ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Session 1: Byzantine Walls and Fortifications
Chair: Clive Foss (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
Asen Kirin (The University of Georgia, Athens):
The Fortification Walls of the City of Serdica: From Constantine the Great to Murad I
Reinhold Schumann (Boston University):
Manpower and Fortifications. Regional Defense and Military Expansion in Byzantine Southern Italy in the Time of Basil II (died 1025)
Veronica G. Kalas (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU):
Building Out Fortification Walls and the Cappadocian Countryside
Walter K. Hanak (Shepherd College):
The Gates of Saint Romanos and the Main Breach: Controversy and Disagreement in Modem Scholarship
Marios Philippides (University of Massachusetts, Amherst):
The Siege of Constantinople in 1453: Fortifications and Defense
Session II: Church Decoration
Chair: Ellen C. Schwartz (Eastern Michigan University)
William Caraher (Ohio State University):
To Whom It May Concern: The Spatial Component of Inscribed Prayers in Fifth and Sixth Century Greek Churches Caroline Downing (SUNY Potsdam): An Ascension from the Episcopal Basilica Narthex at Stobi, Macedonia
Rossitza B. Roussanova (University of Maryland):
The Image of Christ Emmanuel in the Dome of Karanhk Kibse
Sharon E.J. Gerstel (University of Maryland):
Ceramic Icons from Medieval Constantinople
Irene Nikoleishvili (Tbilisi State University):
Early (6th-10th centuries) Examples of the Scenes of Doomsday in the Georgian Reliefs
Session III: Proto-Byzantine North Africa
Chair: Susan T. Stevens (Randolph-Macon Women's College)
Walter E. Kaegi (University of Chicago):
Gigthis in the Pseudo-Methodius Apocalypse and Its Significance
Joan M. Downs (University of Michigan):
Monks, Nuns and Noblemen: Status and Identity in Late Antique Africa, the Case of Tabarka
Frank M. Clover (University of Wisconsin-Madison):
Royalty, Timekeeping and the Heartbeat of Vandal and Proto-Byzantine Africa
Session IV: Late Byzantine/Early Ottoman Topics
Chair: Rudi Paul Lindner (University of Michigan)
Tom Papademetriou (Princeton University):
The Construction of the Patriarchal Tax Farm (14th-16th Century)
Nenad Filipovic (Princeton University):
Istanbul Tekfuri and Qayser-i Rum: On the Ottoman Perception of the Byzantine Emperor
Diana Gilliland Wright (Washington, DC):
When the Serenissima and the Grand Turco Made Love: The Peace Treaty of 1478
Session V: Precious Objects, Precious Materials
Chair: Archer St. Clair (Rutgers University)
Kriszta Kotsis (University of Washington):
The Gold Coinage of Irene from Constantinople (797-802)
John Cotsonis (Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology):
The Virgin and Justinian on Seals of the Ekdikoi
Alicia Walker (Harvard University):
Byzantine Marriage Rings Reconsidered
Dora Piguet-Panayotova (Paris):
A Decorated Silver Censer from the Time of Justinian
Session VI: The Byzantine Polis
Chair: Kenneth G. Holum (University of Maryland)
Claudia Rapp (University of California, Los Angeles):
Bishops as Civic Leaders in Early Byzantium
Stephen R. Zwirn (Dumbarton Oaks):
The Vienna Ivories: The Consular Status of the Roma and Constantinopolis Diptych
Robert Hallman (New York University):
Promoting and Protecting: Urban Iconography in Late Byzantine Coins and Seals
Thomas Brauch (Central Michigan University):
The Fall of Themistius
Session VII: Magic and the Miraculous
Chair: Eunice Dauterman Maguire (Johns Hopkins University)
Daniel Sarefield (Ohio State University):
Incendiary Texts: Burning Magical Books in the Late Roman Period
Dayna Kalleres (Brown University):
Demonic Possession in the Holy Man's Bag of Tricks: Magical Practices Employed for Christian Salvation
Richard Tada (University of Washington):
Alexius I Comnenus and the Sacred Lots Karen C. Britt (Indiana University): The Exhalations of St. John the Evangelist: The Lure of Ephesos for Early Byzantine Pilgrims
Session VIII: In the Wake of the Crusades
Chair: Annemarie Weyl Carr (Southern Methodist University)
Christopher MacEvitt (Princeton University):
Armenians and Franks in Edessa,1098-1118
Lynn M. Snyder (Smithsonian Institution):
Frankish Meals in Greece: the Identification and Recognition of an Invader's Cuisine
Jaroslav Folda (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill):
Loca Sancta Imagery in Crusader Palestine: The Case of the Freiburg Leaf
David Mordecai Perry (University of Minnesota):
Sacred Theft and Sacred Looting: Correlations between Early Medieval and Fourth Crusade furta sacra Narratives
Session IX: The Byzantine Military
Chair: George T. Dennis (The Catholic University of America)
John F. Shean (University of Michigan):
Assimilation and Christianization in the Early Byzantine Army
Michael Kulikowski (Smith College):
The Career of Marcellinus of Dalmatia
E. Warren Perry, Jr. (The University of Memphis):
Sex, Swords and Spirituality: Heroic Motifs in Digenis Akritis
Dimiter G. Angelov (Harvard University):
The Second Imperial Oration of Theodore Metochites and the Campaigns of Andronikos II in Asia Minor (1290-1293)
Session X: Byzantine Architecture
Chair: Ann Terry (Independent Scholar)
Kim Bowes (Princeton University):
God's House in the Private House: Urban House Chapels in the Late Roman East
Carolyn S. Snively (Gettysburg College):
The Integration of Christianity and Death: Burials at Churches and Churches in Cemeteries
Theresa Flanigan (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU):
Reevaluating the Principles of Measure at Hagioi Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople
Svetlana Popovic (Greenbelt, MD):
The Architectural Transformation of Laura in Middle and Late Byzantium
Session XI The Diffusion of Byzantine Influence
Chair: Dorothy Abrahamse (California State University, Long Beach)
Daniel Caner (University of Connecticut):
Sinai Pilgrimage and Ascetic Romance in Late Antiquity
Linda Jones Hall (St. Mary's College of Maryland):
The Letters of Libanius: A Window on the Late Antique Province of Phoenicia
Stephen H. Rapp, Jr. (Georgia State University, Atlanta):
Looking towards Constantinople: Byzantium in Georgian Historical Literature
Maria MaVToudi (Germany):
A Greek-Arabic Lexicon of the 14th Century and Greek Learning in Muslim Lands
Session XII: Byzantine Law
Chair: John Duffy (Harvard University)
Ralph W. Mathisen (University of South Carolina):
Personal Privilege, Imperial Beneficence, and the adnotatio in the Early Byzantine Empire
Hassan Khalilieh (University of Haifa and Dumbarton Oaks):
The Problem of Jettison in the Islamic and Rhodian Sea Laws
Leonora Neville (Catholic University of America):
Complete Authority and Perfect Free Will: Formulas of Possession and Volition in Tenth to Twelfth Century Acts of Athos
Patrick Viscuso (Chantilly, VA):
Menstruation: A Problem in Late Byzantine Canon Law
Session XIII: Pioneers of Byzantine Studies in America VI
Chair: John W. Barker (University of Wisconsin)
David H. Wright (University of California, Berkeley):
Ernst Kantorowicz in America Kenneth Levy (Princeton University): Oliver Strunk and Byzantine Musicology in America
Lawrence A. Tritle (Loyola Marymount University):
Stewart Irvin Oost and the "Chicago School"
John V. A. Fine (University of Michigan):
Georges Florovsky in America
Session XIV: Late Byzantine Literature
Chair: Timothy S. Miller (Salisbury State University)
Franz Tinnefeld (Universtat Munchen):
The Author's Ego in Late Byzantine Letters
Sarah T. Brooks (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU):
The Epigrams of Manuel Philes (c. 1270-1330): Patronage and Monumental Forms in the Late Byzantine Funerary Monument
George Baloglou (SUNY Oswego) and Nick Nicholas (University of California, Irvine):
Humor or Dissent? Two Late Byzantine Animal Epics
Alain Touwaide (University of Oklahoma, Norman):
The Xenodocheion tou Krale in Constantinople and its Medical Activity
Session XV: Byzantium Confronts the West
Chair: Charles M. Brand (Bryn Mawr College)
Danuta Shanzer (Cornell University):
The Burgundians and Byzantium
Heather E. Grossman (University of Pennsylvania):
Building Identity: The Origins and Diffusion of Architectural Plans and Ornament in Frankish-Period Greece
Demetrios Athanasoulis (6th Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities, Greece):
The Architecture of the Byzantine and Frankish Churches of Elis, Greece
Angela Volan (University of Chicago):
Last Judgments and Last Emperors: Byzantine Imperial Ideology and Eschatology in the Church of Agios Pavlos, Crete
Session XVI: Byzantine Archeology
Chair: Cecil L. Striker (University of Pennsylvania)
Frank R. Trombley (University of Wales, Cardiff):
Slavs and Cultural Symbiosis in Early Medieval Greece: The Results of a Recent Archaeological Survey
Kostis Kourelis (University of Pennsylvania):
House and Village in the Northwestern Peloponnese: The Archaeology of a Medieval Countryside
Timothy E. Gregory (OSU Excavations at Isthmia):
Churches, Landscape, and Population in Byzantine Kythera: The Australian Pallochora-Kythera Archaeological Survey 1999-2000
Charles Nicklies (Louisville, KY) and Amy Papalexandrou (University of Michigan):
Byzantines and Lusignans in the Hinterland of Cyprus: Recent Excavations of the Princeton-Cyprus Expedition at Polis
Camilla MacKay (University of Michigan):
Late Medieval Pottery from the Athenian Agora
Session XVII: Byzantium and its Slavic Neighbors
Chair: Ljubica D. Popovich (Vanderbilt University)
Ian S.R. Mladjov (University of Michigan):
Between Byzantium and Rome: Bulgaria in the Aftermath of the Photian Schism
George P. Majeska (University of Maryland):
Patriarch Photius and the Conversion of the Rus'
Andrew Walker White (University of Maryland):
Notes Towards a Byzantine Theory of Religious Performance: An Analysis of The Office of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace Gregory Myers: Byzantine Chant or Znamenny Rospev? Continued Byzantine Hegemony in the Russian Musical Manuscript Tradition of the Late Sixteenth Century
Karen Lemiski (Arizona State University):
Sending a Letter to Byzantium: The Imperial Russian Mail Service to Mt. Athos
Session XVIII: Monasticism
Chair: Robert W. Allison (Bates College)
Mark Moussa (Catholic University of America):
Shenoute to Moses of Abydos: Monastic Authority and Social Control in Early Byzantine Egypt
Richard Layton (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign):
Literacy and the Practice of Reading in Early Byzantine Monasteries
Dusan Korac (University of Maryland):
The Empress, the Despoina, the Sultana, and the Black-Robed Monk: Three Serbian Ladies on Mount Athos
Carolyn L. Connor (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill):
A Sense of Family: Monastic Portraits in the Lincoln College Typikon
Session XIX: Manuscript Studies
Chair: Susan Pinto Madigan (Michigan State University)
Maureen O'Brien (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill):
The Gynaeceum, the Kindergarten, and the Vienna Genesis: Biblical and Extra-Biblical Imagery in Folio 16r
Rima Smine (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU):
The Byzantine Origin of the Iconography of the Virgin and Child Enthroned in Syriac Lectionaries Vatican Syr. 559 and London British Library Add. 7170
Mary-Lyon Dolezal (University of Oregon):
Lectionary Dissonance: The Palaiologina Group, Again
Mark Sosower (North Carolina State University):
Phallic Angels in Watermarks of Paper of Some Sixteenth-Century Greek Manuscripts
Session XX: Ecclesiastical Texts
Chair: Denis Sullivan (University of Maryland)
Susan Wessel (Cornell University):
Literary Style and the Council of Ephesus: The Homilies of Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius
Michael Gaddis (Syracuse University):
Forging Consensus: Definition and Falsification at the Council of Chalcedon
Margaret Trenchard-Smith (University of California, Los Angeles):
Maximos the Confessor On the Passions of the Soul and the Irrational
Alexander Rentel (Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome):
The Origins of the 14th Century Patriarchal Liturgical Diataxis of Demitrios Gemistos
Session XXI: Imperial Images and Issues
Chair: Rebecca W. Corrie (Bates College)
Anne McClanan (Portland State University):
A Reassessment of Sophia
Diliana Angelova (Harvard University):
The Ivories of Ariadne in the Context of Female Imperial Ideology in Early Byzantium
Jennifer Ball (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU):
The Loros in Image and Text Mark Johnson (Brigham Young University): The Royal View at Monreale
Session XXII: Problems in Late Antique and Byzantine Letters
David Olster (University of Kentucky):
Plotinus the Neo-Aristotelian?
John Nesbitt (Dumbarton Oaks):
Alexander the Monk and Alexander Kazhdan: A Question of Date
Federica Ciccolella de Luigi (Columbia University):
"George the Grammarian": History of a Misunderstanding
Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffman (Glenmont, NY):
Metropolitan of Rhodos Theodoulos as a Book Collector: Evidence from Columbia University Manuscript Smith West. Add. 10
Session XXIII: Substance and Style in Byzantine Luxury Objects: Textiles, Ivory, Woodcarving.
Chair: Christine Havice (University of Kentucky)
Vasileios Marinis (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign):
A First Approach to Textiles with New Testament Scenes, the Field Museum Example
Gudrun Buhl (Museum fur Spatantike and Byzantinische Kunst-SMPK): Late Antique Ivory Pyxides and their Stages of Production
Ioli Kalavrezou (Harvard University): Ivories Reconsidered
Holger Klein (University of Bonn/The Walters Art Gallery): Late and Post Byzantine Woodcarvings in the Walters Art Gallery
SESSION I: BYZANTINE WALLS AND FORTIFICATIONS
Chair: Clive Foss (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
The Fortification Walls of the City of Serdica: From Constantine the Great to Murad I
Asen Kirin (The University of Georgia, Athens)
Serdica (in Byzantine sources Τριάδιτζη and in Slavonic Cρtάευh shared the fate of many medieval cities where the fortifications were Roman defense walls that had undergone multiple repairs. What sets Serdica apart is the particular way in which only one part of the late antique defense walls was utilized. While only few small segments of Serdica's walls survive, a body of published and unpublished data allows us to reconstruct the history of these fortifications. Several scholars including M. Stancheva, St. Boiadzhiev, and T. Ivanov have studied Serdica's defense walls. This paper contributes new information from archival sources and new analysis of the walls emphasizing the connection between the history of the fortifications and Serdica's urban development.
In Serdica the first set of defense walls were built under Marcus Aurelius (161-180). During the early fourth century the city became a Tetrarchic see, and subsequently -a residence for Constantine the Great. This new status of Serdica resulted in the repair of the existing fortifications and the construction of a new circuit of walls situated North of the old city. As a result of this, the fortified territory quadrupled in size. No points of junction between the curtain wall of the old city and that of the new city have been discovered; even so this should not be viewed as evidence that the walls of the new city were encircling the old one since no remains of the new city walls were discovered to the east, west and south of the older fortifications. This indicates that most likely the new city abutted the northern wall of the old city. The integral link between the two fortified entities is confirmed by the unusual arrangement of certain towers and gates. The construction of the new city appears to have taken place at the same time when some substantial changes in the old city occurred. Almost a quarter of the old city's territory
was taken over for the construction of a spacious luxurious residence-this alone could have been sufficient to generate the need for extending the city's fortified territory. The fortification walls of the new city and the first two phases of the old city display a similar arrangement consisting of round and polygonal towers projecting from both sides of the curtain wall. During a third construction phase, dating to the second half of the fifth century, triangular and pentagonal towers were added to the fortification walls only of the old city. It seems logical, therefore, to assume that the new city was abandoned before this date. As reconstructed during the second half of the fifth century, the old city's fortifications survived for nine centuries to be replaced by a new set of defense walls after Sultan Murad I conquered Serdica in 1382.
Manpower and Fortifications: Regional Defense and Military Expansion in Byzantine Southern Italy in the Time of Emperor Basil II.
Reinhold Schumann (Boston University)
Under Emperor Basil II, Byzantium was able to defend its populations in Southern Italy against the Arabs without increasing the strength of its field armies in its Thema Calabria and Thema Longobardia of about 2000 each. The Catepan Bojoannes expanded the Thema Longobardia into the Thema Italia by creating the fortress line Civitate-TroiaMelfi north and west of Foggia, with Troia being a completely new foundation. The line extended the Byzantine protection of the population far beyond the sole and heel of the peninsula, the remnants of Byzantine Italy at the beginning of Emperor Basil's rule.
The paper will try to reconstruct the local sources of manpower that Bojoannes could draw on for his expanded thema. Making use of place names with fara in the Italian postal dictionary, following L. M. Hartmann and At. Wolf, and other topographic and local information, the concentration of Lombard fighting-men in the area of the fortress belt will be shown. These in the early eleventh century were no longer in kinship organizations depending on the dukes of Benevento or Spoleto but in free peasant communities or manorial lordships concerned for their own defense. For them the best chances of survival against Islam lay with Bojoannes and Emperor Basil II. Seen in this local perspective, the agitated events of the early eleventh century in the Italian South take on a more realistic meaning than the plots and counter-plots of local princes spiced with the advent of "Norman pilgrim-mercenaries".
The cohesion between the leadership and Emperor Basil and the garrisons of the fortress belt can be measured by their resistance against the German emperors trying to reduce Byzantine power in southern Italy. Henry II, in alliance with Pope Benedict VIII, aimed the chief thrust of his very well prepared Italian campaign against Troia but had to withdraw after a siege of four months in the summer of 1022 This was the Henry who had given shelter to the Lombard Melus after his defeat by Bojoannes at Cannae. Conrad II's Italian campaign of 1026/1027 came after Emperor Basil's death but really in response to his plans of eliminating the Moslem threat through a thorough reconstruction of Byzantine rule in the South and Sicily. Conrad did not attack the fortress belt but was satisfied with the formal and ephemeral allegiance of the princes of Capua and Benevento.
The bond of loyalty between Lombards and Byzantines disintegrated with the disastrous successors of Emperor Basil in Constantinople, in spite of the successes of two able commanders, Orestes and Maniaces, and the building of still another fortification at Syracuse. The Lombards threw in their lot with the Normans. There is a replay of this scenario when Emperor Frederic II founded Aquila in an area of originally dense fara settlement and then lost the loyalty of his free peasants when he over-reached himself against the free communes of northern Italy.
Building Out: Fortification Walls and the Cappadocian Countryside
Veronica G. Kalas (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
"Building out" in Byzantine Cappadocia expresses metaphorically the process of combining masonry with rock-cut structures. Although we tend to think of Cappadocian architecture as being solely rock-cut, masonry walls often accompanied rock-cut features as retaining and terracing walls. Independent constructions such as churches and fortifications of the tenth- to eleventh-century further demonstrate that Cappadocians in the Middle Byzantine period had not lost the knowledge and skill in building out of masonry.
Cappadocia's rock-cut settlements, in fact, did not exist alone in isolation but constituted part of an extensive network of fortified mountain peaks and jutting limestone cliffs dispersed throughout the countryside. At the northern opening of the Peristrema Valley in western Cappadocia, a mass of tufa at Selime sustained an entire troglodyte village. High above this tufa outcropping, on the surface of the limestone plateau, a newly discovered, masonry wall extends in a straight line, almost 200 m. across the plateau. The two ends of the wall meet with the sheer drop of the cliffs. Between the wall and the remaining ridges of the cliff, no structures can be found. Unlike a circuit wall of a city or town, or a perimeter wall of a palace, monastery, or farmhouse, this wall does not enclose inhabited space. The living spaces at Selime were displaced and located not within the wall's enclosure but underneath, in the mass of tufa below the plateau. The immediate sense of this wall's defensive purpose, therefore, is rather abstract since it seems to lack the protective capacities of an enclosure.
The form and function of Selime's fortification is best understood as a Byzantine military installation and territorial status symbol rather than a defensive enclosure. From the great height of the cliff, the entire region could be surveyed. A sentry could warn fellow villagers in the valley below of oncoming raids, while smoke signals were relayed to and from neighboring, fortified peaks. Mutual visibility among fortifications determined the success of Byzantine military installations. The wall at Selime, furthermore, may have demarcated a stationing point. Armies campaigning through the countryside did not randomly pass through the area but stopped, instead, at designated locations in order to pick up local contingents, the so-called "farmer-soldier" mustered from the valley below to join in on the raids. Finally, the outward visibility of Selime's fortification marked ownership and control over one of the most fertile riverbeds in Cappadocia. The largest, most extensive, and most elaborate in design and decoration of all the rock-cut mansions recorded thus far in Byzantine Cappadocia, the Selime Kalesi, is located in the mass of tufa directly below the wall. Perhaps the aristocratic owners of this remarkable, residential complex, who may also have been the lords of the entire settlement, built this wall on the limestone plateau above their habitation. Thus they not only guarded the entrance to the valley but also outwardly displayed their dominance over a highly coveted, border zone.
The Gates of Saint Romanos and the Main Breach: Controversy and Disagreement in Modern Scholarship
Walter K. Hanak (Shepherd College)
The final hours of the Byzantine Empire had arrived and on April 7,1453, Mehmed II launched his main assault, including artillery, against a spot in the walls that he considered to be low and weak. For the Byzantines, however, the question was where would the Ottoman Turks breach the immense, if decaying walls and fortifications of Constantinople. Modem scholarship is not clear on this point.
Drawing upon a personal archaeological site study of the remnants of the existing walls and their foundations, towers, churches and monasteries, and an examination of the topography of the breach area about the gate of Saint Romanos and the fifth military gate (Pemptos) to the north, new evidence is provided which refutes the conclusions of modern scholars. Notable among these scholars, all of whom draw upon limited information, are A.D. Mordtmann who bases his conclusions on the diary of Nicolo Barbaro. George Ostrogorsky in volume four of the Cambridge Medieval History, writes of the "solidity" of the walls, but recognizes that a new instrument had been introduced into warfare-artillery. Ostrogorsky agrees with Chedomil Mijatovich that this attack took place at the gate of Saint Romanus. Steven Runicman, on the other hand, confounds the question by drawing upon A. van Millingen, each claiming that there were two gates of Saint Romanos, one a civil and the other a military gate to the north. More recently, Donald M. Nicol and Apostolos E. Vacalopoulos, though providing conflicting and often contradictory evidence on the height and thickness of the walls and the number of towers, are reticent on where the main breach occurred.
My preliminary conclusion is that we should locate the breach, although the term is neither accurate nor appropriate for any discussion of the fall of Constantinople, in the immediate vicinity of the Lycus River, which Mehmed II had his men dam up at its source months before the main assault. About this dried river bed, the Byzantines early in 1453 hurriedly built a replacement wall and a tower (or towers). Given his advanced knowledge of the fortifications of Constantinople and its defenses, Mehmed II had precise information where he could most successfully launch his attack for the final conquest of Constantinople, but his overall strategy proved a failure and other circumstances explain his successful entry into the imperial city.
The Siege of Constantinople in 1453: Fortifications and Defense
Marios Philippides (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Scholars have always focused attention on the siege of and fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Their starting point has always been texts relating the operations of the siege. Most modern studies however, suffer from one basic handicap: the authors of the "history" of the siege were not directly familiar with the fortifications and the topography and have based their studies directly on "primary sources." And recent research has demonstrated that numerous of these "sources" were neither primary nor composed by authoritative eyewitnesses (e.g.: Pseudo-Sphrantzes, Languschi-Dolfin, Riccherio-Richer). Furthermore, sources that used to be considered later elaborations and derivative have now been shown to be authentic eyewitness accounts (e.g. the Slavonic narrative of Nestor-Iskander). Furthermore, "new" material has surfaced since the last modem study of the siege was composed (e.g. the relazime of the Anconitan consul in Constantinople, Benvenuto). Clearly, the time has come to re-examine the famous siege with the following guidelines: authentic information supplied by reliable authors of truly primary sources, examination of the various events in relation to the Constantinopolitan topography, and re- assessment of the role that the ancient walls played in an era that had rendered practically obsolete the traditional stone fortifications that had been erected in late antiquity. Above all, the tools of the modern military historian need to be utilized effectively in the analysis of the defense operations of 1453.
With such objectives in mind, I will concentrate on the role of the fortifications and will analyze the information supplied by the authentic sources in an attempt to understand the position of the various defenders and the assigned role of the various contingents, professional or volunteer, in the operations. Each sector will be examined, based on my survey of the surviving fortifications, carried out in the summer of 1990, in 1995, and again, more recently, in the summer of 2000. My illustrations will include the appearance of the fortifications before and after the recent and ongoing renovations of the walls. I will attempt to demonstrate that in many respects our views about the operations are flawed and I will suggest alternative explanations based on the guidelines I have outlined above.
My analysis, in summary, will show that the defenders chose to man the first line of fortifications wherever feasible, i.e., the short wall-parapet immediately behind the moat and not the first line of the walls preceding the Great Wall. In particular, this approach was employed in the critical sector of the Gate of Saint Romanus, precisely where the defense eventually collapsed. I will suggest reasons why this particular line of defense was chosen over the more massive walls, which ultimately amounts to a belated attempt by the defenders to deal with the devastating effects of gunpowder employed to an unprecedented level during the siege. I will focus attention on the last battle and analyze its various phases, which culminated in the famous rout.
I will conclude by comparing the disastrous strategy involving the fortifications in 1453 and the successful use of the defenses in the siege of Constantinople by Murad II in 1422 and in the siege of Belgrade by Mehmed II in 1456, demonstrating that an elastic defense was more appropriate in the quattrocento than a traditional, static approach utilized by the defenders in 1453, who seem belatedly to have realized their error but could not compensate for it in the last stages of the siege
SESSION II: CHURCH DECORATION
Chair: Ellen C. Schwartz (Eastern Michigan University) To Whom It May Concern:
The Spatial Component of Inscribed Prayers in Fifth and Sixth Century Greek Churches
William Caraher (Ohio State University)
Scholars have recently committed considerable attention to the question of how ancient individuals viewed inscriptions. Inscribed prayers, in particular, have been a focus for scholarly inquiry. Studies of inscriptions found on votive offerings and on so-called magical amulets have contributed to our understanding of how ancient individuals sought access to supernatural power. Many scholars contend that these inscriptions represented utterances directed either toward a divine being or toward an individual who by acknowledging the inscription became the intercessor between its original erector and the divine. The positioning of an inscription, the decoration associated with it, and the ritual involved in its activation or creation all contributed to the inscribed sentiment's power.
Several early Byzantine churches in central and southern Greece have inscriptions that appear to be inscribed prayers. They contain verbs in the imperative and, occasionally, a noun in the vocative. Inscriptions of this kind are not uncommon throughout the Mediterranean, and have been the focus of some scant attention in Syria where they have been linked to liturgical utterances. Like elsewhere the inscriptions in Greece most often occur on floor mosaics, but they can also occur on architectural members and in graffiti. The known architectural location of some inscriptions makes them valuable texts for interpreting how both ecclesiastical space and inscriptions might have functioned in early Christian society.
This paper will study several early Byzantine inscriptions found in church buildings. It will compare them briefly to other types of inscriptions found in analogous contexts and, at length, to similar inscriptions found in other media, particularly ecclesiastical silver plate and late antique amulets. The paper seeks to apply the theories advanced to understand amuletic type inscriptions to inscriptions found in a specific architectural context. The architectural context can provide some information concerning an inscription's audience, its position in relation to liturgical movements, and its relationship to known sacred points within the church. A detectable relationship between these inscribed sentiments and sacred areas or actions within the church will provide important insights into both the nature of sacred space in early Byzantine Greece and the intention of inscribed prayers.
