of whom began their military careers under Constantius and continued under his successors, including Valens. Both served as magistri militum under Valens and both fought and died with him at Adrianople. Yet their religious views and actions were radically different. While serving in Egypt in Constantius' reign, Sebastianus arrested adherents of Athanasius; in other contexts he was described as a Manichean, meaning perhaps simply "heretic" or Arian. Sebastianus then would appear to be an excellent example of the continuing influence of Arian officers and ideas into the court of Valens.
The career of Sebastianus' contemporary Traianus, however, cautions against any simple generalizations about Valens' reign and Arianism. Not only was Traianus also a longtime serving officer, he was also Catholic. In the campaigning season before Adrianople, Traianus did not have much success and for this was bitterly attacked by Valens. His retort? Valens' persecution of Catholics was to blame and not his incompetence. To his support came two other magistri-Fl. Arinthaeus and Victor-both of whom had also started out under Constantius. Traianus was dismissed but shortly afterwards recalled, in time to die at Adrianople.
The reign of the Emperor Valens since Ammianus has been largely dismissed as but an appendage to that of Valentinian. A review of those men close to Valens suggests that this may not necessarily be the case. While the continued service of former officers of Constantius might reflect bureaucratic and institutional influence, it might just as well point to conscious decisions of Valens. If the latter were correct, then an explanation for his continuation of Arianism may in part have been found.
Imperial Honorifics and Senatorial Status in Early Byzantine Documents
Ralph W. Mathisen (University of South Carolina)
For the late Roman aristocrat, status was not merely the best thing, it was the only thing. One's status determined how one related to and interacted with one's friends, acquaintances, and associates. There were no "peers" in the modern sense of the word; no, everyone ranked above, or below, everyone else. The tiniest distinctions often made the most significant differences in the determination of relative status. This phenomenon is often seen in legislation: chapter 6.5 of the Codex theodosianus, for example, was entitled "Ut dignitatum ordo servetur"; the entire twelfth book of the Codex justinianus, which began with a chapter "De dignitatibus," dealt with the privileges of various ranks and officials; and Novella valentiniana 11 was entitled "De honoratis et quis in gradu praeferatur."
Aristocratic status was bestowed and manifested in many ways. The primary source of status was the emperor, who either bestowed offices that conveyed status or conferred direct grants of rank. The most exalted levels of status were tied to the most powerful offices. The emperor also determined how the various levels of status related to each other. Most of us are familiar with the formalized social hierarchy of the late Roman aristocracy, with the inlustres at the top, followed by the spectabiles and the clarissimi. But status was manifested in other kinds of titulature as well. One example of this is seen in the honorifics applied to various officials in official imperial documents. Along with such appellations as "tua spectabilitas" or "claritas tua," which embodied the terminology of the established social hierarchy, one also encounters a multitude of other appellations, such as "eminentia tua," "amplitudo tua," "sublimis magnificentia tua," and "inlustris et praecelsa magnificentia tua," to cite but a few. The extant imperial documents are replete with such grandiose forms of address.
A number of questions might be asked about these multitudinous and ubiquitous honorifics. How, if at all, are they related to the more familiar status designators inlustris etc.)? Were they formalized in the same way that the customary terms were, that is, were certain honorifics associated with certain offices? In general, what do these honorifics tell us about the bestowal and manifestations of aristocratic status in the late Roman world?
This paper will undertake to answer these questions. It will be seen, for example, that there are patterns in the ways that these honorifics were used. Practical applications of this observation include 1) the ability to suggest what offices might have been held by individuals for whom only honorifics are attested, and 2) the opportunity to suggest more specific dates for documents where only the honorifics of persons who held known offices are given.
Theodosius Tyrannus: Was Theodosius I a Usurper?
Hagith Sivan (University of Kansas, Lawrence)
in August 378 the eastern Roman army suffered a shattering defeat on the battlefield of Adrianople. The western emperor, Gratian, nephew of the eastern emperor who perished with his army, became the senior Augustus. To cope with the crisis he recalled from Spain Theodosius, a man with some military experience. After Theodosius scored a victory, Gratian elevated him to the rank of Augustus January 379). So goes the version commonly accepted by all modern scholars. Yet this sequence of events is by no means firmly established, nor does it have any reassuring precedents. Moreover, contemporary and later sources which deal with the accession of Theodosius are hardly unanimous. Themistius greets us with several conflicting versions, Zosimus with his customary confusion, Pacatus with surprises, and Ausonius maintains a stony silence. Can we be so sure of what happened?
Between 379 and 383 Themistius, a successful panegyrist of four emperors and spokesman for the senate at Constantinople, delivered three orations, all touching on the events of 378/9. Yet each presents a different version. Their most striking feature is the decreasing role of Gratian as the initiator and the chief actor of the drama surrounding Theodosius' accession. Even more bizarre is the fact that when Themistius of the Theodosian oration of 379 extolled Gratian for his foresight in choosing Theodosius as successor to his deceased uncle, Ausonius said not a word in a panegyric addressed that very same year to Gratian. Why did Ausonius, who was well-informed about the events, choose to ignore them when they provided so ready a material for a panegyrist? The short answer is that Gratian's hand had been forced and Ausonius preferred to maintain a stony silence rather than to embarrass his much beloved ruler.
Hints of illegality, or usurpation, received support from another Gallic panegyrist, Pacatus, who delivered an oration honoring Theodosius after the elimination of Magnus Maximus. A decade after the accession we suddenly hear that in 378 Theodosius had been a third candidate to the throne and that the respublica rather than the western emperor begged him to assume the purple. Moreover, the murder of his supposed benefactor in 383 at the hands of Maximus did not move Theodosius, nor was the eastern emperor galvanized to avenge Gratian until 388.
A careful reconstruction of the events which took place between Valens' death and Theodosius' accession points to pressure on Gratian to recall an experienced and familiar commander. The lobby which engineered Theodosius' return to his old sphere was not in Trier but in Sirmium, where the remnants of Valens' army gathered after Adrianople. As a result of his initial success against the Sarmatians (and not the Goths, one may note), Theodosius' soldiers offered him the throne. Gratian hesitated, but eventually had to grant his consent, and Theodosius was duly crowned.
The episode raises several important issues of early Byzantine perceptions of legality and monarchy. What, precisely, constituted usurpation? What were the relations between the eastern and the western parts of the empire as a result of an illegal accession? How did the new emperor of the east secure his position and his dynastic ambitions vis-a-vis the claims of his senior partner in the west?
The Identification of an Imperial Family Member on Seventh-Century Byzantine Copper Coins from the Syro-Palestinian Region
Peter Lampinen (Classical Numismatic Group, Combined Caesarea Expeditions)
The declining state of affairs in Byzantium during the tumultuous reign of Heraclius (610-641 C.E.) is reflected in the chaotic nature of the copper currency in circulation, with innumerable examples of overstriking and countermarking dating from the period, the significance of which has often not been fully developed. The specific pieces under discussion are copper folles countermarked with imperial monograms within the last ten years of Heraclius' reign, apparently applied in the Syro-Palestinian region and comprising a significant proportion of the circulating currency of the period, as noted in both excavated material from sites such as Caesarea Maritima and hoard finds. The monograms appear in two forms, sometimes found singly, but often seen together on the same coin and apparently applied sequentially. These monograms have traditionally been described as variations of the monogram of Heraclius, which appears both as a countermark and as a subsidiary device on his coins. However, an examination of recorded monograms on lead bullae of the period suggests a different reading for one of the monograms; it is possible to interpret this monogram as the name Theodore. The closest example in Zacos and Veglery, Byzantine Lead Seals. volume 1, part 2, is their number 534, a bulla for a Theodore scribon, dated to the sixth century C.E. The comparative countermarked monogram is Grierson's Class E in the Dumbarton Oaks Catalogue of Byzantine Coins, volume 2, part 1, page 55. (Also Hahn Km la). His Class F (Hahn Km lb) represents the normal Heraclean monogram, which besides being used in countermarking operations in Sicily and the East, also is seen on coins of Heraclius in place of his full name and occasionally found as a variation of the reverse cross on his folles.
Although numerous Theodores make appearances in the prosopography of the period, some in the Palestine region, the most likely candidate would be the emperor's brother, appointed military commander in Palestine, and at least partly responsible for the disastrous defense of the region leading to the battle of Ainadayn, where his incompetence led to his disgrace. The initial countermark (Class E) could have been employed by Theodore upon his arrival to command the forces put into disarray by the Islamic incursion, thereby reaffirming Byzantine imperial authority in a region where it had been undermined by two successive invasions, Persian and Arab. The later countermark, the monogram of Heraclius himself, would have been applied to previously marked coins subsequent to the disgrace of Theodore after 634 C.E., and this countermark (Class F) may have been used up to the final collapse of Byzantine defenses in Palestine around 640-641 C.E. with the fall of the last outpost of Caesarea.
The identification of the Class E monogram as that of Theodore raises questions about relations within the imperial family and how authority devolved from the Emperor himself, but should eventually help further clarify Byzantine economic and military policies in the East, not to mention adding a new name to the list of imperial personages recorded on Byzantine coinage.
IX. INSTRUMENTA STUDIORUM: COLLECTIONS, PROJECTS IN PROGRESS, AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Chair: Helen Evans (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Prosopography of the Evergetis Project
Dion C. Smythe (The Queen's University of Belfast)
The Evergetis Project is an international collaborative research effort into eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantine monasticism, centering on the monastery of the Theotokos Evergetis in Constantinople. This large-scale project entering its third year is funded by the British Academy and the Bank of Ireland. One of the features of the Evergetis monastery as an object for historical study is the large body of textual evidence-hynotyposis, synaxarion, synagoge, and katechesis-which survives giving a contextual picture for each of the elements of administration, daily life and economy; liturgy; spiritual life; learning and instruction.
Given this substantial textual dossier, I was employed during the session 1992-3 to computerize the storage of the translations of these texts with a view to enabling computerized access and analysis. In addition, I designed and implemented a computerized relational database to store prosopographical information on eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantine monastic personnel. The alpha-test version of the database uses a limited data-set derived from the surviving published typika. In the long term, the goal is a computerized analysis of the social networks of monastic personnel (broadly constructed) of eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantium.
In the paper, I outline the principles of designing a relational database for Byzantine Studies, concentrating on the choice of the relational format rather than the 'flat' database, the allocation of fields to objects and relations and the vexed question of normalization. I also deal with the choice of database package, but as this usually involves imposed external criteria, it is less universal in import. The Prosopography of the Evergetis Project is a research tool. However, given that good teaching is research-driven, in the presentation I shall relate the design process of PEP to the insights and experience I have gained in introducing undergraduate students to database work, both as end users of the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire based at King's College, London and as systems analysts and designers of their own small systems, showing the advances to be made in using new technology in Byzantine Studies pedagogically and scientifically.
Satellite Technologies and Medieval Morea
Joseph D. Alchermes (University of Minnesota)
The Minnesota Morea Project, co-directed by Joseph D. Alchermes and Frederick A. Cooper, brings new tools and techniques to the study of changing schemes of settlement, land use and resource management in medieval Peloponnesos. The project combines topographical and archaeological survey in the northwest corner of the peninsula, the plain of Elis and the mountainous uplands that enclose it to the east and south. This territory, called Morea in medieval texts, is so vast and so rugged that traditional methods of ground reconnaissance are ineffective; in order to locate quickly and precisely significant natural features and ruined or obscured structures, several satellite technologies have been adapted for use in the laboratory and in the field. They include Landsat remote sensing and image processing, the Global Positioning System (GPS), and the Geographic Information System (GIS).
Laboratory manipulation and analysis of a Landsat digital tape of Peloponnesos permits the isolation and tentative identification of various categories of ground cover; features as diverse as limestone quarries, claybeds, forests, and the remains of masonry structures distinctively emerge and are charted in the course of laboratory research. The resulting map, generated far more rapidly and much more comprehensive than the products of traditional cartographic methods, also serves as a guide for subsequent field work; the existence and precise position of features observed in the investigation of the tape are confirmed in the field, and other information is collected that facilitates further laboratory analysis of the satellite data.
Field reconnaissance directed toward more traditional objectives, such as the mapping of individual sites and villages, also employs innovative tools and methods, most notably the Global Positioning System (GPS). A small receiver that computes field positions by triangulating from signals emitted by a network of Department of Defense satellites, the GPS rapidly and accurately calculates and records latitude, longitude and elevation above sea level. The device has proven particularly useful in recording both the locations of features indicated on the satellite tape and the plans of towns and villages whose names and architectural components can be traced to at least the seventeenth century and often to the Middle Ages. The survey documents the general layouts of these settlements and the distinctive elements of individual vernacular buildings. The use of specially designed forms and numerical codes streamlines the process of documentation in the field and the transfer of data to computer-aided design (CAD) files. The graphics component of the CAD program generates detailed town plans and three-dimensional panoramas, while the CAD data-base can be searched to analyze design or structural elements shared by houses in certain villages or in broader areas. Field reconnaissance serves to collect the information that forms the basis for the creation of maps of villages and of natural features and resources in the countryside. These data in turn are incorporated into a larger, computerized Geographic Information System (GIS); the GIS comprises overlays of evidence furnished by the satellite tape, gathered in field survey and digitized from geodetic, geographical, historical and land-use maps.
This approach, which makes satellite remote sensing the prelude to and complement of field prospection, has produced remarkable results and discoveries over the last two years. This paper will illustrate some of these results, including the identification by remote sensing of limestone quarries and abandoned citadels in Messenia and Morea, and the mapping and recording both of inhabited historic villages such as Neraida, Alepohori and Kakotari, as well as of ruined, abandoned medieval settlements. Of particular interest are the fortifications and habitations of Ayia Triada and kastro tis Oraias, two undocumented, hitherto unnoticed sites in the upper valley of the Peneios River.
The satellite technologies of the Landsat digital tape and the Global Positioning System, in combination with the Geographic Information System and computer-aided design, provide a basis for the efficient, comprehensive analysis of the Peloponnesian countryside; thanks to these new tools, the picture of the medieval development of Morea is rapidly coming into focus.
Observations on Completing a General History of Byzantium
Warren Treadgold (Florida International University)
Six years spent on writing a general account of the Byzantine state and society have left me with some perspectives on the subject that have developed along with the book. During the Christian era the main breaks in the political and social history of the Greek East were the third-century crisis and the Ottoman conquest, which I have taken as the boundaries of Byzantine history. The Fourth Crusade came third in order of importance. But the invasions of the seventh century, unlike the other three upheavals, never overwhelmed the empire's ruling classes or caused a profound change in the government and society. The effects of the third century, 1204, and 1453, unlike those of the seventh century, still shape the eastern Mediterranean today. In most ways the fourth through twelfth centuries were the formative period for eastern Mediterranean culture and political and religious ideology.
These observations contradict some widely accepted views. Much of what scholarship of the past twenty years has considered characteristic of "Late Antiquity," particularly holy men and court ceremony, was in fact just as typical of later Byzantine history. Further, such things were merely symptoms of much larger themes, like the pervasiveness of Christian belief and the establishment of a stable but subtly limited monarchy. The changes of the seventh and eighth centuries, especially the decline of cities and the introduction of Iconoclasm, have been exaggerated; few Byzantines lived in cities and many of those who did continued to do so, while those who cared much about Iconoclasm either way were fewer still.
The process of writing a general history also makes certain weaknesses of current Byzantine studies more apparent. Scholarship continues to accept the assumption of a recent Director of Dumbarton Oaks that the subjects most productive in the past are the most promising for the future. Thus we have four recent studies of the reign of Julian, a brief interval with few lasting consequences, and no study at all of the long reign of Leo VI, a far more significant period for the development of the Byzantine state, Church, economy, and army. For nearly every period economic and military history continue to be neglected, the latter so severely that while writing the general work I needed to write a separate book on the army up to 1081. As Alexander Kazhdan has noted, no one has yet written even a partial history of Byzantine literature as literature. As Cyril Mango has noted, most works on Byzantine art continue to give only superficial attention to the rest of Byzantine cultural history. Many studies of all sorts still fail to make necessary distinctions between different regions and times. In recent years boredom with political history has led scholars to postulate social causes for changes almost certainly resulting from government measures.
Most of these problems need to be addressed if the Byzantine field is to advance past its old obsessions and new fads to gain a secure place in modern scholarship.
X. THE SLAVS IN THE BALKANS
Chair: Ihor Sevčenko (Harvard University)
Grevena (SW Macedonia): A Neglected Frontier Zone of Greece's Early Middle Ages
John Rosser (Boston College)
The region of Grevena is one of the most sparsely settled parts of Greece. In many respects it has always been a frontier zone between Epirus and the rest of Macedonia. Its history has been marked by invasions and migrations, and its distinctly characteristic pastoralism has facilitated cultural exchange. Today, the region is certainly off the beaten path. In Late Roman times it was probably something of a backwater, one which Slavs chose to settle in the Early Middle Ages. This is attested to by the fact that the major place-names of the region are mostly Slav. It is also reflected in the archeological record. Until Byzantine hegemony was reestablished throughout the region it must have remained a frontier zone between civilized oikoumene and the world of the primitive Slavs.
The region, comprised of the modern nomos of Grevena, until recently was archeologically terra incognita. The Grevena Project, an interdisciplinary project that aims at reconstructing the environmental and cultural history of the region, has increased the number of known archeological sites from about a dozen to more than 350. Some of the Late Roman refuge sites were reported on in a paper at the XVIIIth International Congress of
Byzantine Studies, Moscow (Summaries of Communications, II, p. 964; among the general project reports, see American journal of Archeology 94 [1990], p. 309).
What might this frontier have been like in the Early Middle Ages? The region has natural barriers, most notably the Pindus Mountains, which constitute a geographical frontier between the region and Epirus to the west. Other natural geographical barriers contributed to its relative isolation from the rest of Macedonia. That the region did not participate fully in the economy of Greece's coastal towns even before the Slavs arrived is evident from the archeological record. In other words, it was already an economic backwater, a region off the main road systems through central and northern Greece. This fact alone may have made it attractive to the Slavs. Their gradual acculturalization to Byzantium may have been facilitated by the pastoralism of the region. The model for this is the seasonal transhumance which has long distinguished this region from the rest of Greece. Some of the highest villages in Greece are in the western part of the region, including Perivoli, Smixi and Samarina, villages well known for their large flocks of sheep and Vlach shepherds. Using the more recent historical pastoralism as a model, in addition to other information, the region can be seen as a fluid frontier zone that may have served as a bridge for cultural interaction.
At the Crossroads of Cultural Interaction: The Great Moravian Empire
Walter K. Hanak (Shepherd College)
Throughout the course of the ninth century, the Great Moravian Empire, whose territory at its height encompassed the present-day province of Moravia, the Pannonian plain, and beyond it to the south as far as the Sava River, was exposed to major cultural, political, religious and military influences of the Carolingian and Byzantine Empires. The focus of this paper is upon the Byzantine influences and specifically upon the recent archaeological discoveries that have shed new light upon the Cyril and Methodian mission to Moravia and the impact of Byzantine Christianity upon these Western Slavs in the early 860s.
In the summers of 1991 and 1993, two research trips were made to the Czech Republic. Research was conducted at the National Library at the Carolinium, and at the libraries of the Czech Academy of Letters and Sciences, among them the libraries of the Archaeological and Lexicological Institutes. Further the three major archaeological sites were visited, where new finds demonstrated the profound importance of the Byzantine legacy and its cultural interaction with the Slavs. At Stare Mesto [Old Town] new finds were exhibited, among them a portion of a fresco depicting the face of an unidentified religious figure, perhaps a saint. A smaller fragment, little more than one eye, was discovered at Mikulcice, where new churches (apparently fourteen in number) have been discovered. Regarding the latter site, the foundations of two additional churches are being prepared for excavation. To date these new discoveries have not been published. In addition, at both sites, the discovery of tools, weapons, other art work, and items of commercial value demonstrate a rich cultural interaction between Byzantium and Moravia. The third site, Pohansko, though long believed to have had only a military significance as a fortified outpost and staging area near the Danube River, now reveals a more permanent and well-developed society, culture and economy which included religious and secular cultural tendencies. Much of the material remains uninterpreted, but includes fresco fragments from churches, jewelry, military weapons, among other items.
This paper then is a report on the recent finds and their relevance to a more definitive understanding of the significance of the Cyril and Methodian mission.
