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Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
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The Chapel of Physicians at Santa Maria Antiqua* DAVID KNIPP
n 27 June 414 Bishop Cyril of Alexandria addressed a crowd gathering in the Church of the Apostles at Canopus in Egypt. The occasion was the translation of the relics of the two saints Abbakyros and John from Alexandria to the Church of the Evangelists at Menuthis. Cyril quite frankly explained the purpose of this act: in Menuthis and the nearby town of Canopus even Christians, when they got ill, tended to consult the dream oracles at the shrines of the Egyptian gods Sarapis and Isis medica. The reason for this weakness the bishop ascribed to the fact that there was nowhere in the vicinity the tomb of a famous martyr toward which sick Christians could have turned for help. Therefore, Cyril installed the relics of the two saints in order to replace the pagan shrines.1 When in a second speech on the following day—now in the church at Menuthis—Cyril condemned the practice of dream oracles, so-called incubation, taking place at the pagan temples, he did not foresee that precisely this practice was to become a most significant feature of the cult of Sts. Abbakyros and John as well as other medical saints throughout the East for centuries to come, a procedure closely associated with their shrines, relics, and images. This study, however, explores the way religious imagery worked for the sick in early medieval Rome. The idea that a cult of medical saints actually involving incubation might have taken place in Rome has generally been dismissed because of the absence of any documentary evidence. Whether a study of the imagery provides further information remains to be seen.
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SANTA MARIA ANTIQUA: THE DIAKONIKON Since the excavations of 1900–1901, S. Maria Antiqua, the ancient church at the foot of the Palatine Hill, has been recognized as an exceptionally rich source of information * This study was written during the tenure of a Wellcome Research Fellowship held at the Warburg Institute, University of London. I would like to thank Michael Evans and Dag Nikolaus Hasse for their comments and criticism. 1 Cyril of Alexandria, Oratiunculae tres in translatione reliquiarum SS. Martyrum Cyri et Joannis, PG 77:1099– 1106. DACL 1:1113–14. Epiphanios, Ancoratus §109, PG 43:209. Menuthis had since changed its name to Aboukir (Abba Kyros). P. Sinthern, “Der römische Abbacyrus in Geschichte, Legende und Kunst,” RQ 22 (1908): 202; H. Delehaye, “Les saints d’Aboukir,” AB 30 (1911): 448–50; D. Montserrat, “Pilgrimage to the Shrine of SS Cyrus and John at Menouthis in Late Antiquity,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. D. Frankfurter (Leiden, 1998), 261–66; J. Osborne, “The Atrium of S. Maria Antiqua, Rome: A History in Art,” PBSR 55 (1987): 207.
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THE CHAPEL OF PHYSICIANS AT SANTA MARIA ANTIQUA
about cult forms and the role played by images in the period preceding Iconoclasm and beyond.2 This may have its reason in a landslide in 847 that left the church partly destroyed and subsequently abandoned and thus unchanged for roughly a millennium.3 Although this study deals with the cultic function of one particular chapel, it is at this point necessary to embark on some preliminary, more general remarks on the church. The structure that forms S. Maria Antiqua, built originally as a ceremonial hall and later perhaps used as a guard room in connection with the palaces on the Palatine, was at some time during the later sixth century converted into a church.4 Situated on the rise of the Palatine Hill, the building is adjacent to the Temple of Castor and Pollux and the Horrea Agrippiana with the church of S. Teodoro. The existing space was adapted to a Greek plan, with a bema, the presbytery leading to a prothesis on the left and a diakonikon on the right-hand side of the apse (Fig. 1). All the saints depicted in the diakonikon are Eastern; all inscriptions are in Greek. The style of the frescoes has been described as “Hellenistic” and has provoked extensive research into the development of “Hellenism” in early medieval Roman wall painting, while the artists—at least those of the first generation—are commonly assumed to have been Byzantines.5 S. Maria Antiqua was the church of a Greek community closely associated with the Byzantine administration residing on the Palatine. A Byzantine quarter established itself during the sixth and seventh centuries between the Palatine and the area around Torre delle Milizie; there was a major influx of Greek immigrants from Egypt into the city after the Arab conquest of Alexandria in 641.6 The diakonikon, already quite adequately labeled “The Chapel of Physicians” by Joseph Wilpert,7 contains a fresco cycle of medical saints of Eastern origin, the Anargyroi, the healers who do not take money.8 It has long been established, on stylistic grounds as well as for palaeographic reasons, that the paintings in the chapel were executed during the 2 G. M. Rushforth, “The Church of S. Maria Antiqua,” PBSR 1 (1902): 1–123. See also W. de Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique (Rome, 1911); J. Wilpert, Die römischen Mosaiken und Malereien der kirchlichen Bauten vom IV. bis XIII. Jahrhundert, vol. 2 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1917), 653–726; idem, “Sancta Maria Antiqua,” L’Arte 13 (1910): 1–20, 81–107; P. Romanelli and P. J. Nordhagen, S. Maria Antiqua (Rome, 1964); M. Avery, “The Alexandrian Style in S. Maria Antiqua,” ArtB 7 (1925): 131–49; E. Tea, La basilica di Santa Maria Antiqua (Milan, 1937); E. Kitzinger, “Byzantine Art in the Period between Justinian and Iconoclasm,” in Berichte zum Internationalen Byzantinisten-Kongress (Munich, 1958); idem, “On Some Icons of the VII Century,” in Late Classical and Medieval Studies in Honour of A. M. Friend, Jr. (Princeton, N.J., 1955), 132–50; A. Weis, “Ein vorjustinianischer Ikonentypus in S. Maria Antiqua,” Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 8 (1958): 17–61. 3 This was probably the result of an earthquake mentioned in the Liber Pontificalis, 2:108: “terre motus in urbe Roma”; cf. R. Krautheimer, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae, vol. 2 (Vatican City, 1962), 252 (hereafter CBCR). 4 The conversion of the 1st-century building is not mentioned before the mid-7th century; cf. Krautheimer, CBCR 2:251, 269–70; see also idem, Rome: Profile of a City (Princeton, N.J., 1980), 71. For a comprehensive analysis of the building and the various phases of its development and use, see Krautheimer, CBCR 2:251–70 with survey plans, pls. XVIII, XIX; for the pre-Christian edifice, see also R. Delbrück, “Der Südostbau am Forum Romanum,” JDAI 36 (1921): 8–33, 186–87. 5 For a critical review of the discussion of “Hellenism” in S. Maria Antiqua and its origin, see P. J. Nordhagen, “‘Hellenism’ and the Frescoes in Santa Maria Antiqua,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 41 (1972): 73–80. See also Krautheimer, Profile, 99–105, who like Kitzinger settles for a Constantinopolitan origin of the Hellenistic influence, and also raises the question as to whether the artists were imported from Byzantium. M. Dvorák, Der Palazzo di Venezia in Rom (Vienna, 1909), 37–42. 6 On the Byzantine quarter, see Krautheimer, Profile, 76; J.-M. Sansterre, Les moines grecs et orientaux à Rome aux époques Byzantine et carolingienne, vol. 1 (Brussels, 1983). 7 Wilpert, Mosaiken und Malereien, 675. 8 For a survey of the extant paintings, see P. J. Nordhagen, “The Frescoes of John VII (AD 705–707) in S. Maria Antiqua in Rome,” ActaIRNorv 3 (1968): 55–66.
1
Survey plan of S. Maria Antiqua/Horrea Agrippiana, Rome (after A. Bartoli, “Gli Horrea Agrippiana,” MonAnt 27 [1921]: fig. 1, modified)
2
Topography of area west of the Palatine Hill, Rome (after H. Bauer, “Un Tentativo di recostruzione,” ArchCl 30 [1978]: fig. 6)
3
Chapel of Physicians, west wall, S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, 705–707 A.D.
4
Chapel of Physicians, niche in south wall, S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, 705–707 A.D.
5
Chapel of Physicians, icon in the niche of south wall, S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, 705–707 A.D.
6
Horrea Agrippiana, view toward the Palatine Hill, Rome
7
Horrea Agrippiana, view toward S. Maria Antiqua, Rome
9
8
Leaf of triptych with St. Damianos, St. Catherine monastery, Mount Sinai, 7th century A.D. (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)
Chapel of Physicians, west wall, head of saint, S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, 705–707 A.D. (after P. J. Nordhagen, “The Frescoes of John VII,” ActaIRNorv 3 [1968]: pl. LXXV)
10 Icon of Christ Pantokrator, St. Catherine monastery, Mount Sinai, end of 6th century A.D. (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)
11 Head of Sarapis, Louvre, Paris, 2nd century A.D. (after W. Hornbostel, Sarapis [Leiden, 1973], pl. CXLIII)
12 Icon of St. Abbakyros, atrium, S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, 757–767 A.D.
13 Head of St. Abbakyros, atrium, S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, 757–767 A.D.
14 Icon of St. Abbakyros (detail), atrium, S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, 757–767 A.D.
15 Icon of St. Abbakyros (detail), atrium, S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, 757–767 A.D.
16 Surgical instruments from excavations at Kolophon, 5th century B.C. (after R. Caton, “Notes,” JHS 34 [1914]: pl. X)
17 Surgical instruments from Durocortorum Remorum, 2nd or 3rd century A.D. (after E. Kunzl, Medizinische Instrumente [Bonn,1983], fig. 35)
18 Icon of St. Basil, St. Catherine monastery, Mount Sinai, 7th century A.D. (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)
DAVID KNIPP
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papacy of John VII (705–707), a Greek pope.9 Entering the Chapel of Physicians through the doorway from the presbytery, one faces the west wall, decorated with a row of saints and a painted velum below. This decoration is continued on the north wall where the painting is interrupted by the doorway to the west aisle. On the east wall remain only traces of fresco, and there are fragments of paint in the doorways leading to the west aisle and presbytery. The south wall contains a large niche, decorated again with a row of saints. The condition of the frescoes in the chapel is rather worn compared to other parts of John VII’s decoration. By far the best-preserved part of the murals in the chapel is the row of saints on the west wall. Six standing figures, accompanied by inscriptions, can be distinguished (Fig. 3). Of the first on the left, only the lower part of the legs remains. The next figure to the right, of which the upper part of the head with the halo and the lower part of the legs survive, shows remains of an accompanying inscription which led G. M. Rushforth to believe it might be St. Barachisius, a Persian martyr.10 Of the next saint to the right, the hooded head and upper part of the face are preserved, as well as the halo, the right side of the body, and the lowest portion of the legs. The fairly well preserved inscription names him as St. Dometios, a hermit who performed various healing miracles.11 The saint carries a surgeon’s box of which traces remain.12 The next figure on the right is for several reasons the most problematic of all the saints depicted in the chapel.13 Although the surface is rather rubbed and many small lacunae occur, the figure survives in its entire height with no larger losses and is therefore the best preserved in the chapel. The saint wears a brownish tunic, a purple-red pallium, and sandals; he holds a scroll with both his hands; the left—covered in the pallium—carries a surgeon’s box with a carrying strap. His long, almost black hair and flowing beard, the large dark eyes with vividly rendered strong eyebrows, and the small cap he wears (see Fig. 9) set him distinctly apart from all other saints in the chapel, as does the dark purplish pallium. The overall impression of the figure is, in costume and type, a markedly classical one; there is nothing quite like it within the entire church decoration. There has always been a confusion about the identity of this figure. Although Rushforth14 had already rightly pointed out that it is not accompanied by an inscription—according to him, this might be due to a miscalculation of space—Wilpert and other scholars connected the figure with the fully preserved inscription “Agios Panteleemon” on the right.15 But this name, for iconographic reasons, clearly belongs to the youthful saint next to him on the right. Thus the figure in question remains nameless. St. Panteleimon is preserved in his entire height, but the surface is very worn, with many lacunae. The saint, a physician from Nikomedeia, 9
Cf. Nordhagen, ibid., 87. John VII’s addition to the decoration of the church is recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, vol. 1, ed. L. Duchesne (Paris, 1886), 385: “Basilicam itaque sanctae Dei genetricis qui Antiqua vocatur pictura decoravit, illicque ambonem noviter fecit et super eandem ecclesiam episcopium quantum ad se construere maluit, illicque pontificati sui tempus vitam finivit.” See A. Augenti, Il Palatino nel medioevo (Rome, 1996), 56–60; J. D. Breckenridge, “Evidence for the Nature of Relations between Pope John VII and the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II,” BZ 65 (1972): 364–74. 10 Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 77. 11 “Acta Graeca S. Dometii Martyris,” AB 19 (1900): 310–13. 12 For the shape of the surgeon’s boxes held by several saints in the chapel, see Nordhagen’s tracings in his “John VII,” pls. CXXVIII–CXXIX; Wilpert, Mosaiken und Malereien, pl. 145.2; Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, fig. 75. 13 Nordhagen, “John VII,” 58–59, pls. LXXIV, LXXV; Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, fig. 129, pl. IC.LVI. 14 Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 78. 15 Cf. Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, 164; Wilpert, Mosaiken und Malereien, 675.
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wears a chlamys and tunic; he carries a scroll and a surgeon’s box, which together with his beardless face are in keeping with the later Byzantine iconography of this saint.16 The last figure on the right is again preserved from head to foot, but the surface is largely damaged. The saint shows a tonsured head and short beard and wears the paenula of an ecclesiastic; he holds a small cross in his right hand, a surgeon’s box in his left.17 As only a small part of the inscription survives, the identity of the saint remains unclear.18 The continuation of the frieze on the north wall19 has a similar painted velum below, but is partly destroyed, in particular around and above the doorway to the west aisle. What remains is, on the left, the figure of a saint, identified by his accompanying inscription as St. John.20 The figure is largely preserved, but the paint is very worn and damaged in many parts. The saint has rather voluminous hair, a moustache, and a short beard. He wears a cap, a tunic, and a cloak decorated with a pattern of white circles; he holds a scroll in his right hand, a surgeon’s box in his left. Of the next figure on the right remain the head and the upper part of the right side (apart from a small area around the right foot). The accompanying inscription on the left names the saint as St. Celsus.21 He shows a beardless face, dark hair, and has a band tied around his head; the saint wears tunic and pallium. Of the next figure to the right only parts of the head and the halo survive, but the saint is easily identified by the inscription as St. Abbakyros, an Alexandrian physician.22 The figures to the right of this one are largely destroyed; what still can be seen is an unidentifiable inscription and, next on the right, small parts of a halo with the accompanying name of St. Kosmas. Of the last figure on the right, St. Damianos,23 remain the name, the head and halo, the shoulders and chest, as well as some fragments of the lower part. The saint has short hair and beard, and wears a tunic and pallium. The east wall preserves only a fragment of an inscription, which according to P. J. Nordhagen’s tracing belonged to a female saint, probably forming part of a frieze similar to those on the west and north walls.24 16
Vita S. Panteleemonis, PG 115:448–77; cf. Nordhagen, “John VII,” 60. This is probably the earliest representation of St. Panteleimon to have survived. Closest in time comes a fresco at Hagios Stephanos, Kastoria, where the saint also carries a surgeon’s box, though of a different shape. The painting has been assigned to the mid-9th century; S. Pelekanides and M. Chatzidakis, Kastoria (Athens, 1985), 10, 15, fig. 5. Compare also a mosaic in the naos of Hosios Loukas: E. Diez and O. Demus, Byzantine Mosaics in Greece (Cambridge, Mass., 1931), fig. 23. Cappella Palatina: E. Kitzinger, I mosaici del periodo Normanno in Sicilia, vol. 1 (Palermo, 1994), fig. 123. See also a 12thcentury fresco at Hagioi Anargyroi, Kastoria; S. Pelekanides, Kastoria (Thessalonike, 1953), pl. 26b. 17 Nordhagen, “John VII,” 60. 18 For the various readings of the remaining letters, see Nordhagen, ibid. 19 Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, 164, fig. 128; Nordhagen, “John VII,” pl. LXXI.b; Wilpert, Mosaiken und Malereien, pl. 145.1. 20 St. John Anargyros, fellow martyr of St. Abbakyros. The type and iconography in later Byzantine art differs considerably from this early representation: compare, e.g., a 12th-century fresco at Hagioi Anargyroi, Kastoria; Pelekanides, Kastoria, pl. 22a. See also a mosaic at Monreale; Kitzinger, Mosaici, 3: pls. 233, 237. 21 As Rushforth pointed out, this is probably not Celsus of Milan, fellow martyr of Nazarius, but Celsus of Antioch; Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 78. 22 This inscription was, although only fragmentary, much more distinct when Wilpert’s watercolor was done than it is today. 23 The holy physicians Kosmas and Damianos were already popular in Rome much earlier, as their church on the Forum, dating from 526–530, shows, but during the Byzantine period several new churches in Rome were dedicated to the two brothers; cf. Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 79. 24 Nordhagen, “John VII,” 63, pl. CXVII.22. The east wall might have once contained a row of female medical saints; cf. J. David in Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, 484–85.
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The south wall contains a large rectangular niche starting at floor level (Fig. 4).25 Painted on its rear wall is a frieze of five saints with an ornamented border consisting of interlaced circles at the bottom and a small velum forming the lowest decorated strip. The inscriptions are set into a narrow strip above the saints’ haloes, forming thus a decorated zone of their own and emphasizing the strict horizontal order of the compositional scheme. This is the only part of the badly damaged painting that is almost entirely preserved, giving the name of each saint depicted below. The only figure to have survived in large part is the saint on the extreme left, St. Kosmas (Fig. 5).26 The surface is rather rubbed; the feet are lost, but there are several well-preserved parts as well as quite a few lacunae. The saint has short hair, beard and moustache of a reddish color; he wears a tunic and a purplish pallium. The eyes are large, almost round and have a solemn expression, framed by arched eyebrows and strongly rendered lower lids. The nose is thin and casts a shadow on its left side, the lips are rather strong and prominent, the chin small. It is a strikingly thin and elongated, markedly ascetic face of a greenish color which is more successful in giving the idea of an underlying bone structure than is the case with most of the other saints’ faces in the chapel. On the forehead, above the right eye, is a distinct horizontal shadow, which adds to the vividness of the expression. The right hand holds a white scroll, tied with a dark band. The left hand, covered by the pallium, obviously holds the surgeon’s box, which is seen from its right side, with a long carrying strap pointing upwards. It is of a dark, reddish-brown color and represents the best-preserved example of its kind in the chapel.27 Of the next figure, St. Abbakyros, marginal parts of the halo and most of the body survive, but very worn and with many lacunae. This saint, too, wears a purplish pallium. The saint on his right, St. Stephen, remains only in parts of the halo and a fragment of the body with the right hand holding a censer, as well as part of a long white garment.28 Of St. Prokopios, the next on the right, nothing but the upper contour of the halo is left.29 The last saint on the extreme right is St. Damianos, but there are only very worn parts of the halo and the head and traces of a purplish garment in the lower part still distinguishable. 25
The recess is 2.57 m high, 1.91 m wide, and 0.22 m deep; Nordhagen, “John VII,” 64. Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, 163, fig. 125. For the iconography of Sts. Kosmas and Damianos, see the Justinianic apse mosaic in their church on the Forum; Wilpert, Mosaiken und Malereien, pls. 102–7. For a middle Byzantine representation, see the 12th-century frescoes at Hagioi Anargyroi, Kastoria; Pelekanides, Kastoria, pl. 12. See also Monreale: Kitzinger, Mosaici, 3: pls. 230–31, 234–35. Hosios Loukas, narthex: Diez and Demus, Byzantine Mosaics, fig. 52. 27 Judging from Nordhagen’s tracings of other surgeon’s boxes carried by saints in the chapel, the one described here is of the same type as the ones held by the unidentified saints (nos. 4 and 6 in Nordhagen’s catalogue) on the west wall. They are also carried in the same fashion, always with the left hand; Nordhagen, “John VII,” pls. CXXVIII.9,12 and CXXIX.13. The apse mosaic at SS. Cosma e Damiano on the Forum shows a surgeon’s box of a different type carried by St. Damianos (a similar one presumably once held by St. Kosmas did not survive the repeated restorations). Being comparatively schematic, it is red, rectangular, and decorated with a white cross. 28 Compare the middle Byzantine fresco at Hagioi Anargyroi, Kastoria, where the saint is wearing a similar long-sleeved white garment; Pelekanides, Kastoria, pl. 13b. Daphni, naos: Diez and Demus, Byzantine Mosaics, fig. 77. 29 For the later iconography of this saint, see a fresco at Hagioi Anargyroi, Kastoria, where the saint is depicted as a soldier; Pelekanides, Kastoria, pl. 23b. The mosaic in the naos of Hosios Loukas shows him as a warrior, too: Diez and Demus, Byzantine Mosaics, fig. 36. See also a medallion in the Cappella Palatina; Kitzinger, Mosaici, 1: fig. 81. 26
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A fragment of paint in the lower left corner extending from the niche onto the surrounding wall led Nordhagen to the conclusion that the decoration of the niche was in some way connected with paintings once covering the entire south wall of which, however, nothing survives.30 THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE SITE The chapel has in its special dedication to medical saints no surviving counterparts. A somewhat comparable structure might have been the Chapel of St. Febronia in the Church of St. John Prodromos at Constantinople, known from the seventh-century miracles of St. Artemios, another medical saint. That chapel was, according to Cyril Mango’s reconstruction, located to the right of the apse and the main altar of the church—similar to the situation of the Chapel of Physicians at S. Maria Antiqua—and dedicated to a medical saint treating female patients, acting as a kind of assistant to St. Artemios.31 The considerable deviation from the usual function of a diakonikon as a vestry or repository for scriptures— obvious in the Chapel of Physicians—has, too, a parallel there. There have been attempts to explain the meaning and purpose of the chapel’s iconographic program in the context of the location of S. Maria Antiqua. Eva Tea in 1937 suggested a kind of medical shrine at S. Maria Antiqua and linked the Christian building to the preceding pagan monuments on the same site or in the immediate vicinity and their documented healing cults: the Lacus Iuturnae, a healing well within the precinct of the Roman deity Juturna, formed part of the area where S. Maria Antiqua was later established, and the Temple of Castor and Pollux, in the immediate neighborhood, was also the site of a healing cult.32 Tea understood this as the continuous specific dedication of a sacred place from ancient times.33 John Osborne, too, explained the prominence of medical saints in the decoration of S. Maria Antiqua with a replacement of the cult of Juturna34 by a Christian healing cult.35 However, the medical theme appears not to be a feature of the earliest strata of decoration at S. Maria Antiqua.36 It cannot be traced back beyond the mid-seventh century, and the cult of the medical saints seems to have reached the peak of its popularity only with the decorations commissioned by John VII and Paul I during the first half of the eighth century. 30
Nordhagen, “John VII,” 64. C. Mango, “On the History of the Templon and the Martyrion of St. Artemios at Constantinople,” Zograf 10 (1979): 41–42, plan fig. 1; see also V. S. Crisafulli and J. W. Nesbitt, The Miracles of St. Artemios (Leiden, 1997), 13–14, 140–44 (miracle 24), 198–99 (miracle 38), 222–25 (miracle 45). P. Maas, “Artemioskult in Konstantinopel,” BNJ 1 (1920): 377–80. 32 Tea, Basilica, 48–54. On the same matter, see more recently J. Aronen, “La sopravvivenza dei culti pagani e la topografia cristiana dell’area di Giuturna e delle sue adiacenze,” in E. M. Steinby, ed., Lacus Iuturnae, vol. 1 (Rome, 1989), 148–74. L. Deubner, “Juturna und die Ausgrabungen auf dem Römischen Forum,” Neue Jahrbücher 9 (1902): 370–88; E. Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, vol. 2 (London, 1968), 9–17. The cult of the Dioskuroi in Rome evidently involved incubation; see Deubner, “Juturna,” 384 f; idem, Kosmas und Damian (Leipzig, 1907), 56. 33 Tea, Basilica, 48–54. 34 Among the excavation material surfaced a statue of Asklepios, who was evidently worshiped at Juturna’s shrine; Deubner, Kosmas und Damian, 56; Nash, Ancient Rome, 2:9. 35 Osborne, “Atrium,” 207. 36 I am referring to the “Maria Regina” layer on the “Palimpsest Wall” and the subsequent 6th- and early 7th-century paintings of the first apsidal decoration. Admittedly, the scarce remains of the early frescoes do not permit one to exclude the possibility of the Anargyroi having been depicted in some way already at that stage; cf. P. J. Nordhagen, “The Earliest Decorations in Santa Maria Antiqua and Their Date,” ActaIRNorv 1 (1962): 53–72. 31
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But apart from the ancient association of the area with pagan healing cults, a contemporaneous link of the church of S. Maria Antiqua with the local care for the sick is evident from the seventh century on. The apse wall of the church borders an area of mostly brick masonry, excavated between 1903 and 1912, the Horrea Agrippiana. The horrea complex—identified by a dedicatory inscription found there in situ—occupies the space exactly between S. Maria Antiqua, the slope of the Palatine hill, and the rotunda of S. Teodoro (Figs. 2, 6, view of horrea toward Palatine; Fig. 7, view toward S. Maria Antiqua).37 The originally late Republican buildings of the horrea seem to have been used by the eighth century by the diaconiae of S. Maria Antiqua and S. Teodoro.38 The taking over of late Classical structures, for example granaries like the Horrea Agrippiana, by the Church is documented from the sixth and seventh centuries onwards when these areas eventually were owned by the Church and frequently used as diaconiae.39 The diaconiae were welfare institutions of a monastic character. They first appear in Western sources under Benedict II (684–705) and received subsidies until 731.40 Archaeological evidence, however, points to a foundation date of several Roman diaconiae already around 600, among them the diaconia of S. Maria Antiqua.41 S. Teodoro was probably built about the same time as the oratory of its diaconia.42 The institution has mostly, but not undisputedly, been recognized as a monastic importation from the Byzantine East.43 Most important for our case is the fact that the diaconiae apparently of37
R. Krautheimer, CBCR, vol. 4 (Vatican City, 1970), 283–86, figs. 232–34; H. Bauer, “Un Tentativo di recostruzione degli Horrea Agrippiana,” ArchCl 30 (1978): 132–46; idem with A. Pronti, “Elementi architettonici degli Horrea Agrippiana,” ArchCl 30 (1978): 107–31; A. Bartoli, “Gli Horrea Agrippiana e la diaconia di S. Teodoro,” MonAnt 27 (1921): 374–402; M. Berucci, “L’architettura degli Horrea Agrippiana,” Palladio 4 (1954): 145–49. 38 R. Hermes, “Die stadtrömischen Diakonien,” RQ 91 (1996): 35, 52; see also ibid. for the general character of the diaconiae in early medieval Rome and their significance for the welfare system of the city. Cf. F. Astolfi, F. Guidobaldi, and A. Pronti, “Horrea Agrippiana,” ArchCl 30 (1978): 86; Krautheimer, Profile, 77–78. For the dates and documents regarding the first diaconiae in Italy, see Th. Sternberg, “Der vermeintliche Ursprung der westlichen Diakonien in Ägypten und die Conlationes des Johannes Cassian,” JbAC 31 (1988): 173–209, esp. 205–6, fig. 4, with a survey plan of the diaconiae in early medieval Rome. 39 Krautheimer, CBCR 4:287; Bartoli, “Horrea Agrippiana,” 401. Hermes, “Diakonien,” 35, 49. 40 G. Ferrari, Early Roman Monasteries (Vatican City, 1957), 355–56; see also H.-I. Marrou, “L’origine orientale des diaconies romains,” MélRome 57 (1940): 99, and Sternberg, “Ursprung der westlichen Diakonien,” 205. On possible connections between the cult of medical saints and welfare institutions of this kind in Rome, cf. Sinthern, “Abbacyrus,” 220. 41 Krautheimer, Profile, 77, 81, 341. The “diaconia Antiqua” or “diaconia . . . Dei genetricis quae appellatur Antiqua” is later mentioned four times receiving donations during the papacy of Leo III (795–816); Liber Pontificalis, 2:12, 14, 19, 26. According to J. Lestocquoy, “Administration de Rome et diaconies du VIIe au XIIe siècle,” RACr 7 (1930): 296, the diaconia of S. Maria Antiqua was probably installed in the former “Atrium Minervae”; see also C. Bertelli, La Madonna di S. Maria in Trastevere (Rome, 1961), 52–56. 42 According to Krautheimer’s analysis, only the apse of the present building is late antique; Krautheimer, CBCR 4:279–88. The church is not mentioned before the late 8th century: cod. Einsidlensis 326 fols. 81v–82: “ad scm theodorum”; C. Huelsen, “La Pianta di Roma dell’Anonimo Einsidlense,” Atti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 9 (1907): 28, pl. III. Its connection with a diaconia is recorded two times during the papacy of Leo III (795–816): “diaconia sancti Theodori”; Liber Pontificalis, vol. 2 (ed. Duchesne), 12, 21. For oratories and their association with hospitals and xenodocheia, see Th. Sternberg, Orientalium More Secutus, JbAC, suppl. 16 (Münster, 1991), 174–77. See also E. Monaco, “Ricerche sotto la diaconia di S. Teodoro,” RendPontAcc 45 (1972–73), 223–41; Hermes, “Diakonien,” 52; Krautheimer, Profile, 78. 43 Marrou, “Origine,” 100; Sternberg recently discussed the relationship between Egyptian and later Roman and Italian diaconiae again and challenged Marrou’s hypothesis of an Egyptian origin of the Western institution; cf. Sternberg, “Ursprung der westlichen Diakonien,” 173–209, esp. 205–9; see also Ferrari, Monasteries, 356. According to Sinthern, a monastery populated by Greek monks perhaps existed next to the part of
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ten served as hospitals, asylums, and hospices for pilgrims.44 A seventh- or early eighthcentury letter advises the administrator of a Roman hospice to “zealously prepare their beds, with bedclothes, to receive the sick and needy, and provide them with care and all necessities; an annual ration of oil for the sick and poor, and anything else their sickness requires. Provide also doctors and nursing.”45 This document testifies to the fact that at the latest around 700 the diaconiae could assume the function of hospitals, but at the same time retained their status as a general welfare institution. The diaconia of S. Maria Antiqua has left its traces in the decorational and architectural scheme of the church. The hypothesis that this diaconia served in particular the care for the sick is supported by the imagery in the church. While in the prothesis the administrator of the diaconia, Theodotus—a lay official of the papal civil service who repeatedly features in the paintings—installed a private chapel,46 its counterpart on the other side of the presbytery, the diakonikon, reflects the specific dedication of the institution: the decoration celebrates medical saints, and its function is in all likelihood to be seen in the context of the diaconia. Parts of the horrea complex presumably used by the diaconia even border on the chapel’s south wall. Although no documentary proof has surfaced so far, I am inclined to take the iconographic program of the Chapel of Physicians as key evidence for the suggested use of the adjacent diaconia as a hospital. This might apply either to the diaconia of S. Maria Antiqua or to that of S. Teodoro, or indeed to both of them. All this leads to the conclusion that the installation of a cult of Eastern medical saints at S. Maria Antiqua was probably not merely due to the ancient connotation of the site, but also had its cause in a predominantly Byzantine environment: the administration on the Palatine, the emergence of a Byzantine quarter, the wave of immigrants from Egypt in the seventh century, and the specific dedication of the nearby diaconiae.47 THE IMAGERY In looking at the decoration outside the chapel, medical saints are encountered throughout the church. St. Euthymios, whose head is preserved in a fragmentary medalS. Maria Antiqua that faces the Capitoline Hill, built into the area of the former “Templum Divi Augusti”; Sinthern, “Abbacyrus,” 217. 44 Krautheimer, Profile, 77, 81. Zacharias mentiones two hospitals in Rome in the 7th century; cf. C. L. Urlichs, Codex Urbis Romae Topographicus (Würzburg, 1871), 49–50. The xenon near St. Anastasia’s in Constantinople clearly served as a hospital, as is evident from an account in the miracles of St. Artemios; Crisafulli and Nesbitt, Miracles, 8, 130–31 (miracle 22). See also Sternberg, Orientalium, 160–67, on the connection between monastery and hospital in general. Sternberg gives an outline of the organization of a church with an adjacent hospice at Wadi Natrun. For the extent of medical knowledge of the monks and the actual presence of medical and botanical treatises like Dioscorides’ Herbarium in monasteries, see Sternberg, ibid., 166, who points out Cassiodorus’s suggestion, that the monks in his monastery should read the works of Hippocrates and Galen in Latin translations, which implies quite a range of medical knowledge (Cassiodorus, Institutiones, 29, PL 70:1143). See also A. Philipsborn, “Les premiers hopitaux au Moyen Age,” La Nouvelle Clio 6 (1954 = Mélanges Roger Goossens): 137–63. Marrou, “Origine,” 96; G. Lugli, “La transformazione di Roma pagana in Roma cristiana,” RendLinc 4 (1949): 11. 45 Liber Diurnus, form. 46; trans. P. Llewellyn, Rome in the Dark Ages (London, 1970), 116; cf. Krautheimer, Profile, 81. 46 H. Belting, “Eine Privatkapelle im frühmittelalterlichen Rom,” DOP 41 (1987): 55–69; Krautheimer, Profile, 104. On the supervision of these institutions by a pater diaconiae in general, see Krautheimer, ibid., 77. 47 The Byzantine administration used the palace on the Palatine throughout the 7th and in the early 8th century; Krautheimer, CBCR 2:269.
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lion on the facade of the Oratory of the Forty Martyrs, is a saint with the reputation of performing healing miracles, as is St. Blasios, to be found in the passageway to the “Templum Divi Augusti.”48 The saints on the facade of the oratory date from the time of John VII and thus are contemporaneous with the frescoes in the chapel. But already at an earlier period the healing theme held a prominent position in the church: the southwest pillar of the nave preserves two saints holding surgeon’s boxes. One of them is likely to be St. Panteleimon,49 here again next to another medical saint wearing a pallium, as in the diakonikon. The shape of the surgeon’s boxes with “ears” and carrying straps is the same as encountered in John VII’s decoration. The frescoed southeast column of the nave shows Christ’s Healing of a Blind Man, the only one of Christ’s healing miracles to be depicted in the church.50 The paintings in the nave have been ascribed to the mid-seventh century and thus antedate the decoration of the chapel at least by half a century. Evidently, the healing theme already featured at S. Maria Antiqua a few decades after the installation of the two adjacent diaconiae, long before Pope John VII embellished the diakonikon with frescoes. How these pictures were perceived and what particular role the imagery in the chapel played within the cult, regarding the special needs of the sick taking part in it, remain open questions. Adolf Weis and more recently Hans Belting have pointed out that several of the paintings are to be understood as icons, reproduced in fresco technique.51 The originals are likely to have been venerable and famous icons on panel, whereas the copies, commissioned by private donors, were set into areas easily accessible for worship, either in a separate private chapel or in more open parts of the church. The best-known examples are the crucifixion in the Chapel of Theodotus and the Virgin and Child in a small open chapel on the right side of the nave.52 Belting has convincingly argued that the monumental crucifixion scene in the large rectangular niche cut into the south wall of the Theodotus Chapel reproduces a well-known composition encountered several times on eighth-century icons from the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai and ultimately going back to a highly venerated image in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.53 The icon in the prothesis of S. Maria Antiqua, inserted into a preexisting niche, was a cult image in front of which candles could be put on a sill. Belting’s analysis of the character of the central image in the Theodotus Chapel is significant for the problem dealt with here, because it sheds light on a similar situation encountered in the slightly older 48
Cf. Aronen, “Sopravvivenza,” 152. P. J. Nordhagen, “S. Maria Antiqua: The Frescoes of the Seventh Century,” ActaIRNorv 8 (1978): 124–26, fig. 10, pls. LIV.a, b; Wilpert, Mosaiken und Malereien, pl. 145.2. 50 Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, 107, figs. 81, 81A; Nordhagen, “Seventh Century,” 128–30, fig. 11 (tracing), pl. LV. 51 Weis, “Ikonentypus,” 32; Belting, “Privatkapelle,” 58. 52 Belting gives a plan of the distribution of the votive icons in the church; Belting, “Privatkapelle,” 59. 53 Belting, ibid., 58. Note in particular the Palestinian type of Christ wearing a purple colobium; cf. K. Weitzmann, The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Icons, vol. 1 (Princeton, N.J., 1976), B.36. Moreover, there are several links between the paintings in S. Maria Antiqua and the Sinai icons, such as the head of Christ in the crucifixion of John VII’s apse decoration, which is an example of Nordhagen’s rare “Type B” Christ with short curly hair and beard; see Nordhagen, “John VII,” 53. This type is also encountered in the Sinai icons; compare Weitzmann, Icons, B.6. See also Kitzinger, “On Some Icons,” 137, figs. 4, 5, who points out the striking stylistic and iconographic resemblance of the fresco-icon of St. Demetrios at S. Maria Antiqua and the saint to the left of the Virgin on an encaustic icon from Mt. Sinai, who is thus identified as St. Demetrios (Weitzmann, Icons, B.3). 49
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Chapel of Physicians. As in the prothesis, we have a large rectangular niche in the south wall of the chapel (Fig. 4). Despite the fact that traces of paint might indicate a connection between the painted niche and a lost overall decoration of the south wall, the composition and the broad white frame with black borders—which is similar to the one of the icon in the prothesis—show it to be a self-sufficient, complete picture of its own. Moreover, the velum can only be part of the picture itself, since it is much smaller than the ones encountered in the lower zone of the west and north walls of the chapel. The fresco is, in fact, unmistakably to be regarded as an icon which again is set in a crucial position within the chapel and provided with a sill to light candles in front of the image.54 The icon of the five saints—Kosmas and Damianos flanking Abbakyros, Stephen, and Prokopios—reflects beyond doubt a famous model, since it was the center of worship in the chapel, occupying the most significant place.55 Again, one has to look east for the image the composition ultimately goes back to. This is implied by the Eastern origin of the saints, their importance in Byzantine hagiology, and by the Greek inscriptions. As in the prothesis, the Sinai icons seem to provide a clue for the origin of the icon in the diakonikon of S. Maria Antiqua. The right wing of a triptych in the Old Library at St. Catherine’s monastery shows the standing figure of St. Damianos, wearing a long purple tunic and a brown himation and holding an oblong white object in both hands, the left being covered by the garment (Fig. 8, right).56 This object, which Kurt Weitzmann believed to be an instrument box, has in fact exactly the same shape as the scroll held by St. Kosmas in the Chapel of Physicians—even the purple band tied around it can be seen in both paintings. Since the shape of a surgeon’s box is quite different and familiar from several figures in S. Maria Antiqua, as well as from another fragment of the same triptych (Fig. 8, left) and other icons from Sinai,57 it is clear that in both cases a scroll is depicted. It cannot be told from the worn surface of the triptych leaf whether there was in addition a surgeon’s box carried by the saint, but this is quite likely. A surviving fragment of paint in the lower part of the extreme right of the fresco-icon in the chapel shows that St. Damianos there, too, wears a long purple garment. Weitzmann, on stylistic grounds, assigned the encaustic plaque at St. Catherine’s to the seventh century. A hole in the upper left, obviously meant to receive a dowel, shows that it was the right wing of a triptych.58 The left wing, of course, must have shown St. Kosmas. A fragment of the center panel (the left part, identified as such by a hole in the upper left corner) shows St. John (Anargyros) carrying a surgeon’s box, accompanied by his name in vertical script (Fig. 8, left). 54 Rushforth suggested that the recess in the wall once might have contained sacred books, vessels, and vestments. That would be in keeping with the usual function of a diakonikon as a sacristy, but the idea has to be abandoned, since the niche was obviously made to receive the fresco-icon and would, in fact, have not been sufficiently deep enough to have any scriptures or liturgical objects stored in it; Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 77. 55 Entering the chapel from the west aisle, as the early medieval visitor would have done, one faces the south wall with the niche. 56 Weitzmann, Icons, B.18. The saint is identified by a Greek inscription on the top part of the panel. The large letters on dark crimson ground filling a broad strip above the halo of the saint create a zone quite similar to that giving the names of each saint in the niche at S. Maria Antiqua. The surface of the paint is very worn, in particular in the center, and the lower half of the face is rubbed off. 57 Compare Weitzmann, ibid., B.55, 10th century. 58 A corresponding hole in the lower left must have been located in a part of the panel that has splintered off. The back shows, according to Weitzmann’s description, part of a simple cross, the other half of which must have been on the lost left wing; Weitzmann, Icons, 44.
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Returning to the fresco at S. Maria Antiqua, this may in turn give a hint as to the subject of the missing parts of the central leaf of the Sinai triptych. The similarities go beyond iconographic details: the style of the very fine, sharply brushed folds of St. Damianos’s tunic which seem to radiate from the saint’s head on the Sinai icon comes quite close to the manner in which the folds of St. Kosmas’s tunic in the chapel are rendered, as is evident from the fairly well preserved right upper part of this figure. The dense linear pattern of gold striation on the saint’s himation in the Sinai icon can be compared with the very fine and densely set folds of St. Kosmas’s pallium at S. Maria Antiqua. As in the triptych, we find St. Damianos on the extreme right of the fresco-icon, and as St. Kosmas is on the left flanking the central group of figures in the fresco, so he was doubtless depicted on the lost left wing of the triptych. The central panel of the Sinai triptych probably showed a row of perhaps three medical saints of whom only the figure of St. John is preserved. This gives at least an idea of the model for the fresco icon in S. Maria Antiqua. It probably also originated in seventh-century Egypt or Palestine, like the Sinai panel.59 That this kind of triptych was not uncommon is shown by another, later Palestinian icon of St. Kosmas at Sinai, being the left wing of a triptych, the other parts of which are lost.60 Thus the composition to which the fresco-icon in S. Maria Antiqua reverts might in fact have been a triptych that was—naturally, being reproduced in a fresco—adapted to a composition for a single panel, still retaining the symmetry of the flanking brothers Kosmas and Damianos, who in the case of an original single panel are likely to have been depicted next to each other, just as they are in the fresco on the chapel’s north wall, opposite the icon. INCUBATION But what was the precise function of the chapel? The idea of incubation having been practiced at S. Maria Antiqua, though not ruled out, has always met with reservation.61 The character of this cult in ancient Greece is well documented in the iamata of Epidauros: sick people came to the shrine of Asklepios in order to spend a night in the abaton where they expected the god to reveal to them the means to a cure in a dream oracle or to cure them straightaway.62 The practice is known to have been taken over by Christianity in the cult of Sts. Kosmas and Damianos as well as Sts. Abbakyros and John in Asia Minor and Egypt—but not in Italy.63 But, given the fact that the church of S. Maria Antiqua is Byzantine in plan and decoration, being frequented by a Greek community, the import of another Eastern cult form—namely, incubation—seems not implausible, despite the lack of written evidence. This is in particular true of the diakonikon, since the cult of the class of 59
For the place of origin and the date of the St. Damianos panel, see Weitzmann, ibid., 42–43, B.16 and B.17. 60 Weitzmann, ibid., B.47, front. The tubular object held by the saint in his left hand is not, as Weitzmann suggested, a surgeon’s box, but again a scroll, as is evident when compared to the various surgeon’s boxes in S. Maria Antiqua. 61 Cf. Aronen, “Sopravvivenza,” 153 with note 50. 62 For the testimonies and their interpretation, see L. and E. Edelstein, Asclepius, 2 vols. (Baltimore, Md., 1945). 63 But already Deubner considered the possibility of an incubation cult in Rome; Deubner, Kosmas und Damian, 56, 73; cf. Sinthern, “Abbacyrus,” 208. See also Sophronios, SS. Cyri et Ioannis Miracula, PG 87.3:3559– 62. On the structural similarities in the miracle stories from Epidauros and those of the Constantinopolitan saint Artemios whose cult featured incubation, see J. Tolstoi, “Un poncif arétalogique dans les Miracles d’Asklèpios et d’Artémios,” Byzantion 3 (1926): 53–63.
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saints depicted in the chapel was traditionally linked to this practice: in fact, an introduction of the saints, but not of their most conspicuous cult feature, seems rather unlikely. If incubation was ever performed at S. Maria Antiqua, an obvious location would thus have been the Chapel of Physicians, which, however, apart from the subject of its decoration, does not seem to provide evidence for that. But there is one at first glance inexplicable oddity about the main cult image of the chapel—the icon in the niche of the south wall: all other frescoed niches throughout the church which presumably reproduce venerable icons are cut into the wall at eye level, in order to be easily accessible for a donor offering votive gifts or lighting candles in front of the images. But the niche in the south wall of the Chapel of Physicians starts at floor level (Fig. 4): there is no obvious explanation at hand for this peculiarity, which means that a person wishing to put a candle on the sill of the niche actually had to get down on the floor in order to do so. This is all the more remarkable, as the niche does not belong to the preexisting ancient building—contrary to the situation in the Theodotus Chapel—but evidently was cut into the wall contemporaneously with John VII’s decoration,64 beyond doubt to receive the icon it contains. But, in imagining an incubation cult in the chapel, the strange position of the icon immediately makes sense: it enabled the pious sick, spending the night on the floor of the chapel, to gaze at the cult image which was illuminated by the lamps or candles they lit in front of it, on the sill of the niche, c only just above floor level. The resulting perspective when looking up from the floor toward the image would thus have resembled that of a real encounter—or one experienced in a dream. The suggestiveness of a carefully chosen setting for an icon is a factor that has to be taken into account here. As the figures are almost life-size, which adds to the effect, the composition of the original panel painting must have been considerably enlarged in the fresco.65 The virtual presence of a saint in an icon, as conceived by the Byzantine beholder, would have been particularly relevant in the context of a procedure such as incubation, where the worshiper seeks advice from the saint in a dream oracle that involves the actual appearance of the invoked.66 The way in which the icon worked for the pious seems in fact comparable to the way cult statues of Asklepios or Sarapis were perceived in antiquity. Kallistratos gives an idea of this in the Descriptiones: “Are we then to believe that the vessel Argo, which was wrought by the hands of Athena and later assumed its allotted place among the stars, became capable of speech, and yet in the case of a statue into which Asclepius infused his own powers, introducing purposeful intelligence therein and thus making it a partner with himself, not believe that the power of the indwelling god is clearly manifest therein?”67 The same idea of presence in an image is evident in a miracle of Sts. Kosmas and Damianos, where a certain Constantine, who is said to carry an image of the Anargyroi with him whenever going on a journey, tells his wife about the saints after she had experienced a vision of them in a dream. 64
Krautheimer, CBCR 2:264; Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 76. The figures on the icon are approximately 1.60 m high and thus—although much closer to the beholder—slightly larger than the saints on the west wall which measure 1.50 m; Nordhagen, “John VII,” 56, 64. 66 On the relationship between image and prototype, see Kitzinger, “On Some Icons,” 142–43, 144 with note 51. 67 Kallistratos, Descriptiones, 10, “On the Statue of Paean”; trans. Edelstein, Asclepius, 1:343–44, T. 627. 65
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At Laodicea he married a woman who soon thereafter developed a pain in her jaw. Forgetting that he had the icon with him, Constantine was at a loss what to do. The following night she fell asleep and saw these great and awesome physicians . . . Cosmas and Damian standing by her bed in the form in which they are depicted and saying to her, “Why are you afflicted? Why are you causing distress to your husband? We are here with you. Do not worry. . . .” When she awoke, she questioned her husband, wishing to learn from him the appearance of the glorious Saints Cosmas and Damian, i.e. how they are depicted and in what manner they manifest themselves to the sick. The husband explained to her their appearance and related the blessings they confer. . . . The story made him remember that he had in the wallet he carried under his arm a representation of the saints on an image and, taking it out, he immediately showed it to his wife. When she saw it, she offered obeisance and realized that indeed the Saints were present with them as they had said.68
That the idea of the indwelling salutary powers of an image was actually taken quite literally is evident from another miracle of Sts. Kosmas and Damianos, where a patient takes particles from a fresco internally and afterwards has a vision of the saints. This story concerns a woman who had been healed of various diseases by Sts. Cosmas and Damian. She depicted them on all the walls of her house, being as she was insatiable in her desire of seeing them. . . . The woman then develops a bad case of colic and happens to be left alone in her house. Perceiving herself to be in danger, she crawled out of bed and, upon reaching the place where these most wise Saints were depicted on the wall, she stood up leaning on her faith as upon a stick and scraped off with her fingernails some plaster. This she put into water and, after drinking the mixture, she was immediately cured of her pains by the visitation of the Saints.69
Significantly, the woman treats the particles of paint just like an ordinary pharmakon: before actually swallowing them, she dissolves them in water. Considering the attitude toward images evident from the two stories and the presence of the medical saints in the reproduction of a famous (presumably miracle-working) icon, the Chapel of Physicians at S. Maria Antiqua seems quite well equipped for an incubation cult performed by a Greek community in early eighth-century Rome, especially regarding the sick cared for in the adjacent diaconiae of S. Maria Antiqua and S. Teodoro. Referring to Mango’s inclusion of a xenon in his reconstruction of the martyrion of St. Artemios at Constantinople, John Nesbitt recently questioned the probability of a hospital in the proximity of a church where incubation was performed, as the incubants would normally have been people who had already received treatment by doctors.70 I would rather follow Mango here, since there is no need to see a pronounced opposition of healing cult and hospital. St. Artemios’s miracle stories express, it is true, some hostility toward doctors, but more often than not the dream oracles describe settings and actions clearly derived from the medical sphere.71 This is true to an even larger extent of the miracles of Sts. Kosmas and Damianos, who themselves were physicians.72 At S. Maria Antiqua, as elsewhere, the 68
Deubner, Kosmas und Damian, 132ff, Miracle 13; trans. C. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453: Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972), 138–39. 69 Deubner, Kosmas und Damian, 137f, Miracle 15; trans. Mango, Byzantine Empire, 139; cf. Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 107 with note 89. 70 Mango, “Templon,” 41–42, fig. 1; Crisafulli and Nesbitt, Miracles, 11–12. 71 See miracles 24, 42, 44 in Crisafulli and Nesbitt, ibid., 143, 216–23. 72 Cf. J. Haldon in Crisafulli and Nesbitt, ibid., 44.
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diaconia with its postulated hospital was run by the Church, and possibly the same administration and clerics were in charge of both institutions. There is no reason to dismiss the possibility that hospital care and healing cult were in fact closely linked, in particular considering the semi-ecclesiastical, multifunctional character of the Roman diaconiae. But yet another image in the chapel may be examined in support of this argument. There is one enigmatic figure that has always puzzled those dealing with the iconography of the frescoes: the nameless, dark-complexioned saint in classical costume on the west wall between Sts. Dometios and Panteleimon (Figs. 3, 9). As already mentioned, there is no inscription relating to this figure, while the name “Panteleemon” on the right belongs to the next saint on that side. Nordhagen’s proposition that the figure in question might represent St. Hermolaos, another medical saint and Panteleimon’s teacher and fellow martyr, seems problematic.73 The type of the figure in the chapel does not at all correspond to that of Hermolaos in later Byzantine art, where this saint is shown as an old man with white hair and pointed beard, as can be seen in a tenth-century icon from Mount Sinai, a twelfthcentury fresco at Kastoria, and a mosaic in Monreale.74 The dark-haired saint in the chapel wearing classical garments and carrying a scroll and a surgeon’s box clearly shows a markedly different type and therefore would have hardly been associated with St. Hermolaos by the Byzantine beholder. What is most striking about this saint is his Christlike appearance, which Nordhagen had already observed. The face, which is a particularly fine example of John VII’s style, is in fact not comparable to any other saint’s head throughout the church, nor is it in keeping with the iconography of any known saint in Byzantine art. Despite many small lacunae, this is by far the best-preserved saint’s head in the chapel (Fig. 9). The very darkish complexion is enhanced by the long, almost black, curly hair, moustache, and flowing beard. The middle parting of the hair and the two strands falling on the forehead resemble quite strongly the type of Christ Pantokrator encountered in middle Byzantine mosaic decorations such as at Hosios Loukas and Daphni.75 In particular the earliest example of this type, again an encaustic icon from Sinai (Fig. 10), shows a number of similarities: the marked asymmetry of the eyes with the stern expression of the slightly larger left eye, the eyebrow being arched higher on that side, is a striking feature that both the Pantokrator icon and the saint in the chapel have in common.76 The high cheekbones and shadowed concave
73
Nordhagen, “John VII,” 59. The 7th-century pair of medical saints (one probably represents St. Panteleimon) on the southwest pillar of the nave at S. Maria Antiqua does not provide a clue to this problem, since both figures show the same attributes as the two in the chapel, but none of them resembles the type of the figure in question; Wilpert, Mosaiken und Malereien, pl. 145.2. 74 Weitzmann, Icons, B.54; Pelekanides, Kastoria, pl. 27b; Kitzinger, Mosaici, 3: figs. 157, 161. On the Sinai icon, Hermolaos is shown holding a scalpel and a book; at Hagioi Anargyroi, Kastoria, he carries a jeweled book and a scalpel(?); in Monreale he carries a scalpel and a pyxis, wearing classical garments. The accompanying figure, St. Panteleimon, on the icon as well as in Monreale shows the same type as the figure at S. Maria Antiqua that Nordhagen identified as St. Panteleimon; Kitzinger, Mosaici, 3: figs. 156, 160; see also the frame medallion of St. Panteleimon on a 10th-century icon of St. Nicholas; Weitzmann, Icons, B.61. 75 Hosios Loukas, narthex; Diez and Demus, Byzantine Mosaics, pl. 12. Daphni, Pantokrator cupola; O. Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration (London, 1947), pl. 7. Compare also the apse mosaics of Cefalù and Monreale. 76 Weitzmann, Icons, B.1. The same type of Pantokrator appears on a solidus of Justinian II at Dumbarton Oaks; Weitzmann, ibid., fig. 3. The asymmetry of the eyes which results in a vivid expression is also found in an icon of St. Peter at Mt. Sinai, datable around 600; cf. Weitzmann, ibid., B.5.
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cheeks as well as the asymmetrically drooping moustache and the full lips, too, are quite similar. The same is true of the dark square shadow cast by the lower lip on the area just above the chin. Equally close in both the icon and the fresco is the technique of the brushy strokes of highlights in the beard where the chin protrudes.77 Weitzmann attributed the icon to the later sixth century and supposed it to have been painted in Constantinople.78 But in observing the close relations in style and technique, one at the same time realizes the fundamental difference of expression in the two faces: the stern, quiet gaze of the Pantokrator, which gives an idea of timelessness and is encountered in middle Byzantine church decoration time and again, is totally missing in the saint at S. Maria Antiqua. Instead, this face shows a vibrant, almost sensual expression. With long and marked eyelashes and dark, flowing curls of hair and beard framing the face, the saint’s head represents a somewhat Jovian type. This decidedly antique impression is enhanced by the headdress and classical costume the saint wears. In fact, if one of the most often used terms regarding the style of the paintings in S. Maria Antiqua is “Hellenistic,” the most distinctly “Hellenic” image in the church is definitely this one. It is in particular in comparison with images of the Graeco-Egyptian god Sarapis and of Asklepios that the classical air of the saint in S. Maria Antiqua is most conspicuous. Smaller varieties of the kalathos Sarapis wears on his head come quite close to the shape of the saint’s peculiar cap.79 Moreover, some late representations of Asklepios show the god wearing a wreath in his hair which also resembles to some extent the saint’s headdress, an impression enhanced by the equally similar flowing locks and beard of the god.80 But the shape of the saint’s head and the expression of the face seem above all reminiscent of certain types of Sarapis, all of them going back to Bryaxis’s famous cult statue at Alexandria (cf. Fig. 11). Sarapis, in one of the many aspects of this syncretistic deity, was a healing god like Asklepios; as mentioned in the beginning, incubation was an essential feature of his cult, too. All this means little more than an attempt toward a specification, not an explanation, of the classical connotations of the figure in the chapel. It was certainly never intended to give the saint the face of a pagan healing god; it is merely to be understood as the use of an ancient and still familiar pattern that itself evoked a particular atmosphere not necessarily connected with paganism, but reminiscent of its medical associations even in a new context.81 Summing up, it can be said that the nameless saint on the west wall of the Chapel of Physicians shows a number of peculiarities that set him apart from all other figures of saints and connect him on one side with Christ himself, as is evident in comparison to the Pantokrator icon from Sinai. But on the other hand the figure strangely recalls late classical cult images of Asklepios and in particular of the Alexandrian Sarapis.
77 This feature is maintained in the Pantokrator cupola at Daphni and in the apses of Cefalù and Monreale; Demus, Decoration, pls. 7, 30, 31. 78 Weitzmann, Icons, 15. 79 W. Hornbostel, Sarapis (Leiden, 1973), gemstones: pl. XLVI, figs. 88–93. 80 K. Kerenyi, Asklepios (New York, 1959), fig. 57: head of Asklepios from the Baths of Caracalla; for this type see also ibid., fig. 49. 81 Deubner pointed to the fact that Bishop Peter of Argos relates the healing activities of the Anargyroi to those of the Dioskuroi, Cheiron and Asklepios. This text shows that the ancient healing deities were not only still in the minds of people in the early Middle Ages, but that there was obviously no objection against comparing them to the saints; cf. Deubner, Kosmas und Damian, 57 (Vaticanus Palatinus 317).