An Ascension from Episcopal Basilica Narthex at Stobi, Macedonia
Caroline Downing (State University of New York College at Potsdam)
Constructed in the middle of the fifth century, the Episcopal Basilica dominated the landscape of Stobi. A long series of excavations has revealed that the building was sumptuously decorated, including gilded capitals, floor mosaic, glass wall mosaics, and painted walls. And while the wall paintings consist only of fragments, those of the narthex contain enough information to make a reliable estimation of one of the subjects depicted.
The fragments in question were excavated by V. Petkovic, under the auspices of the National Museum in Belgrade, beginning in 1931. They include three faces, the head of a lion, a small winged angel, and a larger fragment of a scene that contains a diademed woman in the orant position beneath the lower portions of three figures. Close examination of the lion showed that part of a jeweled book lay under its jaw, thus making this certainly one of the tetramorphs. Part of an arc at the top right is reconstructed here as part of a mandorla. An exact parallel to this portion of the scene is found in the apse mosaic of Hosios David in Thessalonike, of about A.D. 500, representing the vision of Ezekiel.
The scene as a whole is here reconstructed as an Ascension, with Christ in a mandorla supported by angels, and below this a row of angels, with the Virgin Mary and the Apostles below them. A close parallel can be found in the Rabbula Codex, a Syriac gospel created in 586. In the Rabbula Ascension, Christ appears in a mandorla with the four beasts of the apocalypse, and beneath them stand an orant Mary flanked by Peter and Paul and the other apostles. What is different about the Stobi painting is the additional row of figures above the head of Mary. A similar tiered arrangement with angels is found in a miniature of the Last Judgment from the Topographia Christians of Cosmas Indicopleustes, dated to 543- 552, known from a later copy.
It remains to discuss the meaning of this image in its context. Why would such a scene be deemed particularly appropriate for a narthex? There is some evidence that the narthex was considered an appropriate place for funeral rites, and was certainly the location of numerous burials in the later Byzantine period. An Ascension would be a good choice of subject matter for such a function, relating Christ's Ascension with the deceased's hope for resurrection. A relationship with lost monumental depictions of the subject is another important avenue of investigation. A ninth century account records an ascension in the Church of St. John Studios in Constantinople; and many scholars believe that depictions on souvenir pilgrim flasks reflect the apse decoration of the Anastasis Rotunda in Jerusalem. It is tempting, too, to see a possible connection between the numerous depictions of the Last Judgment above the entrances of medieval churches in the West.
The Image of Christ Emmanuel in the Dome of Karanlik Kilise
Rossitza B. Roussanova (University of Maryland)
The subject of this paper is the decoration of the eleventh-century Cappadocian church of Karanlik Kilise. The church is known for its exquisite frescoes. Remarkably little attention has been paid to iconographic issues and the way Karanlik relates to what is known of the development of religious imagery in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This paper will focus on the decoration of Karanlik's central dome. On its drum is represented a youthful Christ labeled Emmanuel. Six archangels clad in imperial garments converge on this image in adoration. In the summit of the dome is rendered a formidable Christ Pantokrator.
The image of the youthful Christ Emmanuel in Karanlik is the earliest surviving example of this figure in Byzantine monumental decoration. Suggestions have been made that the iconography of Karanlik's dome with archangels and Emmanuel is related to the feast images of the Synaxis of the Archangels celebrated on November 8. This identification is based on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century images of the Assembly of the Archangels in which a pair of archangels, with or without the multiplicity of angels, supports a medallion with Emmanuel. The representations of the Synaxis in eleventhcentury manuscripts exhibit, however, different iconography (Vatican, Gr. 1613; Mount Athos, Dionysiou 587).
In this paper I will argue that the images seen in Karanlik's cupola do not illustrate the angelic feast of the Synaxis. The focal point of the dome's decoration is rather the youthful Emmanuel who is paralleled with the angels as joint intermediaries between heaven and humankind. I will suggest that through the interplay of images and spatial choices Emmanuel can be seen both as a Eucharistic victim and as an awesome savior, thus visualizing the theological and liturgical concerns of the eleventh and early twelfth century.
Ceramic Icons from Medieval Constantinople
Sharon E. J. Gerstel (University of Maryland)
Thirty-nine ceramic plaques bearing figural decoration survive from medieval Constantinople and its surroundings. Of these, twenty-eight are in the collection of the Walters Art Gallery. To date, very few of the iconic tiles have been published; the majority remains virtually unknown. The tiles were once part of a large collection of fragments from which the Louvre purchased several pieces, in 1955, one year before the rest was acquired by the Walters. It is unclear whether the lot, which comprised ornamental as well as figural tiles, was found at a single site or was assembled from a number of sites by dealers in the Istanbul antiquities market. To answer this question I will present material from other sites and other collections.
In 1990 W. Tronzo briefly discussed the Walters tiles at the Sixteenth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference held in Baltimore. Since that time the tiles have been subject to intensive study, conservation and chemical analysis. In this talk I will present only the iconic tiles. Based on this rich material, I will introduce issues of workshop, installation, subject matter and provenance. I will divide the tiles into groups (according to the hand of the painter and the method of fabrication) and will make suggestions about the function of the tiles and their place within the various polychrome media favored by members of the Macedonian dynasty and related courtiers.
The ceramic icons hold an important position in any discussion of Byzantine art that was created around the year 1000. As we will see, one group of tiles contributes important evidence for the study of the templon screen in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A second group reveals that ceramic icons may have been used as frames, perhaps surrounding larger images created in other media. Examples from a third group suggest that ceramic plaques could be commissioned to serve as votive panels for use in domestic or ecclesiastical contexts.
Early (6th-10th centuries) Examples of the Scenes of Doomsday in Georgian Reliefs.
Irene Nikoleishvili (Tbilisi State University)
In the Georgian stone plastic the rather early examples of the image of a scene of Doomsday have been preserved. These examples are dated to the 6th -10th centuries and they should belong to a group of the earliest examples of Christian art.
On the east facade of the 6th century church of the Sacred Cross in Mtskheta the relief images of "Eristavt-Eristavi" (leader of the country) Stephanos and his brothers Demetre and Adaznerse before the Christ have been preserved. Directly above the central figure of Stephanos the figure of an angel with trumpet is represented. Hence, a scene of the Last judgement, in which Doomsday is represented.
Interesting examples of rather late period Georgian relief images are the images on stone Altar screens of the 10th century in some provincial monuments of the mountain region of Georgia - Racha. In St. George church in the village of Skhicri the scene of the Terrible Court is represented on one of four altar plates and it is incorporated in a general semantic composition for repose of the soul of the late donators of the church. Near Skhieri the church of Djois-Ubani is located, where a scene of the Last judgement is also represented (10th century). Here a scene of the Doomsday is also a part of the composition of the Last Judgement, consisting of several scenes of relief decoration of the east facade window. On one of the images the donator presents a model of a church to the Christ, directly ahead of him is represented Archangel Gabriel with a trumpet. On the opposite plate is represented Archangel Michael, weighing souls of sinners and righteous. Inscription-the Last Judgement, explaining the contents of a stage here-is read here.
Occurrence of scenes of Doomsday on Georgian monuments already in the beginning of the 6th century (with their wide circulation already on provincial monuments by the 10th century) compositions of the Last Judgement should testify to the importance of its semantic meaning.
The given scenes are the earliest compositions of Doomsday which have been preserved in Georgian art and one of the earliest examples in the East-Christian world in general. The above mentioned relief images until recently have been unknown outside of Georgia and for the first time they are now introduced to the wide scholarly community.
SESSION III: PROTO-BYZANTINE NORTH AFRICA
Chair: Susan T. Stevens (Randolph-Macon Women's College)
Gigthis in the Pseudo-Methodius Apocalypse and Its Significance
Walter E. Kaegi (The University of Chicago)
The Pseudo-Methodius Apocalypse, 5 (4) and 5 (8) Syriac Version by G. Reinink (1993) and the Greek and Latin versions in the CSCO Subsidia (1998) contain a hitherto unidentified reference to the African port of Gigthis, the history of which port in the late antique and early Byzantine periods is poorly known and even less well understood. Reinink transliterated the Syriac as "Gagatnos," but explained in his comments in the footnotes "Die Herkunft des Namens ist unklar." Likewise Aerts and Kortekaas, the editors of the Greek and Latin versions (Gigetou in Greek and Gigitum in Latin), did not understand the placename (194, 95, 99, II 74). The most important passage reads, referring to the Muslims (sons of Ishmael) "When the sons of Ishmael have seized power over every land and wasted cities and their districts and gained dominion in all islands, then they will build ships for themselves in the manner of birds and will fly over the waves of the sea. Then they will reach even to lands of the west as far as Rome the great and Illyricum and *G - * and Thessalonica and Sardinia the great, which is beyond Rome." The excavated remains of Gigthis face the island of Jerba (Girba), about thirty kilometers north of modern Tunisian Medenine, at the small town of Bou Grara. Scholars were looking elsewhere for the placename. Gigthis has the remains of a Byzantine fortress. One can understand the Greek and Latin versions' allusion to Sardinia better. The Tabula Peuteringeriana identifies Gigthis as Gigti, while the seventh-century Ravenna cosmographer refers to it as Githi and Gittit. It is striking that the Apocalypse refers to the port of Gigthis instead of Carthage or Hadrumetum (Sousse) or Thena. The allusion can indicate that it was still a flourishing port on the eve of the Muslim conquest. The author wishes to impress his readers with such distant placenames near the sea. Gigthis is out of geographic order, but so is Sardinia. The Apocalypse's author wished to underscore how far the Muslims penetrated and ravaged in every direction, including Africa. The author of the Apocalypse is probably referring to one of the following two earliest major Muslim raids along what is today the southern Tunisian coast; both fit the Apocalypse's presumed date (691/2). In 647-8 CE occurred the initial Muslim raid into Ifriqiya (Africa) from Tripolitania and Cyrenaica by the Muslim commander `Abdullah b. Sad b. Abi Sarh, which resulted in victory at Sufetula (Sbeitla), and the imposition of a huge tribute on Byzantine Africa. The alternative and slightly more likely date is 665/6 CE, for in that year Mu'awiya Ibn Hudayj made a major raid with 10,000 men in the south; he raided the ancient Roman Tacape (or modern Gabes) region, which lies only a short distance north of Gigthis, and then pushed further north. Elucidation of the placename has very important implications for understanding the text of the Apocalypse as well as the Muslim conquest of North Africa and its contemporary reverberations.
Monks, Nuns and Noblemen: Status and Identity in Late Antique Africa-the Case of Tabarka
Joan M. Downs (University of Michigan)
In this paper I analyze patterns of personal commemoration in the richly decorated tombs of Tabarka in modern Tunisia. The commemoration of status and personal identity were often important aspects of grave marking in late antique Christian contexts. This is evident even as believers renounced the worldly customs of their pagan forebears and concentrated on salvific imagery in their funerary art. Through her port, Tabarka was made rich by the export of Chemtou marble, beasts for the arenas and wood from the forested surroundings. In this thriving commercial center, we learn from an ancient source of the establishment of two very early male and female monastic communities. The monks, nuns, and noblemen of this town interred their dead with great finery under some of the most creative mosaic tomb covers in Africa.
The Christian tomb mosaics excavated in Tabarka in the late 19th and early 20th century reflect the patronage of both the wealthy and the pious from the late 4th through the 6th century. The Tabarkan mosaics constitute the largest body of polychrome figurative Christian funerary art from a single site in North Africa. After the Roman catacomb frescoes, they are among our most important corpora of figurative tomb art in Christian contexts in late antiquity.
However, Tabarka has received very little scholarly attention in part because of the muddled and incomplete state of the reports issued at the time of its excavation. My analysis of the topography of the town and the contexts of the Christian burials argues for a longer period of production of the mosaics than has been suggested in the past. It also illustrates the changes in the town's fortunes as it went from being a hub of communication between Hippo and Carthage, to a vulnerable access point to the interior of the country under Vandal dominion. These material changes are made manifest in the tombs of the town, and they intersect with the iconographic and qualitative changes in personal commemoration evident in the decoration of the tombs.
Through a study of the 140 mosaics and scores of simpler tombs from the two churches and various cemeteries in the town, this paper outlines the priorities in selfpresentation among those commemorated. In comparison with other African sites, many of the Tabarkan tombs are less uniform in iconography and craftsmanship and more individual in the degree to which the deceased is personally commemorated. The uniqueness of this group has not been adequately explained before. This is particularly true of the large number of portraits, orants and figurative scenes found at Tabarka.
Whether it was the preservation of early Christian iconography and its nostalgic association with the church of the martyrs, or the inclusion of portraits of the deceased, Tabarka's tombs exhibit the priorities of the local elite. This was done in spite of increasing episcopal directives. Augustine's battles against the established, and somewhat fanatical, funerary customs of the area were in conflict with the individual as well as the desires and traditions of the local elite for eternal memory.
Royalty, Timekeeping and the Heartbeat of Vandal and Proto-Byzantine Africa
F.M. Clover (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
The Vandal century (A.D. 439-533) was an unusual episode in the history of ancient North Africa. Not since the age of Massinissa (2nd cent. B.C.) had kings ruled in the coastal regions. How did the Romano-African populations respond to the return of monarchy? The conventional view on this matter rests on the only surviving contemporary history of Vandal Africa, the ecclesiastical diatribe of Victor Vitensis.
Victor depicts an abiding animosity between Vandals and Romans, the latter suffering ecclesiastical persecution and expulsion from estates. The archeological record, on the other hand, offers an interesting corrective to Victor's view.
The archeological remains most susceptible to interpretation are coins and dated funerary inscriptions from the Vandal heartland, the former province of Proconsular Africa (roughly northern Tunisia). From the occupation of Carthage (A.D. 439) onward, the Vandal Kings ordered public documents and records to be dated by regnal years. Two types of dating formulae, present on funerary inscriptions, appear to reflect this practice. Type A displays a simple date anno without the name of the monarch. Similarly, the more elaborate Type B: anno N Kartha ' is I made a first attempt to interpret these formulae in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 1986. Two recently discovered funerary inscriptions (1990 and 1993) force me to abandon my previous effort and start anew. Back to basics. The Bir Trouch ostraka, found on the Algerian-Tunisian border in the 1960s, associate the name of the Vandal King Gunthamund (A.D. 484-496) with Type B. Did the earlier Vandal Kings also use the Type B dating formula? And in which reign(s) does one place the more opaque of the dating formulae, Type A?
After I have offered new interpretations of the two dating formulae, I will return to Victor Vitensis' perception of the Vandal sojourn in Africa. Among the Vandal subjects, only the Romano- African aristocracy would be fully cognizant of the heritage of Carthage. The prominence given to the metropolis in one of the regnal dating formulae suggests a collaboration between the Romano-Africans and the Vandal high command. The association of the two elites was a fact of life with which Justinian had to contend, after Belisarius returned Africa to the Roman domain.
SESSION IV: LATE BYZANTINE/EARLY OTTOMAN TOPICS
Chair: Rudi Paul Lindner (University of Michigan)
The Construction of The Patriarchal Tax Farm (14th-16th Century)
Tom Papademetriou (Princeton University)
The received wisdom about the nature of the institution of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire is that Fatih Mehmed II reestablished the Patriarchate as both a political and a religious authority to govern the post-Byzantine Greek community. The elevation of Gennadios Scholarios to the office of Patriarch, while a significant and symbolic event, does not represent the whole of the relations between the Church hierarchy and the Turkish emirates, including the Ottoman state. Closer scrutiny of these relations reveals that the hierarchy in Anatolia had a long experience of relations with different Turkic groups based, primarily, on economic arrangements.
The Patriarchal Synodal Acta show that, while many bishops were forced or chose to flee, some bishops chose to stay in their sees and created for themselves a new modus vivendi. What was created spurred cries of injustice from the Synod of Constantinople, bemoaning its lack of authority over bishops who chose the latter option of capitulation. Those bishops who remained in their sees displayed what some call "a lack of discipline," as the centralized structure broke down, and the people eventually succumbed to their foreign masters. "Lack of discipline" among the hierarchy and clergy resulted in disputes over jurisdiction and property, and the recourse of individual bishops to Turkish authorities. Settlement of these issues often involved financial agreements between the emirs and the bishops.
Ottoman relations with the hierarchy continued the same process as it transformed the Church into an Ottoman fiscal institution. The testimony of Ottoman archival documents forces us to see that the Church was considered as revenue producing tax farm (iltizam). Our understanding of metropolitans, bishops, and priests shifts toward seeing them as primarily fiscal administrators, and more specifically, as tax farmers (multezim).
Istanbul Tekfuri and Qayser-i Rum: On the Ottoman Perception of the Byzantine Emperor
Nenad Filipovic (Princeton University)
It seems a promising task to look closely at the Ottoman perception of the Byzantine emperor in the early, classic, and post-classic ages of the Ottoman state. For the Ottomans, to rule Constantinople was to rule over the civilized world. The early, classic, and post-classic Ottoman historical narratives depicted the Late Antique and Early Byzantine emperors, roughly from Constantine to Heraclius, as uncontested, and lawful universal rulers.
However, the same narratives portrayed the rulers from the dynasty of the Palaiologoi as petty kings, using an obscure word of Armenian origin, namely the term tekfur. The term could mean not only petty king, but also could mean just a local governor or fortress commander.
The Ottomans, after 1453, deliberately portrayed themselves as lawful Qayasir-i Rum, (the emperors of the Rhomaioi) and did not recognize the right of some other dynasties (Hapsburgs, and several Russian dynasties) to use the title of the universal emperor.
In this paper, I plan to analyze this complex Ottoman conception of what it meant to be the ruler of Constantinople, who is entitled to claim the lawful title of ruler of Constantinople, and how the Ottomans viewed the Byzantine emperors of the dynasty of the Palaiologoi from this view point. As sources, I intend to use chronicles, poetry, diplomatic documents, and inscriptions.
When the Serenissima and the Grand Turco Made Love: The Peace Treaty of 1478
Diana Gilliland Wright (Washington, DC)
The definitions of post-Byzantine Greece and the Balkans were not settled for twentyfive years after the Fall of Constantinople. After ten years of chaos in the Morea, and another fifteen years of war (and fourteen years of episodic attempts at peace), Venice and the Ottomans concluded a treaty (έκαμαν άγάπην) defining their relationship for the next generation.
The peace treaty was written in Greek in the form of an ahd-name, issued by Mehmet Q to the Signoria of Venice, and headed with his gold tugra. The unilateral tone of the document is to some extent justified by its provisions, although extensive and sometimes amusing negotiations preceded the final form. The manuscript in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia was written in a distinctive angular script on two kinds of Venetian-made paper. The scribe was highly idiosyncratic where word divisions, accents, and spelling were concerned, (for example, δ φήλη for όφείλη; εναντι ό σεος for έναντιώσεως; δη άξηράς for διά ξηράς; όφήλην αδήδη for ό(pείλη να δίδη) and the text suggests interesting regionalisms in case and verb endings, as well as offering indications that the writer was an Ottoman Turk. The difficulty in reading the text may account for its long neglect.
The first part of the treaty reiterates conventional treaty provisions, including: safety for merchants and ships, punishment of pirates, return of the possessions of a merchant who has died, return or ransom of escaped slaves, a Venetian representative in Constantinople who would administer justice for the Venetian colony. The last third articulates the conditions of the peace: a 100,000-ducat payment plus 10,000 ducats a year, the surrender of Skodar and Lemnos, and the mutual return of territory in the Morea taken during the war-this last required two and a half years of boundary negotiations on the ground in Greece before it was accomplished. Other requirements of the peace were specified in correspondence between Doge and Sultan, and with emissaries.
An accurate transcription with English translation of the ahd-name is meant to supplement, if not replace, the heavily-edited 1865 Miklosich & Miiller text, and includes an analysis of the various provisions of the treaty.
SESSION V: PRECIOUS OBJECTS, PRECIOUS MATERIALS Chair: Archer St. Clair (Rutgers University)
The Gold Coinage of Irene from Constantinople (797-802)
Kriszta Kotsis (University of Washington)
The coins of Irene issued during her regency and independent reign have been discussed extensively. Most recently Franz Fueg studied Irene's coinage (797-802) in 1991, yet did not publish his conclusions. While Fueg analyzed 79 coins, I collected 98 specimens during the 1997 ANS Graduate Seminar, producing results significantly different from those of Fueg. My study focuses on minting practices in Constantinople during the reign of Irene as revealed by her gold coinage.
Irene's solidi show identical imperial busts on both sides. The 98 coins yielded 34 obverse and 57 reverse dies. 78 specimens produce 10 independent dusters, 7 coins share the same obverse and reverse dies, and 13 coins have dies that appear only once.
Two stylistic groups were distinguished through the analysis of the rendering of three visual elements: the cross on the globe, the scepter, and the facial type. Group A shows crosses on the globe with serifs, long scepters with wide cross arms, and face shapes ranging from elongated to square. Group B displays crosses on the globe without serifs, scepters with squat crosses, and elongated faces. Since the last joint issue of Constantine VI and Irene (793-797) shows globes with non-seriffed crosses, we may conclude that dies with non-seriffed crosses continued to be produced on Irene's earliest issue.
The control marks (O, O, X) used on the reverses do not refer to indictions. While all control marks are present in Group B, only O and X appear in Group A. 36 dies display 0,12 show X, and only 4 have O. 5 coins are without (clear) control marks. The O and O could be either variants of the same mark, or two distinct marks. The rarity of O, and the fact that two coinages preceding Irene's coinage used O exclusively, may suggest that coins with O were the earliest to be issued. Dies with O are linked with dies with O, but not with those displaying X. The X and O are linked through multiple dies. The different extent of wear on the obverse die in one cluster clearly demonstrates that reverse dies with X and O were used interchangeably. Thus, coins with different control marks were minted at the same time, and presumably at the same place. Therefore, it is not clear that control marks should necessarily be interpreted as evidence for separate organizational units (workshops) within the mint. If they are, one should imagine a close collaboration and proximity between these units.
The analysis helped to divide the coinage into two stylistic groups that are not connected by die links, yet use the same control marks (except for the O). The two stylistic groups should be understood either as two subsequent issues or as two concurrent ones produced in different locations in Constantinople. The evidence may suggest that Group B was the first issue, however, the chronology within Groups A and B is unclear. Control marks may refer to two or three closely associated workshops within the mint, or to some other organizational principle that eludes us today.
The Virgin and Justinian on Seals of the Ekdikoi
John Cotsonis (Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology)
The corpus of lead seals is an essential body of material for any investigation devoted to imagery of the Virgin. Thousands of examples of Marian sphragistic figures survive over a span of many centuries and these specimens exhibit a variety of iconographic types. One group that has received little scholarly attention are those seals belonging to the ekdikoi of Hagia Sophia, These examples depict standing figures of the Virgin and Justinian supporting between them a model of the Great Church. The seals range in date from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries and no exact iconographic parallels survive in other media. The few scholars who have tangentially discussed this sphragistic image compare it to that of the mosaic in the southwest vestibule of Hagia Sophia. These studies have led to varying interpretations regarding the sigillographic iconography. In light of a variety of texts (ecclesiastical, legal liturgical, etc.), in addition to the consideration of other visual material, this paper, however, offers some different insights as to the significance such imagery has for the seals belonging to these church officials associated with the cathedral.
Byzantine Marriage Rings Reconsidered
Alicia Walker (Harvard University)
A group of Byzantine marriage rings offers evidence from which to hypothesize about the development of marriage imagery and the use of marriage jewelry in the early Byzantine period. The present paper examines the inscriptions, iconography, and forms of these rings and reconsiders their apotropaic properties.
Approximately fifteen early Byzantine marriage rings, dating from the fourth to the seventh century AD, are extant. They are made of gold with the exception of a few pieces in bronze. Most are decorated on the bezel with an engraved image of the bride and groom. The earliest rings show the couple in bust form, either in profile or frontally. Later rings depict the couple full length. In most examples a Christian symbol or figure appears between the bride and groom: a cross, a bust of Christ, a full length figure of Christ, or full length figures of Christ and a second figure, possibly the Virgin Mary. In some examples, Christ blesses the couple by touching their shoulders; in a few cases he places crowns on their heads. Most rings are inscribed with good wishes or protective phrases. A few pieces include the bride and groom's names. A small group of c. sixthcentury rings display small vignettes from the life of Christ. The scenes are engraved on the flat surfaces of the rings' octagonal bands.
The present study takes as a departure point Gary Vikan's treatment of marriage jewelry in several articles published during the 1980s and 1990s. Based on iconographic, inscriptional, and formal characteristics, Vikan proposed that early Byzantine marriage rings functioned as "birth-facilitating" amulets and he linked their apotropaic properties to pagan medico-magical devices. This paper rejects Vikan's association of early Byzantine marriage rings with pagan amulets. In so doing, it argues against Vikan's interpretation of marriage rings as intended to ensure the health of the married couple for the purpose of child-bearing. Instead, it is proposed that these rings are concerned with the preservation of marital concord and the marriage vow, as indicated by inscriptions on the bezels of the rings, Based on the location of the rings on the wearer's body, the Christian imagery of the objects, and the origin of the rings' iconography in imperial Byzantine coins and medallions, it is argued that these early Byzantine marriage rings should be understood as Christian amulets of a semi-official character.
A Decorated Silver Censer from the Time of Justinian
Dora Piguet-Panayotova (Paris)
The censer No. 1019 in the Antalia Museum forms part of the Corydalla treasure found near the site of the same name, situated to the north of Myra (Demre) and Phoenix (Finikie) in Lycia, Turkey. The cylindrical censer is raised on a circular base which rests on a foot ring. Its three chains are unified at their upper ends under a dome-like knob from which radiate six rays. The thurible is 17 cm in diameter and 9 cm high. On the obverse of the base, five stamps certify the purity of the silver: a round one with the bust portrait full-face of a hallowed emperor, inscribed LEONTIOV: a square with the monogram of Justinian, inscribed EVCEBEIC; a hexagonal one with a damaged monogram, inscribed XPICTO 0OPOV; an elongated stamp with an arched upper end, with a monogram ADDEOV, inscribed DIOMIDOV; the cross- shaped one is inverted, inscribed EV OPONIOV and with a monogram IWANNOV. The metal work is silver, the decoration embossed from inside but engraved and chased from outside. The side-unit is all gilded except for the band with the inscription in niello, under the rim. Framed at the bottom with an ornamental frieze, the episodes of the Life of the Virgin run all round the circumference: the Annunciation, the Testing of Mary's Virginity, the Visitation, the Journey to Bethlehem, the Nativity and the Shepherds Witnessing the Star. As regards the iconography, their constituents, similar to those in the scenes of the ivories from the 6th century, result mostly from the use of the same literary sources (Protoevangelium of James). Several essential iconographic motifs on the censer are nevertheless distinguished from the ivory ones which reflect the Syro-Palestinian tradition. However, some scenes on three gold medallions produced in Constantinople - one in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington D.C., No. 55.10 assigned to 584, the second in a private collection, C.S. Munich, No. 984, end of 6th century, and the third in the Museum fur Spa tantike and Byzantinische Kunst, Berlin, No. 30219, end 6th/early 7th century - bear comparison with those under study. The iconographic analysis of the episodes discussed reveals a preference for the established models in the capital.
The scenes which develop in an uninterrupted cycle form distinctive unities. The spatial arrangement of the figures and their natural behaviour confirmed by the gestures, resume the narrative sense of the pictures. The proportions of the human being are relative to the designed space and also to the size of the decorative surface of the vessel. The slightly stocky proportions of the strong men and their somewhat large heads are characteristic of one of the types in late antiquity. The shepherds in short tunics emit physical power conveyed by the taut muscles of the half-bare upper torso. The clothes of the humble people are drawn on Hellenistic models. The garments of the holy persons echo the antique fashion and the female figure-type of the saints is highly refined. The elegant lines of the cloths and the delicate features of the adolescent Mary are juxtaposed to the protective force emanating from Joseph's constitution. The soft drapery wraps round the figures, moulding with its folds the projecting parts of the body. The precise distinction in the treatment of the details attests the classicized style blossoming in Constantinople during the time of Justinian. As a comparison to the censer, one can mention the hexagonal one from Nessabur, the Maximian cathedra, the three gold medallions, the reliquary in the Hermitage, etc.