The Attainment of Serbian Autocephaly: Its Significance in Byzantine History and Orthodox Canon Law
Andrea Sterk (Princeton Theological Seminary)
The fall of Constantinople to a crusading Latin army in 1204 not only severely weakened the Byzantine Empire but also created political and ecclesiastical confusion throughout Christendom. The church struggled to redefine or reinterpret its canons in light of the proliferation of new nations in a divided Christian empire. Foremost among the problems plaguing the Byzantine church was the meaning of ecclesiastical self-government, or autocephaly. Notions concerning autocephaly had been long assumed and largely unchallenged prior to the thirteenth century. The collapse of a united Christian empire inspired both state and church leaders to use this ecclesiological ambiguity to their own ends. The rise of the Balkan principalities not only played a major role in the political reorganization of Byzantium but also challenged traditional ecclesiastical patterns. The conflict surrounding the emergence of the Serbian church educed the political and ecclesiastical claims of rival Byzantine parties in the power vacuum created by the Latin conquest and occupation of Constantinople. The resolution of this dispute illustrates both the confusion and the slowly developing clarity within the Eastern church.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the attainment of Serbian autocephaly, particularly the question of its legitimacy, in light of the pretensions of its most critical opponent, Archbishop Demetrius Chomatianus of Ohrid. I will first review the pertinent political and ecclesiastical background and the actual concessions granted to Saint Sava, Serbia's first archbishop. I will then examine the protest of Archbishop Chomatianus, expressed in two letters (one to Archbishop Sava and one to Patriarch Germanus in Nicaea), in an attempt to evaluate the justification of his claims. Finally, I will offer reflections on this conflict within the larger scope of Byzantine history and Orthodox ecclesiology. I will show its significance in three areas. First, the dispute sheds light upon a larger issue, the question of the rightful heir to the Byzantine Empire. Second, it elucidates the issue of legitimacy, or canonicity, in Serbia's attainment of self-governing ecclesiastical status. Third, it demonstrates the changing notion of autocephaly in Orthodox canon law, yet another testimony to the Byzantine principle of "oeconomia" in matters of church and state.
Descriptions of Balkan Slavic Rulers in Byzantine Sources: Common Traits and Pervading Themes
Liliana Simeonova, SUNY-Albany
As a rule Byzantine authors mention the rulers of the neighboring countries only in the cases when these rulers' activities affect, in one way or another, the Byzantine empire. Physical descriptions of foreign rulers are seldom available in Byzantine sources. Instead, Byzantine writers prefer dwelling on the conduct and the moral qualities of non-Byzantine rulers, though not in detail.
There are some common traits discernible in the portraits of different Balkan rulers painted by Byzantines. They are the result of several factors which exerted influence on the minds of Byzantine intellectuals, e.g., the hypercultivated rhetoric which often makes the author blur reality with rhetorical cliches and recurring stereotypes of thought; the practice of mixing firsthand information with evidence drawn from less trustworthy sources; and the persisting dichotomy "Romans/barbarians" which nourished the Byzantine authors' sense of cultural superiority to the non-Byzantine personages of their narrations. Finally, nearly all Byzantine writers stick to very much the same ideological pattern of evaluation of foreigners: the ruler who recognizes the empire's claims of supremacy over the rest of Christendom is good while the one who dares reject these claims and damages Byzantium's interests is bad. The verbal portraits of the Balkan Slavic rulers are confined to a more or less limited number of epithets and are often modeled on schemes persisting in Byzantine literature from antiquity. This, however, does not mean that all Byzantine descriptions of foreign rulers are unrealistic. Sometimes the reader encounters details which reveal specific features of someone's character: e.g., haughtiness, arrogance, recklessness, paranoia, etc.
According to Byzantine writers, the reason for the South Slavic rulers' bad attitude toward the empire-they are often described as rebels and tyrants-are entirely rooted in their bad character and envy: they are driven by their megalomania and restless ambition to obtain what by divine right belongs to the Romans. The most negatively characterized ruler in Byzantine sources is probably the Bulgarian tsar Simeon, whose name, together with the name of another Bulgarian ruler, Krum, is often used by Byzantine authors as a bad epithet for foreign rulers who invade the empire. Because of their lack of common sense and hubris, the Balkan Slavic rulers are usually punished by providence itself: this is another pervading theme in Byzantine writing which has persisted in medieval literature from classical works and according to which no one can escape the revenge of Nemesis.
Positive portraits of Balkan Slavic rulers are rarely painted by Byzantines; these are, as a rule, the descriptions of rulers who recognized the Byzantine claims for supremacy and acted in compliance with imperial policy. What is more, Byzantine writes are inclined to recognize military virtues in Slavic soldiers and generals' behavior rather than in the behavior of their sovereigns.
No South Slavic ruler has been described in great detail in Byzantine writing. Byzantine authors prefer concentrating on the deeds and personalities of Byzantine emperors and generals, while foreigners appear as secondary personages in the historical scene. Descriptions of Balkan Slavic rulers follow the same scheme throughout: their moral portraits are painted by means of two basic groups of categories: a) categories used by Byzantine moralists for the evaluation of any men in authority, and b) ethnic epithets used for describing "barbarians" of any kind. Both groups consist of notions which have persisted in Byzantine thinking mostly from the classical tradition. The Byzantine descriptions do not tell us much about the character or the appearance of these personages; however, the schematism and the cliches discernible in these descriptions are quite indicative of the Byzantines' attitude to the Other. Throughout the centuries Byzantines remained under the spell of persisting ideologemes; it was above all their sense of cultural superiority that prevented them from examining non-Byzantine rulers' qualities in detail. The number of classical quotations and rhetorical cliches increases from the tenth century on, which is no doubt due to the increased interest in classical literature in Byzantium. This, however, seldom yields more information on the physical and moral qualities of foreign rulers in Byzantine writing. Byzantine literature as a whole presents no portrait of a foreign ruler that could be compared to the vivid descriptions of, say, Justinian and Theodora, Constantine VIII, or any other portrait in the crowded gallery of Byzantine emperors, empresses, courtiers, military and high ranking clerics who peer from the works of Byzantine writers.
XI. DEATH AND BURIAL IN LATE ANTIQUITY
Chair: Fred Paxton (Connecticut College)
Bones and Scrolls: Metaphors of Holiness in Late Antique Judaism
Naomi Janowitz (University of California, Davis)
Consideration of the material remains of Late Antique Judaism, including the omnipresent ossuaries and the knucklebone buried beneath the Dura Europos synagogue, has all but destroyed stereotypical pictures of Jews shunning bones as unclean. Instead scholars now scan Jewish texts for references to bones, and read the material evidence and these textual references as part of the same seamless narrative. Sometimes the narrative points towards a close relationship between Jewish bones and Christian relics (Grabar) and sometimes that narrative still points towards difference and issues of self-definition (Rothkrug, McCane). This paper examines both types of evidence, arguing that the material remains do not "illustrate" the texts; instead they are two analogous and not fungible modes of thinking about the sanctity of bones.
For the textual evidence, the focus will be on stories which set up parallels between bones and scrolls. Some of these are martyrdom stories in which the rabbis body is compared to a Torah scroll. Others compare, for example, two arks Moses brought out of Egypt, one for Joseph's bones and one for the covenant. Bones and scrolls can both be incarnations of holiness, and the stories show how they are marked vis a vis this sanctity.
For a scroll to be holy it must fulfill certain criteria (extensively discussed), which are reflected both in ritual manipulations which transform it into a holy object and then stem from its sanctity (makes the hands unclean). Keeping these ideas in mind, we can consider the manipulation of bones in funerary rituals as strategies for locating holiness on earth. The conclusions will point towards l) the recognition that literary texts and material remains are evidence of different strategies for constructing metaphors of holiness and that 2) these strategies cut across religious boundaries.
Burial Practices and the Pagan-Christian Conflict of the Fourth Century in Rome
Mark J. Johnson (Brigham Young University)
The paintings of the Via Latina catacomb in Rome have been the cause of much scholarly debate, particularly as regards the interpretation of the Hercules scenes and others that show pagan imagery. At the Ninth Annual B.S.C., David Wright presented a paper in which he argued that certain scenes in the catacomb should be interpreted as representing a pagan theology-juxtaposed to the Christian imagery in the rest of the decoration. Others have argued that the scenes had been borrowed and reinterpreted by the Christians. One question that was not addressed in the discussion was whether or not it was possible for pagans and Christians of the fourth century in Rome to share the same tomb. This paper attempts to answer this issue.
It is often assumed and stated that Christians and pagans were not buried together; that, in effect, the pagan-Christian conflict of the fourth century extended into the grave. Until now, however, no attempt has been made to prove or disprove this hypothesis. An examination of a variety of evidence will show that, contrary to popularly held notions, there were no legal or religious barriers to Christians and pagans sharing the same tomb and that such burials did take place.
Three areas will be examined: law, both Roman and canon; contemporary writings of Christian writers; and archaeological finds that have bearing on the issue. Catacombs in the Roman empire operated under Roman law concerning such matters and it is clear that such laws remained in force in Rome well into the fifth century. No law forbade the mixing of religion in the tombs and it was left to the owners of the tombs to admit whom they chose for burials. The Church itself seems to have been slow to issue any firm rules concerning the mixing of pagans and Christians in the tombs. Although various pronouncements concerning funerary practices were promulgated by various councils, it was not until the Council of Paderborn of 785 that a clear prohibition was issued.
Writings of Hilary of Poitiers, Cyprian and Theoderet have been cited as proof of an official prohibition of such burials but a close examination of the texts leads to the conclusion that they have been misinterpreted. Furthermore, Augustine makes it clear in his writings that the manner and place of burial of Christians is not very important, so long as the proper prayers are made on the deceased's behalf.
Finally, there are numerous examples of such mixed burials uncovered in archaeological investigations from Britain to North Africa. Even in Rome there is evidence of such burials in several places, including the necropolis under St. Peter's, the tombs and shrines that preceded the Basilica Apostolorum and the fourth-century Catacomb of Vibia on the Via Appia. The latter has paintings in which individuals are identified as priests of Sol Invictus and Mithras while down the corridor are numerous inscriptions that are certainly Christian. The only possible conclusion is that there were no regulations against Christians and pagans sharing a tomb in fourth-century Rome.
Passion of Christ, Martyrdom, and Christian Death on Fourth Century Roman Sarcophagi
Alice T. Christ (University of Kentucky)
E. Le Blant over one hundred years ago explained the paratactic listing of Old Testament scenes and New Testament miracles on frieze sarcophagi as a visual analogue of the ancient Judaeo-Christian paradigmatic prayer formula used in the present Roman vigil for the dying: "save as You saved the sons of Israel from Egypt, Jonah from the belly of the fish, etc." In spite of documented funerary use of the prayer only from the eighth century, Le Blant's salvational characterization of frieze sarcophagus iconography has won wide acceptance. But the liturgical frame of reference for early Christian funerary imagery which such an interpretation suggests is only beginning to be explored. The extension of imperial and aristocratic patronage to Christian art after the time of Constantine encouraged scholars to seek sources for the expanded iconographic repertoire and the columnar or panoramic formats of later fourth century sarcophagi in secular elite traditions. Also, by mid-fourth century, interpretation is complicated by conflicting views of the relationship of new scenes such as the Traditio Legis to new public and corporate claims of the Church. The idea that later fourth-century funerary iconography might also refer to elements of funerary ritual has been relatively neglected in the face of this new wealth of possibilities.
This paper will examine the so-called Passion sarcophagi, and sarcophagi sharing their repertoire of scenes of the Passion of Christ and martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, in the context of mid-fourth century developments in funerary ceremony and setting. Analysis of the scenes and compositions of the Passion sarcophagi shows that the sarcophagi as a group do not simply reflect authoritative archetypes. Instead, they present variations of relatively self-contained constellation of scenes, suggesting that the designers and audience of the sarcophagi recognized a thematic unity, distinct from the message of the frieze sarcophagi.
Chance and fragmentary as they are, literary records of the same funerary ceremonies, at the center of which the sarcophagi once stood, reveal the passional theme as a visual evocation of a newly differentiated and ritually elaborated metaphoric demonstration of individual salvation. Passion sarcophagi, more than dogmatic assertions of the grounds of salvation in Christ's victory over death, are pictorial recollections of an ideal pattern of the
individual experience of death in the suffering and triumph, first of Christ, then of the martyrs, formalized in liturgical provisions for the individual death modelled on Easter and related to the increasing Roman ecclesiastical domestication of the cult of the martyrs.
Cemeteries and City Limits in Fifth- to Seventh-Century Carthage
Susan T. Stevens (Randolph Macon Woman's College)
The city of late antiquity was in large part defined by its circuit walls: public life took place within the walls while cemeteries grew up outside them. However both archaeological and literary evidence indicate that in many cites the line between these traditionally intramural and extramural activities became blurred. The suburbs were adorned with great basilical complexes, the public monuments of the Christian city, and certainly by the end of the 5th century intramural burial is well attested.
The city of Carthage in the 5th-7th centuries is an excellent case study of this phenomenon. The course of the city wall is known, the location of Christian cemeteries has been plotted and late burials excavated in the last twenty years during the International Campaign to Save Carthage, many of which are intramural, allow burial patterns in late anfiquity to be assessed.
The first part of the paper is concerned with the city wall at Carthage and its meaning as reflected in both archaeological and literary sources. Given that it was constructed as a defensive system for the city against the Vandals in 425, its course is unlikely to reflect a sacred boundary such as a pomerium. However, the fact that the Vandals repaired the walls of Carthage but not those of other African cities suggests that they had a symbolic as well as functional character related to Carthage's status of "a Rome in Africa."
The second part of the paper gathers the disparate burial evidence of extramural cemeteries and intramural burials. The discussion will consider the impact on the character of the city of the simultaneous development of cemetery basilicas on the outskirts of the city (e.g. Bir el Knissia) and burials grouped in and around buildings inside the city.
The conclusion considers the importance of the city wall and cemeteries of Carthage in defining the city and the roles they played in separating city from suburbium in the late antique period. The discussion will focus particularly on the designation of areas intra muros and extra muros at Carthage. While most scholars have taken this to mean areas inside and outside the city, the ancient evidence suggests that in late antiquity some parts of the city lay inside while others lay outside its defensive wall.
Late Antique Mortuary Practices in Central Spain and their Implications
Leonard A. Curchin (University of Waterloo, Canada)
For the student of Late Antique funerary customs, the evidence from Central Spain is both instructive and problematic. This paper presents a critical reappraisal of the controversy surrounding the cemeteries of the Spanish interior in the fourth to fifth centuries.
The inclusion of knives, spears, belt buckles and bridles in the tombs, and their proximity to hill forts, has led some scholars (P. de Palol, J. M. Blazquez) to posit a Late Roman limes along the river Duero; these cemeteries might then belong to laeti limitanei, or foederati. The similarity of the finds to items found along the Rhine and Danube has been invoked as evidence for the use of German troops on the presumed Spanish frontier. However, the cemeteries are also located close to Late Roman villas, a circumstance which may inspire alternative interpretations. One possibility that has been suggested is private troops in the employ of villa owners. More recently, A. Fuentes has offered a radically new explanation of the weapons as hunting equipment, associable with a favorite sport of the villa residents, as illustrated in mosaics. This interpretation finds support in the typology of the knives, which seem more suitable as slicing instruments than as battlefield weapons, and by the representation of spears and bridles in hunting mosaics. Then too, the absence of swords, helmets and shields from these cemeteries seems inconsistent with the panoply of warriors. Moreover, the widespread distribution of the cemeteries across central Spain would negate the hypothesis of a limes.
Since the tombs and their contents are far from luxurious, and include iron tools as well as weapons, Fuentes connects them with villa craftsmen, members of an "emergent" social class who adopted the "ideals" of the villa aristocracy and who desired to hunt in the afterlife. It will be suggested that a likelier explanation might be the participation of villa personnel as attendants in real-life hunts, as depicted in mosaics. The tools and weapons were buried, not for use in the next world, but rather to commemorate the occupation of the deceased; this practice finds an analogy in the representation of tools on earlier Roman funerary reliefs.
XII. METHODOLOGY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
Chair: Henry Maguire (University of Illinois, U.-C./Dumbarton Oaks)
In Quest of the Mute Social Groups
Angeliki E. Laiou (Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University)
This paper will discuss various methodologies which permit the historian to identify the structure and role of social groups whose members have not left many documents of self-identification: specifically, the Byzantine peasant, the Byzantine merchant, and the Byzantine woman. The benefits and drawbacks of methods such as statistical analysis, comparative approaches, a weighted reading of the sources, will be presented in the light of the scholarship of the past twenty years.
Richard Delbrueck's Consulardiptychen and the Hegemony of Klassische Archdologie
Anthony Cutler (Pennsylvania State University)
To the extent that "postmodern" Byzantine studies exist, they have concentrated on deconstructing the intellectual edifices built by the "great men" of the mid-century in our field-O. Demus (T. Mathews), A. Grabar (A. Wharton), K. Weitzmann U. Lowden). So far, late antiquity has (with the possible exception of R. Cormack's and D. Kinney's critiques of Kitzinger) proved immune to this sort of onslaught. "Situational" analysis, i.e. the recognition that a scholar's productions are likely to have imprinted on them the political, intellectual and cognitive postures of the time in which they were born, is nonetheless appropriate to an opus that still serves as a paradigm for work on the 5th and 6th centuries-Delbrueck's Consulardiptychen and verwandte Denkmdler (1929)-despite sniping attacks by Cameron, Cutler, and Shelton.
A decade ago I proposed that the so-called "Roma and Constantinopolis" diptych in Vienna was a creation of the early Middle Ages rather than of late antiquity, the age universally, if variously, attributed to it by other scholars. With the notable exception of S. Zwirn, this redating has been largely accepted. More important than this reassessment, however, are the questions, first, whether other "late antique" ivories were the subject of similar misprision and, secondly, if this is so, why this should have happened. Delbrueck, who was unable to study a number of diptychs other than in photographs, remains the foundation of the still dominant belief that all such ivories were either late antique works or, for those that did not easily fit into his categories, late antique works recut in the Middle Ages. This assertion, addressed primarily to diptychs in Prague (D40) and Monza (D43), was founded on iconography which places St. Peter in a medieval architectural setting and puts in his hand a key (said to be fashioned from an originally consular scepter) in the case of Prague, and "later" inscriptions identifying the seated "consul" in Monza as David and his standing counterpart as St. Gregory. So, till now, the matter has rested.
Delbrueck, who died in 1957, was more interested in matters of content than craftsmanship and seems to have been unaware that (a) ivory can be recut only where there is material available to be recut, and (b) any recutting (see, e.g., the Berlin Justin) will betray itself under simple, low-power magnification. On the basis of direct examinations performed in 1989 and 1992, and with the photographs to prove it, it is possible to show that neither the single leaf in Prague nor the pair in Monza has been recut in any way: they are entirely medieval creations. The first part of this paper is devoted to such a demonstration.
The second part, rather than being addressed to orthodox art historical investigation ("when, then, were they carved?") asks what is perhaps a more interesting question. What led Delbrueck into these errors? The answer is a complicated one (and still in the process of investigation by the speaker). Part of it, nonetheless, involves the "corpus mentality," the desire to package all phenomena neatly, to tie up such loose ends as "mittelalterlichen Umarbeitung," and to present an orderly sequence of datable carvings that stretched from the beginning of the 5th to the middle of the 6th century. This fundamentally aesthetic attitude was born of his training, first in art theory in Berlin and then in classical archaeology in Bonn. Following his dissertation (on linear perspective in Greek art, 1899), he did not turn to the late Roman empire until he was 37, by which time he had developed (as his pupil and obituarist, H. Drerup, put it) "a profound mistrust for every sort of stylistic analysis." If Delbrueck's long years of work as an archaeologist were responsible for a point of view that saw late antiquity more as the product of what had preceded it than as the origin of that which followed, his "characteristic exact method" required him to forgo those subjective perceptions which had earlier allowed Alois Riegl to sense the seeds of the medieval world in that of the 5th and 6th centuries. Formed in the self-consciously Roman ambience of the Deutsches Archaologisches Institut in the early years of the 20th century, at least intellectually Delbrueck shunned Germany's medieval past. After the Second World War he was able to turn himself to Christian exegesis in his study of the Brescia Lipsanothek; at the time of the Consulardiptychen, the Middle Ages hardly existed for him.