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In early eighth-century Rome, the image of a saint full of classical reminiscences was in all likelihood no longer suspicious, but perhaps implied already a certain veneration for the achievements and the assumed knowledge of antiquity for the beholder, as clearly do the two eminent physicians Hippocrates and Galen conversing in a much later fresco in the crypt of Anagni cathedral.82 And, as in Anagni, it is ancient medicine that is evoked in the Chapel of Physicians by the classicizing type of a medical saint who, incidentally, remains nameless. If this figure really represented Hermolaos, the only way for the eighthcentury beholder to recognize him would have been his position next to his pupil Panteleimon. Possibly the painter wanted to create a new iconography of the saint, full of classical allusions, and was relying on the place in the row of saints for his identification. But since type and iconography of the saint differ so completely from any known representation of St. Hermolaos, an inscription would nevertheless have been crucial for the understanding. Therefore, the omission of the name of the most outstanding and unfamiliar figure in the chapel just by accident or for mere reasons of limited space seems rather unlikely. There remains the suspicion that a name for this figure was never intended in the first place. We can conclude that with the “classical” type of a saint in the guise of Sarapis or Asklepios and the cult image of the chapel, the icon, positioned at floor level, there are two elements that suggest a use of the chapel for incubation: the revival of an ancient iconography strongly associated with this cult form and, above all, the rather peculiar practical adaptation of a chapel to its specific function. Like the dedication of the chapel to medical saints, its postulated use for incubation had perhaps one reason in the history of the site, but was also a result of the influx of Eastern cult forms in the seventh century and of its proximity to the palaces on the Palatine. Nevertheless, an incubation cult seems not entirely appropriate for a place like John VII’s church, used in particular for the display of papal messages. In all probability the diakonikon was strongly tied to the diaconia of S. Maria Antiqua: it may in fact have been its external chapel.83 Only a few decades later, the administrator of the diaconia, Theodotus, would establish his private chapel on the other side of the presbytery, thus strengthening the ties between church and diaconia, while being at the same time a high papal official. Whether or not the Chapel of Physicians would have been the first place within S. Maria Antiqua to serve for incubation remains uncertain. Since the Byzantine influence in Rome considerably antedates John VII’s decoration of the diakonikon, it cannot be ruled out that there was already an incubation cult in existence in parts of the church featuring earlier representations of the Anargyroi, namely in the nave.84 82
The frescoes at Anagni have been ascribed to the 13th century. For an iconographical analysis of the cycle, see M. Q. Smith, “Anagni, an Example of Medieval Typological Decoration,” PBSR 33 (1965): 1–47, pl. 1; cf. L. Pressouyre, “Le cosmos platonicien de la Cathédrale d’Anagni,” MélRome 78 (1966): 552–93. Another example of an unsuspicious attitude toward pagan deities may be recognized in the use of the name “Serapis” or “Serapion” for several bishops, saints, and martyrs; cf. Hornbostel, Sarapis, 397. 83 See L. Jessop, “Pictorial Cycles of Non-Biblical Saints: The Seventh- and Eighth-Century Mural Cycles in Rome and Contexts for Their Use,” PBSR 47 (1999): 271. On the aspect of court art in S. Maria Antiqua, see Sansterre, Moines grecs, 164. 84 In the church of St. John Prodromos at Constantinople, the sick went to sleep in the north (left) aisle of the nave to await the visitation of St. Artemios, as evident from his miracles; Crisafulli and Nesbitt, Miracles, 11, 88–89 (miracle 6), 198–99 (miracle 38). See Mango, “Templon,” 41.
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AN ICON OF ST. ABBAKYROS There is a portrait-icon of St. Abbakyros in the atrium of S. Maria Antiqua (Fig. 12) which, since it belongs to the whole complex essentially, shall be dealt with in the context of the Chapel of Physicians. The fresco is painted into a large, round-headed, apselike niche cut into the east wall. It has commonly been ascribed to the pontificate of Paul I (757–767), half a century later than John VII’s murals.85 This painting is in large parts particularly well preserved and for several reasons the most “medical” of all the images in the church. The towering head of the saint is set against a pale yellowish halo with a red rim filling almost the entire back wall of the niche. The rather stiffened and hardened style of the painting, if compared to John VII’s, succeeds nevertheless in creating a quite intense facial expression (Fig. 13). The high forehead is divided by three deep, rather schematic horizontal lines and a sharp, almost rectangular wrinkle with a marked shadow in the center above the eyebrows. The large, wide-open eyes are set into the face slightly asymmetrically with the right one being placed lower and less wide open, but with a more fixed gaze than the brighter, unsteady glance of the left eye. The left eyebrow is arched slightly higher and thus casts a less marked shadow than the particularly strong right one. The eyelashes are rendered schematically and are not distinguishable from shadows, a noticeable difference from John VII’s faces. The thin, long nose is extremely schematic and shows in its pointed tip a negligence of perspective (the nose is given as if seen from above, contrary to the rest of the painting, which is meant to face the beholder). The brushy strokes of shadowed beard below the cheekbones give the face a markedly slim and bony, ascetic appearance, while the huge flowing, cottonlike white beard shows no effort to give an idea of its texture.86 There is a small rectangular shadow exactly below the tip of the nose. The mouth of the saint is noticeably small and narrow; the thin lips are parted by the same sharp line that indicates the shadow parting the beard on both sides. The artist did not even make an effort to paint the corners of the mouth, which thus is virtually cut through by the dark line. Beneath the lower lip there are two dark strokes of paint indicating the shaded concavity between lower lip and chin. But there is no protruding chin, and thus the square shadow floats rather meaninglessly on the mass of white beard. The ears are large, and the short white hair is set off from the forehead by a sharp dark curved line from which short bristles stand up and that is echoed by the similarly shaped line dividing mouth and beard. The head is set against the halo with the same kind of dark red line, but this one has almost disappeared. Despite its lack of plasticity and the schematic way in which this face—where the eyes seem to be the only parts set firmly in their place— is painted, the stern gaze of the asymmetrical eyes is still faintly reminiscent of the technique applied in the Sinai icon of Christ Pantokrator (Fig. 10). The saint seems to be wearing classical garments in red and yellowish colors, but there 85
Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, 101, fig. 75; Wilpert, Mosaiken und Malereien, pl. 196.4; Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 98; Osborne, “Atrium,” 199. There are two more such niches in the atrium which preserve fragments of paintings. One shows Sts. Agnes and Cecilia, and presumably there was once a third saint of whom nothing remains. The second niche also shows three saints, all dressed in chlamydes. The frescoes have been assigned to the first half of the 9th century; Osborne, ibid., 194, pls. XII, XIII; Grüneisen, ibid., 93, figs. 67, 68. 86 There is a large lacuna in the lower part of the beard.
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is a large lacuna in the area of the right shoulder, while the surface of the paint on the left shoulder is very worn. In his left hand he holds, between thumb and index finger, an instrument (Fig. 14). The upward-pointing, bronze-brown cylindrical handle has an ornate ending with a knob, while of the downward-pointing end only the sharp head is still visible, just in front of another object held in the saint’s left hand (Fig. 15). This end appears to have the shape of a (double-edged?) scalpel87 (cf. Fig. 16) and shows a markedly different bluish-green, metallic color. The contours are given in black, and there is a black line in the middle (to mark the parting of the two edges?). The color sets the inserted iron blade of the scalpel clearly apart from the bronze handle.88 None of the other physician-saints in the church shows this attribute, but if compared to representations of the Anargyroi elsewhere, for example an icon of the Virgin between Sts. Hermolaos and Panteleimon and the right wing of a triptych with St. Damianos (?), both at Sinai and attributed to the first half of the tenth century, the object is easily recognized as a scalpel like those carried by the saints on the Sinai icons which show exactly the same ornate handle and pointed blade as seen in the fresco.89 The attitude of the hand holding the scalpel is similar, too, notably if compared to the St. Damianos panel, which in addition shows three more handles of such instruments in an open surgeon’s box the saint carries in his left hand.90 The object St. Abbakyros holds in his (invisible) left hand (Fig. 15) is far less easy to classify. It certainly represents a surgeon’s box91 but differs in shape considerably from the examples in the Chapel of Physicians as well as from those shown in the Sinai icons. It also resembles neither the tubular shape of a Roman theca vulneraria, nor that of medical caskets where the instruments are displayed in an orderly row.92 The case appears to be of a rectangular shape and is open. Taking into account the rather unclear perspective, the two square “wings” pointing upward look as if they were handles, but they might as well be the two halves of an ornate lid that could be folded down—although the fact that they are carved or decorated on the inside makes this seem less likely. The interior of the box shows two framed compartments of different size, where obviously medical instruments were to be kept.93 Two of these objects stand in an upright position in the smaller compartment in 87
For similar blades, see R. Caton, “Notes on a Group of Medical Instruments Found near Kolophon,” JHS 34 (1914): pl. X, nos. 1–6. 88 On the process of making these instruments, see A. Krug, “Römische Skalpelle,” Medizinhistorisches Journal 28 (1993): 93–100, figs. 1, 2. 89 Weitzmann, Icons, 87–91, B.54, B.55. The same kind of scalpel is carried by St. Hermolaos in a mosaic at Monreale and by several of the Anargyroi in the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. 90 There are numerous examples of such ornate scalpels known from late antiquity; cf. E. Künzl, Medizinische Instrumente aus Sepulkralfunden der römischen Kaiserzeit (Bonn, 1983), 68, fig. 43, no. 5: Vernand (Belgium), formerly Musée de Saint-Quentin, destroyed. Compare also a double-edged knife from Kos (bronze) in Th. Meyer-Steineg, Chirurgische Instrumente des Altertums (Jena, 1912), pl. IV, fig. 5. 91 Rushforth suggested a “case of drugs”: Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 98; cf. Grüneisen, Sainte-MarieAntique, 99: “cassette à médicines.” Osborne and Nordhagen rightly recognized in it a box of medical instruments; Osborne, “Atrium,” 199; Nordhagen, “John VII,” 58. 92 Compare the examples in M. Tabanelli, Lo strumento chirurgico e la sua storia (Forli, 1958), 159–60, pls. XI, XII, XIV, CXVIII, CXIX. 93 A mid-9th-century fresco at Hagios Stephanos, Kastoria, shows St. Panteleimon carrying a box that has some features in common with the one Abbakyros holds in S. Maria Antiqua: especially the upright standing “wings” are comparable, which are here, too, decorated on the inside. The interior of the case seems to be divided into compartments as well, but it is difficult to make any suggestions regarding the contents of the box. Pelekanides and Chatzidakis, Kastoria, 10, 15, fig. 5.
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the foreground. Their lower portion—as well as that of the box—is cut off in the painting, but the visible part of the two identical instruments is of a Z-like shape. Both show a broad strip of yellowish highlight on the left side. The nature of these instruments is difficult to tell since they are incomplete and the rendering is rather sketchy. They may well represent pointed surgical hooks with a spathula at the opposite end, like second- or third-century examples from Reims (Durocortorum Remorum, Fig. 17).94 The peculiar shape of these tools as well as the assumption that the scalpel held by the saint belongs to the same “set” let this seem quite plausible. However, the painter might not have completely understood what he was copying, or probably not even had the intention to reproduce a particular type of instrument. Since the two objects in the box obviously are shown only half length, and since the rather longish scalpel should somehow fit in as well, the container needs to be imagined sufficiently deep: its lower part was omitted in the painting for reasons of space. The image is bordered at the bottom by a black strip above a broad white strip and a red zone below, extending to the side walls of the niche as well. The name of the saint is inscribed on both side walls of the niche. The prominent position in S. Maria Antiqua of St. Abbakyros,95 who appears no less than four times (two times in the Chapel of Physicians, two times in the atrium),96 finds its culmination in this extraordinary half-length portrait. There is no other figure of Abbakyros known from Byzantine art where he carries both the attributes he is shown with here.97 That seemingly matter-of-fact tools like surgical instruments could play an important role in dream oracles during incubation—and hence in the cult of a saint—is evident from the miracles of St. Artemios of Constantinople: in one of the accounts the saint intervenes with a surgeon’s scalpel, in another one he produces a golden medical lancet, and 94
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Musée des Antiquités Nationales; cf. Künzl, Instrumente, 61–63. The Anargyroi Abbakyros and John were popular in Rome during the period of Byzantine influence. Abbakyros, according to legend an Alexandrian physician, later became a monk and together with John, a soldier, suffered persecution under Diocletian in Egypt. The first Roman chapel or oratory dedicated to St. Abbakyros was a 7th-century foundation. This probably took place in the context of the immigration of a Greek community from Egypt during the Arab conquest of Alexandria, in the vicinity of which the first shrine dedicated to the two martyrs had been founded by Bishop Cyril. Rome once contained four or five churches under their patronage; cf. Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 78; Sinthern, “Abbacyrus,” 211–25. The earliest Roman church, located at the Via Portuensis, is later known as S. Passera. Relics might have arrived in Rome during the first half of the 7th century; Rushforth, ibid., 79. The transfer of relics could be seen in the context of the Persian capture in 617 and the Arab conquest of Alexandria in 641, but is not documented prior to the mid8th century; cf. Sinthern, ibid., 212, 225; Avery, “Style,” 149. That Abbakyros had in fact been a physician is not mentioned in Cyril of Alexandria’s report of the installation of the relics and the early cult of the saints. It is most likely a later addition to the legend; cf. Sinthern, ibid., 205. 96 The second instance in the atrium is a fresco above the niche in question, showing Christ between Sts. Abbakyros and John, who in this painting do not carry any medical equipment. The style is quite different from other paintings in the church, and the fresco certainly belongs to a later period (the atrium was still accessible and in use after the destruction of 847). According to Osborne’s stylistic analysis, the painting may be assigned to the middle or second half of the 10th century; Osborne, “Atrium,” 209, pls. XXII, XXIII; Rushforth thought it to be as late as the 11th century; Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 98; Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, pl. IC.XV.I. 97 A half-length portrait of the saint at Hagioi Anargyroi, Kastoria, datable to the later 12th century, shows a type and composition that come quite close to the Roman figure. In the fresco at Kastoria the saint holds a glass vessel in his left hand, pointing to it with his right index finger. The object most likely represents a urine glass; Pelekanides, Kastoria, pl. 22b. Compare also a medallion in the narthex of Hosios Loukas: Diez and Demus, Byzantine Mosaics, fig. 48. Monreale: Kitzinger, Mosaici, 3: pls. 232, 236. 95
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in a third story the saint appears to the mother of a sick boy in the guise of a physician holding a chest of medical instruments.98 The sill of some frescoed niches in S. Maria Antiqua contains an oblong cavity that can be seen below the icon of the Virgin and Child in the little chapel next to the schola cantorum99 and that is well preserved in the niche of St. Abbakyros in the atrium (Fig. 12). As to its function, there have been various suggestions. Rushforth thought that the cavity could have served to hold a light, whereas A. Weis assumed it to be a sepulcrum for small, indirect relics.100 According to Tea, the cavity of the sill below the portrait of St. Abbakyros once contained surgical instruments as relics of the medical saint. The author described these instruments, which came to light during the excavations, as stilettos and a hookshaped metal stick.101 These would exactly have been mirrored in the tools shown in the painting above, and it would be very much the kind of indirect and small relic that seems suitable for this kind of sepulcrum. Although the evidence Tea produced remains uncertain—the recorded objects seem to be lost—her explanation is quite tempting, especially in the light of the specific character of the saint’s attributes in the painting. The apparent effort the painter made to produce a realistic set of medical instruments, which is not encountered in any of the other medical saints in the church, might be taken as an indication that this was in fact what was worshiped here: the sacred tools of a holy physician. But Rushforth was certainly right, too, in suggesting the use of lights in the niche. As the loculus was covered with a lid, there were doubtless candles or oil lamps put on the sill in front of the painting, as was the custom elsewhere in the church.102 Recently Raimund Hermes pointed to the fact evident from the Liber Pontificalis that Paul I transferred relics from a number of sanctuaries outside Rome to the city and that in particular the diaconiae were to receive them. Considering the assumed execution of the icon in the niche during Paul I’s papacy, the relics might have reached S. Maria Antiqua at the same time.103 Pope Paul I is
98
Cf. Crisafulli and Nesbitt, Miracles, 135, 211, 217 (miracles 22, 41, 42). The Constantinopolitan medical saint Artemios, originally an Egyptian martyr, might be present at S. Maria Antiqua, too. A votive icon in the Chapel of Theodotus shows a male and three female saints, accompanied by an inscription: “(marty)res quorum nomina D(eu)s scet.” But the male saint is singled out by a name: “Scs Armentise.” As no such saint is known, J. David suggested that this might be a contorted version of “Artemius.” The figure’s appearance in the costume of a Byzantine official matches the historical Artemios who was dux Aegypti in 360. The decoration of the Theodotus Chapel is commonly ascribed to the papacy of Zacharias (741–752); cf. J. David in Grüneisen, Sainte-Marie-Antique, 486; Belting, “Privatkapelle,” 58, fig. 5. 99 Weis, “Ikonentypus,” 28–29. The semicircular, roundheaded niche with a painted bust of the Virgin and Child at the Coemeterium S. Valentino resembles quite closely the type of the fresco-icon of St. Abbakyros at S. Maria Antiqua. The niche is located in the atrium of S. Valentino—similar to the situation at S. Maria Antiqua—and may well date from Paul I’s pontificate or slightly later. Weis, ibid., 37, fig. 12. 100 Rushforth, “S. Maria Antiqua,” 98; Weis, “Ikonentypus,” 48. Compare also the small apselike niche with a fresco of the Virgin and two saints in the crypt at S. Urbano alla Caffarella which provides a loculus for small relics as well. Weis, ibid., 49–50, fig. 20. 101 Tea, Basilica, 112. See also Weis, “Ikonentypus,” 48 note 157. 102 From the miracle accounts of St. Artemios it is evident that the sick customarily prepared a votive lamp in the name of the saint; Crisafulli and Nesbitt, Miracles, 22, 139 (miracle 23). On the use of candles at S. Maria Antiqua, see Belting, “Privatkapelle,” 58. 103 Liber Pontificalis, 1:464: “Quae (sanctorum corpora) cum hymnis et canticis spiritalibus infra hanc civitatem Romanam introducens, alia eorum per titulos ac diaconias seu monasteria et reliquas ecclesias cum condecenti studuit recondi honore.” See Hermes, “Diakonien,” 26. The transfer of relics of the two martyrs to S. Angelo in Pescheria is recorded in 755; cf. Osborne, “Atrium,” 207 with note 94.
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also recorded in the Liber Pontificalis as wandering around at night visiting the poor and sick.104 The pope’s nocturnal visits may well have included diaconiae: it even seems more appropriate that Paul’s visitation should have taken place within a semi-ecclesiastical institution rather than in some kind of private habitation. There can be no doubt that the design of this image, as has been shown for other frescoed niches in S. Maria Antiqua, goes back to an older model. Once again, this has to be a famous icon which was copied into the niche in order to accompany the venerated relics kept in the sepulcrum beneath. In looking for the origin of the icon of St. Abbakyros, the Sinai icons once more provide at least a hint. The left wing of a triptych at St. Catherine’s monastery shows in its lower part the half-length figure of St. Basil (Fig. 18) which has a number of significant features in common with the icon in question here.105 The saint’s head is set against a yellowish-golden halo; the short dark hair is brushed away from the forehead in a similar fashion as in St. Abbakyros’s portrait in S. Maria Antiqua. The two markedly horizontal wrinkles on the forehead and the rectangular one just above the brows are found in both cases, too. The eyes of St. Basil, looking slightly to the left, are heavily overshadowed by the eyebrows, as on the whole this darkish face shows much more plasticity and texture. The extremely thin straight nose, here again painted as seen from slightly above, is quite similar in both cases, as is the shadowed hollowness of the cheeks, the parting of the lips, and the cottonlike, brushy texture of the flowing beard. But all these features are painted in a much more masterly way in the portrait of St. Basil, whose almost sculptured face shows a vividness of expression and an overemphasizing of the play of light and shade that is in complete contrast to the St. Abbakyros at S. Maria Antiqua, whose large staring eyes seem to be the only substantial part in a face that is otherwise almost transparent and gives the impression of floating in front of the halo. The St. Basil icon is at the same time more sketchy (note, e.g., the rendering of the fingers) and more successful in giving the impression of vividness, movement, and bodily volume. The attitude of St. Basil’s right hand, holding a heavily jeweled book that he supports with the left, is comparable to that of St. Abbakyros, and one could imagine that his left hand—which has been omitted in the fresco—should support the box in the same way as St. Basil’s left hand does the book. From all this it is evident that the fresco-icon in S. Maria Antiqua probably goes back to a model of very much the type of the St. Basil icon at Sinai. The apparent differences in quality and in the rendering of details are explained by the considerable time lag. The Sinai icon has been attributed by Weitzmann to a seventhcentury Palestinian workshop.106 Thus the original icon of St. Abbakyros, which was reproduced at S. Maria Antiqua, in all probability antedates the actual fresco by more than a hundred years, having been painted at a time when the style of which the fresco is reminiscent was still a living force. Considering that the saint’s cult reached Rome during the first half of the seventh century, and its Alexandrian origin, it seems indeed very likely that the image reflected in the Roman painting was an Eastern icon of the earlier seventh century. This assumption would be in keeping with the suggested date of the St. Basil icon 104 Liber Pontificalis, 1:463: “Hic, ut multi testati sunt, nocte per semetipsum cellas pauperum infirmorum periacentium, qui ex suis nequamquam adsurgere valebant lectulis, necnon et aliorum inopum cum suis familiaribus noctis circuibat silentio, amplissime illis ministrans alimonia atque subsidii inferens opem.” 105 Weitzmann, Icons, B.24. 106 Ibid., 48–49.
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THE CHAPEL OF PHYSICIANS AT SANTA MARIA ANTIQUA
representing more or less the type one has to think of here. Thus a cult image was painted in the fashion of an older, certainly well-known icon from Mount Sinai or probably Palestine; the actual model for the fresco might have already been a copy itself. Perhaps, as the relics kept in the sepulcrum were possibly surgical instruments, the Roman (or Byzantine?) painter added the peculiar set of medical tools to the figure in order to emphasize their actual presence. For the Byzantine beholder, image and prototype became nearly identical in this painting: the (copied) famous (probably miracle-working) icon of a saint whose presence in the image was enhanced by the (indirect) relics in the loculus below, not visible, but there and reproduced above in the picture itself. A more demonstrative presence of a saint in his image is hardly conceivable. The described artistic shortcomings of the fresco—if compared to the style of its suggested model or to John VII’s decorations—might not be merely due to a lack of craftsmanship in the artist. If one has to describe the qualities of the picture, it is certainly the startling, almost luminous transparency and the lack of bodily volume and weight one encounters in this face that sets it apart from more lifelike figures. In fact, the spiritual presence of the saint in the icon seems reflected in the style of the painting, giving an impression of quiet timelessness. The fresco-icon of St. Abbakyros in the atrium therefore represents perhaps the least “Hellenistic” image in the church, to use again a term so often applied to earlier parts of the decoration at S. Maria Antiqua. There is no indication of the space or motion that is so typical of the vividness of “Hellenism”—there is just “presence.” In several fresco-icons Nordhagen discovered traces of metallic objects, presumably precious votive gifts that had once been attached to the figures in the paintings. He also found traces of nails formerly inserted into the surface of the frescoes in order to attach either an ex-voto object or an oil lamp to it.107 One would expect such a practice to be of particular relevance in connection with the cult of medical saints. In fact, there is an example from Sophronios’s Miracles of Sts. Abbakyros and John, in which a patient gathers oil from a lamp burning in front of a holy image and subsequently uses it with salutary effects. The man, suffering from gout, is advised in a dream during incubation by the two Anargyroi (after they had won Christ’s approval) to act as follows: “Now proceed to Alexandria and go to sleep on an empty stomach in the great Tetrapylon. Take a small quantity of oil from the lamp that burns there, high up, in front of the Saviour’s image, put it in a little flask and, still on an empty stomach, come back here. When you have anointed your legs with this oil, you will receive the gift of health.”108 The spacious sill of the niche of St. Abbakyros, above the loculus for the relics, was presumably used to put candles or oil lamps and perhaps other votive offerings in front of the image. Considering the procedure described in the Miracles of Sts. Abbakyros and John, and the evidence Nordhagen found for the role 107
Nordhagen, “Icons Designed for the Display of Sumptuous Votive Gifts,” DOP 41 (1987): 454; idem, “Seventh Century,” 141–42. 108 Sophronios, SS. Cyri et Ioannis Miracula, 36; PG 87.3:3548ff; trans. Mango, Byzantine Empire, 136; cf. Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 106 note 86. A practice evident later from the Chalke icon at Constantinople— having been restored after its destruction during Iconoclasm—involves a veil that hung in front of the icon and cured Alexios I and the Protostrator Alexios Komnenos, whose wife then dedicated an embroidered purple cloth, also to be suspended in front of the image; C. Mango, The Brazen House (Copenhagen, 1959), 132–33.
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votive gifts played within the cult at S. Maria Antiqua, it seems possible that, for example, the oil of a lamp put on the sill in front of the icon was perceived by the pious as absorbing its power both from the presence of the saint in his image—illuminated by its flame— and from his relics kept in the loculus just below. The oil from the lamp, thus endowed with beneficial power, could then have been applied as a remedy.109 Although there is no documentary proof available for this kind of practice having been a custom in Rome, one has, again, to take into consideration that S. Maria Antiqua was a church largely frequented by a Greek community taking part in imported cult forms and that the image itself depicts an Eastern saint, copied after an Eastern model. Thus the examples quoted from Byzantine sources might indeed give an idea of what was actually practiced in eighthcentury Rome, too. The painting may well have been donated by a Byzantine or papal official, as was suggested for other icons in the church.110 Considering the existence of the already decorated Chapel of Physicians and the nearby diaconiae of S. Maria Antiqua and S. Teodoro, it seems likely that this image of a particularly well equipped medical saint (who was already represented twice in the church when the icon was painted) was intended to receive the worship of the sick cared for in the diaconiae when entering the atrium of the church and thus already there encountering one of the most celebrated of the particular class of saints to whom parts of S. Maria Antiqua are dedicated. Paul I’s additions to the decoration of S. Maria Antiqua were executed at a time when hostility toward images was a dominating force in the East. Together with the frescoes commissioned earlier in the century by John VII, Paul’s paintings—still reminiscent of Byzantine prototypes—testify to an undisturbed continuity of cultic practices in Rome that can only be described as decidedly iconophile and profoundly rooted in magic. This is, within the given specific context, particularly true of both the imagery in the Chapel of Physicians and the icon of the medical saint Abbakyros in the atrium of the church. In an environment like this, the suggested use of the chapel with its icon as a space for incubation seems very much in keeping with the idea of Rome around A.D. 700 as a predominantly Byzantine city. Bibliotheca Hertziana
109 The Miracles of St. Artemios provide an example, where the likeness of the saint itself is taken as a remedy: after having a vision of St. Artemios in his sleep, the patient waking up finds a wax seal bearing an image of the saint in his hand which he then softens and uses as a salve; Crisafulli and Nesbitt, Miracles, 108–9 (miracle 17). Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 107. 110 Nordhagen, “Icons,” 459; H. Belting, Bild und Kult (Munich, 1990), 133.
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2002 © 2003 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America
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The Biography of Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah Revisited JOHN C. LAMOREAUX
ince the long and halting process of the recovery of Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah’s works began, there have been numerous attempts to reconstruct a coherent account of his life. These reconstructions disagree on many details. Nor is this surprising. The evidence available is sparse. It is often tendentious. It is even more often reticent to provide data for the main concerns of modern researchers. Notwithstanding that consensus has yet to be reached on the details of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s life, there are some points on which all agree. They are confident that he lived in the late eighth and early ninth centuries A.D. They are unanimous that he was, for a time, the bishop of H arra¯ n. Similarly, all agree that Abu ¯ Qurrah was intricately linked to the monastery of Mar Sabas—indeed, that Abu ¯ Qurrah was himself a monk at that monastery. When he spent his time there is a point on which there is debate. Similarly, it is unclear whether he spent more than one stint there as a monk. What is important to recognize is that there is unanimous consent that Abu ¯ Qurrah spent at least part of his life at the monastery of Mar Sabas. This has been, for instance, the conclusion of Ignace Dick, Georg Graf, Sidney H. Griffith, Joseph Nasrallah, and Khalil Samir.1 The proposition that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas has not been without profound implications for the direction that research on his writings has taken. Abu ¯ Qurrah is important. He was one of the first Christians to write in Arabic. He was a significant figure in the intellectual history of the iconoclast controversy, especially in its non-Byzantine form. Indeed, he was himself the author of an articulate defense of icons. Perhaps most importantly, his works were extremely innovative in not a few regards: not least their attempt to articulate a new vision of Christian identity using the language and conceptual tools of Muslim theologians. And yet, as researchers have long recognized, Abu ¯ Qurrah did not exist in an intellectual vacuum. He was heir to a long tradition of theological reflection. Researchers have given, accordingly, much attention to the task of contextualizing Abu ¯ Qurrah’s labors. And one of the most constant streams of reflection in this regard is that Abu ¯ Qurrah’s efforts are best seen against the backdrop of the monastery of
S
1
I. Dick, “Un continuateur arabe de saint Jean Damascène: Théodore Abuqurra, évêque melkite de Harran” (pt. 3), PrOC 13 (1963): 122–23; G. Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, vol. 2 (Vatican City, 1947), 8; S. H. Griffith, Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah: The Intellectual Profile of an Arab Christian Writer of the First Abbasid Century (Tel Aviv, 1992), 18–20, cf. his “Reflections on the Biography of Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah,” Parole de l’Orient 18 (1993): 150–52; J. Nasrallah, Histoire du mouvement littéraire dans l’Église melchite du Ve au XXe siècle, vol. 2.2 ¯ tha¯ rihi,” al-Mashriq 73 (Louvain, 1988), 111; Kh. Samir, “al-Jadı¯d fı¯ Sı¯rat Tha¯ wudu ¯ rus Abı¯ Qurrah wa-A (1999): 418–19.
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Mar Sabas. The contextualization of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s labors is an important project, one that deserves much further research, but this is not a concern here. Instead, I would like to reexamine the proposition that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a Sabaite monk. On what evidence is this proposition based, and is that evidence reliable? EXTERNAL EVIDENCE: THE PASSION OF MICHAEL THE SABAITE The primary evidence for Abu ¯ Qurrah having been a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas is the Passion of Michael the Sabaite. Not only is this text the only piece of external evidence to suggest that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a Sabaite monk, it is also the only text explicitly to identify him as such. It is, thus, doubly unfortunate that we do not have access to the original version of this text. The Passion is preserved today, instead, in a Georgian translation.2 This translation was, it seems, produced in one of the Palestinian monasteries, perhaps in the tenth century.3 As for the language from which it was translated, it is generally regarded as having been Arabic.4 And it would seem that this Arabic version of the Passion was itself produced at the monastery of Mar Sabas.5 The narrator of the Passion is said to be a priest from the monastery of Mar Sabas— otherwise unknown—named Basil, “an amazing man and a seer of wonders” (§1). On the day of the Annunciation, we are told, Basil and some of the brethren were engaged in a procession outside the monastery. On their way back, they stopped at the cell of “the famous Abba Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah.” After taking food and drink, the monks were told a story by Abu ¯ Qurrah. It concerned events that took place in the days of the caliph Abd alMalik (685–705), when the caliph and his wife had come up from Babylon to Jerusalem (§2). The reason for this journey was, we are told, to ask about and search for “a Christian man knowledgeable about the law.” According to Abu ¯ Qurrah, at the time of Abd al-Malik’s visit to Jerusalem there were in the monastery of Mar Sabas two famous monks, both from Tiberias: Abba Moses and his disciple Michael (§3). The latter went one day to Jerusalem to sell boxes and baskets. There he encountered a eunuch who was a servant of the caliph’s wife. This eunuch took the young monk to his mistress, who promptly fell in love with him (§4). When the monk rebuffed her advances, she had him arrested and brought before her husband (§5). There ensued a theological debate among the caliph, a Jew, and the monk—with Michael, not sur-
2 The only edition is that of K. Kekelidze, published in his Monumenta Hagiographica Georgica, Pars Prima: Keimena, vol. 1 (Tblisi, 1918), 165–73. Cf. also his “¥≈ «» ≈ ≈ ¥≈ ≈ ¥≈” (“The Romance of Abu ¯ Qurrah and Its Two Redactions in Old Georgian Literature”), in his ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ¥≈≈ (Studies in Old Georgian Literature), vol. 6 (Tbilisi, 1960), 18–40. P. Peeters has produced a Latin translation of the Passion: “La passion de S. Michel le Sabaïte,” AB 48 (1930): 65–98, translation at 66–77. A new version in English has recently been prepared by M. J. Blanchard: “The Georgian Version of the Martyrdom of Saint Michael, Monk of Mar Sabas Monastery,” ARAM 6 (1994): 149–63. Unless otherwise stated, in what follows I cite from Blanchard's translation. 3 For an overview of the evidence, see S. H. Griffith, “Michael, the Martyr and Monk of Mar Sabas Monastery, at the Court of the Caliph Abd al-Malik: Christian Apologetics and Martyrology in the Early Islamic Period,” ARAM 6 (1994): 120–23. 4 See Peeters, “Michel le Sabaïte,” 65–66, and the evidence cited in the notes to his translation, as well as the excellent analysis of Blanchard, “Martyrdom of Saint Michael,” 159–63. 5 For an overview of the evidence, see Griffith, “Michael, the Martyr and Monk,” 121, 129–30.
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prisingly, the winner (§6–9). The debate was followed by a trial by poison, which Michael passed (§10). Flustered, the caliph ordered that the monk be led out of the city, where he was beheaded (§11). The Sabaite monks, Abu ¯ Qurrah continues, received Michael’s body and took it back to the monastery, accompanied by a fiery cloud, like a pillar of light, which traveled with the holy martyr and could be seen by all the citizens of Jerusalem (§12). When Michael’s body was at last arrived at the monastery, an invalid monk by the name of Theodore was cured after invoking the new martyr (§13). Michael’s body was then interred in “the tomb of the martyrs, the fathers, and the burned martyrs.” As for Abba Moses, he prayed Michael to take him away in seven days, which prayer the martyr answered. Abu ¯ Qurrah, who is said by Basil to have presented himself as an eyewitness to these events, concludes his narrative: “And on the seventh day we preserved the teacher with the disciple. And all of us of one accord gave glory to God the Worker of wonders, to our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is the glory forever and ever. Amen.” Such is the tale that Abu ¯ Qurrah is said to have told Basil and his fellow monks. It is followed in the Passion by Basil’s own panegyric on the holy Sabas (§14–15), “who made the waterless desert like a celebrated city” and “discovered such disciples as Stephen and John and Thomas and Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah.” Stephen of Mar Sabas (d. 794) and John the Hesychast (d. 554) are well known. This Thomas appears to be otherwise unattested.6 As for Abu ¯ Qurrah, in his panegyric Basil refers to him as “the new one of Saint Saba, the shepherd and priest-leader of Assyria, the miracle worker of Babylon” ( ≈
≈ ≈ ≈ ¥≈ ≈ ¥ ≈ ≈¥≈ ).7 Such is the translation of Monica Blanchard.8 P. Peeters translates this key phrase: “Abucura Sancti Sabae neophytus, pastor et hierarcha Assyriae, atque Babyloniae thaumaturgus.”9 Neither translation strikes me as entirely satisfactory. The phrase might better be translated: “the newest scion [lit. new shoot] of Saint Sabas, shepherd and high priest of Syria,10 wonderworker of Babylon.” In short, Abu ¯ Qurrah is praised by Basil as the most recent of the four above-mentioned saints produced by the monastery of Mar Sabas, while at the same time he is identified as a high priest (i.e., bishop) in Syria and as someone who did miracles in Babylon.
6
Basil’s panegyric further describes him (§15): “And [there was] Thomas who furnished teachings for the lavra, and he used to ponder the mystery of the monks. And from Saint Saba to Jericho he gave safe custody to a disciple.” Peeters (“Michel le Sabaïte,” 81) referred to him as one “qui n’est autrement connu.” Griffith (“Michael, the Martyr and Monk,” 128–29) thinks that he might be identified with Thomas the patriarch of Jerusalem (807–821), at one time a Sabaite monk. 7 Kekelidze, ed., 173.13–14. 8 Blanchard, “Martyrdom of Saint Michael,” 158. 9 Peeters, “Michel le Sabaïte,” 77. 10 That ≈ can mean Syria is clear from numerous sources. See, e.g., the Georgian version of the Life of Maximos the Confessor: Kekelidze, ed., Keimena, 1:62.5; the Georgian version of John the Deacon, on which, see below: L. Datiashvili, ed., ¥ ¥ : ≈ ≈¥ ≈ ≈≈ ≈ ≈¥ ≈ ≈ (Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah: The Treatises and Dialogues Translated from Greek by Arsen Iq’altoeli) (Tbilisi, 1980), 95.22, translating the original’s “Coile Syria”; the Georgian version of the Life of Symeon the Stylite: G. Garitte, ed., Vies géorgiennes de S. Syméon Stylite l’ancien et de S. Ephrem, CSCO 171 (Louvain, 1957), 1.15; and the numerous examples in the New Testament (J. Molitor, Glossarium Ibericum in Quattuor Evangelia et Actus Apostolorum, vol. 2, CSCO 237 [Louvain, 1962], 425).
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Such is the account of the Georgian version of the Passion. There is another account of Michael’s martyrdom, however, one that has been incorporated into the Life of Theodore of Edessa,11 a work that has been called, with just cause, “l’un des meilleurs échantillons du mensonge hagiographique, sous sa forme la plus effrontée.”12 The hero of this Life is a (fictitious?) bishop of Edessa who is said to have flourished in the middle of the ninth century. He, too, was thought to have been for a time a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. The account of his life seems to have been drawn up no later than the tenth century, perhaps at the monastery of Mar Sabas.13 The differences between the two versions of Michael’s martyrdom are significant. For our purposes, some of the more important of these concern the relation between the martyr and his spiritual father and the identity of the person who is said to narrate the account of Michael’s martyrdom. While in the Passion Michael comes from Tiberias and enters into the monastic life at the monastery of Mar Sabas under Abba Moses, also from Tiberias, in the Life it is said that he was from Edessa and that he became a disciple of Theodore of Edessa.14 In the Life, moreover, Theodore of Edessa and Michael are presented as being related by blood.15 There is nothing in the Passion to suggest that Michael was a relative of Moses. Further, in the Life, it is not Abu ¯ Qurrah but the narrator (a certain Basil the bishop of Emesa, supposedly a nephew of Theodore of Edessa) who tells the story of Michael’s martyrdom.16 And finally, the Passion and the Life differ on when and how the remains of Michael’s spiritual father came to be interred with those of Michael. While the Passion mentions the miraculous death of Moses seven days after the burial of Michael, the Life presents Theodore of Edessa as returning to the monastery of Mar Sabas only at the end of his career as bishop of Edessa. It was then, we are told, that his remains were laid to rest near those of “his kinsman Michael.”17 Most who have examined the relation between the two versions of Michael’s martyrdom are agreed that the Passion represents the more primitive account.18 The version preserved in the Life, on the other hand, is thought to be reworking an earlier version of the Passion in such a way as to bring it into accord with the narrative of the events of Theodore of Edessa’s life. Here is not the place to attempt to unravel the complicated question of the sources of the Life or of its manner of using those sources. Equally out of place here is a detailed analysis of how the two versions of Michael’s martyrdom are related to each other. Much work remains to be done in both regards. The textual tradition of the Greek Life I. Pomialovskii, ed., итi иж во вят ъ отца ашго одора ар iикоа дкаго (The Life of Our Father amongst the Saints Theodore the Archbishop of Edessa) (St. Petersburg, 1892). The standard study of the Life remains A. Vasiliev, “The Life of St. Theodore of Edessa,” Byzantion 16 (1942–43): 165–225. 12 J. Gouillard, “Supercheries et méprises littéraires: L’œuvre de saint Théodore d’Édesse,” REB 5 (1947): 137. 13 For the date, see Peeters, “Michel le Sabaïte,” 82–83, as well as Gouillard, “Supercheries et méprises littéraires,” 137, and A. Abel, “La portée apologétique de la «vie» de St. Théodore d’Édesse,” BSl 10 (1949): 239. 14 Pomialovskii, ed., 14.11–15.4. 15 Ibid., 14.11. 16 Ibid., 1.5, 86.4, 119.19. 17 Ibid., 119.14–15. 18 See, e.g., Peeters, “Michel le Sabaïte,” 84; Griffith, “Michael, the Martyr and Monk,” 120–21; Nasrallah, Histoire, 2.2:160–61; and Vasiliev, “Theodore of Edessa,” 213–14. 11
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and the Georgian Passion are not yet well understood.19 Slavic versions of both the Life and the Passion have yet to be brought to bear on these questions. The Arabic version of the Life has yet to be published or analyzed. Nor do we yet understand how these various versions of Michael’s Passion relate to similar stories found in the Life of John of Edessa and the Dialogue of Abraham of Tiberias.20 Here let me content myself with a single question: Is there any reason to place confidence in the narrative of the Georgian version of the Passion, in particular its ascription of this account to Abu ¯ Qurrah and its description of him as a famous Sabaite monk? One of the primary arguments for the historicity of the Passion and hence for the reliability of its reference to Abu ¯ Qurrah as a Sabaite monk has been that the remains of Michael are known to have been venerated at the monastery of Mar Sabas.21 It should be noted, however, that the history of Michael’s cult supports the account of the Life rather than that of the Passion. The early twelfth-century Russian pilgrim Daniel, who visited the monastery of Mar Sabas, called attention to the existence there of the relics of Theodore of Edessa and of his nephew Michael.22 This clearly echoes the Life rather than the Passion. The same can be said of the twelfth-century Typikon of Mar Sabas (Sinai Gr. 1096), which commemorates on the same day “Our holy fathers Theodore of Edessa and Michael his nephew, who were from the lavra of the holy Sabas.”23 Similar observations can be made of the Melkite synaxaria, whose notices on Michael link him not to Abba Moses but to his uncle Theodore of Edessa. These include the versions preserved in Sinai Ar. 418, Paris Ar. 254, Berlin, Sachau 127 and 138, Vatican Syr. 243 and 412, and Vatican Ar. 472.24 To the best of my knowledge, contrariwise, apart from the Georgian version of the Passion there is absolutely no evidence to suggest the existence of a Sabaite cult of Michael and Moses. This runs contrary, however, to what one might have expected if the Passion indeed reflects a more primitive account of Michael’s martyrdom.25 This is not to imply that the Life is a historical document. All evidence would tend to the opposite conclusion. I only wish to suggest that one cannot appeal to Michael’s cult in order to support the historicity of the Passion’s reference to Abu ¯ Qurrah as a Sabaite monk. There are yet other reasons that should make one somewhat reticent to place much 19
Kekelidze, in particular, utilized only a single manuscript for his edition of the Passion. At least one other is known; see P. Peeters, “De Codice Hiberico Bibliothecae Bodleianae Oxoniensis,” AB 31 (1912): 307. 20 For the Life of John of Edessa, see J. C. Lamoreaux and H. Khairallah, “The Arabic Version of the Life of John of Edessa,” Le Muséon 113 (2000): 439–60. For the Dialogue of Abraham of Tiberias, see G. Bu ¯ lus Marcuzzo, Le dialogue d’Abraham de Tibériade avec Abd al-Rah ma ¯ n al-Ha ¯ˇimı s ¯ à Jérusalem vers 820, Textes et études sur l’orient chrétien 3 (Rome, 1986). I offer an examination of the textual tradition of the Life and its relation to these other texts in the introduction to a forthcoming critical edition of the Arabic version of the Life. 21 See, e.g., Nasrallah, Histoire, 2.2:159–60; idem, “Regard critique sur I. Dick, Th. Abû Qurra, De l’existence du Créateur et de la vraie religion” (pt. 1), PrOC 36 (1986): 53–54. 22 B. de Khitrowo, trans., Itinéraires russes en orient, vol. 1.1 (Geneva, 1889), 34. 23 See J.-M. Sauget, Premières recherches sur l’origine et les caractéristiques des synaxaires melkites (XIe–XVIIe siècles), SubsHag 45 (Brussels, 1969), 411. 24 Ibid. 25 One could, of course, assume that the Life’s account of the martyrdom generated the cult, or perhaps that an original cult of Moses and Michael was transformed into a cult of Theodore and Michael. Both scenarios are hard to imagine, however, especially in that one would have to posit these transformations to have taken place at the very monastery in which their remains were buried.
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confidence in the narrative of the Passion and hence in its reference to Abu ¯ Qurrah as a Sabaite monk. The whole tenor of the text is naively legendary. The Passion as we have it is very much a calque on the biblical account of Joseph and Mrs. Potiphar, the narrative presentation of which forms the backdrop for a religious debate among Michael, the caliph, and a Jew. And this is a debate characterized by not a little witty and humorous repartee—no doubt offering much pleasure to the original hearers of the text. Though the historical background presupposed by the text is not “entièrement imaginaire,” Peeters thought the Passion to be legendary.26 Griffith, too, seems to incline to this position.27 So also, Robert G. Hoyland is suspicious of its historicity.28 But if Michael is a legendary character, should we assume that Basil, the supposed narrator of the Passion, is the one responsible for crafting this account of Michael’s attempted seduction, triumphant debate, and victorious martyrdom? And if Basil could craft this, could he not have crafted the reference to an equally imaginary source? Equally detrimental to any attempt to place trust in the Passion are its historical infelicities and anachronisms. First, as noted above, the Passion suggests that Abd al-Malik came to Jerusalem from Babylon, that is, Baghdad.29 The problem: Abd al-Malik was an Umayyad, not an Abbasid caliph. He would, thus, not have come to Jerusalem from Baghdad, which city had not yet been founded, an event that would not take place for nearly fifty years.30 Second, the Passion presents Abu ¯ Qurrah as an eyewitness to and participant 31 in the burial of both Michael and Moses. This is simply impossible and must be rejected—otherwise we would have to imagine Abu ¯ Qurrah to have lived for some one hundred and fifty years, for other, more reliable sources have him still alive in the early decades of the ninth century. Finally, Michael is said to have been buried in “the tomb of the martyrs, the fathers, and the burned martyrs.” As is clear from a later parallel (§15), the “burned martyrs” here are the twenty martyrs of Mar Sabas. The problem: these twenty monks had not yet been martyred at the time of Michael’s death; indeed, they would not be martyred for nearly a century, meeting their fate only in 797. All of these incongruities are hard to understand if it was indeed Abu ¯ Qurrah who had transmitted to Basil this account of Michael’s martyrdom. One final point needs to be noted, and this is the fact that the Passion calls Abu ¯ Qur26
Peeters, “Michel le Sabaïte,” 78. Griffith, “Michael, the Martyr and Monk,” 143–46. 28 R. G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 13 (Princeton, N.J., 1997), 380–81. 29 A similar itinerary is posited by the Greek Life (Pomialovskii, ed., 17.19). That Baghdad might be called Babylon is not without parallel in other, roughly contemporary Melkite hagiographic texts. The Georgian version of the Passion of Romanos the Neomartyr, for instance, at one point refers to “Babylon, that is, Baghdad.” See P. Peeters, trans., “S. Romain le néomartyr († 1 mai 780) d’après un document géorgien,” AB 30 (1911): 412.8. Something similar is found in the Greek version of the Life of Theodore of Edessa, which makes mention of “Babylon, which is now called by the Persians Baghdad” (Pomialovskii, ed., 72. 22–23). 30 Peeters, “Michel le Sabaïte,” 77, recognized the Passion’s reference to Babylon/Baghdad as an “anachronisme scandaleux.” Others, too, have recognized the anachronism, but sought, rather, to explain it in such a way as to preserve the essential historicity of the account. Nasrallah, Histoire, 2.2:159 note 305, wants to suggest that it is a question here not of Baghdad but of Damascus. Griffith, “Michael, the Martyr and Monk,” 133, seems to posit a slip or mistake on the part of the narrator of the Passion. 31 Both Peeters, “Michel le Sabaïte,” 80–81, and Griffith, “Michael, the Martyr and Monk,” 127, have also noted this anachronism. 27
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rah—quite offhandedly—the “wonderworker of Babylon.” There is little evidence, and perhaps none, to suggest that Abu ¯ Qurrah had even visited Baghdad, much less that he was thought to have performed miracles there. As for the performance of miracles in the Abbasid capital, I know of absolutely no other source to suggest such a thing. Did Abu ¯ Qurrah ever visit Baghdad? Clear references to such a visit are lacking in the sources known to me. One passage in Abu ¯ Qurrah’s writings, however, has been taken to suggest such a visit.32 In his tract On the Existence of God and the True Religion, Abu ¯ Qurrah imagines himself to have grown up on an uninhabited mountain. One day, he descends to the civilized regions, where he encounters adherents of the various religions and must find a way to decide which of these religions is true. In introducing his thought experiment, Abu ¯ Qurrah describes his descent to civilization as follows: “I grew up on a mountain, on which I knew not [other] people. One day, on account of a need that befell me, I descended to al-mada ¯ in and to the community of [other] people, and I observed that they had different religions.” At issue is the word al-mada ¯ in. It can mean “the cities,” which would make perfect sense in the context of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s thought experiment. Contrariwise, it could be a reference to al-Mada¯ in (ancient Seleucia-Ctesiphon), which was destroyed when the caliph al-Mans u ¯r built Baghdad. The passage has been taken in the latter sense, and, on the assumption that the passage is autobiographical, it has been suggested that Abu ¯ Qurrah resided there for a time before the building of Baghdad.33 It would be hard to imagine less substantial evidence for a sojourn by Abu ¯ Qurrah in Baghdad. Indeed, the whole of the passage’s context speaks against this interpretation: we are dealing here with a thought experiment. If there is no evidence that Abu ¯ Qurrah was thought to have performed miracles in Baghdad, and if, moreover, there is little or no evidence to suggest that Abu ¯ Qurrah even visited Baghdad, to what then is allusion being made when Basil, the author of the Passion, calls him the “wonderworker of Babylon”—seemingly something for which he was quite well known? Oddly enough, the Passion would here make far more sense if the reference were not to Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, but to Theodore of Edessa. As noted above, the latter Theodore was likewise believed to have been a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas and later a bishop in Syria. Unlike Abu ¯ Qurrah, however, he was thought to have traveled to Baghdad, where he performed numerous miracles, not least curing a caliph of a grave illness, an event that—according to the Life—led to that caliph’s conversion to Christianity.34 Moreover, it was as a wonderworker in Babylon that Theodore of Edessa was remembered by later Melkites. In an epitome of the Arabic version of the Life of Theodore of Edessa, for instance, this is how one later Melkite remembered this phase of Theodore’s career: “He then went to the city of Babylon and cured its king of a grave illness, baptizing him and teaching him the Christian faith; he further baptized and illumined there many other pagans, doing among them numerous miracles.”35 Nothing even remotely similar to this is found in any of the sources on Abu ¯ Qurrah’s life. And again, it should be empha32
I. Dick, ed., Théodore Abuqurra: Traité de l’existence du Créateur et de la vraie religion, Patrimoine arabe chrétien 3 (Jounieh–Rome, 1982), 200ff. 33 Based on this passage, Nasrallah, Histoire, 2.2:110, thinks a visit by Abu ¯ Qurrah to Baghdad quite likely, while Dick, “Continuateur arabe,” 122–23, considers it merely a possibility. 34 Pomialovskii, ed., 85–86. 35 Macarius III b. al-Za¯m, ı Akhba ¯ r al-qiddı¯sı¯n alladhı¯na kharaju ¯ min bila ¯ dina ¯ (British Library, ms. ar. ch. 38 = add. 9965, fol. 32a).
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sized, the Passion’s notice fits Theodore of Edessa in other ways too: not only was he thought once to have been a Sabaite monk, he was also believed to have been a bishop in Syria. If the Passion here seems to describe Theodore of Edessa rather than Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, what are we to make of the Passion’s other references to our Theodore? In crafting the original version of his Passion, perhaps Basil claimed to have received this account of Michael’s martyrdom not from Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah but from Theodore of Edessa. If so, might it not be that at some point in the textual history of the Passion a scribe sought to clarify the seemingly ambiguous reference, suggesting that the Theodore of Edessa in question was none other than Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, also a native of Edessa? Or maybe it was not a scribe but the Georgian translator who sought to clarify the text. Or perhaps the source of the confusion was Basil himself. The Passion’s infelicitous anachronisms suggest that Basil compiled the work—carelessly—from an earlier written source. Might it not be that this earlier source was attributed to a Theodore of Mar Sabas and that Basil, in crafting his account, identified this Theodore with a conflated version of Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah and Theodore of Edessa? Answers to these questions can be only speculative at present: much work remains to be done on both the Life and the Passion. One possibility that must be considered, however, is that the Passion is not simply a translation into Georgian of a primitive and “authentic” Arabic version of the text. The textual history of the work must have been far more complex. Whatever the case, is there any reason to place much confidence in the Passion’s testimony that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a Sabaite monk? The weight of the evidence suggests that this is a question that should be answered in the negative. The history of Michael’s cult does not support the historicity of the Passion and hence the reliability of its reference to Abu ¯ Qurrah as a Sabaite monk. The same can be said for the whole tenor of the Passion, which is naively legendary. Moreover, the Passion is riven by a number of grave historical improbabilities and anachronisms for which it is hard to account if in fact Abu ¯ Qurrah had transmitted the account of Michael’s death to Basil. Worse still, the Passion’s description of Abu ¯ Qurrah would make far more sense if the reference were not to Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, but to Theodore of Edessa. In sum, the Passion of Michael the Sabaite has far less probative value than one might wish. If this is the case, what of the proposition that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas? It is the Passion and it alone that explicitly identifies Abu ¯ Qurrah as having been a monk at that monastery. All other evidence that has been cited to support this proposition is less specific, and has most often been called upon only to support further the testimony of the Passion. It is to this other evidence that I now turn: first to the evidence internal to Abu ¯ Qurrah’s own works and then to what might be called ancillary evidence. INTERNAL EVIDENCE The single most important piece of internal evidence supporting Abu ¯ Qurrah’s connection to the monastery of Mar Sabas is the title of the eighteenth of his Greek works,36 36
PG 94:1596B.
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which links Abu ¯ Qurrah to John of Damascus, who is usually thought to have been a Sa37 baite monk. In Migne, this reads: “From the Refutations of the Saracens by Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah the Bishop of H arra¯ n—Through the Voice (dia ;fwnh'") of John of Damascus.” The meaning of the expression dia; fwnh'" is something of a problem. As was demonstrated by Marcel Richard, this is an expression that can signify a number of different things.38 Up to the eighth century, it most commonly indicated that the work in question (here, one by Abu ¯ Qurrah) is derived from the lectures or oral teachings of someone else (here, John of Damascus). By the ninth century, however, the expression had begun to take on a new sense, now meaning simply that the work in question was written “by” someone (in this case, John of Damascus). If we take the title in its first sense, we have to make Abu ¯ Qurrah a disciple of the Damascene, one able to have heard his teachings orally. While this supposition raises some chronological problems, as John of Damascus seems to have died ca. 750, it has, nevertheless, been accepted by some.39 If, on the other hand, we take the expression in the latter sense, it would have to signify that the work in question was written not by Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, but by John of Damascus, who was, however, transmitting the teachings of Abu ¯ Qurrah—a supposition that again introduces chronological problems in that John of Damascus was born some seventy years before Abu ¯ Qurrah. No end of trouble has been caused by this title. The best way out of these chronological impasses has been to limit the sense of the title, taking it in its first sense, but making Abu ¯ Qurrah 40 transmit the written teachings or theological legacy of the Damascene. There is no need here to rehearse the details of the controversy occasioned by the title to the eighteenth of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s Greek works. The problem is, quite simply, no longer a problem. The recent critical edition of the work in question has established that we should read not “John of Damascus” but “John the Deacon.”41 The critical edition has also established that the work in question was not even written by Abu ¯ Qurrah. Rather, it is one of a number of short dialogues that together comprise John the Deacon’s account of a series of debates between Abu ¯ Qurrah and a variety of Muslim interlocutors.42 It was, however, John the Deacon who wrote the work, not Abu ¯ Qurrah. There is nothing here any longer to support the proposition that Abu ¯ Qurrah was the spiritual if not physical disciple of the famous Sabaite John of Damascus. While there is no reason that Abu ¯ Qurrah might not have been acquainted with the writings of John of Damascus, this important link between the two has now been severed. So also, this link between Abu ¯ Qurrah and the monastery of Mar Sabas has now been severed, and there is little hope that it can be repaired. There is one additional piece of internal evidence that has been cited to support the 37
M.-F. Auzépy, in particular, has recently called into question whether John of Damascus was in fact a Sabaite monk. See below, note 87. 38 M. Richard, “APO FWNHS,” Byzantion 20 (1950): 191–222. 39 For instance, Nasrallah, Histoire, 2.2:109–10. 40 Griffith, Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, 19. Cf. his more recent work, “Byzantium and the Christians in the World of Islam: Constantinople and the Church in the Holy Land in the Ninth Century,” Medieval Encounters 3 (1997): 254. 41 R. Glei and A. Th. Khoury, eds. and trans., Johannes Damaskenos und Theodor Abu ¯ Qurra: Schriften zum Islam, Corpus Islamo-Christianum: Series Graeca 3 (Würzburg, 1995), 86.2. 42 This is clear from John the Deacon’s introduction, the Greek original of which is now edited for the first time in Glei and Khoury, eds., 86.2–88.56. A Georgian version of the same has long been available (Datiashvili, ed., 94–95).