The study of the iconography and the style as well as the comparisons with the related objects, makes it possible to define the artistic milieu of the censer, its origin from a silver workshop supervised by the imperial court, which is confirmed by the deciphering of the stamps allowing it to be assigned to about 550.
SESSION VI: THE BYZANTINE POLIS
Chair: Kenneth G. Holum (University of Maryland) Bishops as Civic Leaders in Early Byzantium
Claudia Rapp (UCLA)
In the course of the fourth to seventh centuries, as the Christian Church came to dominate all aspects of society, bishops gained public visibility on an unprecedented scale. As administrators, they often had at their disposal large sums of money which they assigned to the charitable works of the Church (care for the poor, for prisoners and strangers; support of widows and orphans) and to ambitious building projects. As spokesmen of their communities, they went on embassies to the emperor. As trustworthy and uncorrupt men of authority, the emperors depended on their cooperation in keeping a check on provincial governors. And as representatives of their cities in times of crisis, they often assumed the role of negotiators with the enemy during a siege.
These aspects of the public leadership of bishops are well known and have been discussed in detail by Claude and others. Two conclusions have generally been drawn from these studies: First, that Constantine s patronage of Christianity catapulted the bishops to an entirely new role of public leadership; and second, that the rise of the bishops was concomitant with the decline of the curiae, the city councils. The decline of the curiales, it is often argued, created a power vacuum in the cities which the ambitious episcopate seized for its own profit. These conclusions, although widely accepted, stand in need of modification and revision.
This paper provides a reassessment of the civic leadership of bishops in Early Byzantium. In the first part, I will show that the reign of Constantine did not result in a sudden and dramatic change in the range of public activities of bishops. Textual and epigraphic evidence suggests a greater continuity in this regard than the triumphalist version of Christian history, propagated especially by Eusebius of Caesarea, would have us believe. The second part will address the notion of the 'decline of the curiales' as a precondition for the rise of the episcopate. Recent archaeological work in the various regions of the Eastern Mediterranean has shown the continued prosperity of city life well into the sixth century and often beyond. Instead of postulating economic decline, we should therefore look for an internal restructuring of the curia which was increasingly dominated by a small group of possessores or ktetores. This group often included the bishop. Rather than stepping into a vacuum and usurping a new role, I will argue, the bishops throughout the Early Byzantine period continued to be firmly integrated into the fabric of their urban societies.
The Vienna Ivories: The Consular Status of the Roma and Constantinopolis Diptych
Stephen R. Zwirn (Dumbarton Oaks)
Neither the typology nor the date of the ivory diptych in Vienna with personifications traditionally labeled Roma and Cons tan tinopolis have been convincingly determined. Considered a consular diptych of the 5th century by Delbrueck (without any substantive evidence) (Die Consulardiptychen, 1929), a regnal anniversary gift of the 6th century by myself (BSC Abstracts, 1983) and an object of unspecified function from a 9th century Carolingian atelier by Cutler (Byzanz and der Westen, 1984), the ivories clearly pose problems of style and interpretation.
The original purpose of this diptych, which can now be defined accurately, will shed light on its historical position. The key to its identification is the object held up in the right hand of the mural-crowned personification. Delbrueck claimed it was a torch and all subsequent scholars accepted his opinion However, a review of representations of torches in Roman and early Byzantine art makes it clear that this object is not one. Rather, it can be identified unambiguously as a farces, the attribute and symbol of high civil office-holders, including and especially the consul. With this internal evidence, the ivories can now be designated a consular diptych. Furthermore, the farces is seen on another ivory whose 6th century date has never been challenged, establishing a relationship that supports the place of the Vienna ivories in the same period.
Though consistent iconographically and stylistically with other works in the early 6th century, the ivories do contain unique details. These can all be explained as variations of contemporary style and technique. Given the difference between the large number of ivory diptychs that it is reasonable to assume were produced and the very small number that survive, these idiosyncratic details do not argue persuasively against their production in the 6th century. The Vienna diptych should now be understood as expanding, rather than excluded from, the canon of artistic possibilities during Byzantium's first Golden Age.
Promoting and Protecting Urban iconography in Late Byzantine coins and seals
Robert Hallman (New York University)
In sharp contrast to what some have seen as 'surprisingly' vibrant artistic and cultural output in the Late Byzantine period, the coins and seals from this period have been traditionally held up as an accurate reflection of the dismal status of the empire. They are, like the empire, diminished in international importance, less impressive than they once were, adulterated. They represent, like the empire, in the words of Louis Brdhier, "degeneration in its final term."
If we are willing to assign this reflective quality to coins of the Interregnum (12041261) and Late Byzantine period (1261-1453/61), it is surprising that little work has been with the individual coin types that emerge in the period. Few people have asked how Late Byzantine rulers and/or mint masters were presenting their empire, or what message they were trying to impart through this widely-used vehicle. Even if in substance and in form the coins themselves betray any declaration of strength or prestige struck on their surface, the vision of empire expressed through the decoration of Late Byzantine coins and seals is evidence every bit as important as any decrease in purity or craftsmanship.
The best known coins of the Late Byzantine period, and the best studied of the new iconographic programs employed, belong to Michael VIII and Andronikos II Palaiologos, both of whom circulated skyphate gold hyperpyra with obverse and reverse programs that were dramatically different from any previous coins. On the coin's reverse the emperor Michael kneels while his namesake Archangel Michael hovers overhead, presenting the emperor to a seated Christ. Andronikos would exclude the archangel but further diminish his own imperial stature by presenting himself prostrate before Christ. On the obverse of both coins, the Virgin rises above a circuit of walls, dominating the cityscape. It is meant to be a specific city, one assumes, as the coin's release coincides roughly with the 1261 recovery of Constantinople, the Queen of Cities, a city entrusted to the Virgin herself. Components of these coins' iconography have been included in valuable studies by Andre Grabar, Ioannis Spatharakis, and in two iconographic studies by Anthony Cutler. Nonetheless, no studies to date have brought together all of the numismatic and sigillographic examples of urban (or metaphorically urban) iconography from the period for an in-depth comparative analysis.
The present study describes a corpus of such coins, including the coins of the three Byzantine states that emerged in Nicaea, Trebizond and Epiros during the Latin occupation of Constantinople; the Palaiologan hyperpyra as well as additional Palaiologan coins issued in Constantinople and Thessalonike; and the rebellious issue of coins by Matthew I Kantakouzenos. Certain imperial and non-imperial seals, and select objects in other media, help complete the picture of the use of urban scenes in Late Byzantine official iconography.
The coin marking Michael VIII's recovery of Constantinople is not the first Byzantine coin to introduce the iconography of a particular city, or to play up the divine protection afforded that city. However from the fall of Constantinople in 1204 through the Late Byzantine period, this would become one of the most important themes conveyed by coins and seals. Turning to the fragmented status of the empire and the ongoing dialogue with foreign states (and foreign coinages), this paper asks how and why this development in Byzantine iconographic vocabulary occurred.
The Fall of Themistius
Thomas Brauch (Central Michigan University)
Standard opinion is that Themistius' urban prefectship under Theodosius I in AD 384 marks the high point of the orator's public career. However, a careful analysis of the speeches that Themistius composed in connection with this office and their historical context shows that the office represents the end of Themistius' career and that Themistius' political prominence in Constantinople had been in decline for some time.
Orations 17 and 31 reveals that Themistius encountered strong opposition in the eastern senate to his appointment as prefect of Constantinople. In Oration 17 Themistius relies on Theodosius' support to gain the acceptance of his fellow senators for his becoming the city's prefect. Oration 31 indicates that Themistius' enemies had forced him from office after only a few months of service. These orations also suggest that in 384 Themistius lost the leadership of the senate that he had enjoyed since the reign of Constantius II.
The explanation for the eclipse of Themistius' ascendancy in the eastern senate is the change in senatorial membership during the reigns of Valens and Theodosius I. When Constantius II empowered Themistius as proconsul of the city to enlarge the eastern senate in the late 350s, Themistius enrolled several individuals who helped him maintain his leadership of the senate for several years afterward. But the death or retirement of Themistius' nominees in the 370s and 380s depleted the senate of his supporters. In addition, the imperial policy of recruiting senators from among loyal supporters and novi homines brought into the senate of Constantinople individuals who had no allegiance to Themistius and who would compete with him for leadership of that body. Apparently Themistius' opponents had enough power by 384 to end both Themistius' tenure as urban prefect and his political career in general, as he is not known to have participated in political activities after that date.
Oration 34 shows that Themistius' opponents in the senate probably foiled an attempt by Themistius to become city prefect under Valens. In Chapter 14 of that oration Themistius reports that unspecified circumstances forced him to refuse an appointment to this office made by an unnamed emperor. From his description of the emperor this ruler seems to have been Valens. Since Letter 24 of Gregory of Nazianzus affirms that Themistius was prefect of Constantinople in the late 360s, the rejected appointment must have occurred in the 370s. It is at this time that representatives of Valens' regime would have been strong enough in the senate to challenge Themistius for that office.
Such considerations demonstrate the need for a revision of the standard outline of Themistius' career. The floruit of Themistius' career is not the reign of Theodosius I but the decade and a half after 357 during which Themistius' unopposed ascendancy in the senate of Constantinople and imperial support permitted him to administer the city once as proconsul and twice as urban prefect.
SESSION VII: MAGIC AND THE MIRACULOUS
Chair: Eunice Dauterman Maguire (Johns Hopkins University) Incendiary Texts:
Burning Magical Books in the Late Roman period
Daniel Sarefield (The Ohio State University)
Written texts were fundamental tools in the practice of the magic arts in the Late Roman world. We know from literary sources that books and scrolls containing instructions and formulae for performing a variety of magical techniques existed widely during Late Antiquity. Such handbooks were assembled by practitioners of the magic arts as handy guides for the preparation of magical spells and remedies as well as the manufacture of potions, amulets, and other charms. With the transformation and Christianization of the Roman world during the fourth century and thereafter, an everwidening circle of governmental, ecclesiastical, and individual adversaries sought to eradicate the practice of magic, particularly through the burning of magical books.
This paper will examine the forms of magical bookburnings present in the Late Roman period. It will be argued that the willful destruction of magical books, although at times spontaneous, was primarily an orchestrated spectacle intended to assert the power of the persecuting party over the magician. To openly destroy a sacred text was to perform a supremely public act of negation-by burning a book, the words and their meaning were obliterated, erased. The message of their creator or transcriber, and by association these individuals themselves, were symbolically consumed by fire and destroyed. Moreover, such spectacles served not only as a sort of damnatio memoriae, but additionally acted to replace the recognized power of the magician and his texts with the new and greater power of their destroyers.
During Late Antiquity, the written word became the object and focus of intense religious interest, not only among the devotees of sorcery, but also among virtually all the great religious traditions contemporary to the Roman world: the act of writing was understood to have supernatural implications. Written words often came to serve as a protective barrier from all manner of illness or misfortune in amulets, while in curse tablets and other techniques practiced by magicians, written words acted to bring unseen and otherworldly powers to bear in the mundane world. Thus, it is no small wonder that sacred texts were venerated and safeguarded, including those of the practitioners of magic. Among magicians, such scrolls and books additionally operated as vital links between members of the "community" of magicians, a principle method for the transmission of magical lore. Understandably, admonitions to keep magical texts secret and away from those who would destroy them are evident in surviving magical handbooks from this period, such as the Papyri Graecae Magicae. A study of the attempts made to destroy books of magic tells us a great deal about how all elements of society viewed the written word and how authorities of the state sought to use the destruction of books as a means to put an end to magical practices.
Demonic Possession in the Holy Man's Bag of Tricks: Magical Practices Employed for Christian Salvation
Dayna Kalleres (Brown University)
In Pratum Spirituale, John Moschus describes five nuns who desire to leave their convent in order to find husbands. On the night of the planned escape, each becomes possessed by a demon. They remain demoniacs the rest of their lives, thankful for a calamity that secured their life of prayer within the convent. Likewise, when a young boy plagued by a demon seeks exorcistic relief from Theodore of Sykeon, the latter decides to allow the demon to maintain possession for years, as this would keep the boy from sinning. And finally, Simeon the Holy Fool, a patron to many repentant harlots, conspires with demons in order to keep these women loyal to their promise of chastity. If one strays into the iniquity of sexual pleasure, he will send a demon to possess her until she returns to her senses. These examples represent a motif within hagiographic literature in the sixth and seventh centuries in which a holy man uses demonic possession as a tool for saving souls.
This uneasy partnership between demon and saint elicits many questions. If a holy man can effect an "edifying possession" to prevent sinning, what are the ramifications within Christian practice and theology? How does this relate to the cleansing effects of baptism and the apotropaic power of the Baptismal Seal? In the fourth and fifth centuries, this medicinal brand of demonic invasion might have been an impossibility. Catechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem and John Chrysostom speak of the rite of exorcism preceding baptism as a mandatory cleansing of all indwelling demons. The Baptismal Seal secures the soul as the Holy Spirit's sanctified abode; where the Holy Spirit dwells, no demon can tread. Moreover, the discourse on Spiritual Warfare, pervading the fourth and fifth centuries, disseminates this formulation as divine truth. The baptized are soldiers of Christ sworn to fight the demonic. The battle lines are clearly drawn. The demon is a pious Christian's enemy. The holy man, as the paragon of Christian piety, is the demon's most ferocious opponent. In this paper, then, I will sketch the conceptual and cosmological changes that could have occurred by the sixth century to allow a demon to pass through the fortified borders of a Christian soul in order to make that person a better Christian.
Another question arises. How has the image of a holy man changed if this paragon of Christian piety and virtue now engages in a magician's practices? Simeon and Theodore of Sykeon still align with the traditional holy man model, as their exorcisms and healings attest. They cross the line brazenly, however, when they conjure a demon to bind their victims to do their bidding. The language and practices involved are almost identical to that found in the magical papyri, not to mention hagiographic portrayals of magicians. A second purpose in this paper, then, will be to delineate the magic practices implicit in these holy men's activities and to see if this can aid in tracing the shifts in Christian cosmology.
Alexius I Comnenus and the Sacred Lots
Richard Tada (University of Washington)
In 1116, Alexius Comnenus took the field for the last time, leading an army into the interior of Anatolia against the Turks. When he reached Phrygia, he recognized that he had a serious problem: Turkish resistance was fierce and Shahanshah, the Seljuk Sultan of Rum, was scorching the earth in front of him. Alexius was uncertain about the army's course: should he order an advance as far as Iconium, recently established as the Seljuk capital, or should he halt further west at the town of Philomelium? He resolved this dilemma by means of a device "both prudent and daring": he placed two pieces of paper bearing the names of Iconium and Philomelium on an altar, spent the night in prayer, and in the morning had a priest pick up one of the papers at random. The paper chosen read "Philomelium," and accordingly Alexius, having received divine guidance, duly ordered the army to march on that place. This, at any rate, is how Anna Comnena tells the story in the Alexiad (15.4).
To be sure, Alexius had previously resorted to the same device-that of the "Sacred Lots"- in 1094, when deciding whether to campaign against the Cumans. But to resort to such a device while safely behind the walls of Constantinople is one thing; it is quite another to do so in the field while facing a determined enemy. Hence the skepticism which Anna's account has elicited from modern scholars; a skepticism reinforced by the belief that Alexius was unable or unwilling to reconquer central Anatolia from the Turks, and hence had no intention whatsoever of marching on Iconium. Thus W.M. Ramsay describes Alexius' resort to the Sacred Lots as a "pious fraud." Michael Hendy believes that Alexius was facing political pressure to take more decisive action against the Turks, hence his "anxiety to leave the decision (apparent or real) whether to proceed no further than Philomelium, or right up to lconium, to the Almighty."
However, this paper will argue that Alexius was genuinely torn between advancing on Iconium or Philomelium, and that he sincerely employed the Sacred Lots to resolve this dilemma. This conclusion is based upon an examination of Alexius' 1116 campaign. It was not an attempt at reconquest, but rather a punitive expedition to bring an unruly client state-namely, the Seljuk Sultanate-to heel. Once Alexius had reduced the Sultanate to obedience, he could then play it off against both the Danishmend Turks to the north and the nomadic Turkmen tribes inhabiting the Byzantine-Seljuk frontier zone. In short, this was a campaign with political objectives. Thus, when Alexius found the road to Iconium to be tougher than expected, he faced the following questions: Was it necessary to risk an advance to Iconium in order to effect the desired political results? And was attaining these political results worth the risk to his army? In employing the Sacred Lots, Alexius was turning to the only authority he believed capable of answering such critical questions.
The Exhalations of St. John the Evangelist: The Lure of Ephesos for Early Byzantine Pilgrims
Karen C. Britt (Indiana University)
Travelers flocked to several centers of pilgrimage in the eastern Mediterranean during the Early Byzantine period. However, much of the scholarly attention paid to pilgrimage has taken as its primary focus holy sites in Syria and Palestine. Undoubtedly, this is due to the significant extant architectural evidence, the quantity of mass-produced pilgrim 'souvenirs', such as eulogia flasks and tokens, and the relatively plentiful literary documentation that can be positively associated with shrines in this region. Another - =center of pilgrimage that flourished during the Early Byzantine period but has received far less attention is the city of Ephesos, located along the western coast of Asia Minor.
Procopius records that a church dedicated to St. John the Evangelist at Ephesos was rebuilt by the Emperor Justinian. (De Aedifeciis V,1, 4-b) He makes it clear that a church dedicated to this apostle had been in existence at this site for some time before the Emperor tore down the structure in order to build it anew. That the church functioned as a pilgrimage center is attested by graffiti incised in a marble column of the church by one visitor. Additionally, a number of clay pilgrim flasks dating to the sixth century have been discovered in the area near Ephesos. (G. Vikan, "Byzantine Pilgrimage Art", Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection Publications, No. 5,1982) While scholars have asserted that the diverse iconography of the flasks prevent their association with a specific shrine, it appears that several of them can be associated with the church of St. John at Ephesos. These small containers could have been used to collect the miraculous dust exhaled by St. John through the holes in the floor of his tomb located in front of the altar of his church.
Is it simply coincidence that Justinian chose to rebuild this church during a period when pilgrimage to the site was at its zenith? In order to gain a better understanding of the importance of pilgrimage at Ephesos, this paper will consider the possible motivations of the emperor in rebuilding the church including self-glorification, enhancement of the site for pilgrimage (i.e., the impact that the need to accommodate a large number of pilgrims, to provide for the veneration of the saint, and the influence of architectural types employed elsewhere in the Empire had upon the plan of the Justinianic church) as well as explore the impetus for the rise of a mass-produced 'souvenir' industry in the context of the conditions at Ephesos in the sixth century.
SESSION VIII: IN THE WAKE OF THE CRUSADES
Chair: Annemarie Weyl Carr (Southern Methodist University)
Armenians and Franks in Edessa,1098-1118
Christopher MacEvitt (Princeton University)
In the eyes of Edward Gibbon, Baldwin of Boulogne was, in comparison to his elder brothers Godfrey of Bouillon and Eustace of Boulogne, "a character of more ambiguous virtue." Baldwin's ambiguity extends far beyond his virtue to his position as ruler of Edessa from 1098 to 1100. Baldwin had been adopted by the previous dux of Edessa, T'oros, and following T'oros' death at the hands of a rioting mob, Baldwin claimed the title to the acclamations of the approving mob. Having only a small band of Frankish knights under his command, Baldwin relied heavily on the military support of neighboring Armenian leaders, who acknowledged Baldwin a leader among equals. Baldwin thus ruled the first crusader principality in the Levant, but he did so by adopting and adapting the apparatus and governance of the Armenian princes who preceded him.
Only two years after his accession to power in Edessa, Baldwin claimed for himself the tide of King of Jerusalem, following the death of his brother, Godfrey of Bouillon.
Finding Jerusalem to be enough of a challenge, Baldwin ceded authority over Edessa to his cousin, Baldwin of Bourcq. Baldwin of Bourcq slowly transformed Edessa from the loosely-organized confederation of Armenian princes into the westernized County of Edessa by replacing the local Armenian political system with Frankish feudal custom. This effectively destroyed the power of the Armenian elites of northern Syria, replacing them with Frankish knights beholden to the Frankish ruler.
This transformation of Edessa from Armenian principality to Frankish county undermines several assumptions about the nature of Frankish settlements in the Levant. It demonstrates that the exclusion of local elites from participation in the political life of the Frankish states of the Levant occurred because of specific events and decisions by the Frankish leaders, not because of pre-established prejudices or vague historic inevitability, As both Baldwin of Boulogne and Baldwin of Bourcq later became kings of Jerusalem, their experiences in Edessa are important not only for a better understanding of Frankish-Armenian politics in northern Syria, but also to understand better how their experiences in Edessa informed their relationship with local Christian populations in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Frankish Meals in Greece: The Identification and Recognition of an Invader's Cuisine
Lynn M. Snyder (Smithsonian Institution)
Following the 4th crusade, and the conquest of Byzantium, the Franks began a campaign to occupy and colonize the Morea. In the area of Corinth, this "invasion" was complete by 1211. The city of Corinth was at least partially occupied, and Byzantine building complexes were either destroyed or altered to fit Frankish purposes. The Franks, however, were to occupy Corinth for little more than one hundred years. By 1312 they had themselves been rousted by the Catalans.
In 1989 Charles K. Williams II began excavations in a previously unexplored area of Ancient Corinth, south of the new archaeological museum, where he uncovered intact deposits from the late Byzantine and Frankish periods, lying just beneath the present ground surface. Ten subsequent years of investigation revealed the remains of a group of Frankish buildings which include a chapel and hospice complex. Within this complex, buried in the reused narthex of an earlier Byzantine church were found the closely spaced burials of over 100 individuals of all ages, possibly patients of the nearby hospice, many of which showed evidence of chronic diseases.
In addition to the human burials, artifactual and architectural materials from the Frankish deposits, well preserved faunal materials (animal bones) were recovered in large quantities. The majority of these materials had been deposited in dug bothroi, abandoned wells and cisterns. During archaeological excavation, soil matrix from all such discrete contexts was dry screened and all faunal materials saved. The analysis of the resultant faunal assemblage gives a rich picture of Frankish period cuisine, as well as butchering and food preparation, herd management decisions, and manufacturing processes involving bone and horn.
From a small isolated well or cistern in the corner of a walled garden, possibly associated with private areas of the hospice, came a small assemblage of animal bone and table ware which appears to have been discarded directly from the table. This deposit affords a rare opportunity to reconstruct meat dishes presented and consumed at a single meal. The bones of lambs or kids roasted whole, pork roasts, individual lamb or goat chops, plus a number of birds were found. These bones indicate that both roasts and whole birds were cut at table, and individual meat cuts were being served.
In contrast, bothroi located to the southeast of the hospice complex, in an area which probably served as a covered market and stabling ground, contained bones indicative of primary and secondary butchery, and the consumption of lower quality meat cuts and boiled joints. In several wells and bothroi, scattered throughout this area, heavily chopped cattle bones and cattle, sheep and goat horn cores are evidence of industrial activities. Finally, at the top of several deposits, both within and outside the hospice complex, heavily eroded and weathered bones indicate a ground surface cleaning, perhaps hastily done either shortly before or after the Catalan takeover of Corinth.
Loca Sancta Imagery in Crusader Palestine: The Case of the Freiburg Leaf
Jaroslav Folda (University of North Carolina)
Interest in the iconography of place was remarkable on the part of the Crusaders and it was clearly stimulated by the importance associated with the sites under their control in Syria-Palestine during 12th and the 13th centuries. As earlier studies have shown, it is possible to find imagery of both loca sancta and loca profana in Crusader art in a variety of media. In coinage we have architectural imagery found on certain major royal issues, including the billon deniers of king Baldwin III with the "Tower of David," and of king Amaury I with the Anastasis rotunda of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, coins first issued in 1152-1153 and 1163, respectively. The church of the Holy Sepulchre also appears on pilgrim's souvenirs, in particular on an ampulla now in Berlin done in the 1150s. The representation of the church on this ampulla is significant because it represents the Crusader building as very recently rebuilt, with its campanile in place. In the 13th century, we have the images in a manuscript of the History of Outremer now in the Vatican Library, which was executed in Antioch probably in the 1260s. In a notable series of scenes pertaining to the First Crusade, the painter has included two historiated initials which render a "topographical portrait" of the actual site of Antioch.
To what extent can the Freiburg Leaf be considered as additional evidence for Loca Sancta imagery in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem? The Freiburg Leaf has received a great deal of attention since WWII when it has appeared in the several exhibitions, including "The Year 1200" (1970) and "The Glory of Byzantium" (1997) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Because it is so well known, many important scholars have commented on this leaf, including Ernst Kitzinger, Otto Demus, Kurt Weitzmann, and Robert Scheller, among several others. The Freiburg Leaf referred to contains two drawings: one above in silverpoint, one below in sepia and red ink. The image represented in the upper register is Christ speaking to Zachaeus in a sycamore tree, an incident taken from the Gospel of Luke 19: 1-6. The lower image depicts two mounted soldier saints: St. George at the left and St. Theodore at the right. In 1966, Kurt Weitzmann proposed that the artist of the Freiburg Leaf "travelled to the Holy Land, where, in the established Crusader ateliers, he must have been exposed to a great variety of copies from Byzantine models."
My paper will investigate the hypothesis that the artist of the Freiburg leaf came to the Holy Land in the 1190s and that his extant sketches are a very fragmentary record of some of the sites he visited and the images that he saw.
Sacred theft and sacred looting: Correlations between early medieval and Fourth Crusade furta sacra narratives.
David Perry (University of Minnesota)
Justifying the sack of Constantinople in 1204 required simultaneously admitting impropriety while claiming divine sanction for the western army's actions. Too much and too powerful was the criticism leveled at the Venetians' deeds for their apologists to deny any wrongdoing. Instead, ecclesiastical defenders took the early medieval genre of furta sacra narratives and warped it to apply to an entirely new set of circumstances. The action of furta sacra, in a long-established early medieval tradition, referred specifically to the deeds of individuals or small groups of people (usually monks) who stole relics from one church, and claimed that their divine approval signified by the success mitigated any wrongdoing. The hagiographic narratives of the Fourth Crusade, refer instead to the sacking of a city by an enormous army, not the furtive activity of a few men. Focusing on one eleventh-century (but based on a much earlier tradition) and one thirteenth-century text, this paper first describes the numerous correlations between the earlier and later documents, then addresses how certain thirteenth- century writers successfully took the events in Constantinople and depicted them as an act of 'sacred thievery.'
The two texts in question are the eleventh-century Translatio Sancti Marci and the thirteenth- century Translatio Sancti Simeon Prophete. The first relates the ninth-century smuggling of the evangelist's bones from Alexandria by two Venetian merchants. With their church, and hence the relics, threatened by the Islamic ruler of the city, Orthodox monks enabled the Venetians to rescue the saint from peril and bring him to Venice. In the second, a small group of soldiers on the Fourth Crusade, believing that the heretic ruler of Constantinople could not protect the city's sacred objects from the threatening Muslims, looted the bones of St. Simeon, and incidentally participated in the sack of the city. One can define the overall pattern of each text by stripping away surface narrative elements. In each case, secular Venetans traveled to a city only to find saints threatened by Muslims. The ruler of Alexandria potentially sought to destroy the Greek Church holding Saint Mark's relics, and apologists for the Fourth Crusade argued that the Byzantine emperors were too weak to resist the Muslims. Both texts describe the Venetians hesitating over whether they should abscond with the relics and fearing punishment upon their return to Venice. However, after receiving miraculous signs of approbation, they committed the theft. Through considerable peril, both sets of Venetians returned home to find absolution and praise for their deeds.