Converging Processions
Thomas F. Mathews (Institute of Fine Arts, N.Y.U.)
Nearly fifty years have passed since Karl Lehmann published his grand vision of cosmological iconography in the Christian church, the "Dome of Heaven" (AB 27 [1945] 1-27). This was probably the most ambitious attempt ever to discover a comprehensive system of imagery in Early Christian art. The recent collapse of Lehmann's thesis under critical examination has put us in a very different position regarding "system" in Early Christian art (Mathews, Source 1 [1982] 12-16: H. Joyce, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 114 [183-201]; eadem, Mitteilungen des D.A.I. 97 [1990] 347-381). The greatest accomplishment of Medieval art is the comprehensiveness of its image systems. Both the gothic cathedral and the Byzantine decorative system gave the viewer the impression of a complete world order, a visual schema in which there is a place for everything. The question is whether Early Christian/ Early Byzantine art was capable of enunciating any comparable, unified world view.
The world view that governs the imagery of Early Christian churches is, I propose, much more straightforward than Lehmann's cosmic configurations. Converging processions-that is, a concourse of figures from either side, worshipfully approaching the axis at which is Christ-provide the principal organizing device. A confluence of figures toward Christ is prominent in catacomb painting and sarcophagi, and this composition governs a surprising number of church programs of the widest diversity in size, shape, and function. Over sixty percent of the apse compositions catalogued by Christa Ihm include centripetal processions (Die Programme der christlichen Apsismalerei [Wiesbaden, 1960; repr. Stuttgart, 1992]). All of the mosaicked churches of Ravenna fall in this class, including basilicas, baptisteries, and the octagon of San Vitale. In addition, converging processions constitute the organizing principle for countless works of later periods from Romanesque apses to 'sacra conversazione' paintings of the Renaissance. Curiously enough, this basic compositional mode is never discussed as such. I would like to examine some of its implications for the study of Early Christian/Early Byzantine art.
XIII. CONSTRUCTING GENDER IN BYZANTIUM (PART 1): PAPERS
Chair: Judith Herrin (Princeton University)
The Prophet Daniel at the Emperor's Court
Kathryn M. Ringrose (University of California, San Diego)
This paper suggests several ways in which the prophet Daniel became a positive model for the castrated civil servant in Byzantium. The paper is part of a larger study of gender in the Byzantine Empire as reflected in the language and imagery used to define eunuchs. A portion of this study, scheduled for publication in September, 1993, discusses the ways in which we might view Byzantine eunuchs as a third gender category, and will be referred to in order to provide a context for this paper.
In the early twelfth century, when Theophylaktos, Archbishop of Ohrid, wrote his Defense of Eunuchs he assumed that the prophet Daniel served as a eunuch at the Persian court. In his argument in support of eunuchs Theophylaktos uses Daniel as his model for the "good" eunuch. This paper examine that tradition, which is not yet apparent in John Chrysostom, is hinted at in Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and is well developed in Symeon Metaphraste.
Daniel is depicted as the perfect servant, faithful both to God and to his master. He has unusual intellectual abilities, and he is a protector of women and young men. He also possesses special spiritual powers, including the gift of prophesy and the ability to interpret dreams.
The image of Daniel thus created joins in one individual two very different tenth-century categories: the ecclesiastical eunuch and the secular court eunuch. Therefore it is not surprising that when Symeon Metaphraste describes Daniel he reconfigures his story to fit the gender structures familiar to him in tenth-century Byzantium.
This paper will be based on a detailed analysis of several commentaries on the Book of Daniel, with special emphasis on the Interpretatio in Danielem Prophetam of John Chrysostom, a late fourth-century work, the Interpretatio in Danielem of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, an early fifth-century work, and the Commentarius de Sancto Propheta Daniele of Symeon Metaphraste, a late tenth-century work.
Women and Sphragistic Iconography:A Means of Investigating Gender-Related Piety
John Cotsonis (Dumbarton Oaks)
The subject of gender-related piety has received a good deal of attention in recent years. When discussing this topic, scholars have usually focused their attention on the devotion of women towards the cult of the Theotokos and her images. One means of verifying and elaborating upon the relationship between gender and cult is through the medium of Byzantine lead seals. Thousands of examples survive which bear religious figural iconography and the names of their owners. It should be kept in mind, however, that the total number of seals belonging to women is relatively small in comparison to that of men. The vast majority of seals were issued by individuals who held positions within the civil, military and ecclesiastical bureaucracies, all institutions dominated by men. Nevertheless, the present investigation employs 142 seals that were owned by women, a sample size that still provides the largest number of surviving objects with religious figures produced for a female clientele.
Of these seals issued by women, approximately 80% selected the image of the Virgin for their sphragistic iconography. This statistic does testify to the strong correlation between female devotions and the cult of the Theotokos. But the sigillographic evidence also indicates that gender-identification is not the sole motive determining such iconographic choices. The image of the Virgin is also the single most popular image found on seals owned by men. Furthermore, among the seals that depict female saints, only one belonged to a woman. Such results, therefore, call for a rethinking of the role of gender as it relates to artistic patronage and for further investigation into the various factors that determine the relationship between iconographic choice and personal piety.
Spiritual Mother of the Realm and Pious Intercessor for the Tsar: The Significance of St. Helena for the Role of the Muscovite Tsaritsa
Isolde Thyret (Colorado College)
While scholars have pointed out Constantine the Great's significance for the development of the ideology of the Muscovite tsar in the mid-sixteenth century, they have neglected similar efforts to elevate the image of the tsaritsa through the creation of a myth associating her with the Byzantine emperor's mother, St. Helena. The reinterpretation of the tsaritsa's role is evident in the portrayal of Ivan IV's mother, Elena Glinskaia, in the Muscovite chronicles from the 1530s to the 1560s. Whereas in the earliest variants of the "Tale of the Death of Vasilii Ivanovich" (1539 and 1542) Glinskaia's position is compared to that of traditional Russian Grand Princesses, her image is enhanced in the Letopisets nachala tsarstva (1550s), which credits Elena with the power to rule outright as a regent for her son. To underscore this claim the chronicle compares Elena Glinskaia, along with the Kievan princess Ol'ga, whose baptismal name was Helena, with "the great and pious empress Helena."
According to her vita St. Ol'ga, who brought the message of the cross to Kiev and thus imparted the promise of salvation to the Russian realm, imitated Helena's act of taking Christ's Cross from Jerusalem to Constantinople. By invoking the similarities of St. Helena, St. Ol'ga, and Elena Glinskaia, the Letopisets nachala tsarstva created a new theory of translatio imperii, which was based on the spiritual relationship of imperial women. The association of St. Helena with the Muscovite tsaritsa is visible in the tsaritsy's embroideries. Ivan IV's first wife, Anastasiia Romanovna, depicted her name-saint opposite St. Helena in a liturgical curtain donated to the Hilandar Monastery on Mt. Athos in 1556. The tsaritsa's position based on the St. Helena analogy is also evident in a cape of tsar Feodor Ivanovich embroidered by his wife Irina Godunova.
The image of St. Helena continued to define the tsaritsa's role during the Romanov dynasty. The image "The Veneration of the Cross" (late seventeenth century) juxtaposes the figures of Constantine the Great, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, and Patriarch Nikon with St. Helena and Aleksei s wife, Mariia Ilich'na. All figures, holding scrolls, worship the True Cross. Whereas Constantine gives thanks for his victory at the Milvian Bridge after his vision of the Cross, and Aleksei petitions for victory over his enemies, Mariia prays for the spiritual enlightenment which Helena experienced during the conception of her son. In her petition the tsaritsa is joined by the patriarch, the traditional intercessor for the tsar. Like St. Helena, who raised the Cross "from the womb of the earth," Mariia Il'ichna performs a liturgical act, evident in her bow before the cross. Just as Helena assured God's support for her son in battle, Mariia's prayers prepare the ground for Aleksei's success as a ruler. By imitating St. Helena she intercedes for her husband in matters of the faith.
The attribution of St. Helena's qualities to the Muscovite tsaritsa in sixteenth-century Russia gave the tsaritsa the new role of spiritual mother of the realm. In the seventeenth century the concept of the tsaritsa's imitation of the holy empress was used to accord the Romanov women an intercessory role between God and the tsar. Aurelia Charite, "Knower of Letters" Jennifer A. Sheridan (St. Joseph's University)
Aurelia Charite, daughter of Amazonios and Demetria, was a member of the wealthy landowning elite of fourth-century Hermopolis. Charite is known from an archive of forty two documents, published in K. A. Worp, Das Aurelia Charite Archiv (Zutphen 1980). The archive is composed almost exclusively of financial documents: leases, tax receipts, loans, landholding registers. There are a few letters in the archive, but these too refer to financial matters. Our picture of Charite's life and lifestyle is enhanced by the existence of archives of her husband and son, which have also been published by Worp in Die Archive der Aurelii Adelphios and Asklepiades (Vienna 1991).
Only a few biographical facts are known about Charite. She was born around 300, and died around 350; she had at least three children; her father and maternal grandfather were councilors of the city, as were her husband and her sons. Some preliminary studies have been done on her financial dealings, particularly in the area of landholding, although there is more work to be done. It has been established with certainty that she was one of the largest landholders in Hermopolis during the fourth century.
There is one more interesting fact to be noted about Aurelia Charite, and that will be the focus of this paper. Charite was literate. Five documents in the archive are at least partially in her hand. The fact that she is a literate woman is interesting; the fact that someone this wealthy, who could afford a staff of scribes, bothers to write in her own hand is even more so. This paper will examine the documents which Charite wrote, and investigate the unusual vocabulary she uses to describe her literacy. The evidence provided by the Charite archive will also be compared to the prevailing theories on ancient literacy, particularly those espoused by Harris and his critics.
Women and the Monastery of Epiphanius in Late Antique Egypt
Terry G. Wilfong (University of Chicago)
The Monastery of Epiphanius in Southern Egypt was a small monastic community active in the sixth and seventh centuries, known primarily from the wealth of textual and archaeological evidence discovered during its excavation. The site and the texts from it were published in 1926 in a lavish excavation report, with narrative essays on the geographical context, daily life and literary environment of the monastery. The excavation report contained an all-too-brief examination of the highly visible roles and interactions of women with the inhabitants of the Monastery of Epiphanius that remains one of the very few discussions of women in Coptic documentary sources. Unfortunately, this aspect of the Monastery of Epiphanius corpus has not been the object of further inquiry. Although women were not formally part of the community, they were an important part of the local and regional support system for the monastery. The frequent and prominent appearance of women in the Monastery of Epiphanius texts provides an important source for an aspect of women's lives in Late Antique Egypt.
Drawing on the published texts from the site, as well as unpublished archaeological and textual material, this paper will examine and define the interrelationships of the inhabitants of the Monastery of Epiphanius with women outside the monastery. Unlike larger contemporary monasteries, the Monastery of Epiphanius had no associated women's monastic community; women were involved with the activities of the monastery, however, in a number of ways. The informal support systems provided by the female relatives of monks are most frequently attested, but there is also substantial evidence for women's varied participation in the economic activities of the monastery. This evidence will be compared to material from other sites near the Monastery of Epiphanius, showing the general regional pattern of women's roles in the provisioning and maintenance of a network of monastic communities. In turn, the importance of these monasteries to women's lives will be examined: how monastic communities provided services and information to the women of the region. Finally, the Monastery of Epiphanius material will be placed into the context of what is known of the roles and positions of women from Late Antique Egypt in general.
XIV. PALEOLOGAN SOCIETY AND CULTURE
Chair: George Dennis (The Catholic University of America)
Thoughts on Late Byzantine Dynastic Marital Politics, Or, Were the Palaiologoi Really Italians?
John W. Barker (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
In the mid-tenth century, the scholar-Emperor Constantine VI Porphyrogennitos denounced as wicked and indefensible the very idea of marriage between members of the Imperial family and persons of foreign nations. In fact, as he well knew, such practices had long precedents even then, and invariably involved expediences of diplomacy. Nevertheless, during the centuries when Byzantium had few peers on the international scene, such practices could be kept to a strict minimum.
The increasing frequency of foreign marriages by members of Byzantine dynastic families is, however, by itself an index of the Empire's declining status and power from the twelfth century onward. Moreover, though a few of these marriages involved unions with non-Christians, most of them were with Latin Christians, and took place within the contextual consciousness of schismatic separation and of mutually exclusive communions that had poisoned the dealings between Byzantines and Westerners in general. Late Byzantine dynastic marital policies thus reflect in microcosm the patterns of diplomatic and cultural tension that characterize the Empire's later centuries.
The pursuit of foreign marriage alliances was raised to new heights of intensity by the Palaiologoi, especially during the reigns of Andronikos II and Manuel II. In the first of those reigns, Imperial marital policies involved a wide spectrum of diplomatic priorities, whereas, in the second of them, the focus fell more than ever upon Italian alliances. The patterns involved demonstrate that, in fact, Byzantine practices were merely typical of the way dynasties of any period might use marriage alliances as a diplomatic and patrimonial tool. Nevertheless, for an epoch portrayed as crystallizing a sense of more distinctly Hellenic ethnic consciousness, such generic dynastic behavior stands out as an anomalous counter current.
Constantine XI Dragas Palaeologus, Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus: The Creation of a National Myth
Marios Philippides (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
The last Greek emperor of Constantinople, Constantine XI (1445-1453), fell before the walls of his capital in a desperate last stand, while he was attempting to rally his panicked troops, in the early hours of May 29,1453. His remains were never identified with any degree of certainty and were not given a burial (in spite of the statements encountered in some derivative or forged texts). The fact is that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Greeks of Ottoman Istanbul knew of no grave site.
Thus the "disappearance" of the last emperor during the last moments of Byzantium's independent existence, his Serbian cognomen, Dragas` (which the Greeks and the Latins of the time wrongly associated with their word Sp&K41v or with draco), the absence of a grave, hopes for freedom, as well as popular interpretations of various (old and current) apocalyptic texts created a powerful, emotionally charged tale, which reassured the Greeks of eventual resurgence during the dark centuries of the T0VPKOKpa rLa. This tale declared that the last emperor did not die but was concealed by an angel in a cave in the vicinity of the walls and of the Golden Gate; there the emperor is awaiting his future "resurrection" which will herald the end of Turkish domination and the reconstitution of the Byzantine empire. It can be compared to the popular tale of King Arthur in the Celtic West and to a host of legendary, popular heroes. Moreover, the Greek tale assumed political dimensions, as it assisted in the formation of the Mey&XTI'I8€a in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The literary expressions of this tale will be examined, together with the pertinent apocalyptic texts, western lamentationes, and Greek 9p~vm alluding to this popular tale. An overview of the history of the "Byzantine Empire" in the future, under a resurrected Constantine, will be presented and will be illustrated by miniatures from fifteenth- and sixteenth-manuscripts. A surprising conclusion will be reached, as it will be shown that this influential tale (in fact, the only Greek myth to be created after the fall of the Byzantine empire) had been formed very early. Scholars have generally assumed that it was created at the end of the sixteenth century. It will be demonstrated here that its origins go back to the period immediately after the fall of Constantinople and that at least one contemporary narrative of the siege and sack, the Slavonic 110BeCTb o Uaperpane by the eyewitness Nestor-Iskander, knew of this tale. Thus a Slavic dimension to this Greek tale will be discussed and it will be demonstrated that the nucleus of this tale goes back to the immediate years following the sack and not to the end of the sixteenth century, as some scholars have claimed in the past.
Franciscan Devotion and the Union of the Churches (1439): The Artistic Record
Maria Georgopoulou (Yale University)
The Synod of Florence in 1439 was one of the last attempts of the Paleologans to gain the support of the West in the effort to repel the Ottoman threat. It is well known that the majority of the Orthodox population rejected the proclamation of the Union of the Eastern and Western churches. Little-if any-artistic evidence attests to the impact that this act had on the population of the Byzantine Empire.
One region that has yielded such evidence is Crete, which became a Venetian colony following the Fourth Crusade (1211). The presence of the Venetian settlers on Crete for centuries created a favorable climate for the symbiosis of the Eastern and Western rites. For instance, although the two rites remained distinct, priests of both churches marched in the religious processions in the cities, and oftentimes Venetian noblemen married Greek women or vice versa. The rapprochement of the Orthodox and Catholic rites is evident mostly in the devotion that the Cretans showed to the Franciscan friars: Greeks attended services in the church of the Franciscans in Candia, and they named their children after the founder of the order, St. Francis. On the artistic level, this reverence can be detected in the appearance of Western saints in Orthodox iconographic programs: for example, the wall paintings of the Orthodox church of Panagia Kera at Kritsa, or the icons produced for the Venetian or Greek elite of Crete. Despite the long coexistence of Venetians and Greeks, however, these acts remained isolated incidents. Following the example of the population of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox population of Crete categorically dismissed the doctrinal "solutions" proposed in the Synod of Florence. The major effort to foster the decisions of the Synod, namely the College for the instruction of Unionist priests that the cardinal Bessarion established in the capital of Venetian Crete, Candia, failed, attesting to the hostility that the Orthodox population felt against the Union of the churches.
Given the particular historical situation on Venetian Crete, this paper has two objectives: 1) to uncover the specific reasons that led the Orthodox population of Crete to accept the spiritual claims of the Franciscan order while maintaining an antagonistic position vis-a-vis the church of Rome, and 2) to investigate the degree to which similar phenomena happened in other cities with a large foreign population, i.e. Constantinople. The following questions will be addressed: What was the significance that the Western monastic orders had in Constantinople? Did the Orthodox population ever attend services or special masses in the Latin churches of the city? Can the artistic record inform us on the religious attitudes of the population towards the church of Rome?
An Icon of St. John the Theologian
Sheila Campbell (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto)
The University of Toronto Malcove collection has recently acquired an icon of St. John the Theologian, of undisclosed provenance, from a private benefactor. The work is in excellent condition and is of high quality. After it was cleaned, the level of this quality was even more noticeable and indeed it became obvious that this painting can be closely linked to works by the Cretan painter Angelus Akontantos (fl. 1430-50). The Toronto work appears to be slightly later but stylistically very similar (and iconographically identical) and I suggest that it was painted by Ritzos, the pupil of Angelos. The addition of a painter's name to a work is in itself important, but even more so is to be able to add one more piece of evidence which reflects the prevailing artistic trends contemporary with, or slightly later than, the fall of Constantinople, thus acquiring a clearer picture of the connections between Paleologue and Cretan painting.
The Korinthia under the Palaiologoi: Archaeological and Historical Considerations
Timothy E. Gregory (The Ohio State University)
In the last three centuries of the Byzantine Empire the written sources become abundant enough to allow the reconstruction of relatively detailed histories of various regions. Greek and Latin narrative sources provide a broad political outline, while increasingly abundant documentary sources allow observations on economy and society at a local level. In addition, in recent years archaeological investigations have added enormous quantifies of information that can be used in the historical analysis of a given region, and this latter holds out the potential of vastly increasing our knowledge of local Byzantine society. Nonetheless, this archaeological material is not always fully utilized, in part because of its inaccessibility and in part because the historian is not always completely familiar with the problems and the potentials of archaeological data. This situation can be seen particularly clearly in the Korinthia, where American excavators have been involved in archaeological exploration, at a variety of sites, for nearly a century and where recent excavations have vastly expanded our knowledge of the Palaiologan period.
This paper investigates methodological and substantive considerations as a first step in the analysis of local society in the Korinthia in the Palaiologan period. The term "Palaiologan," of course, is somewhat of a misnomer, since from ca. 1200 onward the region was not directly ruled by the Byzantine imperial house, but primarily by a succession of Latin lords. The military importance of the Korinthia as the primary bridgehead into the Morea from mainland Greece, however, forced imperial interest in the region, culminating in Manuel II's rebuilding of the Hexamilion in 1415. The paper will provide a brief overview of the history of the Korinthia in the Palaiologan period and trace the interaction between the Latins and the Byzantines for control of the territory. It will focus, however, more specifically on the importance of recent archaeological evidence, from Corinth itself, but also from sites such as Isthmia and Kenchreai, for an understanding of society on the local level. It raises questions about the nature of that society-whether it was "Latin" or Byzantine and how it fit into the broader Mediterranean world of the later Middle Ages.