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proposition that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas.43 This is one of his Arabic works, his letter to David the Monophysite. In the introduction to this work, Abu ¯ Qurrah recalls that he had met David while the two of them were praying in the holy places of Jerusalem. This David, who must have been a bishop,44 had asked Abu ¯ Qurrah for an exposition of the character of the union of natures in Christ. After their parting, Abu ¯ Qurrah set himself the task of responding to David’s request. What resulted was Abu ¯ Qurrah’s most detailed investigation of a christological theme. For our purposes, what is important is the end of the letter, where Abu ¯ Qurrah invokes God’s blessings on his correspondent: “We ask God that he not turn away from you or from anyone else who seeks his face in an honest manner—[we ask this] through the prayers of the Theotokos Mary and the prayers of our father the holy Sabas, in whose monastery was copied the book from which this book was copied, and through the prayers of all the holy and pure fathers, whose faith is the upright faith of Orthodoxy, who acknowledge the six holy councils, and through the prayers of everyone who believes in the faith that is upright and acceptable [to God], that is, the faith of the council of Chalcedon and its holy participants. Amen.”45 A number of points should be noted about this passage. That Abu ¯ Qurrah accepted as ecumenical only the first six councils is clear from other works of his.46 Nor is it particularly unusual: others of his Melkite contemporaries had not yet granted ecumenical status to the seventh council.47 But what of the reference to Mar Sabas, the only saint that he mentions by name? If this passage were taken at face value, it could be interpreted to suggest that Abu ¯ Qurrah had, at the very least, a special connection to that saint’s monastery, or perhaps even that he had himself been a monk at that monastery. The reference to Mar Sabas here cannot be taken at face value, however. The text of the letter has clearly been subject to scribal interpolation, especially in and around the reference to Mar Sabas.48 The sole edition of the letter is that prepared in 1904 by Ba¯ sha¯ . This edition was based on a single manuscript preserved in Dayr al-Mukhallis, a manuscript that had been copied in 1735 by metropolitan Basil Fı¯na¯ n. As is clear from his colophons,49 Basil had transcribed his manuscript from a copy of a copy that had once been preserved in the monastery of Mar Sabas. A marginal note of its copyist, the metropolitan Basil: Know that this [copy] is a second copy of the copy that is in the monastery of Mar Sabas, the lavra near Jerusalem, which [latter manuscript] is the original copy of the book on the basis of which this copy was copied. Written by the sinful metropolitan Basil Fı¯na¯ n from an older copy [lit. from the book of its old copy], which was in turn copied 50 from the original copy that is in the monastery of Mar Sabas, the lavra in the district of the noble Jerusalem . . . the date of the copy from 43
See, e.g., Dick, “Continuateur arabe,” 122; Griffith, Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, 20; and Nasrallah, Histoire, 2.2:111. Qust ant¯n ı al-Ba¯ sha¯ , Maya ¯ mir Tha ¯ wudu ¯ rus Abı¯ Qurrah Usquf H arra¯ n (Beirut, 1904), 139.5, in particular the reference to David’s flock. 45 Ba¯ sha¯ , ed., 139.12–17. 46 E.g., ibid., 70.12–14, 171–72. 47 See S. H. Griffith, “Muslims and Church Councils: The Apology of Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah,” StP 25 (Louvain, 1993): 270–99. 48 As was long ago recognized by Georg Graf in his Die arabischen Schriften des Theodor Abû Qurra, Bischofs von H arrân (ca. 740–820), Forschungen zur christlichen Literatur- und Dogmengeschichte 10.3/4 (Paderborn, 1910), 11. He was not sure, however, where the interpolation began or ended. 49 Cited in the introduction to Ba¯ sha¯ ’s edition at p. 5. 50 Reading mansu ¯ khah for mansu ¯ jah. 44
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which we copied this book was 6559 A.M. [1051 A.D.] and it was the work of the monk Agapius from the monastery of Mar Elias on Jabal al-Lukka¯ m. . . .
At least part of the passage from the end of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s letter to David must have been penned by this monk Agapius. This is clearly the case with the phrase “in whose monastery was copied the book from which this book was copied.” This expression simply cannot be understood if it is assumed that Abu ¯ Qurrah himself had written it. Contrariwise, it makes perfect sense if it is assumed to have been added by Agapius. But what of the rest of the passage, in particular the invocation of Mar Sabas? Was this in the copy that formed the basis for Agapius’s transcription, or was it something that he himself added? The former possibility is perhaps slightly more likely, but as yet this is a difficulty that cannot be resolved. And it may be that it will never be resolved, for it seems that the only extant manuscript of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s letter to David is that utilized by Ba¯ sha¯ .51 ANCILLARY EVIDENCE I turn now to the final points of evidence that have been called upon to support the proposition that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. While none of this evidence can by itself prove decisively that he was a Sabaite monk, together it has been thought to lend support to other, more determinative evidence, in particular the testimony of the Passion of Michael the Sabaite. As just noted, a copy of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s Arabic works was once preserved at the monastery of Mar Sabas. It has been suggested on a number of occasions that this points to Abu ¯ Qurrah’s links to the monastery, perhaps even that he carried out the final editing of his works there, toward the end of his life.52 But this seems a heavy burden for this piece of evidence to bear. That a copy of his works was there preserved—by itself, this proves only that his works were an object of interest to the monks of the monastery. In a similar vein, occasionally appeal has been made to Abu ¯ Qurrah’s Palestinian connections to support the proposition that he was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas.53 His Palestinian connections are evident in his letter to David. As mentioned above, in it Abu ¯ Qurrah recalls meeting David while the two of them were in Jerusalem visiting the holy places.54 This meeting might have taken place while Abu ¯ Qurrah was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. It should be noted, however, that the description of their meeting could just as well suggest that Abu ¯ Qurrah was there as a pilgrim from further abroad, perhaps from H arra¯ n. Abu ¯ Qurrah’s Palestinian connections are also to be seen in the fourth of his Greek works, a tract on christology that he wrote for the patriarch of Jerusalem.55 Its title reads, in part: “An epistle . . . sent by the blessed pope Thomas, the patriarch of Jerusalem, to the heretics of Armenia—written in Arabic by Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah the bishop of H arra¯ n and translated by Michael the presbyter and syncellus of the apostolic throne, with whom it was also sent.” Again, however, there is nothing to suggest that it was composed while Abu ¯ Qurrah was a Sabaite monk. Indeed, if the title is to be trusted, it must be concluded that he wrote it as the bishop of H arra¯ n. 51
See Nasrallah, Histoire, 2.2:120, and Graf, Geschichte, 2:13. See, e.g., Dick, “Continuateur arabe,” 125, and Griffith, Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, 20. 53 See, e.g., Dick, “Continuateur arabe,” 122. 54 Ba¯ sha¯ , ed., 104.15–18. 55 PG 97:1504–22. 52
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The new critical edition of some of the Greek works once ascribed to Abu ¯ Qurrah also provides two additional pieces of evidence linking him to Palestinian circles. Both are provided by John the Deacon’s work, which purports to record Abu ¯ Qurrah’s debates with a 56 number of Muslims. The introduction to this work states specifically that Abu ¯ Qurrah, “the most blessed and most philosophical bishop of H arra¯ n,” came to visit the southern Palestinian city of Azotus57 in order to aid the Christians there in argument against the Muslims.58 The second is found at the beginning of one of John the Deacon’s dialogues, where a variant states that this dialogue has as its setting an encounter between Abu ¯ Qurrah and a Saracen, when the “blessed bishop” was coming down from Jerusalem: “Whence one of the hypocrites came up behind the blessed bishop as he was coming down from Jerusalem, and without greeting him immediately said: ‘Christian, testify that God is one and without partners and that Muhammad is his servant and apostle.’ Theodore [answered] . . .”59 Again, however, it should be noted that neither of these two passages suggests that it was as a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas that Abu ¯ Qurrah encountered these Muslims. On the contrary, both passages explicitly state that he was at the time a bishop. Finally, there is one last piece of evidence linking Abu ¯ Qurrah to Palestine and to Jerusalem in particular. This is the introduction to the so-called “Questions and Answers from the Voice of the Virtuous Father Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah the Bishop of H arra¯ n, against the Outsiders.” This work is preserved in a single manuscript, Sbath 1324, copied in 1773. Unfortunately, this manuscript seems now to be lost.60 Its incipit, however, as recorded in Paul Sbath’s catalogue, is said to have read: “Question One. Abu ¯ Qurrah said . . . ‘I was approached by a Muslim and a number of his companions. This took place while I and a group of Christians were at the sepulcher of Christ our God.’ . . .”61 Again, we here have evidence for a visit by Abu ¯ Qurrah to Palestine, but nothing to suggest that this visit took place while Abu ¯ Qurrah was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. Indeed, the title of this work explicitly identifies Abu ¯ Qurrah as the bishop of H arra¯ n. NEGATIVE EVIDENCE If Abu ¯ Qurrah had, in fact, been a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas, it might be expected that the titles of his numerous works would bear witness to this fact. This is not the case, however. Among Abu ¯ Qurrah’s many works preserved in Arabic, Georgian, and 56 Contrary to the conclusions of Glei and Khoury, from the manuscript tradition of John’s work it seems clear that it consisted originally of only his Preface and nine dialogues (opuscula 18–25, 32). It is thus that I treat it in what follows. On this subject, see my “Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah and John the Deacon” (forthcoming). 57 That is, Ashdod. 58 Contrary to what might be expected from the formatting of the critical edition here (Glei and Khoury, eds., 88), it may be that only the first of the dialogues is to be understood as having taken place in Azotus. In other words, 88.53–56 should, perhaps, be understood as the introduction to opusculum 18 alone. This is how the editor of the Georgian version interpreted the passage (Datiashvili, ed., 96.3–6). 59 Glei and Khoury, eds., 94, with variant to lines 4–6, which also reflects the reading of the Georgian version (Datiashvili, ed., 98.10–12). 60 At any rate, it and many other of Sbath’s manuscripts are not to be found with the rest of his collection in the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. See Anton Heinen’s comments in his article (dated 1990) on the Arabic manuscripts of Vatican City, in G. Roper, ed., World Survey of Islamic Manuscripts, vol. 3 (London, 1994), 635. 61 Paul Sbath, Bibliothèque de manuscrits, 3 vols. (Cairo, 1928–34), 3:116.
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Greek, it seems that not one is provided with a title that records that he was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. This is, of course, an argument from silence. Even so, the extent of the negative evidence is overwhelming. Not all of his works bear titles that provide biographical information on their author, but many do. And of those that do, they are unanimous that their author was not a Sabaite monk but the bishop of H arra¯ n. 62 As for those of his Arabic works published by Ba¯ sha¯ , one names its author as Abu ¯ Qurrah.63 The other nine works, contrariwise, are all ascribed to “Theodore the bishop of H arra¯ n.”64 His tract in defense of the veneration of icons, similarly, is ascribed both at its beginning and end to “Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah the bishop of H arra¯ n.”65 The unedited panegyric on al-Mamu ¯ n, too, is attributed to “Abu ¯ Qurrah the bishop of H arra¯ n.”66 The same can be said of the two short Arabic sayings published by Sidney H. Griffith from a manuscript dating to 897, which sayings are explicitly attributed to “Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah the bishop of H arra¯ n.”67 Of the two short works that have been published by Ignace Dick, both name their author as a bishop of H arra¯ n: the first, as Abu ¯ Qurrah in one manuscript, but “Theodore the bishop of H arra¯ n who was known as Abu ¯ Qurrah” in another;68 the sec69 ond, as “Theodore the bishop of H arra¯ n.” Similarly, one of the unedited Lenten homilies ascribed to Abu ¯ Qurrah is attributed in three separate manuscripts to “Theodore the bishop of H arra¯ n.”70 Finally, the lost “Questions and Answers” mentioned above was explicitly attributed to “Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah the Bishop of H arra¯ n.”71 Of the Greek works, some are now known not to have been composed by Abu ¯ Qurrah, but by John the Deacon. Of those whose attribution to Abu ¯ Qurrah can be maintained, eight have titles that provide biographical information on their author. Four of these are attributed to “Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah the bishop of H arra¯ n.”72 Two are ascribed to 73 “Theodore the bishop of H arra¯ n,” while another is said to be by “Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, the philosopher, the bishop of H arra¯ n.”74 Finally, there is one Greek work that has variant ascriptions, either to “Theodore the bishop” or to “Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah the bishop of H arra¯ n.”75 It should be noted, however, that the manuscript tradition of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s Greek works is far more complex than the above indications might suggest. Many of these titles vary from manuscript to manuscript. Many of the works that do not contain bio-
62 While the manuscript tradition of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s Arabic works shows some variation in the form of the titles, to the best of my knowledge no copy identifies him as a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas, or even as a monk. 63 That is, his letter to David (Ba¯ sha¯ , ed., 104). 64 See Ba¯ sha¯ , ed., 9, 23, 48, 71, 75, 83, 91, 140, 180. 65 I. Dick, ed., Théodore Abuqurra: Traité du culte des icônes, Patrimoine arabe chrétien 10 (Jounieh–Rome, 1986), 85 and 219. 66 See I. Dick, “Deux écrits inédits de Théodore Abuqurra,” Le Muséon 72 (1959): 54. 67 S. H. Griffith, “Some Unpublished Arabic Sayings Attributed to Theodore Abu Qurrah,” Le Muséon 92 (1979): 29. 68 Dick, “Deux écrits inédits,” 56. 69 Ibid., 62. 70 The relevant incipits are cited in Samir, “Sı¯rat Tha¯ wudu ¯ rus Abı¯ Qurrah,” 435. 71 Sbath, Bibliothèque de manuscrits, 3:116. 72 PG 97:1461, 1492 (= Glei and Khoury, eds., 128), 1504, 1521. 73 PG 97:1524, 1597. 74 PG 97:1565. 75 PG 97:1540. The variant titles are given in Glei and Khoury, eds., 148.
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¯ QURRAH REVISITED THE BIOGRAPHY OF THEODORE ABU
graphical information in their titles as presented in Migne do have such information in the titles found in the manuscripts. Nonetheless, of the approximately one hundred Greek manuscripts of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s works with which I am familiar, there is not one instance of a work that bears a title that identifies him as a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. As for John the Deacon’s record of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s debates, this, too, provides a picture similar to Abu ¯ Qurrah’s own works: Abu ¯ Qurrah is either referred to as bishop by the narrator or addressed as such by Muslims. In his introduction, furthermore, John the Deacon specifically identifies Abu ¯ Qurrah as “Theodore the most blessed and most philosophical bishop of H arra¯ n in Coile Syria.” Something similar is found in the Georgian translation of John the Deacon’s work, which identifies him as “the very holy and most philosophical Theodore the bishop of H arra¯ n in Syria.”76 Similar observations can be made about the bodies of the dialogues, where Abu ¯ Qurrah is often portrayed as being addressed by Muslim interlocutors as “bishop.”77 Almost all of these passages are also paralleled in the Georgian translation.78 At the same time, some of the sections of John the Deacon’s work, which were in time dismembered and separately transmitted as works by Abu ¯ Qurrah, bear titles that ascribe them to “Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah the bishop of H arra¯ n.”79 Like the titles of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s works and the testimony of John the Deacon, other sources for the life of Abu ¯ Qurrah know him only as the bishop of H arra¯ n, but never as a monk at Mar Sabas. These sources stem from a variety of different times and places; they all, nonetheless, remembered Abu ¯ Qurrah only as a bishop. Michael the Syrian (d. 1199) knew him as “Theodoricus the bishop of H arra¯ n.”80 So also, the anonymous Monophysite chronicle Ad Annum 1234 refers to him as “Theodore the bishop of H arra¯ n, who was named Abu ¯ Qurrah.”81 Yet another Monophysite author, Bar Hebraeus (d. 1286), knew him as “Theodoricus of H arra¯ n.”82 It was also as a bishop that he was remembered by the Muslim Ibn al-Nadı¯m (d. ca. 385/995), who knew him as “Abu ¯ Qurrah the Melkite bishop 83 of H arra¯ n.” In the same way, the title of Abu ¯ Qurrah’s Arabic translation of PseudoAristotle’s De virtutibus animae calls him “Abu ¯ Qurrah the bishop of H arra¯ n.”84 Finally, the Ekthesis of John Kyparissiotes (d. 1378), referring to an otherwise unknown antiManichaean synod, on two occasions records words ascribed to Abu ¯ Qurrah, once introducing them as being from “Abu ¯ Qurrah the bishop of H arra¯ n” and once as being from “the bishop of H arra¯ n.”85 Nor should it pass unobserved that none of the sources on the monastery of Mar Sabas 76
Datiashvili, ed., 95.21–22. See, e.g., 88.52, 88.57, 94.4–6 (with variant), 102.5, 102.18–19, 114.2, 118.9, and 124.3–4. 78 See Datiashvili, ed., 95.33, 96.5, 98.10–12 (confirming the variant), 100.36–101.1, 101.18, 105.28, 108.13. There is no parallel for Glei and Khoury, eds., 118.9, in that the whole of opusculum 25 is lacking in the Georgian version of John’s work. 79 PG 94:1595, 97.1583–84 (Latin only). 80 J.-B. Chabot, ed. and trans., Chronique de Michel le Syrien, 4 vols. (Paris, 1899–1910), 3:32. 81 J.-B. Chabot, ed., Anonymi Auctoris Chronicon ad Annum Christi 1234 Pertinens, vol. 2, CSCO 109 (Paris, 1916), 23.10. 82 See Griffith, Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, 19, citing J. S. Assemanus, Bibliotheca Orientalis, vol. 2 (Rome, 1721), 292 note 3. 83 Ibn al-Nadı¯m, Fihrist, ed. Rid a¯ Tajaddud (anonymous reprint), 26, reading Qurrah for Izzah. 84 See Griffith, Theodore Abu ¯ Qurrah, 25–26. 85 PG 152:784, 809 (Latin only); for the Greek, see B. Hemmerdinger, “Le synode réuni par Théodore Abu ¯ Qurra contre les manichéens (H arra¯ n, 764–765?),” RHR 161 (1962): 270. 77
JOHN C. LAMOREAUX
39
in the eighth and ninth centuries (of which there are some significant ones, not least the Life of Stephen of Mar Sabas and the Passion of the Twenty Martyrs of Mar Sabas)86 mentions Abu ¯ Qurrah as having been a monk there—excepting, of course, the historically dubious Passion of Michael the Sabaite. In sum, for some five hundred years, from one end of the Near East to the other, among Melkites, Jacobites, and Byzantines, and even among Muslims, no one remembered Abu ¯ Qurrah to have been a Sabaite monk. Arguments from silence are not without difficulties. Here, however, the weight of the evidence is so great that if one continues to maintain that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a Sabaite monk, one should at least attempt to suggest why no one remembered him as such—neither the scribes who transmitted his works, nor John the Deacon, nor any of the many other persons who were familiar with his legacy. Why remember him merely as the bishop of an unimportant see in northern Syria, if he had, in fact, also been a monk in what was unarguably the most important Melkite monastery in the early Islamic period and a bastion of orthodoxy closely affiliated with both the patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch? CONCLUSION To my knowledge, the material discussed here is all that is available to support the proposition that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. As has been suggested, the evidence is slight. One text alone, the Passion of Michael the Sabaite, states explicitly that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a monk at that monastery. But its testimony is, as has been argued, of dubious value. The Passion has few claims to historical accuracy. The whole tenor of the text speaks against its historicity, as also does what little is known of Michael’s cult. The Passion is further characterized by not a few historical incongruities, including a chronology that is impossible to reconcile with other, more sure data we have on Abu ¯ Qurrah’s life. Further, its description of Abu ¯ Qurrah as someone who worked wonders in Babylon simply does not fit the other evidence we have on his life, though oddly enough it does fit well what is known of Theodore of Edessa. In sum, the evidence offered by the Passion of Michael should, I think, be given far less weight than has been the case in recent attempts to reconstruct the biography of Abu ¯ Qurrah. If the Passion goes, what of the other evidence? The link between Abu ¯ Qurrah and John of Damascus provided by the eighteenth of the former’s Greek works can no longer be sustained: the critical edition has, quite simply, done away with it. As for the passage in his letter to David where Abu ¯ Qurrah invokes Mar Sabas, this is of dubious textual standing. Moreover, it should be recalled that neither of these pieces of evidence explicitly identifies Abu ¯ Qurrah as a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. At best, they can be argued to provide support for the testimony of the Passion. As for what has been termed “ancillary” evidence, while it supports the thesis that Abu ¯ Qurrah had connections with Palestine, it can in no way be taken to suggest that those contacts occurred while he was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. Indeed, in some cases those contacts are specifically described as taking place while he was the bishop of H arra¯ n. At the same time, while there is a large body of biographical material preserved in the titles to Abu ¯ Qurrah’s works, none of it de86
Respectively, AASS July 3:524–613, and March 3:2*–14*.
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¯ QURRAH REVISITED THE BIOGRAPHY OF THEODORE ABU
scribes him as a Sabaite monk. This holds not only for his Arabic works, but also for those preserved in Greek. John the Deacon, too, is silent on Abu ¯ Qurrah’s having been a monk, though he does on numerous occasions describe Abu ¯ Qurrah as the bishop of H arra¯ n. Finally, of the many Christian and Muslim sources for the life of Abu ¯ Qurrah, not one remembered him to have been a monk at Mar Sabas. They do, however, often describe him as the bishop of H arra¯ n. In sum, evidence that Abu ¯ Qurrah was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas is slight at best and nonexistent at worst. While there is no reason that he might not have been a monk at that monastery, there is little or no reason to think that he was. If Abu ¯ Qurrah is severed from the monastery of Mar Sabas, important implications would follow for how we approach his legacy. First, there would be a need to reexamine whether and to what extent Abu ¯ Qurrah’s theological labors reflect the tradition of southern Palestine, more broadly, and of the monastery of Mar Sabas, in particular. One can no longer take it for granted, especially, that Abu ¯ Qurrah was the “continuateur arabe” of that monastery’s most famous theologian, John of Damascus—if, that is, the Damascene was himself a Sabaite monk, something that has recently been called into question by Marie-France Auzépy.87 Second, one must be open to contextualizing Abu ¯ Qurrah’s works against the theological and social background of Mesopotamia and northern Syria. Third, Abu ¯ Qurrah’s works would need to be used more circumspectly in attempts to understand the Sabaite theological tradition in the early Abbasid period. One should not, in particular, be too quick to extrapolate from Abu ¯ Qurrah’s notions to those of the monastery of Mar Sabas. This should prove significant for those concerned with numerous issues, perhaps especially the role of the Sabaites in the defense of icons and the Sabaites’ notions of papal and conciliar authority. But all these are matters for another time.88 Here I am content to suggest that those concerned with Abu ¯ Qurrah and his legacy might wish to reconsider the proposition that he was a monk at the monastery of Mar Sabas. Southern Methodist University 87
See her “De la Palestine à Constantinople (VIIIe–IXe siècles): Étienne le Sabaïte et Jean Damascène,” TM 12 (1994): 183–218, esp. 183 note 3, as well as her “Les Sabaïtes et l’iconoclasme,” esp. 305 note 2, in J. Patrich, ed., The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present (Leuven, 2001). I am grateful to Professor Auzépy for an advance copy of the latter. 88 Some of these issues are considered in a forthcoming monograph on the textual tradition of the works ascribed to Abu ¯ Qurrah in Greek and Georgian and their relation to the corpus of his writings preserved in Arabic.
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
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The Virgin and Justinian on Seals of the Ekklesiekdikoi of Hagia Sophia JOHN COTSONIS IN MEMORY OF PROF. NICOLAS OIKONOMIDES he 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. These specimens exhibit a variety of iconographic types and have served as the basis for numerous art-historical studies.1 Among these seals one group that has received little scholarly attention belongs to the e[kdikoi, or ejkklhsievkdikoi, the tribunal of clerics attached to the church of Hagia Sophia. Thirty published examples exist, ranging in date from the late eleventh through the fourteenth century.2 These seals depict standing figures of the Virgin and an emperor, who both support a model of a church, identified as Hagia Sophia, H AGIA ÇOFIA (Figs. 1, 2).3 Over the span of three centuries, the representation on these seals remained relatively consistent, yet changes are evident in both image and inscriptions. Five examples (Fig. 1)4 display the Virgin on the observer’s left and the emperor on the right. Their inscriptions begin on the obverse with the invocation, ÁPERAGIA QEOTOKE BOHQEI (Most Holy Theotokos help) and continue on the reverse with TOIÇ QEOÇEBEÇTATOIÇ PREÇBÁTEROIÇ [kai;] EKKLHÇEKDIKOIÇ
T
A version of this paper was presented at the Twenty-Sixth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, Harvard University, 2000. I wish to thank John Nesbitt, Ioli Kalavrezou, Anna Kartsonis, Alice-Mary Talbot, and the two anonymous readers for their valuable critique of various aspects of this paper. Funds for the accompanying photographs were kindly provided by Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. 1 For a recent summary of the importance of this material and examples, see W. Seibt and M. L. Zarnitz, Das byzantinische Bleisiegel als Kunstwerk (Vienna, 1997), 104–21, and V. Penna, “The Mother of God on Coins and Lead Seals,” in Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. M. Vassilaki (Athens, 2000), 209– 17. For references to some of the more important scholarly literature devoted to Marian sphragistic images, see J. Cotsonis, “The Virgin with the ‘Tongues of Fire’ on Byzantine Lead Seals,” DOP 48 (1994): 221. 2 This total takes into account the duplicate publication of specimens among the various catalogues: V. Laurent, Le corpus des sceaux de l’empire byzantin, V.1–3, L’église (Paris, 1963–72), nos. 112, 113, 114, 1654; V. Shandrovskaia, “Sfragistika,” Iskusstvo Vizantii v Sobraniiakh SSSR, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1977), nos. 176 and 761; G. Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, vol. 2, ed. J. Nesbitt (Bern, 1984), nos. 62–77; N. Lihachev, Molivdovuly grecheskogo vostoka, ed. V. Shandrovskaia (Moscow, 1991), nos. 1–5, pl. LXXXII; and C. Sode, Byzantinische Bleisiegel in Berlin, vol. 2, Poivkila Buzantinav 14 (Bonn, 1997), no. 359, pl. 15. 3 Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, 2: nos. 62 and 77 (Hermitage, M7949) respectively. 4 Ibid., no. 62 (repr. in “Byzantine Seals: 1,” Spink Auction 127 [London, 7 October 1998], no. 26). The other four are nos. 63 a and b, 64, and 65.
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THE VIRGIN AND JUSTINIAN ON SEALS OF THE EKKLESIEKDIKOI
(the most God-revering presbyters and ekklesiekdikoi). Three similar pieces (Fig. 3)5 identify the Virgin as ÁPERAGIA QEOTOKOÇ (Most Holy Theotokos) and begin the invocation with C(RIÇT)E BOHQEI (Christ help) followed by the identical inscription on the reverse. Four others (Fig. 4)6 have Q(EOTO)KE BOHQEI (Theotokos help) and identify the emperor in the invocation, IOÁÇTINIANON DEÇPOTHN ( Justinian Despot). Five seals (Fig. 5)7 exhibit the figures in a reversed position, the emperor on the observer’s left and the Virgin on our right, both identified by the invocation Q(EOTO)KE BOHQEI and IOÁÇTINIANO/ DEÇP/ and the customary phrase referring to the ekdikoi on the reverse. The same arrangement is found on thirteen other seals but with a different set of inscriptions (Fig. 2).8 Among these, the Virgin is identified by her usual sigla MR Q◊ and the epithet H BOHQIA (Help), the emperor as IOÁÇTINIANOÇ DEÇ(POTHÇ) with the standard inscription on the reverse. This group of seals presents dimensional, epigraphic, and iconographic peculiarities that have no exact parallel in other surviving media and thus require some explanation. The most immediate and striking aspect of these pieces, however, is their relatively large size. Usually, lead seals range in diameter from 1.5 cm to 4.5 cm.9 But these seals of the ejkklhsievkdikoi range in diameter from 4.5 cm to 8.5 cm, that is, anywhere from twice to more than five times as large as that of the average seal. Their great size most likely indicates a particular significance, and this will be addressed later in this study. Another aspect concerning this group of seals is the difficulty of placing them within a chronological sequence. The standard work on dating these pieces is V. Laurent’s Corpus.10 He assigned the seals to periods within a century or two-century time span, beginning with the eleventh century and ending with the fifteenth. Later, G. Zacos divided the specimens within two broad chronological frameworks: those belonging to the Komnenoi-Angeloi period and those of the Palaiologan period.11 In most cases, this investigation follows the dating of Laurent but with some significant exceptions. The five examples that place the Virgin on the observer’s left and the emperor on the right and bear the inscription on the obverse ÁPERAGIA QEOTOKE BOHQEI (Fig. 1) belong to the second half of the eleventh or the early twelfth century.12 The three seals that identify the Virgin as ÁPERAGIA QEOTOKOÇ but open the invocation with C(RIÇT)E BOHQEI (Fig. 3) are of the twelfth century.13 The four specimens that begin the invocation with Q(EOTO)KE BOHQEI and 5 Ibid., no. 66 (repr. in “Byzantine Seals: 2,” Spink Auction 132 [London, 25 May 1999], no. 207). The other two are nos. 67 a and b (repr. in “Byzantine Seals: 3,” Spink Auction 135 [London, 6 October 1999], no. 240, where it is misidentified as Zacos no. 70b and given a 12th-century date). 6 Ibid., no. 68. The others are nos. 70 a, b (repr. in “Byzantine Seals: 3,” Spink Auction, no. 241 but mistakenly identified as Zacos no. 76b and assigned to the 13th century), and c. 7 Ibid., no. 69 a, b, and c. The other two are nos. 71 and 72. 8 Ibid., no. 77. The others are nos. 73 a, b, and c, 74, 75 a and b, 76 a and b; Likhachev, Molivdovuly grecheskogo vostoka, M7950, M7951, M7952; and Sode, Byzantinische Bleisiegel, no. 359. 9 N. Oikonomides, Byzantine Lead Seals (Washington, D.C., 1985), 5. J. Nesbitt, “Seals and Sealings,” ODB 3:1859, notes that most seals range in diameter from 23 mm to 28 mm. 10 Laurent, Corpus, 5.1: nos. 112–15, and 5.3: no. 1654. 11 Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, 2: nos. 62–77. 12 For the seals, see note 4 above. Laurent, Corpus, 5.1: no. 113, pl. 17, the middle example, assigns this type to the 11th–12th century, while Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, 2: nos. 63–65, places them in the KomnenoiAngeloi group. In the auction catalogue, Spink Auction 127, no. 26 (equal to Zacos no. 62), the seal is assigned to the 11th century. 13 For the seals, see note 5 above. Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, 2: nos. 66 and 67, assigns these to the Komnenoi-Angeloi group. In the auction catalogue, Spink Auction 132, no. 207 (equal to Zacos no. 66), the seal is given a 12th-century date.
1
2
Lead seal, the Virgin and Justinian supporting a model of Hagia Sophia, 11th century (after G. Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, vol. 2 [Bern, 1984], no. 62 )
Lead seal (Hermitage M7949), the Virgin and Justinian supporting a model of Hagia Sophia, 14th century (photo: Hermitage)
3
Lead seal, the Virgin and Justinian supporting a model of Hagia Sophia, 12th century (after G. Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, 2: no. 66)
4
Lead seal, the Virgin and Justinian supporting a model of Hagia Sophia, 12th century (after G. Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, 2: no. 68)
5
6
Lead seal (Dumbarton Oaks, Fogg 2934), the Virgin and Justinian supporting a model of Hagia Sophia, second half of 12th century
Mosaic, southwest vestibule of Hagia Sophia, depicting Justinian offering the church and Constantine offering the city to the enthroned Virgin and Child, 10th century
7
Inner narthex, looking south, Hagia Sophia
8
Entrance, southwest vestibule, Hagia Sophia
9
Ekloga (Venice, Marc. gr. 172, fol. 27v), Justinian, personification of Justice, Leo III and Constantine V, the patrikioi Niketas and Marinos, 1175 A.D. (photo: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana)
10 Ekloga (Paris, Bib. Nat. cod. gr. 1391, fol. 179v), Justinian, last third of the 13th century (photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France)
11 Psalter (Vatican, Bib. Apost. Vat. gr. 752, fol. 51r), the sons of Korah confessing to St. Silvester before the icon of the Virgin and Child, 1058/1059 (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)
12 Heavenly ladder (Sinai, cod. gr. 418, fol. 79r), headpiece for Penitence, 12th century (photo: St. Catherine monastery, Mount Sinai)
13 Heavenly ladder (Vatican, Bib. Apost. Vat. gr. 1754, fol. 5r), the Virgin intercedes for the “holy criminals,” late 12th–early 13th century (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)
14 Heavenly ladder (Vatican, Bib. Apost. Vat. gr. 1754, fol. 6r), the Virgin encourages the “holy criminals” to repent, late 12th–early 13th century (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)
15 Fresco, the Virgin Eleousa and Christ Antiphonetes, left and right piers of the sanctuary, Panaghia tou Arakos, Lagoudhera, 1192 A.D.
16 Lavra lectionary (Athos, Lavra cod. A 103, fol. 3v), the Virgin interceding for a high official, 12th century (photo: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, Thessalonike)
17 Imperial doors, inner narthex, Hagia Sophia
18 Panaghiarion (Athos, Xeropotamou), the Virgin and Child flanked by angels, 14th century (after Treasures of Mount Athos [Thessalonike, 1997], no. 9.5)
19 Fresco, Parekklesion (detail), Last Judgment: The Weighing of Souls, 1316–1321, Church of the Chora, Istanbul
20 Fresco, Parekklesion (detail), Last Judgment: The Deesis, 1316–1321, Church of the Chora, Istanbul
JOHN COTSONIS
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include the name of the emperor, IOÁÇTINIANON DEÇPOTHN (Fig. 4), also belong to the twelfth century.14 The five seals that display the figures of the Virgin and emperor in the reverse position, where the Virgin appears on the observer’s right and Justinian on our left and where both are identified by the invocation Q(EOTO)KE BOHQEI and IOÁÇTINIANO/ DEÇP/ (Fig. 5), should be assigned to the second half of the twelfth century.15 The thirteen specimens exemplified by Figure 2, which present the figures in the same positions but now identify the Virgin with the sigla MR Q◊ and the epithet, H BOHQIA (Help), and the emperor as IOÁÇTINIANOÇ DEÇ(POTHÇ) , belong to the thirteenth–fourteenth century.16 A previously overlooked detail that may further assist in providing a generalized dating sequence is the type of loros worn by the figure of the emperor. Traditionally, the loros, the long, heavy, embroidered stole studded with precious stones, wound around the emperor’s body and was arranged in an X pattern over the front of the chest, but in the tenth and eleventh centuries this form was replaced by a simpler or modified loros that was provided with a hole for the head and hung straight down the front of the chest.17 This change in imperial costume is first seen on coins and imperial seals beginning with Romanos I and assigned to ca. 930,18 yet the older form did survive into the eleventh century. On our seals, the earlier form of the loros is found on the examples represented by Figures 1 and 3, that is, on pieces belonging to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Those that depict the modified loros begin with Figure 4, that is, on seals from the twelfth century, and continue to appear until the end of our group as seen in Figures 2 and 5. Possibly the engravers of the earlier seals in the sequence were following older numismatic or sigillographic models or prominent, celebrated images of the emperor dressed in the former type of loros such as the mosaic over the southwest vestibule of Hagia Sophia (Fig. 6), which is usually assigned a tenth-century date.19 The later sphragistic examples may have been produced when the details of older models were no longer regarded as significant. As noted above, the seals of the ekklesiekdikoi exhibit iconographic and epigraphic irregularities in comparison to the customary presentation of sphragistic invocations and figures. Usually, when a seal bears a religious figure (or figures) on the obverse, the figure is identified and is accompanied by a related invocative inscription that may begin on the obverse and continue onto the reverse, or the invocation may be found only on the reverse. When more than one figure is depicted, the accompanying invocation is in the plural. With the present group of seals, however, two figures are present, the Virgin and an emperor, yet the invocative inscription is in the singular, invoking only the assistance of the Theotokos, or, as in the few examples represented by Figure 3, Christ is called upon. 14
For the seals, see note 6 above. For the misidentification and erroneous dating of Zacos no. 70b in the auction catalogue, see note 6 above. Laurent, Corpus, 5.1: no. 113 (top specimen [equals Zacos no. 68]), offered 11th–12th century as the date. 15 For the seals, see note 7 above. Laurent, Corpus, 5.1: no. 112 (top example equals Zacos no. 69b) dated this type to the second half of the 11th century. 16 For the seals, see note 8 above. Laurent Corpus, 5.1: no. 114 and 5.3:no. 1654, also assigns this type to the 13th–14th century. 17 For a description of the imperial loros and its modifications over time, see DOC 3.1:120–25. 18 For the coins, see DOC 3.2:548, pl. 36, no. 9. For the seals, see G. Zacos and A. Veglery, Byzantine Lead Seals, vol. 1.1 (Basel, 1972), no. 66d, pl. 19. For a discussion of the similarities of inscriptions and imagery found on coins and imperial seals, see C. Morrisson and G. Zacos, “L’image de l’empereur byzantin sur les sceaux et les monnaies,” in La monnaie: Miroir des rois, ed. Y. Goldenberg (Paris, 1978), 57–72. 19 For a recent overview of this mosaic, see R. Cormack, “The Mother of God in the Mosaics of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople,” in Mother of God (as above, note 1), 107 and 113–14.
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THE VIRGIN AND JUSTINIAN ON SEALS OF THE EKKLESIEKDIKOI
The earlier seals of our group, as seen in Figures 1 and 3, also do not identify the emperor. When he is specified on the later examples, the form is inconsistent. For the twelfthcentury seals represented by Figure 4, the imperial name appears in the accusative case (IOÁÇTINIANON DEÇPOTHN) instead of either the nominative form, which would simply identify the figure, or in the vocative case, which would include the emperor in the invocation along with the Virgin. Those seals from the second half of the twelfth century, as seen in Figure 5, abbreviate the emperor’s name and title (IOÁÇTINIANO/ DEÇP/) while those of the thirteenth–fourteenth century (Fig. 2) identify the emperor in the nominative case with his title abbreviated (IOÁÇTINIANOÇ/ DEÇ/(POTHÇ)). As for the absence of explicit reference to the emperor in the earlier examples, possibly the engraver considered it sufficient that the model of the church was named, which would serve to identify the emperor, given the well-known association of Justinian with Hagia Sophia.20 Later, it appears that the identification of the emperor is considered significant, and this matter will be addressed below. A problem also arises when one encounters the name of the emperor in the accusative case as part of the invocation. Laurent first attempted to interpret these irregularities observed in the inscriptions and concluded that these sphragistic texts identify both the Virgin and Justinian as intercessors for the ekklesiekdikoi: “Mother of God, help, through (the intercession of ) Justinian . . .”21 This interpretation was later accepted by G. Prinzing.22 Among the corpus of religious figural iconographic seals, there are some examples where the Virgin is depicted with saints and the accompanying invocative inscriptions call upon these holy figures to assist the Theotokos in her intercessory role on behalf of the owners of the seals. One specimen is an eleventh-century seal belonging to an individual named John where the image of John the Forerunner appears on the obverse and that of the Virgin and Child on the reverse with the inscription beginning on the obverse, ÇÁN PRODROMW P(ARQENE ÇK)EPOIÇ . . . (“With the Forerunner, Virgin, protect . . .”).23 On the seals of the ekdikoi, the figure of Justinian may, therefore, be understood as assisting the Virgin in her intercessory prayer. Here the emperor is identified as Despotes and not “saint,” possibly emphasizing the prestigious imperial foundation of the church and its juridical activities.24 These related sphragistic examples thus provide some support for Laurent’s and Prinzing’s understanding of the inscriptions found on the seals of the ekklesiekdikoi in which the celebrated emperor functions as a secondary or intermediary intercessor for the tribunal. Since Justinian’s name does not appear in the vocative case and the verb BOHQEI (help) is in the singular, this interpretation does not provide a complete solution and is far from certain. Nevertheless, the ejkklhsievkdikoi clearly desired to be associated with Justininian, and this aspect will be further explored. As previously observed, the sphragistic iconography also has no exact parallel in other 20
I wish to thank one of the anonymous readers for this suggestion. Laurent, Corpus, 5.1:91. 22 G. Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I. in der Überlieferung der Byzantiner vom 7. bis 15. Jahrhundert,” FM 7 (1986): 16–17. 23 Seibt and Zarnitz, Das byzantinische Bleisiegel als Kunstwerk, no. 5.3.8. Other examples are provided by J.-C. Cheynet and J.-F. Vannier, Études prosopographiques (Paris, 1986), Boutzes no. 10 and Dalassenos no. 24, and Laurent, Corpus, 5.3:no. 1791. 24 I wish to thank one of the anonymous readers for this interpretation. 21
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surviving media. Scholars who have discussed these seals have compared them to the tenth-century mosaic in the southwest vestibule of Hagia Sophia (Fig. 6).25 According to C. Mango, for both the mosaic and the seals, Justinian is portrayed offering a model of his church to Christ, as Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), and also to the Virgin who is the receptacle or temple of Divine Wisdom.26 Laurent followed a similar line of reasoning. Based upon his interpretation of the invocative inscriptions discussed above, he concluded that both the Virgin and Justinian are seen as intercessors for the e[kdikoi.27 L. Rydén, too, likened the sigillographic image to that of the mosaic in that both depict Justinian entrusting the cathedral to the Virgin.28 More recently, Prinzing also related the seals to the mosaic and described the imperial figures in both cases as seeking Christ's blessings, through the Theotokos, since the church is under the general jurisdiction of her city.29 As observed above, Prinzing, following Laurent, considered both the Virgin and Justinian to be intercessors for the e[kdikoi as this emperor instituted the ecclesiastical tribunal at the cathedral.30 It is this aspect, that is, the selection of specific intercessory figures and their particular significance for the group of the e[kdikoi, that my investigation attempts to develop further by drawing upon other visual and textual sources not previously associated with these seals and their iconography. The e[kdikoi, or ejkklhsievkdikoi (defensores ecclesiae), advocates or defenders, with whom we are concerned, were a group of clerics who formed a tribunal, or ejkdikei'on (ekdikeion), that was assigned to Hagia Sophia by Justinian I.31 The prwtevkdiko" (protekdikos) presided over this tribunal.32 In the pre-iconoclastic period, their responsibilities are not well documented, and scholarly controversy exists as to their civil or ecclesiastical responsibilities during these centuries. Laurent considered the ekdikoi in the early period to be ecclesiastical officials, based upon canon 10 of the Synod of Carthage in 401, which calls for the appointment of defenders, under the supervision of bishops, to assist in the Church’s 25
For this mosaic, see note 19 above. C. Mango, “The Mosaics of Hagia Sophia,” in H. Kähler and C. Mango, Hagia Sophia, trans. E. Childs (New York, 1967), 55. For discussion of the Virgin and her associations with Wisdom, see J. Meyendorff, “Wisdom-Sophia: Contrasting Approaches to a Complex Theme,” DOP 41 (1987): 391–401, and D. Pallis, “ÔO Cristo;" wJ" hJ Qeiva Sofiva: ÔH eijkonografikh; Peripevteia Miva" Qeologikh'" ∆Ennoiva",” Delt.Crist.∆Arc.ÔEt. 15 (1989–90): 119–44. For discussion of the Virgin and her associations with the cathedral of Hagia Sophia, see Cormack, “The Mother of God,” 107 and 113–14. 27 Laurent, Corpus, 5.1:91. 28 L. Rydén, “Två Mosaiker I Hagia Sofia,” Meddelanden 1 (1976): 34–35. 29 Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I.,” 8–16. For Prinzing, the mosaic of the southwest vestibule is not only a memorial or foundation image but also the visual statement of an ideal emperor; thus he is critical of A. Schminck, “‘Rota tu volubilis’: Kaisermacht und Patriarchenmacht in Mosaiken,” in Cupido Legum, ed. L. Burgmann, M. T. Fögen, and A. Schminck (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 227–34, who saw this mosaic as a pictorial response of Leo VI in antithesis to the mosaic over the central imperial door supposedly expressing earlier Photian imperial-ecclesial policies. For a less than idealized view of Justinian in this mosaic, see G. Dagron, Empereur et prêtre: Étude sur le “césaropapisme” byzantin (Paris, 1996), 125. Cormack, “The Mother of God,” 113–17, sees the presence of the Virgin in the southwest vestibule mosaic and that of the narthex lunette as referring to the role of the Theotokos in the support of the emperor and state ideology, as the protector of the city, and as deeply religious images. 30 Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I.,” 16–17. 31 Ibid., 14–17. 32 For a discussion of the history of this title and the official’s responsibilities, see K. Rhalles, “Peri; tou' ejkklhsiastikou' ajxiwvmato" tou' prwtekdivkou,” Praktika; th'" ∆Akadhmiva" ∆Aqhnw'n 11 (1936): 286–91, and J. Darrouzès, Recherches sur les OFFIKIA de l’église byzantine (Paris, 1970), 323–32. 26
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protection of the poor against injustice.33 The office underwent subsequent reform in 535 with Justinian’s novel 15, which conferred judicial and administrative authority on defenders, who were to be selected by the bishop, the clergy, or other reputable civic members, but placed under the authority of the local governor.34 J. Darrouzès also argued that, from the beginning, the ekdikoi belonged to the church administration.35 He considered novel 15 to pertain to members of the clergy as well as Justinian’s novels 56, 74, and 117, and canon 75 of Carthage in 419 and canon 23 of Chalcedon in 451.36 Novel 56 stipulates that the ekklesiekdikoi of the cathedral church of Constantinople are to obey orders concerning the receipt of contributions from clergy assigned to the building;37 novels 74 and 117 mention the ekdikoi of the church administering marriage contracts.38 Canon 75 of Carthage, as noted previously, institutes defenders to protect the poor and places these officials under the authority of the bishop of each diocese.39 Canon 23 of Chalcedon charges the ekdikoi of the church of Constantinople with the responsibility of notifying errant clergy and monastics from other dioceses to leave the capital.40 Prinzing, however, concluded that Justinian’s novel 15 refers only to civil officials and that it is difficult to discern when the exclusive ecclesiastical interpretation of the ekdikoi occurred, offering only a broad period between the seventh and the beginning of the eleventh century.41 Since the middle Byzantine period, however, it is known that the clerical tribunal held its sessions in one of the vestibules of the Great Church. From the tenth-century Dresden typikon, one learns that during the return of liturgical processions to Hagia Sophia, the lite concluded at the seat of the ekdikoi (ejn th'/ kaqevdra/ tw'n ejkdivkwn) and that the final prayer of the procession took place before the column of the ekdikoi (e[mprosqen tou' kivono" tw'n ejkdivkwn).42 Later, when Niketas Choniates described the tumultuous events that occurred in Hagia Sophia in May 1181 during the conflict surrounding the seizure of the imperial
33 Laurent, Corpus, 5.1:86. The canon is repeated later as canon 75 of the Synod of Carthage in 419. For the text of the canon, see G. Rhalles and M. Potles, Suvntagma tw'n Qeivwn kai; ÔIerw'n Kanovnwn, vol. 3 (Athens, 1853 [repr. 1966]), 494. For discussion of the defensores of the early Church, see F. Martroye, “Les ‘defensores ecclesiae’ aux Ve et VIe siècles,” Revue historique du droit français et étranger 2 (1923): 597–626; C. Humfress, “Defensor ecclesiae,” in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, ed. G. W. Bowersock et al. (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 405–6; eadem, “Roman Lawyers in the Late Antique Church: The Creation of the Defensor Ecclesiae,” forthcoming. 34 Laurent, Corpus, 5.1:86. For the text of novel 15, see Corpus Iuris Civitis, ed. R. Schoell and G. Kroll, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1959), 109–15, and The Civil Law, ed. S. Scott, vol. 16 (Cincinnati, 1932 [repr. New York, 1973]), 80– 85, in which the responsibilities of the defenders or e[kdikoi include advocating for those suffering injustice, registering various documents such as wills and donations, assisting in the collection of taxes, repressing public sedition, overseeing cases of small claims, and judging minor offenses. 35 Darrouzès, Recherches, 323–25, where he disagrees with the 12th-century commentaries of Balsamon who understood the early ekdikoi to be civil officials. 36 Ibid. 37 For the text, see Corpus Iuris Civilis, 3, 311 and The Civil Law, 235. 38 For the text, see Corpus Iuris Civilis, 3, 375 and 554 and The Civil Law, 17, 52. 39 See note 33 above. 40 For the text, see G. Rhalles and M. Potles, Suvntagma tw'n Qeivwn kai; ÔIerw'n Kanovnwn, vol. 2 (Athens, 1852 [repr. 1966]), 270. 41 Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I.,” 17. 42 A. Dimitrievskii, “Drevneishie patriarshie tipikon’ ierutsalimskii (tsviatogrodskii) i konstantinopol’skii (Velikoi tserkvi),” Trudy Kievskoaei Dukhovnoaei Akademiaei 16 (1901): 566, and Darrouzès, Recherches, 327.
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throne, he wrote that the seat of the e[kdikoi was located in the vestibule of the church (to; proskhvnion tou' newv).43 Based on this information, Darrouzès concluded that the tribunal met either in the inner narthex or in the small vestibule of the entrance (Figs. 7, 8).44 In either case, the setting of the ejkdikei'on within the precincts of the Great Church, combined with its clerical status, endowed the tribunal with a quasi-sacramental character. From the twelfth through fifteenth centuries, and thus contemporary with our group of seals, the responsibilities of the ejkdikei'on are better documented:45 they defended those accused of murder and other offenses;46 they oversaw the liberation of slaves or those freed from prison;47 they granted the right of asylum in the Great Church;48 and they instructed converts and those who had lapsed.49 Obviously, their most important function was dealing with those accused of murder who sought refuge in Hagia Sophia. The right of asylum had a long history.50 It is first mentioned in canon 7 of Serdica in 342/343 where it is already acknowledged as a practice in which accused persons seek mercy and refuge in the church.51 In 431 Theodosios II extended the boundaries of refuge to include not only the nave and altar but also the entire precinct of the church.52 The edict of Leo I in 466 most 43 Niketas Choniates, Historia, ed. J. van Dieten (Berlin, 1975), 238, and Darrouzès, Recherches, 327. For the English translation of Choniates, see H. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates (Detroit, 1984), 134. 44 Darrouzès, Recherches, 327. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium, 134, translated to; proskhvnion as “outer narthex.” 45 Darrouzès, Recherches, 328–30, discusses these activities with reference to the primary sources; see also R. Macrides, “Nomos and Kanon on Paper and in Court,” in Church and People in Byzantium, ed. R. Morris (Birmingham, 1990), 68 (repr. in her Kinship and Justice in Byzantium, 11th–15th Centuries [Aldershot, 1999], no. VI). 46 Darrouzès, Recherches, 328. The sources are George Tornikes, Sur la promotion du prôtekdikos, ed. Darrouzès, Recherches, 534: tou;" o{soi dhladhv, ta;" cei'ra" eij" ajndrovmeon bavyante" ai|ma, kivndunon e[scon aJlw'nai fonourgiva" ejgklhvmati; Balsamon's treatise comparing the chartophylax and the protekdikos, PG 138:1037B: tw'n me;n cavrin ejleuqeriva" th;n ejkklhsiastikh;n zhtouvntwn bohvqeian, meta; dikaiodosiva" ajntilambavnesqai; Patriarch Matthew I's decree of 1398, J. Oudot, Patriarchatus constantinopolitani acta selecta (Rome, 1941), 158, no. 29: tou;" th'/ aJgiwtavth/ Megavlh/ ∆Ekklhsiva/ prospefeugovta", tivsin aijtivai" tauvth/ prosevdramon, . . . kanonivsei te tou;" peripesovnta" ejgklhvmasiv tisin ajphgoreumevnoi" (for a French summary, see J. Darrouzès, Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople, I: Les actes des patriarches, vol. 6 [Paris, 1979], 330); and Symeon of Thessalonike’s De sacris ordinationibus, PG 155:464B: tou;" fovnw/ h] a[llw/ tini; aJmarthvmati peripivptonta" ejxetavzwn. 47 Darrouzès, Recherches, 328. The sources are George Tornikes, Sur la promotion du prôtekdikos, 534: e[sti d∆ ou}" kai; doulosuvnh" ejxavgwn ajdivkou kai; pro;" to; fuvsei koino;n kai; ajrcai'on ejpanavgwn ejleuvqeron, and Balsamon, PG 138:1037B: para; toi'" qeosebestavtoi" ejkdivkoi" cavrin ejleuqeroboouvntwn h] doulagwgoumevnwn tinw'n. 48 Darrouzès, Recherches, 328. The sources are Balsamon, PG 138:103B: tw'n de; loipw'n prosfuvgwn ajntipoiei'sqai, and Matthew I: see note 46 above. 49 Darrouzès, Recherches, 328. The sources are Matthew I, ed. Oudot, Patriarchatus constantinopolitani acta selecta, 158, no. 29: Touv" ge mh;n tw'/ qeivw/ th'" paliggenesiva" loutrw'/ prosdramovnta", ejk tw'n ajlloeqnw'n te kai; ajllofuvlwn, prosdexavmeno", paradwvsei tini; tw'n ejkdivkwn th'" ejkklhsiva" pro;" kathvchsivn te kai; th;n tou' zhtoumevnou teleivwsin, and Darrouzès, Les regestes, 6:330; and Symeon of Thessalonike, PG 155:464B: de; pavlin tou;" ejpistrevfonta" ejx ajrnhvsew" devcesqai tavxin e[cei. 50 For an overview of the history of asylum in the Eastern Church, see E. Herman, “Asile dans l’église orientale,” DDC 1 (Paris, 1935), 1084–89; idem, “Zum Asylrecht im byzantinischen Reich,” OCP 1 (1935): 204– 38; and A. Papadakis and R. Macrides, “Asylum,” ODB 1:217. 51 Rhalles and Potles, Suvntagma, 3:249: ∆A ll∆ ejpeidh; pollavki" sumbaivnei tina;" oi[ktou deomevnou", katafugei'n ejpi; th;n ejkklhsivan, dia; ta; eJautw'n aJmarthvmata eij" periorismo;n. 52 Codex Theodosianus, ed. T. Mommsen and P. Meyer, 1.2, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1954), 9, 45:4, 520: “nec sola altaria et oratorium templi circumiectum, qui ecclesias quadripertito intrinsecus parietum saeptu concludit, ad tuitionem confugientium sancimus esse proposita, sed usque ad extremas fores ecclesiae, quas oratum gestiens
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clearly defined the rules governing asylum: it recognized the authority of the bishop in such matters; the person seeking refuge must present the case to the defender of the church (defensoris ecclesiae); and it specified the role that the civil court played in these cases.53 These constitutions were later incorporated within Justinian’s code.54 This right of asylum at Hagia Sophia, however, had a long history and close association with the legislation of Justinian, yet regarding the privilege for murderers the law code is problematic. In his novel 17.7, this emperor actually restricts the use of asylum by denying protection to murderers, adulterers, and rapists, specifying that it is intended only for those who suffer injustice.55 There also survive two chrysobulls attributed to Justinian that pertain to the right of asylum at the Great Church but do not mention this privilege for murderers.56 It is only later in the tenth century that asylum for murderers is expressly stated and associated with Justinianic tradition and legislation. Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (945–959) issued two novels affirming the right of asylum for murderers, referring to Justinian’s precedent for this tradition.57 In novel 10, Constantine VII attempts to reconcile Justinian’s restrictive legislation related to asylum with another tradition, also ascribed to Justinian, that granted the privilege of asylum for murderers at Hagia Sophia.58 In novel 11, Constantine VII did not specify the Great Church but rather speaks of the church in general concerning asylum for murderers.59 The tenth-century
populus primas ingreditur, confugientibus aram salutis esse praecipimus, ut inter templi quem parietum describsimus cinctum et post loca publica ianuas primas ecclesiae quidquid fuerit interiacens sive in cellulis sive in domibus hortulis balneis areis atque porticibus, confugas interioris templi vice tueatur.” See also The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions, ed. C. Pharr (Princeton, N.J., 1952), 9, 45:4, 265. 53 Corpus Iuris Civilis, 2, 65–67 and The Civil Law, 12, 82–85. 54 Ibid. 55 Novel 17.7, Corpus Iuris Civilis, 3, 121–22: Ou[te de; ajndrofovnoi" ou[te moicoi'" ou[te parqevnwn a{rpaxin aJmartavnousi th;n ejk tw'n o{rwn fulavxei" ajsfavleian, . . . hJ ejk tw'n ajsfavleia ouj toi'" ajdikou'sin, ajlla; toi'" ajdikoumevnoi" devdotai para; tou' novmou, and The Civil Law, 90–91. Justinian’s novel, however, refers to church precincts in general and not just to Hagia Sophia. 56 Imp. Iustiniani PP. A. novellae quae vocantur . . . , ed. C. E. Zachariae von Lingenthal, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1881), xi–xiii. R. Macrides, “Justice under Manuel I Komnenos: Four Novels on Court Business and Murder,” FM 6 (1984): 191–92 (repr. in her Kinship and Justice in Byzantium, no. IX), and eadem, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law in Byzantium,” Speculum 63 (1988): 510–11 (repr. in her Kinship and Justice in Byzantium, no. X) discusses Justinian’s legislation on asylum and the doubted authenticity of these two chrysobulls in light of their irregular transmission. She suggests that since the chrysobulls do not specifically mention the right of asylum for murderers, the texts may be corrupt. 57 Novels 10 and 11, Jus Graecoromanum, ed. J. Zepos and P. Zepos, vol. 1 (Athens, 1931 [repr. Darmstadt, 1962]), 230–35. In her discussion of these undated novels of Constantine VII, Macrides, “Justice under Manuel I Komnenos,” 191–93, underlines the actual new and more liberal stance taken by this emperor in affirming the right of asylum extended to murderers, although the emperor thought that he was drawing upon Justinianic legislation (see note 56 above). She also concludes that since the right of asylum for murderers that Constantine VII mentions does not appear in the earlier two chrysobulls attributed to Justinian, either the chrysobulls exist in a corrupt state or the privilege to which Constantine refers was a forgery (again, see note 56 above). In summarizing the reception of these novels in subsequent commentaries, Macrides suggests that Novels 10 and 11 were originally composed as one novel with the text of 10 functioning as the prooimion. See also eadem, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law,” 510–12. 58 Jus Graecoromanum, 231: mavcetai pavntw" eJautw'/ oJ tou;" novmou" ajqroivsa" kai; gravya" ijoustinianov", nomoqethvsa" me;n ajndrofovnoi" mh; ei\nai ajsulivan, ejn de; tw'/ par∆aujtou' sustavnti iJerw'/ ajsulivan, e[cein loipo;n tou;" ajndrofovnou". 59 Ibid., 233: kai; to; tw'n ejkklhsiw'n mevga kai; qei'on sunthrh'tai pronovmion.