One need only consider the position of the church of San Marco in Venice to understand the importance of the evangelist's bones to the city. That importance partially answers why and how the writers of texts such as the Translatio Sancti Simeon were able to alter the early medieval genre to their subject matter. The role of relics in the Crusades as a motivating presence and a justification for violence also aided the defenders of the Fourth Crusade's deviation to Constantinople. By casting their actions as furta sacra, the saint's willingness to be moved demonstrated, according to the authors, the divine approval of Constantinople's fall. The apologists needed to change the subject matter to which this genre had traditionally applied, but could successfully do so only by staying within its traditional narrative boundaries. Thus, rather than protest condemnations of their activity, the apologists could accept papal (and other) rebukes without making restitutions.
SESSION IX: THE BYZANTINE MILITARY
Chair: George T. Dennis (The Catholic University of America)
Assimilation and Christianization in the Early Byzantine Army
John F. Shean (University of Michigan)
The introduction of barbarian troops, especially Germans, into the Roman armies of the fourth through sixth centuries was the result of the pressing need of the Roman government to find adequate resources of military manpower for its expanded military needs. This policy represents a significant moment in the history of Europe since it led to the permanent establishment of these peoples throughout Europe and gave it the ethnic and linguistic face which is familiar to us today. Similarly, the policy of recruiting and resettling foreign peoples within the borders of the eastern empire paved the way towards establishing the multi-ethnic composition of the Byzantine empire. There were also significant changes in the religious loyalties of the military. Starting with the reign of Constantine, all subsequent Roman emperors (with the exception of Julian, 361-63 CE) were Christians and actively promoted the faith as part of their military policy. As an example of this policy we have an incident dating from 376 CE in which a group of Germans, the Tervingi, were granted permission to cross south of the Danube river and accept Roman federate status. As part of this process of entering into Roman military service the barbarian leader, acting for his whole people, formally accepted conversion to Christianity. A similar policy was followed by subsequent emperors such that, by the late fourth century, Christianity had become so closely linked to the Roman identity that, for the barbarian soldier, becoming a Roman meant becoming a Christian. Thus, the religious policies of fourth century Christian emperors not only had consequences for the religious life of the German people, but they also helped to further cement the close identification of Christianity with Romanitas. The army became an instrument of assimilation into Roman culture, especially when Germans recruited from outside the empire were combined with those who were descendants of earlier settlers, which speeded their acculturation into Roman society.
Barbarian forces would continue to play a prominent role in Roman armies of the late fifth through early sixth centuries; as a precondition for this service Roman emperors would insist on conversion to Christianity, especially Justinian, who apparently believed that peoples of a similar faith would be more loyal to the empire. Conversion to Christianity was part of the process by which barbarians could be romanized and coaxed into living in peace with the Roman inhabitants of the empire. The very act of crossing the limes and settling down in Roman territory seemed to carry with it the abandonment of paganism and the acceptance of Christianity in order to become fully acceptable to the Roman people.
The Career of Marcellinus of Dalmatia
Michael Kulikowski (Smith College)
The career of Marcellinus of Dalmatia (d. 468) is an instructive case study in early Byzantine politics, demonstrating as it does the possibilities opened up by the extinction of the Theodosian dynasty in 455. Marcellinus probably began his public life in the usual military cursus and certainly ended his days in 468 as a patrician in the service of Anthemius. But for quite some time in the middle of his career he was a free agent in Illyricum and played a decisive role in political affairs without conforming to the structure of imperial office- holding which was the traditional legitimation of power in the late Roman world.
Standard accounts of Marcellinus date the start of his independence to the death of Aetius in 454, while at the same time giving him a normal military command in the 460s. The foundation of the traditional narrative is a passage of Procopius (Bell. 3.6.5-9) which is held to document Marcellinus' early career. The present piece will suggest that it does nothing of the sort, and that we must begin from other sources, closer in date to the lifetime of Marcellinus and more precise in detail, before trying to use the Procopian evidence. When we do this, we find that Marcellinus first emerges from obscurity only at the time of Majorian's execution in 461: his rebellion is one of several touched off by that event. His period of Dalmatian independence dates from that year until early 467, during which period he held no imperial office. The emperor Leo treated with Marcellinus on the same terms as he did with the Vandal king Gaiseric, as an autonomous leader fundamentally outside the imperial hierarchy. Despite this fact, Marcellinus was reabsorbed into the legitimate imperial political order at the very end of his life.
The career path that Marcellinus followed in the 460s would have been impossible even a decade earlier, and his ability to play a dual role as both insider and outsider is a testament to the novel difficulties that transformed the empire in the course of the fifth century. It is as a symptom of these changes that Mascellinus has his real historical significance, a significance which only becomes clear when we realize that Marcellinus' years as a public figure were both shorter and more irregular than is usually thought.
Sex, Swords, and Spirituality: Heroic Motifs in Digenis Akritis
E. Warren Perry, Jr. (The University of Memphis)
Although the Byzantine story of Basil, Digenis Akritis, is not as widely known in the canon of epic literature as many works which are contemporaneous to it, this medieval Greek tale contains battles, passion, allegiance to powers both mortal and beyond, and many other traits characteristic of better known epics. Digenis Akritis also serves purposes similar to those many other works in that it entertains, enlightens, and stimulates nationalistic sentiment. In short, it is an epic of great literary merit, but one that is not traditionally mentioned alongside the early Arthurian legends, or other European works of the tenth through thirteenth centuries.
The first part of this paper will discuss the literary and heroic aspects of the youthful hero, Basil, in terms of his heroic sway versus that of his contemporaries. An examination of the motifs at work in The Poem of the Cid, The Song of Roland, Chretien's Perceval, or, The Story of the Grail, and the Pearl poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight will yield many common denominators also at work in both the Grottaferrata and Escorial presentations of Digenis Akritis. This section will conclude with a brief analysis of heroic motifs such as the arming of the hero and the invoking of the name of God; both of these occur in the Byzantine epic, but are treated differently in the Western works.
The second part of this paper will describe the morality of the Byzantine hero. Basil's undertakings and his adherence/non-adherence to the Christian code of his world will be juxtaposed against the actions and codes of his Western counterparts. Such motifs as adultery and the treatment of women will be herein stressed.
The conclusion will affirm the Byzantine hero's proper place among his epic peers. The final comments will also address the death of the hero Basil and the hero's own attempt to place himself in the canon of heroes. These observations will focus on Basil's purpose in erecting the large allegorical mosaic in his palace on the Euphrates.
The Second Imperial Oration of Theodore Metochites and the Campaigns of Andronikos II in Asia Minor (1290-1293)
Dimiter G. Angelov (Harvard University)
The scholar and statesman Theodore Metochites (1270-1332) delivered two, still unpublished, imperial orations to Andronikos II (1282-1328) at the very beginning of his career in the imperial administration. The second imperial panegyric, which has been transmitted by Cod. Vind. phil. gr. 95 (containing the works of Theodore Metochites), ff. 145v -158r, deals exclusively with the campaigns of Andronikos II in Asia Minor, both before and after his accession as a sole emperor in 1282. In particular, it focuses on the policies of Andronikos II in Asia Minor during the period 1290-93, when the emperor resided and campaigned on the empire's eastern frontiers. This text offers a number of interesting insights into the policies of Andronikos II during his sojourn in Asia Minor (on which the narrative sources are mostly silent), their propagandist interpretation, and the role of rhetoric at the court of Andronikos II.
Metochites delivered the oration during the emperor's stay in Asia Minor and spoke as an eyewitness. He followed closely the other panegyrists of Andronikos II in the first half of his reign (Gregory of Cyprus, Nikephoros Choumnos, Nikolaos Lampenos, as well as his own first imperial oration) in magnifying the military successes and extent of involvement of Andronikos II in Asia Minor at the time of his co-rule with his father Michael VIII (1259-1282). The oration adds the new interpretation that the empire, already in the early 1290s, lies in ruins, and that foreign policy on two fronts (in Europe and in Asia) as once practiced by Michael VIII is no longer possible. Metochites described the current policy of Andronikos II as a purely defensive one, involving the construction of fortresses and other kinds of barriers along the entire course of the Sangarios river. In addition to praising Andronikos II, Metochites voiced several of his own arguments in favor of the policy of retrenchment and against the use of diplomacy. The articulation of arguments in support of a contemporary policy and within an encomiastic context was not an unique feature of Metochites' oration. Elements of advice and apology are detectable in other speeches during the reign of Andronikos II (by Gregory of Cyprus, Planoudes, the anonymous of Vat. gr. 112), a circumstance which suggests the function of imperial panegyric as a form of advice literature.
SESSION X: BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE
Chair: Ann Terry (Independent Scholar)
God's House in the Private House: Urban House Chapels in the Late Roman East
Kim Bowes (Princeton University)
No less than thirteen Theodosian Code edicts finger the house church as a refuge of heretics. Eusebius (Vit. Const., 3.65) claimed that worship in the home was prohibited by law. Yet Christian worship in the home clearly existed and persisted in Late Antiquity, even as it continued to provide fodder for everything from anti-heretical to pro-Nicene polemic. Scholars have long recognized the ambiguous nature of the texts pertaining to private Christian practice, although we still await a definitive study of the regional and temporal manifestations of this phenomenon in the Late Antique period. However, while the textual material has become an increasing object of scrutiny, the material evidence for worship in the private sphere has, until now, escaped any serious study. There exists no comprehensive examination of the material remains of chapels and churches constructed within, or associated with, private residences of Late Roman/Early Byzantine date. Such a study has been largely discouraged by the difficulty of distinguishing such churches from other kinds of secular spaces, such as triclinia, and the serious chronological problems surrounding both church and associated house.
This paper addresses the material evidence for private chapels constructed within the urban domes, and as such, forms part of a larger study on Christian worship in house and villa in the post-Constantinian period. Adopting a rigorous set of criteria for identifying potential home-churches, this paper will examine the architectural form, liturgical articulation and domestic topography of a small number of these 'chapels.' It will be suggested that while these churches were most often located in relatively inaccessible, `private' spaces in the home, their sophisticated plans and elaborate liturgical furnishings mimicked those of public basilicas, particularly, the local, liturgical idiosyncrasies of the house-chapel's respective city. However, it is not always clear that these miniature churches were ever intended to enact the complex liturgies they seemed designed to accommodate, but rather, that the appropriation of such devices as a tiny synthronon or an overly-large reliquary indicate a desire to 'own' the props, and thus the appearance of public liturgy.
The Integration of Christianity and Death: Burials at Churches and Churches in Cemeteries
Carolyn S. Snively (Gettysburg College)
In the Orthodox tradition, Christians were frequently interred near or even inside churches. This connection between Christian burial and ecclesiastical architecture now appears so strong that more than one 20th century archaeologist has used the presence of 5th or 6th century Christian graves as evidence for a church in the immediate vicinity.
Religion and death had not been closely associated in the pagan world, despite the promise of immortality made by various mystery religions. Hades and other deities of death or the underworld were respected and feared but rarely worshipped, and no priests of those deities presided at funerals. In so far as religious architecture was concerned, it was forbidden to bring corpses into the precinct of a temple for fear of pollution, and terminally ill patients were removed even from the sanctuary of Asklepios lest they die there. Architecture associated with graves consisted of the tomb itself or its enclosure and, occasionally in some regions, of dining areas, wells, and kitchens for commemorative meals possibly associated with family cult.
The triumph of Christianity had a major impact on the Roman world. Its promises of immortality and the resurrection of the body and, in particular, the development of the cult of the martyrs and veneration of their bones caused major changes in attitudes toward the dead and through time therefore in the methods and places of their burial. Numerous chronologies and models, varying according to region, have been proposed for this evolution of beliefs and practices concerning burial and its consequent association with churches.
In the southern Balkan peninsula, where martyria are few and much disputed, at least three models for the gradual integration of extramural churches and burials may be observed, as well as numerous examples that fit no obvious category. Model l is a church built in an already existing cemetery and incorporating pre-existing Christian tombs into it; burial continues in and/or around the church after its construction. Model 2 is a church built in a general cemetery area but not directly over or among already existing tombs; burials begin to take place in and/or around the church at the time of or soon after its construction and continue during the existence of the church. Model 3 consists of a large tomb with a church beside or above the tomb.
The territory of the Late Antique province(s) of Macedonia displays a number of Christian tombs and cemeteries as well as churches and shrines associated with burials. Monuments such as the Cemetery Basilica at Stobi, the Holy Fifteen at Strumica, Basilica D at Herakleja Lynkestis, the Extra Muros Basilica at Philippi, the monumental tombs at Evropos (nome of Kilkis), Basilica B at Argos Orestikon (Diocletianoupolis?) near Kastoria, and the Third September Street church in Thessaloniki illustrate the models described above and provide information about certain stages in the evolution of Christian burial customs and beliefs in this region.
Re-evaluating the Principles of Measure at Hagioi Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople
Theresa Flanigan (Institute of Fine Arts, NY)
It has been proposed that Justinian's palace church, dedicated to Hagioi Sergius and Bacchus, may have served as a testing ground for design principles and inventions later used in the larger and more spatially complex church of Hagia Sophia. Even if the church of Hagioi Sergius and Bacchus did not serve as the direct model for Hagia Sophia, a study of the measurements used in the smaller church may shed light on the principles of measure and construction used during the Justinianic period at Hagia Sophia and in his other foundations.
In 1942, Paul Underwood (Cahiers Archeologique, 3, 1942, 64-74) analyzed the major dimensions of the ground plan of the central octagon of Hagioi Sergius and Bacchus and concluded that a 10-Byzantine foot unit was the basic module of measurement used in the layout of the church. My reexamination of not just the major, but also the minor dimensions of the central space of the church reveals that, contrary to Underwood's conclusion, there are several dimensions that are not divisible by 10. In fact, divisions and multiples of a smaller module, namely a 5-Byzantine foot unit, are discernable throughout the ground plan. My conclusion that a 5-Byzantine foot module was the basic unit of measure for the design of Hagioi Sergius and Bacchus is supported by an analysis of the vertical dimensions of the central space.
In his monograph on the church of Hagia Sophia, Roland Mainstone (1988) emphasizes the importance of the 15-Byzantine foot module at Hagia Sophia. A comparison between my analysis of the measurements used in Sergius and Bacchus and Mainstone's analysis of the dimensions of Hagia Sophia demonstrates that, contrary to his proposal, the 5-Byzantine foot unit also governed the design of Justinian's great church.
In this paper I will also examine the significance of the use of a 5-Byzantine foot module in architectural practice. I am specifically interested in how the use of such a small module in the construction of a large structure provides clues as to the method by which the buildings design was translated by the builders and actually laid out on the site.
The Architectural Transformation of Laura in Middle and Late Byzantium
Svetlana Popovic (Greenbelt)
In this paper I shall demonstrate how the laura community was transformed in terms of its regulation, monastic habits and building program within the designated period. The formation of the laura-type of monastic community dates from the early days of monasticism in fourth-century Egypt and Palestine. The best known laura community was the celebrated Great Laura of St. Sabas in the Judean Desert. The community was organized as a number of scattered individual cells in which anchorites lived and gathered only on Saturdays and Sundays within the laura core for communal prayer and meal. The meeting space at the center of the community therefore had a church, and some additional buildings. It is not certain whether the core of the laura included a refectory, since archaeological excavations did not reveal one. According to the adopted way of life, the laura combined both practices of anchoritic and limited coenobitic monasticism. A similar system of cell dwellers developed about the sixth century in Syrian monastic environment, and also in Asia Minor (Armenia, Paphlagonia, Pontus, etc). Before the tenth century on Mount Latros, located northeast of Miletos, a vast monastic colony of cell dwellers developed. In the early tenth century the prominent monk Paul of Latros established there a community known as the laura of Stylos. This monastic center, although established as a laura, introduced some new features in terms of the adopted life and architectural planning. From the Life of Paul we learn that he regulated the life in his community by dividing the monks into coenobites and anchorites, which led to the formation of a combined settlement. It consisted of an enclosed complex which had at its west side the group of buildings - a church, vast refectory, storage chambers, and probably a residential building - while the individual cells were scattered within the laura enclosure. This led to the formation of the monastic confederation in the eleventh century with the protos as its head. Although the life was combined (anchoretic and coenobitic) in the Laura of Stylos, the architectural plan reflects the loose combination of structures which lacked a clear division in terms of the building program and adopted way of life. By the end of the tenth century at Mount Athos, the laura community of Athanasios of Athos was transformed into a spatial structure which had an architecturally codified coenobitic core (katholikon placed centrally, refectory located to the western side of the church and various buildings attached to the encircling wall), and a limited number of lavriotic cells located outside the core within the laura proper. This model was further transformed in the fourteenth century at Meteora in Thessaly. A laura community in Meteora was formed as a group of individual coenobia located on the tops of solitary rocks, each of which was considered as a kellion of the laura of Stagoi, the core of which was at the monastery of Doupiani.
SESSION XI: THE DIFFUSION OF BYZANTINE INFLUENCE
Chair: Dorothy Abrahamse (California State University, Long Beach)
Sinai Pilgrimage and Ascetic Romance in Late Antiquity
Daniel Caner (University of Connecticut)
Though less studied than Jerusalem and other Holy Land sites, Mount Sinai offered its own distinct attractions and challenges to pilgrimage and the religious imagination of late antiquity (c. 350-600). 1 argue that Mount Sinai especially attracted ascetic pilgrims because of its associations with Moses, Elijah, and the wilderness and because of a belief in God's continuing presence there. I then examine the challenge posed to that belief by the presence of pagan bedouins and their attacks on pilgrims and monks living on the Sinai. I conclude by suggesting that this challenge was addressed not only in practical terms by Justinian's fortification of Sinai, but also in imaginative terms by a late Roman romance that deals with the apparent failure of divine Providence to act against pagan, barbarian power on the Sinai.
Descriptions of Sinai from the late fourth to the late sixth centuries (Egeria, Sulpicius, Theodoret, Procopius, Antoninus of Placentia) focus mainly on the peaks where Moses and Elijah received revelations, and on the rigorous asceticism of those who settled at its base. The site's appeal for ascetic pilgrims undoubtedly derived from its historic connection to these two prototypes of prophetic revelation and wilderness withdrawal. But Theodoret also indicates some believed that the experience of these prophets on Mount Sinai could be attained by pilgrims too. Such expectations were encouraged by belief that God's raw powers continued to be manifest on the mountain's peak, a belief promoted and perhaps safeguarded by a rule (attested from the fourth century on) that no one could pass a night there. For late antique pilgrims, Mount Sinai offered a sense of close exposure to God's revelatory power.
Mount Sinai also exposed Christians to the menace of pagan nomads. By the sixth century attacks on Sinai monastic settlements had created a local martyr tradition, and their continuing threat to the ascetic colonizers and pilgrims there undoubtedly gave Justinian cause to fortify the site. The question arises how contemporary imagination reconciled belief in God's presence at the site with the active presence of the pagan, barbarian threat.
The same question is raised at the beginning of an ascetic romance entitled the Narrations or Descriptions of the Slaughter of the Monks of Sinai. Ascribed to Nilus of Ancyra, though probably written sometime between the late fifth and late sixth centuries, it tells how a father and son who renounced the world and moved to Sinai were soon separated by a barbarian attack that killed most of the monks who lived there. Why had God failed to reveal himself and defend those dedicated to him, as in the past? The answer is suggested when father and son are finally reunited by God because both had devoted themselves during their separation to strenuous penance: the burden of divine Providence is thus shifted from God on the Sinai to the asceticism of the Christians who live there. Interesting in literary terms for its development of the genre, this romance also reflects concerns of late Roman experience on the Sinai.
The Letters of Libanius: A Window on the Late Antique Province of Phoenicia
Linda Jones Hall (St. Mary's College of Maryland)
The letters of Libanius have long been studied for the information they provide about life in Antioch and the province of Syria (Liebschuetz, Antioch; Petit, Libanius el la vie municipale d Antioche). However, a close study of the orator's epistles reveals a deep, even intrusive, interest in the affairs of the province of Phoenicia. As Libanius corresponded for over three decades (358- 392 A.D.) with various governors of the province, one finds that his interest derives from the fact that he drew half his income from Phoenicia, as confirmed in his letter to Julianus 15 (Ep. 740 = Norman [1992], Letter 89). Libanius flaunts his familiarity with the high officials of the province thus: "The fairest spot in all the world is ennobled by the glories of Phoenicia, since its governor is the best of men, and the next best is his assessor" (Ep. 1221 = Norman [1992], Letter 121). This detailed correspondence not only clarifies many aspects of the public administration of Phoenicia but also it reveals multiple aspects of private life in the Phoenician cities and countryside.
The letters also detail the conflicts between pagans and Christians over the re-use and possible restoration of ex-appropriated buildings (Ep. 1364 = Norman [1992], Letter 105). Libanius even feels comfortable in demanding that the Phoenician governors should comply with such personal requests as obtaining huntsmen and wild animals for shows in Antioch (Ep. 1400 = Norman [1992] Letter 108; Ep. 217 = Norman [1992], Letter 71). Libanius provides insights into the law cases being tried before the governor when he describes a famous case of rape by a tax-collector which occurred in "Phoenicia, the most civilized region of all, under the rule of law, of appointed governors, and of an emperor [Constantius] who spends his life in arms so that all violence should disappear" (Ep. 77 = Norman [1992], Letter 77).
A careful study of Libanius' letters allows us to analyze the transition from Christian to pagan to Christian dominance in the province which was governed from Tyre. Furthermore, we can learn much about the conduct of various legal cases in the governor's court and about the training of lawyers who studied at Berytus. We can gauge the relative ease with which passengers made the voyage from Antioch to Berytus and Tyre, or vice-versa. There is evidence for measuring the term of office of the governors and the nature of their administrative duties.
Libanius provides us with the most reliable roster of the names of known governors. Although Jean-Paul Rey-Coquais suggested in his 1978 IRS article on Roman Syria that a study of Phoenician governors needed to be carried out, little has been done, other than the careful biographical sketches of the governors by the compilers of the PRLE who note repeatedly that Libanius remains our best source for our knowledge of Phoenicia, his neighbor to the south.
Looking towards Constantinople: Byzantium in Georgian Historical Literature
Stephen H. Rapp Jr. (Georgia State University, Atlanta)
What did the medieval Georgians know about the Byzantine Empire, when, and why? Despite the fact that medieval Georgian hagiographers intimately tied the ca. 337 conversion of Mihran (Mirian), the king of the eastern Georgian realm of K'art'li (Gk. Iberia), to Byzantium and especially Constantine "the Great", Georgia had looked historically not to the west but rather to the east, particularly to the Persian commonwealth. Karfknmkjli's Christianization did stimulate contacts with Byzantium. Nevertheless, in the two oldest Georgian historical works deriving from around the year 800 (and which are based upon considerably earlier oral traditions), Byzantium is seldom encountered: information about it is limited to the names of a few emperors and very little else. Only a brief third, early source attributed to Ps. Juansher and written just before 813 begins to show signs of a meaningful familiarity with Byzantium. Ps.Juansher was the first Georgian historian to be a near-contemporary of the events he describes; by his time, Byzantium had forced its way upon the Caucasian stage. What is significant is that the earliest indigenous histories did not embed Georgia's remote past within a Byzantine/Roman framework, and it is only beginning in the 7th and 8th centuries that the Georgians perceived their history as intersecting with that of the Byzantines.
This inaugural age of Georgian historical writing came to an abrupt end in or just before 813. The production of local histories was revived under the sponsorship of the Bagratid dynasty in the 11th century. In these Bagratid-era works, Byzantium is the major imperial actor and information about it is generally reliable. Perhaps even more revealing is the special Byzantine connection embraced in these histories by the Bagratid royal dynasty: their royal image is clearly based upon Byzantine models. The Byzantine trappings (not always understood correctly) applied to the Georgian Bagratids gave way in the next century to a Georgian proclamation of dynastic equality with the Byzantines.
I have demonstrated elsewhere that while royal conversion in the 4th century did not entail membership in the Byzantine commonwealth, it did prepare the ground for Georgia's cultural reorientation from the Persian world in the ensuing centuries. The first hints of large-scale elite reorientation from Persia to Byzantium date from the 7th century. One event that seems to have been crucial in this shift is Heraclius' appearance in the Georgian lands in the late 620s, an incident so significant that three local historians recorded it. Heraclius' adventure coincided with the theological debates enveloping the K'art'velians and their Armenian neighbors. The K'art'velians ultimately favored the decisions of Chalcedon, in part to secure a political alliance with Constantinople against the insurgent Zoroastrian Persians. Finally, in 813 a Georgianized branch of the Bagratid dynasty seized control of political power in eastern Georgia. From the start, these Bagratids had the firm support of the Byzantine emperors. What is more, these Bagratids resided with numerous K'art'velian exiles in the neo-K'art'li they had established in the southwestern Georgian domains directly bordering upon Byzantine territory. The ascension of the Bagratids in 813 occurred just a few years after the appearance of the oldest Georgian histories.
I shall argue that the silence about Byzantium in the two ca. 800 texts addressing Georgia's remote past reflect the fact that, before the 9th century, the Georgians knew very little about their Byzantine Christian neighbors. Ps.-juansher's account, however, is conclusive proof that a close - though not always friendly -relationship between the two was being cultivated at the very time that the Bagratids were coming to power.
A Greek-Arabic Lexicon of the 14th Century and Greek Learning in Muslim Lands
Maria Mavroudi
The paper will focus on MS Sinaiticus gr. 1338 (14th century), which contains a Greek-Arabic lexicon. The lexicon is based on a Greek to Greek dictionary, the text of which seems to have been copied first, leaving a blank space after each line where the Arabic translation of the entries was added later. Both the Greek and the Arabic entries are written by a clear and exercized hand. Evidence from the manuscript suggests that it was used in order to teach Greek to an arabophone. By examining the level of education reflected in the Greek entries, the paper will draw some conclusions regarding the style of Greek (high, middle or low) that was deemed desirable to learn among the Christian flock under Muslim control during the Late Byzantine period. MS Sinaiticus gr. 1338 will further be discussed in relation with MS Scorialensis arab. 611 of the 13th-14th
century, which also contains a Greek-Arabic dictionary. Evidence from additional bilingual MSS will be introduced in order to support the thesis that knowledge of Greek among Christians in Muslim lands never disappeared, even long after the end of Byzantine political presence in the Middle East. Such a conclusion is of particular importance, given that contemporary scholarship has often interpreted the birth of an original Christian literature in Arabic in the 9th century and the end of the translation movement from Greek into Arabic (9th-10th centuries) as indicative that the Greek language was abandoned among Arab Christians and that its cultural prestige faded among Muslims.
SESSION XII: BYZANTINE LAW
Chair: John Duffy (Harvard University)
Personal Privilege, Imperial Beneficence, and the adnotatio in the Early Byzantine Empire
Ralph W. Mathisen (University of South Carolina)
In the early Byzantine period, from the fourth through the sixth centuries, legal enactments were, issued in forms known variously as edicts, orationes, and adlocutiones (forms of leges generales); mandata or epistulae (administrative instructions); rescripta, subscriptiones, or epistulae (responses to requests); and decreta, sententiae, opiniones, or interlocutiones (legal rulings). Although some of these documents were initiated by the emperor himself, most resulted from outside stimuli, such as the consuttationes, relationes, or suggestiones of imperial officials. Until 295, moreover, private persons had the right to submit preces and petitiones directly to the emperor, and to receive a rescriptum personally addressed to them. Subsequently, however, rescripts were addressed to imperial officials, and petitions came from recognized bodies (corpora, provinciae, civitates, curiae) and, as a result, private citizens lost a crucial means of direct contact with the emperors.