XV. CLICHE AND GENRE: THE PLACE OF RHETORIC IN BYZANTINE LITERATURE
Chair: Alan Cameron (Columbia University)
The Use of Quotations in Byzantine Literature: The Influence of Rhetoric
Helen Saradi (University of Guelph, Canada)
In this paper the use of quotations of classical authors by the Byzantines will be examined as well as its origin.
Ancient Greek teachers of rhetoric defined the maxim (γνώμη) as part of the rhetorical syllogism. In classical rhetoric maxims were used for their demonstrative power as arguments and not in authoritative statements. Later Roman orators also used the maxims (sententiae) as persuasive arguments, but they compared them to decrees. Thus their persuasive power was deriving from the authority with which the author's reputation invested them. In Roman rhetoric sometimes they were also used as figures of style, since they added elegance to the text.
Historians of ancient rhetoric and literary criticism, impressed by the exuberant, heavily ornamental and pompous style of Asianic rhetoric, tend to search for such a use of most of the elements of rhetoric, including the references to ancient authors. The persuasive function of these references has been neglected.
In the treatises of Greek teachers of rhetoric in the Roman Empire, references to ancient authors (sententiae) are further developed in the form of yrogymnasmata (exercises) with the title ρέια. Among the various techniques with which one can use the χρέια is the μαρπιρία τών παλαιΔν. Later Byzantine theorists of rhetoric and scholiasts of ancient rhetorical manuals developed further the χρέια by combining definitions and rules set up by the Greek orators of the Roman Empire. It is important to note that the Byzantines emphasized the persuasive function of ancient sententiae because of the authority of the person who pronounced them. According to Doxopatres, for example,χρέια is needed more than γνώμη if it is more persuasive on account of the Ενδοξον of the person with whom it is associated. Thus the audience would not be persuaded by the a certain sententia unless the person who said it is added (so it will be: "Basil the Great said...").
The use of quotations in Byzantine literature must be studied also in connection with the mimesis of classical authors by the Byzantines. The Byzantines were drawing on the works of the ancients as their heirs, either by reproducing their style, or by quoting them or alluding to them. By studying the use of quotations in all genres of Byzantine literature it becomes clear that they never lost their persuasive power. They were used according to the rules of ancient rhetoric as arguments. But the Byzantines were closer to the theory of Roman rhetoric than to the classical Greek, for the persuasive power of the quotations relied on the authority and reputation of the ancient authors. According to the same Roman tradition they were also used as figures of speech, as a display of erudition.
A Homeric Exercise from the Byzantine Schoolroom
Raffaella Cribiore (New York)
The British Museum owns the upper portion of a wooden board (BM 1906.10-ZO.Z) which contains Homeric verses written in Egypt by a student in the Byzantine period. The board was cursorily described by F. G. Kenyon in L 29 (1909) 39. It has an iron handle at the top. Kenyon claimed that the handle was used to hang the board on the wall, but since the board's size is not too large to prevent assuming that it could be carried around, it is possible that the handle was used for this purpose. A few Attic cups of the fifth century B.C. (see A. E. R. Beck, Album of Greek Education [Sydney, 1975], plate 11, fig. 58, 60, 61) portray students carrying around tablets by a handle which does not seem to be hinged directly on the tablets, but was part of a case which contained them. Our student, however, may have owned only a single tablet instead of an expensive whole set and may have conveniently carried it back and forth to school by the handle. Individual wooden tablets, not filled with wax, seem to have been especially used in Egypt in the Byzantine period.
The tablet should be dated to the fifth century. It was inscribed by a student whose hand still shows uncertainties and hesitations and is comparable to the hand of the "Cairo Menander" (See Cavallo and Maehler, Greek Bookhands of the Early Byzantine Period, plate 16b). Although the student's hand is mostly upright and writes more slowly, the shapes of the individual letters are very similar and early Byzantine.
What is left of the exercise consists of Iliad l, lines 468-473. It is not too surprising that the passage starts in the middle of a sentence, since this is a practice often observed in schools. Line 468, on the other hand, was certainly the first of the exercise. A Chrism is traced in the left margin. Among the exercises such a sign appears only in the Byzantine ones which usually have an elementary character. Our exercise should be at an intermediate level, belonging probably to the first years of a student under a yPUWWaTLic6S.
The Homeric passage is mostly correct and follows the Vulgate. The text shows a few lectional signs: one rough breathing (with a round form, not the usual angular shape), and two circumflex accents (which are usually the only ones marked in exercises). Two apostrophes are also marked and show that elision was always signalled in the passage. In addition, the words are separated by oblique strokes, a notable characteristic particularly of teachers' models. In the exercise three vowels, moreover, are marked with a sign of long quantity which is extremely rare in school exercises. In the Byzantine period the accent changed from a melodic to a stress-accent, and it seems that the student marked exactly the syllables whose quantity he could not hear anymore.
Libanius: Hellenism, Republicanism, Platonism, "Byzantinism"
Stephen A. Stertz (Dowling College)
Libanius is generally held to have been a fierce defender of local rights against the central power and an admirer of the emperor Julian, whom he considered divine after that emperor's death. His defense of local rights is considered to have been connected with similar appeals and rhetoric on the part of Julian, and to have looked forward to the vigorous condition of eastern municipalities in later Byzantine times. Both Libanius and Julian have been characterized by modern scholars as pagans, but "Byzantine pagans," and Libanius has been contrasted with Themistius, court rhetor at Constantinople and defender of the central power and the exaltation of Christian emperors, notwithstanding Themistius' own paganism. Libanius would have presumably agreed with Julian's position stated in his Letter to Themistius, opposing imperial exaltation and favoring republican symbolism.
These positions are not without validity, but are far from being exhaustive explanations of Libanius' attitudes toward political theory, as this paper will try to assert. Libanius, as a sophist and Hellenist, was heavily influenced by Demosthenes, whose life he wrote, and Plato. Demosthenes' defense of local rights against tyranny influenced a long series of earlier sophists, notably Aelius Aristides, and the same may be said of Plato's opposition to tyrants. In this paper aspects of Platonic and Demosthenic influence will be examined in the light of both rhetorical tradition and fourth-century conditions, with a view to assessing the influence of a popularized Neoplatonistic attitude toward authority found also in many contemporary rhetorical works, including the writings of the emperor Julian and even such Christians as Synesius of Cyrene, toward a nostalgia for both the ancient polls and republicanism in general, and opposition to Christian rulers who are seen in the image of the tyrant who threatens local rights, including those connected with local Hellenic religious rites, an image of course obscured by indirection during the reigns of Christian emperors. Julian, after his death, is seen as the fallen and divine philosopher-king. The rhetor is seen in this connection as the defender of local rights. Contrary to what some modern scholars have implied, the "Byzantinism" of Libanius and Julian is to a great extent fortuitous, since the defense of local rights was hardly emphasized, except as implied by "Hellenism" in general, in the rhetoric of Constantinople as exemplified by Themistius, Eusebius, and their successors. Its existence in practice and exemplification on occasion in the rhetoric of bishops should not be confused with the theory emanating from the capital and found in imperial panegyric. The majority of early Byzantine emperors were soldiers rather than sophists, at best patrons of Hellenic culture. Thus neither Libanius nor Julian can be characterized as "Byzantine pagans," if the phrase is indeed not an oxymoron. Their politics, although distorted, especially in Julian's case, by practical considerations, was largely one of nostalgia.
Egyptian Hellenism and Roman Power in the Dionysiaka of Nonnos of Panopolis
David Frendo (University College, Cork)
The present paper sets out to examine the relationship between certain aspects of the fictional and fantastic world created by Nonnos of Panopolis in his massive and rambling Epic Poem of the Exploits of the god Dionysus and the contemporary reality of an existence experienced and enacted in mid-fifth-century Upper Egypt, a region exposed to barbarian incursion and protected by Roman power. Though the poet draws upon a vast accumulation of inherited literary material, some of it suggested and inspired by the historical reality of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East and propagation of Hellenism, and is probably not uninfluenced by later Greek syncretism of the Osiris myth with that of Dionysus, nowhere are such historical events or mythological connections explicitly referred to. On the other hand the deliberate geographical dislocation of the Blemmyes so as to place them in India and to make them offer submission to Dionysus during his campaign there against a fictitious king of that country has all the appearance of being a pointed and contrived displacement of a contemporary event of considerable local significance for Nonnos and his world-the Roman defeat in 451 of those same marauders whose incursions had so often menaced the peace and security of Upper Egypt. It is argued, moreover, that it is by means of such rare allusions to contemporary events, as also in the fulsome praise of the city of Beirut as a predestined center for the diffusion of Roman law and in the poet's tributes to and expressions of faith in Rome's imperial mission (which he sees as the culmination of a civilizing process beginning with the god whose exploits he celebrates), that he attempts to forge a link in his ideal fantasy world between the backward-looking nostalgic brand of Hellenism he espouses, with its body of outmoded and forbidden religious practices and beliefs and the actual power of a Roman Empire now presided over by a succession of Christian rulers.
The So-Called Holy Fool in Early Byzantium
Derek Krueger (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
This paper considers hagiographical writings which include accounts of a saint pretending to be insane composed between the early fifth and the mid-seventh centuries. Those stories of Christian holy men and women who pretended to be crazy which survive from the period before Leontius of Neapolis composed the Life of Symeon the Fool are often taken to represent a tradition of holy folly extant before Leontius composed the Life of S meon in the 640s and from which he is supposed to have drawn inspiration. Each of these tales is only a brief vignette, and none makes more than a cursory attempt to outline the themes these stories share with the Life of S, eon. A survey of Palladius' Lausiac History 34 (the story of the nun who feigned madness), an episode from one manuscript of John Rufus' Plerophoriae (about a monk in the monastery of Silvanus), brief notices in Evagrius Scholasticus' Ecclesiastical History (one of them about Symeon of Emesa), and the "Life of
Mark the Fool" in the Life of Daniel of Skete reveals a range of literary themes and widely disparate theological objectives. This discovery raises questions about notions of a "holy-fool" genre prior to Leontius and, more generally, about a folklore approach to Early Byzantine hagiography. The paper questions the notion that salos functions as a technical term to describe a certain type of saint in any of the late-ancient literary sources. In closing, the paper reflects on the Early Byzantine interest in tales of concealed sanctity.
Metaphraseis before Metaphrastes: The Rewriting of Saints' Lives before the 10th Century in Historical Context
Claudia Rapp (Cornell University)
Revised and updated versions of Greek saints' lives have in recent years been the object of considerable attention by scholars interested in the literary production and literary tastes of the Byzantine elite. These studies focus on the monumental collection by Symeon Metaphrastes and the hagiographical works of later authors. Yet, the rewriting of saints' lives did not begin with the 10th century. In this paper, I will present metaphraseis from earlier centuries and raise some questions as to the purpose of these texts and the assumptions underlying their composition.
I shall first discuss the activity of rewriting individual saints' lives from its beginnings in the 6th century to its peak on a gigantic scale in the collection of Symeon Metaphrastes in the 10th century. Stylistic improvement was not the only reason for the composition of such metaphraseis. I shall point out that stylistic downgrading, the improvement of content by adding new materials or by rectifying the story, literary patronage and new developments in the cult of a saint and his relics all necessitated on one occasion or other the composition of a new Vita.
The second part of my paper takes off from the observation that from the late 8th century there appears to be an increase in the number of saints' lives thus produced. This is also the period when new Vitae were composed with a definite political slant and old Vitae were collected and processed for liturgical and ideological purposes. In view of this evidence, I shall raise the question of how the original Vitae were approached. Was there perhaps a feeling of distance between the present and the saints of old? And if so, how was this situation dealt with? An answer can only be found in connection with developments in Byzantine society, especially the cult of saints.
Psellus Tragicus: Observations on Chronographia 5.26ff.
Andrew R. Dyck (UCLA)
Michael Psellus' description of the riot in Constantinople in April, 1042, which toppled the Emperor Michael V from his throne, though much admired, has not yet been subjected to detailed analysis. It is remarkable for its vivid and accurate depiction of the psychology of a destructive mob and for Psellus' attempt to portray the events as a tragedy.
In our passage Psellus for the first time steps forward as an actor in the events of the Chronographia. He tells us that he was at the time a secretary (όπογραμματεύ;) at the imperial court, who, when told of the formation of the mob, departed on horseback in order to witness the sequel with his own eyes (5.27). The guards' commander charged with arresting the emperor is a friend of Psellus and brings him along to the Studite Monastery, to which Michael and his uncle, the nobilissimus Constantine, have fled for refuge. Psellus admits that until his arrival there he shared the mob's feeling, both on account of the tonsuring of Zoe and because of some minor grievance (unspecified) of his own. But once he sees the two refugees at the church altar, his attitude changes from resentment to pity, he bursts into tears and utters groans (5.40). Psellus has, at this point, made the transition from participant on the side of the mob to spectator. He contemplates the fate of the two men who have fallen so far so quickly and reflects on the vicissitudes of human fortune in general, as would a member of the audience at a performance of tragedy.
In the next segment, however, Psellus becomes an actor in the drama once again; for Constantine and his uncle notice Psellus' tears and groans and approach this one sympathetic onlooker. When Psellus speaks, however, he assumes a tone of mild reproof for the treatment of the empress, as if he were a kind of coryphaeus speaking for the assembled public, and receives a reply from each of them, the nobilissimus denying that he was privy to the plot against the empress, the emperor acknowledging the justice of his punishment (5.42-43).
But surely these events did not actually occur in the way Psellus narrates them; the whole situation presupposes that Constantine and Michael are clinging to an altar (Psellus makes Michael implausibly interrupt his grip on the altar for purposes of the conversation; cf. 5.43). In this imaginative recreation of the event Psellus, who read tragedies at school and shows interest in them in his later writings, wanted to make the scene into a tragedy with himself as both spectator and participant. He tips his hand in the appended comment: "I thought that the disturbance would proceed only thus far; and I was marvelling at the stage (τήν γε σκην(Jν) and was astonished at the choral dance of the sufferings (τήν τών παθημ(Xτων χορείαν); but this was, as it turned out, a brief prelude to worse tragedies" (5.43).
Apart from the cento Christus Patiens, Byzantine authors did not essay tragedy; but Psellus was fascinated by the genre and in our passage of the Chronographia performed an experiment in genre-boundaries in attempting to import a mini-tragedy into his narrative.
XVI. CONSTRUCTING GENDER IN BYZANTIUM (PART 2): NOTICES AND DISCUSSION
Chair: Annemarie Weyl Carr (Southern Methodist University)
Textile Production and the Construction of Gender in the Early Byzantine Period
Nicholas P. Constas (Washington, D.C.)
Proclus of Constantinople (sed. 434-446), a Late Antique pulpit orator with a penchant for extravagant mariological images, was deeply involved in the controversy over the Mother of God that preceded the Council of Ephesus in 431. One of Proclus' most distinctive images of the Virgin is that of the textile-loom. In this image, the Virgin's womb is depicted as a workshop containing the loom on which the flesh of God is knit, woven together, and, upon its completion, wrapped around the bodiless divinity giving it form and texture. This unusual imagery is closely related to (1) contemporary biblical exegesis of cloth and clothing; (2) the appearance, in the fifth century, of iconographic images of the Virgin either weaving or holding a spindle; (3) contemporary changes, not only in the manufacture of clothing and other textiles, but in the way they were understood and experienced by their users and wearers (e.g., the apparent shift from aniconic patterning to figural decoration, as well as the increasing mystique surrounding the lavish robes of state); (4) the legacy of classical antiquity (e.g., the histological treatises of the Hippocratics); and (5) the empress Pulcheria's defense of the propriety of calling the Virgin Mary the Theotokos. Pulcheria, the virgin empress who spent much of her time weaving, consciously modeled herself on the image of Mary and sided with Proclus in his campaign to unseat Ne§torius, the latter being offended by Pulcheria's position at court and by Mary's exalted position in the church of Constantinople. After establishing the fact that women's workrooms, especially those where yams were spun and woven, were the favored sites for the fabrication of proverbial stories and aphorisms, these remarks conclude with the tentative suggestion that Pulcheria and her circle of high-born female weavers might themselves have been the authors of Proclus' detailed images of the virgin as a textile-loom.
A Note on Dowries
Charles M. Brand (Bryn Mawr College)
In two instances known to me, men in the eleventh century report that they were deprived of any share in their parental property, in order that their sisters might have dowries. Gregory Pakourianos and Michael Attaleiates, in writing the typika for their monasteries, strongly insisted that all the properties used in the endowments had been gained by their own unaided efforts. Pakourianos appears resentful of his deprivation, while Attaleiates indicates that he had agreed to be disinherited in favor of his sisters. Since their monasteries were founded in the 1075-85 period, both instances probably occurred in the 1020-1040 period.
For the Byzantine woman, marriage was almost the only possible career choice, and the greater the dowry, the better the chance of a distinguished marriage. That families should choose to direct all of their wealth to the success of their daughters, while leaving sons to seek their fortune in the wider world, says something about relative values in Byzantine society. Two cases, of course, do not indicate a universal practice, but where we have so little information, they are worth considering.
Byzantine Female Sanctity and Gender Construction: The Case of Thekla
Carolyn L. Connor (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Gender studies have in recent years proved helpful in understanding past and present societies, with gender implying a set of constructs associated with men or women in any given cultural setting. In Byzantine studies, while there has been increasing activity in women's studies in particular, the avenues of approach to Byzantine women often remain limited due to a paucity of records or other testimonies.
Numerous writings survive, however, which are aimed at a general public and which describe the lives of a particular category of women-saints. Although semi-legendary, and often depicting women long-dead, these accounts present a coherent view of women who remain socially and religiously significant and a palpable presence through their cults. Images in art, icons, manuscripts, and church decoration, are also preserved, conveying the special importance of certain female saints. This presentation investigates the possibility that in constructing by gender these unusual females, we will be able to detect and define social issues (class, wealth, power, family, custom, religious beliefs) helpful in reconstructing an ideological norm for more usual, everyday women, from Late Antiquity to the Middle Byzantine period. The same women who in large numbers promoted cults of female saints, also venerated their relics and their icons on the walls of churches; these women, perceived through binary polarities, or through paradigms or exemplars, may be reflected in contemporary constructions of saints. Useful methodological models are provided, for example, by such diverse investigators as Foucault, Peter Brown, Denise Riley, and Brigitte Cazelle.
Using Saint Thekla as a test case we will explore the possibility of her construction, since the evidence is plentiful, and she was widely venerated for a long period of time. Initially we might ask: What forms of evidence do we have for her (literary/popular, artistic)? Does historicity influence her gendering? What criteria are most useful for her definition by gender? Do the criteria change, and therefore her definition, as she is represented differently in different periods (2nd century, 5th-6th, 10th-11th)?
Byzantine Women in Norman Histories
Emily Albu Hanawalt (Boston University)
As outsiders who valued strong women, Norman historians have left us views of Byzantine women that we do not get from more traditional Byzantine sources. When they came into contact with Byzantines in southern Italy and Sicily, along Crusaders' routes and in the Levant, Normans observed not only the imperial family but also ordinary women far from Constantinople. This brief communication features women in war, especially those in besieged towns and in territories that Norman armies traversed or captured.
Women at Work in the Palaeologan Period
Linda Safran (The Catholic University of America)
The aim of this brief presentation is to offer some questions and hypotheses about women's work in the Palaeologan period. An underutilized source, the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit, offers one way to address this issue. The PLP culls its information from a great variety of primary source materials, virtually all of which, we can assume, were written by men with particular concerns and biases. It is therefore interesting to note which professions in the PLP indexes are female, without male equivalents, and how many women are engaged in those professions. What is the ratio of strictly male to strictly female occupations? How many women relative to men are associated with jobs performed by both sexes? Which female occupations receive the most attention-in other words, the greatest number of index entries? It hardly seems accidental that "prostitute" is one of the best represented female occupations, exceeded only by "landowner," "peasant," and "nun." How can we interpret such statistics, and what can this source (and others) tell us about gender and work in the Palaeologan period?
That Was No Lady: Women in Action in Illustrated Chronicles
Christine Havice (University of Kentucky)
A series of miniatures in the Skylitzes Chronicle illustrates moments in the Restoration of Orthodoxy (842-843) through images of the enthroned Empress-regent Theodora. When supplied, the inscriptions usually misidentify her as the deceased Emperor Theophilos, despite some differentiation of figure type. This problem in the Madrid Skylitzes suggests either confusion or reluctance about representing women in certain sorts of action.