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emperor’s legislation, therefore, represented a more benevolent treatment of murderers, probably reflecting the church’s influence on previous imperial legislation concerning this matter.60 With time, Constantine VII’s more lenient legislation was abused, and in 1166 Manuel I Komnenos issued an edict that attempted to curtail the misuses associated with this practice at the cathedral.61 R. Macrides has characterized this same period of Manuel I as an era that witnessed a revival in the sphere of jurisprudence.62 This renewed interest actually had its beginnings in the eleventh century with the creation of a school of law by Constantine IX Monomachos,63 the compilation of the Peira,64 and the revision of the Nomokanon.65 Such developments also paved the way for the twelfth-century canonists Aristenos, Balsamon, and Zonaras.66 For the Komnenian period, P. Magdalino67 and Macrides68 have discussed the parallel interest in Justinian and his legislation as part of the imperial dynastic policy of
60
Macrides, “Justice under Manuel I Komnenos,” 191–92, and eadem, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law,” 511. The question regarding the church’s right of asylum for murderers appears to have been a subject of some concern in the 10th century. Arethas, bishop of Caesarea, addressed two letters to Emperor Leo VI and the magistros Kosmas in which he discussed extending the privilege of asylum to murderers. For the texts of these letters, see Arethae Archiepiscopi Caesariensis Scripta Minora, ed. L. Westerink, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1968), 257–59. For discussion of these letters, see P. Karlin-Hayter, “Aréthas et le droit d’asile,” Byzantion 34 (1964): 613–18 (repr. in her Studies in Byzantine Political History [London, 1981], no. VII). 61 Macrides, “Justice under Manuel I Komnenos,” l60: tau'ta pavnta katanohvsasa hJ basileiva mou, proslogisamevnh de; kai; to; tou' rJhqevnto" nearou' basilikou' diatavgmato" ejpiv tisi kanonikai'" diatavxesin ejnantivon kai; a[llw" ajdovkimon, ejfrovntise kata; to; ejgcwrou'n kai; to; tou' fovnou muvso" ajnastei'lai, kai; ta; th'" neara'" diorqwvsasqai. For the full text of the edict, see ibid., 156–67 and 190–204 for discussion. Manuel refers to the Great Church and to Constantine by name, 158–59, but does not mention Justinian even though the 12th-century emperor has taken up the spirit of the more restrictive policy concerning asylum established by his 6th-century predecessor. See also eadem, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law,” 512–14. Also in the 12th century, in addition to Hagia Sophia, we know from Anna Komnena, Alexiade, ed. B. Leib, vol. 1 (Paris, 1967), 2, 76, that the chapel of St. Nicholas, behind the eastern end of the Great Church, likewise was regarded as a place of asylum or refuge (prosfuvgion) for criminals. For discussion of this chapel, see R. Janin, La géographie ecclésiastique de l’empire byzantin 1: Le siège de Constantinople et le patriarcat oecuménique, 3: Les églises et les monastères, 2d ed. (Paris, 1969), 368– 69, and G. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1984), 223–25. 62 Macrides, “Nomos and Kanon,” passim, and eadem, “Perception of the Past in the Twelfth-Century Canonists,” in Byzantium in the 12th Century: Canon Law, State and Society, ed. N. Oikonomides (Athens, 1991), 589–600 (repr. in her Kinship and Justice in Byzantium, no. VII). 63 Macrides, “Nomos and Kanon,” 67–68, and eadem, “Perception of the Past,” 589. For the school of law, see P. Lemerle, Cinq études sur le XIe siècle byzantin (Paris, 1977), 207–12. 64 Macrides, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law,” 517. For the text of the Peira, see Jus Graecoromanum, ed. J. Zepos and P. Zepos, vol. 4 (Athens, 1931 [repr. Darmstadt, 1962]), 9–260. See also N. Oikonomides, “The ‘Peira’ of Eustathios Rhomaios: An Abortive Attempt to Innovate in Byzantine Law,” FM 7 (1986): 169–92. 65 Macrides, “Nomos and Kanon,” 67. For the text of the Nomokanon, see I. Pitra, Iuris ecclesiastici graecorum historia et monumenta, vol. 2 (Rome, 1868 [repr. 1963]), 433–640. 66 Macrides, “Nomos and Kanon,” 71–86. 67 P. Magdalino, “Aspects of Twelfth-Century Byzantine Kaiserkritik,” Speculum 58.2 (1983): 344–45 (repr. in his Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Byzantium [Aldershot, 1991], no. VIII); idem, “The Phenomenon of Manuel I Komnenos,” ByzF 13 (1988): 171–99 (repr. in his Tradition and Transformation, no. IV); and P. Magdalino and R. Nelson, “The Emperor in Byzantine Art of the Twelfth Century,” ByzF 8 (1982): 172–76 (repr. in his Tradition and Transformation, no. VI). 68 Macrides, “Justice under Manuel I Komnenos,” 101–2; eadem, “Perception of the Past,” 589–90; and R. Macrides and P. Magdalino, “The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism,” in The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. P. Magdalino (London, 1992), 120–22.
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renovatio. Although Justinian had already been included in the tenth-century Synaxarion of Constantinople, Patriarch John IX Agapetos (1111–34) instituted another annual celebration on 2 August in honor of the emperor.69 Of the known images of this idealized emperor from the period of our seals, we find two examples, both within the context of legal works, that is, manuscripts of the Ekloga: Venice, Marciana cod. gr. 172, dated to 1175 (Fig. 9)70 and Paris, Bib. Nat. cod. gr. 1391, assigned to the last third of the thirteenth century (Fig. 10).71 According to Prinzing, Justinian’s image serves to portray the celebrated emperor as a co-author of the Ekloga, thus associating and expanding his memory within the wider corpus of Byzantine legal tradition.72 In this light, it is easy to understand the presence of Justinian on the seals of the e[kdikoi as part of the revival of the discipline of law along with the memory of this emperor of the distant past. He is regarded as the founder or patron of the tribunal, and those seals of the ekdikoi are among the very few ecclesiastical examples that bear an image of an emperor.73 In addition, Justinian was the builder of the temple in which the ekdikoi met and was remembered as the one who instituted the right of asylum in the cathedral. During the last decade of the twelfth century, Patriarch George II Xiphilinos (1191– 98) elevated the position of protekdikos to the sixth rank within the ejxwkatavkoiloi, the principal officials of the patriarchal office.74 Possibly, those seals in our group that place Justinian on our left, but in the more honored position to the Virgin’s right, may reflect this promotion (Fig. 5).75 All the seals with this configuration are assigned to the period of the later twelfth century or afterwards. Figure 5 may belong to the late twelfth century or 69 Macrides, “Perception of the Past,” 589, and Macrides and Magdalino, “The Fourth Kingdom,” 121. See V. Grumel, Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople, ed. J. Darrouzès, 1.2 and 3 (Paris, 1989), no. 1006. 70 I. Spatharakis, Corpus of Dated Illuminated Greek Manuscripts to the Year 1453 (Leiden, 1981), 1: no. 161, 46, and 2: pl. 307. For a complete transcription of the inscriptions accompanying the figures and their biblical references, see Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I.,” 96–97. 71 C. Constantinides and R. Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus to the Year 1570 (Washington, D.C.–Nicosia, 1993), no. 21, 127–32 and pl. 165. For the transcription and discussion of the inscriptions flanking the image of the emperor, see Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I.,” 98–99. 72 Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I.,” 99. 73 Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I.,” 15, and Macrides, “Perception of the Past,” 590 note 4, claim that the seals of the ekdikoi are the only ecclesiastical seals that depict an emperor. From my database of 7,070 seals bearing religious figural iconography, eleven examples, however, depict another sainted emperor, Constantine I. Of these, four of the offices of the owners are unknown; three belong to an emperor; three are from the civil administration; and one is issued by a monastery or diakonia dedicated to St. Constantine. For this example, see Laurent, Corpus 5.3: no. 1922. Another striking and extremely rare example is an 11th-century seal belonging to the oikonomeion of Hagia Sophia on which the obverse bears an image of the Virgin and Child seated on a thokos (backless throne) flanked on either side by three imperial figures. For reproductions of this seal, see Zacos and Veglery, Byzantine Lead Seals, vol. 1, frontispiece for the plate volume, and “Byzantine Seals: 2,” Spink Auction (London, 25 May 1999), no. 208 with discussion. 74 Darrouzès, Recherches, 324–28, outlines the controversy this promotion created between the position of the newly elevated protekdikos and that of the chartophylax; he also provides the oration, with translation, composed by George Tornikes upon the occasion of the promotion, 534–37. For Balsamon’s treatise on the relative responsibilities of the two offices of the protekdikos and the chartophylax, see G. Rhalles and M. Potles, Suvntagma tw'n Qeivwn kai; ÔIerw'n Kanovnwn, vol. 4 (Athens, 1854 [repr. 1966]), 530–41 and PG 138:1033–52. See also Macrides, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law,” 515 and 536–37, and eadem, “Nomos and Kanon,” 83. 75 Laurent, Corpus, 5.1:91, discusses the relative positions of the Virgin and Justinian on these seals and offers a chronology different from that set forth in this paper: no. 112, second half of the 11th century; no. 113, 11th–12th century; and no. 114, 13th and 14th centuries. In attempting to explain the unusual secondary position of the Virgin in comparison to the emperor, Laurent suggested that those seals that place Justinian on
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to the early thirteenth, that is, before the Latin conquest of 1204. Furthermore, these seals now include the name of the emperor in the inscription. With their new status, the ejkklhsievkdikoi may have desired to cultivate a closer association with their illustrious imperial patron. When handling the case of an accused murderer, the tribunal heard the person’s confession (the most essential element of the procedure), judged the individual’s guilt or innocence, and the patriarch, with the synod, assigned the proper epitimia (ejpitivmia) or penances.76 The ekdikeion’s decision and the penances were then given to the penitent in written form, a semeioma (shmeivwma), which also ensured his safety against his pursuers. Possibly the seals of the ekklesiekdikoi were appended to these semeiomata.77 If so, their relatively large size would permit easy recognition of the penitents’ immunity from retribution. As Macrides observed, those who sought refuge in the church, most often the disenfranchised, usually fared better there than in civil courts where the imperial administration was known for its arbitrariness.78 The ejkdikei'on, in contrast, regarded itself as an instrument of spiritual healing and dispenser of mercy for the accused, ensuring hope for their ultimate salvation.79 In a document issued ca. 1059/60 by Patriarch Constantine III Leichoudes, the hierarch includes an account of a slave who committed murder and sought asylum in the cathedral.80 The patriarch writes that those who sought refuge in the precincts of the Great Church could be saved from death as if by a protective mother (kai; qanavtou me;n ejpivsh" toi'" a[lloi" rJuev tai mhtrikw'").81 With such characterizations, one may begin to understand the specific role of the Virgin on the seals of the e[kdikoi, as the protective mother
the proper right and the Virgin on the proper left were made at a time when the left, the side of the heart, was given the place of honor, while those few with the opposite arrangement reflect a period that followed the more traditional custom that the proper right was the more esteemed position. There seems to be no evidence to support this conclusion, which is also criticized by Rydén, “Två Mosaiker,” 34–35. In addition, Laurent makes no mention of the promotion of the office of the protekdikos. He does, however, publish a new type of seal belonging to the ekdikeion which depicts the Virgin and Child seated on a thokos and assigns it to the second half of the 12th century. Laurent states that this new type of seal does not replace the other, but rather they coexist. Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I.,” 17, suggests that this new seal may have been made during the period of competition between the protekdikos and the chartophylax and tentatively considers that the absence of Justinian’s image and his association with the ekdikoi may reflect a heightened juridical-historical awareness in light of the controversy and Balsamon’s commentary on their origin and responsibilities (see notes 35 and 74 above). Macrides, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law,” 537, however, regards Laurent’s seal no. 115 as evidence of the protekdikos’s new, elevated status. Although the reverse inscription of this seal indicates its novelty, tw'n ejkdivkwn sfravgisma tugcavnw nevon, the image of the Virgin and Child in itself is ubiquitous on seals. Furthermore, this appears to be only one surviving example, and all later seals belonging to the tribunal, that is, after the late 12th-century promotion, depict the customary image of the Virgin and Justinian supporting the model of Hagia Sophia. 76 The significance of the accused’s confession and an outline of the tribunal’s procedure is provided by Macrides, “Justice under Manuel I Komnenos,” 197, 200–202; eadem, “Poetic Justice in the Patriarchate. Murder and Cannibalism in the Provinces,” in Cupido Legum (as above, note 29), 154–57 and 164–66; and eadem, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law,” 516–17. 77 I wish to thank one of the anonymous readers for this consideration. 78 Macrides, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law,” 533–38. 79 Ibid., 509 and 515. 80 Rhalles and Potles, Suvntagma, 5:48–49. For the problematic dating of the text, see Grumel, Les regestes, no. 887. See also Macrides, “Justice under Manuel I Komnenos,” 196–97, and eadem, “Killing, Asylum, and the Law,” 517. 81 Rhalles and Potles, Suvntagma, 5:48.
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and intercessor for the accused as well as for those who must make the difficult decisions determining their innocence and guilt. The Virgin was well known as the intercessor par excellence, a unique position she enjoyed as the mother who could move her divine son to compassion.82 Laurent,83 followed by Prinzing,84 read the invocation on our seals as beseeching the Virgin, through the prayers of Justinian, to help the ekklesiekdikoi. Some visual evidence indicates that the Virgin had a significant and particular role for criminals and penitents. In the Psalter, Vatican, cod. gr. 752, datable by paschal tables to 1058/59, the miniature accompanying Psalm 16 includes an inscription that identifies the scene: the sons of Korah are “confessing” before St. Silvester (oiJ uiJoi; tou' kore; ejxagorivan poiouvmenoi eij" to;n a{gion sivlbestron) (Fig. 11).85 In discussing this miniature, I. Kalavrezou et al. noted the inclusion of an icon of the Virgin and its appropriateness for the setting of confession.86 The Theotokos’s particular protection for criminals is demonstrated in some other manuscript images, too. In a twelfthcentury copy of the Heavenly Ladder, Sinai, cod. gr. 418, the headpiece accompanying the chapter on Penitence includes an additional scene depicting three monks in prostration before the Virgin orans (Fig. 12).87 Only this chapter within this manuscript receives an augmented headpiece. In another illustrated version of the Ladder from the late twelfth– early thirteenth century, Vatican, cod. gr. 1754, the text of the Penitential Canon is included in honor of the “holy criminals” described in the fifth chapter.88 The theotokion of each ode of the canon is provided with an image of the Virgin interceding on behalf of the so-called “holy criminals” and an accompanying supplicatory inscription. For ode 1, the Virgin prays for the sinners, here depicted with their hands bound behind them as actual criminals (Fig. 13);89 for ode 3, the Virgin encourages the criminals to repent (Fig. 14).90 Similar scenes incorporating the figure of the Theotokos illustrate later copies of the Penitential Canon as well.91 The late eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed the development of various emotive Marian images that associated the Virgin with the role of advocate or defender.92 Two wellknown, relevant examples are the proskynetaria icons of the Virgin Eleousa with Christ An82
For a general discussion of the Virgin as intercessor, see J. Ledit, Marie dans la liturgie de Byzance (Paris, 1976), 303–13. For a recent summary of the Theotokos as compassionate mother, see I. Kalavrezou, “The Maternal Side of the Virgin,” in Mother of God (as above, note 1), 41–46. 83 Laurent, Corpus, 5.1:91. 84 Prinzing, “Das Bild Justinians I.,” 16. 85 E. De Wald, The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the Septuagint, III:2, Vaticanus graecus 752 (Princeton, N.J., 1942), 13, pl. 21. 86 I. Kalavrezou, N. Trahoulia, and S. Sabar, “Critique of the Emperor in the Vatican Psalter gr. 752,” DOP 47 (1993): 216. 87 J. R. Martin, The Illustration of the Heavenly Ladder of John Climacus (Princeton, N.J., 1954), 187, fig. 185, and K. Weitzmann and G. Galavaris, The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Illuminated Greek Manuscripts, I: From the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1990), 155, color pl. 26a and fig. 600. 88 Martin, The Heavenly Ladder, 128–49, figs. 246–77. 89 Ibid., 130, fig. 249: Ou|toi o[pisqen eJautw'n ta;" cei'ra" wJ" katavdikoi dhvsante", ejn proseuch'/ i{stantai klivnonte" ta;" eJautw'n o[yei" eij" gh'n: kai; ajnaxivou" eJautou;" logizovmenoi th'" pro;" ta; a[nw neuvsew": kai; oujde; eijpei'n tiv cavrin eujch'" tolmw'nte": uJpe;r w|n hJ Q(eotov)ko" poiei'tai devhsin. 90 Ibid., 132–33, fig. 253: oi\" hJ Q(eotov)k(o)" pareggua'tai mh; ajpognw'nai˘˘: ajll∆ eJlpivdi th'/ pro;" Q(eo;)n to;n e[leon ejfelkuvsasqai. 91 Ibid., 147–49, figs. 278–91. 92 H. Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. E. Jephcott (Chicago, 1994), 241 and 281–96.
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tiphonetes flanking the sanctuary barrier in the church of the Panaghia tou Arakos in Lagoudera, Cyprus, dated to 1192 (Fig. 15)93 and in the twelfth-century lectionary, Lavra, cod. A 103 (Fig. 16).94 The texts accompanying the Virgin in both representations spell out the invocative dialogue between the Mother of God and her Son on behalf of those who implore her aid,95 and the epithet Antiphonetes (Responder) applied to Christ originally belonged to legal officials (“guarantors”) involved with petitions.96 These representations seem to echo the procedures followed by the ejkdikei'on, in which the protekdikos, an advocate like the Virgin holding her “legal” document, records the confession of the accused, determines the proper penances, and then provides him with the semeioma that ensures the tribunal’s protection and ultimate absolution.97 The role of the Virgin as the special refuge of the accused is made more explicit when we realize that an actual icon of the Theotokos was in physical proximity to the seat of the tribunal. The twelfth-century account of the Anonymous Mercati informs us that the miraculous icon of the Virgin that had induced Mary of Egypt to repent of her sins was in the inner narthex of Hagia Sophia, to the right of the imperial doors (Fig. 17).98 This image was seen again by the Russian pilgrims who visited Hagia Sophia during the Palaiologan period,99 and Symeon of Thessalonike testifies to its existence as well.100 G. Majeska has noted that the marble revetments on the east wall of the narthex, flanking the central doors, display dowel holes at approximately head level, suggesting that icons were once attached there for veneration.101 Furthermore, the Byzantine era replacements of the flooring directly below these panels indicate that a large number of people passed over these spots to venerate these images.102 93
Ibid., 214, fig. 140, and H. Maguire, “Abaton and Oikonomia: St. Neophytos and the Iconography of the Presentation of the Virgin,” in Medieval Cyprus: Studies in Art, Architecture, and History in Memory of Doula Mouriki, ˇevcˇenko and C. Moss (Princeton, N.J., 1999), 105, figs. 20 and 21. ed. N. S 94 I. Spatharakis, The Portrait in Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts (Leiden, 1976), 78–79, fig. 45. 95 For the customary text of the dialogue in wall paintings, see S. Der Nersessian, “Two Images of the Virgin in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection,” DOP 14 (1960): 82: “Devxai devhsin th'" sh'" mhtrov", oijkti'rmon” “Tiv, mh'ter, aijtei'";” “Th;n brotw'n swthrivan,” “Parwvrgisavn me,” “Sumpavqhson, uiJev mou,” “ajll∆ oujk ejpistrevfousi,” “Sw'son cavrin.” For the dialogue in the Lavra lectionary, the transcription is provided by Spatharakis, The Portrait, 78: TO ÇCHMA PANTA TON ÇKOPON DHLOI TEKNON PREÇBIN ME PROÇ ÇE KAI MEÇITHN DEIKNÁON. TOINÁN BRABEÁE KEIMENON MOI PROÇ PODAÇ BIBLW GRAFHNAI TWN DIKAIWN ÁIE MOÁ AN(DR)WN EMW PROÇHXE TW NAW TODE. W M(HT)ER EXEI PANTELH ÇWTHRIAN. APEÁCARIÇ TW ÇW KRATEI Q(EO)Á LOGE. 96 C. Mango, The Brazen House: A Study of the Vestibule of the Imperial Palace of Constantinople (Copenhagen, 1959), 142, and Belting, Likeness and Presence, 241 and 282. For a history of the Christ Antiphonetes icon and the relevant literature, see Majeska, Russian Travelers, 356–60. 97 See the outline of the tribunal’s procedures mentioned previously and note 76 above. 98 K. Ciggaar, “Une description de Constantinople traduite par un pèlerin anglais,” REB 34 (1976): 249: “In dextera autem parte templi extra atrium ubi sunt <portae> in pariete est imago illa sanctae Mariae que fuit in Hierosolima, quam rogavit sancta Maria Egipciaca in illo tempore et audivit vocem de ore sanctae Dei genitricis.” Ibid., 216–24, is found the discussion of the 11th-century date of the original Greek text from which the Anonymous Mercati was compiled. For more recent discussion of Western visitors to Byzantium, see eadem, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium, 962–1204: Cultural and Political Relations (Leiden, 1996), passim. 99 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 92, 160, 182, and 206–9. 100 J. Darrouzès, “Sainte-Sophie de Thessalonique d’après un rituel,” REB 34 (1976): 47, and Majeska, Russian Travelers, 208, who also notes that Symeon is the only Byzantine source that refers to the presence of this icon. 101 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 208–9. 102 Ibid.
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THE VIRGIN AND JUSTINIAN ON SEALS OF THE EKKLESIEKDIKOI
The texts of the late Byzantine period that describe the tribunal’s ritual regarding accused murderers seeking refuge in Hagia Sophia most clearly establish the link between the ejkdikei'on and the Virgin. A formulary concerning the treatment of murderers preserved in a mid-fourteenth-century manuscript, Vatican, cod. gr. 640,103 and the procedure recounting the ejkdikei'on's treatment of murderers preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript, Moscow 477,104 describe how, after the confession of the accused, the tribunal makes its decision and assigns the proper penances. In addition to a period of excommunication, these individuals were also forbidden to receive the antidoron (the blessed bread distributed at the end of the liturgy) and holy water-agiasma (aJgivasma), but they were, however, permitted to receive the Panaghia (panagiva),105 the particle of bread elevated and dedicated to the Virgin in a ceremony, often employing a special paten or panaghiarion provided with an image of the Theotokos (Fig. 18),106 that is known as early as the tenth century.107 Among the troparia sung for this service, the Virgin is implored as help (bohvqeia), refuge (katafughv), and protection (skevph).108 Symeon of Thessalonike recommended that this service be celebrated whenever a person was in need,109 and believed that by lifting this bread, the Panaghia is invoked, her assistance is sought, and that there is no greater help (bohvqeia) than she.110 In fact, our later seals identify the Virgin as H BOHQIA, or help (Fig. 2).111 It was appropriate, therefore, that the e[kdikoi permitted the penitents to receive the Panaghia particle. It was a pledge and emblem of the Theotokos’s assistance and protection, an encouragement and consolation during their time of penance. In the Moscow manuscript, the same description informs us that the murderer comes before the ejkdikei'on and is placed in front of the doors, asking forgiveness from those who pass by.112 Thus he is near Mary of Egypt’s icon of the Virgin. Later, the accused is stripped of his clothes and his hands are tied. After making prostrations, he is instructed to confess and then receives in written form the epitimia. Afterwards, the murderer departs to a corner and dresses, and the protekdikos then presents him with the semeioma. The procedure recalls the image of the holy criminals depicted in the Penitential Canon previously men-
103
M. Strazzeri, “Drei Formulare aus dem Handbuch eines Provinzbistums,” FM 3 (1979): 325–27 and 331–51. 104 A. Pavlov, “Grecheskaia zapis o tserkovnom sudie nad ubiitsami, pribiegaiushchimi pod zashchitu tserkvi,” VizVre 4 (1897): 155–59. Macrides, “Justice under Manuel I Komnenos,” 198 note 294, cites two other 15th-century manuscripts that contain the ritual. Although the date of the ritual itself is indeterminate, both Darrouzès, Recherches, 330–31, and Macrides observe that elements of the formula can be traced back to earlier practices. 105 Strazzeri, “Drei Formulare,” 326, 338–40, who cites, 339 note 96, another, undated example of this practice stipulated for a criminal in Ioannina (see MM, 1: no. 76, 173), and Pavlov, “Grecheskaia zapis,” 159. 106 For a recent discussion of this example, see Treasures of Mount Athos, ed. A. Karakatsanis et al. (Thessalonike, 1997), no. 9.5, 324–25. 107 For a study of the service of the Panaghia, see J. Yiannias, “The Elevation of the Panaghia,” DOP 26 (1972): 225–36. According to the author, 228 note 6, the 10th-century source is quoted by J. Goar, Euchologion sive rituale graecorum (Venice, 1730 [repr. Graz, 1960]), 680–81. 108 Goar, Euchologion, 680–81. 109 PG 155: 664. See also Yiannias, “The Elevation of the Panaghia,” 228. 110 PG 155: 664 and 668. 111 For these seals, see note 8 above. 112 Pavlov, “Grecheskaia zapis,” 158: ejn tai'" wJraivai" puvlai" ajpo; tou' e[xw mevrou". Of related interest is the reference given by Niketas Choniates, Historia, 343, and Magoulias, O City of Byzantium, 189, of the raised “pul-
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tioned in which the figures appear with their hands bound behind them (Fig. 13).113 The bound hands and naked condition before the tribunal likewise parallel elements from scenes of the Last Judgment, as in the fourteenth-century frescoes of the parekklesion of the church of the Chora in Constantinople, where the souls facing trial are bound and stripped (Fig. 19).114 It is in such depictions that the Virgin is revealed as their most powerful advocate as she stands to the right of her Son (Fig. 20).115 As noted earlier, from the mideleventh century, Patriarch Constantine III Leichoudes described Hagia Sophia’s right of asylum in motherly terms,116 and this maternal role appears to have been personified by the Theotokos herself. Thus on these seals of the ejkklhsievkdikoi the image of Justinian and the Virgin with the model of the Great Church had a particular significance for its owners in light of their grave judicial responsibilities. Hagia Sophia was the locus of mercy and refuge; Justinian was not only the builder of this temple but regarded also as the patron of the tribunal and founder of the cathedral’s right of asylum. The Virgin, of course, was the most powerful of intercessors who seems especially attentive to the accused and the penitent. Turning to such effective mediators, the ekdikoi were certain to make wise and compassionate decisions, and those who fell into their hands surely had every reason to hope for a good outcome. Archbishop Iakovos Library, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology
pit” (to;n ajnavstaqmon) at the entrance of Hagia Sophia from which murderers publicly confess their crimes and seek forgiveness from those entering and leaving the cathedral. 113 See note 89 above. 114 P. Underwood, The Kariye Djami (New York, 1966), 1: no. 204.5, 205, and 3: pl. 386. 115 Ibid., 1: no. 204.2, 202, and 3: pls. 373 and 374. 116 See notes 80 and 81 above.
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2002 © 2003 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America
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Pilgrimage in the Byzantine Empire: 7th–15th Centuries
Introduction he millennial year of 2000, viewed as a milestone in the history of Christianity, prompted a number of conferences on the topic of pilgrimage and visitation of relics. In Athens the Christian Archaeological Society organized a conference in May on the “Influence of Pilgrimage on Art,” and the same month in Moscow the Centre for Eastern Christian Culture scheduled a symposium on “Relics in the Art and Culture of the Eastern Christian World.” The Dumbarton Oaks symposium of 5–7 May 2000 was the first in this series of conferences. Its special focus was the examination of pilgrimage within the Byzantine Empire during the period following the Arab conquest of the Holy Land, that is, from the seventh to the fifteenth century. Up to now those Byzantinists interested in pilgrimage have primarily examined the phenomenon in the Holy Land, including Egypt, and have stressed the early centuries, the fourth to sixth, for which evidence is relatively abundant, both in the form of texts and artifacts. Much important work has been done in this area in recent decades, so that we are all now familiar with the indefatigable traveler Egeria, rituals at the Holy Sepulcher, Monza and Bobbio flasks, and St. Symeon tokens. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the phenomenon of pilgrimage in Byzantine territory during the middle and late Byzantine centuries, with the exception of Krijnie Ciggaar’s and George Majeska’s useful books and articles on Western and Russian travelers to Constantinople.1 One reason may be the paucity of Greek pilgrims’ accounts in these centuries in comparison with those by their Western and Russian counterparts. Our information, for the most part, has to be painstakingly gleaned from scattered passages in hagiographical narratives and from the rarer archaeological evidence. The symposium speakers attempted to fill this lacuna by looking at developments in devotional travel within the empire after its loss of the Holy Land. There is no question that Byzantines continued to go on pilgrimage to Syria and Palestine even after these lands fell under Arab domination; numerous hagiographical accounts include the journey of a holy man to see the holy places and the monasteries of the Levant.2 At the same time it is clear that such journeys were difficult, even perilous, and
T
1
K. N. Ciggaar, “Une description de Constantinople dans le Tarragonensis 55,” REB 53 (1995): 117–40; eadem, “Une description anonyme de Constantinople du XIe siècle,” REB 31 (1973): 335–54; eadem, “Une description de Constantinople traduite par un pèlerin anglais,” REB 34 (1976): 245–63; eadem, Western Travellers to Constantinople. The West and Byzantium 962–1204: Cultural and Political Relations (Leiden, 1996); G. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1984). 2 On this see A. Külzer, Peregrinatio graeca in Terram Sanctam: Studien zu Pilgerführern und Reisebeschreibungen über Syrien, Palästina und den Sinai aus byzantinischer und metabyzantinischer Zeit (Frankfurt, 1994), and A.-M.
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INTRODUCTION
on occasion forbidden by the Muslim authorities. And for some reason, not yet fully understood, women ceased to embark on long-distance pilgrimage to Palestine after the seventh century. It is not surprising, then, that Byzantine men and women sought alternate forms of pilgrimage within their own territories: they could visit Constantinople with its accumulation of Passion relics and objects associated with the Virgin, a city termed the “New Jerusalem” or a “Second Jerusalem” at least as early as the fifth century;3 they might go to a local shrine to venerate an especially holy icon or to seek healing from the relics of a saint; they might visit places hallowed by association with the apostles, such as Patmos and Ephesos; or they might journey to the hut, cave, or column of a famed living holy man to seek spiritual counsel, forgiveness, or a blessing. The definition of pilgrimage adopted for the purposes of this symposium was a rather broad one: it includes not only long-distance journeys to Jerusalem, Rome, and Constantinople, but shorter trips as well, to a saint’s tomb within one’s own village or neighborhood, or to a shrine in the nearest town. This wide spectrum of devotional activities has been included in the phenomenon we have called pilgrimage because these activities all entailed spiritual travel, whether it be visitation of living holy persons, the relics of sacred personages, or sites sanctified by association with sacred events. They were devotional journeys that fell outside the normal attendance at church services, and hence deserve our special attention as providing insight into the spiritual yearnings and practices of the Byzantines. One of the most vivid descriptions of the excitement of the pilgrimage experience and the many different ways in which it appealed to participants can be found in a text from the late antique period, the Miracles of St. Thekla at her shrine at Seleukeia in Anatolia. The anonymous author brilliantly evokes the scene on the saint’s principal feast day that attracted large numbers of pilgrims. After the conclusion of the services, some of the visitors were eating and sharing their impressions of the ceremonies. “As is natural, each was saying what had struck him during the ceremony. One its brilliance and splendor, another the huge crowd of people, another the vast assemblage of bishops, another the eloquence of the preachers, another the noble ardor in the singing of psalms, another the perseverance in the nocturnal vigil, another the harmonious order of the ceremonies, another the intense fervor of the people who were praying, another the terrible press of the crowd, another the suffocating heat, another the pushing and shoving during the celebration of the sacred mysteries, with some new arrivals, others departing, . . . some shouting, others arguing, others coming to blows because each wanted to be the first to take part in the eucharist.” Finally, one of the pilgrims admitted that he had been completely distracted by the spectacular beauty of a noblewoman, so that his eyes remained glued upon her throughout the service and he could think of nothing else!4 Such were the multiple experiences of pilgrimage to a popular shrine. One of the problems of defining pilgrimage in the Byzantine period is that, as Cyril Mango pointed out, the Greeks, who had a word for everything, did not have a single term Talbot, “Byzantine Pilgrimage to the Holy Land from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century,” in The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present, ed. J. Patrich (Leuven, 2001), 97–110. 3 Vita of Daniel the Stylite, ed. H. Delehaye, Les saints stylites (Brussels, 1923), 12, chap. 10. 4 G. Dagron, Vie et Miracles de Sainte Thècle (Brussels, 1978), miracle 33.
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that encompassed the meaning of our English term pilgrimage.5 Some of the papers that follow allude to this problem. The English word suggests both the long and arduous journey and the attainment of the spiritual goal. The Greek texts, on the other hand, use a number of verbs and nouns that focus on the culmination of one’s journey, usually the visitation of a holy site or the veneration of relics. The most common term by far is proskuvnhsi" (“veneration”) or the related verb, but one also frequently encounters such verbs as kataspavzw (“kiss”), periptuvssomai (“embrace”), and prosyauvw (“touch”) to describe the pilgrim’s physical contact with the tomb or relics. Sometimes only the element of prayer (proseuchv) is mentioned; on other occasions when the pilgrim remains at a shrine for a long time, as in the ritual of incubation, verbs such as prosmeivnw, proskarterevw, prosedreuvw (“to remain”) are used. Special words for the journey itself are less common: often a pilgrim just “goes” to a shrine, or he may “seek refuge” (katafeuvgw) or run (prostrevcw) there. If a pilgrim is making the rounds of a number of churches, as in Jerusalem, Rome, or Constantinople, the verbs perinostevw or peripolevw (“to travel around,” “wander around,” “visit”) may be used. Finally, there is limited use of a vocabulary derived from the root xevno" (“guest” or “stranger”), with its implications of travel to a foreign land. Such words are ejpixenouvmenoi, meaning “pilgrims taken in as guests at a hostel,” and xeniteiva, which normally has the more abstract connotation of a soul’s spiritual journey toward God, often manifested in the unfocused wanderings of a monk seeking to separate himself from ties to the physical world, but very occasionally the term seems to refer to an actual pilgrimage. The group of selected symposium papers published here begins with an introductory overview by Pierre Maraval of the earliest phase of Christian pilgrimage in the fourth to sixth century. Annemarie Weyl Carr then examines one aspect of Constantinople’s transformation into the New Jerusalem: the development of the cult of the Theotokos, especially her icons. George Majeska’s study provides the perspective of Russian pilgrims to Constantinople, focusing on their response to the attractions of this new holy city. Most of the remaining studies focus on pilgrimage in the provinces, at shrines both old and new. There are case studies, as for St. Demetrios in Thessalonike (Charalambos Bakirtzis) and St. Eugenios in Trebizond (Jan Olof Rosenqvist), and broader overviews of patterns of pilgrimage in Anatolia (Clive Foss), on pilgrimage by saints (Michel Kaplan), on the lure of healing shrines (Alice-Mary Talbot), and the visitation of living holy men (Richard Greenfield). Several of the studies conclude that short-distance pilgrimage to local shrines seems to have been the norm for pious Byzantines, although longer journeys to Rome, Constantinople, and the Holy Land continued to be made. Alice-Mary Talbot Dumbarton Oaks
5 Cf. C. Mango, “The Pilgrim’s Motivation,” in Akten des XII. Internationalen Kongresses für christlichen Archäologie, JbAC suppl. 20 (Münster, 1995), 2–3.
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The Earliest Phase of Christian Pilgrimage in the Near East (before the 7th Century) PIERRE MARAVAL
n discussing the origins and early development of the practice of pilgrimage within the Christian context,1 I begin with a brief reflection on the terms pilgrimage and pilgrim. The word pilgrim, derived as it is from the Latin peregrinus, which was used to designate the stranger or traveler, focuses our attention on an aspect of his or her activity that perhaps is not the essential one—the journey undertaken, the peregrinatio. Yet in practice, even if the term pilgrimage puts the emphasis on this idea of a physical displacement, be it over a great distance or more usually, in the case of the majority of “pilgrims,” no more than a short trip within the locality, what provided the real meaning to this movement was the place that was the object of the pilgrim’s attention, a place he considered as possessing a particular value or holiness and where he went in an attitude of prayer and adoration, as well as with a certain veneration for the object or person whose presence served to establish the reputed sanctity of the place. It thus follows that to investigate the origins of Christian pilgrimage is first to invite reflection on the existence and eventual veneration of holy places within the Christian world of the first centuries A.D. I may note in passing that it is not my intention to discuss that form of pilgrimage closely associated with the ascetic life, the xeniteia both advocated and lived by certain monks of the early Christian centuries.2
I
I begin by stating the obvious: Christianity is the product of Judaism, and only slowly did it manage to distance itself from this early background. The Jews did, in fact, have their holy places: Jerusalem was the “holy city” containing the Temple in which was to be
Translated by K.-Y. Burchill-Limb, Villanova University. 1 For a general bibliography on Christian pilgrimage in the Near East during the first centuries, see B. Kötting, Peregrinatio religiosa: Wallfahrten in der Antike and das Pilgerwesen in der alten Kirche (Münster, 1950); J. Wilkinson, Palestine Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977); E. D. Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire AD 312–460 (Oxford, 1982); P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient: Histoire et géographie des origines à la conquête arabe (Paris, 1985). On the following period, see idem, “I pellegrinagi dei cristiani nei luoghi santi della Palestina prima delle Crociate,” in Piacenza a la prima Crociata (Reggio Emilia, 1995), 35–50. For Egypt see A. Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints en Egypte: Des Byzantins aux Abbasides (Paris, 2001). 2 See H. von Campenhausen, Die ascetische Heimatlosigkeit im altkirchlichen and frühmittelalterlichen Mönchtum (Tübingen, 1930), repr. in Tradition und Leben: Kräfte der Kirchengeschichte (Tübingen, 1960), 290–317; A. Guillaumont, “Le dépaysement comme forme d’ascèse dans le monachisme ancien,” AnnEPHE, 5th. ser., 76 (1968–69): 31–58.
64 THE EARLIEST PHASE OF CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE IN THE NEAR EAST found the holy of holies, and it was an annual obligation for Jews to go to Jerusalem to worship in the Temple. There were places that likewise became the object of occasional veneration: the tombs of the prophets; certain sites such as that at Mamre; or Jacob’s well at Shechem, among others. This same attitude was apparent among some of the first disciples of Christ: Peter and John went to the Temple to pray (Acts 3:1); Paul went to Jerusalem and also worshiped in the Temple (Acts 21:6). Yet very soon voices of discord could be heard opposing the sacralization of places, voices that reechoed in this respect criticism already apparent within certain Jewish circles: Stephen criticized the idea of the Temple as a holy place (Acts 7:47–49); the Gospels noted Christ’s attack on the veneration of the tombs of the prophets (Mt. 23:29); but it is finally in the Gospel of John that the most stringent reserve comes to the fore when it is noted that God is to be worshiped neither in Jerusalem, the holy place of the Jews, nor in Gerizim, the holy place of the Samaritans, but rather in spirit and in truth (Jn. 4:21). This tendency came to be dominant within the Greek-speaking part of the Christian world during the second and third centuries: Christian writers of this period were concerned to demonstrate that Christianity, in distinction to both paganism and Judaism, required neither temples nor altars nor even specific places for worship since this was to be done in the spirit. If Christians could hold their meetings anywhere, it was because their God “is not limited by place, but, being invisible, fills the heavens and the earth, and thus is he adored and glorified by the faithful everywhere.”3 According to Clement of Alexandria, “the true temple is the assembly of Christian people,”4 and Origen adds: “the holy place is the pure soul.”5 This must explain the almost total silence of the sources until the fourth century about what later came to be known as the “holy places.” An almost total silence: still it would be useful to comment briefly on the “almost.” Even if the dominant tendency within the Hellenistic version of Christianity at the time took no interest in these things and rejected the idea of the sacralization of certain places, it may yet be asked whether there was not a residual attitude of veneration among the JudeoChristians of those places not only associated with recollections of the Old Testament but those connected with the principal events in the life of Christ. A number of pointers suggest a pious interest within the primitive community in Jerusalem that found expression in the organization of visits to the sites that had witnessed the final stages of Christ’s life. This was certainly the case for his tomb: the account of the resurrection contained in the Gospel of Mark makes possible allusion to such visits,6 and the phrase placed in the mouth of the angel seems like the commentary of a tour guide: “This then is the place they put him” (Mk. 16:6).7 Aside from this tomb, which had been hewn out of the rock, two other grottos came to be of note, of which one was already mentioned as early as the second cen3 Cf. Justin’s answer to the judge before his martyrdom in Passio Justini et sociorum, rec. B, 3; H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972), 48. 4 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 8.5 (GCS 17, p. 22); Origen, Homil. in Levit., 13.5. Cf. the echo of this sentence, Jerome, Epist. 58.7 (CSEL 54, p. 536). 5 Origen, Homil. in Levit., 13.5; Jerome, Epist. 58.7 (CSEL 54, p. 536). In a more general sense, certain commentators felt that the origin of the accounts of the Passion might be related to their commemoration of the sites themselves by the brothers of Jerusalem and the pilgrims to the Holy Land; cf. E. Trocmé, The Passion as Liturgy. A Study in the Origin of the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels (London, 1983). 6 Ibid. 7 The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, which derived from a more Hellenistic environment, attempted to correct this tendency through the words of the angel warning not to seek Christ among the dead: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but he is risen” (24: 5–6).
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tury A.D. These were the place on the Mount of Olives where Christ had his last meeting with the disciples and the site of his birth in Bethlehem. In the absence of any reliable archaeological evidence, the literary sources are not easy to interpret, though it may be said that “one can eventually admit the Judeo-Christian frequentation of these grottos at least until 135.”8 Thereafter at least two of these sites were inaccessible to the Christians, since the tomb had been buried under the rubble of the capitol in Jerusalem and the site at Bethlehem had been included within a sacred wood dedicated to Adonis.9 Still it is natural enough to suppose that these places were in no way forgotten within the local community, which explains the rediscovery of the tomb in 325. In any case, aside from the possible veneration of these sites by Judeo-Christians from the earliest times, there is practically no evidence of a similar regard toward the other biblical sites on the part of the Christian community of the first three centuries. None of the occasional Christian visitors to Palestine during the third century about whom anything is known—one thinks of Melito of Sardis, Pionios the priest of Smyrna, and Origen—gave evidence in their subsequent accounts of having undertaken the voyage as pilgrims who were intent on praying in places deemed to be holy, but it seems rather that they went out of a sense of curiosity or in search of theological insight.10 Should it then be concluded that the Christians of the second and third centuries outside of Palestine were wholly spiritual and totally immune from the veneration of object and place that came to be developed from the fourth century on? Some sign of a change in this attitude can be found in the first examples of the cult of the martyrs. Although the evidence is indeed sparse, it does suggest that the tombs of the martyrs became places of assembly for the Christian community on the anniversary of their death, a practice that in many respects recalls the cult of the dead that existed within the Greco-Roman world at the time. Moreover, it seems that from the second century, whenever they could be recovered, the martyrs’ remains were much sought after and thus the object of a certain veneration. The assimilation of the martyr’s body to the bread of the eucharist that can be found in the letters of Ignatios of Antioch already tends in this direction,11 though there are other, more concrete examples. According to the Passio of Polycarp, which dates from about 160, the Church of Smyrna had the “holy remains” (hagion sarkion) of the bishop, his bones which were “more precious (timiotera, a term that can often later be found applied to relics) than valuable stones and more estimable than gold,” kept in a suitable place 8
S. Mimouni, Le judéo-christianisme ancien. Essais historiques (Paris, 1998), 364. See esp. chap. 4.1.1, “Archéologie cultuelle dite ‘judéo-chrétienne’ en Palestine.” 9 Jerome, Epist. 58.3 (CSEL 54, pp. 531–32). 10 Melito of Sardis went to Palestine to learn the order of the Old Testament books; cf. Eusebios, Hist. eccl., 4.26.13–14. The priest Pionios, who was put to death at Smyrna in 250, declared in a final discourse directed against the Jews that he had seen in Palestine “a land that witnesses even today to the anger of God raised against the sins of its inhabitants” (Passio Pionii, 4.18–20, ed. L. Robert, Le Martyre de Pionios, prêtre de Smyrne [Washington, D.C., 1994], pp. 23, 35). Origen, at the same time, says he visited some sites “in search of traces of Jesus, of his disciples and of his prophets,” but he cites the example only to decide between two rival interpretations of Gospel passages, and in another case he only refers to what can be seen at Bethlehem in order to confirm the biblical narrative (In Joannem comm., 6.204 [SC 157, p. 286]; Contra Celsum, 1.51 [SC 132, p. 214]). When, in his Demonstratio Evangelica, which dates from ca. 320 prior to the constructions undertaken by Constantine at Jerusalem and the expansion of pilgrimages, Eusebios of Caesarea speaks of Christians who came to worship on the Mount of Olives, it was really to stress that from there they could see the fulfillment of the prophecy in the ruin of Jerusalem and its temple (6.18.23; GCS 23, p. 278). 11 Ignatios of Antioch, Epist. ad Rom., 4.1: “I am the wheat of God, and I am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts that I may be found pure bread of Christ.”
66 THE EARLIEST PHASE OF CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE IN THE NEAR EAST where the anniversary of his martyrdom could be celebrated.12 Likewise the letter of Polykrates of Ephesos to Victor of Rome confirms that the tombs of the saints and their earthly remains were already objects of interest to the faithful, since it mentions the presence in Asia of the tombs of John, Philip, and Philip’s daughters.13 The increase in the number of Christians during the third century, which was particularly marked during the second half, the period of the so-called truce of the Church, and the corresponding construction of places of worship, necessarily favored this tendency toward the sacralization of persons and places. Clear evidence of this can be seen in the martyrdom of Cyprian at Carthage in 258, when Christians laid out cloths to receive the blood of the martyred bishop before his execution.14 The truce of the Church served to accentuate this phenomenon, which was first apparent with regard to the biblical sites. Eusebios in his Onomasticon, which can perhaps be dated from as early as the 290s and in any case before 311,15 gives evidence of the growing interest of these sites for Christians. Granted that in many cases he was content to remark without more ado that here was shown (deiknutai) some souvenir of a biblical event, yet he thus reveals that Christians liked to meet for prayer at Gethsemane or to be baptized at Bethabara, the site of the baptism of Christ.16 Despite his concern in his apologetic works to show that attachment to particular places was characteristic of Judaism, not Christianity, which was in this respect wholly independent of place,17 Eusebios, in his Evangelical Demonstration (dated 314–320), notes that Christians from Jerusalem liked to meet “for prayer” on the Mount of Olives, and he consciously juxtaposed the worship that took place there with that of the Jews in their Temple which stood on the hill opposite.18 Even though it is not explicitly stated, this is a clear example of the transfer of a holy place: the sacralization of places by Christians already begun. Under Constantine this became a political program. During his stay at Rome between 312 and 324, the emperor favored the establishment of sanctuaries on the tombs of the Roman martyrs,19 while in the East the bulk of his effort was focused on Jerusalem. It was following the Council of Nicea in 325 that, on the orders of the emperor,20 an order given according to legend in the presence of his mother, Bishop Makarios of Jerusalem began the 12
Passio Polycarpi, 18 (ed. Musurillo, pp. 16–17). Eusebios of Caesarea, Hist. eccl., 5.24.5. 14 Acta Proconsularia Sancti Cypriani, 5.4 (ed. Musurillo, pp. 174–75). 15 T. D. Barnes considers that the book On the Names of Places in Holy Scripture, which deals with the historical geography of Palestine, of which only the fourth part, the Onomasticon survives, dates from ca. 290; cf. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 110–11. 16 Eusebios of Caesarea, Onomasticon, pp. 74.17–18, 58.19–20 (GCS 11, ed. E. Klostermann). 17 “Since the coming of Christ, it is no longer necessary to adore God in specific places, in some corner of the world be it in the mountains or in the temples made by the hand of man, but each can adore him in his proper place” (Eusebios of Caesarea, Dem. Evang., 1.6.65; GCS 23, p. 33; see also, ibid., 40, p. 29, as well as Theophaneia, 4.23 [GCS 11, vol. 2, pp. 200–201]). Jerome again raises this issue: “Since the drying of the fleece of Judea, the universe has been moistened by celestial dew (cf. Jgs. 6:36–40) since many from both east and west have fallen asleep in the bosom of Abraham (cf. Lk. 16:22–23), so God has ceased to be known only in Judea (Ps. 75:2) and his name glorified only in Israel (Ps. 18:5), but the voice of the apostles has been directed to the whole world and their words to its very limits.” (Epist. 58.3, p. 530). 18 Eusebios of Caesarea, Dem. Evang., 6.18.23 (GCS 23, p. 278). 19 R. Krautheimer, Rome, Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton, N.J., 1980). 20 Cf. Vita Constantini, 3.30–32 (GCS, pp. 97–99, ed. Winkelmann). 13
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search that led to the rediscovery of both the tomb and the cross of Christ.21 A building program was then set up, which was in no way fortuitous, since sanctuaries were to be erected on the sites that well illustrated the fundamental affirmations of the creed: he was born, died, and was resurrected; and he ascended into heaven. The basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, those of the Anastasis and the Martyrium, those on either side of the atrium at Golgotha, as well as that on the Mount of Olives—all are constructions of Constantine undertaken on the orders of the emperor and with public funds.22 To these would be added a little later the sanctuary at Mamre,23 an Old Testament site to be sure, but the three visitors to Abraham were usually identified by the Fathers as a prefiguration of the Christian Trinity. In his letter to Bishop Makarios, Constantine was the first to employ the term holy place, which would become common currency during the course of the fourth century.24 The development of these holy places through the establishment of sanctuaries at Jerusalem and then throughout Palestine would continue for another three centuries, which were to be marked by three periods of intense activity: the time of Constantine, just mentioned; that of Eudokia, the wife of Theodosios II, after 437;25 and that of Justinian.26 The bishops, together with a variety of wealthy visitors to Palestine, carried on and completed this work according to their means. At the end of the fourth century, Bishop John started work on the great basilica at Sion,27 and the pilgrim Poemenia commissioned the church of the Ascension;28 at the beginning of the sixth century, Patriarch Elias started building the Nea church of the Theotokos, which would have to wait for the financial support of Justinian to be completed.29 Following the fall of Jerusalem to the Persians in 614, at the initiative of Patriarch Modestos there was an effort of restoration or rather rebuilding of the sanctuaries that had been damaged. Nor was such activity limited to Jerusalem. Throughout Palestine an elaborate inventory of the holy places was compiled on the basis of biblical texts, local tradition, and various forms of revelation, many of which, it may be felt, owed much to the imagination, though all were strictly controlled by the episcopal hierarchy.30 This led to the creation all along the main routes of Palestine of sanctuaries of varying degrees of importance, around which were soon to be established monasteries for liturgical services and hostels to receive pilgrims. Relics also came to be more common—relics of the Passion, of the life of Christ and that of the Virgin, of figures 21
Cf. S. Borgehammar, How the Holy Cross Was Found. From Event to Medieval Legend (Stockholm, 1991). On the Anastasis-Golgotha-Martyrium, see Ch. Coüasnon, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (London, 1974), V. Corbo, Il Santo Sepolcro di Gerusalemme. Aspetti archeologici dalle origini al periodo crociato (Jerusalem, 1974); M. Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (Stroud, 1999). On Eleona’s church, see H. Vincent and F. M. Abel, Jérusalem: Recherches d’archéologie et d’histoire. II. Jérusalem nouvelle (Paris, 1926), 337–60 (excavations of 1910). 23 This church was also built on Constantine’s initiative; see Eusebios of Caesarea, Vita Constantini, 3.52. On this site, see A. E. Mader, Mambre: Die Ergebnisse den Ausgrabungen im Heiligen Bezirk Hamet el Halil in Südpalästina, 1926–1928 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1957). 24 Eusebios of Caesarea, Vita Constantini, 3.52. Eusebios does not use the term holy place again in the following text. 25 This activity is briefly mentioned by Socrates, Hist. eccl., 7.47.2 (GCS, n.s. 3, p. 394). The church of St. Stephen was built on the initiative of Eudokia. 26 Y. Hirschfeld, “Imperial Building Activity during the Reign of Justinian and Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in Light of the Excavations on Mt. Berenice, Tiberias,” Rev Bibl 106 (1999): 236–49. 27 Grand Lectionnaire, 565 (CSCO 189, p. 80). 28 Vita Petri Iberi (ed. R. Raabe, Petrus der Iberer, p. 35). 29 Cyril of Skythopolis, Vita Sabae, 72–72 (ed. E. Schwartz, Kyrillos von Skythopolis [Leipzig, 1939], pp. 175– 78); Vita loannis Hesych., 20, ibid., p. 216; Prokopios of Caesarea, Aed., 5.6. 30 P. Maraval, “Songes et visions comme mode d’invention des reliques,” Augustinianum 29 (1989): 583–99. 22
68 THE EARLIEST PHASE OF CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE IN THE NEAR EAST from the Bible, and a little later acheiropoietoi images—all of which became occasions for the foundation of new sanctuaries in their own right. All of this confirms the success of what were now termed without reserve the “holy places,” which drew pilgrims from far and near and served to establish Jerusalem and the Holy Land as the focal point of Christian sacred geography. This phenomenon, which had such an effect on the holy places of the Bible, was perhaps even more in evidence with regard to the tombs of the martyrs. Once again an indication of the changing situation or mind-set can be gained from the writings of Eusebios in comparing the two versions of his Martyrs of Palestine. The first version simply states that the martyrs of Caesarea “obtained a decent funeral and the usual burial,”31 but this is then amplified in the later edition to reveal that shortly after their martyrdom the bodies were deposited “in the splendid abodes of the temple (naon) and placed in the sacred oratories (en hieriois proseukteriois), as an everlasting memorial to be honored by the people of God.” More or less throughout the empire the tombs of the martyrs came to be adorned with multiple sanctuaries in the form of martyria, oratories, and basilicas, all of which were themselves held as sacred, as holy places. Once again there would be the process of the discovery or rediscovery of the tombs and relics of martyrs until then sometimes unknown, and once again the whole process was controlled by the bishops as part of a conscious policy of Christianization. Thus Cyril of Alexandria—unless it was his successor, Peter Mongos—discovered the relics of Abbakyros and John, which he successfully opposed to a sanctuary of the goddess Isis at Menuthis.32 This movement developed throughout the fourth century and hardly ever stopped thereafter. To give but one example: in the town of Sebasteia the feast of the Forty Martyrs had been celebrated from early on, but it was only from 380 that a new festival appeared, that of Bishop Peter, who had also been a victim of the Great Persecution, but whose memory had paled in comparison to that of the Forty.33 The texts of the numerous Passiones of the martyrs composed during the fifth and sixth centuries, which in the absence of the true story were often recompositions on the basis of stereotyped models, provide us with knowledge of some of the sanctuaries rather than with the real history of the martyrs themselves. Without seeking to establish a sort of hierarchy, I will mention the most famous: St. Menas in Egypt became a major center of pilgrimage,34 together with the sanctuary of Sts. Abbakyros and 31
Eusebios of Caesarea, De Martyribus Palestinae, 11.28. Sophronios, Miracula Cyri et Ioannis, 29, ed. N. Fernandez Marcos, Los “Thaumata” de Sofronio. Contribución al estudio de la “incubatio cristiana” (Madrid, 1975), 298–302. E. Wipszycka adopted the hypothesis of L. Duchesne according to which the translation of the relics did not take place until the time of Peter; cf. “La christianisation de l’Égypte aux IV–VIe siècles. Aspects sociaux et ethniques,” Aegyptus 68 (1988): 117–65. 33 Gregory of Nyssa is the first witness to the celebration of the feast of Bishop Peter of Sebasteia; cf. Epist. 1.5 (GNO, p. 4; SC 363, p. 86); P. Devos, “S. Pierre Ier, évêque de Sébastée dans une lettre de Grégoire de Nazianze [a letter now attributed again to Gregory of Nyssa],” AB 79 (1961): 355. The feast was created by Gregory’s brother, whose name was Peter, who became bishop of Sebasteia probably after the Council of Constantinople in 381; for the new bishop it was a way of asserting his legitimacy. 34 The site of Abu Mina has been excavated since the beginning of this century; cf. C. M. Kaufmann, Die Heilige Stadt der Wüste: Unsere Entdeckungen, Grabungen und Funde in der altchristlichen Menasstadt (Kempten, 1924); RBK 3:1116–58 (Karm Abu Mena); P. Grossmann, “Recenti resultati dagli scavi di Abu Mina,” CorsiRav 18 (Ravenna, 1981): 125–76; idem, “The Pilgrimage Center of Abu ¯ Mı¯na¯,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, ed. D. Frankfurter (Leiden, 1998), 281–302; idem, Christliche Architektur in Ägypten (Leiden, 2002), 401–12. 32
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John at Menuthis;35 in Syria the town of Sergiopolis grew up around the pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Sergios;36 in Seleukeia in Isauria there was the sanctuary of St. Thekla,37 at Ephesos that of St. John,38 at Chalcedon that of St. Euphemia,39 at Euchaïta that of St. Theodore,40 and at Thessalonike that of St. Demetrios.41 Those about whom we know anything are but the tip of the iceberg: the vast majority are and will remain unknown. Thus Gregory of Nyssa, in a letter that must date from the 380s, declared that there were in Cappadocia alone innumerable martyria, though the surviving evidence allows us to mention no more than about fifteen.42 It may also be noted that the translation of relics further facilitated the multiplication of these sanctuaries; this was the case in Cappadocia, which came to count several of the martyria from the Forty of Sebasteia.43 There were not only the tombs of the martyrs: other saints soon also appeared, the “holy men” of the Christians, the monks and bishops, or at least some of them. This phenomenon had different aspects in different places. If, from the fourth century on, Egypt drew pilgrims longing to see the monks and eager to profit from their contact,44 the latter did their very best to prevent their remains becoming the object of veneration among the faithful: Antony requested that his tomb be kept a secret, though it was rediscovered during the sixth century.45 In Palestine the remains of Hilarion, who died in Cyprus, were taken by one of his disciples and brought back to a monastery, where they soon became the object of devotion,46 just as throughout the sixth century would be the tombs of the great monastic founders, such as Euthymios or Sabas.47 In Syria, even during their lifetime certain monks attracted numerous visitors, as was the case with Symeon the Elder, images of whom also helped to spread the cult. Even after his death, when his remains had been 35 On this vanished sanctuary, we have only literary sources, essentially the Miracula Cyri et Johannis of Sophronios, ed. Fernandez Marcos (as above, note 32). See D. Montserrat, “Pilgrimage to the Shrine of SS Cyrus and John at Menouthis in Late Antiquity,” in Pilgrimage and Holy Space, 257–79. 36 The site of Resafa has been excavated over the course of the last century: see H. Spanner and S. Guyer, Resafa, die Wallfahrtstadt des heiligen Sergios (Berlin, 1926), W. Karnapp, “Deutsche Grabungen und Forschungen in der Ruinenstadt Resafa in Syrien,” Antike Welt 8.4 (1977): 17–30; T. Ulbert, Resafa, II: Die Basilika des Heiligen Kreuzes in Resafa-Sergiupolis (Mainz, 1986); W. Brinker, “Zur Wasserversorgung von ResafaSergiopolis,” Damaszener Mitteilungen 5 (1991): 119–46. 37 For excavations on the site of Ayatecla near Silifke, see E. Herzfeld and S. Guyer, Meriamlik und Korykos, zwei christliche Ruinenstätten des Rauhens Kilikiens, MAMA 2 (Manchester, 1930), 1–89. 38 Forschungen in Ephesos, IV.13: Die Johanneskirche (Vienna, 1951); RBK 2:180–92 (Ephesos). 39 On this now vanished sanctuary, see A.-M. Schneider, “Sankt Euphemia und das Konzil von Chalkedon,” in Das Konzil von Chalkedon, vol. 1. ed. A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht (Würzburg, 1951), 291–302. 40 No monograph has been devoted to this sanctuary, which is known only through literary sources and two ˇevcˇenko and C. Mango, “Three Inscriptions of the Reigns of Anastasius and Constantine V. inscriptions (I. S I. Two Inscriptions from Euchaita,” BZ 65 [1972]: 379–84). 41 G. and M. Soteriou, ÔH basilikh; tou' ÔAgivou Dhmhtrivou Qessalonivkh" (Athens, 1952). 42 Gregory of Nyssa, Epist. 2.9 (GNO, p. 16; SC 363, p. 114); see Maraval, Lieux saints, 371–74. 43 See P. Maraval, “Les premiers développements du culte des Quarante Martyrs de Sébastée dans l’Orient byzantin et en Occident,” VetChr 36 (1999): 198–200. 44 There are many examples, from Melania the Elder to Postumianus (Egeria, Paula, Jerome, Poemenia, etc.). 45 Athanasios, Vita Antonii, 91.7 (SC 400, p. 370). 46 Jerome, Vita Hilarionis, 32.6–7 (ed. A. Bastiaensen, Vite dei santi, vol. 4 [Milan, 1975], p. 142). 47 Cyril of Skythopolis, Vita Euthymii, 50–59 (72–82, ed. Schwartz). See also A. Barrois, “Chronique III. Une chapelle funéraire au couvent de Saint-Euthyme,” RevBibl 39 (1930): 272–75. Sabas’s grave is today venerated at Mar Saba.