Many requests addressed to the emperors asked for exemptions, special exceptions, or forms of extraordinary personal privilege which often were contrary to existing legislation or to standard administrative procedures. On occasion, the granting of such requests resulted in pronouncements that contravened past legislation. As a result, there was a steady stream of imperial legislation inveighing against the issuance of these kinds of special grants.
I will argue in this paper that in some cases "rules were meant to be broken," and that there was a procedure for circumventing established "policies and procedures" by means of a special authorization, the adnotatio, granted only by the emperor himself. The adnotatio has been little studied and its function never has been convincingly defined. It was different from all other kinds of legal documents issued by the emperor in that it was a purely administrative instrument, and never was used as a method, direct or indirect, of issuing legislation. The other kinds of imperial pronouncements were incorporated, in various forms, into the Theodosian and Justinianic Codes; no adnotatio ever was.
The adnotatio granted a special, one-time, favor to a specific individual. It was invalid if the exception violated any rule other than that for which it was being issued. It was used, for example, to issue pardons to convicted criminals; to alienate parcels of imperial property; to provide exceptions relating to family law (as in marriage and adoption); to authorize the hiring of bureaucrats and to grant them ranks and promotions above those allowed by their seniority; and to give exemptions from taxes and munera. In most cases, the adnotatio offered the only means by which such exceptions could be obtained. And in all cases, it bestowed a favor (beneficium) from the emperor. As such, it provided a mechanism for cementing a personal tie between emperors and generally non-elite subjects without going through too many of the normal bureaucratic channels. Consequently, in the fifth and sixth centuries the adnotatio assimilated to itself some of the aspects of the pre-Constantinian rescript, and became the only means whereby citizens of non-senatorial status could have direct contact with the emperor, and personally benefit from his favor.
The Problem of Jettison in the Islamic and Rhodian Sea Laws
Hassan Khalilieh (University of Haifa & Dumbarton Oaks)
Muslim and Byzantine lawyers grappled with the issue of when it was allowable to throw cargo overboard in an emergency. Storms, piracy, and enemy attacks could all necessitate the jettisoning of cargo. In stormy weather, the sea might become unduly rough - and the crew might throw cargo overboard so as to make the ship easier to control. A sinking ship, too, might be salvaged by jettisoning cargo, thereby making the ship lighter and more maneuverable. In regions where piracy was prevalent, getting rid of valuable cargo might make the ship a less tempting target for thieves. In war zones, a ship without cargo also represented a poor target, inasmuch as it would not provide the enemy with spoils of war. And in both cases, a lighter and more maneuverable ship stood a better chance of escaping from its adversaries than did a heavily laden vessel.
The present paper examines the various solutions proposed by Muslim and Byzantine jurists to the problems arising from jettison. Our analysis will focus on three basic points: the rules of jettison, the distribution of losses, and the type of jetsam (jettisoned cargo) included within the category of general average. Put differently, how was the decision reached to jettison all or part of the cargo, and who did the actual throwing? How were calculations made to assess losses and compensation, and which goods were taken into account? And, who-among passengers, owners of goods, and crew-was required to pay compensation? Most importantly, we will attempt to investigate the development of the maritime laws of jettison in the Mediterranean region by comparing the Islamic regulations with their Byzantine counterparts and looking for the similarities and differences between both collections.
Complete Authority and Perfect Free Will: Formulas of possession and volition in tenth to twelfth-century Acts of Athos
Leonora Neville (The Catholic University of America)
Deeds of sale, acts of exchange, and a variety of agreements preserved in the Acts of Athos frequently contain repetitive formulaic phrases explaining the completeness of the authority the new owner will enjoy over the property in question and the completeness of the sellers' freewill in yielding the land. Georgia donated her property and ceded her inheritance rights "voluntarily, without any trickery, fear, violence, compulsion, difficult circumstances, robbery, baiting, extortion, joking or womanly simplicity" (Laura #1). George and Peter sold their land to Theoktistos for him "to have and to possess with power and authority, your own and without others, undisturbed and unhindered, to sell, to give, to plant vineyards, to bequeath to heirs and simply to manage the matters of the land unhindered as you want and will wish" (Esphigmenou 1). Similar phrases can be found in nearly every act of sale. Although at first glance these may appear to be nothing more than exaggerated Byzantine rhetoric, examining these formulas in the context of the specific agreements can help us to understand Byzantine conceptions of ownership, authority and freedom.
The formal continuity of the Roman legal tradition in Byzantium should not lead us to be less attuned to peculiarly Byzantine constructions of ownership and volition, and with them, personal freedom. There is enough uniformity among the statements of volition and possession to recognize them as standard formulas considered necessary for the legality of documents. That they are formulaic does not mean that they were unimportant or less meaningful. Rather these repetitive, contextual descriptions of volition and possession were necessary to strengthen the binding legal power of the agreement.
Both the phrasing of the formulae themselves and a study of their use in the context of the specific terms of individual agreements, suggest that simple categorical terms of ownership and volition were not sufficient. Simply paying for land did not simply make one its "owner": the text must describe the nature and extent of one's possession, lordship, authority and rights of determination regarding the land. This is because ownership in this period did not automatically imply a consistent definition of possession, authority and rights of determination. The same acts provide us with ample examples of limitations and restrictions placed on a new owner's authority and rights over land. The long descriptive definitions of ownership are a response to the lack of a precise and consistently applicable legal definition of ownership.
The same limitations on an owner's authority form part of the impetus behind the elaborate statements of volition. Owners' restricted authority made it more difficult for their acts of self- determination to be legally binding, leading to more elaborate statements of intention.
This essay examines formulaic statements of possession and volition in tenth to twelfth-century Athonite documents to add to our understanding of middle Byzantine conceptions of authority and freedom.
Menstruation: A Problem in Late Byzantine Canon Law
Patrick Viscuso (Chantilly, VA)
Religious regulations are often concerned with conditions governing participation in sacred rituals and actions. Much previous scholarship has addressed sacred rituals and menstruation, but has overlooked the rich sources of Byzantine legal texts. This study will deal with menstruation as a problem of ritual defilement in late Byzantine canon law. The canonical sources examined will encompass commentaries, legal synopses, reference handbooks, and ecclesiastical responses. Representative authors will include Theodore Balsamon, John Zonaras, Alexios Aristenos, loasaph of Ephesos, and Matthew Blastares.
This study will present the framework of canonical legislation and opinion used in late Byzantine sources to deal with the problem of impurity and ritual defilement associated with menstruation. Among the topics covered, this study will systematically survey church laws and canonical views restricting women's participation in the Eucharist, ordination to major orders, and entrance into church buildings. The legal status and social implications of nocturnal emissions for men will be set in contrast.
It will be argued that late Byzantine legal opinion, particularly canonical commentaries, distinguished two main types of ritual defilement, the first caused by a state of impurity resulting from the intention of the subject and the second through contact with an object or subject regarded as impure by nature. It will be shown that menstruating women were viewed as impure by nature as a result of the corruption of blood and Levitical influence when considered in relation to sacred space, public worship, and reception of sacred objects. These laws and views will be set into the context of the dialectic of the theological and social construction of women.
The consequences resulting from the late Byzantine resolution of problems associated with women's impurity will be discussed. Conclusions will be reached regarding the social ordering of individuals and the establishment of hierarchical relationships. The implications of this study go far beyond the narrow scope of canon law itself to shed light on the broader understanding of sexuality, women, clergy, and views of the sacred in Byzantine society.
SESSION XIII: PIONEERS OF BYZANTINE STUDIES IN AMERICA VI Chair: John W. Barker (University of Wisconsin)
Ernst Kantorowicz in America
David H. Wright (University of California at Berkeley)
Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz was born in 1895 in Posen, Prussia, into a wealthy and entirely secular Jewish German family. He had an English governess as a child and attended the best local Gymnasium. Completing the Abitur in 1913 he went to Hamburg for an informal apprenticeship in finance but upon the outbreak of hostilities he volunteered for the field artillery, was wounded at Verdun in 1916, recovered, and was sent to serve in a German unit in Turkey. In November 1918 he returned to Posen to defend the German community against the Poles and later went to Berlin to fight against the Sparticists. Next he enrolled in economics at Munich, where he fought against the local Soviet and was wounded again.
In the fall of 1919 he began to study public administration in Heidelberg, completing his dissertation in 1921 on the organization of Islamic craft guilds. But in Heidelberg he fell under the sway of the poet Stefan George, became a member of his inner circle, and devoted himself to the life of a gentleman aesthete, based in Heidelberg but traveling widely, particularly in Italy. Recognizing his natural elegance, George dubbed him il cavaliere. At George's urging he produced his masterly Friedrich der Zweite in 1927, a work renowned as a brilliant historical synthesis but criticized for its high-flown rhetoric and lack of documentation; as an answer he published in 1931 a second volume with 252 pages of notes and 84 pages of supplementary material.
He was appointed Honorary Professor of Medieval History at Frankfurt in 1930, Ordinarius in 1932, and he devoted himself to teaching. With the Nazi advent in 1933, as a war veteran at first he was permitted to retain his chair, but he took leave to spend a term at Oxford. In 1934 he refused to swear allegiance to Hitler but was allowed to assume emeritus status (at the age of 39) and returned to the life of a Privatgelehrter, now based in Berlin. In 1938 his friend C. M. Bowra persuaded him to emigrate, temporarily to Oxford, then to America.
In 1939 he found a temporary position teaching English constitutional history at Berkeley, which was prolonged in various forms until he was appointed Professor of Medieval History in 1945. He gave formal course lectures, always written out, but his graduate seminars were famous for their informality, meeting in the evening at his home, accompanied by wine. In June 1949 the Berkeley faculty learned that they must sign a new notarized non-communist oath before they could receive another pay check; at the end of the ensuing controversy, which almost destroyed the University, in 1950 Kantorowicz and 30 others, after a heroic defense of academic freedom, refused to sign and were dismissed. In this emergency he was offered a term at Dumbarton Oaks and later was appointed Professor of History at the Institute for Advanced Study.
The change in his scholarship often associated with his coming to America actually began with his withdrawal from Frankfurt. The George Kreis broke up in 1933 when George spoke out against the Nazis, went into exile in Switzerland and soon died. At that point Kantorowicz had published nothing of substance beyond Friedrich der Zweite, but now, working particularly at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Berlin, he pursued the best standards of that institution, dropping his former elitist pose and rhetoric. In Berkeley he was a key member of the Colloquium Orientologicum, a formidable group of scholars, most of them also European exiles, who gave papers on topics in ancient, medieval, and oriental history. In Princeton he found himself in a similar group of scholars, and Erwin Panofsky became one of his closest friends. Stimulated in this way, his writing became ever more ingenious and multi-disciplinary in the best German tradition.
His experience of America affected him in other ways. Teaching at Berkeley must have been a major part of it and those few students who finished their degrees with him became some of his closest friends. One of them, Ralph Giesey, reports that Kantorowicz regularly voted for the Democrats and that in August 1963 he said that if only his health would permit it he wanted to go to Washington to join Martin Luther King's march. He died a week later.
Oliver Strunk and Byzantine Musicology in America
Kenneth Levy (Princeton University)
Oliver Strunk (Ithaca, NY, 1901- Rome, Italy, 1980) was the founding father of Byzantine musical studies in America, and one of the patriarchs of that discipline worldwide. He was the son of Cornell's English scholar William Strunk (author of The Elements of Style). But Oliver was a rebel who hoped to be a composer; he played piano in silent-movie houses; he never bothered to earn a university degree. That seemed to rule out a traditional academic career. But his intellectual distinction prevailed. By his early thirties he was the chief of the Music Division at the Library of Congress. From there his path led, at thirty-five, to a trial appointment in musicology at Princeton, where he remained for a full thirty-year career.
His engagement with Byzantium came almost by accident. Among his new Princeton colleagues were Kurt Weitzmann and Albert M. Friend, both distinguished art historians; they showed him a Mount Athos hymnary that quite extraordinarily was supplied with illuminations as well as musical notation. At the time, Oliver had no Greek, but he was fascinated by the problems of the notation. Sherlock-Holmes-like, he quickly penetrated them as no one had before. More than any other scholar, he provided the transcription of the Byzantine notation with a solid scientific-theoretical basis. From then on, his published work was almost exclusively in Byzantine music. He became a legendary teacher. Most of that teaching was in matters more readily accessible to his many awe-struck graduate students (among others: the medieval Latin West; Renaissance Italy; Baroque opera; Haydn and Mozart; Verdi). There was nothing he seemed not to know. But his primary commitment was to the greatest of challenges--the sacred music of the Byzantine Empire.
Stewart Irvin Oost and the'Chicago School'
Lawrence A. Tritle (Loyola Marymount University)
Mention 'Chicago School' and one usually thinks of Milton Friedman and economics. In the early 1970s, however, 'Chicago School' also referred to ancient history, particularly its expansion into the world of late antiquity, when the Roman world of Caesar and Scaevola yielded to that of Constantine and Eusebius. This program was led by Stewart Irvin Oost (1921-1981), professor of history at the University of Chicago, who, with his colleague in Byzantine studies, W. E. Kaegi, directed the research of half a dozen Ph.D. students into the world of Late Rome.
Oost's training was in both Greek and Roman history under the direction of J. A. O. Larsen and his ideas on history and historiography were Rankean in nature, reflecting a tradition that itself reached back to Ranke. When Oost took up his position at Chicago (1959), he continued his investigations into Roman history which had begun with his doctoral thesis then book, Roman Policy in Epirus and Acarnania in the Age of the Roman Conquest of Greece (1954). At this time most Roman history courses in the US concluded with the Antonines and usually wrapped things up with an omnibus lecture on "The Fall of Rome" and barbarian invasions. Oost departed from this view and ventured into new territory and topics and pushed back the intellectual borders of Romanitas. He inquired anew on old opinions regarding the relationships between barbarian warlords and Roman emperors ("D. N. Libius Severus P. F. Aug.," CP 75 [19701:228-40) and examined closely the relationships between the recently arriving Germanic peoples in the Empire and the Romans. His 1968 study, Galla Placidia Augusta exemplifies this, as do the contributions of his students: F. M. Clover on the Vandals, K. Holum on the Theodosian empresses, R. Edbrooke on Constantins and Constantine, and B. Twyman and D. Novak on the late Roman aristocracy. Here Oost's techniques of mentoring and directing his students stands out, as well as his own interests in a wider definition of Rome.
Georges Florovsky in America
John V. A. Fine (University of Michigan)
This paper will discuss the American career of Father Georges Florovsky (1893-1979) and will focus on his years at St. Vladimir's seminary and Harvard University. After briefly summarizing his difficulties with the Russian Church at St. Vladimir's and Harvard University's Arts and Sciences' cold reception of him from the time he joined the faculty at the Harvard Divinity School, I shall briefly examine major aspects of his scholarship on Church History (in particular Byzantine, but also noting his work on Russia's). Florovsky's knowledge of the Church Fathers was unsurpassed in the twentieth century, and he wrote a multi-volume work on the Fathers. He also was fascinated by, but also an opponent of, Origen. And his work on Origen's impact on the subsequent Church deserves attention. He completely changed academic views on the fourth-century Egyptian monks known as "Anthropomorphites," by showing that these monks did not anthropomorphize the Father (as Cassian, wanting to depict them as heretics, claimed) but in fact focused on the human side of the Son as opposed to Origen's emphasis on the Spiritual Son in all His glory at the right hand of the Father. As Florovsky said, it is wrong to follow Cassian and other intellectuals, who wrote the surviving sources and depict this dispute as one between intellectuals who understood the faith and illiterate yokel monks who did not. After all, he explained, the Orthodox faith did not move beyond the historical Jesus as Origen called on mature Christians to do, but the religion combined a God who was manifest in the flesh with a Christ received in all His spiritual glory. The issue was not learning against ignorance, but Origenist Platonism against what Florovsky calls "Evangelical Realism." Moreover, he showed that some/ many iconoclasts were not following Eastern (non-Greek) beliefs; but that there was a strong Origenist argument, advanced by certain iconoclasts, against icons. Thus that movement also had support emerging from a Christian and Greek tradition. As to Russia, and lacking any interest in popular traditions, Florovsky, to the dismay of many Russians, argued that prior to the nineteenth century, the Russians made no contributions whatsoever to Orthodox theology. I shall devote the last, and major, part of my paper, as is the focus of the excellent series created by our colleague John Barker on founders of US Byzantine studies, by describing my own experiences (eye-opening and often amusing) in working with him as an undergraduate (taking a seminar, lecture course, and having him as the mentor for my senior thesis).
SESSION XIV: LATE BYZANTINE LITERATURE
Chair: Timothy S. Miller (Salisbury State University)
The Author's Ego in Late Byzantine Letters
Franz Tinnefeld (Universitat Miinchen)
Byzantine letters have a bad reputation as sources of information on the individual thinking and feeling of their authors. They seem to be no more than artificial products of stylistic subtlety, mixed up with rhetorical and epistolographical topoi. It is true that we have lots of those boring documents in Byzantine literature, which are hardly worthwhile to be read, but on the other hand there are no less letters or at least parts of letters which convey real information. Their value as a source for everyday life has been shown by other scholars as, for instance, by Apostolos Karpozelos. But Byzantine letters also allow us to get an insight into their author's interior and upon his or her character, feelings and convictions.
In my paper I will try to show the value of letters as sources for our knowledge of their authors' individuality by examples from the fourteenth century, especially from greater corpora of letters as the ones of Manuel Gabalas and Demetrios Kydones, but also from some letters of a woman, Eirene Eulogia Choumnaina.
In the following I am giving a preliminary survey on various expressions of personal feelings in late Byzantine letters. I distinguish feelings and reactions concerning the own person and those concerning other persons, and in both cases the positive and the negative aspect.
Concerning the own person we find in letters the expression of the following positive feelings: joy in various situations, e.g. for having been invited to take part in hunting or for being retired and free of duties, pride of one's erudition, interest or pleasure in books or texts, love of one's native country, and longing or enthusiasm for far off places, towns or countries. As negative feelings can be mentioned: Suffering from every day's work and surroundings, from ache, disease and insomnia or from loneliness, the experience of the own moral shortcoming, the reminiscence of unpleasant or dangerous experiences, and concern for one's hometown or native country.
As for feelings and actions concerning other people the following positive aspects can be listed: Love and concern for close relatives and friends or mourning for their death, concern or comfort for friends in painful situations, intercession for other persons, advice, admonition, amicable criticism, joy at presents from friends, particularly texts, written by themselves, because of their beautiful style, reverence or enthusiastic admiration of respectable persons, arguing with those persons about differing opinions, gratitude for their appreciation, search for spiritual comfort, and finally, well-meant joking about or with friends.
Negative feelings and reactions against other persons are, for instance, defence against criticism, defamation or calumny, suffering from intrigues, painful experiences of criticism, rejection or neglect by respected persons, close friends or relatives, polemics against unacceptable opinions or doctrines of others or against negative behaviour of colleagues or other persons.
By the evidence given it will be demonstrated that Byzantine letters in many cases are not only stylistic exercises and accumulations of commonplaces, but valuable documents for the psychology of homines Byzantini.
The Epigrams of Manuel Philes (c.1270-1330): Patronage and Monumental Forms in the Late Byzantine Funerary Monument
Sarah T. Brooks, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
The more than sixty funerary epigrams penned by Manuel Philes and preserved in his collected writings (Miller 1866; Martini 1900) are an unexplored source of evidence for the commissioning and decoration of Late Byzantine arcosolium tombs. Philes served an elite imperial and aristocratic clientele residing in Constantinople and in the empire's other urban centers; his career roughly spanned the first thirty years of the fourteenth century, an especially active period of church building and restoration. Funerary chapels and the burial monuments they housed predominate in this building activity and it is not surprising that a significant number of Philes' epigrams are associated with tombs.
This paper begins with a survey of extant, decorated arcosolium tombs, focusing on their artistic compositions and inscribed epigrams. The best example of an epigram surviving in its original location, and comparable to Philes' compositions in style and content, is on the Chora's tomb of Michael Tornikes and his wife. This paper will then explore the contribution made by Philes' epigrams to our understanding of three major aspects of the Palaiologan tomb: the intended response of the viewer; the range of artistic compositions; and the patronage behind the tomb's construction.
The firm connection between these epigrams and their lost tombs is made clear by Philes' specific mention of the tomb (τάφος), its figural painting (είκόνα or τύπον), and the viewer's anticipated experience before these images. The spectator, directly addressed as άνθρωπε (man or woman), ξένε (guest or stranger), or more rarely έκκλησιαστά (congregant), is urged to come near and behold the tomb; this is attested in an epigram for a certain noble woman: : Εϊ γονν θέλεις, άνθρωπε, μαθdν τήν φνσιν,/ Πρόκυπτε καί ςc ιν έξερείινα τόν τάφού,/ Καί τήν μέν άντίμιμον είκόνα σκόπει. "If then you wish, Oh man/woman, to learn (my) nature/stoop and bend forward and while still living, examine the tomb,/ and behold the resembling image" (Miller 1. CCXLIX,1.37-39). In other epigrams, the spectator is urged to entreat the saints depicted, asking that the deceased may enter Paradise; these conversations are not restricted to the living and divine, but they involve the deceased as well, who in the form of his/her portrait speaks to the viewer, offering counsel on the pious life on earth, which will lead to salvation.
In some cases Philes' epigrams offer detailed descriptions of the tombs, attesting compositions not preserved in the visual record. In particular, children's tombs are described: that of Theodoros Atzumou's son, for example, represents Theodoros' presentation of the child to the prophet Daniel who in turn leads him before the Theotokos (Martini n. 50,1. 6-10.)
While in most instances extant tombs do not reveal who planned and built them, Philes' epigrams suggest, not surprisingly, that surviving relatives make up the majority of tomb patrons: spouses for one another, children for parents, and parents for children.
In rarer cases, the deceased is said to have planned his/her own monument before death (e.g., Martini n. 86).
In these three areas--reception, composition and patronage -Philes' epigrams make a considerable contribution to our understanding of tomb monuments and thus far they have not been exploited for the light they shed on Late Byzantine funerary art.
Humour or Dissent? Two Late Byzantine Animal Epics
George Baloglou (SUNY Oswego) and Nick Nicholas (University of California, Irvine)
The 90's saw renewed interest in two 14th century Byzantine poems: G. Makris has argued [Origini della Letteratura Neogreca, pp. 391-412 (1993)] that the Book of Birds (Ι7ουλολό) was a hidden satire against, among others, Alexius Apocaucus (John Cantacuzene's main adversary during the 1341-1347 civil war); and P. Vasiliou has proposed [Ellinika 46, pp. 59-82 (1996)] that the Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds (Τ7αιδιόφραοrοs Διήyησιs τώνΖώων τιϋν Τετραπόδωή) was a purely comical work with no similar messages or ambitions. Vasiliou's viewpoint is strengthened by the absence of the Book's allusions to specific places, let alone individuals, from the Tale. On the other hand, the Tale presents us with a startling defeat and humiliation of the animal nobility, while the Book's central aviary authority maintains power throughout. Scholars are in general agreement that the Book predates the Tale, and it is also likely that the author of the latter was aware of the former. Still, there is scant evidence for direct influence of the Book on the Tale. Both works are written in near-vernacular Greek and are focused on a conference dominated by colorful debates and monologues. But the Tale's dialogue structure and content is decidedly less rigid, and far more "didactic", than that of the Book, and the Tale is characterized by an elaborate introduction and an eventful ending absent from the Book.
On the contrary, the Tale's influence on the textual transmission of the Book is undeniable. While the Book is found in four out of the five manuscripts containing the Tale, the Tale is missing from two late manuscripts of the Book in which its ending is substantially and incongruously modified: there is now a final battle clearly influenced
by that of the Tale, except that in the end King Eagle emerges victorious and is spared King Lion's cruel fate. One has to wonder about the motives of the anonymous scribe who presumably altered one work and omitted the other.
A possible explanation follows as a corollary to Vasiliou's work: he argues that the Tale's ending is inauthentic, and he suggests an initial version with a succinct battle scene favoring King Lion and the ruling class (carnivores); it would then have been possible for one scribe to alter the Book's ending (inspired by that of the Tale) and for another to alter the Tale's ending. But we have grounds to argue both against such a scenario and Vasiliou's claim of the inauthenticity of the Tale's ending. On the other hand we find arguments supporting Vasiliou's contention that the Tale's ten-line "moralizing" prologue is inauthentic.
Even in case the prologue is inauthentic, we find it difficult to follow Vasiliou's suggestion and accept the Tale as a mere farce. And, while the Tale does not offer evidence as clear as what the Book presented to Makris, we feel that there is some evidence allowing for at least two historical interpretations of the Tale as a protest poem: a "class-oriented" interpretation relating to the civil war of 1351-1354 and a 11 stateoriented" interpretation relating to the attempted church union of the late 1360's. The Xenodocheion tou Krale in Constantinople and its Medical Activity Alain Touwaide (Oklahoma University, Norman)
If the history of the xenodocheion tou krale during the 14th century AD begins to be known, its medical activity has remained unknown.
A systematic exploration of Greek medical manuscripts and a full study of their texts and history allow us to gather material to bridge this gap: it leads to the identification of codices owned by the xenodocheion or copied in it during this period. On this basis, it is possible to reconstitute the medical activity of the xenodocheion: the manuscripts witness not only teaching activity, but also theoretical work that led to the writing of new treatises. The scientific orientation was twofold: the xenodocheion echoed Arabic medicine, diffused in Byzantium at this period, and, at the same time, it reproduced classical Greek medicine.
The paper will present the activity of the xenodocheion as it can be reconstituted on the basis of the manuscripts, in a dynamic perspective. To this end, it will present first the manuscripts themselves, second, their texts, according to their topics and kinds and, third, the reconstitution of the activity of the xenodocheion they allow us to propose.
The conclusion will stress the contribution of the study to the analysis of Byzantine intellectual life. The xenodocheion seems indeed to have been the center of a reaction against foreign influences: from 1340 AD onwards, Greek medicine seems to have been strongly re-introduced and re-elaborated, so as to counter-balance the presence of Arabic, Arabic oriented or Arabic influenced medicine.
The paper will be illustrated by color slides showing illustrated pages of the manuscripts under consideration.
SESSION XV: BYZANTIUM CONFRONTS THE WEST
Chair: Charles M. Brand (Bryn Mawr College)
The Burgundians and Byzantium
Danuta Shanzer (Cornell University)
In studies of the relations between western barbarian kingdoms (regna) and Byzantium (imperium) in the Later Roman Empire and Early Middle Ages one smaller political player is often omitted: the Second Burgundian Kingdom (443/47-534). Stein's Histoire du Bas-Empire, for example, discusses Burgundian affairs only on the margins of his treatment of the Franks, Ostrogoths, and Byzantines. Wood (Merovingian Kingdoms 1994) began to correct the imbalance, drawing attention to the role of Gundobad, rex Burgundionum, and emphasizing his power and probable status after the death of Clovis (511) as "most favoured" barbarian king at the Constantinopolitan court.
Burgundian diplomacy necessarily involved triangulation between Byzantium, the Franks, and the Ostrogoths, and more recently (Shanzer, Romanobarbarica 1998) the chronology and significance of documented diplomatic relations between Theodoric and the Burgundians has been reexamined. Theodoric betrothed his daughter Ostrogotho to Sigismund to help ransom Italian captives taken by Gundobad (494/95). Sigismund visited Rome (pre-498) and again (498/501-502) in connection to his conversion to Catholicism. But letters by Cassiodorus to Gundobad exhibit unwarranted haughtiness towards the Burgundians, and there was a subsequent decline in relations (506-507). The nadir comes at some point after 515: at this point Byzantium becomes relevant.