It also raises the general question of the relationship of image, inscription, and text in Byzantine manuscript illumination. More narrowly but germane to this session, one must ask what sorts of activities by women do Byzantine chronicles typically illustrate? A quick census of these in illustrated chronicles allows us to refocus this particular question with some conclusions relevant to images of active (historical) women in other media.
The Iconographic Power of an Image: The Case of Queen Simonis
Ljubica D. Popovich (Vanderbilt University)
A sufficient amount of literary and visual evidence exists to draw a generalized portrait of Simonis (1294-after 1336), daughter of the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II (1282-1328), and the fourth wife of the Serbian king Milutin (1282-1321). Three damaged fresco representations of Simonis paired with Milutin have survived. The images of the queen were painted on the south wall of Kraljeva Crkva (1314), on the north wall of the narthex in Staro Nagoricino (1316-1318), and in the soffit of the arch leading into the nave of Gracanica (1320-1321). In these ktitor representations, the depictions of Simonis are remarkably similar. Small differences exist only in the details of the insignia, the garment decoration, and in the titulary inscriptions.
The impact that Milutin's rapprochement to the Byzantine court in Constantinople had on the development of Serbian art and culture during the fourteenth century is a topic well explored by scholars. In this study I will concentrate on a possibly overlooked aspect of Simonis' representations-their iconographic impact on subsequent depictions of various female figures in Serbian painting. To accomplish this task, only certain isolated elements from Simonis' iconography will be used in comparison with a selected group of images of women. The details chosen for this analysis are: the crown, the facial type, and the position of the arms in relation to the body.
The first to be examined and compared is the crown type worn by Simonis. The antecedent of this crown might be found in the less elaborate type worn by the last Macedonian dynasty empresses, Zoe and Theodora. The first crown of this type that survived in Serbian frescoes is worn by the queen Katalina in Arilje (1296), and its representations can be followed through the 14th century examples. The second element to be discussed is the shape of Simonis' face. A perfect, flatly rendered and almost rounded, oval pale face remains, but, due to heavy damages, any sense of individuality is lost. This facial type seems to have become an ideal of beauty for the representations of young females depicting secular personae and saints of that period. The third iconographic detail to be studied from the depiction of Simonis is the position of her arms in relation to her body. Her elegant gestures, customary for an empress, are definitely a reflection of the refined Byzantine court ceremonial. Byzantine and Serbian art offer many parallels to the hand gestures of Simonis. A confirmation that this is indeed a ceremonial gesture which exceeds court practices is, in my opinion, found in the representations of similarly positioned hands of Old Testament high priests (Arilje and Zica).
Finally, the image of Simonis may have been used as a prototype for the representation of St. Nedelja (Kyriake) in the church of the Virgin Hodegetria at Pec (before 1337). The ktitor and the author of the iconographic program of this church was the Archbishop Danilo 11, a confidant and biographer of King Milutin, who knew the young queen personally. The representation of St. Nedelja at Pec shares all the iconographic features with Simonis, from the crown to the separated fingers of her right hand. It is possible that Archbishop Danilo II wanted to pay tribute to the dowager queen about whom he wrote by endowing St. Kyriake Simonis' iconographic type.
If in the world of state politics Queen Simonis did not have any actual power, this was not so in the world of images. It seems that, judging from the preserved representations, the porphyrogeneta princess and the Serbian queen exercised her power and influence through the iconography of her representations.
Helena of Anjou's Two Cultures and the Patronage of Churches
Lois Drewer (Princeton University)
We know from documentary sources and from visual evidence such as donor portraits that Byzantine aristocratic and royal women, acting alone or with their husbands and other family members, were active in founding monasteries and building and restoring monastic churches. Helena of Anjou (d. 1314), a French princess who became the wife of the Serbian king Uros l, interpreted this traditional role in an unusual manner which reflects her dual cultural heritage. Helena was responsible for the building of both Orthodox and Latin monasteries in Serbia. In doing so she was clearly carrying out her dynastic and family responsibilities. Her husband, King Uros, founded the monastery of Sopocani, and built the church of the Trinity with its superb fresco decoration as the intended burial church for members of his family. Helena, who, according to her contemporary biographer, supervised the church building in its later phases, is represented along with her husband and sons in the founder's portrait in the narthex.
At the same time, Helena retained close ties with the Western Catholic Church, including maintaining correspondence with Popes Nicholas IV and Boniface VIII. She presented an icon of Peter and Paul to St. Peter's in Rome. Helena built and restored Catholic churches on the Adriatic coast, and supported both the Benedictine and Franciscan orders.
As queen of Serbia, however, Helena was a convert to Orthodox Christianity. For her own burial place she founded the Orthodox Monastery of Gradac in Serbia. Archbishop Danilo I1's biography tells us: "And thus she began a beautiful church to the Mother of God, dedicated to the Feast of the Annunciation, in the place known as Gradac. She strove, having no rest day or night, to bring to successful fulfillment this work that she had begun. She ordered that the finest craftsmen in her country be found and, when this had been done, chose from among them the finest artists, desiring that they make of that church a superlative act of praise." The church itself shows an intriguing blend of Byzantine and Western Gothic elements. The architectural plan emulates in many respects the Serbian dynastic church at Studenica, while for the fresco decoration Helena clearly employed painters from her husband's building program at Sopocani. But some of the "finest craftsmen in her country" which she found were clearly trained in Gothic building practices.
In founding the monastery of Gradac and her other endowments, both Orthodox and Latin, Queen Helena was simultaneously carrying out one of her royal duties, commemorating the piety of earlier members of the dynasty into which she had married, and providing for her own burial and prayers for her soul. Late in her life she entered the convent of St. Nicholas in Skadar, and she is represented as a nun and a saint with a halo along with other revered members of the Serbian royal family in commemorative portraits in the frescoes of churches at Arilje and at Gracanica.
XVIL ARTIST, ARTISAN AND ARTIFACT
Chair: Gary Vikan (Walters Art Gallery)
A Byzantine Scriptorium of the Second Half of the Eleventh Century
Nadezhda F. Kavrus (Russian University of Peoples Friendship, Moscow, and Columbia University)
In the second half of the eleventh century a large group (about fifty) of Greek manuscripts closely connected in script and illumination was produced. The core of this group is a set of three richly illuminated lectionaries: Moscow, Russian Historical Museum, Syn. gr. 511; Athos, Dionysiou 587m; and Athos, Chilandari 105. These lectionaries were written, in my opinion, by the same scribe. The scribe is a remarkable calligrapher whose hand is one of the best examples of the "liturgical minuscule"-a script derived from the "Perlschrift" in the second half of the eleventh century. Unfortunately, these manuscripts have no colophons, so we do not know the scribe's name or the date or place of origin of the codices. All three manuscripts, however, are luxurious and illuminated and were obviously written for a special purpose. The entire texts of the Syn. gr. 511 and the Chilandari 105 are written in gold ink on carmine. Later notations in the Syn. gr. 511 provide evidence that this codex was once the property of the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople. The codex was brought to Moscow in 1588 by the Constantinopolitan patriarch Ieremia II as a gift to the first Russian patriarch love. A Constantinopolitan origin, then, is likely for this manuscript and probably for the group.
There are other illuminated Greek manuscripts written in a similar script: Athens, National Library, codices gr. 57 and 190; Dumbarton Oaks Collection, MS. 1; Iveron, unnumbered manuscript; London, Brit. Mus. Add. 39603; Moscow, Russian Historical Museum, codices 13,146, and 12; Pierpont Morgan Library, codices M 639, M 692, and M 647; St. Petersburg, Russian National Library, cod. 214; codex Vat. gr. 333, and others. In my opinion, manuscript M 692 and Iveron unnumbered codex were written by the same scribe.
Most of the above listed manuscripts are executed and illuminated in the same style. Some of them are written entirely or partly in a cruciform shape. Some manuscripts have similar codicological features: size, ruling systems and patterns, quire numbering.
Only one manuscript of this group can be dated rather precisely-St. Petersburg codex 214. This manuscript has an historical initial on the folium 1 recto with a portrait of an imperial family-an emperor, probably Michael Ducas, empress Maria, and their son Constantine. The manuscript obviously was written for the imperial family and can be dated about 1080.
My conclusion is that all of the manuscripts under investigation were produced in the imperial scriptorium of the Ducas and the Comneni emperors in the second half of the eleventh century.
Portraits of the Byzantine Artist: Do They Exist?
Nancy Patterson Sevčenko (Cambridge, Mass.)
A miniature in a Psalter on Mount Athos (Dionysiou 65, fol. 12v) shows a standing Virgin holding her child on one arm and gesturing with the other to a monk who kneels at her feet. The inscription below the miniature is a fairly ordinary first-person appeal from the monk to the Virgin for the remission of his sins. What is unusual is that the unnamed monk indicates that he himself has depicted (&VLvT6p9aa) the Virgin.
If this is really a portrait of a Byzantine artist-the language is not absolutely clear and could be read to mean the monk merely commissioned the image-then it is one of the very few known portraits of its kind (cf. I. Spatharakis, The Portrait in Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts [Leiden 1976], pp. 76-78). It can be compared to a miniature in the Melbourne Gospels (National Gallery 70/5), where a standing monk is shown offering the Virgin and child a book, and the accompanying verse inscription states that this monk, Theophanes by name, was responsible for giving, writing, and adorning the codex. But even here it is not entirely clear whether Theophanes is actually the artist, and not merely the patron.
In an effort to shed further light on this question, this paper will examine the traditional verbal and visual language of donation, including epigrams and the prayers artists have written near images they have created (e.g. Chicago 947 and some Sinai icons), and some unusual features found in the contents of the manuscripts in question. It will compare these portraits to the equally rare portraits of scribes, and discuss some unnamed "donors" who could conceivably be artists or scribes in disguise (e.g., Harvard 3). Finally, in asking why these portraits are such a rare phenomenon, it will discuss whether, if artists are represented exclusively in their role as donors, as seems the case, the fault may lie with the traditional artistic formula for donation, inappropriate for the task, not with the innate modesty of the Byzantine craftsman.
Physical Evidence for Patterns of Production among Byzantine Bronze Crosses: Assessment and Methodology
Karl Sandin (Denison University)
Numerous Byzantine bronze crosses have been published recently, permitting a preliminary assessment of their physical form as evidence for their patterns of production. Although the study of this material is in its early stages and a firm chronology is still being developed, broad temporal distinctions may be made. Assuming that the circumstances of their manufacture constitute the place to begin studying a coherent body of objects, this paper presents physical evidence for the economic and artisanal structure of the crosses' production, for identifying specific artistic environments, and for reconstructing some of their aesthetic and religious goals.
The major clusters of Middle Byzantine bronze crosses, for example, were clearly made in series, in environments utilizing specialization of labor-possibly degrees of prefabrication prior to sale-and producing a wide variety of objects. Several clusters assigned to the eleventh century display clear, economical inscriptions and figural images, emphasizing the "unambiguous expression" of identities. In contrast, other clusters-perhaps later-possess contrasting decorative schemes evincing varied ornament and complex design as positive values. Overall, the crosses' producers aggressively exploited the properties of bronze as a material and of numerous metalworking techniques to create objects satisfying a broad set of requirements.
Analyzing these aspects of their making yields important data about the distinctions and connections between bronze and silver artisanship in the Middle period, on the possibility of eleventh-century changes in the form and decoration of the crosses, and on their liturgical and devotional use. Regarding the latter, in particular, the oft-mentioned presence of tangs and bilateral decoration as evidence for the processional use of these crosses may now be re-examined and more precise criteria proposed.
This initial definition of the crosses' production, functions, and artisanal traditions constructs a framework to which other kinds of archeological, linguistic, and iconographic data may be added. Within such a framework individual crosses and clusters may be studied, relationships to Middle Byzantine bronze and silver sculpture may be clarified, and cognate objects such as various kinds of reliquaries and icons may be compared.
The Methods of the Early Byzantine Architect
George Stricevic (University of Cincinnati)
In a brief communication, presented to the Byzantine Congress in Istanbul (1955), I made a few suggestions about the methods which were employed by Early Byzantine architects in developing well-proportioned plans for church buildings. Several special studies dealing with related problems appeared since (Underwood, Afanasyev, Petrovic, Chen et al.), and more data became available, partially through my own fieldwork, proving that a portable ground plan ('skarifos'-Mark the Deacon) which could be used for the construction of more than one building, consisted of a detailed drawing, showing the form of the edifice, drawn to scale, with dimensions, given, naturally, in current measuring units.
The procedure in designing architectural plans can now be reconstructed more fully as well. The architect would start his work by determining-or be given-one of the major dimensions (in a three-aisle basilica it would usually be the length of its naos) in round figures. From that key measurement the other would be derived, neither by arithmetic means nor by the use of modules as it is often assumed, but by the application of one of several simple geometric methods. A group of churches from Prima Iustiniana (Caricin Grad) and its environs shows that here the principal geometric figure was either a rectangle 1:~3 or equilateral triangle (a rectangle over which equals 1:~3 x 2) which can most easily be constructed both on a 'skarifos' and on a 'thesis' (the plan transferred onto the ground). I was able to confirm the results of these deductions in the field by using a tightly stretched rope, as it was done by the builders at the time.
The hypothesis that the system of architectural proportions which starts with equilateral triangle was a hallmark of a sixth-century Byzantine architectural workshop active in the hinterland of Constantinople can now be tested. The same principle of proportions, based on equilateral triangle has been used in designing the plan of San Giovanni a Porta Latina in Rome, built in the first half of the sixth century, which, while morphologically different not only from contemporary basilicas in Rome but also from churches in Ravenna, strikingly resembles the architecture of Constantinople and eastern provinces of the Empire (Krautheimer).
Even greater interest for architectural historians represents the observation that this same system of proportions could be recognized in the so-called Great Basilica at Pliska, the layout of whose plan, architectural forms and the masonry technique indicate that it was built in the sixth century rather than during the period of the First Bulgarian Empire, when, of course, an Early Byzantine basilica might have been restored to serve as the katholikon of the monastery in which Boris-Michael, the first Christian ruler of Bulgaria, spent the last years of his life.
An interesting note can be added: Testamentum Domini (fifth century?) advises that the length of the baptistery and its breadth should be 21 ("for the type of the total number of the prophets") and 12 cubits ("for a type of those who were appointed to preach the Gospel") respectively. Although at first the prescript might look like yet another example of the use of the so-called sacred numbers in architecture, it is, I believe, nothing but a mnemonic device: 12:21 = 1:√3!
The results of this essay help us in appreciating why geometry occupies such a prominent place in the theoretical part of the curriculum of architectural studies from the time of Vitruvius, through Late Antiquity (Heron of Alexandria) until the age of Justinian (Anthemius and Isidorus).
Byzantine Hagiography and the Art of Building
Robert Ousterhout (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
The period after Iconoclasm has left us little information about architectural practices. Ekphraseis describing lost buildings are well known, but these are perhaps most useful in determining Byzantine attitudes toward architecture, rather than how buildings were constructed or even what they looked like. In his Chronographia Psellos employed descriptions of the construction process much as Suetonius had done centuries earlier-that is, as a part of the characterization of the patron. Psellos provides very little specific information about how buildings were built, although his accounts suggest that designs could be altered after construction had begun, and perhaps that the elevation of a building was developed independently from the ground plan.
A virtually untapped resource for determining architectural practices in Byzantium is hagiography, which includes the realia of building as well as of daily life. Byzantine saints built churches and participated in all aspects of design and construction. In addition, they often responded posthumously to building accidents, rescuing those in peril or healing those injured. Construction accidents became something of a topos in hagiographical literature, and although similar incidents are recorded in Western medieval saints' Lives, rarely do they possess the instructive detail found in the Byzantine texts.
In this paper, I propose to examine several Byzantine hagiographical sources in conjunction with visual aids (such as manuscript illuminations that show building in progress) and with the surviving evidence in the buildings themselves. The physical evidence helps to clarify some obscure passages in the texts, and conversely, the texts can help us to recreate the art of building in Byzantium. I shall attempt to follow the stages in the design and construction of a building, drawing upon hagiographical sources for evidence of each step of the process. Among those texts to be discussed are the Lives of Lazaros of Mt. Galesios, Athanasins of Athos, Nikon of Sparta, Euthemios the Younger, Ioannikios, and Photeine.
XVIII. BYZANTINE MUSIC
Chair: Milos Velimirovic (University of Virginia)
The Liturgical Place and Origins of the Byzantine Liturgical Drama of the Three Children
Alexander Lingas (University of British Columbia)
The 'Ακολονθία τΑς καμ6νοο ("Service of the Furnace") is the only known liturgical drama from Byzantium. A setting of the biblical story of the three youths in the fiery furnace, it was performed between matins and Divine Liturgy on the Sunday before Christmas (the Sunday of the Fathers). This play is known today through the texts and transcriptions published by Milos Velimirovic in his essay "Liturgical Drama in Byzantium and Russia." The core of this late Byzantine sacred drama is a quasi-dramatic antiphonal performance of the two canticles of the three children from the Septuagint Book of Daniel, augmented by an assortment of stichera and heirmoi that comment upon their ordeal. Thus far, however, the liturgical origins of this work have remained somewhat obscure because its canticles, consisting of elaborate solo intonations followed by syllabic verses with refrains, are alien to the order prescribed by the Horologion for the chanting of biblical odes.
The present study demonstrates that the "Service of the Furnace" was not derived from the Sabaitic monastic rite that had produced its heirmoi and stichera, but from the archaic Byzantine Cathedral rite, otherwise known as the "(χσμ«τική trκολουθια" or "sung office."
In an unpublished Dataxis (Athens MS. 2047) for his cathedral of Hagia Sophia, the last church known to have maintained the full cycle of "sung" offices, Archbishop Symeon of Thessalonica (t1429) mandates the performance of the play as an integral part of the asmatic commemoration of the Sunday of the Fathers. Along with the full text of the play, Symeon provides a special order for the preceding service of matins that includes an extraordinary Sunday performance of the drama's two canticles. A subsequent examination of two musical settings of asmatic matins for the Sunday of the Fathers in the antiphonarion Athens 2061 (ca. 1410-25) reveals that the melodies for the canticles from the cathedral offices are reproduced verbatim in the liturgical drama. Finally, this antiphonal structure for chanting the two Odes of the Three Children in both the play and the festal offices is shown to be an elaborate form of the asmatic order for these same canticles at weekly Saturday matins, which is itself an example of the cathedral rite's classic formula for antiphonal psalmody.
Neo-Byzantine Chant: A Stylistic Analysis of the Doxastika in Mode Two of Petros Peloponissius
Jessica Suchy-Pilalis (Butler University)
Petros Peloponissius ranks highly among the names of Byzantine melodists. Probably due to popularity, the Doxastarion of Petros Peloponissius was transcribed and published in Chrysanthine notation as early as 1820. This printing contains a selection of Doxastika (ornate festal hymns that close the Kekragaria section of Vespers or the Pasapnoaria section of Matins) in various modes along with selected related hymns. Unlike his contemporary Iakovos the Protopsalti, Petros Peloponissius tended to place more emphasis on the proclamation of the text. The Doxastika of the former are highly melismatic with frequent repetitions of syllables while the latter's are succinct, yet flowing. As such, his formulaic usage served as a model for those composing Doxastika after his time. This paper will examine selected Doxastika written in Mode Two in order to present an analysis of the stylistic traits of Petros Peloponissius. Also discussed will be how this vocabulary became the standard formulaic usage of the Neo-Byzantine era.
The Traditional Role of Greek Women in Music from Antiquity to the End of the Byzantine Empire
Diane Touliatos (University of Missouri, St. Louis)
As might be expected of medieval times, the composers from both the East and the West were predominantly men. The absence of women's names in the repertoires of medieval music, however, is not a true indication of the participation of women in Byzantium and antiquity in the development of musical traditions.
The early role of woman as performers and musicians can be documented in ancient civilizations. In the classical Greek civilization, women were involved in music and participated as composers, performers, and singers. In fact, it is from this epoch that a number of important women lyric poetesses and musicians emerged, such as Sappho of Lesbos and Telesilla of Argos. With the end of the Greek classical period, the involvement of women in music was declining and women began to be viewed as inferior to men.