70 THE EARLIEST PHASE OF CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE IN THE NEAR EAST transported to Antioch, the great basilica of Qal’at Sem’an was build around his column, and this became the object of frequent pilgrimage, as was evident from the numerous hostels set up in the vicinity.48 Then, a little later, a church was constructed around the column of his emulator, Symeon the Younger Stylite, to welcome pilgrims even during his lifetime.49 To these three categories of pilgrimage places must be added another: sanctuaries dedicated to angels. The cult of the angels, although condemned as a residue of Judaism by a local council toward the end of the fourth century,50 quickly expanded from the beginning of the fifth, especially in Phrygia, from which it spread to many regions including the capital.51 Constantinople would soon be of great importance within the sacred geography of the East, presented as it was from the fifth century on as a second Jerusalem. This sacralization was clearly the result of a deliberate policy, as the capital otherwise possessed no more than two local martyria at the outset, those of St. Akakios and St. Mokios. Here patristic scholars have sought to credit the emperor Constantine, who has been presented as the one truly responsible for the program of construction of both churches and martyria, but in reality the phenomenon was progressive. It certainly began from the time of Constantine, since his mother, Helen, had him bring part of the relic of the cross from Jerusalem, as well as the nails of the Passion—relics that would long be reserved for the use of the palace and the imperial family, as when a fragment of the cross was inserted into a monumental statue of Constantine or the nails were used to construct a helmet and a bit for the imperial horse. These relics would not cease to flow from Palestine: there were relics of the patriarch Joseph; of the prophet Zacharias; of St. Stephen in the fifth century; clothing of the Virgin toward 472, which was deposited in the church of Blachernai, while her belt was placed in that of Chalkoprateia; the trumpets from the fall of Jericho; stone from the surrounds of Jacob’s well; the acheiropoietos image of the Kamoulianai Christ in the sixth century; in 614 the holy lance and sponge; and then twenty years later another relic of the cross. The same goes for the relics of the martyrs, which were brought from every corner of the Christian world, though often with some difficulty, as when the popes refused to send the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul on the grounds that in the West the bones of martyrs were not to be dispersed and they thus had to be content with a delivery of secondary relics, such as a link from the apostle’s chains or cloth that had been placed on his tomb. This collection of relics was certainly a deliberate policy, one promoted by the emperors, the bishops, state officials, the clergy, and the monks. They started to arrive during the 48
On Qal’at Sem’an, see RBK 1:223–76. This site has been excavated many times: see most recently J. Lafontaine-Dosogne with the collaboration of B. Orgels, Itinéraires archéologiques dans la région d’Antioche. Recherches sur le monastère et l’iconographie de saint Syméon Stylite le Jeune (Brussels, 1967). 50 Concilium Laodicenum, canon 35 (Mansi 2:569). 51 The most celebrated sanctuary in Phrygia is that of St. Michael at Colosses, whose influence can be traced through the Michaelion of the Anaplous at Constantinople (Sozomen, Hist. eccl., 2.3.8), as well as this site of the Sostheruon (Prokopios, Aed., 1.8.17–19). Another celebrated church was at Germia; cf. C. Mango, “The Pilgrimage Centre of St. Michael at Germia,” JÖB 36 (1986): 117–32. 49
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reigns of Constantius II and Theodosios I, and their flow continued during the reigns of all the emperors of the fifth and sixth centuries. Justinian, during whose reign several of the sanctuaries to the martyrs were either constructed or rebuilt, was particularly anxious to obtain relics, to which he made clear his devotion on several occasions.52 The arrival of these relics was a major event: they were solemnly received at the gates of the city with the adventus ceremony, and a feast day commemorated their reception and deposition in the new sanctuary. This was both a policy of Christianization as well as one directed toward the maintenance of orthodoxy. Here it is striking that the Orthodox Church tried to recover any relics in the possession of dissident groups, as with the head of John the Baptist toward the end of the fourth century which had hitherto been in the hands of the Macedonians, or with the relics of the forty martyrs rediscovered during the episcopate of Proklos (434– 446) and again in 451 with a sanctuary under the church of St. Thyrse that had likewise been under Macedonian control.53 It seems likely that this practice had as an object the rehabilitation of relics of heretical provenance. In any case, this policy served to elevate Constantinople to the status of a new holy city to which pilgrims would journey from afar (there were examples already during the fourth century, such as Egeria), especially after the fall of the eastern provinces to the Arabs. If Rome then became, as R. Krautheimer has written, “the magical center of the West,” Constantinople took on this role for the East while still retaining a certain attraction for those coming from the West despite the progressive separation of the two churches. Here in fact we might dispute the affirmation of the same author according to which after the seventh century “Rome remained the only holy city of Christendom,”54 a perspective that is narrowly occidental to say the least. After this brief survey of the main centers of pilgrimage within the Byzantine world, I turn to the visitors, the pilgrims themselves. What did the visitor come to do in the holy place, and why did he come? An answer was already given at the outset: he came to pray, euches eneken, orationis causa—two expressions frequently encountered in the texts of the fourth century. This prayer could be an act of gratitude, the fulfillment of a vow, a request for forgiveness, or a demand for a variety of favors. But since the pilgrim came to pray in a specific place, this basic motive could take on a particular color: his prayer would be fortified by all that the place itself could bring and contribute, which is essentially to say by all that could be seen and touched. The pilgrim came from afar, and the language of vision played an important role in his or her discourse.55 One of the best illustrations is provided by a passage from a letter in which St. Jerome invited Marcella, one of his Roman followers, to come to Palestine: “we will see (videbimus) the flower of Galilee. Not far from there Cana can be perceived (cernetur) . . . . At Tabor it is with the Father and the Spirit that we will contemplate (cernemus) the Savior. From there we will arrive at the sea of Genesareth, and we will see (videbimus) four, then five thousand men fed in the desert. The town of Naïm will appear (apparebit). . . . 52 For details, see Maraval, Lieux saints, 93–100. On the early transfer of relics to Constantinople, see C. Mango, “Constantine’s Mausoleum and the Translation of Relics,” BZ 83 (1990): 51–62. 53 Sozomen, Hist. eccles., 9.2.18 (p. 394.28–29, ed. Bidez-Hansen); Chron. Pasch., a. 451 (PG 92:813A). 54 Krautheimer, Rome, 201. 55 See G. Frank, The Memory of the Eyes, Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Calif., 2000).
72 THE EARLIEST PHASE OF CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE IN THE NEAR EAST One will gaze upon (videbitur) the Hermons. Capernaum can also be viewed, as well as the whole of Galilee.”56 The place of pilgrimage is the place where one shows (deiknutai), as was noted in the Onomasticon of Eusebios of Caesarea. A pilgrim such as Egeria tells us that she is very curious (satis curiosa) and in practice on each of her visits demanded that things should be shown to her (curiously ostendebantur is the first word of the torn manuscript that records her text); that she should be shown “according to the Scriptures” or that she should be shown those “places the Christians delight to see.”57 Seeing the places suggests what might be termed the curiosity of the tourist or perhaps even a certain scholarly interest where it was accompanied by a desire to be informed about the places concerned. Yet it should be remembered that this desire was focused exclusively on the holy places, those where the events of salvation history had taken place or those that housed souvenirs of the Christian past. In his account of the voyage of Paula, St. Jerome makes clear that he will speak only of the biblical sites. In this perspective the vision of place was already directed toward the life of prayer. The first objective of the pilgrim was not to be better informed, but rather to nourish his or her personal prayer. If the sight of these places led the pilgrim to that end, it was because they were places of memory where one could see, hear, and even touch that which would direct one’s attention to a higher reality brought to life through contemplation. Once again Jerome illustrates this point very well when he wrote to Marcella: “Each time that we enter the tomb, we see the Savior lying on his winding sheet: if we stop there for just a moment we can still see the angel seated at his feet and at his head the folded shroud.”58 In her description of the ceremonies during Holy Week at Jerusalem, Egeria stressed the importance of the readings that accompanied them, which were “adapted to the time and circumstance” and had an emotional impact manifest in the whimpers and cries (mugitus et rugitus) of the faithful. She herself undertook similar readings on the occasion of her private visits to the holy places, whether they were the biblical sites or the tombs of the martyrs. Moreover, if we are to believe a homily of John Chrysostom, these too had a strong emotional charge: “Go to visit a martyrium,” he said, “and there without needing to be told the sight alone of the tomb will bring forth floods of tears and a great fervor in prayer.”59 The sight of the places was thus an aid to the faith of the visitor, as Cyril of Jerusalem observed in his Catecheses: “He was truly crucified, and if I seek to deny it, this Golgotha where we are now assembled confounds me, the very wood of the cross divided in fragments with which the whole world is now filled.”60 The contemplation of the saintly monks tended to the same end, as Theodoret of Cyrrhus noted concerning the visitors to Symeon the Stylite: “Those coming for the spectacle return instructed in things divine.”61 Yet the holy places offered more than things to see: part of the theophany that had been enacted through martyrdom or the saint that was buried there remained in the form of relics. As already noted, the very success of the pilgrimages led to the multiplication of 56
Jerome, Epist. 46.13 (CSEL 54, p. 344). Egeria, Itinerarium 1.1, 18.5 (SC 296, pp. 120, 204). 58 Jerome, Epist. 46.5 (CSEL 54, p. 334). 59 John Chrysostom, In SS. Mart. hom., 2 (PG 50:648). 60 Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. 4.10 (PG 33:468B–469A). 61 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Hist. relig., 26.12 (SC 257, pp. 188–89). 57
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these relics, and very soon there was a spontaneous demand on the part of the visitors to participate in the physical veneration of the objects or to have contact with them. That is to say that there was a belief in the “living force” contained within the relics,62 whether those of the true cross or the bones of the saints, and this force was somehow transmitted to its immediate surroundings, the reliquary, the tomb, the railings, or even the nearby fountain. One no longer came simply to worship in a holy place, but rather to adore or venerate the place itself as a means of participating in its holiness. From this stemmed many of the common practices of the pilgrims. The objective was the veneration of the relics themselves whenever that was possible, though they were more often than not inaccessible or at the very least well protected. In many different ways this was transferred to the veneration of the surroundings: prostration before the reliquary, which would be kissed and covered in tears or perfume; placing an object in the vicinity, which could then be taken back home; or even the simple inscription of a name. Among the best known of these practices, and that which was the object of particular attention on the part of the authorities responsible for the site, was incubation, a return to a long-standing pagan practice of sleeping either in the sanctuary or nearby as a means of soliciting a special favor, often that of a cure. It was also important for the pilgrim to bring away some part of this holiness that he or she came to see and touch: the ideal was of course to obtain a relic, but these were only rarely given out and only to those of civil or ecclesiastical status. The majority of pilgrims had thus to be content with eulogiai or benedictiones, relics at one stage removed that soon gave rise to a small industry in the surrounding area, for example the flasks of St. Menas, many of which were found in one of the ovens that were designed to produce them.63 All of which goes to demonstrate the concern of pilgrims to appropriate through some form of physical contact part of the holiness of the place they had come from near or far to venerate. I have remarked elsewhere that this delight in the holy places gave rise to numerous critiques, the main lines of which should at least be recounted.64 There was nothing new about this criticism, which simply reproduced established arguments of the second and third centuries. A refusal to relate the divine presence to a particular place, “to enclose the omnipotence of God within too close confines,” as Jerome would put it, recalling the Gospel verse from John on worshiping in spirit and in truth.65 There was also the refusal to attribute to a place a form of holiness that could be appropriated through contact, a point well made by Gregory of Nyssa, when he noted that “a change of place does not bring one closer to God, but there where you are God will come toward you, if the condition of 62
This expression is used by Paulinus of Nola for the relic of the Holy Cross; cf. Epist. 3.6 (CSEL 29, p. 274). In the same way, the Vita Nicolai Sionitae talks about the dynamis of the Holy Cross (8, ed. G. Anrich, Hagios Nikolaos, vol. 1 [Leipzig, 1913], p. 9). 63 On the pilgrim’s practices, see Maraval, Lieux saints, 221–41. 64 Cf. P. W. L. Walker, Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1990); R. L. Wilken, The Land Called Holy. Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven, Conn., 1992); P. Maraval, “L’attitude des Pères du IVe siècle devant les lieux saints et les pèlerinages,” Irénikon 65 (1992): 5–23; idem, “Jérusalem cité sainte? Les hésitations des premiers siècles,” in La Cité de Dieu/Die Stadt Gottes (Tübingen, 2000), 351–65; R. A. Markus, “How on Earth Could Places Become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy Places,” JEChrSt 2 (1994): 257–73. 65 Jerome, Epist. 58.3, pp. 530–31.
74 THE EARLIEST PHASE OF CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE IN THE NEAR EAST your soul is such that the Lord can there reside and move around (2 Cor. 6:16). But if you have the interior man (Rom. 7:22) full of evil thoughts, even if you are on Golgotha, even if you are on the Mount of Olives, even if you are in the tomb of the Anastasis, you are as far from receiving Christ within you as those who have not even begun to confess him.”66 Here the visit of holy places is not condemned, but rather placed in a relative perspective. The same goes for the veneration of relics, though the texts are rare regarding this question. A letter from a bishop of Thessalonike at the beginning of the seventh century yet clearly affirms that the inhabitants of his town were not to arouse their souls to piety through the sight of and contact with relics, but to found their faith on the spirituality of the heart rather than the things of the sensible world.67 The iconoclastic crisis, which attacked both the cult of images and that of relics, doubtless says much about the persistence of such reservations before what may have appeared to many brought up in a tradition of spiritual worship as an excessive materialization of the sacred. It may be noted in conclusion that such spiritual reserve in no way impeded the development of pilgrimage, neither during the first seven centuries nor, a fortiori, later on. This symposium has, I think, revealed something of this richness and diversity. It also made evident, despite some points of difference, the continuity of this phenomenon in the Byzantine world, and the same could doubtless be said about the West. This period of the origins of the practice of Christian pilgrimage has the advantage of letting us examine the emergence of the specifically Christian phenomenon at the time of its first manifestations, while drawing attention to many of the problems that it posed and that were to reappear at several points throughout its history. Université de Paris IV–Sorbonne 66
Gregory of Nyssa, Epist. 2.16–17 (GNO, p. 18; SC, pp. 120–23). On this letter and its posterity, cf. P. Maraval, “Une querelle sur les pèlerinages autour d’un texte patristique (Grégoire de Nysse, Lettre 2),” RHPhR 66 (1986): 130–46. 67 Miracula s. Demetrii, 5.52 (p. 89, ed. Lemerle).
This is an extract from:
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Icons and the Object of Pilgrimage in Middle Byzantine Constantinople ANNEMARIE WEYL CARR
he Diegesis of the famous icon of the Virgin of Kykkos includes a story of a paintermonk named Iakovos.1 In his arduous pilgrimage to the icon of Kykkos, Iakovos is tormented by a demon of doubt that compares his own paintings with the famed icon of Kykkos. We quickly recognize in Iakovos’s self-consciousness of his art the fact that he is a modern figure, an interpolation into the old Narrative. We are far slower to query his act of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage to a great icon of the Mother of God seems thoroughly Byzantine. But is it? My purpose is to probe what we know about icons as the object of pilgrimage in Byzantium, in the interest of asking what we can learn about pilgrimage from the objects to which it was directed. The fulcrum of my inquiry will be the big cults of the Mother of God in Constantinople. They are not unproblematic, for they may prove to have been exceptional, not exemplary, of Byzantium’s cults. I have chosen them nonetheless because the Marian cults have been central to my preconceptions of pilgrimage in Byzantium. They were equally central, I suspect, to the preconceptions of the scholars upon whom I have drawn, and the conceptions of these scholars, in turn, rested upon the reports of yet earlier western Europeans who actually made pilgrimages to Byzantium in medieval times. Central as these cults seem to have been, they offer us remarkably little to look at. We do not know what icons were displayed at their sites, or how those icons looked. What does this absence tells us about icons as pilgrimage objects? Characteristically, as in the case of the Panagia of Kykkos, I have taken as the sign of an icon’s pilgrimage status the existence of icons that replicate it. If an icon is replicated in
T
This article is based on a paper of the same name that I read at the Dumbarton Oaks Symposium on 5 May 2000. I am indebted to Alice-Mary Talbot for the opportunity to participate in the symposium, and I owe thanks as always to the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies for the help of the library and facilities in pursuing my research. 1 Ephraim the Athenian, A Narrative of the Founding of the Holy Monastery of Kykkos and the History of the Miraculous Icon of the Mother of God, trans. A. Jacovljevic´, ed. N. Christodoulou (Nicosia, 1996), 53–54, 93–94. The translation is based on the edition of 1918; the episode with Iakovos had not yet been added to the story in the first printed version of 1751 by Ephraim the Athenian, ÔH Perigrafh; th'" sebasmiva" kai; basilikh'" Monh'" tou' Kuvkkou, h[toi Dihvghsi" peri; th'" qaumatourgou' aJgiva" Eijkovno" th'" ÔÁperagiva" Qeotovkou th'" legomevnh" Kukkiotivssa" (Venice, 1751), and it does not occur in the earlier, manuscript versions of the Diegesis: see C. Chatzepsaltes, “To; ajnevkdoto Keivmeno tou' ∆Alexandrivnou Kwvdiko" 176 (366). Paradovsei" kai; ÔIstoriva th'" Monh'" Kuvkkou,” Kupr.Sp. 14 (1950): 39–69; K. Spyridakes, “ÔH Perigrafh; th'" Monh'" Kuvkkou ejpi; th' Bavsei ajnekdovtou Ceirogravfou,” Kupr.Sp. 13 (1949): 1–28.
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other icons, then its special sacred identity is visible. The greater the degree of the replicas’ identity to one another, the stronger the identity of the replicated icon that stands behind them. Replication as such is as old as the cult of icons itself: already the earliest images not made by human hands, the acheiropoieta, had replicated themselves,2 and the inclusion of what seems to be a donor on one of the Symeon tokens suggests to Gary Vikan that the token’s image replicates a votive icon displayed in the shrine of St. Symeon Stylites the Younger.3 Replication served in each case to authenticate the image. Crucial for us is the nature of the authenticity that was being confirmed. The replication of the acheiropoieta authenticated their sacred authorship; that of the Symeon icon authenticated the clay of the token. In the replicas that interest us, the replication confirms the visual identity of a venerated painting. When did such icons of icons appear? First, however, we should pause to consider the kind of pilgrimage envisaged here. Victor Turner forged the current terminology of pilgrimage.4 It is rooted in the metaphor of the journey, of “being on the way” toward a transformative (in)sight. Capacious as his paradigm is, it is inevitably both late and Western, and I should like to suggest instead a paradigm derived from a ninth-century Byzantine narrative about a major pilgrimage site. This is the story of the miracle at Chonai.5 The story is clearly intended to give pilgrimage status to a great site, but I think it also offers us a paradigm of the pilgrim, in the figure of its protagonist, Archippos. Archippos is not in any literal sense on a journey. Instead, he is in a state of veneration: for sixty years he has tended the shrine of the Archangel Michael. This is his pilgrimage. It culminates when he is invited to avail himself of the access that his loyalty has earned him, and to come into the very presence of the archangel: “Rise, just soul,” the Archangel bids him, “. . . take the access offered you, and come towards me.”6 Now, with synaesthetic intensity, he adores the mighty presence of holy power. More than one who traveled, the Byzantine pilgrim was a proskynetes, one who venerated; the critical movement was over the threshold of access to the one venerated. The space claimed was one less of distance than of presence. Though possible as a metaphor, the journey as such seems to have played a fairly small role in the imaginative terminology of Byzantine pilgrimage, while access and the craving for it played a large one.7 Already in middle Byzan2
See E. von Dobschütz, Christusbilder. Untersuchungen zur christlichen Legende, TU 118 (Leipzig, 1899), 40–60, 123*–134*, 3**–28** on the Kamouliana icon of Christ, and 102–96, 158*–249*, 29**–156** on the Mandylion. On the Mandylion most recently see H. Kessler, ed., The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, Villa Spelman Colloquia 6 (Bologna, 1998). On the role of icons in early Byzantium, see the effective survey of H. G. Thümmel, Die Frühgeschichte der ostkirchlichen Bilderlehre. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Zeit vor dem Bilderstreit, TU 139 (Berlin, 1992), 174–203. 3 G. Vikan, “Icons and Icon Piety in Early Byzantium,” in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. C. Moss and K. Kiefer (Princeton, 1995), 574 and fig. 3, citing a token in the Menil collection in Houston, Texas, that includes the figure of a certain Konstantinos. 4 V. W. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York, 1978). 5 M. Bonnet, Narratio de miraculo a Michaele Archangelo Chonis patrato, adiecto Symeonis Metaphrastae de eadem libello (Paris, 1890); G. Peers, Subtle Bodies. Representing Angels in Byzantium (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2001), 157–76, 179–86. 6 Bonnet, Narratio, 15:4 and 11: ajnavsta dikaiva yuchv . . . lavbe parrhsivan tou' ejlqei'n prov" me. I am indebted to Peers, Subtle Bodies, 159, for the interpretation of the word parresia, so basic to my understanding of the story. 7 The contrast between Western and Byzantine paradigms of pilgrimage will no doubt acquire sharper definition in the body of papers assembled in this volume. Defining the character of Byzantine pilgrimage has already engaged scholars fruitfully. See E. Patlagean, “Byzantium’s Dual Holy Land,” in Sacred Space. Shrine, City, Land, ed. B. Z. Kedar and R. J. Zwi Werbowsky (New York, 1998), 112–26, esp. 114; E. Malamut, Sur la
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tine times, proskynetai were people at shrines or mindful of them, quite regardless of the length of the literal journey that might have brought them there. Eventually, in postByzantine times, “pilgrimage” would denominate even so circumscribed an act as the purchase of a paper icon, for the “countless proskynetai” described in Diegeseis like that of the Kykkotissa must have been not so much actual travelers to the holy icon as people who became its venerators by buying one of the engraved replicas sold for alms by its mendicant monks. In the ensuing discussion, then, “pilgrims” will be people appealing to sites of sacred intervention, and their journeys will assume varied, even metaphorical, forms that are defined less by the act of travel than by the state of being at the place in which access is sought. THE CONSTANTINOPOLITAN ICONS A locus classicus of the Constantinopolitan pilgrimage icons is a panel of the twelfth century at Mount Sinai that shows, above thirty-six scenes of the miracles and Passion of Jesus, a sequence of five images of the Mother of God (Fig. 1).8 The central one, the Virgin of the Burning Bush, most probably refers to the monastery on Sinai itself,9 and the panel was probably commissioned for Sinai by the priest who crouches at this figure’s feet. The remaining images are all labeled with names that we associate with miracle-working images in Constantinople: Blachernitissa, Hodegetria, Hagiosoritissa, Chemevti. These images line up above an exceptionally long cycle of Jesus’ miracles: eighteen of the thirtysix vignettes show miracles. With its long sequence of miracle scenes, the icon seems to be a kind of mandala of the miraculous, a pilgrimage in paint, and it is hard not to read its four named Virgins as pilgrimage sites themselves, replicas of miracle workers marking the major Marian pilgrimage sites in the City. The icon is not, however, so simple a piece of evidence. This is indicated already by the route des saints byzantins (Paris, 1993), 147 and passim; P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient. Histoire et géographie. Des origines à la conquête arabe (Paris, 1985); idem, “Fonction pédagogique de la littérature hagiographique d’un lieu de pèlerinage. L’example des Miracles de Cyr et Jean,” in Hagiographie. Cultures et sociétés. Actes du colloque organisé à Nanterre et à Paris (2–5 mai 1979) (Paris, 1981), 383–97; B. Menthon, Une terre de légendes. L’Olympe de Bithynie. Ses saints, ses couvents, ses sites (Paris, 1935). I believe it would be useful to watch more attentively the kinds of metaphors that gather around pilgrimage in Byzantium: metaphors of pilgrimage and pilgrimage itself as a metaphor. What are the Byzantine counterparts, for instance, to Marcabru’s image of the lavador in his great Cantiga Pax in nomine Domini? See E. Lommatzsch, Provenzalisches Liederbuch. Lieder der Troubadours mit einer Auswahl biograph. Zeugnisse, Nachdichtung und Singweisen zusammengestellt (Berlin, 1917), 15–17. The force of such metaphors was driven home to me when I discovered that the strong, visual image of pilgrimage with which Michael Psellos concludes his description of St. George Mangana in E. R. A. Sewter’s translation of the Chronographia—“It was as if a pilgrimage had ended, and here was the vision perfect and unparalleled”—is in fact not really Psellos’s, at all, which reads: kai; w{sper ejpi; peperasmevnh" kinhvsew" mhde;n ei\nai to; ejpevkeina tw'n oJrwmevnwn e{kasto" w\/eto. See Michael Psellus, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, trans. E. R. A. Sewter (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1966), 191; Michel Psellos, Chronographie ou histoire d’un siècle de Byzance (976–1077), 2 vols., ed. and trans. E. Renauld (Paris, 1928), 2:63, ¶187, lines 17–18. 8 G. A. Soteriou and M. Soteriou, Eikones tes Mones Sina, 2 vols., Collection de l’Institut français d’Athènes 100, 102 (Athens, 1956, 1958), 1: fig. 125, 2:146–47, and in color in A. Cutler and J. M. Spieser, Byzance médiévale, 700–1204 (Paris, 1996), pl. 310. See also the fine details in M. Vassilaki, ed., Mother of God. Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, catalogue of exhibition at the Benaki Museum, Athens, 20 October 2000–20 January 2001 (Milan, 2000), pls. 85, 87, 88. 9 K. Weitzmann, “Loca Sancta and the Representational Arts of Palestine,” DOP 28 (1974): 53 on the types of the Virgin associated especially with Sinai.
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image of the Blachernitissa (Fig. 2). The name Blachernitissa, of course, refers to Blachernai, for centuries the most potent site of Mary’s presence in Constantinople.10 It is a name that appears on icons of Mary, suggesting that they portray the icon of the Virgin that summed up the site.11 But the name turns out to accompany not one but a range of iconic types, as illustrated here in Figures 2, 3, and 4. Among them this particular type, with Mary caressing a standing Child, is extremely unusual.12 Without the name, we would not identify it with Blachernai. The name, in short, seems to invoke not an icon as such, but a site: a site whose power and charisma had not been crystallized in any one image, but could be attached by way of the name to any number of images. Certainly imperial visits to the church at Blachernai took the emperors past several venerated icons.13 With this, the identity of some one great pilgrimage icon at Blachernai becomes elusive. No less complicated is the figure of the Hagiosoritissa (Fig. 6). The Hagiosoritissa is supposed by many scholars to have been the icon of Mary resident in the reliquary shrine or “Soros” at the Chalkoprateia church, the second greatest Marian church in Constantinople.14 An icon in Cyprus roughly contemporary with the Sinai one and labeled originally with the same name exhibits the same posture as is shown on the icon at Sinai,15 offering some support to the idea that the name may in fact identify a specific image in this case. Informed speculation can readily confect an icon at Chalkoprateia of much the form exhibited here, as Sirarpie Der Nersessian did on the basis of the marble relief at Dumbarton Oaks.16 This figure can readily be paired as a petitioner or intercessor with a figure of Christ, as in fact one often finds on the piers of Byzantine churches from the end of the eleventh century onward.17 The Christ in these cases is sometimes labeled “Antiphonetes,” or Responder. Antiphonetes is the name linked with a famous and ancient icon housed in 10 On Blachernai see most recently C. Mango, “The Origins of the Blachernai Shrine at Constantinople,” in Acta XIII Congressus Internationalis Archaeologiae Christianae, Split-Porecˇ (25 September–1 October 1994), 3 vols. (Vatican City–Split, 1998), 2:61–76 with earlier bibliography. 11 The Virgin in a frontal orante position is labeled “Blachernitissa” on several mid-11th-century coins: see A. W. Carr, “Court Culture and Cult Icons in Middle Byzantine Constantinople,” in Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204, ed. H. Maguire (Washington, D.C., 1997), 87 note 36. The profile orante Virgin on the Maastricht enkolpion may have been labeled “Blachernitissa”: see H. C. Evans and W. D. Wixom, eds., The Glory of Byzantium. Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era A.D. 843–1204, catalogue of exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 11 March–6 July 1997 (New York, 1997), 166, no. 113; and an 11th-century seal published by G. Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, 2: Numbers 1–1089, ed. J. Nesbitt (Bern, 1984), 272, no. 522, uses the name “Blachernitissa” to label an orante Virgin with Christ en buste in a medallion on her breast. 12 On this iconographic type see Nano Chatzidakis, “A Fourteenth-Century Icon of the Virgin Eleousa in the Byzantine Museum of Athens,” in Byzantine East, Latin West (as above, note 3), 495–500, esp. 496 with discussion of an icon of this iconographic type from Bacˇkovo dated 1310/11 that again bears the label “Blachernitissa.” 13 Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae, PG 112:1021–28: whether the episkepsin in the reliquary church of the Virgin’s veil at Blachernai was an icon is unclear, but it is clearly followed by references to other icons of the Theotokos: one outside the metatorikion where the silver cross is (1021C); a silver icon in the bath to the right of the piscina (1025A); another silver icon in the right apse over the piscina (1021B); and a marble icon from whose hands water flows (1028A). 14 S. Der Nersessian, “Two Images of the Virgin in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection,” DOP 14 (1960): 77–78. 15 A. Papageorgiou, Icons of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1991), 9, pl. 3; S. Sophocleous, Icons of Cyprus, 7th–20th Century (Nicosia, 1994), 77, no. 4, pl. 4. 16 Der Nersessian, “Two Images of the Virgin,” 77–86. 17 Ibid., 81, citing especially the eastern piers of the church of the Panagia tou Arakos at Lagoudera, Cyprus, on which a figure of Mary in the profile orante posture faces a figure of Christ labeled oJ ∆Anthfonivth". See A. Kazhdan and H. Maguire, “Byzantine Hagiographical Texts as Sources on Art,” DOP 45 (1991): 15 and figs. 25–26.
1
Icon with five icons of the Mother of God and scenes of the miracles and Passion of Christ, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan–Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)
2
Icon with five icons of the Mother of God, detail: The Blachernitissa, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan–Princeton– Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)
3
Silver two-thirds miliaresion of Constantine IX with the Mother of God Blachernitissa, Dumbarton Oaks
4
Lead seal of John PrvtoprÒedrow ka‹ §p‹ t∞w basilik∞w sak°llhw, with the Mother of God Blachernitissa, Zacos Collection, Bern (after G. Zacos, Byzantine Lead Seals, vol. 2 [Bern, 1984], 522)
5
Aspron trachy nomisma of Theodore Doukas, with the Mother of God Hagiosoritissa on the obverse, Dumbarton Oaks
6
Icon with five icons of the Mother of God, detail: The Hagiosoritissa, Mount Sinai (photo: Michigan– Princeton–Alexandria Expedition to Mount Sinai)
7a
Enamel enkolpion with St. Demetrios, exterior, Dumbarton Oaks
7b Enamel enkolpion with St. Demetrios, interior showing the saint in his tomb, Dumbarton Oaks
8
Icon of the Mother of God Zoodochos Pege, Byzantine Museum, Nicosia (photo: Cultural Foundation of Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus)
9
Hagioi Theodoroi, Mistra. Line drawing of fresco of the Mother of God Zoodochos Pege (after G. Millet, Monuments byzantins de Mistra [Paris,1910], pl. 90.2)
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its own chapel at Chalkoprateia.18 One could, then, imagine them united—the Hagiosoritissa and Antiphonetes—as responsive name icons of Chalkoprateia. But problems quickly arise. First, though many pilgrims went to the Chalkoprateia church to venerate Mary, not a single pilgrim speaks of a great icon of Mary there;19 pilgrims speak instead of Mary’s relics, and about the icon of Christ Antiphonetes. Antiphonetes in this case, however, means “Guarantor”: the icon guaranteed a series of loans for a merchant named Theodore. The Guarantor stood above the altar of its own chapel, and so in a central place that would not readily accommodate a second icon of Mary.20 The Guarantor had a long history of attentive visitation, and though we do not hear of deliberate votive journeys to it, it is far more nearly a pilgrimage object in its own right than an icon of Mary at Chalkoprateia. Second, the name Hagiosoritissa is not exclusively wedded to this image. Numismatic images labeled Hagiosoritissa show Mary not only as a profile but as a frontal orante,21 in some cases spreading her arms over a circuit of walls (Fig. 5).22 Far more than Chalkoprateia, Blachernai was linked by both legend and location with the walls of Constantinople. Blachernai, as well as the Chalkoprateia, had a Soros with Marian relics. Thus “Hagiosoritissa” could refer to the Soros not at Chalkoprateia, but at Blachernai.23 That two of the images on the Sinai icon should refer to Blachernai is not impossible. Blachernai was a complex site. There were in fact a number of significant icons at Blachernai. We have seen that the emperors venerated several icons during their ceremonial visits in the tenth century. Though the locations, functions, and very existence of Blachernai’s icons varied from one period to another, we gather that when the Sinai icon was made in the early twelfth century, there was at least one icon of special note in the Soros and one of note in the main church, one a panel painting and one a marble relief.24 This said, however, it was only at limited periods in Blachernai’s history that any of these icons assumed visibility in the pilgrimage visitation of the site. The most identifiable is the veiled icon of the “usual miracle,” attested during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.25 Its spectacular Friday night manifestations drew crowds—unquestionably including many pilgrims— and were reported as far away as western Europe.26 However, Friday night spectacles had been a feature of Blachernai for centuries already, centering not upon icons but on other
18
C. Mango, The Brazen House. A Study of the Vestibule of the Imperial Palace of Constantinople (Copenhagen, 1959), 142–48; Kazhdan and Maguire, “Byzantine Hagiographical Texts,” 15–16. 19 As is in fact noted by Der Nersessian, “Two Images of the Virgin,” 78. 20 Mango, The Brazen House, 146. Cf. the paper by J. Cotsonis in this volume. 21 The frontal orante labeled “Hagiosoritissa” is seen in the coins minted during the 13th century in Thessalonike for Theodore Doukas: see M. Hendy, DOC 4.2:551 and pl. XXXVIII. 22 T. Bertelé, “La Vergine aghiosoritissa nella numismatica bizantina,” REB 15 (1958): 233–34. For an especially impressive reproduction of a coin with the Hagiosoritissa spreading her arms over a circuit of walls, see Vassilaki, ed., Mother of God, 369, no. 53, a hyperpyron of Andronikos II Palaiologos now in the Benaki Museum, Athens, inv. no. 31544. 23 ˇevcˇenko, “Virgin Hagiosoritissa,” ODB 3:2171. This is suggested by N. P. S 24 K. N. Ciggaar, “Une description de Constantinople dans le Tarragonensis 55,” REB 53 (1995): 121–22, in which a Latin priest visiting Constantinople around 1100 speaks of a “Dei genetricis sancta et venerabilis ycona aurea” in the Soros that makes the weekly miracle, and a “Dei genetricis ycona marmorea non manufacta sed nutu divino operata”—that is, an acheiropoietos—in the main basilica. 25 See J. Cotsonis, “The Virgin with the ‘Tongues of Fire’ on Byzantine Lead Seals,” DOP 48 (1994): 221–27, and V. Grumel, “Le ‘miracle habituel’ de Notre-Dame des Blachernes à Constantinople,” EO 30 (1931): 129–46. 26 Grumel, “Le ‘miracle habituel,’” 129–35.
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events: a weekly procession to Chalkoprateia;27 weekly meetings of the confraternity overseeing the healing bath;28 and the imperial ceremonies at the Soros.29 It is these, and not the “usual miracle,” that form the staple of pilgrims’ accounts of the site. Anthony of Novgorod, for instance, speaks only of relics there.30 He does describe the site as “Blachernai on which the holy spirit descended.”31 This is often regarded as a reference to the “usual miracle.” Michael Psellos had said of the “usual miracle” that it was “a true prodigy and indeed the descent of the holy spirit.”32 The belief that Blachernai was a place where the holy spirit descended makes its appearance as early as the tenth-century Lives of Andrew Salos and Eirene of Chrysobalanton,33 but in neither of these cases is there any intimation that its descent was associated with an icon. Thus it seems that Blachernai had been a site of ceremonies evoking the spirit’s descent for centuries. Only at a certain phase of its history, however, had this descent been embodied in a ritual centered upon a particular icon. We do not know how that icon looked, and we have no evidence that it was ever regarded as constituting the source or even the symbol of Blachernai’s special potency. The strength of the Mother of God of Blachernai far superseded any one icon or symbol of her presence. It is impossible to identify an icon in the images bearing its label. It is hard in these circumstances to see in the Sinai icon a portrait of the icon—or even the icons—that constituted the object of pilgrimage to Blachernai. “Blachernitissa,” and even “Hagiosoritissa,” seem far more likely to evoke sites—as the Virgin of the Bush between them also does— than to quote specific great icons. The third of the four named icons is the Chemevti. An icon of similar name, meaning enameled, is cited in Constantine VII’s Book of Ceremonies,34 but we know nothing more about it and no pilgrim account speaks of it. This leaves us with the Hodegetria.35 The image on the Sinai icon exhibits the posture we identify with the great icon of that name, and pilgrims from the twelfth century onward offer us ample evidence about the Hodegetria’s prominent public life. A particularly good description of the weekly procession of the Hodegetria is given by the Latin author of a description of Constantinople from around 1100.36 He describes the hymns and crowds, tells us that other icons joined in the procession, preceding the Hodegetria like handmaidens (quasi famulas),37 and says that when the procession passed the chapel of Christ— ˇevcˇenko, “Icons and the Liturgy,” DOP 45 (1991): 50–52. N. P. S A. Dmitrievskii, Opisanie liturgicheskikh rukopisei, 3 vols. (repr. Hildesheim, 1965), 2:1042–52, drawing on Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Coislin 213, of 1027. 29 See note 13 above. 30 Anthony of Novgorod, trans. George Majeska, typescript. 31 Ibid. 32 Grumel, “Le ‘miracle habituel,’” 137: paravdoxon kai; tou' qeivou pneuvmato" a[ntikru" kavqodo". 33 L. Rydén, “The Vision of the Virgin at Blachernae and the Feast of Pokrov,” AB 94 (1976): 63–82; J. O. Rosenqvist, The Life of St. Irene Abbess of Chrysobalanton. A Critical Edition with Introduction, Translation, Notes and Indices (Uppsala, 1986), 58–59. 34 Constantine Porphyrogennetos, Constantine VII Porphyrogénète. Livre des cérémonies, ed. A. Vogt, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Paris, 1967), 1:158. 35 On this great icon see most recently C. Angelidi and T. Papamastorakis, “The Veneration of the Virgin Hodegetria and the Hodegon Monastery,” in Mother of God (as above, note 8), 373–87, and R. Cormack, Painting the Soul. Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds (London, 1997), 58–64 and passim. 36 Ciggaar, “Une description,” 127, lines 349–76. 37 Ibid., 127, line 359. 27 28
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perhaps that of the Responder nearby at the Chalkoprateia—the Hodegetria of its own accord would bow to her son.38 That other icons joined the Hodegetria’s procession is clear from various indications.39 At the same time, with its retinue of what must have been other icons of Mary—since they were handmaidens, not male retainers—the Hodegetria’s procession reminds one of the procession on the fifteenth of August in Rome, which was joined on its journey toward the meeting of Christ and Mary by the Marian icons of the eighteen Diakoniae of Rome.40 At the culmination of this procession the great Marian icon of the Salus Populi Romani bowed to the icon of her son. The detail of the Hodegetria’s bow is recorded only in the one text of 1100, and it seems to be a reflection of the author’s own, Western understanding of an urban icon procession. It implies that the Hodegetria’s procession became linked in his mind with the icon processions of Rome. In both Rome and Constantinople, the pageantry of the icon processions became a magnet for pilgrims. But there is a difference. Scholars have suggested a genesis for the icon processions of Rome that was deeply rooted in the uneasy relationship of city and papacy within Rome itself.41 We have no comparable insight at all into the genesis of the Hodegetria’s procession. We have simply assumed that the Hodegetria was a great pilgrimage object that was paraded at weekly intervals in the city. In fact, we have no idea how the procession originated. It is altogether unclear how the Hodegetria itself was related to the healing spring at the monastery that housed it; we do not know how—if it was related to the spring—it liberated itself from the spring to become an object in its own right; perhaps above all in the context of the current inquiry, we cannot say whether the procession was directed initially to a pilgrim audience or was colonized by pilgrim attention as time went on. The Sinai icon is very early among the sources we have about the Hodegetria’s autonomy as a public figure, and it is not at all clear at this point how that autonomy emerged. In sum, the Sinai icon reflects a bouquet of epithets and images honoring Mary, so suggesting icons that served not as accessories to a site but as objects of pilgrimage in their own right as the icon of Kykkos was. Yet it is only the Hodegetria that can be identified as an icon of an icon; the other images seem to function above all through their names, which refer less to images than to sites. What, then, can we learn from them about icons as objects of pilgrimage? ICONS AND PILGRIMAGE That icons were densely woven into the rituals of pilgrimage in the Byzantine world is perfectly clear. One sees this in at least five ways. First, the one we most often think of is the icon as a marker, identifying a sacred person or place. This is exemplified by the many shrines that were marked with an icon of the person whose relics were venerated there.
38
Ibid., 127, lines 370–75. See the reference in the narrative of the Maria Romaia charging this icon’s confraternity with the obligation of bringing it to join the other icons in the Tuesday processions of the Hodegetria in E. von Dobschütz, “Maria Romaia. Zwei unbekannte Texte,” BZ 12 (1903): 202. 40 H. Belting, “Icons and Roman Society in the Twelfth Century,” in Italian Church Decoration of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, ed. W. Tronzo (Baltimore, Md., 1989), 27–41. 41 Ibid., 40 and passim. 39
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Paradigmatic was the shrine of Artemios in St. John Oxeia in Constantinople, with icons of Artemios and Christ at the top of the stairs leading to the crypt where the relics were.42 The icon of Artemios marked the way to the saint literally, and also psychologically by putting visitors in mind of the saint whom they would meet in very fact in the entombed relics below. Thus clothed in his image, Artemios could meet his petitioners more compellingly. In one instance a miraculous cure was described as being effected by way of the icon itself rather than by the relics below.43 But usually it is the relics that supplicants seek; the animated figure of the saint himself, recognizable by his kinship to the icon, appears to them as they sleep there and effects the often starkly physical cure that they seek. A similar disposition of icon and relic seems to have characterized the shrine of St. Nikon of Sparta;44 the icon of Hosios Loukas is over the site where his relics were lodged;45 and funerary icons, too, performed in this way. How intimately image and relic might be associated is illustrated by the fourteenth-century St. Athanasios, patriarch of Constantinople, whose icon was painted inside his coffin lid, conjuring the compelling scenario of corpse and effigy side by side.46 This relationship of icon to pilgrimage object might be summed up visually in the enameled lockets of St. Demetrios (Figs. 7a, b).47 The locket bears the icon of the saint and evokes his presence. But the icon is not alone. Behind the image, inside the locket, is a relic: a relic of Demetrios’s myron set in a model of his tomb. If the image evokes and identifies Demetrios’s power, it is the relic that embodies it. It is the tomb and its myron, not the image, that would be the object of a pilgrimage journey. Occasionally we hear of devotees who profess that simply seeing a saint’s image is contact enough for their faith, but this is rare; more often, seekers resembled the blind man at St. Athanasios’s tomb. His prayer was to see the icon, but his pilgrimage brought him to the relics, and he gripped the saint’s coffin as he prayed.48 In their strong bond to the tangible relic, these Byzantine icons retain much of the referential role assigned to the images adorning pilgrim tokens in late antiquity.49 There, too, the image put the token’s owner in mind of the saint, while the material of the token effected the contact with the saint’s healing power. What distinguishes the two eras is less the autonomous power of the icon than the physical division of image and material relic. Second, icons served to disseminate the saint from the site of her or his tomb or relic. For the pilgrim, this often took the form of a remembrance, as in the tokens that pilgrims 42 The Miracles of St. Artemios: A Collection of Miracle Stories by an Anonymous Author of Seventh-Century Byzantium, ed. V. Crisafulli and J. Nesbitt (Leiden, 1997), 17 and passim. See also C. Mango, “On the History of the Templon and the Martyrion of St. Artemios at Constantinople,” Zograf 10 (1979): 40–43, and P. Maas, “Artemioskult in Konstantinopel,” BNJ 1 (1920): 377–80. 43 The Miracles, 218–19, miracle 43. Here a mother thanks the icon for her son’s cure. 44 Kazhdan and Maguire, “Byzantine Hagiographical Texts,” 14–15; D. F. Sullivan, The Life of Saint Nikon (Brookline, Mass., 1987), 215, in which a monk seeking Nikon’s intervention sees himself at the top of the western stairway of Nikon’s monastery, where there are icons of Nikon himself and Christ Antiphonetes. 45 Kazhdan and Maguire, “Byzantine Hagiographical Texts,” 15. 46 A. M. Talbot, Faith Healing in Late Byzantium. The Posthumous Miracles of the Patriarch Athanasios I of Constantinople by Theoktistos the Stoudite (Brookline, Mass., 1983), 26. 47 Evans and Wixom, eds., The Glory of Byzantium, 167–68, nos. 116, 117, with earlier bibliography, esp. André Grabar, “Un nouveau reliquaire de saint Démétrios,” DOP 8 (1954): 305–13. 48 Talbot, Faith Healing, 81. 49 See Vikan, “Icons and Icon Piety,” 573: “the image brings the saint, and the blessed substance—and not the icon itself—brings the cure.”
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took with them.50 Once again, such remembrances could often in themselves serve as potent objects, saving their owner from the vicissitudes of life or of the journey. But they were enabled in this by their contact—the pilgrim’s actual contact, or the tokens’ implicit contact—with the saint’s presence at the pilgrimage site from which they were brought. Along with tokens, painted panels—and eventually engraved prints—served a similar purpose. Third, the icon could function as a votive gift or gesture. This might take the form of a graffito incised into an image already at the pilgrimage site, like those studied by Nicole Thierry and Catherine Jolivet-Lévy in Cappadocia.51 The image was, after all, a marker, which one could appropriate with one’s own mark. Or it might be a new icon given to the site to mark in perpetuity one’s own being there.52 Both the remembrance—whether pilgrim token or painted icon—and the votive image play into the fourth role of the image in pilgrimage, and this is as a stimulus to pilgrimage. Knowing through an image about a saint or an exceptional intervention could prompt a pilgrimage.53 This was true in a literal sense. But we often see it metaphorically, too. Thus, among the most gripping stories of an icon’s prompting pilgrimage is that of St. Leontios of Jerusalem.54 On the icon shelf of a priest who took him in as a wandering seeker, Leontios saw a small icon of the infant Christ. The icon moved him profoundly, prompting him to take it with him to a lonely mountaintop, where he spent three days of agonizing ascesis beseeching Christ’s direction in his spiritual quest. The icon became the metaphor for Leontios’s decision to redirect his spiritual journey. A similar role is played by the icon of Symeon the New Theologian in several posthumous miracles that can be exemplified by the story of a middle-aged man of substance led by a pilgrimage to abandon his life in the world and become a monk in Symeon’s monastery.55 But soon a demon of 50 Middle Byzantine pilgrim tokens are far less numerous than late antique ones, though 10th-century Symeon tokens are discussed by Vikan, “Icons and Icon Piety,” 576, and a group of some 170 surviving glass medallions, many of Venetian manufacture, are often identified as pilgrim tokens. On this latter group of objects see D. Buckton, “The Mass-Produced Byzantine Saint,” in The Byzantine Saint, ed. S. Hackel (London, 1981), 187–88; M. Vickers, “A Note on Glass Medallions in Oxford,” JGS 16 (1974): 18–21; H. Wentzel, “Das Medallion mit dem hl. Theodor und die venezianischen Glasplasten im byzantinischen Stil,” in Festschrift für Erich Meyer (Hamburg, 1959), 50–67, who gives a catalogue of 157 examples; and M. C. Ross, DOCat 1:87–91 on the medallions in the Dumbarton Oaks collection. D. Buckton, ed., Byzantium. Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections, catalogue of exhibition at the British Museum, London, 1994 (London, 1994), 187–88, nos. 202 and 203, includes 12th-century pilgrim ampullae from Jerusalem, but while it can well be argued that such objects spring from a Middle Eastern tradition, their 12th-century revival surely depended more heavily upon the Latin revival of pilgrimage to Jerusalem than upon Byzantine habit. 51 N. Thierry, “Remarques sur la pratique de la foi d’après les peintures des églises rupestres de Cappadoce,” in Artistes, artisans et production artistique au Moyen-age. Colloque international, ed. X. Barral y Altet, 3 vols. (Paris, 1990), 3:703–30; C. Jolivet-Lévy, “Çariklı Kilise, l’église de la précieuse croix à Göreme (Korama), Cappadoce: une fondation des Mélissènoi?” in EÁYÁCIA. Mélanges offerts à Hélène Ahrweiler, 2 vols., Byzantina Sorbonensia 16 (Paris, 1998), 1:301–12. 52 See the many icons at Sinai showing the standing Virgin with the Child before her chest accompanied by a standing figure that Kurt Weitzmann regards as likely to have been votives: Weitzmann, “Loca Sancta,” 53, figs. 48–51. 53 Certainly this was the case in post-Byzantine times with the paper icons; in Byzantine times see Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos’s comment that he learned of a 12th-century cure at the healing spring of the Theotokos tes Peges by seeing an icon that commemorated it: A. M. Talbot, “Epigrams of Manuel Philes on the Theotokos tes Peges and Its Art,” DOP 48 (1994): 161 note 119. 54 D. Tsougarakis, The Life of Leontios Patriarch of Jerusalem. Translation, Commentary (Leiden, 1993), 36–37. 55 Nicétas Stethatos, “Vie de Syméon le Nouveau Théologien (949–1022),” ed. and trans. I. Hausherr and G. Horn, OrChr 12 (1928): 207–11.