This paper will examine Burgundian relations with Byzantium as attested in the correspondence of Avitus, Bishop of Vienne (ca. 490-518), the first translation of which is forthcoming in the Translated Texts for Historians (Shanzer & Wood). There is a confused flow of information about the Acacian schism in Avitus's Contra Eutychen et Nestorium 1 and 2, and Epp. 39-42; also another dossier (Epp. 9,46A, 47, and 48, datable to 515) that touches on the schism, but is primarily concerned with the return of the son of the vir illustris Laurentius, sent to join his father in Constantinople, at the request of the emperor. But my main concern is a third group of documents relating to Gundobad's son, Sigismund's secular relations with Byzantium (Epp. 49, 78, 93, and 94). Correctly interpreted, read as a group, and dated, they have much to tell and suggest about the nature and substance of diplomatic relations between Byzantium and Burgundy. Epistolary trappings notwithstanding, Ep. 93 is a panegyric, in which Avitus avoids his usual convoluted periodicity, perhaps in the interest of oral delivery. The difficulties: problems finding an appropriate ambassador to go to Byzantium (not to mention a bishop in Burgundy competent to draft a letter to the Emperor!) and Theodoric's attempts to obstruct such embassies (Ep. 94 to Anastasius). Facts to account for: at least three Byzantine hostages in Burgundy and Sigismund's lobbying to be accorded Gundobad's title (suae quidem gentis regem, militem vestrum [46A] and militiae titulos [931).
My discussion of Sigismund's correspondence with Anastasius suggests that Gundobad held a Magister Militum title continuously from the 470's onward; that it is Sigismund's patriciate that constitutes his militiae rudimenta (Ep. 94) before 516; that the office mattered to Sigismund, because of complications arising from considerations involving the Ostrogoths, including perhaps the death of Ostrogotho, and the birth of Athalaric. The tone of the communications is supine (particularly in comparison to Theodoric's interchanges with Byzantium), but there is no suggestion of need for intervention against other local powers (i.e. the Franks) or of any conflict with anyone other than the Ostrogoths.
The Origins and Diffusion of Architectural Plans and Ornament in Frankish-Period Greece
Heather E. Grossman (University of Pennsylvania)
Current scholarship typically classifies the architecture built or adapted during the post- Fourth Crusade Latin domination of Greece into the categories of "Gothic" and "hybrid," based primarily upon the structures' plan typologies and ornamentation. This taxonomy implies that the architecture of the medieval West was imported wholesale into the Morea by the Latin conquerors through their patronage of new ecclesiastical structures as well as their modification of earlier Orthodox-rite churches. These categories also suggest singular, ethnically-based points of origin for architectural elements-they are either "western" or "Byzantine" traits. This paper reconsiders the possible sources of plan types and features as well as of sculptural motifs, particularly of the crocket, or abstract foliate, capital found in several thirteenth-century Peloponnesian churches, in order to call these categories into question.
I first examine the group of thirteenth-century churches, including the monastic church of Zaraka in Stymphalia (Corinthia) and the church of Haghia Sophia in Andravida (Ilia), often discussed by previous studies as most indicative of the proliferation of unaltered western architecture in the Peloponnese. These buildings do indeed resemble the roughly contemporary Gothic churches of western Europe: they are single-apsed basilican churches with ribbed support systems and westward-looking ornamental details. I highlight new, close parallels for specific features in these structures to buildings in Burgundy and Champagne, the originating territories of the majority of knights who settled in the Latin Peloponnese. However, I will also demonstrate that these structures differ significantly in construction technique from their French counterparts, and therefore must themselves be considered hybrids.
Second, I examine the origin and diffusion of the crocket capital found in many Frankish- period churches of both categories. The basic form of this capital type, incorporating two stylized, stemmed buds which bound each of the capital's faces, is a familiar one in French medieval architectural decoration, and the examples found in Peloponnesian churches are of similar form and location as their French comparanda. They have thus been thought of strictly as imports, indicative of western influence on Byzantine construction. The capital is however also related to classical antecedents and therefore might also demonstrate the continuation of earlier forms known in Greece (and France) from spolia. In tracing the origins and diffusion of this capital type, I will assess the cultural associations attached to this feature. Through consideration of these two elements of Frankish-period architecture, I hope to highlight some of the problems of the current taxonomy of Moreote architecture, in order to evoke the mixed origins of these structures. This then allows scholars to consider these buildings afresh in the future.
The Architecture of the Byzantine and Frankish Churches of Elis, Greece Demetrios Athanasoulis (6th Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities, Greece) The Byzantine monuments of Elis, in the western Peloponnese, have only recently been systematically explored. The 6th Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities (Patras) has developed a project of archaeological research in the area over the last four years, whose preliminary results will be presented in this paper. In many well-known Byzantine churches, like the Panagia Katholike in Gastoune, the Palaiopanagia in Manolada, and the Katholikon of the Vlacherna Monastery, new elements of the structure and the decoration have been discovered. Other churches have also been surveyed and excavated, among them, the ruined three-aisle vaulted basilica, the episcopal church at Olena. Based on such new evidence, we can draw definite conclusions concerning the church architecture of this region, its particular construction techniques and stylistic characteristics during the middle Byzantine and Palaeologan periods. Furthermore, we can reconsider the dating of some of the monuments.
After the Latin conquest of Constantinople, the Principality of Achaia was founded. Elis became the administrative and economical center of the new state. Its capital, Andravida, was situated in the plain of the Peneios River, and Clarentza, the seaport of the capital, quickly developed into a commercial center and an important harbor of the Eastern Mediterranean. Contrary to other Latin centers in Romania, the impressive ruins of the Frankish presence in the region illustrate the conquerors' intention of a more permanent settlement in the Western Morea. They built castles like Chlemoutsi (Clermont), cathedrals and abbeys. The establishment of the Latin Church in Elis was immediate. A Latin bishop was elected and the western religious orders settled in the region. The remains of the Frankish church architecture, the St. Sophia in Andravida, the Cathedral of Clarentza, and the Gothic monastery of Isova, have attracted the interest of earlier scholars, but the recent excavations on these sites begin to provide new, important data concerning the architectural typology, the sculpture, and the painted decoration of the monuments. The monastic orders which served as primary vehicles for the transmission of Gothic architecture in the fragmented Romania, seem to have brought their own craftsmen and workshops to build the abbeys. Nevertheless, particularities such as the workmanship of the masonry in the construction of the Gothic buildings, suggest the involvement of local masons. Critical for our understanding of the relations between Greek and Latin workshops is the case of St. Nicholas, the later church of Isova. The co-existence of Byzantine and Gothic art and craftsmanship in the territory of Elis had the inevitable effect of reciprocal influence. This cultural fusion created hybrids, new forms in art, visible in both the imposing Frankish churches, and, to an even larger degree, in the more modest Byzantine counterparts. The Orthodox monuments show strong traces of western artistic features in the construction techniques, in the morphological elements, and in the carved ornamentation. During this period, for example, some otherwise canonical Byzantine buildings were decorated by carved Gothic motifs. Pointed arches, Gothic ribs, capitals, door and window frames articulate structural elements of buildings with typical Byzantine plans. These churches belong to a category commonly called "Franko-Byzantine." Based on our recent research on these churches, including two previously unknown ones, they should be dated to a period after the Latin conquest.
Last Judgments and Last Emperors: Byzantine Imperial Ideology and Eschatology in the Church of Agios Pavlos, Crete
Angela Volan (The University of Chicago)
The early fourteenth-century Orthodox church of Agios Pavlos, in the rural village of Agios loannis, Crete, contains a dedicatory inscription that glorifies the then current Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, Andronikos II. This expression of Byzantine imperial rhetoric in Agios Pavlos is unusual because the Orthodox population of Crete had been, since 1211, under Venetian rule and Vatican ecclesiastical authority. Scholars have noted that such epigraphic references to the Orthodox emperor in areas severed from the Byzantine empire represent a form of political dissent from the foreign regime, but they have yet to consider the deeper ideological significance of these expressions within the context of the surrounding painted church decoration. At Agios Pavlos, the dedicatory inscription appears in a band encircling the base of the dome in the naos, where the name of Andronikos is thus physically integrated with scenes of the painted Byzantine Last judgment that also appear in the dome, itself an anomalous and unprecedented composition in Byzantine art. While the Last Judgment imagery is primarily concerned with the eschatological narrative of the Second Coming, it also propagates imperial authority in that it casts Christ as an ersatz emperor in his role as judge of all souls. In particular, the image of the etoimasia, or the empty throne of Christ prepared with the instruments of the Passion, stands as a metonymic reference for the imperial Christ, as he will appear at the end of time. Such images of Christ as an emperor ultimately serve to reinforce the imperial office of the earthly emperors, and in this sense, the Last Judgment imagery can be seen as contributing to Andronikos' glorification.
A more sophisticated reading of the dome composition at Agios Pavlos reveals that, in turn, Andronikos' name in the inscription serves as an integral part of the eschatological program of the Last Judgment. Byzantine textual accounts of the end of the world, as early as the fourth century Tiburtine Sibyl, prophesied that the supernatural events of Christ's Second Coming could not take place until the last of the Byzantine emperors had ascended his throne in Constantinople and restored the Greek-speaking world to Orthodox rule. This earlier literary tradition has not been previously related to the later development of the Byzantine Last Judgment imagery because their iconographic contents do not seem to coincide: the literary figure of the Last Emperor, for instance, is not physically present in the Last Judgment imagery. However, this paper will show that the actions of the Last Emperor are made manifest in the painted Last Judgment cycle, particularly in the image of the etoimasia, which illustrates the consequence of the final and most significant event of the Last Emperor's reign: the placement of his crown on the cross. This connection between the Byzantine apocalyptic texts and images ultimately accounts for the placement of the inscription in the dome of Agios Pavlos: Andronikos' name is the expression of hope for immediate deliverance from Venetian rule by the Last Emperor.
SESSION XVI: BYZANTINE ARCHEOLOGY
Chair: Cecil L. Striker (University of Pennsylvania)
Slavs and cultural symbiosis in early medieval Greece: the results of a recent archaeological survey
Frank R. Trombley (University of Wales, Cardiff)
Archaeological survey was carried out in mainland Greece between 1993-2000, with the aim of identifying early medieval sites that might yield pottery types of similar fabric and firing method to the Slavic-type wares recently published by Speros Vryonis, Jr. in 'The Slavic Pottery (Jars) from Olympia, Greece', Byzantine. Studies (1992) 15-42, and also noted in the excavations at Argos and Isthmia. The procedure was fairly straightforward: by observation of surface scatter, it was hoped to discover the early medieval 'signature' of sites, particularly those lying in the so-called Sklavinias mentioned in the chronicle of Monemvasia and Miracula of St. Demetrius, and especially in places having verifiable early medieval Slavic placenames. The survey covered most areas of mainland Greece, including Epiros, Akarnania, Aitolia, Thessaly, the Peloponnese and parts of Thrace and Macedonia, where approximately 150 sites were visited. A sizeable number of places yielded the hand-made, badly fired ceramic wares that were sought. They were in general early medieval fortresses and kastra, but with a few notable exceptions none of them bore Slavic placenames. Slavic-type ceramics of the primitive variety identified during the survey have a relatively narrow chronological 'window', roughly the sixth to ninth centuries. On many occasions seemingly synchronous, well-fired Late Roman or'Dark Age' Greece wares were identified in the scatter. The inference was drawn that the producers of the Slavic-type pottery (which might also be characterised as 'barbarian-type' or 'Myro-Sklavinian') lived in economic symbiosis with the probably Greek kastron-dwellers, exchanging goods and possibly even using the same wares. It also appeared that the makers of the badly-fired, hand-made wares improved their firing techniques and the durability of their wares through a process of acculturation. It seems quite probable that these folk lived in the near territoria of the Greek fortresses, often in squatters' settlements just outside the walls. The view that the Slavic Landnahme in mainland Greece was not a violent one was first expressed by Ph. Malingoudis. The existence of the settlement patterns described above may well corroborate this view. It must be recognised, however, that the views expressed here are only an interim hypothesis that can only be corroborated by finds with clear stratification. After presenting a more detailed theoretical framework, my paper will go into the particulars of certain sites that illustrate the symbiosis thesis most clearly, and will deal with certain important exceptions.
Two slide projectors will be used in tandem.
House and Village in the Northwestern Peloponnese: The Archaeology of a Medieval Countryside
Kostis Kourelis (University of Pennsylvania)
A historical gap of more than a millennium exists in our knowledge of how people in Greece built houses and towns, how they structured their physical communities, or how they sustained their livelihood in the countryside. The study of Byzantine domestic architecture and urbanism has been hampered by the scarcity and inaccessibility of surviving material and the ideological or methodological limitations of the disciplines that have traditionally studied it. Despite the infancy of the field, however, recent scholarship has made significant contributions to the study of the medieval countryside as witnessed by a number of archaeological surveys, publications, and exhibits on secular Byzantine architecture. As the discipline of archaeology approaches that of Byzantine studies, and vice versa, the physical world of a predominantly agrarian Byzantine society should slowly emerge out of obscurity.
The Morea Project, an architectural survey of all surviving domestic architecture in the northwestern Peloponnese from the 9th to the mid-20th centuries, has documented 172 settlements, containing approximately 3000 houses within a study area that covers the modern counties of Achaia and Elis. Twenty-one of the settlements belong to the medieval period and make up the material of the present study. These sites consist of abandoned villages of various sizes, ranging from 10 to 300 houses each, the majority located on defensible mountainous locations. The houses, a total of about 700 structures, are built of local limestone and exhibit common dry construction techniques. Large uncut blocks make up the comers and mortar is used only in the construction of chapels, cisterns, and fortification walls. In spite of the low degree of preservation (only a few feet above ground), the urban ensemble of each site is discernible in its constitutive elements of city wall, keep, houses, cisterns and chapels.
The exhaustive corpus of sites from the northwestern Peloponnese offers opportunity for conclusions at the regional level, as well as a foundation for cross-geographic comparisons. At the urban scale, these settlements illustrate a coherent picture of a Byzantine village and provide the textual historian with clues regarding social hierarchy, organization, transportation, communication and defense. At the architectural scale, they present evidence for at least one kind of rural dwelling in relation to a set of building types that make up the Byzantine town. At the construction scale, they raise issues of indigenous and foreign traditions, procurement of building material, and the building trades.
Churches, Landscape, and Population in Byzantine Kythera: The Australian Paliochora-Kythera Archaeological Survey 1999-2000
Timothy E. Gregory (OSU Excavations at Isthmia)
The Australian Paliochora-Kythera Archaeological Survey is designed to investigate the broad question of the relationship between fortified centers and their hinterlands in the Byzantine period, testing alternative hypotheses for site location and the factors influencing occupation and abandonment of sites. The project focuses on the land surrounding the abandoned site of Paliochora (mediaeval Agios Demetrios) on the island of Kythera, mid-way between the Peloponnesos and Crete.
Traditionally it has been assumed that fortified centers, particularly medieval castles, existed primarily for purposes of defense, and that military considerations were the preeminent concerns for their location and existence. Our project is designed to test this hypothesis against other possible explanations of fortified settlements, especially in the island environments of the Aegean area, but with ramifications for other parts of the world.
The project is conducting a statistically designed survey of the area surrounding Paliochora, using the region as a 'field laboratory' to investigate the locational characteristics, and the settlement and abandonment of fortified sites in marginal environments. The project is using leading-edge GIS and GPS methods, developed or adapted by members of the team in the course of other projects, for survey design, data recording, analysis and presentation of results.
A particular focus of the project is the recording of the many churches in the survey area and their analysis along various lines of inquiry: architectural, locational, historical, and functional. The churches are also important as the locations on which the 18thcentury censuses of the island were based, providing the project with a firm basis of population data against which the archaeological information can be measured.
This paper presents a brief overview of the 1999 and 2000 field seasons of the project.
Byzantines and Lusignans in the Hinterland of Cyprus: Recent Excavations of the Princeton-Cyprus Expedition at Polis
Charles Nicklies (Louisville, KY)
Amy Papalexandrou (University of Michigan)
Excavations conducted by Princeton University since 1984 at the site of Polis-tesKhrysokhous (ancient Marion/ Arsinoe), in northwestern Cyprus, have revealed much evidence concerning late antique/early Byzantine settlement in this remote section of the island. To date, attention has primarily been focused on a modest three-aisled basilica of the late fifth century. While this church clearly underwent subsequent structural modifications, the archaeological record has offered little else to suggest continued occupation of the site beyond the tenth century, i.e., after presumed raiding and/or natural disasters resulted in the abandonment of this and similar coastal regions of Cyprus.
Our picture of the medieval life of this site has been considerably enhanced since 1996 through additional excavations on a low promontory located approximately one half-mile east of the basilica. Here, in an area adjacent to what may be the late antique city walls of Polis, a fairly large complex, Roman or early Christian in date, was re-used and substantially rebuilt in the Middle Ages by both Byzantine and Lusignan inhabitants. Although little survives above the floor level, a number of earlier features were clearly incorporated into the later building(s) as, for example walls, a small apse with tessellated pavement, and an earlier floor through which graves were dug. Evidence also points to later vaulting of the structure. Our report focuses on this recently discovered material and will also include the results of the 2000 season.
One of the most intriguing elements of the building activity within this medieval structure is its floor packing, for which carved ashlars decorated with Byzantine frescoes were utilized. Several chance finds have revealed this to be figural, of two or more different styles and, in one instance at least, the product of a remarkably sophisticated workshop. On the one hand we would note the apparent willingness with which the later inhabitants utilized Orthodox sacred imagery for such a banal purpose. On the other, we see no defacement of the images and suspect that they may yet have been valued, at the very least for their potential apotropaic properties. Findings such as these offer an opportunity to consider notions of conquest and assimilation and, ultimately, the effect of foreign rule on societal and cultural aspects of the existing Byzantine civilization of the island (and vice versa). Indeed, the provincial location and relative obscurity of Polis in the medieval period provide valuable insight into just how pervasive this cultural interaction could be.
Late Medieval Pottery from the Athenian Agora
Camilla MacKay (University of Michigan)
In this paper, I present Frankish and early Ottoman (thirteenth through sixteenth century) pottery from a house complex in the Athenian Agora excavated in the 1930s. Apart from early publications by Frederick Waage and Alison Frantz (Hesperia 1933, 1938,1942), little medieval pottery from Athens has been published, and pottery of the period I cover here is under-represented. Unlike Frankish towns in the Peloponnese (notably Corinth) or towns in Epirus, Athens did not import Italian pottery; imports (e.g. Zeuxippos ware, Aegean ware) came from the east, and tail off in the thirteenth century.
Locally manufactured Frankish glazed wares are largely unvaried: sgraffito or slippainted wares, which degenerate in form, color, and decoration through the fourteenth and into the fifteenth century. But some time in the fifteenth century (perhaps following the Ottoman takeover of Athens?), new shapes and decorative styles begin to appear, far more carefully made than previously, like green and brown painted or monochrome sgraffito bowls; new courseware shapes also appear. Despite the departure from earlier types, wasters from kilns excavated in the Agora indicate that this pottery too was made locally. These distinctive new styles are also exported, and begin to appear on sites in Boeotia and perhaps farther afield.
Athens's adherence to a local ceramic tradition throughout the Frankish and into the Ottoman periods must be due partly to geography: most Greek towns with substantial imports from the west are close to the Ionian sea. Yet Italian ceramics are found in the inland Peloponnese and on its east coast; Athens's isolation cannot be explained by geographic location alone, and may reflect Athens's political associations with Frankish states in Greece. The material I present here is important both because medieval pottery types in Athens are not well known, but also because, at least by the early Ottoman period, it is found on sites outside Athens itself; moreover, it offers new material evidence for the medieval Athenian economy.
SESSION XVII: BYZANTIUM AND ITS SLAVIC NEIGHBORS
Chair: Ljubica D. Popovich (Vanderbilt University)
Between Byzantium and Rome: Bulgaria in the Aftermath of the Photian Schism
Ian S.R. Mladjov (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
Bulgaria's conversion to Christianity in 864 served as the catalyst for the so-called "Photian Schism" between Rome and Constantinople. The Byzantine government was able to pressure the Bulgarian ruler Boris 1 (853-889) into accepting the Greek rite. However, when the Byzantine church failed to grant Boris I an autocephalous archbishop for Bulgaria, he turned to Rome in 866. Pope Nicholas 1(858-867) and the East Frankish King Ludwig II (840-876) both sent priests into Bulgaria, to introduce the Latin rite.
Alarmed, Patriarch Photius (858-867) convoked a synod which condemned the western practices introduced into Bulgaria and informed Boris that he was being led astray. This political maneuver backfired, causing a major quarrel between the Papacy and the Byzantine church. Photius excommunicated Nicholas, who did not live to react, and Pope Hadrian II (867-872) excommunicated the now deposed Photius and his appointees in 869. Emperor Basil I (867-886) and Patriarch Ignatius (867-877) reluctantly agreed to accept the papal decision at the Council of Constantinople in 869-870. However, by now Rome too had failed to satisfy the Bulgarians, and Boris sent a delegation to the council inquiring whether Bulgaria belonged to Rome or to Constantinople. The eastern prelates who constituted the majority of the participants voted in favor of Constantinople. Consequently Bulgaria returned to the Greek rite and Boris expelled the Roman and Frankish missionaries from his lands. Naturally, the Papacy vehemently opposed the council's decisions, and Pope John VIII (872-882) continually tried to reverse the situation. When Patriarch Photius was restored (877-886) he tried to conciliate Rome by surrendering Bulgaria to the Roman church in 878. However, by this time Bulgaria was committed to the Byzantine church and unlikely to revert to the Roman fold.
This paper examines Bulgaria's position between Rome and Constantinople during, and especially after, the Photian Schism. While it is clear that the Byzantine concession of 878 was correctly calculated as purely symbolic, its effect on Bulgaria's relations to the west has remained virtually unexamined. I argue that, although the Bulgarian church remained faithful to the practices of the Greek rite - modified by Slavonic liturgy - some relations continued to exist between Bulgaria and Rome during the late ninth and tenth century. The attempt of Patriarch Nicholas 1(912-925) to enlist papal support in his diplomatic dealings with Simeon 1(893-927) of Bulgaria in 923 suggests that the Papacy retained a certain amount of influence, if not outright leverage, at the Bulgarian court. The papal intervention in the conflict between Bulgaria and Croatia in 926 also implies this. Did the new relationship between Rome and Bulgaria extend any further? In the mid 920s Simeon had come to terms with the Byzantines and agreed to a peace. However, he repeatedly undercut the proposed peace by insisting that the Byzantines recognize not only his title of "Emperor of the Bulgarians" - which they were begrudgingly willing to do - but also that of "Emperor of the Romans." Could this barrier to peace have been inspired by something more than obstinacy? Perhaps Bulgaria was once again vacillating between Constantinople and Rome in a quest for a new goal. Possibly a pope interested in extending his authority into the Balkans, like John X (914-928), could have done what the later correspondence between Kalojan (1197-1207) of Bulgaria and Pope Innocent III(1197-1216) alleges, namely, that he confirmed the Bulgarian ruler as emperor and the Bulgarian archbishop as patriarch. The sources are limited, but this course of action is plausible. Moreover, the imperial throne in the west was vacant from 924 to 962, and the Bulgarian ruler could have claimed - even if he had not received - a Roman imperial title. Regardless of the validity of Simeon's claims as reconstructed in this hypothesis, it seems reasonable to imagine in the early tenth-century a broad southern Europe more integrated and aware of itself as such than before - and a Bulgaria still suspended, in terms of diplomacy, between Constantinople and Rome.
Patriarch Photius and the Conversion of the Rus'
George P. Majeska (University of Maryland)
During the wide-spread celebration of the millennium of the Christianization of Rus' in 1988-1990, an important body of sources dealing with the conversion of Rus' was seriously underplayed. These sources would date the conversion of the Rus' people more than a century earlier, specifically to the period of the first reign of Patriarch Photius of Constantinople (858-867). In an encyclical letter to the other eastern patriarchs in 867, for example, Photius boasts that the "Godless Rus"' who had so recently devastated Constantinople (i.e., during the Rus' attack of 860) had accepted a bishop. Like the Rus' of Kiev more than a hundred years later, these Rus' must have been Slavs governed by Vikings; they lived near the town of Tmutorokan (Tamatarcha in Greek) at the mouth of the Sea of Azov, a bay of the Black Sea. From their center they could easily mount an attack on Constantinople across the Black Sea, and probably did in 860. Note that it was to this area (between Crimea and the Khazars) that Patriarch Photius sent Constantine/Cyril (known for his knowledge of Slavic) in the aftermath of the attack. He was doubtless instructed to negotiate an arrangement that would prevent a repetition of the recent Rus' attack on the Byzantine capital. A successful mission to the Rus' in this neighborhood (inspired by the visit of St. Cyril) would explain Photius' announcement that the Rus' had accepted a bishop, as well as the raising of the bishop of Tamatarcha to the rank of archbishop in the middle of the tenth century. Assuming this archbishop was in charge of the Christian Rus' of the Tmutorokan region would also explain the apparent lack of a bishop in Kiev until the Tmutorokan principality was conquered by the Kievan Rus' in 1016. Until that time the Archbishop of Tmutorokan would have been the primate of the Rus' church, even if beholden to a dynasty separate from the rulers of the Rus' of Kiev.
Notes Towards a Byzantine Theory of Religious Performance: An Analysis of The Office of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace
Andrew Walker White (University of Maryland, College Park)
Each December in Constantinople, on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, the great church of Hagia Sophia would host a performance of The Office of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace. The Office featured a set, costumed soloists and the spectacle of a descending angel (in the form of an icon). Because of these unusual elements the Office has been identified closely with the Western medieval tradition of the liturgical drama. The chief obstacle to classifying the Office as a liturgical drama has to do with the Orthodox Church's innate hostility to theatrical performances - a hostility that would regard the term 'liturgical drama', at least within the Orthodox tradition, as an oxymoron. In order to reconcile the competing claims of Church and Theatre, it will be the purpose of this paper to derive the principles of Byzantine religious performance based on an analysis of the Office's form and content, and relate these principles to theatrical practices, past and present.
The Office of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, as found in several extant MSS, is a fascinating blend of song, dialogue, improvisation and recitative. It is eclectic in both its music and language, revealing many of the diverse influences that informed Byzantine culture. But its unique form bears little resemblance to western-style religious drama, the Italian sacra rappresentazione in particular. The Office deliberately avoids traditional theatrical touches such as full impersonation of roles, and freely distributes both narration and quotations from the original biblical episode among Domestikoi, choir and soloists alike. Moreover, its use of a mute icon at the height of its 'dramatic' action, instead of a flesh-and-blood celebrant, seems anticlimactic at best.
It may be possible to position the Office as a religious drama. But the Office employs a performance aesthetic that appears to be decidedly post-modern - i.e., antirepresentational -- in both its intent and practice. The Office, therefore, offers us an opportunity to derive a distinct Byzantine theory of religious performance, one which makes occasional use of so-called theatrical elements but which patently rejects the representational, illusionist aesthetic that is central to western religious drama. This Byzantine performance theory would appear to occupy an aesthetic middle ground between Islam and Western Catholicism.
Finally, in considering the Office's possible origins, it may be useful to consider its unusual performance date. Although iconographically associated with Easter on the Orthodox calendar, the Office was always performed in late December. That, plus the Office's extensive use of fire imagery, implies a connection with the Winter Solstice that has yet to be addressed. This association is even more explicit in the Office's Russian incarnation, The Furnace Action, which not only retained the December performance date but sanctioned carnival-like activities featuring Russian mines. The performance of The Furnace Action near the time of the Calends (Russian: Kohada) points towards the larger issue of possible intersections between pagan and Christian performance practices in Russia, Byzantium and beyond.