In the early centuries of the Byzantine Empire, women continued to perform musical instruments, especially at symposia, but the writings of the early church fathers condemn these women musicians and consider them to be prostitutes. This attitude prevails from the middle years of the Empire until its decline, stifling the participation of decent women in secular music. With no other outlet for musical participation, women composers and performers turned to sacred music and women performers began to flourish in the nunneries of Byzantium, where they chanted liturgical services and participated in liturgical plays. Consequently, it is not surprising that Greek women composers of the middle and late Empire were usually nuns, such as Kassia, Thekla, Martha, Theodosia, Palaiologina, daughter of Ioannes Kladas, and Kouvouklisena.
XIX. PAPERS IN MEMORY OF KURT WEITZMANN (PART 1): MONUMENTAL PAINTING AND MINOR ARTS
Chair: Jeffrey Anderson (The George Washington University)
Portrait of an Empress: A Bone Statuette in the Princeton University Art Museum
Archer St. Clair (Rutgers University)
In his Princeton seminar on ivories, Kurt Weitzmann stressed the importance of bone carving as complementary, and pointed to the need for scholarship based on the systematic and integrated study of both materials.
Recent scholarship, by Anthony Cutler and Jean Claude Beal among others, as well as recent archaeological excavations, notably on the Palatine, have confirmed the intimate relation between bone and ivory carving both in the workshop when both materials were available, and in finished works of art. As Beal has suggested, it was often the craftsman's skill, rather than the raw material that determined the value of the finished object.
A recently acquired bone statuette of a woman in the Princeton Art Museum would appear to confirm this opinion. Acquired in 1989, the standing, strictly frontal figure is approximately 20 cm tall. She wears a tunic beneath a mantle that covers the upper half of her body and her head. A jewelled diadem is set high on her coiffure and her ears are pierced to receive earrings.
The Princeton statuette is related to a small group of approximately six similar statuettes in bone and ivory that appeared in the 1970s and were acquired by various institutions in the United States and Europe. In one case, southeastern Turkey, in another Tarsus, were the reputed findspots, but no concrete evidence of provenance has been produced. Similarly, while their roughly contemporary appearance suggests that they may have been found as a group, there is no concrete evidence to support this supposition. Two of the statuettes have been recently identified by von Heintze as depicting Julian the Apostate. All are characterized by columnar form with gestures close to the body, reflecting the shape of the tusk or long bone from which they are carved. The Princeton example is further distinguished by the subtlety and elegance of the carving which far exceeds the other examples. Partially for this reason dates in the second as well as fourth centuries have been suggested for this figure, while the others are generally accorded dates in the fourth century or later. The function of these figures is also a subject of debate. This paper examines these problems and the relation of the Princeton statuette to this group as well as to other examples of bone and ivory carving in the Roman world.
The Head of Christ in the Munich Ascension Ivory
Alfred Frazer (Columbia University)
Sorely missed in the monumental exhibition of Late Roman and Early Christian art organized and curated by Kurt Weitzmann and displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) in 1977/1978 under the title "The Age of Spirituality" was the Munich Ascension Ivory. This well-known and much admired work, however, did appear in the exhibition catalogue as a text figure in the essay by Herbert L. Kessler titled "Narrative Representations." In it Professor Kessler said, in respect to the Christ figure, "Christ's vigorous stance seems to have been patterned after depictions of Moses receiving the law, such as that on the Moggio pyxis... . The hand clasping [that of the Father and the Son] may have been derived from representations of the emperors apotheosis, in which the dextrarum junctio signifies spiritual union." In this Kessler is probably correct.
Professor Kessler addressed the entire figure and stance of Christ; my brief paper (no more than fifteen minutes) concentrates solely on his head. I find in the head, its physiognomy, its hair style, its upward tilt and gaze as well as the form of its framing nimbus to be remarkably similar to that of the emperor Constantine the Great as represented on a number of gold medallions struck in Eastern mints between 324 and 337 A.D. and that of his familial successors. Normally these seem to have commemorated nodal points in an imperial career, i.e. the transition from one imperial status to another and higher degree.
Whereas, in the history of art, we often find disparate works whose similarity are wholly coincidental, in this instance I think that the resemblance is not accidental. My paper will discuss the ramifications of the resemblance of the heads of Constantine and Christ within the framework of the emerging iconography of the Savior between the 320s and circa 400 A.D., the latter probably being the time of the carving of the Munich ivory.
Early Byzantine Wall Mosaics Revisited from Close Quarters
Irina Andreescu Treadgold (Florida International University)
The interpretation of the few wall mosaics preserved from early Byzantine times, which are among the most lavish decorations of public and ecclesiastical buildings, has been hampered by imprecise and insufficient knowledge about their dates, their intended functions, or even the mosaics themselves. Moreover, most studies have been written from a standpoint that ignores the large framework within which mosaics need to be viewed if they are to be properly understood and assessed. The problem is mostly methodological, since art historians, even those who try to compensate by consulting a restorer on technical matters, generally overlook the information to be found in the artifacts unless they are themselves trained to examine them. Only a comprehensive study using archeological methods can illuminate the production of mosaics in the larger context of the building and decorating practices of their time.
Though the problems and methodology for studying wall mosaics are basically the same throughout their millennial history, certain specific points can be made about the early Byzantine examples. Some of these can be dated reasonably well, like those in Ravenna. Others in Italy and in the eastern Mediterranean, though much harder to date, provide a considerably wider fund of information. My recent close and systematic examination of certain sample areas in some crucial wall mosaic decorations has allowed a more precise and factual picture of mosaic making to emerge.
Among the mosaics to be discussed are, first, a group including those of San Michele in Africisco, San Vitale, Sant'Apollinare in Classe, and Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, where changes have been noticed in patterns of supplies, technology, and the workshops' composition. The discussion will also cover another group represented by mosaics in Salonika and Diirres of roughly similar dates, and finally a rather large group from Cyprus. Taken together, these pre-Iconoclastic mosaics offer a relatively wide technical spectrum. Looking at the overall picture may advance our knowledge about the chronology of some Eastern monuments, chief among them the elusive complex of St. George in Salonika, and about their relationship with the sixth-century Ravenna mosaics. The Cypriot mosaics, which supply the widest and most diverse framework for several unrelated manners of mosaic making in one relatively small space, will be compared with those from Ravenna, Salonika, and Diirres, while evidence from the Mt. Sinai and St. Irene mosaics will also be brought into the panorama.
Based on archeological scrutiny, this paper plans to present some preliminary conclusions about early Byzantine wall mosaic making (including a discussion of what is common and what is unusual), to expose the dangers of armchair theorizing, and to emphasize the need for more fieldwork. Nineteen years after the National Endowment for the Humanities gave Dumbarton Oaks a large grant for a corpus of Middle Byzantine mosaics that would have gone far towards solving these problems, we are still waiting for it to present results to the scholarly public.
Two Byzantine Pendants
William Wixom (Metropoitan Museum of Art, New York)
The last fifty years have witnessed an extraordinary enrichment of the Early Christian and Byzantine collections in both European and American museums. Perhaps the most marked growth has been in the medium of metalwork, especially in the field of church and secular silver plate. Of equal importance, but of greater rarity, has been the acquisition of several Byzantine cloisonne enamels. Two of these, discussed in some detail, were intended to be worn as pendants. In size, both may be characterized as minute.
The first, recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, consists of a hollow, crescent-shaped gold receptacle that has an opening and a loop for suspension at the top. The convex sides of the pendant are covered with exquisitely worked cloisonne enamel in colorful abstract patterns and with a medallion of a beardless male head. An accompanying thin, tapering stick is embellished with a pattern of crosses in cloisonne enamel. Previously identified as an earring, the pendant may now be understood as a temple pendant comparable in function to certain Kievan Rus gold and enameled ornaments. However, the head, the decorative patterns, and the refined technique relate the pendant to a series of Byzantine works that support a Constantinople origin and a Middle Byzantine dating. Its use as an element of Byzantine court costume is postulated.
The second enameled object to be discussed is a tiny enkolpion or breast pendant, designed to protect its owner through its imagery and through the relic that it was intended to contain. Purchased for the Cleveland Museum in 1972, the front of this pendant displays a silver-gilt relief depicting the Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John. Greek inscriptions identify each figure. The thin plaque set into the reverse of the pendant shows the haloed figure of the bearded Saint Theodore and the beardless Saint George of Cappadocia, each also identified by an inscription in Greek. They are shown in military costume. Rendered in cloisonne enamel, each figure is silhouetted against the silver-gilt background.
Pendants of this type, part jewelry, part reliquary, and part amulet, were undoubtedly considered luxury objects because of their materials and exacting techniques. Several comparative examples are cited. Stylistic comparisons support a localization in Constantinople and a dating for this piece within the Middle Byzantine period. Byzantine cloisonne enamels have always been highly prized. They were used as imperial gifts, occasionally sent to foreign rulers. They may have been carried to the West as part of Theophano's dowry and other properties. Some came to the West following the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Even the smallest fragments were treasured abroad for their fine workmanship and jewel-like brilliance; they were, on occasion, preserved through incorporation into later works. Although the two objects presented here are both extremely small, their size may have been a significant factor in their survival.
Loca Sancta et Profana and Crusader Representational Arts
Jaroslav Folda (University of North Carolina)
In an important article entitled "Loca Sancta and the Representational Arts of Palestine," published in the 1974 Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Kurt Weitzmann discussed imagery pertaining to the holy sites. In summarizing his observations on these pictures, he proposed three basic points:
1. Each locus sanctus allows the creation of more than one archetype, and each version may emphasize different aspects of the locality.
2. The influence of loca sancta pictures spread into different arts of the Christian world, thus playing a role in the formation and dissemination of Christian iconography, in which topographical elements are stressed.
3. Loca sancta pictures existed in a wide variety of media. While Weitzmann focused on representational arts in Palestine before 1100, he also included a few later icons dating to the 12th/13th century among others, from the collection at the monastery of St. Catherine's on Mt. Sinai.
These three principles derived from the analysis of loca sancta imagery in Early Christian and Byzantine Palestine by Weitzmann can be usefully employed in the study of the representational arts of Crusader Palestine and Syria as well. In fact, the interest in topographical settings can be found not only in Crusader loca sancta pictures but also in what we might call loca profana, representations of secular sites in Crusader art.
I propose to discuss a series of Crusader works in various media which include or refer to both sacred and secular sites. The sites referred to, directly or indirectly, include Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Antioch, and Resafa, among others. The images contain both traditional iconography and reflections of contemporary circumstances occasioned by Crusader commissions at the sites.
Weitzmann has demonstrated that the holy sites in Palestine, such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Sinai, received loca sancta pictures more or less continuously through the centuries. Working from the foundation which he laid, it is possible to see how the Crusaders encountered, continued and diversified this tradition in Palestine and Syria during the period from 1099 to 1291.
XX. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF BYZANTINE PALESTINE Chair: Lucille Roussin (New York)
Late Byzantine Monasteries and Churches at Tell Nessana, Israel
Dan Urman (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Tell Nessana is located ca. 70 km southwest of Beer-Sheva, close to the international Israel-Egypt border line.
The site was first discovered in 1807 by the German scholar U. J. Seetzen, who mistakenly identified it with the location of Eboda. During the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, the site was visited by different researchers, some of whom, like A. Musil, C. L. Woolley, and T. E. Lawrence, prepared plans of the ruins while emphasizing the church remains observed on the surface at that time.
In the winters of 1935-36 and 1936-37, excavations were held at the site by the expedition of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, under the direction of H. D. Colt. The Colt Expedition excavations focused mainly on exposing two churches at the site's acropolis. One is the church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus (also referred to on the plates and elsewhere in Colt's report [H. D. Colt, Excavations at Nessana, Vol. I, London, 1962] as the North Church), constructed-in Colt's opinion-in the first third of the fifth century C.E. The other church is St. Mary's (also referred to on Colt's plates and elsewhere in his text as the South Church), built in the beginning of the seventh century C.E. In both churches the Colt Expedition discovered papyri archives which have been, until present days, the main source for studying the Negev at the end of the Byzantine period and the beginning of the Arab.
Colt was aware of references to church remains, at the lower town of the site, made by researchers arriving at the site during the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The Colt Expedition, however, could not locate those remains due to intensive construction works in the area executed by the Turks and Germans during the First World War. After analyzing the various researchers' descriptions, Colt concludes: "From all this evidence it can be concluded that the lower town contained two churches, one in the southern and one in the northern end" (Colt, 1962:4-5).
Since Colt's excavations and until June 1987, the site of Tell Nessana was left deserted, serving as a focus for military activity during the series of wars between Egypt and Israel in 1948-49,1956, and 1967. It was only after the signing of the Camp David peace agreement and the beginning of the activity of the Educational Community of modern Nitzana, that an expedition on behalf of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, under the direction of the author, started excavating the site. During the excavations of the Ben-Gurion University expedition, running successively from June 1987, were there exposed-inter alia-remains of a large basilical-plan church at the center of the lower town (Area F). This church was erected probably during the sixth century C.E. and continued existing until the end of the seventh century C.E., when it served for Moslem inhabitants.
The Ben-Gurion University expedition also exposed the remains of a complete monastery, constructed in 585 C.E. on the acropolis' northern slope (Area P).
Some of the prominent finds exposed in Area F's church, and the remains of Area P's monastery, will be reviewed in the lecture.
It is noteworthy that the large church discovered in Area F does not fit the descriptions of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century researchers, so it seems that there is still reason to commence searching for-at the site's lower town-another two churches: one at the northern end of the town and the other at its southern end, as Colt had already concluded. In January 1992, Dennis E. Groh became co-director, and we hope together to uncover the missing churches in future seasons.
The Petra Church Project 1992-1993
Robert Schick (American Center of Oriental Research, Amman)
Between May 1992 and March 1993 excavations were conducted at a Byzantine church in Petra, Jordan. The basilica is about 25 meters long and 16 meters wide. At the east end of the side aisles are semicircular apses, while the nave ends in a bema and a larger semicircular apse. The raised bema projects westward into the nave as far as the second columns from the east. The bema is a second-phase feature, and a later remodelling of the central apse involved the addition of four rows of a synthronon. The ambo was on the northwest corner of the bema. An atrium is to the west of the church, and a room, probably three stories high, was excavated at the southwest corner of the atrium. A series of rooms to the north of the church were left largely unexcavated.
Almost all the excavated soil was sifted, so complete recovery of a wide variety of objects was achieved, including abundant structural elements, such as brackets, door hinges and sockets, and roof nails, all of which provide an unusually clear picture of the constructional details. Marble chancel screen panels, posts, columns, and tables were recovered, as well as a large footed marble basin with two lion-shaped handles. Sherds of 21 large storage vessels were found along the south wall of the church.
Mosaic floors were in the north and south aisles. In the north aisle are rows of circular medallions formed by vine scrolls. The central row depicts amphorae, vases, baskets, and other objects. The rows on either side contain flanking pairs of birds, other animals, and people. The south aisle has a central row of rectangular medallions with images of people, some of which short Greek inscriptions identify as personifications of the four seasons, Ocean, Earth, and Wisdom. Flanking the central row are square and circular medallions depicting fish and other animals. The nave, bema, and central apse were paved with an opus sectile pavement of marble and purple sandstone, which was mostly robbed out. The two east-west rows of arches and the walls of the apse semidomes were decorated with mosaics. Many fragments survived the structural collapse of the church.
No dedicatory inscriptions were found, but the church may have been constructed in the later fifth century, and continued in use throughout the first half of the sixth century. Its abandonment may have been due to an earthquake, perhaps the one in 551 A.D. The church also suffered a major fire. Some evidence points to later occupation, which may have continued into the seventh century, or perhaps early eighth century.
Renewing the Religious Center: The Christianization of King Herod's Temple Platform at Caesarea, Israel
Ken Holum (University of Maryland)
When Herod the Great founded Caesarea Maritima 22-10 B.C., he named the new city for Caesar Augustus and dedicated its principal temple to Roma and Augustus. According to Josephus, this temple stood on a "mound of earth" (geloghos) or "hill" (kolonos) elevated above Caesarea's harbor. Since the last century, archaeologists have identified this "mound" or "hill" with a facade of niches visible inside Caesarea's Old City, and with its continuation to the south, an elevation fronted on the west (overlooking the ancient harbor) by a series of barrel vaults.
Recent excavations, conducted by the author and by Dr. Yosef Porath of the Israel Antiquities Authority, have revolutionized our understanding of King Herod's Temple Platform, especially of its later history. Work on the platform itself has demonstrated that the "mound" or "hill" of Josephus was in fact a bedrock ridge that Herod exploited to elevate his temple and its temenos above the harbor and the surrounding terrain. Exploration has brought to light what appear to be foundations of the Herodian temple, and beneath it, on the same centerline, an octagonal church built about A.D. 525-550. After four seasons of excavation, the ground plan of the church is now clear, and the excavators have unearthed portions of the pavement of gray marble slabs, as well as Corinthian capitals, bases, column shafts, and portions of the building's superstructure. The discovery of this church confirms that at Caesarea, as in Jerusalem and elsewhere, Christianity took over the city in part by appropriating its religious center.
In excavations that continue at present, Porath has added an exciting new dimension. It is now possible to distinguish in the Temple Platform facade between a Herodian/Roman phase, associated with the temple to Roma and Augustus, and a Late Antique ('Byzantine') phase. It appears from preliminary analysis that the facade of barrel vaults belongs to the latter, and indeed that the Temple Platform underwent a radical redesign and massive reconstruction later in its history that, from ceramic evidence, most likely dates to the early fourth century. With appropriate caution, it is reasonable to interpret this redesign in light of the contemporary Christian appropriation of the Zeus temple in Jerusalem and construction there of the martyrium of the Lord's Tomb. Convincing evidence is still lacking for a fourth-century predecessor to the later octagonal church on the Temple Platform. Yet it begins to appear that while Eusebius of Caesarea described one decisive episode of renewing the religious center in his Life of Constantine, he neglected a similar episode that occurred simultaneously in his own city.
A Complex of Byzantine Shops at the Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem
Jodi Magness (Tufts University) and Aren M. Maeir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
From August to October 1989, in association with the beginning of the urban redevelopment of the Mamilla neighborhood of Jerusalem, the first phase of a large-scale rescue excavation was carried out. The project was directed by Mr. Aren M. Maeir, on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. In the excavations, which were located to the west of Jaffa Gate, substantial remains dating to the end of the Byzantine period were found. This paper surveys the architectural remains and ceramic material from one of the excavated areas (A2).
Area A2 was located on the southern side of the excavation. It contained a row of three shops that lined an alleyway leading up to the area of the Jaffa Gate. The shops consisted of two rooms (an inner and outer room arranged perpendicularly to the alleyway), with simple white mosaic floors and various installations. Some of the installations may be connected with the preparation and vending of food. The shops were built on a series of stepped terraces (with one on each terrace) which led up to the area of the Jaffa Gate.
One of the shops and its adjacent road/courtyard (1,153-1,164; 1,171) contained a rich assemblage of ceramic material. The assemblage includes the usual selection of types represented in sixth to seventh century C.E. contexts throughout Jerusalem. These include Phocean Red Slip Ware bowls, and locally-produced large "candlestick" oil lamps and "Fine Byzantine Ware." However, the assemblage also contains a number of types which are rare or unattested elsewhere in Jerusalem or Palestine. These include fragments of Egyptian Red Slip "C" Ware, several Coptic bowls painted with figured designs, two Cypriot cooking pots, and Constantinopolitan lead-glazed ware. Although examples of the last two types are published from coastal sites such as Caesarea, this is the first time they have been found in Jerusalem. There is also a jug made of Constantinopolitan "mica-dusted ware," which apparently represents the first and only example of this type from a site in Palestine. Among the other finds are a small cross of red Jerusalem limestone, and an ampulla decorated in relief with a scene depicting the flight of Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus to Egypt.
The fact that the fragments of pottery are large but could not be restored as whole vessels, and the manner in which they were concentrated in one of the shops while the others contained only small, scattered sherds, suggest that the assemblage from 1,153-1,164 represents a dump. The evidence from the excavations indicates that the shops were abandoned rather than destroyed. The fact that the latest ceramic types from the other shops are identical with those found in the assemblage from 1,153-164 suggests that all the shops went out of use at about the same time. The combined ceramic and numismatic evidence points to a date in the third quarter of the seventh century C.E. for the end of the occupation. Some time after their abandonment, the shops appear to have collapsed.