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envy overcame him, and he saw Symeon’s icon taunting and making faces at him. Clearly, the man’s monastic profession had been prompted by a vainglorious infatuation with his own presumed spirituality. Symeon’s taunting visage showed him that he must shed his affectation and begin the pilgrimage of his monastic profession over again. Finally, in the fifth place, we have the icon as a surrogate for pilgrimage. A beautiful example of this is offered by the story in the Life of St. Nikon of Sparta of the young monk who prays to Nikon before an icon in his cell that he might be relieved of a terrible illness of the jaw.56 Thus praying, he falls asleep and sees himself standing before the icons of Nikon and Christ the Responder at the top of the western stairway in the church of Nikon’s monastery. A voice from the icon of Nikon tells the youth to drink the oil from the lamp in front of it; as he reaches toward it, the lamp tips and tumbles its full contents into his mouth. As it does, he awakens and finds himself before the icon in his cell, the lamp before it still full and untouched, and his jaw healed. The icon in this case enabled the journey, as if miraculously snapping closed the locket of image on the one hand, and pilgrimage site on the other. In each of these roles there were opportunities for the icon to mediate the efficacity of the object of pilgrimage. Often, icons at the site of a saint’s relics would become themselves active, forming a focus of activity and a proof of successful contact with the saint. The oil of their lamp might prove to be inexhaustible, or curative, or fragrant;57 the cord holding the lamp might prove to have remarkable capabilities;58 the icons might speak;59 the eyes might move.60 Such manifestations were surely directly related to pilgrimage, either as responses to successful pilgrim visitations or as ploys to attract pilgrims. By the same token, images at a pilgrimage site often acquired their own stories, as the icons in Hagia Sophia did for the Russian pilgrims.61 Such embellishments show us that images were expected to be avenues of contact with the divine. In some cases, where there were not relics, an icon might come by a process of elision to stand for a site, as in the case of the icon of St. Michael the Archangel tou Eusebiou, adjacent to healing springs in Constantinople, that drew pilgrims because the oil of its lamp was regarded as thaumaturgic.62 But these embellishments do not tell us that the icons in question were themselves the object of the journeys that brought people to them. They were avenues or accessories to the object. An especially vivid insight into the relationship of icon and relic is offered by the Life of St. Theodora of Thessalonike. Already before her death, Theodora’s icon flowed with fragrant oil, and in time many cures were effected by it. Recurrently, however, the accounts of the cures refer 56
Sullivan, The Life of Saint Nikon, 214–16. A vivid example is offered by the lamp burning before the icon of St. Theodora of Thessalonike, cited in note 63 below. 58 See the description of an icon of St. Stephen in Hagia Sophia by Anthony of Novgorod (as in note 30 above). Sufferers from headache could assuage their pain by wrapping around their heads the hemp from the cord that held the lamp in front of the icon. 59 Ibid.: see the icon of the four-fingered Christ, who scared its iconographer to death by reprimanding him. 60 Ciggaar, “Une description,” 123–24, esp. lines 207–11 with the oft-told and oft-varied story of the icon that turns its eyes to the faithful servant of a powerful man. 61 See in particular Anthony of Novgorod’s descriptions of icons in Hagia Sophia, sketched on pp. 80–81 above. 62 Pantaleon, “Narratio Miraculorum Maximi Archangeli Michaelis,” in PG 140:573–92; Peers, Subtle Bodies, 154–56, 186–87. 57
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back to the relics of the saint.63 The icon was auxiliary to the relics; without them it would not have functioned. What, then, of that sixth kind of pilgrimage function: the icon as the object of its own pilgrimage cult? How tantalizing the evidence about icons can be is illustrated by the cult at the church of the Virgin Pege in Constantinople, so beautifully reconstructed by Alice-Mary Talbot.64 The components just inventoried are all there. There is the pilgrimage objective: the healing spring, placed under the care of Mary, as the healing springs of Blachernai and the Hodegon had been, as well. There are images of Christ and Mary that acquire special capabilities: as Talbot has pointed out, Leo VI’s mistress Zoe is supposed to have been enabled to conceive the future Constantine VII by placing around her own body a string that had been measured around an image of the Virgin in the underground sanctuary of the Pege. There are votive images: Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos reports miracles of which he says he learned through the votive images at the shrine that recorded them. There was an identifying name for the presence of Mary at the Pege: he Zoodochos Pege. Natalia Teteriatnikov has shown that an image of Mary associated with that name must have begun to take shape in the years between 1306 and 1311, when the shrine was rebuilt after the stairs leading to the spring collapsed under the press of a particularly heavy crush of pilgrims, but that it was only toward the end of the century that the now-familiar iconography of the orante Virgin with the Child on her breast rising from a chalicelike fountain surrounded by swimmers emerged: an example of the image still in its formative phase is offered by the late fourteenth-century mural painting at the church of the Saints Theodore in Mistra (Fig. 9).65 A panel painting of much the same date in Cyprus is the earliest portable icon I know that is labeled with this name (Fig. 8).66 Its iconography is quite different, however, with Mary folding her Child to her heart above haloed, half-length forms of the apostles Peter, Paul, and John, Rather than constituting an icon of an icon, it suggests once again a case in which the power of the site is carried by way of the name. Only slowly did a consistent iconography of the Virgin of the Pege impose itself. Many of the Russian pilgrims who visited Constantinople also visited the Pege.67 But not a single one 63
On the icon see A. M. Talbot, ed., Holy Women of Byzantium. Ten Saints’ Lives in Translation (Washington, D.C., 1996), 210–11, ¶54 (online at http://www.doaks.org/talbch7.pdf ). For the relation of its oil to the relics of the saint, see for instance the cure of a “certain distinguished and honorable woman” who “took in her hands the vessel containing the oil as if it were the blessed herself or one of her relics” (¶56, p. 212), or the statement of the vita’s author that by recounting one of Theodora’s miracles “I propose to make known that, just as she fulfills expediently the requests of those who come with pure testimony of their conscience to the abundant fountain of blessings (I am referring to her living relics, from which the grace of her miracles gushes forth like a river and encompasses all the land), and also of those who invoke her greatly desired name from a distance, in the same way she leads those who are dubious about her blameless life away from their lack of faith in her, as out of the depths of the sea” (¶58, p. 214). Here the imagery of gushing beneficence, applicable to the oil, is applied to the relics as if to show the auxiliary role of the icon that yields the oil. 64 Talbot, “Epigrams of Manuel Philes,” 135–65. 65 N. Teteriatnikov, “The Virgin Zoodochos Pege. The Origin of the Image,” paper read at the international conference Mother of God, 12–14 January 2001, the Benaki Museum, Athens. 66 Athanasios Papageorgiou, He Autokephalos Ekklesia tes Kyprou. Katalogos tes Ektheses. The Autocephalous Church of Cyprus. Catalogue of the Exhibition, Byzantine Museum of the Cultural Foundation of Archbishop Makarios III, Nicosia, 15 September–15 October 1995 (Nicosia, 1995), 142. 67 G. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, DOS 19 (Washington, D.C., 1984), 325.
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of them speaks of a major icon there; they all speak of the spring. All of the evidence from pilgrim visits focuses on the spring. People brought to incubate are brought to the spring; the people hurt when the throng of pilgrims caused a structural failure were crowded on stairs leading down to the spring. There were surely one if not more icons of Mary at the Pege. But the role of the image seems not to have been as an object of pilgrimage. Its importance seems to have been quite other: to clothe the capabilities of the spring in a conceivable form for those who were not there—to function, in short, as a stimulus to, or a surrogate for, pilgrimage. Linking named icons to the great Marian shrines of Constantinople, as the icon at Sinai had seemed to do, has proved in the end to be unexpectedly difficult, challenging the belief that icons constituted the goal of pilgrimage in these places. They turn attention back to the pilgrimage sources to see the ways in which icons actually do relate to sites in them. I have tried to survey two kinds of sources: the reports of long-distance pilgrims, for which I am deeply indebted to Krijnie Ciggaar and George Majeska,68 and hagiographic narratives.69 In the inventories of the long-distance pilgrims, the accounts of icons are notable for two features. One is the degree to which the icons they cite function not as images but as objects. The icons are characterized on the one hand by stories and on the other hand— often in addition—by secretions: usually of oil, blood, or water. The icon stories eddied like leaves in autumn among the churches of the city, gathering around the icons now in one place, now in another, with minor variations, shifting as one site or another appropriated and sought distinction through them. Icons that had been attacked by Jews, icons that had spoken, icons that had wept or been rescued appear in varying avatars and are duly noted by pilgrims. Rather than the images, it is the stories that are replicable and recognizable, and it is they that lend specialness to the panels in which they come to roost. Without the stories, the panels would revert to mere images again; with them, they have the capacity to mark the special sanctity of the sites or shrines they occupy. The effluvia, in turn, concretize the blessings of that site, and it is they—not replicas of the icons—that are carried away by eager pilgrims as memoria and memorabilia. It is in much this way that the icons cited by the late twelfth-century Anthony of Novgorod functioned.70 He tells us that he kissed the Hodegetria in the palace, but otherwise, excepting his passing references to the Guarantor, the Mandylion, and an icon in the palace that spoke to a priest, the icons that figure in his account are all in Hagia Sophia. The relic of Christ’s tomb slab is the first object of his veneration in Hagia Sophia; the very next is an icon: the icon of the all-holy Mother of God wounded by a Jew. Of this, Anthony reports that he kissed the blood that flowed from it. Then he describes an icon of the Mother of God that wept, the tears flowing from her eyes into those of her son. Water from her weeping was available to all for anointing. Having passed the four-fingered Christ and an icon of Boris and Gleb where painters exchange icons, he then arrives at an icon of St. Stephen with a lamp that one can draw up in front of it. People with eye afflictions bind 68 See Ciggaar, “Une description” (as above, note 24); eadem, “Une description de Constantinople traduite par un pèlerin anglais,” REB 34 (1976): 211–67; eadem, “Une description anonyme de Constantinople du XIIe siècle,” REB 31 (1973): 335–53; and Majeska, Russian Travelers. 69 In stalking these, one owes a great debt of gratitude to A. P. Kazhdan, The List of Saints of the 1st–10th Centuries in a Chronological Order, 3 vols. (unpublished typescript, Dumbarton Oaks, 1993). 70 See the translation by George Majeska (as above, note 30).
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their head with the hemp that is used to draw up the lamp, and their eyes are cured. This is followed by the icon from Beirut that bled. Recurrently, what focuses Anthony’s interest and veneration is the tangible by-product of the icon—blood, water, hemp. It is this that constitutes its memory, and no doubt that was also taken home as a remembrance. To replicate the icon itself would have been gratuitous. A comparable account is given already in the seventh century by Arculf, who reports seeing a small panel with a bust of Mary that a Jew had thrown in a privy.71 He does not say where he saw it. The icon thrown in an unseemly place is among the most recurrent stories of pilgrim lore. In this case, the icon exuded oil, of which Arculf says, “This marvelous oil proves the honor of Mary the Mother of Jesus.” The oil, then, validated not the efficacy of the icon, but the honor of Mary herself. It was surely oil that Arculf took away as his pilgrim’s blessing, and the oil stood as an attestation of the sanctity of Mary. As also for Anthony, a replica of the icon was not important. Its role was not as a spectacle, but as a vehicle for a physical blessing. This challenges our belief that spectacles as such—even such spectacular ones as the “usual miracle”—could serve the pilgrim as a fully meaningful goal. Long-distance pilgrims inventoried their experiences by collection, not by item, and it is hard to say for certain whether a figure like Anthony of Novgorod was drawn to Hagia Sophia for the sake of the site as a whole or for the sake of one or more items within it, like icons. Nonetheless, it is notable—and this is the second striking aspect of the long-distance pilgrims’ accounts—how rarely such pilgrims ever comment on a site for the sole sake of its icon. This is never the case with Blachernai, the Chalkoprateia, or the Pege, as we have seen; even in the case of the Hodegetria, we hear of the processions but not of votive journeys to the monastery where it was housed; and it is perhaps notable that the notorious “spurious letter of Alexios I” inventorying the holy objects of Constantinople includes no icons at all.72 It is only in the fourteenth century that we encounter pilgrims who clearly visited places for the sake of their icons. It is at this point that we hear of pilgrim visitations to the icon at the church of the Virgin ton Kyrou, for instance,73 though the icon itself figures already in middle Byzantine texts;74 Russian pilgrims also visit a site on the walls along the Golden Horn because an image of the Guarantor could be seen.75 We are indebted for these written accounts to long-distance pilgrims, most of them foreigners to Byzantium. They offer invaluable documentation. The vast bulk of pilgrim traffic must, however, have been short-distance pilgrims, local inhabitants drawn by personal need to nearby points of holiness. These people did not inventory their experiences, 71
J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), 115, ¶5.1–9. E. Joranson, “The Spurious Letter of Emperor Alexius,” AHR 55 (1949–50): 813–15. 73 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 329–30, citing Ignatius of Smolensk and the Russian Anonymous. 74 Niketas Choniates, O City of Byzantium. Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. H. J. Magoulias (Detroit, Mich., 1984), 107, reports the dream of a certain Mavropoulos in which the icon of the Mother of God in the church of the Virgin ton Kyrou implores the military saints to protect Constantinople but finds them unwilling to do so (Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. J. van Dieten, 2 vols., CFHB 11 [Berlin, 1975], 1:190–91). Yet far earlier is an incident in which St. Artemios cures an ailing child whose mother had taken him to the church of the Mother of God ton Kyrou, on the grounds that—as St. Artemios explains to her—“Christ our God, born of the Theotokos, this very One heals you.” See The Miracles of St. Artemios (as above, note 42), 98–101, miracle 12. An icon may have provided a focus for such petitions at the church ton Kyrou. 75 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 356–60. 72
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and we must rely for glimpses of them upon other kinds of texts. Saints’ lives offer vivid insights into religious behavior, as we have already seen in cases drawn from the vitae of St. Theodora of Thessalonike, St. Nikon of Sparta, and St. Leontios of Jerusalem; especially valuable are the compilations of miracle stories that gathered around healing shrines like those of Sts. Artemios, Nikon of Sparta, Loukas of Stiris, Symeon the New Theologian, or, later, St. Eugenios in Trebizond.76 For all their documentary vividness, however, these sources have significant drawbacks. They are often sketchy, barely describing the journeys either of the saints’ devotees or of the saints themselves when they visited holy sites: Cyril the Phileote’s biographer, for example, tells us that Cyril went each Friday to Blachernai.77 But he does not explain with any specificity what drew him there, making it impossible to guess whether his goal was a liturgy, a spectacle, a meeting of a confraternity, or the opportunity to venerate a great miracle-working icon of Mary. More significantly, when the vitae move into the narration of a saint’s posthumous activity at his or her cult site, they and their miracle compilations are bound by the need to cycle the saint’s capabilities back to the sponsoring institution of the cult site itself. Under these conditions icons are unlikely to be conceded autonomous cults of their own, but are firmly controlled as mediators of the site and its relics. What one craves under these conditions are compilations of miracles devoted to a great icon rather than a great saint. Such compilations are well known in the post-Byzantine centuries; the Diegesis of the Kykkotissa cited at the opening of this article is an example. In Byzantium itself, however, such compilations are exceedingly rare. Their rarity in itself must be a testimony to the rarity of autonomous cult icons. When, then, did these appear? OUTSIDE CONSTANTINOPLE: THE EVIDENCE OF THE HOLY LAND Contrasting with the Constantinopolitan accounts of Marian icons are the late twelfthcentury descriptions of two icons in the Holy Land. One of these is the “incarnate” icon at Saidnaya near Damascus.78 Saidnaya had, indeed still has today, an icon of the Virgin Mary that had developed breasts—they felt like leather, according to a Latin visitor— 79 and the breasts exuded holy oil. Especially on Marian feasts it attracted pilgrims of every religious persuasion, Muslim as well as Christian, who gathered at Saidnaya to receive a blessing of the oil, as many as five thousand taking away oil in a day. As in the pilgrim accounts of icons 76
On the miracle accounts see esp. H. Delehaye, “Les recueils antiques des miracles des saints,” AB 38 (1925): 1–85, 305–25; and V. Déroche, “Pourquoi écrivait-on des recueils de miracles? L’example des miracles de Saint-Artémios,” in Les saints et leur sanctuaire: textes, images, monuments, ed. C. Jolivet-Lévy, M. Kaplan, J. P. Sodini, Byzantina Sorbonensia 11 (Paris, 1993), 95–116. For the 14th-century miracles of St. Eugenios, see J. O. Rosenqvist, The Hagiographic Dossier of St. Eugenios of Trebizond in Codex Athous Dionysiou 154 (Uppsala, 1996). The miracles of Artemios, Nikon, Loukas, and Symeon the New Theologian are cited in notes 42, 44, 45, and 55 above. 77 E. Sargologos, La Vie de saint Cyrille le Philéote, moine byzantin (†1110). Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes, SubsHag 39 (Brussels, 1964), 83, ¶14:1: Filekklhvsio" de; w]n oJ o{sio" kai; filovqeo" tetuvpwke kata; Paraskeuh;n to;n ejniauto;n a{panta eijsevrcesqai pezh' ejn Kwnstantinoupovlei kai; th;n ejn Blacevrnai" Devspoinan hJmw'n Qeotovkon proskunei'n kai; kataspavzesqai kai; meta; th;n sumplhvrwsin th'" nukterinh'" doxologiva" ejpanevrcesqai oi[kade. 78 D. Baraz, “The Incarnated Icon of Saidnaya Goes West,” Le Muséon 108 (1995): 181–91 with earlier bibliography, above all P. Peeters, “La Légende de Saïdnaya,” AB 25 (1906): 137–57. 79 H. Michelant and G. Raynaud, eds., Itinéraires à Jérusalem (Geneva, 1882), 173–74, quoting the Anonymous continuator of William of Tyre.
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in Constantinople, the benefaction of the icon here is a tangible one, and it is the little vials of oil, not the image as such, that were said in the Middle Ages to dot the relic collections of western Europe. Nonetheless, what stands out in the case of the Saidnaya icon is the clear centrality of the panel itself. It was not to Saidnaya, but to the icon that pilgrims came. It is precisely this situation that is so curiously hard to find in the reports of middle Byzantine Constantinople. Equally notable is a second report by a Holy Land pilgrim from the late twelfth century. In the apse of a small vaulted chapel at the desert monastery of Calamon, the Greek pilgrim John Phocas saw, as he says: “a picture of the Virgin with the Saviour Christ in her arms, being in form, colour, and size like that of the Hodegetria in the imperial city. There is an ancient tradition that it was painted by the hand of the Apostle and Evangelist St. Luke; and what tends to corroborate this story are the frequent miracles wrought by the picture, and the thrilling perfume which proceeds from it.”80 Two features of John’s description stand out. One is the panel’s identity in form, color and size to the Hodegetria. This is an icon confirmed in its specialness not by its readily recognizable icon story, but by its readily recognizable resemblance “in form, colour, and size” to a great icon. It is known by its appearance. It is an icon of an icon. The other feature that stands out is the character of the panel’s blessings: its sweet odor and miracles. These stand as surety not of the honor of Mary, as Arculf had said, but of the efficacy of the panel itself, a work of St. Luke. CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE MARIA ROMAIA The two Holy Land accounts illustrate attitudes that had proved unexpectedly hard to find in the pilgrimage accounts of Constantinople, and especially in the accounts of its Marian shrines. These include on the one hand the summing up of the pilgrim’s goal in a particular icon, and on the other the summing up of the icon’s efficacy in the spectacle of its own recognizable and replicable image. Each of these is integral to the Marian icon cults of late and post-Byzantium. But how characteristic were these of middle Byzantine pilgrimage sites? In Constantinople itself, it is the Hodegetria, cited within John Phocas’s text, that most answers these criteria. There surely were other icons with similar appeal. This is indicated by the story of an icon known as the Maria Romaia. Its narrative is preserved in a manuscript of the eleventh or twelfth century.81 The story of Maria Romaia accompanies four other icon stories—of the Mandylion, the Guarantor, the icon wounded by an Arapes (a Blackamoor or bogeyman), and the bleeding icon of Beirut—and it takes as its core yet another classic story: that of the icon that sailed to Rome to avoid Iconoclasm. But uniquely in this case, the classic kernel is then carried on into the present day, and we hear of the icon’s ongoing miracle-working activity, managed by a confraternity whose members orchestrated showy public exorcisms before it.82 The icon’s beneficiaries very clearly came to it, not to its church or to a relic, and they joined, as well, in public cere80
J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099–1185 (London, 1988), 331, ¶24.2–4. Dobschütz, “Maria Romaia,” 173–214. The manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, gr. 1474, is assigned by Dobschütz (p. 192) to the 11th century and by Albert Ehrhardt to the 12th century: see N. P. ˇevcˇenko, “Servants of the Holy Icon,” in Byzantine East, Latin West (as above, note 3), 549 note 17. S 82 ˇevcˇenko, “Servants of the Holy Icon,” 549, and A. W. Significant portions of the text are translated in S Carr, “The Mother of God in Public,” in Mother of God (as above, note 8), 329. 81
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monies when the Maria Romaia was taken by its confraternity to join the Hodegetria’s Tuesday processions. No surviving icon that I know bears the name of the Maria Romaia, and the panel’s image is not known. Thus we cannot tell if it was replicated in other icons that drew for their reputation upon the form of the miracle-working original. Its Diegesis is strikingly similar to those of the shrines of saints; it closely resembles also the narratives of the later and postByzantine pilgrimage icons. Its purpose, like theirs, was surely to market its cult. It is, however, unique in middle Byzantine sources; even the story of the Hodegetria is presumed to have taken shape only later, in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries.83 More than a long-established phenomenon, then, the Maria Romaia’s narrative may reflect a hagiographic genre that was fairly new when it was transcribed in the late eleventh or twelfth century. Like the Holy Land accounts, it suggests that the later eleventh and twelfth centuries may have marked a phase in the formulation of the cult icon. CONCLUSION In 1328 after ascending to the purple the emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos made a pilgrimage to an icon of the Mother of God, an acheiropoietos housed in Hyrtakion near Kyzikos.84 By the fourteenth century, we are in a world dotted with pilgrimage icons. It is these that figure in Nicolas Oikonomides’ memorable article on the holy icon as an asset;85 the great named icons of post-Byzantine pilgrimage, too, are emerging into visibility. The icons of Megaspilaion, of Soumela, of Kykkos, of Karyes, of Pelagonia can all be traced back to the mid-fourteenth century.86 Like the icons on the Sinai panel, these have names of their own. But in contrast to the ones on the Sinai panel, they also have distinctive forms, that get closely repeated in replicas. These are, then, not simply names that carry the power of a place; they are icons that get replicated in other icons. And they make an appeal through their replicas and their narratives to pilgrims. And so we return to our central question: what can we learn about icons that take a place as primary objects of pilgrimage cult? Perhaps a first lesson is how significantly pilgrimage sites were places to be, rather than things to see. Though the Constantinopolitan sites in particular were richly encrusted with spectacle, from splendid buildings to spectacular tricks like weeping, bleeding, or metamorphosing icons, spectacle in itself was rarely if ever an adequately meaningful experience, and in most of what we have seen the pictures were at best secondary: mediators 83
C. Angelidi, “Une texte patriographique et édifiant: le ‘Discours narratif ’ sur les Hodègoi,” REB 52 (1994): 132, which assigns the formulation of the Hodegetria’s story to the 13th century. 84 Dobschütz, Christusbilder, 84. 85 N. Oikonomides, “The Holy Icon as an Asset,” DOP 45 (1991): 35–44, esp. 39–43. 86 On the Megaspilaiotissa see the chrysobull of John VI Kantakouzenos dated 1350 and addressed to the “venerable Peloponnesian monastery of my queen, known by the name of the honored and all-pure Lady and Mother of God called Megaspilaiotissa”: F. Miklosich and J. Müller, Acta et Diplomata Monasteriorum et Ecclesiarum Orientis, 5 vols. (Vienna, 1887), 5:191. On the Pelagonitissa see G. Babic´, “Il modello e la replica nell’arte bizantina delle icone,” Arte cristiana 76 (1988): 61–78. The icon of Soumela is cited in the chrysobull of 1365 of Alexios III Komnenos (1349–90): E. T. Kyriakidos, ÔIstoriva th'" para; th;n Trapezouvnta iJera'" basilikh'" patriarcikh'" stauropigiakh'" Monh'" th'" uJperagiva" Qeotovkou th'" Soumelav (Athens, 1898), 65–66. The Karyiotissa, or Axion Estin, has been cleaned and is believed to be an icon of around 1300: K. Chrysochoides, G. Tavlakes, and G. Oikonomake-Papadopoulou, Tov “Axion ∆Estivn. Panagiva hJ Karuwvtissa. ÔH ∆Efevstia Eijkovna tou' Prwtavtou (Mount Athos, 1999), 19–23 and passim. I am working on a study of the Kykkotissa.
ANNEMARIE WEYL CARR
91
of the more tangible objects of pilgrimage that were in turn the mediators of the holy. Only in special circumstances did they become autonomous mediators of the holy in their own right, as pilgrimage objects. These special circumstances were certainly complex, and some were surely operative at all times. Determinative was the icon’s autonomy, standing for itself rather than as the adjunct of a relic or spring. Absence of relics must have made it far easier for elisions of site and image. A good early example of this process may be the icon of the Archangel Michael at St. Michael tou Eusebiou, in which journeys to a healing spring became elided as journeys to the icon, whose lamp effected cures.87 Angels were particularly apt candidates for such elisions because they did not have relics. Above all, of course, it was the Mother of God who figured in this way. It is she who figures in all of the icons listed just above as great pilgrimage objects. In this respect, the icon from Mount Sinai on which the beginning of this article was focused is important: its icons were all icons of the Mother of God. But I think that time, too, played a role in these special circumstances. There is a pattern in time in the instances of icons that function as goals of pilgrimage, and icons that are known by their appearance rather than their stories or effluvia, that suggests a shifting history of the icon itself. Even so famous an object as the Mandylion, after all, assumes visibility only at certain periods, and is notably fugitive as an image in the pilgrim reports before the twelfth century. The icon of the Guarantor, too, though its history is full of problems, seems to offer itself in history first as a story and a name, then from the late eleventh century on as a name attached to an image, though not necessarily to the same image, and finally in the fourteenth century as an image as such: an icon of an icon, that was visited on the walls along the Golden Horn. The images of the Mother of God, too, trace much the same chronological pattern, emerging in the eleventh century as bearers of names, appearing then as objects of public cult, and taking preeminence finally in the fourteenth century as named icons of consistent form and significant pilgrimage attention. In this respect, the icon at Sinai is notable, for it appears in the twelfth century when this process was very much under way. The panel with the five icons of Mary at Sinai may be indicative in a second way, as well. This is suggested by the form of the figure labeled “Blachernitissa.” Traditionally, the images bearing this label assumed an orante form: occasionally the profile orante, more often the frontal orante with arms open to either side, and sometimes the frontal orante with the medallion of Christ superimposed on the breast.88 John Cotsonis and Bissera Pentcheva have both interpreted these images as visual expressions of the enspirited icon, the icon upon which the Holy Spirit has descended.89 They have associated this enspiriting with the term empsychos. “Empsychos” begins to figure in descriptions of icons in the second half of the eleventh century—most notably in Michael Psellos’s description of the “usual miracle” quoted earlier90—and continues to be used in the twelfth century.91 The figure on the icon at Sinai does not assume any of the orante guises. Instead, it 87
See note 62 above. See note 11 above. 89 Cotsonis, “The Virgin with the ‘Tongues of Fire’” (as above, note 25); B. Pentcheva, “A New Image of the Virgin in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Constantinople,” BSCAbstr 25 (1999): 34. 90 See note 32 above. 91 H. Belting, Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. E. Jephcott (Chicago, 1994), 261–62. 88
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ICONS AND THE OBJECT OF PILGRIMAGE IN CONSTANTINOPLE
displays a posture of tender maternal intimacy, with Mary caressing a youthful Child who moves eagerly toward her embrace. In its tenderness, the posture reflects the qualities of emotive warmth and humanity that had first led Hans Belting to single out the term empsychos and introduce it to art historical discourse.92 Little links Cotsonis’s and Pentcheva’s use of empsychos—as filled with the spirit of God—with Belting’s interpretation of the term—as filled with the feeling of human vulnerability—except the capacity of the image in each case to move the viewer. This said, it is clear in the history of Marian veneration that the elaborate ceremonies of enspiriting like the “usual miracle” cease to be cited after the first half of the twelfth century, and tenderly expressive forms of the Mother of God come ever more to dominate Marian iconography.93 In essence, the space of enspiritment has shifted, from a famous site to the space hallowed by the relation of the icon to its viewer. The “usual miracle” had offered its icon as the spectacular expression of the sanctity of a long-hallowed setting; the emotionally affecting icons extend an invitation to the one venerating to “come in” to their own emotive space and share that feeling. One can certainly not claim that this shift caused a shift in the pilgrimage function of icons. Artistic forms far more often reflect than inflect their viewers’ behavior. Yet the change might serve as a correlative: an expression of shifting strategies of engagement with the icon, and especially of engagement with those icons that could claim as their own the space of special and intense veneration. Through the novel form of its “Blachernitissa,” the panel with the five Virgins registers this shift in the icon’s claim to identification with the space of veneration. Accordingly, it emerges not as a simple illustration of a long-established pilgrimage habit in Constantinople, but as a view into a development in progress. Just what the forces were that were driving this development remain to be explored. But I think we can ask one final question. Why have we believed so firmly that the great Marian shrines of Constantinople were characterized above all by spectacular icon cults that drew pilgrims from far and wide? Here, I think, it might be worth noting that the most vivid middle Byzantine accounts of these shrines are those of the Western pilgrims. It is they, too, who have played such a central role in our research. They gave us the Turners’ paradigm of pilgrimage, as the journey toward the transforming (in)sight. They were the pilgrims most vividly struck by the icon spectacles. And they were pilgrims who went to see. The icon spectacles of the City may well have made a more indelible impact on them than on the icon-inured Orthodox pilgrims, who came to be in the City’s great sites, as much as to see its sights. Southern Methodist University 92
Ibid. On the “usual miracle” see Grumel, “Le ‘miracle habituel,’” 141; on the iconography of Mary see in particular C. Baltogianne, Eijkovne". Mhvthr Qeou' brefokratouvsa sthvn ∆Ensavrkwsh kaiv to Pavqo" (Athens, 1994). 93
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2002 © 2003 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America
www.doaks.org/etexts.html
Russian Pilgrims in Constantinople GEORGE MAJESKA
n anno domini 1200, Dobrinia Iadreikovich, scion of a wealthy Novgorod merchant family (and soon to be archbishop of Novgorod under his new monastic name, Anthony), visited Constantinople, as he puts it, “by the grace of God and with the aid of St. Sophia, that is to say, of Wisdom, the ever-existent Word” (so states his record of his visit to the city).1 His detailed record of his pilgrimage fills thirty-nine printed pages and records his visits to some seventy-six shrines in the “city guarded by God,” as well as another twenty-one in the city’s suburbs. His list of relics preserved in and around the city rivals in size the lists of sacred booty exported to the West in the wake of the Fourth Crusade, which saw the looting of the city just four years later.2 Although it is quite possible that Anthony’s trip to Constantinople was not purely for spiritual refreshment (his subsequent appointment as archbishop of Novgorod, the second see of the Church of Rus’, suggests that he was probably involved in some ecclesiastical politics at the Patriarchate), his notes de visite are clearly of a pilgrim nature, and, indeed, the work he authored has come down to us under the title Kniga Palomnik, “Pilgrim Book.” In fact, Anthony’s description of the shrines of the Byzantine capital is the most complete such medieval work preserved. Unfortunately for those interested in the topography of Byzantine Constantinople, however, Anthony’s notes seem to be in no recognizable order,3 suggesting that the author made only brief on-site notes and wrote up his “Pilgrim Book” later, perhaps after returning to Russia (leading at least one scholar who has studied this text to suggest that the pages of the prototype manuscript must have somehow gotten out of order 4). Despite its geographical imprecisions, Anthony’s text stands as a marvelous catalogue of what at-
I
1 Кига ало ик, ка аи т вят во Цар град Атоия Ари и коа овгород кого в 1200 годu, ed. H. M. Loparev, PPSb 51 (St. Petersburg, 1899), 1. On the biography of the author see ibid., “Introduction,” i–vii ff. See also K.-D. Seemann, Die altrussische Wallfahrtsliteratur (Munich, 1976), 213–21. 2 Cf. P. Riant, Exuviae sacrae constantinopolitanae, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1877–78); F. de Mély, Exuviae sacrae constantinopolitanae. La croix des premiers croisés—la sainte lance—la sainte couronne (Paris, 1904); A. Frolow, Les reliquaires de la Vraie Croix, AOC 8 (Paris, 1965). I am currently preparing a new edition of the Old Russian text of the “Pilgrim Book” of Anthony of Novgorod with English translation and commentary. In the meanwhile, on the relics recorded in Constantinople by this Russian visitor, see G. Majeska, “Russians and the Relics of Constantinople,” Во точори тиа ки р ликвии (Moscow, 2002) (in press). 3 Except for the opening and closing sections of the narrative which treat St. Sophia and the Imperial Palace churches, and the shrines of the outlying suburbs, respectively. See recently on this subject A. Berger, Untersuchungen zu den Patria Konstantinupoleos. Poikila Byzantina 8 (Berlin, 1988), 160–61. 4 See J.-P. Arrignon, “Un pèlerin russe à Constantinople: Antoine de Novgorod,” in Toutes les routes mènent à Byzance, ed. J. Baschet et al. (St.-Denis, 1987), 36. In Кига ало ик, “Introduction,” cxxxi–cxxxii (but see
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RUSSIAN PILGRIMS IN CONSTANTINOPLE
tracted pilgrims to this sacred city. Studying Anthony’s list of holy shrines and pious relics along with more or less contemporary works of Western pilgrimage should give us a good idea of exactly what it was that attracted pilgrims to the Byzantine capital in the century or so before the Latin conquest. If one compares the Russian Anthony text with the original Mercati Anonymus text, the longest and most detailed of the three extant contemporary Western descriptions of the shrines of Constantinople, one finds that the Latin text includes only twenty of the seventy-six religious shrines mentioned by the Russian enumeration.5 The two other contemporary Latin descriptions are much, much shorter.6 The Russian pilgrim text is obviously much fuller in detail. The Great Church, the church of the Holy Wisdom (ÔAgiva Sofiva) was clearly the central and most important religious edifice in the city, to judge from both the Russian text and the three Latin descriptions of Constantinople preserved from approximately the same period. All of these texts mention visiting St. Sophia; it was normally the first stop on the pilgrims’ holy rounds. St. Sophia was, of course, the patriarchal and imperial cathedral for the whole Byzantine Christian world, and a veritable treasure trove of relics could be seen there. But, interestingly enough, the church itself, as a building, seems also to have been an object of devotion to the pilgrims. Unlike the churches of the other great pilgrimage centers of the Christian world (the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, St. Peter’s in Rome, and the cathedral of St. James at Compostela, for example), the religious value of the building was not a specific single relic (Christ’s tomb, Peter’s or James’s body), but was actually the sacred edifice itself. Thus Anthony of Novgorod begins his description of the shrines and relics of Constantinople with the phrase, “First we venerated St. Sophia,” just as a fifteenth-century Russian pilgrim, the monk-deacon Zosima, begins, his recital of a visit to the city with the words, “First I venerated the holy Great Church of Sophia,” and only then begins his litany of miraculous images and holy relics.7 The description of the church of St. Sophia with its relics makes up by far the longest section in Anthony’s text, listing forty-six sacred relics, only ten of which the Mercati text notes (although the two shorter Western texts from this period add three more).8
also ibid., xxviii–lxiv and 43–69), on the other hand, the editor, Khrisanf Loparev, attempts to establish the author’s itinerary by rearranging posited leaves in the original manuscript. 5 And twenty-four not noted by Anthony, including three Latin establishments. See the newly edited expanded, fuller, and probably original, Mercati text, “Une description de Constantinople traduite par un pèlerin anglais,” ed. K. Ciggaar, REB 34 (1976): 211–67 (hereafter “Description anglaise”). The editor is clearly correct (ibid., 211–38) that the text is a translation from Greek, albeit the work of a Westerner interested in the holy sites of the city; see Berger, Untersuchungen, 155–59. 6 But include three more shrines not noted by Anthony. See “Une description anonyme de Constantinople du XIIe siècle,” ed. K. Ciggaar, REB 31 (1973): 335–54 (hereafter “Description anonyme”), and “Une description de Constantinople dans le Tarragonensis 55,” ed. K. Ciggaar, REB 53 (1995): 117–40 (hereafter “Description tarragonne”). 7 Кига ало ик, 2; G. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, DOS 19 (Washington, D.C., 1984), 183. 8 For an analysis of the relics recorded by the Russian visitors to Constantinople, see Majeska, “Russians and the Relics of Constantinople” (in press). The Mercati text also lists ten relics not mentioned by Anthony. On the church of St. Sophia, see W. Müller-Wiener, Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls: Byzantion—Konstantinupolis—Istanbul bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1977), 84–96, and R. Janin, La géographie ecclésiastique de l’empire byzantin, I. Le siège de Constantinople et le patriarcat oecuménique, 3, Les églises et les monastères, 2d ed. (Paris, 1969), 455–70 (hereafter Églises CP).
GEORGE MAJESKA
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The longest section in the Mercati Anonymus, on the other hand, is that dealing with the imperial palace’s Pharos church of the Mother of God, where most of the Passion relics of Christ were shown. Here the relic list of the Mercati work is much longer than that of Anthony (fifty compared to twenty-three), and, although the Mercati text lacks six of the twenty-three sacred objects listed by the Russian source, it includes thirty-three not mentioned by Anthony.9 The availability of a relic inventory of the church’s treasury, like the one penned by Nicholas Mesarites ca. 1200,10 to which both pilgrim catalogues bear some resemblance, would explain the unexpected similarity of the two texts and the detailed nature of the English work. In the nearby Nea church in the palace, to the contrary, Anthony records thirteen sacred relics of various sorts; the Mercati text mentions only four of them.11 This latter general pattern of recording relics is preserved in the two texts’ treatments of the other sanctuaries of the imperial city: Anthony listing more relics than the Western texts do.12 At the Stoudios monastery, for example, the Mercati text records five of the eight relics listed by Anthony.13 A similar ratio holds for the monastery of St. George at the Mangana.14 The church of the Holy Apostles held seventeen important relics according to Anthony of Novgorod, but the Mercati text lists only eleven.15 On the other hand, both narratives record the same three saints interred at the shrine of the Prophet Daniel.16 There are, of course, several ways to analyze these data. One can argue that these religious institutions (along with several others mentioned by both Russian and Western texts, such as the church of Sts. Sergios and Bacchos, the monastery of Sts. Kosmas and Damianos, the martyrion of St. Euphemia, and the monastery of St. John the Baptist at Petra) held an ecumenical attraction in the period before the Fourth Crusade. One might also be tempted to differentiate between Eastern and Western tastes in Constantinopolitan shrines, but it is equally possible that the differences between the number of shrines visited and relics catalogued in the texts from different cultures might reflect nothing more than the level of tour the authors took, with Anthony on the “personalized special deluxe tour” (and seeing both more shrines and more relics in each shrine) and the Mercati author, for example, cataloguing only the regular tour (and visiting fewer shrines and seeing fewer relics at each shrine). But militating against such a prosaic analysis is what the two Кига ало ик, 18–19; “Description anglaise,” 245–46. On the Qeotovko" tou' Qavrou church, see Janin, Églises CP, 232–36. 10 Cf. A. Heisenberg, Nikolaos Mesarites: Die Palastrevolution des Johannes Komnenos, Programm des K. Alten Gymnasiums zu Würzburg (Würzburg, 1907), 29–31. 11 Кига ало ик, 19–21; “Description anglaise,” 246. On the Neva church, see Janin, Églises CP, 361–64. 12 Major exceptions to this rule are two important shrines of the Mother of God visited by both Anthony and the Mercati Anonymus, the Chalkoprateia and Blachernai sanctuaries, where both texts record the same number of relics, but not necessarily the same relics: Кига ало ик, 21; “Description anglaise,” 250–55, 260. On these churches see Janin, Églises CP, 237–42, 161–71. Note that although Anthony lists relics that are known to have been in both shrines, he incorrectly assigns them all to the Blachernai church (further evidence that he did not write up his notes “on the spot”). 13 Кига ало ик, 22; “Description anglaise,” 262; on the Stoudios monastery, see Janin, Églises CP, 430– 40. 14 Anthony three; Mercati two; Кига ало ик, 23; “Description anglaise,” 250; on the Mangana monastery of St. George, see Janin, Églises CP, 70–76. 15 Кига ало ик, 24–25; “Description anglaise,” 258; on the Apostles church, see Janin, Églises CP, 41–50. 16 Кига ало ик, 27; “Description anglaise,” 262; the Russian work, however, also notes minor relics there. On the Prophet Daniel shrine, see Janin, Églises CP, 85–86. 9
E
(45)
(47) (46)
N
(48) (49) 50 51
GALATA (31)
G
D (44) (43)
O
(30) (29) 28
32 33
E
L
D
(52)
E
N HO RN
(54) (53) (55) (56)
E (69) (71)
34
(70)
B
(40)
(41) 27 (25?)
(38)
15 (42)
(37)
(39)
D
20
14
C
(22) (21) 19
(23)
36
D
26 (35)
13
(18) 17 16
24
(67) (68) (64)(66) 61 60 A➔ 57 (58) (62) (63) 59 (65) 1 (9) (10)
(12)
11
KEY TO MAP SHRINES IN CONSTANTINOPLE VISITED BY RUSSIANS DURING THE 14TH AND 15TH CENTURIES
1 St. Sophia Church 9 Justinian Column 10 Imperial Palace Chalke Gate 11 Great Palace 12 Palace Nea Church 13 Hippodrome 14 St. Euphemia Martyrion 15 Constantine Column 16 SS. Sergios and Bacchos Church 17 Kontoskalion Harbor 18 St. Demetrios monastery 19 Jewish Gate on the Propontis 20 Arcadios Column 21 St. Athanasios monastery 22 Secular Church 23 “Righteous Judges” statues 24 Peribleptos monastery 25 Povasil’ias convent (?) 26 Stoudios monastery 27 St. Anastasia’s relics 28 Pantokrator monastery 29 Apolikaptii monastery 30 St. Constantine convent 31 Kecharitomene convent 32 Holy Apostles Church 33 Kyra Martha convent 34 Lips convent 35 St. Diomedes Church 36 St. Andrew in Krisei convent 37 St. Andrew Salos monastery 38 St. Eudokimos convent 39 St. Tarasios’s relics
40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71
St. Euphemia’s body “tå mikrå ÑRvma¤ou” convent Pege monastery Prophet Daniel’s tomb “tå KÊrou” Church SS. Kosmas and Damianos monastery Blachernai Shrine St. Nicholas Blachernai Church St. Nicholas Petra convent St. John Baptist Petra monastery Pammakaristos monastery St. Theodosia Church St. Stephen Shrine Basilike market St. Nicholas Basilike Church Basilike Frankish Church Guarantor Savior St. Eirene Church Iterapiotica convent Hodegetria monastery St. George Mangana monastery Filãnyrvpow Mangana Church Perec convent t∞w Panaxrãntou monastery t∞w Pantanãsshw convent St. Lazaros monastery St. Cyprian the Sorcerer monastery St. Andrew Salos monastery St. Panteleemon’s Head convent Mighty Savior convent St. Stephen Mangana monastery St. Barbara Church
Note: Key numbers in parentheses on the map indicate a nonspecific location at the site. Map and key numbers after G. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1984)
TABLE 1. PILGRIMAGE SHRINES AND RELICS OF THE 12TH CENTURY AS NOTED BY ANTHONY AND WESTERN VISITORS 1. Shrines *** St. Sophia
** Holy Apostles Church Blachernai Church Pharos Church
* Church of St. Anastasia Chalkoprateia Church SS. Kosmas and Damianos monastery Shrine of Prophet Daniel Martyrion of St. Euphemia Church of the Forty Martyrs St. George Mangana monastery
Church of SS. Gourias, Samonas and Abibus Hodegetria monastery Tomb of Prophet Isaiah St. John the Baptist Petra monastery Tomb of St. Juliana Nea Church Pantokrator monastery Church of St. Photina Church of St. Procopios Church of the Resurrection Oratory of Samson Church of SS. Sergios and Bacchos Stoudios monastery
2. Relics *** True Cross Crown of Thorns Holy lance Sandals of Christ
** Basin of Christ’s foot washing Swaddling clothes of Christ Gold of Magi Stabbed icon of Christ Nails from Crucifixion Holy reed of Christ Purple robe of Christ Scarf of Christ Sponge from Crucifixion Sudarion image of Edessa Tunic of Christ Wellstone of Samaria Girdle of Mother of God Robe of Mother of God Staff of Mother of God
Veil of the Mother of God Table of Abraham Body of St. Andrew the Apostle Head of St. Babylas Body of Emperor Constantine Body of Daniel the Prophet Sheepskin of Elias the Prophet Cranium of St. George Body of St. Gregory Nazianzen Body of St. Helen Tomb of St. James the Apostle Bust of St. John the Baptist Right hand of St. John the Baptist Body of St. John Chrysostom Body of St. Joseph Stoudites Body of St. Luke the Apostle Rod of Moses Body of St. Niketas
Note: Number of asterisks denotes number of mentions by Western visitors.
Wooden cross made from Noah’s ark Head of St. Paul Hand of St. Procopios Body of St. Romanus Tomb of Symeon the Prophet Body of St. Timothy Body of St. Theodore Stoudites Relics of St. Theodore Tyron Tomb of Zacharias
* Boards of Christ’s tomb Cross the height of Christ Seals of Christ’s tomb Stabbed icon of Mother of God Icon of Mother of God, speaking to St. Mary of Egypt Trumpets of Joshua Blood and milk of St. Panteleemon
TABLE 2. POPULAR PALAIOLOGAN PILGRIMAGE SHRINES WITH RUSSIAN VISITORS Mentioned by Shrine
Armenian Anonymous 1
Westerners
1. 5 Russian visitors St. Sophia Holy Apostles Church Blachernai Church Monastery of Christ Filãnyrvpow Shrine of the Prophet Daniel Hodegetria monastery St. John the Baptist Petra monastery Pantokrator monastery Peribleptos monastery Stoudios monastery
4
yes 3 4
yes yes
2
yes yes 2
4
yes yes
2 2
yes
2. 4 Russian visitors SS. Kosmas and Damianos monastery St. George Mangana monastery Kyra Martha monastery Church of St. Theodosia Monastery of the Virgin t∞w Panaxrãntou
3
yes
yes 3. 3 Russian visitors
Column of Constantine the Great St. Lazaros monastery tå Mikrå ÑRvma¤ou monastery Pammakaristos monastery Monastery of the Virgin t∞w Pantanãsshw Pege Shrine of the Virgin
1
3
yes yes
yes
Mentioned four other shrines that cannot be identified. Note: Several other shrines that were not listed by Russian visitors or otherwise identified exist.
TABLE 3. MOST VENERATED RELICS OF THE PALAIOLOGAN ERA
Relic
Times mentioned by Palaiologan visitors
Passion relics Constantine’s tomb Stone of Anointment Martyrs’ gridiron Column of the Flagellation Hodegetria icon of the Virgin Left hand of St. John the Baptist Body of St. John Chrysostom Tomb of the Prophet Daniel Body of Patriarch Arsenios Column of Peter’s weeping Relics of St. Gregory Nazianzen Table of Abraham Body of St. Spiridon Right hand of St. John the Baptist
12 9 9 8 8 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 5 6 5
Location
Prodromos Petra, Mangana, Pantanassa, and St. Sophia Holy Apostles Pantokrator St. Sophia Holy Apostles Hodegetria Peribleptos Holy Apostles Prophet Daniel St. Sophia Holy Apostles Peribleptos St. Sophia Holy Apostles Prodromos Petra
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authors chose to record when they visited the same building. Both texts list carefully the relics connected with the earthly life of Christ: the swaddling clothes, the gold of the Magi, the Passion relics, the wellhead of Samaria, the basin in which Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, relics of John the Baptist, and, of course, relics of the Virgin Mary, along with Old Testament relics such as Abraham’s table and Elias’s sheepskin, and relics of a few well-known saints. These relics, then, can be accounted the major attractions for Christian pilgrims in a Constantinople become a sacred city. To these sacred treasures of ecumenical interest, Anthony’s text adds mention of the relics of many saints popular mainly in Eastern Christianity, as well as miraculous icons, stories about which the author had doubtlessly heard at home (images that bled when stabbed, that spoke, etc.). Apparently such things were not objects of devotion for Western Christians ca. 1200, but were special objects of piety in the Eastern Christian sphere.17 It would seem, then, that by using these pilgrim accounts one can create a list of the most important Christian shrines in Constantinople in the twelfth century18 and the most highly revered relics in those shrines for Christians, both Eastern and Western. The methodology employs a kind of “law of citations” so that the shrines and relics mentioned most often in the four texts from this period (Anthony and the three Western descriptions) qualify as the most important. These objects of devotion are what drew pilgrims from around the Christian world to the city on the Bosporos. The crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204 changed, among other things, the sacred physiognomy of the city. Holy places were destroyed, or desecrated, or disappeared during Latin rule and seem to have been resurrected only partially when the Byzantines took back the city. Thus, while Anthony of Novgorod visited fully ninety-seven religious shrines in the city and environs in 1200, the five Russian travelers of Palaiologan times who left records of their trips all together mention only fifty-eight sanctuaries. Although it is possible that Anthony had more time to spend in Constantinople than did the later visitors, or was a more assiduous sightseer, it is also clear that there were far fewer Christian sites to visit and relics to venerate after the sack accompanying the Fourth Crusade.19 What was pilgrim Constantinople like after the Byzantine restoration in 1261? The Russian travel tales from the Palaiologan period contain much information about pilgrimage in Constantinople in the period after the Byzantine reconquest. The five preserved texts all date from a compact period of seventy years (1349–1419) and form a surprisingly homogeneous group, despite the diverse backgrounds of the travelers—two lower clergy, one petty official/merchant, and two visitors of unidentified background (but one of the last-mentioned texts, the so-called “Russian Anonymus,” might rather represent a recital derived from a guidebook rather than from a visit to the city).20
17
See Majeska, “Russians and the Relics of Constantinople” (in press). Although it is certainly odd that, unlike the shorter Mercati text (“Description anglaise,” 258, 259), Anthony makes no mention of the important church of St. Stephen where the saint’s body was preserved; cf. Janin, Églises CP, 474–76, and Majeska, Russian Travelers, 351–53. 19 On the relics venerated before and after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 (or, perhaps better, available for veneration), see Majeska, “Russians and the Relics of Constantinople” (in press). 20 As is the case with the Mercati Anonymus (see above, note 5); cf. Seemann, Altrussische Wallfahrtsliteratur, 235–36. On the authors and their texts, see Majeska, Russian Travelers, 15–20, 48–57, 114–21, 156–58, 166– 70, and Seemann, 221–60. 18
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All of the later Russian pilgrims, not surprisingly, record visiting the Great Church, that is, St. Sophia, as their first order of business in Constantinople, and they spend considerable space listing the relics and wonders that they saw there, not unlike the pilgrims before the Latin occupation. All of the later Russian pilgrims visited nine other shrines besides St. Sophia: the Holy Apostles church, the Blachernai shrine of the Virgin, the monastery of Christ Philanthropos, the shrine of the Prophet Daniel, the Hodegetria monastery, the monastery of St. John the Baptist at Petra, the Pantokrator monastery, the Peribleptos monastery, and the Stoudios monastery. Adding to this number the five shrines listed as visited by four of the five later Russian pilgrims (the monastery of Sts. Kosmas and Damianos, the monastery of St. George at the Mangana, the Kyra Martha monastery, the church of St. Theodosia, and the monastery of the Virgin Panachrantos) provides, one would assume, a relatively accurate listing of the Constantinopolitan shrines of most interest to the later Russian pilgrims to the city. Five preserved non-Russian travel descriptions of the sacred wonders of Constantinople from the same period can be combined with the Russian sources to provide a more ecumenical picture of the most popular shrines of the city. The most extensive of these comes from an Armenian visitor to the city in the early years of the fifteenth century.21 This text is uncannily close to the Russian lists of popular shrines, suggesting a specific Eastern Christian predilection for certain shrines in the period, a predilection apparently not shared by Western Christians (see Table 2).22 The other four include two important Western descriptions of the relics of the city that were penned by diplomatic visitors from the Iberian peninsula in the first half of the fifteenth century, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo y Clavijo and Pero Tafur.23 Also included in this number are two much briefer Western descriptions of the city from the same general period, those of the Italian traveler Buondelmonti and of the Frenchman de la Broquière.24 Cataloguing visits by the five later Russian travelers and by the Armenian pilgrim, as well as reports from the four Western visitors, provides a reasonable approximation of the most visited pilgrimage sites in Constantinople in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Allowing for the fact that eleven churches visited by Anthony and the earlier Western pilgrims are not mentioned by the postconquest visitors (most of these sanctuaries can be assumed to have perished or been abandoned during the Latin occupation25), this list is quite reminiscent of the set of pilgrim stations recorded before the Latin conquest (see 21
S. Brock, “A Medieval Armenian Pilgrim’s Description of Constantinople,” REArm, n.s. 4 (1967): 81–102. Thus the Armenian pilgrim visits the tomb of the Prophet Daniel and the monasteries of the Mother of God tes Panachrantou and tes Pantanasses, shrines that no Palaiologan Western visitors discuss. 23 Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo y Clavijo, Embajada a Tamorlán, ed. F. Lopez Estrada (Madrid, 1943); Pero Tafur, Andancas é Viajes, ed. M. Jimenez de la Espada (Madrid, 1874). 24 “Le Vedute di Costantinopoli di Cristoforo Buondelmonti,” ed. G. Gerola, SBN (1931): 247–79; Bertrandon de la Broquière, Le Voyage d’Outremer, ed. C. Schefer (Paris, 1892). 25 These shrines include the fabled Pharos church of the Mother of God in the palace where, among other things, the relics of Christ’s Passion had been preserved. It apparently lay in ruins by the 14th century, its treasures dispersed in the West and elsewhere in the imperial city; Janin, Églises CP, 232–36, and P. Magdalino, “L’église du Phare et les reliques de la Passion à Constantinople (VIIe/VIIIe–XIIIe siècles)” (forthcoming). The major Passion relics, of course, are widely reported in the West after the Fourth Crusade; see Riant, Exuviae sacrae, passim; de Mély, Exuviae sacrae; Frolow, Les reliquaires de la Vraie Croix; and J. Durand and M.-P. Lafite, Le trésor de la Sainte-Chapelle (Paris, 2000), esp. 18–95. At the same time, however, Passion relics were also shown in Constantinople’s monastery of St. George at Mangana, the monastery of St. John the Baptist in the Petra quarter, and the convent of the Virgin th'" Pantanavssh" in the First Region (see Majeska, Russian Trav22
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Table 1); only three of the churches visited by a quorum of the later travelers were not on the “must see” list of Anthony and at least one of the earlier Western pilgrims (two small monasteries of the Virgin on the slope of the first hill of the city—th'" Panacravntou, th'" Pantanavssh"—and the monastery of Kyra Martha, which had yet to be founded when the earlier travel tales were penned26). This fact is, indeed, eloquent testimony to the essentially conservative nature of Constantinopolitan pilgrim goals. Once again the basic similarity in the lists of sanctuaries visited by the Russians and by non-Russian contemporary visitors is striking, despite the fewer shrines visited by the Western visitors.27 What drew the travelers to these specific shrines during the period 1261–1453? Whether the visitors chose to visit these sanctuaries on their own or whether their choice was dictated by a guidebook or a regularly guided itinerary, the important question is what was special about these buildings that would make them (or the visitors’ hosts or guides) think that they were especially worthy of a visit. Although at the practical level the pilgrims might have visited these sacred establishments because they were on a “package tour” (as certainly the fourteenth-century Spanish diplomats did), or because the sites were listed in a widely used guidebook, the more fundamental answer is numenosity, the sacred power with which certain objects (relics, images, holy water, etc.) were imbued. Such holy objects were available for veneration at the locations discussed here. Again, as with the list of shrines visited, one sees a general consensus among pilgrims from East and West as to what were the most venerable and powerful objects in Constantinople; the list, as was the case in the twelfth century (see Table 1), is dominated by objects connected with the life of Christ and with personages known from the scriptures.28 Thus not only did Russian pilgrims share costume and accoutrements with West European pilgrims of the Middle Ages (bell-shaped cloak, pilgrim staff, sack [scrip], and the broad-brimmed “hat of the Greek land”),29 but for the most part they also frequented the same shrines and venerated the same sacred relics. One senses a common pilgrimage ethos shared by Eastern and Western Christians, but perhaps not by the Byzantines, who had no need to undertake a long journey to venerate them.
elers, 368–70, 342–43, 377–79), but these were apparently lesser relics; see Majeska, “The Relics of Constantinople after 1204” (forthcoming). The other sanctuaries that appear to be no longer on the prime pilgrim circuit by the 14th century are: the churches of the Forty Martyrs and of the Resurrection, and the oratory of St. Samson, all three of which continued to exist in the Palaiologan period (Janin, Églises CP, 485–86, 20–22, 561–62), and the churches of St. Anastasia, of the Forty Martyrs, of Sts. Gourias, Samonas, and Abibus, the shrines of the Prophet Isaiah and of St. Juliana, the churches of St. Photina and of St. Procopios, about which nothing is known in the Palaiologan period, a fact that would suggest that they had disappeared during Latin rule (Janin, Églises CP, 25–26, 485– 86, 80, 139–40, 260, 499, 444). 26 Janin, Églises CP, 324. On these three shrines and their histories, see ibid., 214–15, 215–16, 324–26, and Majeska, Russian Travelers, 375–77, 377–79, 276–83. 27 Although the shrines visited by Eastern Christians but not by their Western counterparts might once again just as easily reflect the smaller number of places the Westerners had time to visit. 28 For a fuller treatment of the holy relics shown in Constantinople in the Palaiologan period, see G. Majeska, “St. Sophia in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: The Russian Travelers on the Relics,” DOP 27 (1973): 69–87, and idem, “Russians and the Relics of Constantinople” (in press). 29 I. Sreznevskii, “Рuки калики дрв го вр и,” аи ки и ратор ко акад ии аuк 1 (1862): fasc. 2, 195–205.