Byzantine Chant or Znamenny Rospev? Continued Byzantine Hegemony in the Russian Musical Manuscript Tradition of the Late Sixteenth Century
Gregory Myers
The following paper postulates that the Znamenny chant of the medieval Russian Orthodox Church did not have an independent written tradition until the seventeenth century. From the fifteenth to the beginning of seventeenth century, different values were gradually assigned to the Byzantine neumes to create a written tradition for the emergent Znamenny chant. Pre-seventeenth-century manuscripts are impossible to transcribe without recourse to later sources preserving the Znamenny melodies. In terms of their musical notation, these sources still bear witness to the Slavo-Byzantine musical tradition of the twelfth century, suggesting that Byzantine chant held sway over Russian plainsong until at least the first half of the seventeenth century.
To support my hypothesis, I will introduce as evidence a selection of antiphons from the Holy Thursday service of the Pedilavium or Foot-Washing. With these examples it will be shown that the late sixteenth-century chants can be reconstructed according to those Byzantine models which are preserved in the oldest surviving musical manuscripts. It will be shown that the late medieval Russian church maintained a tradition of chant that can be traced back to the cathedral traditions of Constantinople and Jerusalem.
Sending a Letter to Byzantium: The Imperial Russian Mail Service to Mount Athos
Karen Lemiski (Arizona State University)
Documents carried by the mail service established in the late nineteenth century between the Russian Empire and Mount Athos highlight the conflict between modernity and the historical continuity of the religious communities to their Byzantine heritage. Until this time, Athos had been able to resist the forces of changing civilizations and to preserve the holy heritage of Byzantium largely unimpaired because of its continued autonomous status. An examination of the available correspondence from the imperial Russian mail route demonstrates the profound impact the Russian presence had on centuries-old Athonite traditions.
The strong ecclesiastical ties that were originally established between the Muscovite state and Byzantium continued into the nineteenth century and coincided with a drive toward territorial expansion, which was presented under the guise of imperial Russian protection of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. As a means of advancing both programs, special steamship lines and hospices were established to promote regular contacts between the Russian population and the monasteries of Mount Athos. The resurgence of the Russian pilgrimage tradition and the influx of religious personnel gave the Russian monks a numerical majority on Mount Athos. Consequently, the Russian monasteries gained the right to conduct specific religious services in the Russian language, while disputes over other religious issues briefly resulted in a Russian military presence on the peninsula.
With increased donations from the Russian Empire, the nature of monastic life was also altered. The Russian monasteries were the first to be mechanized and increasingly to adapt their routines toward economic ventures. The evidence from available postal forms documents both the transfer of wealth from the Russian provinces to the monasteries and its manipulation, through an exemption from import duties, for business purposes and financial gain.
SESSION XVIII: MONASTICISM
Chair: Robert W. Allison (Bates College) Shenoute to Moses of Abydos:
Monastic Authority and Social Control in Early Byzantine Egypt
Mark Moussa (Catholic University of America)
The late fifth and early sixth century was a period of intense doctrinal and ideological conflict in the Egyptian desert. With the continual void of patriarchal leadership, the presence of monastic authority became germane to maintaining the solidarity of the anti-Chalcedonian separatist movement. Shenoute of Atripe and Moses of Abydos, two monastic figures of the Egyptian Thebaid, provided such authority in the face of doctrinal plurality and insurgent paganism. This paper contends that a defined continuum of prescribed monastic authority and doctrinal promulgation is clearly found in Coptic literature by or related to Shenoute and Moses - primarily in treatises such as 1 Ain Amazed and 1 Have Been Reading the Holy Gospels by the former, and in pastoral letters by the latter. Both actively combated heretical or pagan elements near their communities by attempting to exterminate their physical presence and augmenting their efforts by rhetorical polemics in their own writings. The efforts of both abbots proved influential and lasting in southern Egypt well beyond their years.
Literacy and the Practice of Reading in Early Byzantine Monasteries
Richard A. Layton (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
What was the place of reading and writing during a formative period in Byzantine monastic life? The most prominent markers in the monastic landscape in the fifth and sixth centuries are two spectacular conflicts over "Origenism." These conflicts promote a perception that a small cadre of intellectual ascetics was embattled by a traditionalist, and unlettered, majority. This paper looks beyond the dynamics of theological controversy to examine the evidence for literacy and reading practices in Greek monasteries during this period. The correspondence of ascetic leaders -Nilus of Ancyra, Isidore of Pelusium, Barsanuphius, and Dorotheus of Gaza-offers a resource, rarely fully exploited, to investigate the broader spectrum of the uses of literacy in monastic communities. In addition to these letters, documentary papyri also provide insight into the daily routines of less prominent monasteries. An initial survey of these documents has generated three working hypotheses about reading and its social consequences in monastic life.
First, while literacy was not necessary for a monk, there were significant inducements to reach a proficiency in reading sufficient for skillful chanting of the psalms. A number of monks sought the guidance of their superior concerning their illiteracy, indicating that they experienced distress from their perceived deficiency. Complaints of incompetent reading of the Psalms suggest that social pressures contributed to this discomfort. Second, monasteries did not institute measures, such as providing reading instruction, which promoted communal literacy. In this respect, the monasteries mirrored the larger society, but informal channels for teaching literacy may have been more readily available. A few community offices (handling outside business, directing the infirmary) were most capably filled by the literate. At least some occupants of these positions were sensitive to the delicate social tensions this distinction might introduce. Social tensions over literacy differences, however, may have been defused by the practice of communal recitations of narratives, and voluntary writing of letters on behalf of the illiterate. Third, book collections under community control and ownership were quite small. Abbots typically regarded books as legitimate private possessions, and did not police book content. With the exception of the Palestinian foundation of Mar Saba, individuals handled the storage, copying, and circulation of their own texts. The absence of regulation may have supported wide intellectual inquiry, but the literature does not confirm such diversity. Rebukes for possession of secular books are rare, and Basil's Asceticon and Lives of ascetic heroes predominate. The reading of literary works was used to promote technical proficiency in the ascetic vocation, which contrasts sharply with the social function of reading in antiquity to develop and sustain a ruling class. These hypotheses suggest that some level of literacy was necessary to all monastic communities. Pressures to develop literacy existed, and while different levels of literacy could exacerbate underlying conflicts, the possession of texts in itself rarely introduced conflict in a monastic community.
The Empress, the Despoina, the Sultana, and Black-Robed Monks: Three Serbian Ladies on Mount Athos
Dusan Korac (University of Maryland)
The traditional monastic rule of abaton has been rigorously observed on Athos from an early date. The prohibition of the presence of women was an unwritten rule; its justification found in legendary traditions kept among the Athonite monks. During the times of troubles when Athos served as a refuge for the local population, the refugees surely included women, especially along its northern, land border. However, the tradition was universally respected and even in modem times no woman had tried to enter the Holy Mountain openly.
How can we explain, then, the case of three Serbian women of noble birth who cultivated very special relations with the Athonite monks and visited the peninsula? Jelena, the first empress of Serbia, spent eight months on Athos with her husband and the entire Serbian imperial court (1347/1348). According to the tradition preserved among the monks of Chilandar she behaved very modestly, kept herself covered and spent most of the time praying on top of one of the monastery's tallest towers. However, the ample evidence from the Athonite archives shows clearly that she visited numerous monasteries and made donations to them. She even rebuilt the kellion of St. Sava in Karyes and became its second ktetor. After the death of her husband, Stefan Dusan (1355), she ruled independently from the city of Serres, as nun Elisabeth, and acted as overlord and benefactor of Athos.
"The most fortunate despot of Serbia," Jovan Ugljesa (1363-1371), who took over the role of the Athonite protector from the empress-nun, lost his only son still a child and buried him in the church of the Virgin at Chilandar. The grieving mother, whom we know only by her monastic name Jefimija, made many very personal donations to the Serbian monastery on Mount Athos. Among them was a precious small dyptichon with a warm prayer for her sons soul on its cover (probably originally his own icon). There is no trace in Athonite traditions about her visits to her young son's tomb, but it is safe to assume that she was not banned from coming to Chilandar. After the death of her husband in the battle of the Marica (September of 1371) Jefimija left Serres, joined empress-nun Elisabeth in Serbia, and lived at the court of prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic (1371-1389).
Two generations later, Mara Brankovic, the eldest daughter of Djuradj Brankovic, the despote of Serbia, was sent to the harem of the Ottoman sultan Murad 11(1421-1451). Muhammed the Conqueror (1451-1481) allowed her to leave his father's harem. Using her influence at the Ottoman court, Mara was able to act as an important protector and benefactor of the Orthodox Church. She had special ties to the Holy Mountain. Having retired to an estate in the hinterland of Athos, she showered many of the monastic communities there with gifts, especially the monastery of Saint Paul, her family's foundation. According to a tradition she was once allowed to step on the sacred soil, and made it half the way from the port to the monastery of Saint Paul.
Each of these Serbian ladies acted as a mistress and benefactress of Athos. The monks were fully aware of the political influence and power these noble women exercised. However, Jelena, Jefimija, and Mara cultivated special relations with the monks of Athos under extraordinary circumstances. Empress Jelena's refuge from the'Black Death', despoina Jefimija's unquenchable maternal grief for her only son, and sultana Mara's piety and deep devotion after her release from Murad's harem, touched the hearts of the Athonite monks: more or less openly they disregarded the tradition of abaton.
A Sense of Family: Monastic Portraits in the Lincoln College Typikon
Carolyn L. Connor (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
The th•pihon of the Monastery of the Mother of God of Sure Hope (Theotokos tes Bebaias Elpidos), in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (Lincoln College Ms. Gr. 35), provides our most thorough and illuminating testimony on a Late Byzantine female monastic foundation This manuscript with its striking series of double portraits expresses in the relationship between text and images special concerns for family, social hierarchy and community.
The original typikon was drafted at the time of the dedication of the monastery, a convent in Constantinople, by the founder, Theodora Synadene around 1300. An emended later version was also produced by her in around 1330. After Theodora's death, between 1332 and 1335, according to Irmgard Hutter, the Oxford manuscript, including twelve folios of portraits, was reassembled under the direction of her daughter Euphrosyne, who added her own revisions and emendations. The document we have today thus reflects two principal phases of the typikon's history, and the wishes of both mother and daughter.
Euphrosyne had been dedicated as a young child by her mother to the Virgin Mary and to Christ; she joined her mother in her retreat from the world at the Monastery of the Mother of God of Sure Hope after the death of her father, John Synadenos. Euphrosyne never knew life outside the convent and grew to maturity among the community of nuns and family members encloistered there according to their status. While Theodora's main concern in the typikon appears to have been proud association with her illustrious family through assuring commemoration of its members, Euphrosyne's was commemoration of the nuns with whom she had grown up and spent her life.
In this paper I will demonstrate the way in which miniatures and text relate to one another, indicating on the one hand concern for the hierarchy of family, and on the other, sympathy and concern for the nuns, down to the most humble. The technical rendering of the portraits of the founders, some of which appear to have been painted from life, distinguishes them from more conventional portraits of family members, further emphasizing the individual character and concerns expressed in the typikon.
SESSION XIX: MANUSCRIPT STUDIES
Chair: Susan Pinto Madigan (Michigan State University)
The Gynaeceum, the Kindergarten, and the Vienna Genesis: Biblical and Extra-Biblical imagery in Folio 16r
Maureen Anne O'Brien (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
The presence of extra-biblical iconography in the sixth-century Vienna Genesis (Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. theol. gr. 31) has been a focus of art historical research on the manuscript for over a century, and no miniature has attracted more scholarly attention or less scholarly consensus than that of folio 16r. Although the Septuagint text that accompanies the folio's imagery has long been recognized as Genesis 39:9-13 (the attempted seduction of Joseph by the wife of his master Potiphar), scholars have traditionally viewed only three of the miniature's eleven persons as identifiable by the biblical text alone. These three figures occupy the upper left-hand corner of the miniature, and are widely accepted to be Potiphar's wife with Joseph literally in her clutches, followed by a second depiction of Joseph after his escape. The remaining eight people depicted on folio 16r, all women and children to be precise, have been the subject of a particularly lengthy debate in manuscript studies, resulting in over a dozen treatments of the peculiar iconography. Once derisively labeled as the "gynaeceum" scene by one scholar and as the "kindergarten" by another, the present study seeks to reopen the debate by considering the intersection of gender, word, and image in folio 16r, and offer a new interpretation of these mysterious women and children of the Vienna Genesis.
Before presenting a new reading, a brief exploration and critique of the historiography on the image is necessary. This paper will trace the contours of the debate, from the earliest scholars who believed the extra-biblical elements to be novelistic additions or genre scenes of harem life in Potiphar's household, to later scholars who sought explanations of each individual figure in Jewish rabbinical literature. Although I reject the initial attempt to eroticize and exoticize the women, as well as later theories stemming exclusively from Jewish legends, both of these approaches point, in my view, in fruitful directions. The first approach correctly extrapolates from the visual evidence that the image fundamentally has something to do with women and women's activities, while the second indicates a possible connection to Jewish thought or writings.
By revisiting the visual, textual, and philological evidence, including close examination of the Genesis text in the Hebrew original, in the Septuagint Greek, and in the modern German translation (the native tongue of the majority of Vienna Genesis scholars), I will argue that the extra-biblical figures in folio 16r are not really extrabiblical at all, but reflect instead the biblical text. They furthermore follow established patterns of "extra-biblical" iconography in the manuscript as a whole. When analyzed in their entirety, extra-biblical embellishments in the Vienna Genesis fall into four categories: women, children, angels, and servants/ courtiers. The decision by the patron or artists to privilege this kind of iconographical embellishment in folio 16r and other miniatures might point to new ways of thinking about the old unresolved questions of the patronage and function of the Vienna Genesis.
The Virgin and Child Enthroned in Syriac Lectionaries: Vatican Syr. 559 and London British Library Add. 7170 and its Byzantine Origin.
Rima E. Smine (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
Syriac Lectionaries Vatican Syr. 559 and British Library Add. 7170 share a similar representation of the Virgin and Child enthroned. The image appears before the reading from the Gospel of Matthew relating the sequel to the Nativity in the visit and adoration of the Magi to the newborn Christ. Scholars have interpreted the image as the Adoration of the Magi. This identification is problematic, since the magi are not included in the image. Furthermore, the image of the Nativity in both manuscripts clearly includes them in its multiple scenes representation. The purpose of this paper is to consider the image of the Enthroned Mother and Child as it is represented in the Syriac lectionaries and to give a different identification than that previously ascribed of Adoration of the Magi.
The first step in this new identification is a comparison of this image with similar representations of the Enthroned Mother and Child, as it is found in contemporary Byzantine manuscripts. It will show that the Byzantine manuscripts placed this image in the frontispiece section of the gospelbooks and lectionaries, facing the image of the Christ Emmanuel. Thus, if Syriac artists were inspired by Byzantine manuscripts, as the whole iconography seems to indicate, it is fair to assume that they transposed this image from frontispiece to the middle of the readings. Thus, the next step will aim to determine what justified the Syriac artists in the new setting of the image before a specific reading in the Syriac lectionary system.
For this purpose, we need to return again to the written page, not necessarily the Gospel reading, but rather the little inscription found exclusively in the Vatican manuscript. There, in the middle margin, the scribe has added a note: "the Sunday of Emmanuel". It becomes clear then that both the Syriac scribe and artists were considering the commemoration of the Incarnation of the Christ Emmanuel in the calendar year rather than the Adoration of the Magi referred to in the text. Because in their tradition the Virgin is viewed as a symbol of Church and Incarnation, they deliberately picked this image which faces the Christ Emmanuel in Byzantine manuscripts. The Syriac artists were astute in choosing the Mother and Child enthroned to represent the Sunday of Emmanuel, a choice justified by its setting in the calendar year and the commemoration of the Incarnation of the Christ Emmanuel. It is not a literate representation of the Gospel narrative but a representation of the liturgical calendar of the Syriac Church.
Lectionary Dissonance: The Palaiologina Group, Again
Mary-Lyon Dolezal (University of Oregon)
Study of the lectionary has generally focused on those examples that were produced in the middle Byzantine period. Moreover, until recently, scholars' interest in these manuscripts was determined by their respective disciplines, which resulted in a separation of text from image and obscured the broader meaning and function of these books. The attention given to the middle Byzantine representatives of this genre by art historians is understandable: the most deluxe, as well as the few surviving densely illustrated lectionaries are dated to this period and seem to offer an aggregation of riches for rewarding research. From my perspective, they have not disappointed. As the middle Byzantine lectionary has become better understood, examples from the Palaiologan period have received modest scrutiny, yet they too deserve considered analysis. Over twenty years ago (1978), H. Buchthal and H. Belting, in their monograph on a proposed atelier from late thirteenth-century Constantinople, discussed four lectionaries that they associated with their "group" and their proposed patron, the aristocratic intellectual Theodora Raoulaina. Since then various scholars have made additions, to the point that in an article (1991), R. Nelson and J. Lowden reassessed the nature of the "group" which now includes at least eight-ten lectionaries. Nelson and Lowden examined the codicology, palaeography, and ornamental decoration of these manuscripts, but did not analyze the texts. Their purpose was to establish further relationships between the books and to question conclusions concerning patronage and function inherent in the Buchthal-Belting thesis.
Stimulated by Nelson and Lowden's contribution, I began to examine the lectionaries in the "group" and expanded the scope to other late Byzantine examples. My analysis has revealed a panoply of puzzles regarding the evolution of the lectionary and its function in the late empire. Most critical, the texts of the lectionaries assigned to the "group" do not follow a single pattern. For instance, they divide between the SaturdaySunday and Weekday types, and their menologia, the normal sites for disparity in lectionary texts, differ from each other and from middle Byzantine versions. It is significant that deluxe lectionaries attributed to Constantinople from the Palaiologan period present a different textual profile than their counterparts from the earlier period. Remarkable is the omission of feast days or saints that are connected to Constantinople, such as post-Iconoclasm patriarchs or celebration of events and disasters in the city. On the other hand, to focus on one case, the Palaiologan lectionary Istanbul, Ecumenical Patriarchate, cod. 1, documented as belonging to Hagia Sophia, is unlike both its contemporaries and its forebears: it is a weekday type with a complete menologium, not immediately exceptional, but the inclusion of complete lections for every feast and saint is rare if not unique. Thus, some lections are repeated multiple times, instead of using the reference system found in most unabridged lectionaries. This suggests, among other things, that the Istanbul manuscript was tailored for particular use, possibly for (even easier) reading on a daily basis in Hagia Sophia.
Highlighting the Istanbul lectionary exemplar gives further credence to the questions already raised concerning the construction of a group or atelier with a large proportion of lectionaries as its members. The texts of this and other manuscripts demonstrate that the Palaiologan lectionaries were not made for a single aristocratic patron in or for a single center, corroborating other data set forth by Nelson and Lowden. The decorative and textual profiles of these late lectionaries offer provocative evidence for determining an altered role for this liturgical book in the period after the Latin Conquest and may suggest an altered scheme for liturgical practices in the capital in the waning years of the empire.
Phallic Angels in Watermarks of Paper of Some Sixteenth-Century Greek Manuscripts
Mark L. Sosower (North Carolina State University)
The existence of phallic angels in watermarks was first noted by William Ravenhill. ("A Curious 'Saint' Watermark ... c. 1590," International Paper History 4 (1994), 5-10.) Using beta-radiography to study the paper of an English Atlas, Ravenhill discovered a watermark depicting a priapic holy person - probably an angel. Ravenhill suggested that the image could be Christian symbolism, perhaps representing a saint, e.g., Martin of Tours, who declared he would stand naked in front of the army armed only with the Cross. Alternately, Ravenhill proposed that the watermark reflected a strain of paganrooted phallicism that became associated with the veneration of popular Italian saints. Finally, he cited Leo Steinberg (Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art..., 1983; 2nd edition, 1996) to propose that the Saxton watermark was an artistic rendering that illustrated a prevalent theme of devotional imagery made during the Renaissance, that clearly depicting the genitalia of the Christ child and of the dead-and-risen Christ in order to emphasize his humanity. Furthermore, Ravenhill proposed that the paper was manufactured in northern Italy, perhaps at the well-known Fabriano Paper Mill (as the paper resembles Zonghi nos. 1688-94).
While I hope that someone in the audience could elucidate the iconography, my discussion deals with Ravenhill's analysis of the paper. During my systematic study of the paper of sixteenth-century Greek manuscripts in Spain, I found many different types of phallic angels. In my presentation, I will show specimens of the watermarks of various kinds of phallic angels that I have found, and talk about the paper. The variety of the types of angels and range of dates indicate that watermarks of phallic angels were not uncommon in the second half of the sixteenth century. Moreover, the paper probably was produced in numerous paper mills in northern Italy (not only at Fabriano).
Ravenhill mentioned that he could not correctly discern the Saxton watermark without a beta-radiograph. However, he did not have access to newly-invented watermark readers that make legible faint watermarks and faint details of watermarks that are otherwise illegible. Essentially, the machine is a thin sheet of plastic that glows but exudes no heat. When placed underneath a folio of an open manuscript in a dark room, the machine functions like a photographic table: The glowing sheet illuminates the watermark as dark lines in a milky background.
I will explain how, using the reader, I made a comprehensive archive of specimens by tracing the watermarks in situ, then scanning and editing them on computer. The completed specimens consist of images and also significant elements of paper, e.g. density of chain-lines. This approach is a practical method for global analysis of paper in large archives of manuscripts.
SESSION XX: ECCLESIASTICAL TEXTS
Chair: Denis Sullivan (University of Maryland) Literary Style and the Council of Ephesus: The Homilies of Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius
Susan Wessel (Cornell University)
An examination of the christological controversies of the fifth century East uncovers an apparent paradox, namely that Cyril of Alexandria ultimately emerged victorious, his name entirely synonymous with orthodox doctrine, in spite of the fact that the Council of Chalcedon eventually adopted language reminiscent of his defeated opponent Nestorius, and his dual- nature, christological doctrine. In no way a vindication of Nestorianism, however, the two nature formula of Chalcedon was a defense of Cyrillianism and Cyril's understanding of the creed. When the bishops at Chalcedon shouted, "Cyril was orthodox! Cyril thinks like Leo!" there was no doubt for the Chalcedonian majority that this was, indeed, a pro-Cyrillian council. In fact, pro-Cyrillian sentiments ran so deep by the time of Chalcedon 451 that both the majority Cbalcedonians and their Monophysite opponents (represented by the archimandrite Eutyches and the Egyptian delegation of bishops) simultaneously claimed to preserve Cyrillian orthodoxy from the doctrinal incursions of their opponents. At the same time, Nestorius, the deposed bishop of Constantinople, was considered a heretic of such immense proportions that only the most ardent Nestorians in Antioch dared to invoke Nestorius' name in connection with the two nature language of Pope Leo's Tome. For at least one hundred years following the Council of Chalcedon 451, Byzantine Christians of various christological persuasions all laid claim to Cyril's legacy, ready to declare their devotion to Cyrillian orthodoxy.
My paper studies one aspect of this paradox in the formation of Byzantine orthodoxy by comparing Cyril's method of public theological argumentation with that of his opponent Nestorius. In particular, an examination of Cyril's and Nestorius' homilies, delivered throughout the Nestorian controversy, reveals starkly different literary styles and methods of argumentation. While Cyril publicly assailed his opponent Nestorius with the rhetorical arguments and literary figures commonly found in the stylistic treatises of late antiquity, Nestorius preferred to lecture his audience using logical and didactic arguments, a method similar to that found in the refutational discourse outlined in the Progymnasmata of Aphthonius. In contrast with Nestorius' tendency toward didacticism, Cyril's homilies effectively used a number of literary figures found, for example, in Hermogenes' treatise On Style. My paper concludes that the formation of Cyrillian orthodoxy develops, in part, from a sophisticated literary strategy in which Cyril combined classical Greek literary figures with distinctly Christian claims to truth and, in the process, devastated his opponent Nestorius.
Forging Consensus: Definition and Falsification at the Council of Chalcedon
Michael Gaddis (Syracuse University)
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 marked a defining moment in the Christological controversies that tore apart the church of the eastern Roman empire in the fifth century. Whether seen as a milestone in the development of orthodoxy, or as a divisive and misguided occasion of schism, Chalcedon is typically remembered in terms of its doctrinal product, the Definition of Faith. But surprisingly little attention has been devoted to examining the process by which that result was reached, the day-to-day deliberations of the Council as revealed in its documentary Acts. The Acts of Chalcedon are particularly fascinating, because they incorporate lengthy excerpts from the Acts of the Second Council of Ephesus in 449 (the so-called "Robber Council"), which in turn included the transcript of Flavian's trial of Eutyches in Constantinople (448) and Eutyches' subsequent appeal.
On each occasion, records of the earlier sessions were successively read back and challenged, and themselves became further causes of controversy, amid accusations of forgery, falsification and coercion. Meanwhile, bishops charged with producing a credal statement walked a fine and often ambiguous line between necessary "definition" and clarification, and the ultimate sin of "innovation" upon the faith. The interaction of these multiple layers of documentation shows us the concerns of church leaders converging with the bureaucratic and legalistic requirements of the late Roman state to express a uniquely late-antique obsession with textuality, and with the rigorous authentication of texts, as a basis for legitimate authority in both religious and secular spheres.
These issues of authentication, falsification, definition and innovation, allow us to examine how proponents of Chalcedon constructed and represented its claims to legitimacy, and how its opponents attempted to undermine those claims. The two councils of 449 and 451 offer two competing models of conciliar authority. Ephesus Il subordinated normal considerations of ecclesiastical hierarchy and judicial fairness to the singleminded pursuit of orthodoxy, and doctored the record in order to produce a misleading impression of unanimity. Chalcedon, in turn, sought to present an appearance of moderation and scrupulous due process, taking care to record accurately the voices of dissident bishops and monks even while manipulating the agenda to deny those dissidents any real influence. But leaders at both councils, charged with producing a theological settlement, sought at all costs to avoid any free and open discussion of divisive theological questions.
Maximos the Confessor On the Passions of the Soul and the Irrational
Margaret Trenchard-Smith (University of California, Los Angeles)
Maximos the Confessor's eminence as theologian and defender of Orthodoxy has tended to obscure the fact that, as pater pneumatikos, he had much to say on the soul. Among his early writings are the Four Centuries on Love and Difficulty 10, both of which were written within well-defined monastic genres and contain Maximos' understanding of the soul and its passions and their relationship to the irrational.
Maximos' conception of the soul follows the Platonic scheme accepted in the main by the early Fathers of the Church: the soul is tripartite, its rational, irascible and concupiscent elements situated somatically. Traditionally, only the rational element (nous) was considered to be assimilable to God, while the irascible and concupiscent elements of the soul formed a 'material dyad' from which the rational element was to be cleansed. Andrew Louth has made explicit how Maximos developed a more dynamic understanding of the soul, one in which its lower elements, when turned through an act of will toward the love of God, became agents of the process of deification.
Placing an unprecedented stress upon the ability and necessity of the will to effect spiritual change, Maximos' thought was radically anti-determinist. In this paper, his reflections on the passions and the irrational will be investigated through pursuing three lines of inquiry: soteriological, demonological and medical. First, Maximian soteriology, in which the passions, the will and rationality play crucial roles, will be treated. Second, a comparison will be made of Maximos' statements on demonic possession with those of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Evagrius Ponticus. This will bring into relief his confidence in the capacity of the individual to invite or to repel demonic influence. Third, Maximos' statements on the imbalance of the bodily humors will be discussed visa-vis Galenic medical theory, with the intention of demonstrating how closely he associated medical, demonological and religious explanations for humoral imbalance, and, by implication, irrational states of mind. Uniting these avenues of discussion is Maximos' emphasis upon the importance of personal choice in the attainment of somatic and spiritual wellbeing. This paper will explore how Maximos' insistence upon personal accountability and the convergence of religious and medical therapeutic concepts evinced in these writings fit within the setting of Byzantium in the seventh century.