XXI. EXPRESSIONS OF ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM IN BYZANTIUM
Chair: Louis Feldman (Yeshiva University)
Chrysostom on Jews and Jewish History
Stephen D. Benin (Memphis State University)
Much has been written concerning Chrysostom and the Jews, as well as his attitudes towards the Jews, who were "the most envious, little-minded, and in all respects imperfect" of all peoples. Yet much of what has been written pays little attention to the role of Jewish history in Chrysostom's voluminous writings. John is consistent in his interpretation of the role of the Jews within his providential reading of history. While much consideration has been paid to John's Eight Homilies Against Christians, those homilies alone, given in Antioch against a backdrop of well-known and vigorous continued Jewish existence, do not convey the totality of Chrysostom's reading of Jewish history.
In this presentation I intend to set forth what I perceive to be the main currents in Chrysostom's thought regarding Jewish history, and explore how these and similar themes appear throughout John's exegetical, homiletical, and moral writings. Such an examination may shed greater light upon the role of Jewish history in Chrysostom's work, and lead to an improved and expanded appreciation of Jews and Judaism within John's oeuvre. By locating Jews and their history more securely in his writings, we may better understand his view of the baneful effects of their continued existence.
Jewish Women in Byzantium
Steven Bowman (University of Cincinnati)
One of the more difficult questions that historians have had to face is the reconstruction of an aspect of the past for which there are no direct sources. Sometimes, of course, this makes scholarship a bit easier for some of our colleagues. For the medieval period, we do have the rubric 'historical imagination' to work with our primary sources and to control their analysis accordingly. How much the more difficult is this question when we deal with Jewish women? The historical sources for Byzantine Jewry are, for the most part, known. They tell us very little about Jewish women, however. While we can reconstruct their annual life cycle and daily rhythms based upon traditional Jewish sources, we can also assume that they shared the vicissitudes of their male counterparts; for the latter there is ample evidence in the sources. The literary, mystical, and religious manuscripts extant from Byzantium were written, copied, and studied by males. As yet, these have not been exploited for the historical purposes to be explored in this paper. Still, we can extract from them gender attitudes, family values, and occasional nuggets of historical worth. The sources range from personal and poignant letters that survive in the Cairo Genizah, biblical commentaries, liturgical poetry, and mystical treatises that explore the feminine and its relationship to the divine. While the research from which this paper is derived is in its beginning stages, enough material is available to describe the parameters of a chapter to be called "Jewish Women in Byzantium." The paper will also analyze to what extent the developing methodologies of feminist and gender scholarship can be brought to bear upon the topic.
The Image of the Jew in Byzantine and Medieval Art
Ellen C. Schwartz (Eastern Michigan University)
Although integral to many scenes in the art of the Middle Ages, the depiction of Jews has only recently come under serious investigation. These representations in Old Testament and Christological scenes present opportunities to examine several questions. One can examine how images of Jews were constructed in the east as opposed to those created at the same time in the west. Through investigation of Byzantine images along with contemporary documents, we can see that artists were unfamiliar with Jewish rituals and garments; in addition, it appears that certain practices had fallen into disuse in many parts of the Byzantine empire. Thus depictions were based solely on models, often misunderstood and conflated. This is quite evident in the mixup of tefillin and the re-creation of the priestly mitre of Biblical times. This situation has been contrasted with that in western art, which seems to show acute observation of Jews wearing contemporary garments of distinction mandated by legal documents of the time. Upon investigation, however, it appears that in the west, too, images were equally untruthful, for the ubiquitous "Jew's hat," by which Jews were most often designated in Romanesque and Gothic art was required only in Germany and eastern Europe. The marks of distinction in other countries-the rouelle in France or tabula in England, for instance-were rarely shown in high art contexts. An ignorance of Jews' lives, ritual as well as social, and consequent erroneous depictions due to the copying of models, thus links the images in both Byzantine and European medieval art.
The Role of Hellenic Nationalism in the Cypriot Cult of St. Mamas
Elizabeth Nightlinger (Marymount University)
Unlike numerous early Christian martyrs whose once popular cults have sunk into near oblivion, St. Mamas is still highly revered in Cyprus, and the loss of access to his pilgrimage shrine in Turkish-occupied Morphou is mourned by all. But why was the cult of this saint so popular in the late Middle Ages, and why does it survive today?
Little in his "official" vita or the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil set him apart from a host of other third-century martyrs; even the popular acta written by Simeon Metaphrastes, which echoes the Orpheus myth, does not explain Mamas's popularity. Byzantine frontier troops brought his cult to Cyprus in the seventh century and built a chapel in honor of this "Christian Hercules" at Morphou, where he became the patron of local shepherds. His veneration suddenly escalated in the late fifteenth century when traditional hieratic standing portraits were abandoned in favor of images depicting the saint riding a lion and bearing shepherd's crook, lamb, and cross-the fusion of a sixth-century motif from Constantinople with that of the Good Shepherd. Was the new Cypriot legend which arose at this time an explanation for the new mode of depiction, or was it a cultural symptom with deeper meaning? The answer may lie in this folkloric transmutation of a Cappadocian hermit into a native Cypriot whose saintly powers subdued a savage lion and whose subsequent appearance in the throne room of the foreign ruler riding on this beast won him an exemption from taxes for life. Such images and legends flourished throughout the sixteenth century in Cyprus, when the country suffered a drastic economic decline after centuries of ruinous taxation.
Upon her arrival in Cyprus as the wife of John 11, the Byzantine princess Helena Paleiologina (1442-1458) successfully restored much of the traditional Hellenic way of life to Cyprus, and did much to overcome the Latin oppression of Cypriot Orthodoxy. This short lived Hellenic revival fueled the strong feelings of nationalism in the native population, who soon faced disastrous social and economic policies under the rule of the Venetian Republic (1489-1571). I concur with Gabelic that the popularity of the iconography of St. Mamas and the lion is linked to the prominence of the Venetian Lion of St. Mark in Cyprus at this time; however I also believe that it embodies the hopes of the native population for divine intervention in subduing the forces responsible for their sad plight. This "native" vir sanctus astride the lion is portrayed as humbling the fierce and powerful heraldic emblem of both the French and Venetian oppressors of Cypriot political, economic, and religious freedom. The iconographical type retained its popularity under Turkish rule as well.
This paper examines images and documentary sources, investigating the role of nationalism and the influence of the political and economic climate on the folkloric embellishments to the vitae and iconography of St. Mamas in Cyprus.
Children of Darkness: Color Ideology in the Ashburnham Pentateuch
Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk (Rutgers University)
The depiction of black Egyptians in the late sixth-century Ashburnham Pentateuch has indicated to some scholars a north African provenance for the manuscript. This assumes personal contact with Africa on the part of the artist which is not supported by a critical examination of the black Egyptians, who are represented as pictorial types. The dark-skinned Egyptians are drawn with the same features as the light-skinned Egyptians with the addition of black pigment and curly hair. The manuscript includes well-established Mediterranean pictorial types, such as black camel drivers, which to a European audience lent an air of authenticity to the representation of Egypt and its inhabitants. In contemporary literature, the term "Egyptian" or "Ethiopian" was often synonymous with a black person.
Although the inclusion of black Egyptians has been interpreted as representing a current of optimism toward all races that Christianity appropriated from antiquity, I believe that the portrayal o£ black Egyptians in the manuscript indicates an ideology that divides the world into the children of darkness and the children of light. A Christian cosmography that places black in opposition to white is fundamental to Biblical and patristic thought. Black signifies sin and wickedness, white connotes a state of grace. Although the "Ethiopian" may be redeemed, he must be washed in the waters of baptism and become white.
The ideological dichotomy is given pictorial expression in the illustration of the Slaying of the First Born in the Ashburnham Pentateuch. The Egyptian first born are represented as older black children, which is in contrast to the depiction of Moses Drawn from the River Nile. Moses is portrayed as a white infant; the change in color and age in the depiction of the Egyptian first born indicates a conscious choice on the part of the manuscript's creator. The two stories of innocents dying through no fault of their own are linked by the Church Fathers. Pharaoh's order to kill the Hebrew male infants was used to justify the killing of Egyptian babies. Both Augustine and Ceasarius of Arles understood that the execution of the tenth plague was "wont to cause anxiety" in their parishioners. The manuscripts creator attempted to allay the audience's anxiety by portraying the Egyptian first born as older black children because their black color indicated the children's state of ungrace and their larger size indicated their "age of discretion." The depiction of white mothers who mourn beside black fathers over the bodies of then dead children also raises questions about contemporary attitudes regarding miscegenation. The Ashburnham Pentateuch does not portray color without prejudice; by giving pictorial expression to a literary tradition, it is one of the earliest examples in Christian art where color is used to justify the exclusion, and in this case the murder, of the Other.
XXII. PAPERS IN MEMORY OF KURT WEITZMANN (PART 2): MANUSCRIPTS
Chair: Herbert Kessler Johns Hopkins University)
The Illustrated Byzantine Octateuchs as a Source for the Imagery of Early Christian Syria
Massimo Bernabo (UniversityA di Firenze)
The illuminated Byzantine Octateuchs have generally been regarded, in recent years, as Middle Byzantine adaptations of earlier material. The forthcoming volume on the subject by Kurt Weitzmann and myself presents a different hypothesis of their origin and development, focusing on those innovations introduced in various periods as the cycle was copied. Through a comparative analysis of iconographical readings of the miniatures in the Octateuchs, our study also aims at reconstructing the original pictorial nucleus.
Thus nucleus is permeated by early Christian thought and influenced, in particular, by fourth- and fifth-century Syriac texts. (Theodoret's Ouaestiones in loca difficilia..., which dates from about 460 A.D., might be taken as a terminus ante quem, since his exegetical views are ignored or even contradicted in the pictorial cycle.) It also contains ample testimony of Jewish texts and legends, which are part of the vast cultural patrimony the Christian community in Syria inherited from the Jews. Indeed, the two cultures coexisted in that area, and this coexistence is reflected in the title Octateuchs. Nevertheless, if we attempt to define the milieu in which our nucleus of miniatures was forged, the pictorial interpretation of Biblical history we fund in the Octateuchs emerges as a genuine Christian achievement.
Thus, the Octateuch cycle, though deeply influenced by its Jewish roots, is evidence of the imagery of early Syrian Christianity and presents us with a subject for new research: elements deviating from Biblical narrative which are not to be found in extant literature (e.g, the story of Hagar), which are scattered in distinct pseudepigrapha attributable to the region (e.g., the story of the Fall), or which are found in other sources in Byzantine art (e.g,, the disappearing of Moses); the emphasis on hermits (e.g., the episode of Melchizedek); the destruction of pagan idols by bands of the faithful (e.g., the laws in Deuteronomy); etc. Assuredly, the original nucleus of the cycle preserved in the Octateuchs and reconstructed through a comparative iconographical investigation promises to be a splendid, as yet unexamined source for future research.
Technical Illustration and Neo-Platonic Levels of Reality in Vaticanus Graecus 1605
Denis F. Sullivan (University of Maryland, College Park)
Kurt Weitzmann noted (Ancient Book Illumination, 8-10) that poliorcetic illustrations may be categorized as schematics (Classical) or finished devices (Byzantine). Vaticanus Graecus 1605, which contains a Poliorcefica (and Geodesia) compiled directly from Classical sources by 'Heron of Byzantium' (10th century), employs the latter. I will argue that the Byzantine method may be, as far as its adaptation to this genre, an innovation of Heron, conceptualized (ironically) in his text in terms of Neo-Platonic levels of reality.
Heron comments that pofiorcetic concepts (νοήματα) are perhaps comprehensible τη άηνωσ[φ μόνη, as they obtain no clarity άτrαίrrής της TOW (Classical)σχημάτων θέας. He indicates he will combine improved verbal descriptions ονν τοίς σχήμασιν, άκρι(3Ος δωρισάμεμοι,... producing a σχηματισμός καλιJς διορισθείς. The reading άηνωσίg, emended by all previous editors, is, I suggest, correct, used as frequently by Pseudo-Dionysius (e.g., De. Myst. Theol. 11:1: δί άOλεψίας καί άγνωσίαε [δείν καί ηνΟναι τό imΣρ θέαν καί ηνύισιν), as 'cognition surpassing sense perception'. Heron's contrast, σχημα/ σχηματισμός, is also paralleled in Neo-Platonism. Simplicius In Cate . 21:14,271:26, etc.), for example, uses the distinction to express the relation between the underlying form and the sensible object.
The validity of these Neo-Platonic interpretations is strengthened by overt references. Heron cites Porphyry (6 πολβις Εν σοφW, on Plotinus (6 μέγα; ), that Plotinus was μ6νον τοτ1 νοΩ καί τΑν πραγμάτων έχ6μενος. Τριττ& γάρ τά 6ντα ήπίστατο, Εν τε φωνατς νοήμασίτε καί πρ&γμασι. "Καί τΔν πραγμ&των" is not in Porphyry's Vita Plotini and has apparently been added to the citation. The next sentence appears to refer to the well-known Neo-Platonic controversy about the subject of Aristotle's Categories, whether it classifies 'words' (φωναί), 'things' (πρ&γματα) or 'concepts' (νοήματα). Heron then argues that one who errs about "things" falls into Plato's &γναια διπλή κατά διάθεσιν (i.e. 'thinking one knows, not knowing one doesn't), the designation κατά δι&θεσιν α Neo-Platonic addition to Plato's phrasing via Aristotle. Thus Heron supplements the text of the Vita Plotini to mark a contrast between and 'πράγματά and shows a specific, if unsophisticated, knowledge of Neo-Platonic epistemology. In the 'νοήματά Geodesia Heron describes geometrical figures as existing νοήσει τε καί άιαθήσει...αίσθήσει τε καί φαντασίρς, reflecting levels of reality found in Proclus and employs uniquely realistic drawings (e.g., a square cistern, with bricks and water clearly rendered, to illustrate calculation of the volume of a cube).
I suggest, then, that the "finished device" approach to poliorcetic illustration in Vaticanus 1605 is consciously articulated in his text by Heron. He relates it to the older method of his sources in Neo-Platonic levels of reality, replaces objects "in imagination" with "sensibles" to achieve his practical educational purpose, and specifically describes the process, άκριβΔς διορίζεσθαι ('give precise definition to, particularize')τά σχήματα. He may therefore be the original adapter of realistic representation to the poliorcetic genre.
The Limits of Invention in Illustrating Terence around the Year 1100
David H. Wright (Oakland, California)
Around the year 1100, partly under the influence of Byzantine art, there developed a revolution in Western art. Armed with a new capacity to articulate the human figure, and to coordinate complex patterns of drapery with the dramatic action of a figure, adventurous artists began to invent highly expressive narrative illustrations, particularly episodes in the lives of saints not known in earlier art. One remarkable painter, probably working just after 1100, perhaps in the Loire valley, set out to produce an entirely original illustrated Terence (now Vat. lat. 3305, provenience untraceable before Fulvio Orsini). It was an extraordinarily bold enterprise and so it should not surprise us that complete originality was soon replaced by dependence on the established ancient iconography, and that after the first three narrative scenes planning the illustrations became quite irregular and only ten were completed. The production involved one artist and no less than eight scribes, who did their parts in some confusion.
But the self-confidence of this artist when he began is breathtaking. He invented a complex prefatory illustration that can have no precedent in antiquity and he did so not only by reading Terence but by searching for further information about the author in colophons and in at least one commentary. In this way he imagined what amounts to a medieval dispTtatio in which Terence is confronted by his critics ("adversarii") before an audience of "Romani" in a scene presided over by Calhopius. That there were such critics, including one hidebound old rule-maker, is the theme of the prologues to the plays, where Terence asks his audience to judge his plays for what they are, not for the rules they may not obey. But the principal critic is here named Luscius Lavinius, an identification not found in Terence, known only from the fourth-century commentary by Aehus Donatus and the later derivative commentary by Eugraphius, and the name Calliopius is known only from colophons in Carolingian and later manuscripts with the repeated entry "Calliopius recensui" and the final characterization "Calliopius bono scolastico." So our artist invented a medieval scene for his frontispiece, and he supplemented it with two smaller invented scenes that well characterize the first play (Andria) but that do not actually occur in this form in the action of the play. Our artist read intelligently.
Next he illustrated the first Prologue with a medieval figure pointing in both directions, repeating the gesture of his Callopius. His illustrations to the first three scenes in Andria are medieval in style and are just inaccurate enough in illustrating the text so that we can be sure they do not depend on the ancient iconography. After that the two scribes who were copying that part of the text failed to leave room for illustrations at the start of the next eight scenes. Then come two illustrated scenes, one simple and entirely satisfactory, the other revealing significant misunderstandings of the text, implying invention by this artist. The scribes left no space for the next three scenes but the next illustrated scene (at Andria verse 716) is certainly an adaptation of the ancient iconography, not a medieval invention. In the light of that obvious dependence it is possible to suggest that at least one detail in one of the invented scenes is a reminiscence of a detail in a different scene in the ancient cycle.
There are no further illustrations to Andria and there was no space left for any illustrations in Eunuch but our artist added a small original drawing in the margin by Eunuch verse 81, illustrating the passage only in general terms. Two illustrations were planned for Heautontimorumenos; the first (at verse 381) is again certainly adapted from the ancient iconography; the second (at verse 723) was only tentatively sketched and then erased, but may also have depended on the ancient iconography.
It seems that our artist set out boldly to invent an entirely new cycle of illustrations to Terence but soon ran out of breath. He did five completely original illustrations in rapid succession but then he, or someone else in the scriptorium, decided not to illustrate all the scenes. Of the next two he did illustrate one is certainly original in iconography, the other probably so, but his next illustration and the last one he finished are certainly adaptations of the ancient iconography. Perhaps he did not have an illustrated Terence available for continuous study; perhaps he had seen one elsewhere; his imagination was provoked by it and he copied a couple of the more complex and expressive scenes. At any rate, despite his excellent draftsmanship and his initial enthusiasm and ingenuity, in the end it seems he found it easier to rely on an iconographic model. Traditio picturae docet.
An Illustrated Horologion with Miniatures of the Canon for a Soul Being Judged
Panayotis L. Vocotopoulos (University of Athens)
The only illustrations hitherto known of the "Canon for a soul being judged" (Kanon eis psychen krinomenen), attributed to Andrew of Crete, were the frescoes in the chapel of the tower of St. George in the monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos (datable to the third quarter of the thirteenth century), and those in the exonarthex of the cathedral of St. Sophia in Ohrid (ca. 1320). A late twelfth-century Horologion in a Greek collection, containing the above canon, is illustrated with poorly preserved miniatures of the so-called "2400" or "epsilon" or "Decorative Style" group.
The odes, at the beginning of the codex, are preceded by miniatures of the Crossing of the Red Sea, Moses, Hannah, Habakkuk, Isaiah, Jonah, the Three Hebrews in the furnace, the Virgin and Zachariah. The Hours contain full-page miniatures of the Crucifixion, the Deposition from the Cross, the Women at the Tomb, and monks entering a church. The Canon for a soul being judged occupies twelve folios towards the end of the codex. Every page contains a troparion and a miniature illustrating the text literally; for example, the third troparion of the 5th ode, containing an invocation to the archangel Michael, is illustrated with a dying monk stretched on a couch and an icon with the bust of St. Michael, while the last troparion of the 6th ode, containing an allusion to the corpse being dragged by dogs, is accompanied by a badly flaked miniature of dogs and ravens attacking a corpse, while two men are looking on.
The miniatures of this unnoticed Horologion provide us with one more example of the "Decorative Style," but also include the oldest extant illustration of the Canon for a soul being judged.
XXIII. CONSTANTINOPLE
Chair: Dale Kinney (Bryn Mawr University)
Living and Working Environments in Byzantine Constantinople: The Cases of Genoese and Pisan Quarters in the Twelfth Century.
Berge Aran and Maria-Christina Georgalli (University of California, Los Angeles)
The Genoese and Pisan quarters in Constantinople have been subject to some topographic, economic, and diplomatic studies, particularly since the publication of major Greek and Latin texts between 1865 and 1898 that relate to the foundation of these colonies. To the best of our knowledge, however, there was no architectural study done with the exception of the so-called Palace of Botaneiates which presumably lay within or adjacent to the Genoese quarter.