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ITINERARIES IN THE CITY It cannot be purely accidental that the travelers all visited pretty much the same sites and venerated the same religious treasures, but particularly interesting is the fact that to a significant degree the post–Latin conquest Russian visitors did it in the same order. Unlike Anthony of Novgorod’s Pilgrim Book, these later texts have a discernible topographical order in their entries. There is, in fact, an uncanny similarity in the sequence in which the later Russian pilgrims chose to view the sacred wonders of Constantinople. Although it is perhaps possible that these similarities of itinerary derive from the simple fact that there was a generally recognized set of important sanctuaries and relics in the “city guarded by God,” it would seem much more likely that a guide of some sort (a person or text) dictated the pious pilgrim’s movements in the imperial city, at least in the case of the Russian pilgrims of Palaiologan times.30 It is not surprising that all five later Russian visitors first went to St. Sophia, a treasure hoard of relics and a building of mythic renown; nor is it surprising that while there some stopped to see neighboring objects of interest like the Justinian Column outside the church and the Chalke Gate of the Palace across the Augusteon plaza. But unexpectedly, four of these five Russian pilgrims next describe visits, not to a famous church such as Holy Apostles, but rather to a set of churches and monastic foundations east of St. Sophia on the slope leading down to the Bosporos, the area normally spoken of as the “First Region,” a neighborhood little spoken of. The exception to this rule (and to most of the generalizations about later Russian pilgrim itineraries in Constantinople) is Ignatius of Smolensk, who seems to have been in no hurry to do the pious tourist circuit and rather visits shrines at the rate of only one or two per day, probably because he will be in the city for more than two years.31 After visiting St. Sophia, however, the other four Russian visitors record going to the various shrines in the First Region area, most notably the Hodegetria monastery of the Virgin, the monastery of St. George at the Mangana, the monastery of Christ Philanthropos, and the Panachrantos monastery of the Virgin.32 (But among them they list some twelve ecclesiastical establishments in that neighborhood.33) Although they for the most part speak of the same shrines, they do not discuss them in the same order. Apparently they did not all follow the same route through this area. However, these ecclesiastical establishments (some quite large, others very small) were cheek-by-jowl on this hillside, so that the efficient way to visit them would be to wander around; and this is apparently what the Russian pilgrims did. If St. Sophia is counted as “Itinerary A” for Russian visitors to Constantinople, the galaxy of shrines on the hill leading down to Seraglio Point should be deemed “Itinerary B,” denoted by the four anchor establishments noted above and shrines in close proximity to them (see Map).34 “Itinerary C” (which might actually be the conclusion of “Itinerary 30 There is not enough material in the later Western descriptions of visits to the city or in earlier pilgrim recitations to determine if viewing the city shrines in a set order was a more common phenomenon. 31 On the length of Ignatius’ visit, see Majeska, Russian Travelers, 53, 56–57. 32 On these shrines and their locations, see Majeska, Russian Travelers, 362–66, 366–71, 371–74, 375–77, and Janin, Églises CP, 199–207, 70–76, 527–29, 214–15. 33 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 361–87. 34 The earlier Mercati Anonymus follows the same general order of listing religious sites (but starting with the imperial palace chapels [in disrepair since the Latin occupation], duplicating the order of the “topo-
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B”) included the Imperial-Palace Nea church, the Hippodrome, the Column of Constantine, and the martyrion of St. Euphemia.35 Again, these neighboring shrines (see Map) seem to have been visited in no set order. “Itinerary D” started in the neighborhood of the monastery of Peribleptos in the southwestern section of the city and continued southwest to the Stoudios monastery; next the Russian visitors took advantage of being in that area to visit shrines near the land walls farther north, most notably the tomb of the Prophet Daniel, where pilgrims received their “seal for the road.”36 Actually, only Stephen and the Russian Anonymus consistently follow this itinerary; Deacon Zosima begins his third excursion in this fashion, but then (rather than continuing on toward Stoudios in the city’s southwest corner) turns north after going part way and takes instead the north branch of the Mese (the main street of the city) and visits the shrines in the geographic center of the city, the area around the church of the Holy Apostles (no. 32); he then goes up to the northwest corner of the city to visit Blachernai (no. 46; see Map).37 These holy sites would normally be part of “Itinerary E” (see below). Indeed, judging from the recorded visits to shrines that Zosima’s text lists after this entry, he no longer seems to be following anything that looks like a rational itinerary, but rather makes a series of separate visits to discrete neighborhoods. Like Ignatius of Smolensk (who specifies what he saw each day), Zosima seems now to be visiting individual sites one by one; he has apparently decided to spend considerable time in the city and is no longer rushing about with some sort of excursion bureau.38 The clerk Alexander, on the other hand, had only a few days in Constantinople, and so, after visiting St. Sophia and the First Region (“Itineraries A” and “B”), he seems to abandon a set itinerary and visits Holy Apostles (no. 32) in the middle of the city, and then he too heads northwest toward Blachernai (no. 46) and from there south to the Tomb of Daniel near the land walls (no. 43; doubtless for his pilgrim token).39 In what seems to be his final tour (his is a very short text), Alexander tries to fill in what he has missed, going farther south to Peribleptos (no. 24) and Stoudios (no. 26), and from there northeast to Kyra Martha (no. 33) and then southeast to “downtown,” to Sts. Sergios and Bacchos (no. 16) and the Hippodrome (no. 13), before heading back to the First Region again to visit the Lazaros monastery (no. 65; see Map).40 Perhaps Alexander’s unusual wandering in the city was because on certain days some of these churches were having special services that he wanted to attend; or perhaps he had somehow missed these sanctuaries on his first visit to these neighborhoods.
graphical recension” of the “Patria”; see Berger, Untersuchungen, 155–59. The Russian texts diverge from this earlier order after discussing the First Region, however. 35 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 247–50, 250–58, 260–63, 258–60. 36 On this pilgrim token, see G. Majeska, “A Medallion of the Prophet Daniel in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection,” DOP 28 (1984): 361–66. The sights listed in Itinerary D by both Stephen and the Russian Anonymus include the monasteries of the Mother of God Peribleptos and of St. John the Baptist-Stoudios, the convent of St. Andrew in Krisei, the body of St. Euphemia, the convent of the Mother of God ta; mikra; RJ wmaivou, and the shrine of the Prophet Daniel; see Majeska, Russian Travelers, 276–83, 283–88, 314–15, 319–21, 321–25, 326– 29. 37 That is, he visits the sanctuaries of the Holy Apostles, the Pantokrator, and Apolikaptii monasteries, the convent of St. Constantine, and the Kecharitomene monastery of the Mother of God, before arriving at the Blachernai shrine; see Majeska, Russian Travelers, 184–87, 299–306, 289–95, 295–96, 296–98, 298, 333–37. 38 Or, perhaps, that he wrote up his travel notes after leaving the city. 39 See above, note 36. 40 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 160–65; on these last sights, see ibid., 306–9, 264–65, 250–58, 379–81.
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Note that with Ignatius and Zosima making individual forays to specific religious sites rather than following “sensible” routes, and with Alexander cramming everything important into a few precious days, there are, in the end, only two texts that reflect the posited “Itinerary D” and, in fact, also the final tour, “Itinerary E.” “Itinerary E” (followed only by Stephen and the Russian Anonymus) starts from near Holy Apostles and heads northwest toward the Virgin shrine at Blachernai and the monastery of Sts. Kosmas and Damianos (in the Kosmidion suburb northwest of the city),41 and then returns, following the shore of the Golden Horn southeast, passing a number of shrines, including the church of St. Theodosia (no. 51; where Stephen ends this tour)42 (see Map). The Russian Anonymus continues along the shore to a series of shrines (nos. 53–55) at Perama (the “Ferry,” modern Odunkapi).43 Stephen’s last noted excursion revisits the First Region (although not shrines visited previously),44 while the final shrines in the list of the Russian Anonymus are in the central northwest part of the city (Pantokrator, Pammakaristos, Lips, and other shrines in the Lykos valley45 [nos. 28, 50, 33, 34; see Map]). The last sites mentioned in those texts would seem to be shrines the pilgrims had not seen previously, a pair of, as it were, “fill-in tours.” GUIDES The texts of the later Russian travelers to Constantinople include only one clear reference to the use of guides in Constantinople. In summing up his experiences in the Byzantine capital, Stephen of Novgorod notes that, “Entering Constantinople is like [entering] a great forest; it is impossible to get around without a good guide, and if you attempt to get around stingily or cheaply you will not be able to see or kiss a single saint unless it happens to be the holiday of that saint when [you can] see and kiss [the relics].”46 It would seem safe to assume, then, that Russian pilgrims in Constantinople employed the services of guides, amateur or professional, whenever possible.47 The fact that Stephen (in Constantinople during Holy Week in 1349, or possibly 134848) uses the first person singular in the first line of his narrative and then shifts to the first person plural for the remainder of his description49 suggests that he was moving around with a group, as well as, it would seem, with a professional guide (note the emphasis on money in his statement on guides in Constantinople). Indeed, most of the Russian pilgrims seem to have visited the shrines of the city in groups.50 Alexander the Clerk 41
On the suburban monastery of Sts. Kosmas and Damianos, see Majeska, Russian Travelers, 331–33. See Majeska, Russian Travelers, 346–51, on this church. V. Hrochová, “Les itineraires des pèlerins russes à Constantinople,” in ÔH ejpikoinwniva sto; Buzavntio. Praktika; tou' BV Dieqnou'" Sumposivou tou' Kevntrou Buzantinw'n ∆Ereunw'n (Athens, 1993), 600–601, outlines grosso modo Stephen’s itinerary. 43 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 150–52. 44 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 44–45. 45 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 152–53. 46 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 44–47. 47 On guides for Russian pilgrims in Constantinople, see D. Ainalov, “рича ия к тктu А то ия овгородкого.” ZhMNP 1906, fasc. 6: 234–36. 48 ˇevcˇenko, “Notes on Stephen, the Novgorodian Pilgrim to Constantinople On the date of the visit, see I. S in the XIV Century,” SüdostF 12 (1953): 165–72. 49 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 28–47. 50 Ainalov, “рича ия,” loc. cit. 42
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also shifts from the first person singular to the first person plural after the opening lines of his recital (although his account is largely written in the impersonal third person).51 Similarly, Ignatius of Smolensk’s description of the shrines of the city is in the first person plural (“we saw,” “we venerated,” etc.) from 28 June 1389 until 17 December of the same year (one of his last touring entries), when he abruptly switches to the first person singular.52 His group seems to have broken up when a new metropolitan of Rus’ was dispatched from Constantinople, probably taking back to Russia with him the Russians who had come to Constantinople with Ignatius in the train of the previous Muscovite metropolitan and who had been his companions.53 Deacon Zosima, on the other hand, begins and ends his description of the wonders of Constantinople in the first person singular, but writes everything in between in the impersonal third person (“Near this monastery is a convent”), giving no hint of whether or not he traveled with a group in the city.54 The “Russian Anonymus” text might, as suggested earlier, in fact reflect a translation of a written guidebook used by Constantinopolitan guides. As handed down to us, the text is preserved only as part of a pastiche pilgrim tale with massive pieces of the travel tale of Stephen of Novgorod added to it, and, separately, as the topographical foundation for a faux dialogue on the wonders of Constantinople and the blessings of pilgrimage to the Byzantine capital.55 The text outlines “Itineraries A–E” discussed above, probably exemplifying a standardized religious tour of Constantinople. The text’s introductory and concluding sections (and added dialogue elements) aside, it reads in fact very much like a guidebook. The verbs are neither in the first person (singular or plural) nor in the impersonal third person, but rather in the infinitive form: a kind of generalized imperative (“Go east from there to . . .”) with specific directions to various shrines and wonders, albeit, interestingly, assuming that the reader possesses a basic knowledge of the layout of the city. The text also includes the kinds of fantastic stories that guides seem to like to tell about the places they are showing. Moreover, the two different versions of the Old Russian text used in the two works preserving it seem to reflect two separate translations, assumedly from the Greek (although there are few clear Graecisms in the text), for although the two versions essentially “say the same thing,” they tend to say it in different forms grammatically— something that would be quite odd in a normally transmitted pilgrim narrative. Very likely the compiler of the pastiche narrative (probably the author of its introductory and concluding paragraphs) used one translation of a Greek original text, while the dialogue editor used a different translation of the same text. One can even argue that the text was translated by Novgorodians both times, for both versions show heavy traces of northwest Russian dialect.56 The basic text, however, must have reflected a standard tour of the city in order to find real-life echoes among the Russian travelers to Constantinople. 51
Majeska, Russian Travelers, 160–65. Majeska, Russian Travelers, 76–133. 53 See Majeska, Russian Travelers, 98–101. 54 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 176–95. 55 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 114–21. 56 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 119–21. But note that Greek guidebooks to Constantinople were rare; see E. Kislinger, “Sightseeing in the Byzantine Empire,” in ÔH ejpikoinwniva sto; Buzavntio (as above, note 42), 464–65, and G. B. Popov, “Дрв ши рuки лицво роки итари,” И рu али в рu ко кuл тuр , ed. A. Batalov and A. Lidov (Moscow, 1994), 86. That they did, in fact, exist, however, is evidenced by the background of the text of the “Description anglaise” (see above, note 5). 52
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We may conclude, then, that Russian pilgrims (and probably other Eastern Christians, to judge from the fourteenth-century Armenian Anonymus) were attracted to Constantinople basically by the same relics as were Western visitors both before and after the Fourth Crusade, and visited essentially the same shrines in the city. Beyond the shrines and relics of general Christian interest in Constantinople, however, the Russians (and Armenians and other Eastern Christians?) visited other shrines and venerated other relics, probably because these sacred places and objects coincided with their specifically Eastern Christian tastes.57 The Russian pilgrims, at least, seem to have followed a basic general itinerary in viewing the holy sites of the city; non-Russian visitors might have also followed these routes, but the available material does not allow for a judgment on this question. University of Maryland 57
Or, less likely, because they spent more time in the city.
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2002 © 2003 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America
www.doaks.org/etexts.html
Les saints en pèlerinage à l’époque mésobyzantine (7e–12e siècles) MICHEL KAPLAN
e but des récits hagiographiques étant de montrer le caractère exemplaire du saint pour l’ensemble des fidèles, il est intéressant d’étudier les saints en pèlerinage pour comprendre le sens même du phénomène du pèlerinage. Pour autant, l’hagiographie mésobyzantine n’est pas très propice à cette étude. Les Vies de saints ou les récits de miracles sont bien plus riches en pèlerinages de fidèles auprès du saint, de son sanctuaire ou de sa relique qu’en pieux voyages effectués par les saints eux-mêmes. En effet, si l’exil volontaire, la xéniteia, constitue l’une des pratiques de sanctification qui peut faire partie de l’itinéraire spirituel du saint, les pèlerinages effectués par celui-ci sont comparativement peu nombreux dans la littérature hagiographique, d’autant que la plupart des saints sont des moines qui respectent peu ou prou leur vœu de stabilité. Ajoutons une difficulté supplémentaire: la notion même de pèlerinage n’est pas clairement définie, pas plus qu’elle ne l’est à la même époque en Occident,1 au point que le vocabulaire de l’époque ne révèle de définition ni du pèlerin ni du pèlerinage. Faut-il découvrir le pèlerinage au sens contemporain du terme dans cet exil volontaire qui dépasse très largement ce sens, dans le phénomène du voyage ou dans le résultat même, qui est d’aller vénérer un lieu saint ou une relique, la proskynèse, à l’origine du terme contemporain désignant le pèlerin (proskunhthv")?2
L
1 B. De Gaiffier, “Pellegrinaggi et culto dei santi: réflexions sur le thème du congrès,” Pellegrinaggi e culto dei santi in Europa fino alla Ia Crociata, Convegni del Centro di Studi sulla Spiritualità medievale 4 (Todi, 1963), 11– 35. “Peu à peu, l’«étranger» deviendra le «pèlerin»,” mais pas nécessairement avant la première croisade pour l’Occident. Soulignant l’aversion de la règle bénédictine pour les moines gyrovagues, l’auteur, citant H. von Campenhausen, Asketische Heimatlosigkeit, Sammlung gemeindverständischer Vorträge und Schriften aus dem Gebiet der Theologie und Religionsgeschichte 149 (Tübingen, 1930), 19, attribue l’amour de la perigrinatioxéniteia à une influence orientale, ce qui nous laisse la tâche entière. Cf. M. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001), 197–207. 2 Cf. P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient: Histoire et géographie des origines à la conquête arabe (Paris, 1985), 138. L’auteur s’étend assez peu sur cette définition. Notons qu’il traduit proskunhthv" par “adorateur,” ce qui est sans doute vrai à l’époque qu’il étudie; mais le sens de la proskuvnhsi" va se modifier lors de la querelle iconoclaste et après, pour prendre le sens de prosternation ou vénération par opposition à l’adoration. C’est déjà particulièrement net dans la Vie d’Étienne le Jeune (BHG 1666), éd. et trad. M.-F. Auzépy, La Vie d’Étienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre: Introduction, édition et traduction, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs 3 (Aldershot, 1997); sur le sens du terme (prosternation ou vénération, non adoration), cf. 179 note 2 de la traduction et, au c. 55:155, l’opposition, classique dans les textes iconodoules: “ce n’est pas la matière que les chrétiens ont jamais prescrit d’adorer (latreuvein) dans les icônes, mais c’est le nom de ce qui est vu devant
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Les raisons qui poussent au départ ne sont pas toujours explicites. C’est le cas pour le pèlerinage à Jérusalem, qui est d’une évidence absolue, mais sur lequel nous n’insisterons pas. La Vie qui nous fournira le plus d’exemples de pèlerinages, celle de Théodore de Sykéôn (mort en 613),3 comporte trois voyages vers cette destination. La première fois, Théodore est mû par une sorte de désir d’information, forme élémentaire et première du pèlerinage: il admire la naissance, la vie, la mort et la résurrection du Christ, se demande avec stupeur comment ces événements ont pu se produire; il est donc pris du désir de partir voir les lieux saints pour y prier, s’y prosterner (proskynèse).4 Les deux fois suivantes, la Vita ne mentionne que le désir de se rendre dans la ville sainte et d’y prier.5 La prière ad sanctos est ici la principale motivation et recouvre presque complètement la notion de pèlerinage. On retrouve les mêmes motivations lorsque Paul, maître de Pierre d’Atroa (mort en 837), prend celui-ci avec lui et part pour la Ville Sainte “pour visiter et baiser (blevyai kai; kataspavsasqai) les saints et vénérables (aJgivou" kai; sebasmivou") lieux qui s’y trouvaient.”6 Le voyage à Rome est également une évidence. Cyrille le Philéote (mort en 1110) lequel nous nous prosternons (proskunou'men).” Dans l’épilogue de la Vie (c. 78, p. 177), le saint mérite “honneur et prosternation” (timh; kai; proskuvnhsi"). C’est bien le sens du mot tel que défini par le second concile de Nicée, notamment son horos: “attribuer aux icônes baiser et prosternation d’honneur (ajspasmo;n kai; timhtikh;n proskuvnhsin), non la vraie adoration selon notre foi (th;n kata; pivstin hJmw'n ajlhqinh;n latreivan), qui convient à la seule nature divine”: Mansi 13:373D–380B et le texte repris et traduit par M.-F. Auzépy, “«Horos» du concile de Nicée II,” Nicée II, 787–1987. Douze siècles d’images religieuses, éd. F. Bœspflung et N. Lossky (Paris, 1987), 32–33. 3 Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn (BHG 1748), éd. et trad. A.-J. Festugière, Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, t. 1: Texte grec; t. 2, Traduction, commentaire et appendice, SubsHag 48 (Bruxelles, 1970). Voir la présentation du dossier hagiographique dans M. Kaplan, “Les sanctuaires de Théodore de Sykéôn,” Les saints et leur sanctuaire à Byzance: Textes, images et monuments, éd. C. Jolivet-Lévy, M. Kaplan, et J.-P. Sodini, Byzantina Sorbonensia 11 (Paris, 1993), 65. Pour replacer Théodore dans son contexte: S. Mitchell, Anatolia, Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor, vol. 2: The Rise of the Church (Oxford, 1993), notamment c. 19: “Central Anatolia and the End of Antiquity: The Life of Saint Theodore of Sykeon,” 122–50. Comme le titre de Mitchell le laisse entendre, la Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn présente certains aspects qui relèvent de l’antiquité tardive. Il nous paraît toutefois nécessaire de l’utiliser dans le présent article et ceci pour plusieurs raisons. D’abord, Théodore, mort en 613, relève du 7e siècle et ceci d’autant plus que sa Vie est écrite certes peu de temps après sa mort et même, si l’on croit l’auteur (c. 165, p. 152–53), commencée du vivant même du saint, mais tout de même achevée après; l’auteur, apparemment né peu avant 600, est bien un homme du 7e siècle. Au reste, le texte, dont le premier manuscrit date du 10e siècle, reste tellement vivant qu’il est repris au 9e siècle par Nicéphore le Skévophylax. Ainsi la Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn constitue-t-elle un point de départ utile et nous n’en avons pas vraiment d’autre présentant une telle qualité d’information. Enfin, et surtout, la question du passage de l’antiquité tardive à l’époque dite mésobyzantine doit s’apprécier de façon nuancée. Quel que soit le rôle d’accélérateur joué dans ce phénomène complexe par les invasions perses et arabes, la crise de la cité commence bien avant; dès l’époque de Justinien à tout le moins, les curies s’avèrent incapables de relever les ruines de cités touchées par la peste ou par des accidents (incendies, tremblements de terre). La Vie de Théodore est donc un bon témoin du passage de l’antiquité tardive au moyen âge. D’une façon générale, nous donnons dans le texte les dates où vécurent nos saints, faute de disposer toujours de données suffisantes pour dater la rédaction de la Vie, qui importe bien davantage. 4 Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, c. 23:20. 5 Ibid., c. 50:44 et 62:52. Lors de cette troisième et dernière visite, Théodore est évêque d’Anastasioupolis. 6 Vie de Pierre d’Atroa (BHG 2364), c. 8, éd. et trad. V. Laurent, La vie merveilleuse de saint Pierre d’Atroa, SubsHag 29 (Bruxelles, 1956), 87. L’hagiographe écrit au milieu du IXe siècle; cf. infra n. 112. J’adopte la traduction de V. Laurent. Rappelons que, dans l’horos du concile de Nicée, le baiser va avec la prosternation (proskynèse), que l’on peut aussi traduire par vénération.
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souhaite partir pour Rome “vénérer les saints apôtres” (cavrin proskunhvsew" tw'n aJgivwn ∆Apostovlwn),7 mais aussi dans un but ascétique sur lequel nous reviendrons. Blaise d’Amorion (mort en 911–912) part à Rome pour résister à la tentation diabolique, avant tout charnelle, également par souci d’ascèse, mais sans détails sur ce qui lui fait choisir cette destination.8 Pierre l’Athonite (vie légendaire écrite au IXe siècle), prisonnier à Samarra, échange sa libération par l’intervention des saints Nicolas et Syméon contre un voyage à Rome: “Je ne m’adonnerai plus aux troubles du monde, mais je me rendrai à Rome, au sanctuaire du coryphée Pierre, et je passerai tout le temps de ma vie, devenu moine à la place de l’homme du monde, à m’efforcer de plaire à Dieu de toutes mes forces.”9 Le pèlerinage, non explicite, mais évident de par la mention du sanctuaire de Pierre, se double de la volonté de s’y faire moine. Quant à Élie de Sicile (mort en 903), il part pour Rome suite à une vision reçue dans l’oratoire de saint Pantéléèmôn: il voit en songe deux hommes d’aspect éclatant, ayant l’apparence et les habits de Pierre et Paul, les coryphées, lui disant “Demain, il faut que tu prennes ton disciple et que tu fasses route (o{deue) vers Rome.”10 Tous ceux qui auraient souhaité aller à Rome n’y sont pas arrivés: Lazare le Galèsiote (mort en 1053), de retour à Éphèse après un très long et fructueux périple sur lequel nous reviendrons, s’apprête à repartir pour les rives du Tibre et s’agrège à ses futurs compagnons de voyage, lorsqu’il lui vient l’idée de retourner dans son village, ce qui marque le début d’un itinéraire de stylite qui s’inscrit dans sa région d’origine.11 La Vie, pour éviter que le lecteur ne se méprenne sur ce renoncement à ce qui aurait logiquement dû constituer le pendant au pèlerinage à Jérusalem qui a vu Lazare recevoir l’habit monastique à la laure de Sabas,12 ajoute que ceci se fit par la divine providence. À ce désir de vénération, que l’on retrouve lorsque Cyrille le Philéote part pour Chônai,13 s’ajoutent des raisons plus concrètes. Ainsi, Théodore de Sykéôn va se rendre deux fois à Germia. La première fois, le pèlerinage correspond au désir de Théodore d’obtenir des reliques de saint Georges; ce dernier apparaît alors à l’évêque Émilianos de Germia, ville qui en détient un certain nombre. Émilianos invite Théodore à venir 7
Vie de Cyrille le Philéote (BHG 468), c. 20.1, éd. et trad. E. Sargologos, La vie de saint Cyrille le Philéote, moine byzantin († 1110), SubsHag 39 (Bruxelles, 1964), 101. 8 Vie de Blaise d’Amorion (BHG 278), c. 8, éd. H. Delehaye, AASS Nov. 4:660. Sur les itinéraires de Blaise d’Amorion, cf. E. Malamut, Sur la route des saints byzantins (Paris, 1993), 258–60. 9 Vie de Pierre l’Athonite (BHG 1505), c. 1.2, éd. K. Lake, The Early Days of Monasticism on Mount Athos (Oxford, 1909), 19. Naturellement, la lecture de cette Vie implique la connaissance de l’article de D. Papachryssanthou, “La vie ancienne de saint Pierre l’Athonite, date, composition et valeur historique,” AB 92 (1974): 19–61. Cette partie de la Vie, de l’aveu même de l’auteur, un moine athonite nommé Nicolas et qui écrit sans doute à la fin du 10e siècle, est entièrement reprise du miracle de Nicolas de Myra, patron de l’auteur, en faveur du scholaire Pierre, dont la version primitive date du milieu du 9e siècle et a vraisemblablement été transmise à Nicolas par un enkomion de la même époque. 10 Vie d’Élie de Sicile (BHG 580), c. 36, éd. G. Rossi Taibbi, Vita di Sant’Elia il Giovane, Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, Testi 7, Vite dei Santi Siciliani 3 (Palerme, 1962), 54. Sur les itinéraires d’Élie de Sicile, l’un des plus grands voyageurs de l’époque mésobyzantine, cf. Malamut, Sur la route, 256–58. 11 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote (BHG 979), c. 29, éd. H. Delehaye, AASS Nov. 3:518. On se reportera également à la traduction commentée de R. P. H. Greenfield, The Life of Lazaros of Mt. Galesion, an EleventhCentury Pillar Saint: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, Byzantine Saints’ Lives in Translation 3 (Washington, D.C., 2000). 12 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 16:514. Sur les itinéraires de Lazare, cf. Malamut, Sur la route, 40–44. 13 Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, c. 18:94.
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prier au sanctuaire de saint Michel dont s’honore sa cité; il en profite pour le mêler au pèlerinage annuel de sa cité à la Théotokos d’Aligétè; et Théodore repart avec ses reliques, à savoir une partie de la tête du saint, un doigt de sa main, une de ses dents et un autre morceau non précisé.14 Quant au second pèlerinage à Germia, il s’agit d’accomplir un vœu, mais nous n’en savons pas plus.15 Constantin le Juif (9e siècle) quitte le monastère de Phouboutè, près de Nicée, pour se rendre en Chypre sur les indications d’une icône de Spyridon. Le saint s’y livre à une véritable chasse aux reliques. D’abord, il s’enquiert des reliques des saints Phainontés,16 situées dans une grotte difficile d’accès dont seul l’évêque ose s’approcher; Constantin s’y rend en cachette, y passe la nuit, puis repart muni d’un morceau de la relique, le pouce.17 Il allait partir à la recherche d’un monastère digne de recevoir cette relique, lorsqu’une voix divine l’avertit de se rendre auprès de la dépouille de saint Palamôn. Ce sanctuaire n’est guère plus accessible et Constantin le découvre grâce à un berger. Après trois génuflexions, le visiteur saisit la dextre de la relique, qui, séparée du reste de celle-ci, lui reste dans la main par l’effet d’une force invisible. Celle-ci lui ordonne de quitter Chypre pour déposer la relique au monastère de Hyakinthos à Nicée.18 Plus banal encore, Théodore de Sykéôn se rend à Sôzopolis en Pisidie:19 il désire depuis longtemps voir les dons divins qui s’y manifestaient; mais surtout, il souffre depuis plusieurs années d’un mal aux yeux qui le frappe chaque été durant un mois et qui le gêne beaucoup pour recevoir les foules. Divinement averti, il part donc chercher sa guérison, exactement comme les multiples pèlerins qui se rendent auprès de lui; il l’obtient grâce au myron qui s’écoule d’une icône de la Théotokos, qui s’est condensé en bulle avant de lui éclater au visage et après une incubation de quatre jours.20 De la même façon, Constantin le Juif part pour Chypre parce que l’icône de Spyridon à laquelle il demande une guérison le lui ordonne, en échange de celle-ci.21 La recherche pure et simple de l’ascèse est relativement peu fréquente. Dans la Vie de Blaise d’Amorion, celui-ci, qui part pour échapper à la tentation charnelle, se lance dans “l’arène pleine de souffrances de la xéniteia (to; th'" xeniteiva" poluvponon stavdion).”22 Quant 14
Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, c. 100:80–82. Germia est située à près de 100 km au sud de Sykéôn: cf. K. Belke et M. Restle, Galatien und Lykaonien, TIB 4 (Vienne, 1984), 166–68. Sur Aligétè-Elcik, cf. ibid., 160. 15 Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, c. 161:139. Au passage, Théodore chasse, comme d’habitude, des esprits impurs, sans compter un détour par Pessinonte, métropole dont dépend Germia et où il fait tomber la pluie. Sur les lieux saints de Germia, cf. la brève notice de Maraval, Lieux saints, 370–71. 16 Ou Phanentes: H. Delehaye, “Saints de Chypre,” AB 26 (1907): 254. En revanche, pas trace de saint Palamôn dans cet article. 17 Vie de Constantin le Juif (BHG 370), c. 30, éd. H. Delehaye, AASS Nov. 4:636. 18 Vie de Constantin le Juif, c. 33–35:637. Pour le dépôt de la relique à Nicée, après des aventures où Constantin et son précieux chargement échappent miraculeusement aux Arabes, c. 41:639. Sur le monastère de Hyakinthos à Nicée, cf. R. Janin, Les églises et les monastères des grands centres byzantins (Bithynie, Hellespont, Latros, Galèsios, Trébizonde, Athènes, Thessalonique) (Paris, 1975), 121–24, pour qui il s’agit de l’église de la Dormition. 19 Aujourd’hui Ulu Borlu; brève notice ibid., 389. Cf. K. Belke et N. Mersich, Galatien und Pisidien, TIB 7 (Vienne, 1990), 287–88. 20 Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, c. 106:84. On notera au passage que l’évêque Zoïlos reçoit personnellement cet illustre patient. Sur l’icône de Sôzopolis, cf. Maraval, Lieux saints, 389 et note 191. 21 Vie de Constantin le Juif, c. 26:635. P. van den Ven, La légende de S. Spyridon, évêque de Trimithonte, Bibliothèque du Muséon 33 (Louvain, 1953), ignore cette marque du culte de Spyridon. La relique du saint aurait été transférée à Constantinople à la fin du 7e siècle; cf. ibid., 145*–146*. 22 Vie de Blaise d’Amorion, loc. cit. supra, note 8.
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à Cyrille le Philéote, son pèlerinage à Rome est un moyen de s’infliger d’extrêmes sévices corporels (kakouciva" perissotevra" tou' swvmato").23 Le saint, qui voyageait à l’écart de la foule qui peuplait la route de Rome et ne mangeait pratiquement rien,24 “tomba malade en cours de route par suite de la grande fatigue. . . . Il resta allongé durant deux mois, inflexible, supportant le poids et la chaleur du jour, de la fièvre et de la couche inconfortable, près d’un village, sous un chêne. . . . Son frère le suppliait tout le temps, en larmes, de se soigner à cause de la xéniteia25 et de prendre un peu de nourriture cuite et de vin.” Au bout de quelques jours, par la grâce de Dieu, il retrouva des forces et ils reprirent la route. Contre toute attente, Cyrille tire une conclusion négative de cette expérience: “Les changements de lieu n’enseignent pas la sagesse et n’enlèvent pas la folie. . . . Ce n’est pas par le changement de lieu, mais par l’attention de l’esprit qu’on dompte les passions. Ceux qui sont portés aux changements sont partout peu estimés.”26 Voilà qui condamne les pèlerinages, alors que Cyrille, on le verra, s’est rendu à Chônai et se rendait tous les vendredis de Philéa à l’église de la Vierge des Blachernes pour y assister au miracle habituel.27 Jalon sur un itinéraire de perfection, le pèlerinage est l’un des moments privilégiés pour recevoir l’habit monastique, surtout à Jérusalem, ou pour se faire admettre dans l’un des prestigieux établissements monastiques de Terre Sainte. Ainsi, Théodore de Sykéôn, lors de son premier voyage en Palestine, s’initie à la vie monastique en visitant cénobes, laures et ermitages; descendu au Jourdain, il reçoit l’habit monastique à la Théotokos de Choziba.28 Lors de son troisième voyage, Théodore, qui est devenu évêque d’Anastasioupolis et ne réussit pas dans une charge pour laquelle il est peu doué et qui contrecarre sa vocation monastique, tente de se faire à nouveau moine en Terre Sainte.29 Le patriarche de Jérusalem donne l’habit monastique à Élie de Sicile, prisonnier des Arabes qui s’est racheté et s’est rendu au sein d’un groupe en pèlerinage dans la ville sainte.30 Quant au séjour de Lazare le Galèsiote en Palestine, c’est une véritable course à la laure la plus cotée. Lazare est déjà moine, mais il veut accéder au plus glorieux monastère, la laure de Sabas; il arrive à convaincre l’archidiacre de l’église de la Résurrection non seulement de faire pression pour l’y faire admettre, mais aussi de payer les 12 nomismata de frais d’admission et de lui obtenir l’office de canonarque. Chassé pour idiorythmie impénitente, Lazare se fait admettre à la laure d’Euthyme, puis il obtient du même archidiacre, décidément bien accommodant, de se faire réadmettre à Saint-Sabas; et l’archidiacre de payer à nouveau les 12 nomismata. Lazare, ordonné prêtre, reçoit alors le
23
Ce n’est pas Cyrille, mais son frère cadet, différent de son frère aîné Matthieu, fondateur du monastère où se retire Cyrille, et donné pour inculte mais très pieux, qui a décidé d’aller à Rome pour vénérer les tombeaux des apôtres et s’imposer les plus dures privations. Mais l’on comprend, par la pratique de Cyrille, que celui-ci n’est pas en reste. 24 Tout de même: “du pain, des herbes et des légumes secs trempés.” 25 La Vie dit que Cyrille reste allongé wJ" kurivw" xevno". 26 Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, c. 20.1–5:101–4. 27 Cf. en dernier lieu M. Kaplan, “In Search of St. Cyril’s Philea,” Work and Worship at the Theotokos Evergetis, Papers of the Fourth Belfast Byzantine International Colloquium, éd. M. Mullett et A. Kirby, BBTT 6.2 (Belfast, 1997), 213–21. 28 Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, c. 24:21. 29 Ibid., c. 62:52. Sur Théodore comme évêque, cf. M. Kaplan, “Le saint, le village et la cité,” Les saints et leur sanctuaires à Byzance: Textes, images et monuments, 81–94, notamment p. 88. 30 Vie d’Élie de Sicile, c. 18:26–28.
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grand habit.31 Les sévices exercés par les Arabes vont toutefois pousser Lazare à rentrer poursuivre son ascèse dans sa patrie. Le chemin que parcourt le saint est bien connu, tout comme la façon de le parcourir.32 Le personnage part rarement seul en pèlerinage. Paul, maître de Pierre d’Atroa, part pour Jérusalem avec celui-ci.33 Plus tard, Pierre se rend en pèlerinage à Éphèse avec l’un de ses frères.34 Hilarion d’Ibérie (9e siècle), saisi du désir de vivre en étranger et d’aller vénérer les lieux saints, renonce à sa charge d’higoumène, emmène un des frères avec lui et se dirige vers Jérusalem.35 À peu près à la même époque, Grégoire le Décapolite, arrivé à Thessalonique, se joint à un moine pour poursuivre vers Rome.36 Blaise d’Amorion tente de se rendre à Rome en compagnie d’un moine indigne qui le vend à un Scythe.37 Délivré, il rencontre un évêque de Bulgarie et part avec lui pour Rome.38 Cyrille le Philéote s’était rendu apparemment seul à Chônai, mais part avec son frère cadet pour Rome.39 Théodore de Sykéôn, parti avec un seul compagnon pour son premier pèlerinage à Jérusalem, s’entoure de deux frères pour le second et encore de deux, dont l’archidiacre de son monastère, lors du troisième.40 Il peut arriver que les groupes soient plus nombreux. C’est évidemment le cas lors des nombreuses traversées maritimes. C’est aussi le cas lorsque Lazare le Galèsiote, âgé de dixhuit ans, traverse l’Asie Mineure pour gagner Jérusalem. Il prend d’abord la route de Chônai; il rencontre une troupe de Cappadociens qui se rendent, eux aussi, à ce sanctuaire et qui comptent parmi eux une jeune fille.41 Mais c’est une exception; repartant de Chônai, 31 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 16–17:514–15. On ne peut que s’interroger sur l’esprit étroitement mercantile des moines de Saint-Sabas en ce tournant du 11e siècle et sur le pouvoir qu’exerce sur eux l’archidiacre de l’une des églises majeures de la Ville Sainte. Sur cette coutume de donner une somme d’argent à l’entrée au monastère, cf. la note accompagnant cet épisode dans R. P. H Greenfield, The Life of Lazaros, cité supra n. 11, p. 96, note 84. 32 C’est évidemment l’objet principal de l’ouvrage de E. Malamut, Sur la route. 33 Vie de Pierre d’Atroa, c. 8:87. 34 Ibid., c. 13:101. 35 B. Martin-Hisard, “La pérégrination du moine géorgien Hilarion au 9e siècle,” BK 39 (1981):101–38; cf. c. 7:123. On ne serait pas surpris que, derrière le “désir de vivre en étranger,” se trouve la xéniteia et derrière la vénération la proskuvnhsi". Sur l’itinéraire d’Hilarion, cf. E. Malamut, Sur la route, 51–53. Dans sa traduction latine de la Vie, P. Peeters, “S. Hilarion d’Ibérie,” AB 32 (1913): 236–69, l’auteur qualifie Hilarion d’ascète itinérant. Il ne me semble pas que l’itinérance vise ici l’ascèse et nous n’avons pas rangé cette Vie dans celles qui font du pèlerinage une ascèse. 36 Vie de Grégoire le Décapolite (BHG 711), c. 22, éd. G. Makris, trad. M. Chronz, Ignatios Diakonos und die Vita des hl. Gregorios Dekapolites, ByzArch 17 (Stuttgart–Leipzig, 1997), 86. Sur les voyages de Grégoire le Décapolite, cf. E. Malamut, Sur la route, 247–49. 37 Vie de Blaise d’Amorion, c. 8:660. 38 Ibid., c. 10:662. 39 Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, loc. cit. supra, note 7. 40 Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, c. 24:20; c. 50:44; c. 62:52. 41 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 7:511. L’épisode permet évidemment à Lazare, jeune homme vigoureux, de surmonter la tentation charnelle. Ce cas permet aussi de poser le problème des pèlerinages féminins. L’hagiographie monastique féminine de l’époque dont nous traitons ici ne fournit aucun exemple de ce type, contrairement à ce qui s’est passé à l’époque protobyzantine (S. Schein, “The «Female-Men of God» and «Men Who Were Women». Female Saints and Holy Land Pilgrimage during the Byzantine Period,” Hagiographica 5 [1998]: 1–33): le vœu de stabilité est bien mieux respecté par les moniales que par les moines. La pèlerine que l’on trouve ici est bien partie en pèlerinage (ajpoxenwqei'sa) en compagnie de ces hommes originaires de la même region, mais qui s’empressent de la détrousser, preuve s’il en est que le pèlerinage ne sied pas aux femmes, encore que plusieurs saints partis en pèlerinage vont être vendus comme esclaves (cf. supra pour Grégoire le Décapolite et infra pour Lazare le Galèsiote) ou détroussés (cf. infra pour Cyrille le Philéote), bien
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il choisit comme compagnon de route un moine paphlagonien;42 et, repartant de Terre Sainte pour se rendre à Rome, il part classiquement avec un compagnon, Paul.43 Il finit par s’en séparer44 et fait apparemment seul la route qui, en de multiples étapes, va le conduire à Éphèse. De là, il s’agit de prendre la mer, et donc les pèlerins de Rome dont il se sépare finalement constituent un groupe nombreux.45 Nous avons vu que Cyrille le Philéote, accompagné de son jeune frère, fait route à l’écart des autres voyageurs sur la route autrement très fréquentée qui conduit à Rome et qui est donc vraisemblablement la Via Egnatia.46 Léontios de Jérusalem (12e siècle), débarqué triomphalement à Akka pour tenter d’occuper son siège patriarcal sous domination latine, fait route vers Jérusalem entouré d’un véritable cortège.47 Les itinéraires suivis montrent clairement que les saints utilisent les grandes routes. Ainsi, quand Cyrille se tient à l’écart du flot des voyageurs de la Via Egnatia, la Vie croit nécessaire de le préciser. L’itinéraire suivi par Lazare le Galèsiote à l’aller comme au retour, fournit le tracé de deux routes pour se rendre en Syrie, puis en Palestine, soit que l’on veuille embarquer à Attaleia,48 soit que l’on franchisse le Taurus, comme le montre son trajet de retour. Sur ces routes, le pèlerin trouve deux sortes d’hébergement. Soit il peut et veut payer, et il s’offre une auberge (pandocei'on), parfois à ses risques et périls, comme nous le verrons pour Cyrille le Philéote en route pour Chônai. Soit il entend se loger gratuitement parce qu’il vit uniquement de l’aumône et trouve refuge auprès de moines49 ou dans de simples églises ou chapelles qui ne fournissent aucun secours.50 De toute façon, un voyage coûte cher, ce qui pose le problème des moyens d’existence. En route pour Chônai, Cyrille, donc, s’arrête dans une auberge; l’aubergiste l’interroge
qu’ils soient assez forts pour se défendre, ce que d’ailleurs ils font, par la fuite pour Lazare ou par la parole pour Cyrille. Lazare obtient que les Cappadociens ne laissent pas la jeune fille sur le bord de la route, mais la lui confient en garde avant de la rendre à des parents qui se trouvent à Chônai (en pèlerinage eux aussi?) pour qu’ils la ramènent dans la patrie de ses parents. Lazare réprimande une moniale de Constantinople qui s’est déguisée en homme pour faire le pèlerinage de saint Jean à Éphèse et qui se rend auprès de lui. Lazare la démasque, lui attribuant le désir de se rendre à Jérusalem, et la renvoie dans son couvent: Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 95:538. Cf. Greenfield, The Life of Lazaros, 185–86 notes 421–24. 42 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 8:511. 43 Ibid., c. 20:516. 44 Ibid., c. 24:517. Paul se fait stylite dans la région de Laodicée. 45 Ibid., c. 29:518. 46 Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, c. 20.3:102. 47 Vie de Léontios de Jérusalem (BHG 985), c. 82, éd. D. Tsougarakis, The Life of Leontios, Patriarch of Jerusalem: Text, Translation, Commentary, The Medieval Mediterranean 2 (Leyde–New York–Cologne, 1993), 128. 48 La Vie de Constantin le Juif nous fournit des variantes lors du trajet de retour depuis Chypre. Au c. 36:638, il cherche à gagner Attaleia d’où il était parti au c. 28:635; au c. 39:639, il débarque finalement à Séleucie et de là semble prendre la route terrestre pour aller déposer sa relique à Nicée. Malamut, Sur la route, 253–54 n’a pas noté ce changement inopiné d’itinéraire. 49 Comme nous l’avons vu à plusieurs reprises, c’est souvent le cas en Terre Sainte, où l’on cumule pèlerinage et séjour dans les laures et cénobes de Palestine. 50 Iôannikios en route pour Éphèse se réfugie dans une petite chapelle: Vie de Iôannikios par Pierre (BHG 936), c. 42, éd. AASS November 2.1:408; Vie de Iôannikios par Sabas (BHG 935), c. 11, éd. AASS Nov. 2.1:343. L’épisode apparaît dans la Vie par Sabas peu avant que le saint n’arrive à Éphèse, mais sans lien avec le pèlerinage, le saint déambulant dans la montagne, d’où il descendra presque par hasard sur la cité de saint Jean. Nous revenons ultérieurement sur ce déplacement de l’épisode. À la fin du 12e siècle, Néophytos le Reclus, partant de Chypre pour le Latros, emporte 2 nomismata; mais il ne s’agit pas d’un pèlerinage: I. P. Tsiknopoullos, Kupriaka; Tupikav (Nicosie, 1969), 76.
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sur le contenu de son sac et Cyrille répond: “Je me rends à Chônai vénérer (proskunhvswn) mon archistratège Michel. Mon sac, parce que je ne veux pas mendier, renferme, venus de chez moi, trois nomismata et un miliarèsion.” Touchante naïveté: l’aubergiste s’empresse de détrousser Cyrille, mais celui-ci, jamais à court d’arguments, finit par se faire rendre son argent et son vêtement.51 Cyrille, originaire d’une famille de moyens paysans qui peuvent parfaitement s’offrir un voyage à Chônai, était donc parti avec l’argent de la route. Lorsque, plus tard, il part pour Rome avec son frère cadet, Nicolas Katasképènos, l’hagiographe, se contente d’une citation biblique, la plus fréquente de toutes,52 pour nous décrire la précarité de leur condition; toutefois, ils se procurent au jour le jour pain, légumes et légumineuses sans avoir apparemment à demander l’aumône.53 D’autres n’ont pas ces scrupules. Iôannikios (mort en 846), en route pour Éphèse, épuisé par “le manque de provisions, la chaleur du soleil (car c’était le dernier mois de l’année)54 et la longueur du voyage,” s’arrête dans une chapelle; un couple venu y apporter une offrande, d’abord effrayé par la figure du saint qui brille comme le soleil, finit par lui apporter de la nourriture et lui indiquer le bon chemin.55 En route pour Jérusalem, Lazare le Galèsiote part comme Iôannikios sans rien emporter du monastère pour les besoins de la route;56 sur le chemin du retour, fuyant les Arabes avec son compagnon Paul, il arrive à Tibériade sans rien avoir mangé durant trois jours. Les habitants les rassasient; ils repartent avec un pain pour la route, que des chameliers leur arrachent.57 Ils reçoivent même des aumônes monétaires: arrivés à Laodicée, ils se séparent, Lazare continuant sa route pour Éphèse, tandis que Paul reste sur place se faire stylite; Paul propose au saint d’aller chez un changeur (trapezivth") pour obtenir la monnaie qui leur permettra de se partager ce nomisma, qui était donc bien la pièce d’or et non un montant en menue monnaie; Lazare refuse d’en prendre la moindre obole et dit à Paul de tout donner aux pauvres.58 Vivre de l’aumône n’est d’ailleurs pas si simple, car les habitants des provinces, peutêtre habitués à ce que les pèlerins partent avec de quoi vivre, ne se laissent pas forcément faire. Lazare, revenu en territoire byzantin, en fait la douloureuse expérience. Sur sa route de Césarée de Cappadoce à Euchaia, il s’arrête dans un village où personne ne lui donne 51
Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, c. 18.1:94–97. L’aubergiste voulait même dépouiller Cyrille de son manteau en pleine salle de l’auberge; mais, comme il y avait des femmes, Cyrille craint de ne pouvoir contenir l’excitation qu’il ressentirait de se mettre nu en si galante compagnie. C’est à partir de là qu’il commence l’un de ses insupportables discours moraux dont Nicolas Katasképènos, l’hagiographe, abreuve le lecteur, ce qui lui permet de récupérer ses biens sans perdre sa vertu. On notera que, partant pour Rome, il n’emporte pas grand chose, mais trouve toujours de quoi se procurer pain, légumes et légumineuses, c. 20.1:101. 52 Luc 9:3: “ni bâton, ni sac, ni deux tuniques, ni sandales aux pieds,” dit la Vie. Cf. aussi Matthieu 9:9–10 et Marc 6:8, qui insistent davantage sur le fait de partir sans argent “car l’ouvrier mérite sa nourriture.” Cf. note suivante. 53 Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, c. 20.2:102. On remarque au passage que la citation biblique est volontairement tronquée pour laisser à Cyrille la possibilité d’avoir quelque argent sans avoir à gagner celui-ci par le travail. 54 Donc en août. Cf. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, chaps. 13–16, esp. 450–68; A. Avramea, “Land and Sea Communications, Fourth–Fifteenth Centuries,” dans The Economic History of Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. A. Laiou (Washington, D.C., 2002), 57–90, esp. 77–88. 55 Vie de Iôannikios, loc. cit. supra, note 50. 56 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 14:513; même paraphrase de la même citation biblique. 57 Ibid., c. 23:516. Sur Tibériade à cette époque, cf. Greenfield, The Life of Lazaros, 107, note 129. 58 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 24:517. En fait, il lui laisse le choix d’en faire ce qu’il veut, de le garder ou de donner aux pauvres, ce que lui ferait de sa part.