The Origins of the 14th Century Patriarchal Liturgical Diataxis of Dimitrios Gemistos
Alexander Rentel (Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome)
This paper will investigate the liturgical context and possible historical circumstances surrounding the composition of a 14th century liturgical Diataxis for the Patriarchal Divine Liturgy in Constantinople. Generally speaking, a liturgical Diataxis refers to a collection of directions or rubrics for ministers in the performance of the ceremonial details of a particular liturgical rite. And so, this patriarchal Diataxis provides minute directions for the complex ceremony when the patriarch was presiding at a Divine Liturgy. It also details "how and when" the various rites of ordination might take place before and during the Liturgy. And, curiously, it describes fully the rite of the prothesis, a rite that took place before the Liturgy itself began and was performed by only a priest and deacon. The composition of this Diataxis originated from within the patriarchal chancery in Constantinople, bearing all the hallmarks of an official "chancery" document, and in fact has been ascribed in the manuscript tradition to a leading figure of the Chancery in the second half of the 14th century, "the protonotary [later the mega sakallarios] and deacon of the Great and Most-holy Church of God, Kyr Dimitrios Gemistos (?-ca. 1397)." (See, Athos Vatopedi 135 f. 3r (AD 1390); Patmos 49 (AD 1391); Vatican Greek 754 (ca. 14th); etc.)
If Dimitrios Gemistos was indeed the author or compiler of this Diataxis - and he almost certainly was - that is not to say that Gemistos created something entirely new out of nothing. Rather, it is evident from the study of the various manuscripts of the Diataxis that he combined the traditions of the patriarchal rite in Constantinople at the Great Church of the Hagia Sophia with elements from the Euchology tradition, and, significantly, for a number of reasons both liturgical and political, from the Diataxis for the Divine Liturgy of Patriarch (1353-54,1364-1376) Philotheos Kokkinos (ca. 13001377/78). It is also evident that in the various rites of ordination, in particular those for the ordination of bishops, he did not simply copy them from the Constantinopolitan Euchology tradition, but rather he included elements into the texts of these rites which express specific concerns of the patriarchal bureaucracy. Not being content to view this Diataxis simply as a liturgical document, it then becomes easy and even necessary to read between its lines in order to understand its liturgical and historical context.
SESSION XXI: IMPERIAL IMAGES AND ISSUES
Chair: Rebecca W. Corrie (Bates College)
A Reassessment of Sophia
Anne McClanan (Portland State University)
The Empress Sophia's role and representation have been undervalued in the scholarship on the early Byzantine period. The main purpose of this paper is to reassess her significance in terms of both material and textual evidence, for she has been overshadowed by her aunt, the Empress Theodora. Accidents of preservation largely account for this disparity, for Sophia actually wielded greater power and was more prominent in the most basic units of currency, the bronze follis.
The two historical incidents that best illuminate these questions are the treatment of Sophia in accounts of Justin U's madness as well as the period following his death in which her status was rendered ambiguous. Although news of her authority in the face of the emperor's growing incapacity reached as far afield as Gregory of Tours, the institutional force of her role becomes apparent when she was widowed. Following the death in 578 of Justin II, who was succeeded by Tiberios, John of Ephesos relates that Sophia, prevented the court of women from attending Tiberios' wife, Ino. The terms in which the incident is related make clear that this contravened the expected protocols of Byzantine palace life in the sixth century. The motivation for this supposedly peevish display is usually attributed to Sophia's jealousy arising from her unsuccessful attempt to have Tiberios divorce Ino and marry herself. A careful reading of Byzantine sources shows that her preeminent concern was likely more the singularity of rank than a love interest. The moment of conflict enriches our general understanding of the potency of basileia for an Augusta, Sophia's prerogatives and privileges would be infringed by an interloper sharing her role as head of the palace's women. The incident is interesting because clearly the ambiguity of who was the Augusta threw off the normal functioning of the sekreton ton gynaikon.
Likewise Sophia pushes the parameters of visual representation in the way that the main bronze coin depicts her enthroned side-by-side with Justin 11. This visual language mimics an earlier numismatic depiction of Justin I and Justinian-not that of an imperial couple significantly. These images, along with that on the cross in the Sancta Sanctorum, indicate the substantial authority of her position in the Empire.
The Ivories of Ariadne in the Context of Female Imperial Ideology in Early Byzantium
Diliana Angelova (Harvard University)
This paper examines two ivory panels from the late fifth or early sixth century that feature two female figures in full imperial regalia, generally identified as the empress Aelia Ariadne.
In contrast to previous studies of the plaques, which have primarily concentrated on identifying the empresses and the emperor in consular attire depicted on her tablion, this presentation examines the meaning of their iconography. Arguing that the central message advertised on the panels is that the Christian empress bears imperial authority comparable to that of the emperor, I examine the ideas and historical circumstances which allowed for the portrayal of a Roman empress in an emperor's clothes.
I maintain that the two major ideas through which the Roman Augustae participated in imperial ideology were the notions of the emperor's divine appointment, and of his god- granted victory. Both were adopted and perpetuated by the Christian emperors. Before and during Constantine's time, the empresses were incorporated into these ideas through association or assimilation to mother-goddesses, or to the imperial virtues. With the changed religious priorities of the Theodosian era assimilation to goddesses came to an end. Instead, the Augustae adopted the male insignia of rulership and victory.
These novel iconographic developments can be explained by the changing positions of Helena and the Virgin Mary and an emerging comparison between the two. The empress Helena came to be viewed as Constantine's partner in the creation of the Christian monarchy, and essential to his victory in Christ. Mary was elevated to the position of Theotokos and increasingly seen as the counterpart to Christ, and likewise instrumental to achieving victory. As the Theodosian court came to compare the two female figures, each gained something extraordinary through the association. Mary acquired the prerogatives of an empress. Helena and the empresses who followed her gained a kind of authority formerly available through appeal to Roman goddesses. In the refashioning of the traditional base of female imperial power in Christian context, the empresses found a new role within the ideology of imperial victory. This role was portrayed on the ivories of Ariadne, where two Augustae were arrayed in all the splendor of masculine authority.
The Loros in Image and Text
Jennifer L. Ball (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU)
The portrait of Eudoxia with her sons, Leo and Alexander, in the Homilies of Gregory Nazianzus (Par. Gr. 510) presents an interesting problem of interpreting imperial dress. Each figure wears a loros that crosses down over the shoulders and chest, while the back panel winds around the hip, to the front of the body, and hangs over the arm. In all three cases the jewel-studded loros is worn over a divetesion, a long, silk tunic. An identical semi-spherical stemma rests on their heads and each wears pointed, silk slippers studded with pearls. This portrait and many others like it shows that official dress for the Middle Byzantine emperor and empress consisted of a stemma, a loros over a divetesion with an under-tunic, and silk shoes, called tzangia. Contemporary literary sources such as De Ceremoniis, however, contradict the evidence of the portraits. They state that this outfit was only worn on Easter and that official dress usually consisted of a chlamys in place of the loros. In this paper, I will examine why official imperial dress as seen in images differs from what was actually worn.
First, for practical reasons, the loros was in actuality not worn often. The garment's construction with its multiple rows of precious stones and pearls embedded onto a leather panel made it extremely heavy. Also, as an excessively long garment worn precariously draped around the body, the loros was, at best, difficult to wear. Attempts to re-design the garment in the Middle Byzantine period attest to this.
In addition to adding considerable weight, the jewels, of course, made the garment the most valuable piece of imperial clothing. Therefore, by its very nature, the loros was designed for special occasions. The loros was counted among the imperial treasury and treated more as a precious object than an article of clothing.
Due to the expense of the loros, the garment attained a status that can be likened to "crown jewels." As such the loros was worn rarely but pictured often, serving as a symbol of the empire itself. The chlamys with its golden tablion played a greater role in Byzantine ceremony as it was worn for most victory celebrations and coronations, among many other ceremonies.
The types of ceremonies for which the loros was worn highlight its special status. Not surprisingly, the loros was donned for the most important Byzantine feast of the year, Easter, when the emperor was seen by more of his citizens than at any other time. Clearly the imperial garment acted as an emblem of power.
Besides the Easter ceremony, the loros was sported for select diplomatic ceremonies. By displaying the loros before foreigners, the imperial couple lived up to their image quite literally. Many of the images in which the loros was donned were images that circulated outside of the borders of the Byzantine Empire-coins, ivories and metalwork most importantly. Due to the prominence of the loros in artistic representations, it should be understood as an internationally recognized symbol of Byzantium that embodied its wealth and power.
The Royal View at Monreale
Mark J. Johnson (Brigham Young University)
As Professor Ernst Kitzinger observed at the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Art Bulletin 31, 1949, 269-92) and as I previously demonstrated at the Cathedral of Cefalu (Gesta, 33 (1994),118-131), earlier mosaic programs at Norman churches with royal connections contained saints and scenes chosen for their associations with their royal patron, Roger II. In each case, these elements are located on the south wall, opposite the royal box in the Cappella Palatina and across from the throne at Cefalu. A "royal view" is thus created in each church.
It is well known that the design of Monreale is based upon that of Cefalu and there is reason to believe that the royal panels at Monreale were based on now-lost panels that once adorned the facade of Cefalu Cathedral. Roger had intended his cathedral to be his burial church and William looked to this model in creating his own dynastic monument at Monreale, transferring the remains of his father there and eventually be interred there himself.
While visiting the Cathedral of Monreale last summer, I stood as close to the royal throne as possible to see what could be seen from the vantage point. While seated on his throne on the north side of the sanctuary, King William II (1166-1189), the founder of the church could look directly across and see his own dedicatory image, depicting him presenting a model of the church to the Virgin Mary. This I expected, but as I looked around I was surprised to discover how much else was visible from the throne, both on the pier and wall near the dedicatory mosaic and on the walls of the south transept.
The mosaic program at Monreale contained several of the same saints and scenes as in the royal views of Roger's churches, similarly located in sight of the royal throne. On the southwestern pier of the sanctuary are two roundels containing images of the biblical kings David and Roboam.
In the center of the south transept wall is the scene of the Transfiguration, a scene rich with royal associations. Around the corner, on the west wall of the south transept, but still within view of the throne, is the scene of the Entry into Jerusalem, which figured prominently into the royal view at the Cappella Palatina.
The south transept held special importance for William, for it was here that the porphyry sarcophagus containing the remains of his father and his own sarcophagus were placed. As a royal burial chapel, then, the south transept received decoration linked with its function. The theme of the bottom register of the south wall and the panels of the west wall is that of the last events of Christ's life and the beginning of the passion sequence, which is picked up in the north transept, culminating in the crucifixion of Christ. The north transept also functioned as
burial chapel, containing the sarcophagi of William's mother and two brothers. The themes of royalty and the mission, passion and death of Christ provided an appropriate setting for the royal tombs of Norman rulers.
SESSION XXII: PROBLEMS IN LATE ANTIQUE AND BYZANTINE LETTERS
Plotinus the Neo-Aristotelian?
David Olster (University of Kentucky)
Plotinus clearly stands out as the greatest philosopher of late antiquity, whose work inspired not only later Neo-Platonisms like Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus, but also the most influential of Christian theologians like the Cappadocians and Augustine. But while Plotinus's broad influence on later thinkers is universally recognized, his own philosophical development has been less well studied. His philosophy has been often (although by no means always) characterized as "mystical," and in the light of Porphyry's Life been viewed rather as a "holy man" than as a philosopher. More to the point of this paper, scholars have, for the most part, viewed his works as an organic whole: a system that has been designated "Neo-Platonism."
The weakness of this approach is self-evident, for it begs the question of the evolution of his philosophical positions. Ironically, modern scholars have viewed Plotinus much as Plotinus himself viewed Plato, as a seamless whole without philosophical development or changes of position. Yet just as this viewpoint of Plato is naive, so too is the view that Plotinus's work did not evolve. In fact, the question of Plotinus's philosophical evolution is one that we are uniquely in a position to explore. Unlike Plato, whose works are not only undated, but whose order is subject to debate, Porphyry's Life not only lists the works of Plotinus in the order of their composition, but roughly dates them as well. By exploring Plotinus's changing vocabulary and strategies to interpret fundamental philosophical problems within the tradition of middle Platonism, his evolution as philosopher and his break with the previous traditions of Platonic thought can be found.
Specifically, I intend to examine the changing context and use of the terms hyle and hypokeimenon (both of which are often translated as matter) showing a shift in Plotinus's view of matter from his earliest works to his later ones. In particular, I will endeavor to show that that Plotinus drew on the Aristotelian distinction between "potential" and "activity" in order to resolve the philosophical dualism between matter and spirit that he inherited from his middle Platonist influences.
By setting Plotinus into his own philosophical context, and showing how he worked with and within a broader philosophical tradition, scholars can begin to re-evaluate the intellectual development of late antiquity as an organically evolving tradition rather than relying on the broad (and vague) term Neo-Platonism to explain the philosophical foundations of phenomena like monasticism or iconoclasm.
Alexander the Monk and Alexander Kazhdan: A Question of Date
John W. Nesbitt (Dumbarton Oaks)
In the second volume of his De cruce Christi (1602) Jakob Gretser came to publish a curious text which its author, Alexander the Monk, describes as an historical narrative relating the discovery of the life-giving cross. Gretser based his edition (later reprinted by Migne in PG 87.3) on three manuscripts: one in Grottaferrata, one in Munich and another in the hands of the Belgian humanist Andreas Schott. Today some forty manuscripts are known and consequently a new edition is easily justified. In response to this need John Nesbitt and Roger Scott have undertaken to establish a revised text for the Corpus Christianorum (Leuven).
The text presents a number of problems. One of these is a matter of date. In their translation of Theophanes the Confessor Mango and Scott (pp. lxxvi-lxxviii) neatly summarize the question as follows. The text was written somewhere between 543 and the ninth/ tenth centuries. The terminus post quem derives from a reference in the text to the condemnation of Origen. The terminus ante quern is based on the date of manuscripts containing a Georgian translation. It should be noted that Alexander the Monk is generally credited with the authorship of two texts: the Inventio crucis and the Laudatio Barnabae apostoli (ed. P. van Deun [1993]). In his Introduction Van Deun persuasively argues that the Laudatio was written between 530 and 566 and so, if it was obvious that the two works were written by one and the same author, we could use the Laudatio to date the Inventio. But A. Kazhdan (see his ODB article) has labeled the identification as "arbitrary"' and in an article in Byzantion (1987; p. 247) he proposed that the Inventio crucis may have originated in the period of 741-775. The reason for this proposed date is that the text concludes with a eulogy of the Cross, a cultic outpouring which Kazhdan would see as appropriate to the reign of Constantine V.
Our paper will argue that it would be difficult to find anything in the text which relates to Iconoclasm and that what seems to come across is that the text is related to theological concerns of the sixth century and to the promotion of pilgrimage. I will further argue that the panegyric on the cross needs to be considered in the light of a possible interpolation. For we have to remember that the reason the text was popular is that it was commonly used in association with the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross. Hence the text as we have it may have undergone modification.
"George the Grammarian" : History of a Misunderstanding
Federica Ciccolella De Luigi (Columbia University)
A poet called "George the Grammarian" is mentioned in all major texts on Byzantine literature as the author of eleven Anacreontic poems, only nine of which are preserved: six ethopoeae (1-6), two bridal songs (7,8), and one poem for the Brumalia of a grammarian Colluthus (9). These poems, handed down in the tenth-century codex Barberinianus gr. 310, were published first by Pietro Matranga (1850) and then by Theodor Bergk (1867). Attempts to identify the author have not given any meaningful result. Theodor Nissen and Rosario Anastasi have sketched out the personality of a poet who lived perhaps during the sixth century, either in Egypt or in Palestine. Consideration of the striking similarities in style and content between George's poems and those of John of Gaza has provided a significant clue to his close relationship with the cultural environment as determined by the "school of Gaza".
A "George the Grammarian" is actually mentioned in the index of the Barb. gr. 310 as the author of a lost Disputation between the Sun and Aphrodite. But there is no name next to the titles of the following ten poems, usually considered George's work. It was Leo Allatius, in the seventeenth century, who, in his copy of the Barberini manuscript (currently Vallicellianus gr. 210), wrote rswpyiou ypapEiaTUCov at the top of the page where the first poem begins, Tov airrou before the title of the following seven poems, assigning the ninth one to an "Acoluthus". Matranga, who based his edition both on the Barberini manuscript and on Allatius' copy, did not question Allatius' attribution; nor did Bergk, who did not see the original manuscript directly.
Some slight differences in the style and the metrical structure of the nine poems, and especially their content and the circumstances of their transmission, allow us to draw some distinctions among them. The last three poems may have circulated independently: they were the only ones imitated by Leo Magister Choirosphactes in his poems composed for the weddings of emperors Leo VI and Constantine VII. Poem 4 probably also circulated independently, transmitted by the Laurentianus gr. 32. 52 under the name of Constantine of Sicily (10th century). The references to the Nile in poem 7 and to a Colluthus in poem 9 hint at an Egyptian origin. Poem 1 refers to the shrine of Aphrodite at Aphaka, in Lebanon. It is possible that poems 5 and 6 had a Palestinian provenance: they are related to a visual representation of the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus, which is remarkably similar to a sixth-century mosaic discovered at Madaba, as well as to Procopius of Gaza's EKTpaois dKOvos.
There is no evidence, therefore, that George the Grammarian wrote the nine poems traditionally attributed to him. They should rather be considered anonymous lateantique school exercises, probably by different authors and of different origins. Until the end of the tenth century, when these texts were included in the Barberini sylloge, they may have circulated in one or more anthologies, as is the case of most of the Byzantine Anacreontics.
Metropolitan of Rhodos Theodoulos as a Book Collector: Evidence from Columbia University Manuscript Smith West. Add. 10
Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann (Glenmont, NY)
Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library possesses a unique and very important Greek manuscript: "Pege Gnoseos" by St. John of Damascus, with scholia composed by a XIII-century Byzantine astronomer George Chioniades for one Theodoulos. The unpublished text of the scholia has been studied by historians of science, but some important and intriguing questions have never been asked: In what circle or scriptorium was the St. John of Damascus manuscript written? How many scribes worked on the codex, and who were they? Who was Theodoulos, the commissioner of the manuscript? In my paper I will address such questions using paleographical and codicological analysis.
According to the main scribe's colophon, the manuscript Smith Add. 10 was finished in AD 1296. This date was erased and changed to 1301 to indicate the completion of the scholia. Because Chioniades at that time was translating the Persian astronomical treatises he used in our scholia, they are almost certainly the original commentaria. Also, we learn from a marginal note that the commissioner of the scholia was Theodoulos, "the most honorable among monks." The main scribe of the manuscript can be identified as a well-known copyist, Symeon Kalliandres, who copied two other manuscripts for Theodoulos. In one of them (Strassbourg, Argent. 1906) Theodoulos was identified as metropolitan of Rhodos, and in the other (M. Athos, Iveron 38) as "the most honorable among monks." Although some analysts believe they were two different persons, the codex Smith Add. 10 suggests otherwise. It is highly unlikely that a simple monk commissioned sophisticated scholia to a famous scientist working for the emperor. And rarely, if ever, is a monk called "the most honorable" in a colophon.
My hypothesis is that all three manuscripts were written for the same person - Theodoulos-the first when he was metropolitan of Rhodos and the second and third thereafter. The Strasbourg manuscript (dated AD 1285) is the last document identifying Theodoulos as metropolitan. And very probably Theodoulos, an active supporter of the Union of the Churches, had to retire to a monastery after the local council of Constantinople officially repudiated the Union in 1285. But, as a monk, Theodoulos continued to collect books and, perhaps, had more time to satisfy his intellectual curiosity. Thus, Columbia University manuscript Smith Add. 10 enhances our understanding of religious and political life, as well as intellectual activities, in the early Paleologan period.
SESSION XXIII: SUBSTANCE AND STYLE IN BYZANTINE LUXURY OBJECTS: TEXTILES, IVORY, WOODCARVING
Chair: Christine Havice (University of Kentucky)
A first approach to textiles with New Testament scenes: the Field Museum example
Vasileios Marinis (University of IIlinois at Urbana-Champaign)
New Testament subjects are rare in Coptic textiles. However, an example from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which has never been fully published, provides insight into their meaning. The red-ground roundels, clavus strips and sleeve bands, once decorated a woolen tunic to whose fragments they are still attached. Due to the schematization of the representation the scenes are rather difficult to read but include among others the Visitation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi and the Baptism. Christ Pantokrator and figures of saints are also present.
In interpreting the scenes one should bear in mind that the weavers did not follow the "official" iconography - this is also often the case in monumental Coptic painting. There is much free (or maybe folk) interpretation in rendering the scenes from the Gospels, and the iconography ultimately derives from popular culture and is somehow influenced by magic. These garments were people's everyday clothes and they reflect their beliefs, superstitions and anxieties, their need for protection and prosperity. And for these reasons it is sometimes very difficult for us to understand what it is represented.
The selection of subjects on the tunic is similar to that which appears on sixth- and seventh- century jewelry, amulets, pendants and other objects typical of an early Christian household. In this paper I will argue, elaborating upon an idea first expressed by Henry and Eunice Maguire, that the goal of these objects' decoration is quite different from the goal of the monumental art. Saints, miracles and biblical subjects, including scenes from the life of Joseph, appearing on these weavings were rather designed to function as amulets or charms to protect and bring happiness to the bearers. Additional information about this mentality is provided to us by surviving written Coptic charms.
Their obscure meaning, in which Christ, Isis, apostles, saints, demons, incomprehensible words, and magic signs are repeated and blended together, finds its parallel in the strange way some of the scenes in the tunic are repeated or mixed with others.
Finally, these weavings do not strike one as art objects but in any case these representations do not have an exclusively decorative character. Their importance, however, lies in the information they provide about people's everyday life in the early Christian era, a life full of magic and faith, demons and gods, hopes and fears.
Ivories Reconsidered
loll Kalavrezou (Harvard University)
This paper will study closely three ivory pieces which through their carving technique and style reveal that they were produced, if not by the same craftsman, at least in the same shop. What is interesting about these pieces is that they are not similar at all, either in form or subject matter.
The first is a box decorated on its exterior with warriors and related figures, the second consists of two plaques, which together were part also of a container but is of different size and shape than the first and has a narrative subject. These two are objects of secular use. The third is an icon triptych with the Crucifixion, and in contrast to the boxes is a piece of religious function.
The observation that they are closely related addresses a larger problem in the study of Byzantine ivories: their organization into stylistic and iconographic groups in the corpus of 1934. The established view is that these groups represent a few workshops in Constantinople that worked during the decades from 940 to 970 and produced the majority of ivory pieces. This grouping and dating was so persuasive that it has prevented scholarship to move on. The recent exhibitions of Byzantine art have raised a few questions and occasionally individual pieces have been recognized to belong to different centuries.
The discussion of these three objects will raise questions as to the organization of the ivories, their production and the way we have been taught to look at them.
Late and Post-Byzantine Woodcarvings in the Walters Art Gallery
Holger A. fUein (University of Bonn/ The Walters Art Gallery)
Apart from his well-known interest in collecting Early and Middle Byzantine art and manuscripts, Henry Walters also acquired, over a period of about 30 years, a considerable number of Late- and Post Byzantine works of art, among them a great number of woodcarvings. So far, these works have received little or no scholarly attention. The preparations for the reinstallation of the Walters Art Gallery's Medieval and Byzantine galleries have provided an opportunity to study these objects in more detail. As it turned out, Henry Walters' collection of Late- and Post-Byzantine woodcarvings is one of the largest within the United States, including liturgical and devotional objects from the late 14th through the late 18th centuries.
These works, which include Benediction and Communion-table crosses, circular and star-shaped pendants and devotional diptychs and triptychs, follow a long tradition of woodcarving practiced in the monastic centers of Northern Greece, the Peloponnese, and the Greek islands. Since few of the objects in the Walters collection have an artist's signature or date, only stylistic and iconographic comparisons with signed and dated works preserved in museums, the monasteries of Mt. Athos, and other centers of Orthodoxy can provide clues for determining their provenance and date.
The present paper will introduce some of these works-most of them unpublished - for the first time to a wider audience. The aim of this presentation is twofold. On the one hand, it will introduce a lesser-known aspect of Henry Walters' interest in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art; on the other hand, it will address the problem of the attribution and dating of these objects.
INDEX OF SPEAKERS (Name-Session)
Angelov, Dimiter G. (IX)
Angelova, Diliana (XXI)
Athanasoulis, Demetrios (XV)
Ball, Jennifer L. (XU)
Baloglou, George (XIV)
Bowes, Kim (X)
Brauch, Thomas (VI)
Britt, Karen C. (VII)
Brooks, Sarah T. (XIV)
Buhl, Gudrun
Caner, Daniel (XI)
Caraher, William (II)
Clover, F.M. (III)
Connor, Carolyn L. (XVIII)
Cotsonis, John (V)
De Luigi, Federica Ciccolella (XXII)
Dolezal, Mary-Lyon (XIX)
Downing, Caroline (II)
Downs, Joan M. (111)
Filipovic, Nenad (IV)
Fine, John V.A. (XIII)
Flanigan, Theresa (X)
Folda, Jaroslav (VIII)
Gaddis, Michael (XX)
Gerstel, Sharon (II)
Gregory, Timothy E. (XVI)
Grossman, Heather E. (XV)
Hall, Linda Jones (XI)
Hallman, Robert (VI)
Hanak, Walter K. (1)
Johnson, Mark J. (XXI)
Kaegi, Walter E. (III)
Kalas, Veronica G. (1)
Kalavrezou, loli (XXIII)
Kalleres, Dayna (VII)
Kavrus-Hoffmann, Nadezhda (XXII)
Khalilieh, Hassan (XII)
Kirin, Asen (1)
Klein, Holger A. (XXIII)
Korac, Dusan (XVIII)
Kotsis, Kriszta (V)
Kourelis, Kotsis (XVI)
Kulikowski, Michael (IX)
Layton, Richard A. (XVIII)
Lemiski, Karen (XVII)
Levy, Kenneth (XIII)
MacEvitt, Christopher (VIII)
MacKay, Camilla (XVI)
Majeska, George P. (XVII)
Marinis, Vasileios (XXIII)
Mathisen, Ralph W. (XII)
Mavroudi, Maria (XI)
McClanan, Anne (XXI)
Mladjov, Ian S.R. (XVII)
Moussa, Mark (XVIII)
Myers, Gregory (XVII)
Nesbitt, John W. (XXII)
Neville, Leonora (XII)
Nicholas, Nick (XIV)
Nicklies, Charles (XVI)
Nikoleishvili, Irene (II)
O'Brien Maureen Anne (XIX)
Olster, David (XXII)
Papademetriou, Tom (IV)
Papalexandrou, Amy (XVI)
Perry, David (VIII)
Perry, E. Warren, Jr. (IX)
Philippides, Marios (I)
Piguet-Panayotova, Dora (V)
Popovic, Svetlana (X)
Rapp, Claudia (VI)
Rapp, Stephen H., Jr. (XI)
Rentel, Alexander (XX)
Roussanova, Rossitza B. (II)
Sarefield, Daniel (VII)
Schumann, Reinhold (I)
Shanzer, Danuta (XV)
Shean, John F. (IX)
Smine, Rima E. (XIX)
Snively, Carolyn S. (X)
Snyder, Lynn M. (VIII)
Sosower, Mark L. (XIX)
Tada, Richard (VII)
Tinnefeld, Franz (XIV)
Touwaide, Alain (XIV)
Trenchard-Smith, Margaret (XX)
Tritle, Lawrence A. (XIII)
Trombley, Frank R. (XVI)
Viscuso, Patrick (XII)
Volan, Angela (XV)
Walker, Alicia (V)
Wessel, Susan (XX)
White, Andrew Walker (XVII)
Wright, David H. (XIII)
Wright, Diana Gilliland (IV)
Zwirn, Stephen R. (VI)
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To serve until the 2003 Conference:
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To serve until the 2001 Conference:
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