The texts used in this study are well-known Deeds of Concession or Inventories that range from 1170 to 1201. They provide detailed and vivid descriptions of living and working environments with a particular emphasis on their spatial contents, sizes, and terminology of building parts.
Possible architectural reconstructions attempted here in words and in drawings have been aimed at rendering an actual urban experience. Our approach was to take the texts apart according to spatial units whose descriptions were given and to reassemble the information about each unit in writing that would establish the basis for a reconstruction in drawing. The changes at the site that occurred from 1170 to 1201 were also taken into consideration for each spatial unit, thus reflecting the evolution of the urban fabric.
The built environment described in these texts shows a mixed-use pattern of commercial, manufacturing, and residential property, most likely repeated in other areas of the city. The surprising similarities become apparent, for instance, with some contemporary Western European cities from Italy to England. Moreover, the ties of Constantinopolitan urban patterns to Roman tradition are undeniably present. At the same time, the inventories make also clear the Byzantine character of these areas which were never intended to become a Little Pisa or a Little Genoa.
Structural Study of Justinian's Hagia Sophia: Work in Progress
Robert Mark and Ahmet S. Cakmak (Princeton University)
An ongoing study by a group of American and Turkish engineers and historians is aimed at deriving a more complete understanding of the structural history of Hagia Sophia over its 1'/z millennia life, including the strategies employed for its design and construction. Another major goal of the study is to evaluate the ability of the present structure to withstand a future major earthquake. Concurrent efforts being undertaken at Princeton and at the building site include: 1) investigation of fractures and distortions emanating from environmental loadings (including earthquake) and the structural interventions associated with numerous campaigns of restoration; 2) creation of numerical (computer) models to account for both short- and long-term material behavior, including the consequences of cracking and effects of deformation during the initial sequence of construction as well as subsequent structural modification; 3) determination of the properties of the building materials from physical and chemical tests, particularly the time-dependant behavior of early mortars; 4) monitoring ambient vibrations (from wind and traffic) and the response to earthquakes from accelerometers installed within the building structure; and 5) determination of the likely strong ground motions from earthquake to which Hagia Sophia will be subject in future years.
Aspects of the modeling (which in turn is based on information derived from the other segments of the full study) and some new insights already gleaned from its application will be described. These include the somewhat startling inference that changing the dome configuration after the partial collapse of the first dome in 558 did not have a propitious structural effect as maintained in almost every modern interpretation of the building form.
The Recent Findings around the Istanbul City Walls during their Restoration
Mehmet I. Tunay (University of Instanbul)
The recent restorations of the Istanbul city walls, begun in 1992, continues at seven different sections. Some areas are still being excavated, while in others work on the walls has begun. The areas where excavation is still continuing include:
1. Marmara Sea Walls:
Mangana Palace Area: Under and around the Soter Church, parts of Polyeuktos Palace have been found.
2. Land Walls:
a) Around Silivriapi: In addition to a family burial, another, underground, tomb has been found. The tomb, which has four sections, has cross motifs on its walls and is decorated with frescoes. Around it are simpler tombs.
b) Edimekapi: The wall graffiti indicate that they belong to a burial cult.
New Architectural Sculpture Findings in Istanbul
Asnu Yalgin (University of Istanbul)
Abstract not received.
XXIV. SYRIACA
Chair: Susan Harvey (Brown University)
Ephraem Syrus or Ephraem Graecus: The Case of the Sermo Asceticus
Sidney H. Griffith (The Catholic University of America)
In the Clavis Patrum Graecorum it takes a number of pages second only to those it takes to list the works attributed to John Chrysostom to list the works in Greek attributed to Ephraem the Syrian. For the most part scholars have so far been unsuccessful in their efforts to find the putative Syriac originals for any of the Greek texts attributed to Ephraem. One exception has been the so-called Sermo Asceticus, for which in fact a number of parallels in different Syriac texts can be found. The work has survived in all of the languages of the early Christian period, including Greek, Latin, Coptic and Arabic. The purpose of the present communication is to describe the present state of research on this important text,
and to investigate its composition with special reference to the selection of its component parts from Ephraem s genuine works in Syriac. The study will highlight the influence of Ephraem in Byzantine spirituality from the fifth century to the ninth century.
Philoxenos of Mabbug and Monastic Reform in Syria Robin Darling Young (The Catholic University of America) Philoxenos of Mabbug (d. 523) is known as a leader of the anti-Chalcedonian party during the reigns of the emperors Zeno and Anastasius. He was a provincial bishop whose influence extended far beyond his diocese, as his successful promotion of Severus, patriarch of Antioch, demonstrates. Philoxenos also guided numerous monasteries in Syria by visitation and correspondence, and made influential visits to the imperial court in the fifth and early sixth centuries to promote the Henoticist cause.
This paper explores a less polemical aspect of Philoxenos' work, namely his labors as a reformer of monastic life and schooling in northern Syria. This project he based upon an appropriation of the thought of the Cappadocians and of Alexandrians such as Cyril, Origen and Evagrius, using them to reinterpret the older Syrian tradition based on the works of Ephrem and others. He explicitly rejected the training he had received at the School of the Persians in Edessa, but he modified the monastic teaching of Evagrius by insisting upon the centrality of religious practice in restoring human beings to their primordial state-that of the monk.
In effect, Philoxenos promoted a form of Christian Hellenism in an area often thought to be resistant to Greek culture. This paper considers how Philoxenos, a monastic leader who never actually practiced the monastic life, tried to persuade communities to live according to the principles he described in his Paraenetic Memre, the Letter to Abraham and Orestes, and the Letter to Patricius. Ironically, the result of his efforts was the promotion of a particular form of late ancient paideia in Syriac-speaking monasteries at the moment of their initial separation from the churches of Byzantium.
Mar Aba the Great and the Syriac-speaking Jacobite Church
Victoria Erhart (The Catholic University of America/Dumbarton Oaks)
Mar Aba the Great, Catholicos of the Syriac-speaking dyophysite church in the Sasanian Empire 540-552, led the church during the reign of Shah Khusrau 1 (531-579), a reign which witnessed the conquests of Byzantine territory, most notably the sack of Antioch in 540. Mar Aba had to deal with the political ramifications of the war between Persia and Byzantium. He was forced to contend with disorder and disunity within the Syriac dyophysite church caused by a previous "duality" in the catholicate as well as the ambitions of successive bishops of Nisibis who opposed the centralization of ecclesiastical power in the hands of the Catholicos. In historical sources, Mar Aba is generally portrayed as a wise and capable administrator of the church's affairs during a perilous period. It is, however, precisely during Mar Aba's tenure as Catholicos that the Syriac-speaking Jacobite church began to construct and solidify its autonomous position under the intense evangelical activity of Jacab Baradaeus, whose consecration as dissident bishop was practically contemporary with that of Mar Aba.
Through a detailed reading of the Syriac Life of Mar Aba published by Bedjan in Histoire de labalaha et de trois autres patriarches (Leipzig, 1895), the Chronioue de Sert and the canons of the Synod of Mar Aba in 544 as preserved in Chabot's edition of the
Synodicon Orientale (Paris, 1902), I construct an account of Mar Aba's tenure as Cathohcos and how his seeming lack of response to the rise of a dissident theological group allowed the spread of the Jacobite church in the Sasanian Empire.
Monastic Education and Spiritual Formation and the Library of Deir Suriani in Egypt
Monica J. Blanchard (The Catholic University of America)
It is no exaggeration to state that the modern academic discipline of Syriac studies has been shaped in large part by the rich manuscript resources of the ancient library of Deir Suriani in Egypt. It was here, far from the Syriac-speaking regions of Syria and Mesopotamia that many important works of early Syriac Christian writers were preserved from the depredations visited upon so many Syrian monastic foundations. Although the ancient library has long since been dispersed to other institutions, notably to the British and Vatican Libraries, it is possible to reconstruct what remains of the original collection with some accuracy through a careful examination of manuscript colophons and other scribal notes. This communication will examine the known literary resources of the library of the Monastery of the Syrians during the tenth through thirteenth centuries as tools of monastic education and spiritual formation for the resident Syrian Jacobite community, and as records of the rich heritage of Syrian monasticism inherited by this emigrant monastic community.
INDEX OF SPEAKERS
Alchermes, Joseph: "Satellite Technology and Medieval Morea.
Aran, Berge: "Living and Working Environments in Byzantine Constantinople: The Cases of Genoese and Pisan Quarters in the Twelfth Century" (with Maria-Christina Georgalli)
Barker, John: 'Thoughts on Late Byzantine Dynastic Marital Policies, or, Were the Palaiologoi Really Italians?
Basin, Jane: "The Eschatological Vision as a Source for Byzantine Popular Religion"
Benin, Stephen: "Chrysostom on Jews and Jewish History"
Bernabo, Massimo: "The Illustrated Byzantine Octateuchs as a Source for the Imagery of Early Christian Syria"
Birkenmeier, John: "Patzinaks and Normans: The Development of Alexius' Tactical Doctrine"
Blanchard, Monica: "Monastic Education and Spiritual Formation and the Library of the Monastery of the Syrians in Egypt.
Bowman, Steven: "Jewish Women in Byzantium"
Brand, Charles: "A Note on Dowries"
Cakmak, Ahmet: "Structural Study of Justinian's Hagia Sophia: Work in Progress" (with Robert Mark)
Campbell, Sheila: "An Icon of St. John the Theologian"
Christ, Alice: "Passion of Christ, Martyrdom, and Christian Death on
Fourth-Century Roman Sarcophagi"
Clover, F. M.: "A Western Adjustment to the Anastasian Currency Reform"
Connor, Carolyn: "Byzantine Female Sanctity and Gender Construction:
The Case of Thekla"
Constas, Nicholas: 'Textile Production and the Construction of Gender in the Early Byzantine Period"
Contis, George: "Patterns of Health, Disease, and Death Among Women and Children in Early Byzantine Times"
Cotsonis, John: "Women and Sphragistic Iconography: A Means of Investigating Gender-Related Piety
Cribiore, Raffaella: "A Homeric Exercise from the Byzantine Schoolroom"
Curchin, Leonard: "Late Antique Mortuary Practices in Central Spain and their Implications"
Curcic, Slobodan: "What was the Real Function of Late Byzantine Katechoumena?"
Cutler, Anthony: "Richard Delbrueck's Consulardiptychen and the Hegemony of Klassische Archdologie..
Dale, Thomas: "Easter, Saint Mark and the Doge: The Deposition Mosaic in the Choir of San Marco in Venice"
Drewer, Lois: "Helen of Anjou's Two Cultures and the Patronage of Churches"
Dyck, Andrew: "Pseilos Tragicus: Observations on Chronographia 5.26ff
Erhart, Victoria: "Mar Aba the Great and the Syriac-speaking Jacobite Church"
Fine, John: "John Cassian as a Source on Egyptian 'Semi-Pelagianism"'
Fisher, Elizabeth: "Psellos on Life in Eleventh-century Sykeon.
Folda, Jaroslav: "Loca Sancta et Profana and Crusader Representational Arts"
Frazer, Alfred: "The Head of Christ in the Munich Ascension Ivory"
Frendo, David: "Egyptian Hellenism and Roman Power in the Dionysiaka of Nonnos of Panopolis .
Garsdian, Nina: "Acacius of Melitene and the Presence of Dyophysites in Armenia in the Earl Fifth Century
Georgalli, Maria-Christina: "Living and Working Environments in Byzantine Constantinople: The Cases of Genoese and Pisan Quarters in the Twelfth Century" (with Berge Aran)
Georgopoulou, Maria: "Franciscan Devotion and the Union of the Churches (1439): The Artistic Record"
Gerstel, Sharon: "Mandylion and Eucharist"
Golitzen, Alexander: "Anarchy vs. Hierarchy?: Dionysius Areopagita, Symeon the New Theologian, and Nicetas Stethatos on the Hierarchical Vision"
Gorecki, Danuta: "Restoration of Taxes on Abandoned Peasant Land: Law and Practice"
Gregory, Timothy: "The Korinthia under the Palaiologoi: Archeological and Historical Considerations"
Griffith, Sidney: "Ephraem Syrus or Ephraem Graecus: The Case of the Sermo Asceticus
Haas, Christopher: "John Moschus in Alexandria"
Hanak, Walter: "At the Crossroads of Cultural Interaction: The Great Moravian Empire"
Hanawalt, Emily Albu: "Byzantine Women in Norman Histories"
Havice, Christine: "That Was No Lady: Women in Action in Illustrated Chronicles"
Hickey, Todd: "Who Really Led the Sassanian Invasion of Egypt?"
Holum, Ken: 'Renewing the Religious Center: The Christianization of King Herod's Temple Platform at Caesarea, Israel"
Horden, Peregrine: 'Text and Context: The Pantokrator Hospital in its Middle Byzantine Setting
Janowitz, Naomi: "Bones and Scrolls: Metaphors of Holiness in Late Antique Judaism"
Johnson, Mark: "Burial Practices and the Pagan-Christian Conflict of the Fourth Century in Rome"
Kaegi, Walter: "The Battle of Nineveh
Kavrus, Nadezhda: "A Byzantine Scriptorium of the Second Half of the Eleventh Century„
Kianka, Frances: "Demetrius Kydones and the Early Italian Renaissance"
Kolbaba, Tia: "Liturgy, Symbols and Byzantine Religion"
Krueger, Derek: "The So-Called Holy Fool in Early Byzantium"
Laiou, Angeliki: "In Quest of Mute Social Groups"
Lampinen, Peter: 'The Identification of an Imperial Family Member on Seventh-Century Byzantine Copper Coins from the Syro-Palestinian Region"
Lidov, Alexei: 'The Schism and Byzantine Church Decoration"
Lingas, Alexander: 'The Liturgical Place and origins of the Byzantine Liturgical Drama of the Three Children"
Maeir, Aren: "A Complex of Byzantine Shops at the Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem" (with Jodi Magness)
Magness, Jodi: "A Complex of Byzantine Shops at the Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem" (with Aren Maeir)
Majeska, George: "Notes on Popular Religion in Thirteenth-Century Constantinople"
Mark, Robert: "Structural Study of Justinian's Hagia Sophia: Work in Progress" (with Ahmet Cakmak)
Mathews, Thomas: "Converging Processions"
Mathisen, Ralph: "Imperial Honorifics and Senatorial Status in Early Byzantine Documents"
Miller, Timothy: "Another Perspective on Byzantine Philanthropy"
Neuru, L. L.: "A Byzantine Commercial Premises in Roman North Africa"
Neville, Leonora: "Four Embassies of Emperor Theophilus.
Nightlinger, Elizabeth: 'The Role of Hellenic Nationalism in the Cypriote Cult of St. Mamas'
O'Roark, Douglas: "Marriage and Urban Social Structure in Late Antiquity as Evidenced by John Chrysostom"
Ousterhout, Robert: "Byzantine Hagiography and the Art of Building"
Parker, S. Thomas: "Reassessing Nomadic-Sedentary Relations on the Early Byzantine Frontier in Arabia and Palestine"
Pevny, Olenka: "Patronage and Church Decoration in Kievan Rus': A Study of the Church of St. Cyril in Kiev"
Philippides, Marios: "Constantine XI Dragas Palaeologus, Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus: The Creation of a National Myth"
Popovid, Svetlana: "'Elevated Chapels'-The Monastery Tower and its Meaning"
Popovich, l. obica: "The Iconographic Power of an Image: The Case of Queen Sinionis"
Rapp, Claudia: "Metaphrastes before Metaphrastes: The Rewriting of Saints' Lives before the Tenth Century in Historical Context"
Rapp, Stephen: 'The Rebellion of Nikephoros the Twisted Neck' Phokas and Nikephoros Xiphias: An Attempt to Reconcile the Accounts of Byzantine and Eastern Sources"
Ringrose, Kathryn: 'The Prophet Daniel at the Emperors Court"
Rosser, John: "Grevena (S.W. Macedonia): A Neglected Frontier Zone of Greece's Middle Ages"
Safran, Linda: "Women at Work in the Palaeologan Period"
Sandin, Karl: 'Physical Evidence for Patterns of Production among Byzantine Bronze Crosses: Assessment and Methodology"
Saradi, Helen: 'The Use of Quotations in Byzantine Literature: The Influence of Rhetoric.
Schick, Robert: 'The Petra Church Project, 1992-1993"
Schwartz, Ellen: "The Image of the Jew in Byzantine and Medieval Art'
Sevčenko, Nancy: "Portraits of the Byzantine Artist: Do They Exist?"
Sheridan, Jennifer: "Aurelia Charite,'Knower of Letters "'
Simeonova, Liliana: "Descriptions of Balkan Slavic Rulers in Byzantine Sources: Common Traits and Pervading Themes"
Sinkevic, Ida: "Middle Byzantine Narthexes and Adjacent Chapels"
Sivan, Hagith: 'Theodosius Tyrannus: Was Theodosius I a Usurper?"
Smythe, Dion: "Prosopography of the Evergetis Project'
St. Clair, Archer: "Portrait of an Empress: A Bone Statuette in the Princeton University Art Museum"
Sterk, Andrea: 'The Attainment of Serbian Autocephaly: Its Significance in Byzantine History and Orthodox Canon Law"
Stertz, Stephen: "Libartius: Hellenism, Republicanism, Platonism, 'Byzantinism"'
Stevens, Susan: "Cemeteries and City Limits in Fifth- to Seventh-Century Carthage"
Stratikis, Leon: "Hellenistic and Byzantine Elements of the Twelfth-Century French Romance"
Stricevi6, George: 'The Methods of the Early Byzantine Architect'
Suchy-Pilalis, Jessica: "Neo-Byzantine Chant: A Stylistic Analysis of the Doxastika in Mode Two of Petros Peloponissius.
Sullivan, Denis: "Technical Illustration and Neo-Platonic Levels of Reality in Vaticanus Graecus 1605"
Talbot, Alice-Mary: "The Logos of Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulo on the Miracles at the Shrine of the Zoodochos Pege in Constantinople
Teteriatnikov, N.: "Metochites' Tlace in the Land of the Living' in His Monastery of the Chora, Constantinople
Thomas, John: "Concern for the Peasantry in the Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents"
Thyret, Isolde: "Spiritual Mother of the Realm and Pious Intercessor for the Tsar: The Significance of St. Helena for the Role of the Muscovite Tsaritsa.
Tomekovic, Svetlana: "The Iconographic Program of Side Chapels of the Triple Sanctuary"
Touliatos, Diane: "The Traditional Role of Greek Women in Music from Antiquity to the End of the Byzantine Empire"
Treadgold, Irina Andreescu: "Early Byzantine Wall Mosaics Revisited from Close Quarters"
Treadgold, Warren: "Observations on Completing a General History of Byzantium"
Tritle, Lawrence: 'Religion and Politics at the Court of Valens
Tunay, Mehmet: "The Recent Findings around the Istanbul City Walls during their Restoration"
Urman, Dan: "Late Byzantine Monasteries and Churches at Tell Nessana, Israel"
Vanderspoel, John: "The Senate of Constantinople and the Foundation of Byzantium"
Verkerk, Dorothy Hoogland: "Children of Darkness: Color Ideology in the Ashburnham Pentateuch"
Vocotopoulos, Panayotis: "An Illustrated Horologion with Miniatures of the Canon for a Soul Being Judged"
Weber, Ronald: "Social Responsibility and the Stewardship of Wealth"
Wilfong, Terry: "Women and the Monastery of Epiphanius in Late Antique Egypt'
Wixom, William: "Two Byzantine Pendants"
Wright, David: "The Limits of Invention in Illustrating Terence around the Year 1100"
Yalon, Asnu: 'New Architectural Sculpture Findings in Istanbul"
Young, Robin: "Philoxenos of Mabbug and Monastic Reform in Syria"
1992-1993 Officers
Governing Board
To serve until the 1996 Conference:
To serve until the 1995 Conference:
To serve until the 1994 Conference:
To serve until the 1993 Conference:
Program Committee:
Local Arrangements:
Dumbarton Oaks Liaison Committee:
Necrology
Ernest J. W. Hawkins 1905 - 8 June 1993
Henry Kahane 1902 -11 September 1992
John Meyendorff 1926 - 22 July 1992
Kurt Weitzmann 1904 - 7 June 1993
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