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fût-ce un bout de pain.59 Il insiste, restant dans ce village pour la fête des quarante martyrs, mais ne reçoit toujours rien. Alors il sort du village et gagne un petit oratoire proche où il trouve une moniale assise; celle-ci se lève et lui donne du pain et de l’eau.60 L’on comprend mieux cette relative réticence à l’aumône en analysant un autre épisode de la Vie de Lazare, encore tout jeune homme. Celui-ci, en route pour Jérusalem, s’apprête à partir de Chônai après un difficile combat contre la porneia dans l’église de l’Archange. “Il se tenait dans le narthex de l’église après l’achèvement du canon, lorsqu’il voit un moine entrer dans l’église pour prier; au moment où celui-ci va pour sortir, Lazare lui demande d’où il est et où il va. Lorsqu’il eut entendu qu’il était paphlagonien et allait aux Lieux Saints, il tombe à ses pieds et lui demande de le prendre avec lui.” Il part donc avec ce compagnon. “Mais le moine était tortueux et ne voulait pas faire route directe, ou plutôt ne pouvait pas; il avait en effet la mauvaise habitude de dévier du droit chemin pour faire la tournée des villages, demander et rassembler du pain ou tout autre chose qu’on lui donnât. Le soir venu, arrivé dans un village ou un marché (ejmporei'on), il le vendait et en empochait la valeur.” Lazare essaie en vain de le raisonner; alors, il profite de ce que l’autre s’éloigne quémander pour donner le produit de la collecte à qui il rencontre. “De retour, l’autre trouve le sac vide et lui demande, en colère, «où sont les pains que j’ai rassemblés toute la journée en quémandant; est-ce que, en mon absence, tu ne les aurais pas vendus?»,” prêtant à Lazare ses propres intentions. Il n’hésite pas à battre Lazare, mais celui-ci continue son action. Vengeance contre ce gaspilleur ou moyen de se procurer une somme plus rondelette, arrivé à Attaleia où il s’agit d’embarquer, le moine paphlagonien s’apprête à vendre le jeune homme à un nauclère arménien, dont il parle la langue, ce qui lui permet de négocier en présence et à l’insu de Lazare; mais l’un des marins prévient Lazare qui s’enfuit à temps.61 Cet épisode donne une meilleure image de la capacité des moines pèlerins à lever des aumônes et montre qu’il pouvait s’agir d’une activité fructueuse; or ce moine n’est présenté ni comme un faux moine ni comme un faux pèlerin, car il fait bien route vers la Terre Sainte; simplement, au-delà d’un caractère intéressé du personnage, il faut bien amasser de quoi payer le voyage, problème dont l’hagiographe ne nous donne pas de solution normale.62 À lire la plupart de nos récits hagiographiques, l’on pourrait croire que le mouvement est tout et le but final n’est rien. Autant les auteurs s’étendent longuement sur le départ du saint homme et les aléas du chemin, autant ils sont relativement discrets moins sur le 59
Ibid., c. 27:517. Ibid., c. 28:518. Présence certes secourable, mais un rien surprenante, les moniales ne sortant pas d’habitude de leur clôture, sauf si l’on admet que l’oratoire en question était celui d’un monastère féminin; c’est d’ailleurs l’explication la plus simple pour comprendre que la moniale dispose si facilement du pain que les villageois voisins ont refusé au saint. 61 Ibid., c. 8:511. Le moine paphlagonien était donc arménien ou du moins arménophone. La même aventure est arrivée à Blaise d’Amorion, parti pour Rome avec un moine indigne, qui le vend aux “Scythes” (Vie de Blaise d’Amorion, c. 8:660–61). Les relations de Lazare avec les Arméniens sont d’ailleurs difficiles; au c. 15:513, il délivre une jeune fille qui a été enlevée par les soldats arméniens dans les environs d’Antioche. Quant au nauclère, il appartenait sans doute à la communauté arménienne alors nombreuse en Syrie. 62 Les passages en bateau sont relativement fréquents dans nos sources, par exemple lorsqu’il s’agit de se rendre en Chypre. Les hagiographes, qui ne manquent pas de nous montrer leur héros calmant une tempête durant la traversée, ne soulèvent généralement pas la question du paiement de la traversée. Par exemple, Constantin le Juif embarque lui aussi à Attaleia pour Chypre, puis regagne Séleucie sur un navire isaurien sans que le problème soit abordé (Vie de Constantin le Juif, c. 28–29:635–36 et c. 39:639). 60
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pèlerinage lui-même que sur la durée du séjour, sauf lorsqu’il dépasse la durée d’un simple pèlerinage, notamment à Jérusalem et Rome, et sur l’opération de retour. Certains séjours sont très courts par nécessité. Ainsi, Iôannikios, lors de son pèlerinage à Éphèse, s’est vu refuser d’entrer seul dans le sanctuaire et de nuit, comme il le désirait, et ceci pour des raisons sur lesquelles nous reviendrons; il y entre donc de façon miraculeuse, mais s’en retire dès qu’il a fini ses prières. Si le premier pèlerinage de Théodore de Sykéôn en Terre Sainte dure assez longtemps, car il ajoute à la visite des lieux saints de la Ville celle des monastères de la région, lors du second, après sa tournée intra muros, il se voit prié de mettre fin à une sécheresse; “pour ne pas être importuné du fait de l’accomplissement de ce miracle, il quitta aussitôt la ville et regagna son monastère.” En revanche, son troisième voyage ressemble au premier.63 Certains saints effectuent une véritable tournée. C’est le cas de Théodore de Sykéôn, qui, de retour de Constantinople, séjourne dans un faubourg de Nicomédie, Optatianai, chez un ami, près du martyrion d’Anthime.64 Il part de là pour le monastère SaintAutonomos;65 près du port d’Hérakleion au Latomion, il s’arrête à la chapelle de SaintGeorges; puis il se rend au sanctuaire de la Théotokos de Myrokopion, avant d’arriver à Saint-Autonomos. “Le saint entra et pria dans l’oratoire de saint Autonomos, puis se rendit au sépulcre où repose le glorieux martyr; il en baisa la sainte relique et célébra la divine liturgie66 avec ceux qui l’accompagnaient.” Il repart le lendemain pour Nicomédie, accompagné des moines de Saint-Autonomos, et s’arrête au passage célébrer la liturgie dans l’église de la Théotokos de Diolkidès.67 Bref, la tournée des pèlerinages locaux a conduit Théodore tout autour du golfe de Nicomédie. Pierre d’Atroa accomplit également un déplacement multiple, peu après qu’il a dû disperser sa communauté lorsque l’iconoclasme a repris sous Léon V: Éphèse, Chônai, puis Chypre, “qu’il parcourut aussi dix mois; puis, ayant, comme il le souhaitait, vénéré (kataspasavmeno") les lieux saints qui s’y trouvaient et ayant délivré de nombreuses personnes de leur maladie, il retourna à l’Olympe.”68 Si la plupart des pèlerinages se terminent, comme celui-ci, une fois leur objectif atteint, certains voient leur fin guidée par les circonstances, comme Théodore de Sykéôn quittant précipitamment Jérusalem, ou sur une instruction divine. Ce dernier cas se retrouve dans la Vie de Constantin le Juif. Lorsque la dextre de saint Palamôn lui est restée dans la main, il se voit ordonner d’emmener la main, de quitter Chypre et de faire route pour le monastère de Hyakinthos, à Nicée, sous le vocable de la Théotokos.69 Toutefois, il n’a pas vraiment obéi à cet ordre, dont on ne sait d’ailleurs qui l’a émis. Si l’épisode suivant nous le montre franchissant à pieds secs un fleuve en crue tandis qu’il fait route pour embarquer vers Attaleia, Constantin rend visite à un higoumène ami, puis se rend dans un oratoire du Prodrome, que les Arabes investissent; mais, lorsque ceux-ci entrent dans l’église, 63
Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, loc. cit. supra, note 40. Cf. Janin, Les églises et les monastères des grands centres byzantins, 83. 65 Ibid., 87, où sont citées les autres localités de ce passage non identifiées. Saint-Autonomos était situé à Prainète; cf. C. Foss, “St. Autonomus and His Church in Bithynia,” DOP 41 (1987):187–98, repris dans idem, History and Archaeology of Byzantine Asia Minor (Aldershot, 1990), article V. 66 Théodore a conservé la dignité épiscopale après sa démission de l’évêché d’Anastasioupolis. 67 Janin, Les églises et les monastères des grands centres byzantins, 93 n. 66. Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, c. 156– 58:126–33. 68 Vie de Pierre d’Atroa, c. 13–14:99–101. 69 Vie de Constantin le Juif, c. 35:637. 64
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Constantin et sa relique leur restent miraculeusement invisibles.70 À tout le moins, ces détours ont fait courir à la main de Palamôn un risque inconsidéré. Les destinations des pèlerins sont innombrables et, pour beaucoup, sans surprise.71 Trois dominent, sur lesquelles nous n’insisterons pas outre mesure: Jérusalem, Rome et Constantinople. La première a d’abord un intérêt christologique, mais se double, pour les moines, d’un intérêt monastique, puisque les laures palestiniennes continuent de fonctionner; nombre de pèlerins, nous l’avons vu, veulent se faire moine en un endroit qui apparaît comme le foyer décentré du monachisme byzantin. Rome est avant tout une destination apostolique et rejoint Jérusalem et la Terre Sainte comme foyer de profession monastique, qui entraîne un long séjour. Blaise d’Amorion, dont les pèlerinages obéissent au désir de xeniteiva, décide de rester à Rome; il y poursuit son errance, en xevno" inconnu. Il finit par entrer au monastère de César, alors dirigé par Eustratios de Cyzique, qui le laisse circuler entre les saints tombeaux, non sans lui conférer l’habit monastique et changer son nom de Basile en Blaise.72 Il y fait une brillante carrière, s’adonnant à la calligraphie; il devient canonarque, bibliophylax puis ecclésiarque.73 Le simple pèlerinage est donc largement dépassé lorsque, au bout de dix-huit ans, il quitte Rome pour Constantinople et le monastère du Stoudios, sous le règne de Léon VI et le patriarcat d’Antoine Cauléas.74 Peu de temps auparavant, Hilarion d’Ibèrie est venu de Constantinople pour vénérer la sépulture des chefs des apôtres: “il se rendit immédiatement à l’église des saints chefs des apôtres, Pierre et Paul, vénéra et embrassa avec élan et ferveur spirituelle leurs saints tombeaux et toutes les reliques des saints pontifes et martyrs . . . et il vécut deux ans à Rome d’une vie angélique. . . . Après deux ans . . . , une inspiration venue d’en haut le détermina à retourner vers la ville impériale de Constantinople.”75 Un séjour court n’est toutefois pas exclu. La Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, si diserte sur le voyage, est laconique sur le séjour: “arrivés dans la fameuse Rome et ayant visité les tombeaux des saints apôtres, ayant aidé de nombreux habitants de cette ville de leur conversation et de leur aspect conforme à la volonté de Dieu,76 ils rentrèrent chez eux.”77 Il arrive même que le séjour à Rome s’avère décevant. C’est le cas pour Élie de Sicile, dont c’était une destination projetée depuis longtemps; il en avait été privé, arrêté à Corfou et envoyé en Calabre fonder le monastère de Salinai78 à un endroit dont il avait reçu la révélation des années auparavant à Antioche.79 Pourtant, tout s’annonce bien pour Élie: il 70
Ibid., c. 36–38:638–39. Notons que, si le voyage en Chypre est connu de la notice du Synaxaire de Constantinople (Synaxarium CP, 345–46), l’épisode de la relique de Palamôn n’y figure pas. 71 Pour l’époque mésobyzantine, répertoire commode dans Malamut, Sur la route, 311–18. 72 Vie de Blaise d’Amorion, c. 10–11:662. Cf. J.-M. Sansterre, Les moines grecs et orientaux à Rome aux époques byzantine et carolingienne (milieu du VIe s.–fin du IXe s.), 2e éd. (Bruxelles, 1993), 53 et note 9, et surtout idem, “Une laure à Rome au IXe siècle. Remarques à propos d’un article recent,” Byzantion 44 (1974): 514–17. 73 Vie de Blaise d’Amorion, c. 14:663. 74 Ibid., c. 19:666. 75 Martin-Hisard, “La pérégrination,” c. 22–23:129–30. 76 Un aspect peu engageant: Cyrille est connu pour ne jamais changer de vêtement ni se laver, malgré la pourriture qui entoure les blessures qu’il s’inflige par une corde qu’il ne quitte pas, et donc pour la forte odeur qu’il dégage. 77 Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, c. 20.5:105. 78 Vie d’Élie de Sicile, c. 29–30:44–46. 79 Ibid., c. 22:32.
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a reçu la vision des deux coryphées des apôtres qui lui ont ordonné de partir pour Rome avec un disciple; dès l’aube suivante, il s’est mis en route. Arrivé à Rome, il y accomplit sa prière, mais “il ne reçut pas l’honneur convenable de la part du proèdre Étienne.” Tout le monde n’a pas été aussi mal traité par le pontife. La comparaison s’impose avec Pierre l’Athonite, saint beaucoup plus légendaire,80 ce qui rend le récit hagiographique plus significatif encore. La première partie de la Vie de Pierre est reprise d’un miracle dont a bénéficié le scholaire Pierre qui a été, lui aussi, fait prisonnier par les Arabes. Pour obtenir sa délivrance, il implore Nicolas puis Syméon, promettant de se rendre à Rome, au sanctuaire du coryphée Pierre, pour s’y faire moine.81 Lorsqu’il approche de Rome, Nicolas apparaît au pape du moment, lui raconte l’histoire de Pierre, son désir de prier à Saint-Pierre et son nom. C’était le dimanche; le pape se rend au sanctuaire, trouve l’homme du songe au milieu de la foule, l’interpelle par son nom, le tonsure et le consacre à Dieu; au bout d’un certain temps, Pierre quitte Rome pour son destin athonite.82 Contrairement à ce que nous avons vu dans la Vie d’Élie de Sicile, le pape a donc joué le rôle attendu à l’endroit et au moment voulu. Revenons à Hilarion: la Vie nous montre comment, au bout de cinq ans, vers 860, il quitte son monastère de l’Olympe pour “aller à la Ville vénérer les Bois de la Vie. . . . Il partit à Constantinople vénérer la précieuse Croix et toutes les églises saintes. . . . Et lorsqu’il fut entré dans la ville impériale, il vénéra le Bois précieux qu’il chérissait et embrassa volontiers les reliques des saints, autant qu’il s’en trouvait.”83 Constantinople est donc une destination dont les reliques de la Passion constituent le but essentiel, mais que l’on qualifiera, comme Jérusalem et Rome, de multisite. Ce que confirme la Vie de Luc le Stylite (10e siècle). Une voix céleste lui a ordonné de se rendre à Chalcédoine pour s’établir sur la colonne d’Eutropios. Pourtant, venu d’Asie Mineure, il franchit le Bosphore: “il se rend dans la ville impériale, il y fait le tour de tous les sanctuaires renommés de Dieu et maisons saintes,”84 en une sorte de pèlerinage final avant de monter sur sa dernière colonne pour ne plus en redescendre. Deux pèlerinages importants, mais monosites, apparaissent dans l’hagiographie mésobyzantine: Chônai et son sanctuaire de l’archange saint Michel et Éphèse, avec le sanctuaire de saint Jean le Théologien. Le second, qui n’est certes pas le seul pèlerinage à Éphèse, mais de loin le plus important, apparaît dans deux des Vies majeures du second iconoclasme, celles de Pierre d’Atroa et de Iôannikios. Peu après la reprise de l’iconoclasme, Pierre “considérant que les sanctuaires saints sont comme les demeures de Dieu, prend avec lui l’un de ses frères, zélé et vertueux, appelé Jean, et part pour le sanctuaire de saint Jean le Théologien, pour y prier.”85 Quant à Iôannikios, juste après sa 80
Cf. supra, note 9. Vie de Pierre l’Athonite, c. 1:18–22. Ce récit est beaucoup plus favorable au pape; il est vrai que le saint s’appelle Pierre et se rend donc sur la tombe de son saint patron, dont le pape est le successeur. Il est vain de chercher une indication dans l’époque supposée d’écriture (cf. supra, note 9), car, vu la complexité des relations entre la papauté et Constantinople au début de la seconde moitié du 9e siècle, une datation fine, ici impossible, serait nécessaire. 82 Ibid., c. 2 et 3.1:22–23. 83 Martin-Hisard, “La pérégrination,” c. 22:129. 84 Vie de Luc le Stylite (BHG 2239), c. 10, éd. H. Delehaye, Les saints stylites, SubsHag 14 (Bruxelles, 1923), 206. 85 Vie de Pierre d’Atroa, c. 13:99. 81
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rencontre avec Inger, donc avant 826, il “eut une fois le désir de se rendre dans les Thracésiens, pour aller prier dans la très sainte église de l’apôtre et évangéliste Jean le Théologien.” C’est au cours de ce voyage qu’un couple le ravitaille dans une chapelle.86 Nous verrons plus loin les difficultés qu’il rencontre à Éphèse. En 863, Antoine le Jeune (mort en 865), qui vit à Constantinople au métoque de tous les saints dépendant du monastère d’Héraklion, désireux de conseiller à Pétronas, stratège des Thracésiens, d’engager la bataille contre les Arabes contrairement aux ordres formels de Michel III, car il a reçu la révélation de la victoire future, “prit immédiatement la route sous couvert d’aller prier l’apôtre du Christ le Théologien et rejoignit son fils spirituel.”87 Le pèlerinage d’Éphèse est alors une évidence quotidienne que l’on entame à tout moment. Au début du onzième siècle, ce sanctuaire est le point d’aboutissement inévitable de Lazare le Galèsiote, originaire de la région, de retour de Terre Sainte à l’issue d’un long périple de pèlerinages; il sert aussi de lieu de rassemblement à ceux qui vont partir pour Rome, ce à quoi Lazare renonce finalement.88 Une fois accompli son pèlerinage au sanctuaire d’Éphèse, Pierre d’Atroa continue “pour celui de l’archistratège Michel à Chônai.”89 Nous avons déjà vu que Lazare, encore jeune homme, s’y était rendu en compagnie de Cappadociens. Nous avons là une description plus complète des pratiques, en général absente des pèlerinages des saints: Lazare passe la nuit dans un coin du narthex et y subit la tentation de la porneia sous la forme d’une femme habillée en moniale qu’il voit en songe lui faire la proposition d’une liaison honteuse; il se réveille en sursaut, quitte l’endroit sans répondre à la femme et, se tenant dans un autre lieu, demande à Dieu de le délivrer de la tentation diabolique et de lui arranger une route sûre pour Constantinople.90 Quant à Cyrille le Philéote, il se rend à Chônai vénérer le miracle accompli par l’archistratège Michel. “Parvenu au sanctuaire de l’archistratège Michel, il y entra et se prosterna devant la sainte icône de celui-ci; il lui demanda de le préserver . . . des ennemis visibles et invisibles. Ensuite, il retourna chez lui avec l’aide et la grâce de Dieu.”91 À ceci s’ajoutent des pèlerinages secondaires soit par leur importance ou leur caractère local,92 soit parce qu’ils sont l’annexe du pèlerinage principal. Ainsi, Alypios, futur stylite (première moitié du 7e siècle), alors économe de la métropole d’Hadrianoupolis de Paphlagonie, quitte subrepticement son évêché pour se rendre en Orient, d’ailleurs moins mû par un désir de pèlerinage en Terre Sainte que par l’objectif de se faire moine dans une des laures de Palestine.93 Son évêque se lance à sa poursuite et le rattrape à Euchaïta, 86
Vie de Iôannikios, loc. cit. supra, note 50. Vie d’Antoine le Jeune (BHG 142), 2e partie, c. 14, éd. F. Halkin, AB 62 (1944): 218. 88 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, loc. cit. supra, note 11. 89 Vie de Pierre d’Atroa, loc. cit. supra, note 85. Sur Chônai, cf. Belke et Mersich, Phrygien und Pisidien, 222– 25. 90 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, loc. cit. supra, note 41; la Vie ne précise pas ce qu’elle entend par changement d’endroit (sta;" ejn eJtevrw// tovpw/), à l’intérieur ou à l’extérieur du sanctuaire. Comme Lazare continue sa prière, il pourrait s’agir d’un autre endroit dans le sanctuaire, mais nous sommes de nuit, et le sanctuaire était normalement fermé (cf. infra à propos de Iôannikios). 91 Vie de Cyrille le Philéote, c. 18.1:94 et 18.5:98. 92 Nous revenons infra longuement sur la participation de Théodore de Sykéôn à des pèlerinages locaux. 93 Vie d’Alypios le Stylite (BHG 64), c. 6, éd. H. Delehaye, Les saints stylites (cité supra, note 84), 152. Les remarques faites supra, note 3 pour la Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn s’appliquent à celle d’Alypios dont la destinée ultérieure est toutefois moins prospère. 87
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au moment de la fête de Théodore le Martyr: Alypios participe incidemment, au hasard de son parcours, à un pèlerinage relativement prisé et que nous retrouverons, mais secondaire par rapport au but poursuivi par le saint. Sur sa route vers Chypre, Constantin le Juif se détourne (ejxwvdeue) vers l’église de Myra pour vénérer l’archevêque Nicolas.94 Après son séjour à Rome, Hilarion d’Ibérie décide de rentrer à Constantinople; l’itinéraire le conduit à Thessalonique; “il pénétra dans la ville et, avant toute chose, vénéra le tombeau du glorieux Dèmètrios,” évidence incontournable pour qui passe par là.95 Deux itinéraires s’avèrent particulièrement complets dans nos récits hagiographiques. D’abord celui d’Élie de Sicile, qui, délivré des prisons arabes, entend faire la tournée des lieux saints d’Orient, d’abord en Palestine (outre Jérusalem, le Jourdain, Nazareth, le mont Thabor et Dodékathronon),96 puis en Égypte, à Alexandrie, où “il faisait des nuits entières de prière dans les martyria de saint Marc l’Évangéliste et de Pierre le célèbre évêque et martyr, Ménas, Cyr et Jean, les très célèbres martyrs.”97 Empêché de se rendre en Perse, il passe par Antioche, puis regagne sa patrie par l’Afrique. Il est le type même du personnage assoiffé du moindre pèlerinage; ainsi, de passage dans le Péloponnèse, dans la région de Sparte, il visite une église des saints Anargyres Côme et Damien inconnue de nous.98 Enfin, après avoir fondé son monastère de Salinai et enfin accompli son pèlerinage à Rome, il retourne à Taormina à la veille de sa chute en 902 pour se prosterner (proskunh'sai) devant la vénérable relique de saint Pankratios; Dieu l’y informe de l’imminence de l’attaque arabe.99 Deuxième exemple d’itinéraire, celui-ci de Lazare le Galèsiote de retour de Terre Sainte; son chemin n’est qu’une longue suite de pèlerinages. D’abord le Mont Admirable auprès de Syméon Stylite le Jeune.100 Parvenu en Cappadoce, il tente l’ascension hivernale du Mont Argée, sans doute un simple exercice d’ascèse, car aucun lieu saint n’y est mentionné.101 Arrivé à Césarée, il va prier dans l’église Saint-Basile.102 Puis il se rend à Euchaia, ville de Théodore le Stratélate où il se livre à la vénération; de là, il gagne Euchaïta vénérer Théodore Tyron. L’itinéraire se poursuit par des prières dans l’église Saint-Michel de Chônai puis dans celle de saint Jean le Théologien à Éphèse.103 La volonté de l’hagiographe de nous montrer un itinéraire complet de pèlerinages semble patente. Ce parcours apparaît comme l’achèvement de cette partie du cheminement qui conduit à la sainteté; comme pour Luc le Stylite, mais sur une échelle kilométrique incomparable, elle précède immédiatement l’ascension sur une colonne.104 94
Vie de Constantin le Juif, c. 27:635: proskunhvsew" cavrin. Martin-Hisard, “La pérégrination,” c. 24:130. 96 Vie d’Élie de Sicile, c. 19:28. 97 Ibid., c. 21:30. 98 Ibid., c. 27:30. 99 Ibid., c. 49:74. 100 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 25:517. 101 Sur le mont Argée, cf. F. Hild et M. Restle, Kappadokien, TIB 2 (Vienne, 1981), 149. 102 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 27:517. On notera que, dans le cas du Mont Admirable comme dans celui de Basile, il n’est pas utilisé de terme technique propre aux pèlerinages, contrairement à ce qui se passe à Euchaia et Euchaïta. 103 Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, c. 29:518. 104 Celle-ci intervient au c. 31:519. Différence notable toutefois: chez Luc le Stylite, la tournée des sanctuaires de Constantinople précède la dernière ascension sur une colonne d’un ascète qui n’en est pas à son coup d’essai; chez Lazare, elle précède la première expérience de stylite qui sera suivie de plusieurs change95
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Le pèlerinage dépasse toutefois l’itinéraire de sainteté des individus, aussi fameux soient-ils, ne constituant d’ailleurs jamais un critère déterminant de la sainteté des personnages, pour devenir un phénomène social, voire sociologique, et comporter un enjeu politique. Le phénomène sociologique est peut-être plus sensible lorsque le saint participe à un pèlerinage local, ce que nous voyons à deux reprises dans la Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn. Désireux d’embrasser le saint homme, alors évêque d’Anastasioupolis, et de recevoir sa bénédiction, l’évêque Émilianos de Germia l’invite à venir prier dans le sanctuaire de saint Michel dont s’honore sa cité. Lorsqu’il l’accueille enfin, “c’était l’époque de la fête de notre maîtresse la Théotokos que l’on honore au village de Mousgè,105 où chaque année se rendaient les deux cités de Germia et d’Eudoxia106 pour célébrer la fête. Le temps de ce rassemblement étant arrivé, les évêques des deux cités sortirent comme d’habitude avec tout le peuple en procession au susdit chôrion de Mousgè.” Émilianos en profite pour y mêler Théodore, qui, bien entendu, accomplit un miracle, délivrant une possédée du village nommée Irène au milieu du Kyrié Éléèson chanté par la foule. “À la vue du miracle accompli, l’évêque et le peuple des deux cités rendirent gloire à Dieu, puis, avec le saint, s’en retournèrent joyeusement chez eux. Le bienheureux prit congé et, précédé par l’évêque et les citoyens, retourna à Anastasioupolis.”107 Un deuxième épisode implique le même Émilianos. Théodore, redevenu moine, qui doit sa vocation à saint Georges, en voudrait détenir des reliques; or “l’évêque de Germia avait une partie de sa sainte tête, un doigt de sa main, une de ses dents et un autre morceau.” Émilianos demande à Théodore de venir à nouveau prier dans le sanctuaire de l’Archange; il l’embrasserait et lui donnerait les reliques. Théodore s’exécute et Émilianos le conduit au monastère de la Théotokos d’Aligétè, qui devait constituer un autre pèlerinage local. Or la métropole voisine de Pessinonte108 est frappée par la sécheresse; les habitants apprennent la présence du saint à 15 milliaires de chez eux. “Leurs magistrats, leurs clercs avec une belle foule, se rendirent au susdit monastère de la Théotokos”; ils obtiennent d’Émilianos d’emmener Théodore célébrer une fête chez eux pour que la prière du saint leur apporte la pluie. La cité en procession accueille le saint à 3 milliaires des remparts; le métropolite Georges vient l’accueillir à l’entrée. Le saint ordonne une procession pour le lendemain; celle-ci se réunit à la cathédrale Sainte-Sophie. Théodore et le métropolite en prennent la tête et la conduisent au sanctuaire des 10,000 Anges hors les murs. Après la lecture de l’Évangile, la procession retourne à la cathédrale, le saint célèbre la messe et la foule partage un repas de fête; le jour même tombe une pluie abondante. Théodore rentre alors à Germia et repart à Sykéôn avec ses reliques.109 L’enseignement des deux épisodes est à peu près le même. Le pèlerinage est un phénomène civique, qui implique le métropolite ou l’évêque, le clergé et les citoyens de la cité. Il revêt un aspect collectif, encore renforcé par son caractère habituel. Au plan local, ments de lieu et de colonne. Elle ne constitue donc pas un point d’inflexion fondamental du récit hagiographique, comme dans le cas de Luc. 105 TIB 4:208. 106 Ibid., 163. 107 Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, c. 71:58–59. 108 TIB 4:214–15. 109 Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, c. 100–101:80–82.
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il manifeste l’unité de la cité derrière son évêque et, éventuellement, son saint. Il est l’un des éléments du “travail civique du saint,” pour reprendre la belle expression de Peter Brown,110 en même temps qu’il marque le territoire de l’évêque. On notera que les exemples ultérieurs de pèlerinages que nous examinons ici ne donnent pas à l’évêque une place aussi importante; les cités, et donc l’évêque, ont perdu en importance, du moins sur ce plan-là. Deux épisodes parallèles, que l’on trouve de surcroît chez le même hagiographe, et qui datent tous deux du second iconoclasme, tendent à montrer que les pèlerinages sont un enjeu important de cette controverse et donc, compte tenu du caractère éminemment politique de celle-ci, un véritable enjeu politique, les iconodoules privés de pèlerinage étant des opposants certes religieux, mais, par nature, politiques en dernière analyse.111 Pierre d’Atroa se rend en pèlerinage à Éphèse puis Chônai peu après la reprise de l’iconoclasme. Pourquoi? Dans la première rédaction, l’hagiographe, Sabas, dit simplement “considérant que les sanctuaires des saints sont comme les demeures de Dieu.” Mais, dans la version qu’il remanie lui-même, il ajoute: “ayant depuis longtemps l’intention de se rendre en ces lieux, d’autant qu’il ne pourrait plus s’y rendre à cause du gouvernement tyrannique des hérétiques (le canon aurait interdit au pieux d’entrer dans l’église des impies).”112 Il faut peut-être retourner la proposition: l’investissement des grands sanctuaires par le clergé iconoclaste en aurait interdit l’accès aux iconodoules non pas parce 110
P. Brown, La société et le sacré dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris, 1985), traduction du recueil d’articles Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Calif., 1982), 215. Ce rôle civique du saint, tant dans les villages que dans les cités, est développé dans trois articles: “Le saint homme: son essor et sa fonction dans l’Antiquité tardive,” 59–106; “Ville, village et saint homme: le cas de la Syrie,” 107–88; “Une crise des Siècles sombres (sic! obscurs serait plus exact): aspects de la controverse iconoclaste,” 199–244. Cf. notre étude sur cet aspect de Théodore de Sykéôn dans “Le saint, le village et la cité,” cité supra, note 29. Les publications d’origine de P. Brown sont les suivantes: “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” JRS 61 (1971): 80–101; “Town, Village and Holy Man: The Case of Syria,” Assimilation et résistance à la culture gréco-romaine dans le monde ancien. Travaux du VIe congrès international des Études classiques (Paris, 1976), 213–26; “A Dark Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy,” EHR 88 (1973): 1–34. 111 Voir notre point de vue en la matière dans M. Kaplan, La chrétienté byzantine du début du VIIe siècle au milieu du XIe siècle. Images et reliques, moines et moniales, Constantinople et Rome (Paris, 1997), 100–101. 112 Vita retractata de Pierre d’Atroa (BHG 2365), c. 13, éd. et trad. V. Laurent, La Vita Retractata et les miracles posthumes de saint Pierre d’Atroa, SubsHag 31 (Bruxelles, 1958), 104. Référence aux canons concernés dans Laurent, La Vie merveilleuse de Pierre d’Atroa, 127 note 3. Il convient de s’interroger sur les raisons qui poussent Sabas à introduire cette précision. La première version de la Vie s’intéresse en fait assez peu à la question de l’iconoclasme. Sans doute Pierre était-il un iconodoule modéré, qui n’a d’ailleurs pas souffert outre mesure des persécutions de Théophile, contrairement au frères Graptoi, à Michel le Syncelle ou Euthyme de Sardes; il s’est contenté de défendre localement ses monastères et leurs reliques, et le rétablissement de l’iconodoulie n’amène nulle diffusion de son culte (cf. Laurent, ibid., 51). Dans un premier temps, Laurent avait même affirmé que la Vie avait d’abord été écrite avant 843. Mais deux expressions, l’une disant, en incise “du temps de l’hérésie” et l’autre qualifiant de “saint” Iôannikios, mort le 6 novembre 846, lui ont fait dater cette écriture de 847, du vivant de Méthode (ibid., 14). Comme Sabas a remanié plusieurs fois son texte, on peut admettre que la rédaction d’origine date bien d’avant 843, événement qui n’est même pas prévu par le saint et que les deux incises ont été rajoutées avant le premier état conservé, si elles ne l’ont été par quelque scribe. En tout cas, la première version est modérée, conformément à la ligne de Méthode, qui, pour maîtriser sa politique de renouvellement de la hiérarchie, entend ménager la dynastie et donc ne pas charger Théophile et les iconoclastes: cf. en dernier lieu D. Afinogenov, “The Great Purge of 843: A Reexamination,” LEIMWN, Studies Presented to Lennart Rydén on His Sixty-fifth Birthday, éd. J. O. Rosenqvist, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia 6 (Uppsala, 1996), 79–91. La seconde version date d’une période où les excès commis par Ignace ont permis aux iconoclastes de redresser la tête; Sabas, qui introduit notamment un long passage de défense de la doctrine des Images (Vita retracta, 97–100), insiste désormais sur les difficultés que son héros a dû surmonter du fait des iconoclastes. C’est la ligne suivie par Phôtios, qui fait par deux fois condamner l’iconoclasme,
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qu’ils n’auraient pas voulu y entrer en vertu des canons cités, mais parce que les iconoclastes le leur auraient interdit, au moins tacitement. De cela, nous avons une autre indication dans la Vie de Iôannikios. Iôannikios se rend à Saint-Jean-le-Théologien d’Éphèse, dans des circonstances que nous avons vues cidessus pour son ravitaillement,113 mais “il ne désirait pas entrer en même temps que la foule qui s’y déversait.” Il ne veut donc pas prier en même temps que la foule des iconoclastes, ce qui permet de remarquer au passage que ceux-ci ne sont nullement hostiles aux pèlerinages. Iôannikios demande au responsable114 de l’église de lui ouvrir l’église pour lui tout seul la nuit, ce que celui-ci refuse évidemment: il n’a qu’à faire comme les autres. “Trois jours de suite, l’homme lui ferma la porte au nez et partit.” C’est alors l’apôtre lui-même qui lui ouvre les portes puis les referme après que Iôannikios a accompli ses dévotions.115 On peut certes arguer que le préposé aux clefs a simplement refusé une ouverture spéciale pour un individu sans forcément savoir que c’était ce dangereux iconodoule de Iôannikios. Mais le pèlerinage constitue bien, au moins pour l’hagiographe iconodoule, un enjeu de la querelle. Une dernière interrogation s’impose. Le pèlerinage est-il un phénomène si général, si présent dans tous les esprits? Les lieux saints, les grands sanctuaires sont-ils des endroits y compris par les envoyés de Rome, en 861 et 865 (cf. Kaplan, La chrétienté byzantine, 79–80). Et l’éditeur place à juste titre la révision de Sabas sous le premier patriarcat de Phôtios. Toutefois, ce pourrait être un peu plus tôt. 113 Loc. cit. supra, note 50. 114 to;n tou' naou' th;n frontivda e[conta: ce pourrait être l’ecclésiarque, mais le texte précise par la suite que c’est celui qui détient les clefs. 115 Vie de Iôannikios par Pierre, c. 43:409, où l’épisode est placé peu avant 826, sous Michel II; Vie de Iôannikios par Sabas, c. 12:143. Sabas, qui écrit après Pierre, déplace l’épisode d’une façon qui n’est pas sans intérêt: il place la venue à Éphèse peu après la prise d’habit, vers 797–99. “De là, il se rend au sanctuaire de Jean le Théologien à Éphèse. Il y entre d’une façon incroyable à une heure de fermeture: les portes se sont ouvertes pour lui, il y a prié, il est sorti et les portes se sont refermées.” Il retourne alors dans la montagne. Le problème du sanctuaire iconoclaste et de la foule hérétique avec laquelle il ne faudrait pas prier est ici évacué, alors même que Sabas le réintroduit dans sa nouvelle rédaction de la Vie de Pierre d’Atroa. On ne peut donc manquer de s’interroger sur le pourquoi d’un déplacement qui, par parenthèse, obéit à une motivation en apparence opposée à celle qui a présidé, pour ce même Sabas, à la réécriture de la Vie de Pierre. Là encore, la date de composition est tout à fait essentielle et l’objectif purement politique. La Vie de Iôannikios par Pierre a été composée du vivant de Méthode ou très peu de temps après celle-ci, en tout cas avant avril 848; elle présente un iconodoule modérément persécuté, circulant à peu près librement, qui peut donc tout à fait se rendre à Éphèse. Elle se montre en revanche discrète sur les débuts de la carrière de Iôannikios, certes un héros de la bataille de Markellai, mais un déserteur, qui se cache après 815 pour ne pas être arrêté comme tel, d’où sa résistance modérée. Elle est violemment hostile aux Stoudites et magnifie la place de Joseph de Kathara, celui qui a remarié Constantin VI, provoquant le conflit de celui-ci avec le Sakkoudion, puis de Nicéphore Ier avec Théodore Stoudite. La version de Sabas, postérieure à la première rédaction de la Vie de Pierre d’Atroa, retire tout ce que la Vie par Pierre contenait d’hostile aux Stoudites et de favorable à Joseph de Kathara; elle gonfle exagérément tout ce qu’elle peut placer dans la première partie de la Vie, faisant prendre l’habit à Iôannikios beaucoup plus tôt. D’où le déplacement d’un certain nombre d’épisodes, dont celui-ci. On voit mal dès lors pourquoi le saint a absolument voulu entrer seul dans le sanctuaire et Sabas passe rapidement. Sur ces points voir, plutôt que l’introduction de D. Sullivan à la traduction de la Vie par Pierre dans Byzantine Defenders of Images: Eight Saints’ Lives in English Translation, éd. A.-M. Talbot (Washington, D.C., 1998), 245–49, le magistral article de C. Mango, “The Two Lives of St. Ioannikios and the Bulgarians,” Okeanos: ˇevcˇenko on His Sixtieth Birthday by His Colleagues and Students, HUkSt 7 (1983): 393–404. Essays Presented to Ihor S On ne peut rien tirer de plus sur ce plan d’une version tardive (13e siècle) de ce miracle: Od. Lampsidis, “Das Wunder des heiligen Ioannikios in der Kirche des Evangelisten Johannes in Ephesos,” AB 100 (1982) (Mélanges offerts à Baudouin de Gaiffier et François Halkin): 429–30.
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de visite obligatoire pour les fidèles qui passent à proximité? La réponse est pour le moins nuancée. Nous avons vu Antoine le Jeune se rendre à Éphèse pour persuader Pétronas, stratège des Thracésiens, de désobéir à Michel III et d’attaquer les Arabes en une bataille qui va s’avérer pour les Byzantins une victoire décisive. Antoine, qui est moine à Constantinople, “prit immédiatement la route d’Éphèse sous couvert d’aller prier l’apôtre du Christ Jean le Théologien et rejoignit son fils spirituel.”116 D’un côté, même en cette période où les routes, notamment maritimes, sont infestées d’Arabes, le pèlerinage à Éphèse est une évidence quotidienne et il est naturel qu’un moine de Constantinople le pratique. Mais de l’autre, ce n’est ici qu’un simple prétexte: notre saint homme va exclusivement voir son disciple stratège et n’en profite même pas, alors qu’il se trouve à Éphèse, pour faire le pèlerinage. Mais il est un exemple plus étonnant encore, quoique plus tardif. Il s’agit de la Vie de Léontios, patriarche de Jérusalem, écrite par un aristocrate de Constantinople, Théodosios Goudélès. Nommé patriarche par Manuel Ier, l’ancien higoumène de SaintJean-le-Théologien de Patmos reçoit l’ordre de rejoindre son poste en 1175, dans le cadre de la politique de reconquête menée par l’empereur, alors qu’il y a un patriarche latin dans la Ville Sainte, Amaury de Nesle. L’arrivée de Léontios à Akka est triomphale, mais ce n’est évidemment pas sa destination principale. “Le grand homme se mit en devoir de monter à Jérusalem et Nazareth se présentait sur sa route. C’était l’heure du déjeuner; le jour avait atteint son milieu, gênant le saint lui-même et ses compagnons de route, car il frappait en plein sur leur tête. Cela les convainquit de s’arrêter un peu et d’éviter le pic de chaleur, de prendre du pain et de l’eau. ”117 Autrement dit, fût-on un saint et un patriarche, l’on peut passer à Nazareth sans y faire autre chose que s’y mettre à l’abri de la chaleur et y déjeuner; c’est proprement l’anti-pèlerinage. Au reste, parvenu à Jérusalem, où il ne peut prendre possession de son patriarcat et doit même échapper aux sbires d’Amaury de Nesle qui voulaient lui faire un mauvais sort, Léontios n’a pas davantage une attitude de pèlerin; son seul souci, d’ailleurs vain, ce serait non de faire un pèlerinage au Saint Sépulcre, mais d’y dire la messe et s’imposer ainsi comme patriarche. Le pèlerinage, même en Terre Sainte, est-il passé de mode au moment même des Croisades dans l’aristocratie byzantine en ce début du treizième siècle où écrit Goudélès? Nous proposons de limiter la portée de cet exemple à une catégorie bien déterminée, qui n’était d’ailleurs pas celle qui prisait le plus les pèlerinages lointains, l’aristocratie de fonction, à laquelle appartient l’auteur de la Vie de Léontios. Pour les saints dont la Vie ne traduit pas ce point de vue, c’est au contraire la continuité qui l’emporte. Bien sûr, une rupture radicale s’est produite au septième siècle, lorsque l’empire a perdu le contrôle de Jérusalem, de la Palestine et donc des monastères du désert qui sépare la Ville Sainte du 116
Vie d’Antoine le Jeune, loc. cit. supra, note 87. Vie de Léontios de Jérusalem, loc. cit. supra, note 47. Notons que Léontios, alors disciple d’un ascète qui se retrouve nommé métropolite de Tibériade, commence par accompagner celui-ci sur le chemin de la Palestine, mais, au lieu d’accompagner son maître jusqu’au bout, ce qui l’aurait mis à pied d’œuvre pour maints pèlerinages en Terre Sainte, se sépare de celui-ci pour se retirer à Saint-Jean-le-Théologien de Patmos. Comme il s’agit d’une période pour laquelle Théodosios Goudélès ne dispose pas d’informations de première main, il aurait pu sans difficultés faire passer son héros par la Terre Sainte s’il en avait senti la nécessité. 117
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Jourdain et de la Mer Morte. Pourtant, comme le montre la Vie de Lazare le Galèsiote, devenir moine à la Laure de Sabas reste un objectif raisonnable. Les Byzantins n’auront nul besoin que les Croisés leur montrent le chemin de Jérusalem. La Vie de Cyrille le Philéote montre, s’il en était besoin, que, à la fin du onzième siècle, l’écho du “schisme” de 1054 n’est pas parvenu jusque dans les monastères byzantins, en tout cas ne remet pas en cause la ville de Pierre et Paul comme lieu privilégié de pèlerinage; mais, là, pour mesurer l’impact des conflits entre Orient et Occident, en tout cas nul à l’époque de Phôtios, il faudrait sortir du cadre mésobyzantin. Quant à Constantinople comme destination des pèlerinages, c’est une discrète constante. Mis à part quelques rares spécialistes, comme Hilarion d’Ibèrie ou Élie de Sicile, nos saints ne sont pas des pèlerins impénitents. Le pèlerinage est par trop contraire à l’idéal de stabilité du moine et les Vies des saints sont ici un mauvais témoin: les saints sont rarement gyrovagues, faute de quoi ils n’auraient pas été saints. La xéniteia reste un idéal, mais il n’a pas besoin de se matérialiser sur la route au-delà d’une ou deux manifestations, exemplaires mais limitées, dans une vie: c’est avant tout une ascèse intérieure. Pour autant, le pèlerinage apparaît comme l’une des étapes sinon nécessaire, du moins utile et très généralement présente, dans l’itinéraire de sainteté, complexe et nuancé, du saint byzantin, grandement dépendant de la conception personnelle de l’hagiographe. Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
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Pilgrimage in Medieval Asia Minor CLIVE FOSS
t first sight, pilgrimage in Asia Minor seems to decline drastically after the early seventh century. In terms of abundance and variety of evidence, medieval Byzantine sources have far less to offer than those of earlier centuries. No texts of the seventh through fourteenth centuries can compare with the rich detail of the miracles of St. Thekla or the lives of St. Theodore of Sykeon or St. Nicholas of Myra. Those allow a whole environment to be reconstructed, featuring the lives of holy men in a rural society or the vibrant activity of a major shrine that drew people from a wide area. In addition, longdistance travelers, whether from Byzantium or the West, reveal a whole network of famous late antique shrines and their activities.1 For the following centuries, the evidence is quite different and far more limited. Lives of saints or scattered mentions of shrines in historical texts offer inconsistent though sometimes detailed information—much of it concentrated in one period, the ninth century—but accounts of long-distance travelers are few and uninformative. The detailed life of an eleventh-century saint, Lazaros of Mount Galesion, provides a valuable exception.2 Likewise, the archaeological evidence is much scarcer: the Isaurian shrines of St. Thekla and Alahan (which appears to have been a pilgrimage site) were abandoned, and only Ephesos presents continuing evidence for pilgrimage. Clay ampullae, used for the sacred oil gathered at some shrines, also appear to date only to late antiquity.3 The circumstances of the early Middle Ages, of course, were not very propitious for pilgrimage. The Arab invasions of the seventh to ninth centuries would have impeded long-distance travel, while the decline of cities and general reduction of the population
A
1 For all this, see the excellent survey of P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’orient (Paris, 1985), esp. 353– 58, 363–89 for Asia Minor. 2 See R. Greenfield, The Life of Lazaros of Mt. Galesion (Washington, D.C., 2000), with comprehensive introduction and notes. 3 For ampullae from Ephesos, see M. Duncan-Flowers, “A Pilgrim’s Ampulla from the Shrine of St. John the Evangelist at Ephesus,” in R. Ousterhout, ed., The Blessings of Pilgrimage (Urbana, 1990), 125–39. On the other hand, lead ampullae were being made at Salonica in the 12th–15th centuries (C. Bakirtzis, “Byzantine Ampullae from Thessaloniki,” ibid., 140–49), and lead and pewter ampullae from the Holy Land, normally dated to the 6th century, have now been assigned on convincing grounds to the 11th–13th centuries: D. Buckton, ed., Byzantium, Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections (London, 1994), 187f. The whole question of dating ampullae from Asia Minor is perhaps to be revised. This and the study of lead seals, many of which bear images of patron saints of pilgrimage sites and are sometimes pierced for wearing, offer promising lines for future research. So, no doubt, do inscriptions, though a preliminary check revealed little direct evidence for pilgrimage.
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meant fewer resources for travelers. After the battle of Mantzikert in 1071, most of the interior of Asia Minor was permanently lost to Byzantium. Everything seems to indicate that pilgrimage could only have continued on a greatly reduced scale. Yet a closer look at the sources suggests a more nuanced image, with far more pilgrims visiting far more shrines than are at first apparent. I propose to present this image here by investigating a few simple questions: what shrines were still functioning? what attractions did they have to offer? who attended them? and, in the process, to show the limits of our knowledge.4 In the late tenth century, a certain Leon, a native of a village near Magnesia on the Maeander who came to be known as St. Lazaros of Mount Galesion, set out on an ambitious pilgrimage. On his way to the Holy Land, he first visited the shrine of St. Michael the Archangel in Chonai in Phrygia. Years later, on his return from Jerusalem, he traveled through Antioch and Cilicia to the church of St. Basil in Cappadocian Caesarea, then to the shrines of St. Theodore the General in Euchania, St. Theodore the Recruit in Euchaita, back to Chonai, and finally to the church of St. John the Evangelist in Ephesos.5 His pilgrimage took in most of the major shrines of Asia Minor; it also illustrates some of the problems of the available evidence and raises the question of changing goals of pilgrimage between late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Relatively abundant sources corroborate the importance of Ephesos, Chonai, and Euchaita as major goals of Byzantine pilgrimage. Euchania and Caesarea, however, are hardly ever mentioned, while Lazaros failed to visit three other places which clearly attracted large numbers of pilgrims: Myra, Nicaea, and Mount Olympos in Mysia.6 In terms of sacred capital—churches, tombs, relics, and sites of miracles—Ephesos was by far the richest place in Asia Minor and one of the greatest goals of pilgrimage in the empire. As one of the major Aegean ports, standing at the end of highways into the interior and across Asia Minor, it was in a convenient location to attract local, long-distance, and international visitors. Consequently, its pilgrims included royalty, officials, saints, and many foreigners. They came in a constant stream through the Byzantine period and into the fifteenth century.7 The city contained one of the most holy sites of Christendom, the church and tomb of St. John the Evangelist, so important that the medieval town was usually known simply as Theologos, the title of the Evangelist. The church was the scene of an annual miracle which will be described below. Second in fame was the tomb of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesos whose miraculous awakening took place in the fifth century; they even found their way into the Koran.8 In addition, there were the tombs of Mary Magdalene, St. Timothy, and St. Hermione, daughter of the apostle Philip. Local relics included the 4
The following discussion operates within certain geographical limits: it includes Asia Minor west of the Taurus and Antitaurus—thus excluding Armenia, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia (though these are within the boundaries of modern Turkey), and does not discuss pilgrimage to Trebizond or Mt. Galesion, the subjects of articles in this volume by J. O. Rosenqvist and R. Greenfield. 5 Text in AASS Nov. 3:511, 518f. Neither St. Lazaros nor his monastic foundation and the pilgrims who frequented it will be discussed here, since they have been treated in full detail by R. Greenfield: see above, note 2. 6 Nor did he visit the shrine of St. Eugenios in Trebizond, whose widely famed cult attracted pilgrims from the 9th though the 14th century; it is discussed by J. O. Rosenqvist, in his article in this volume. 7 See C. Foss, Ephesus after Antiquity (Cambridge, 1979), 119, 125–28, and below for some of the individual pilgrims. 8 For the Islamic tradition, see below, 140ff.
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red stone on which Joseph of Arimathea had washed the body of Christ (it was transported to Constantinople by Leo VI), a piece of the true Cross which St. John had worn round his neck, a shirt that St. Mary had made for St. John, and John’s manuscript copy of the Apocalypse. The last three were still present when the Turks took the city in the early fourteenth century. On the mountain outside the city were the monasteries where St. Lazaros stood on a pillar in the eleventh century, attracting pilgrims from far and near.9 Most of the other sites were associated with only one holy figure. At Chonai, the Archangel Michael had performed an impressive miracle that transformed the landscape. A magnificent church, described on the occasion of a Turkish attack in 1070, burned in another in 1189, attracted visitors from the ninth through the thirteenth century. The icon it contained was the object of a pilgrim’s veneration.10 Those who traveled long distances to visit Chonai included an emperor, Manuel I, who came here on the eve of the fatal battle of Myriokephalon in 1176, holy men on long peregrinations who became saints, and a young man from Paphlagonia. The fame of the church redounded to the town which became an archbishopric around 860 and a metropolitanate a century later.11 Euchaita was the home of a martyr of the Great Persecution, St. Theodore the Recruit, who had killed a dragon there. His church, already famed in the fifth century, survived the attacks of Persians and Arabs. It contained a miraculous image of the saint, while another stood on the city gate.12 St. Lazaros made his pilgrimage here on the way back from the Holy Land, as did a Georgian saint, George Hagiorites in 1059.13 In the seventh century, Euchaita still had the body of the saint, but it (or another like it) eventually wound up in the similarly named town of Euchaina (or Euchania, also in Pontos) where the rival cult of St. Theodore the General grew up in the Middle Ages.14 This Theodore became so famous that John Tzimiskes dedicated a great church here in 971 to celebrate his victory over the Russians on the spot where he had received the saint’s aid. This, too, became a goal of pilgrimage, but is only mentioned as such in the account of St. Lazaros. Euchania, then, represents typical Byzantine phenomena: a new cult of dubious origins, and a place of real importance that simply happens not to appear in the existing sources. Similarly, the ancient shrine of St. Basil in Caesarea is nowhere else mentioned as a medieval pilgrimage goal,15 yet it had a church whose rich decor was described on the occasion of its devastation in 1070. It had stood, as part of a complex built by Basil, since the 9
See above, note 4. Vita of Cyril Phileotes, ed. E. Sargologos, Vie de s. Cyrille le Philéote (Brussels, 1964), chap. 18. 11 See K. Belke and N. Mersich, Phrygien und Pisidien, TIB 7 (Vienna, 1990), 222–25 with full references. 12 For the saint and his miracles, see Vita, educatio et miracula S. Theodori, AASS Nov. 4:49–55, dated to the 8th century by C. Zuckerman, “The Reign of Constantine V in the Miracles of St. Theodore the Recruit,” REB 46 (1988): 191–210. For the cult and its celebrations, see also the works of the 11th-century metropolitan John Mauropous, ed. P. de Lagarde, Iohannis Euchaitorum metropolitae quae in codice Vaticano graeco 676 supersunt (Göttingen, 1882). Maraval, Lieux saints, 376 discusses the late antique cult. 13 George Hagiorites: F. Peeters, “Histoires monachiques géorgiennes,” AB 36/37 (1917–19), 121f. 14 The cults of identically named saints in similarly named towns have been the source of much confusion. N. Oikonomides, “Le dédoublement de Saint Théodore et les villes d’Euchaita et d’Euchaneia,” AB 104 (1986): 327–35, clears it away as far as possible. See also I. Hutter, “Theodorupolis,” in Aetos: Studies in Honour of Cyril Mango (Stuttgart, 1998), 181–90. 15 A Georgian monk, St. George the Hagiorite, went to Caesarea on his way to Euchaita in 1059, most probably to pray at this church, but the source gives no indication of his specific goal or motive: Peeters, “Histoires monachiques,” 121. 10
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fourth century.16 The fame of Myra also was based on one saint, St. Nicholas, a renowned miracle worker who attracted pilgrims from home and abroad in all periods. They included pilgrims from England and Russia, a priest from Mytilene who regularly attended the saint’s festival, and many locals. Nicholas’s church, probably a work of Justinian reconstructed in the ninth century after an Arab attack, was further rebuilt under the patronage of Constantine X in 1042. Although it soon lost its major treasure—freebooters from Bari carried off the saint’s body in 1087—pilgrims kept on coming.17 All these shrines, except Chonai, featured the body of one or more saints. Nicaea and Mount Olympos were different cases. The First Ecumenical Council of 325 gave eternal glory to Nicaea, which boasted of the Church of the Fathers where it was supposedly held. Pilgrims from the West came to see it, while the shrines of Sts. Tryphon, Neophytos, and Diomedes were of more local interest. Later, however, St. Tryphon became the patron of the city, with the most celebrated cult. The miracle that took place at his shrine was important enough to justify an encomium by an emperor, Theodore II Laskaris (1254–58), while Tryphon’s church received a new miracle-working saint, John the Merciful the Younger, in the late thirteenth century.18 Mount Olympos, convenient for access from the capital, gained its fame as a monastic center, a base for resistance to the iconoclasm of the early ninth century. Its brief moment of fame came from living holy men and from the miracles that some of them wrought after their death. Although renowned during the ninth and early tenth centuries, it hardly appears in later years.19 Unlike the others, it derived its fame not from great churches but from a group of individual holy men. These eight sites—Ephesos, Chonai, Euchaita, Nicaea, Myra, Mount Olympos, Euchania and Caesarea—appear to have been the most important in medieval Asia Minor, possessing renowned spiritual capital that drew people, many of high rank, from long distances. They contained famed churches that often attracted imperial patronage. Beside them were a host of minor sites, primarily of local interest. At least they so appear in the haphazard survival of the sources that describe them, sometimes only in a few phrases. They seem rarely to have attracted pilgrims from long distances or people of more than local importance, but, as will be seen, they may represent only a part of a picture whose details can never be completely reconstructed. The following discussion includes only places where a specific miracle or cure is attested (or where closely contemporary sources mention miracles or cures, even vaguely) and where the sources give concrete reason to believe that pilgrims came, if only from a short distance.20 Most of them are in easy reach of Con16 Church described: Michaelis Attaliotae Historia, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1858), 94; its possible remains: M. Restle, Studien zur frühbyzantinischen Architektur Kappadokiens (Vienna, 1979), 44f; earlier references: F. Hild and M. Restle, Kappadokien, TIB 2 (Vienna, 1981), 193–96. In late antiquity, the major local cult was that of St. Mamas, which does not appear in medieval sources: for that and other local saints, see Maraval, Lieux saints, 371f. 17 See C. Foss, “The Lycian Coast in the Byzantine Age,” DOP 48 (1994): 24, 30f, 34f, with further references. 18 See C. Foss, Nicaea: A Byzantine Capital and Its Praises (Brookline, Mass., 1996), 6f. (martyrs), 97–120 (churches and cults). 19 Comprehensively discussed in R. Janin, Les églises et les monastères des grands centres byzantins (Paris, 1975), 126–91. 20 In most cases, the cults cannot be closely dated; the texts that report them (usually AASS or Synaxarium CP) are often of the 10th–11th centuries.
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stantinople by land or sea, or along the Black Sea coast.21 Such a geographic distribution may reflect the nature of the sources, written primarily in the capital and therefore reflecting information available there, rather than purely local data which might reveal more obscure or remote shrines.22 All these shrines are very poorly attested; little is known beyond the bare fact of their existence and general activities. Nikomedeia had three of the several active shrines in Bithynia. The churches of Sts. Panteleemon, Kosmas and Damianos (where a famous 9th-century bishop Theophylaktos was buried), and Diomedes are attested by local or roughly contemporary sources as sites of healing; in the case of St. Panteleemon, large numbers of people came from the city bearing offerings (the church lay outside the walls).23 At the famous hot springs of Pythia Therma, Sts. Menodora, Metrodora, and Nymphodora succeeded the ancient nymphs in working cures at their church.24 The monastery of Medikion on the Sea of Marmara contained the bodies of its founder, St. Nikephoros (d. 813) and his successor, Niketas (d. 824). Their nearly contemporary biographies vaguely describe them as having a yearly cult and working cures.25 Further west on the sea, in Mysia, the ancient city of Kyzikos contained the church of St. Tryphaena, built on the spot where she was martyred; it featured a miraculous spring frequented by women. The tomb of St. Rufus and eight other martyrs of the Great Persecution in the same city also offered cures.26 The island of Aphousia in the Marmara, a common place of exile for iconodule monks, contained the tomb of St. Makarios of Pelekete, which was reputed to effect cures.27 The church of St. Michael in Katesia near Daphnousia on the Black Sea coast of Bithynia was built by the patrician Niketas, who attained sainthood after his death in 836. His tomb produced a miraculous oil that was much in demand by locals and travelers. In Daphnousia itself, the church of Sts. Photios and Aniketos had an annual celebration of its saints and provided cures.28 In the interior, the shrine of St. Eleutherios in Tarsos, on the main highway that led east from Nikomedeia, worked cures and miracles.29 21
I have excluded from this discussion sites in the immediate vicinity of Constantinople, including the Bosporos, Chalcedon, the Princes’ Isles, and Bithynia as far as Cape Akritas; for them, see Janin, Grands centres, 5–76. 22 The chance survival of the miracles of St. George reveals several unknown shrines in Paphlagonia which will appear in the following narrative. The texts are published in Miracula S. Georgii, ed. J. B. Aufhauser (Leipzig, 1913); cf. the translation and commentary of A.-J. Festugière, Sainte Thècle, Saints Côme et Damien, Saints Cyr et Jean, S. Georges (Paris, 1971), 259–334. 23 Panteleemon: Laudatio, ed. B. Latyshev, “Hagiographica graeca inedita,” MASP 8th ser., 12. 2 (1914): 65– 75; for Kosmas and Damianos, see the vita of Theophylaktos of Nikomedeia by Theophylaktos, ed. A. Vogt, AB 50 (1932): 71–82; Diomedes: L. Westerink, “Trois textes inédits sur S. Diomède de Nicée,” AB 84 (1966): 161–227. 24 See the references in Janin, Grands centres, 98. 25 Vita of Nikephoros of Medikion, ed. F. Halkin, “La Vie de S. Nicéphore, fondateur de Médikion en Bithynie (d. 813),” AB 78 (1960): 401–25; vita of Niketas of Medikion, AASS Apr. 1:xviii–xxvii (at end of volume). 26 For Tryphaina see Synaxarium CP 436 and passio, ed. C. Nikas in RSB 6/7 (1969–70): 160–64; for Rufus see his passio, ed. W. Lackner, in JÖB 22 (1973): 45–48. 27 Vita of Makarios of Pelekete, ed. I. van den Gheyn in AB 16 (1897): 142–63. 28 Vita of Niketas the Patrician, ed. D. Papachryssanthou, TM 3 (1968): 327, 337, 349; for Daphnousia, see epitome of passio of Photios, Aniketos, et al., in AASS Aug. 2:707–9. St. Photios had a church in Boanes, an unlocated place in Bithynia, where his relics drove away demons and worked cures: passio of Photios, Aniketos, et al., ed. B. Latyshev, “Hagiographica graeca inedita” (as above, note 23), 112f. 29 Passio of St. Eleutherios, AASS Aug. 1:326f; for the site, see C. Foss, “Byzantine Malagina and the Lower Sangarius,” AnatSt 40 (1990): 180–82.
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Further east on the Black Sea, Amastris could boast the church of St. Hyacinth where a miraculous curative dust issued forth, while one of its villages, Potamou, contained a shrine of St. George, the scene of a tenth-century miracle that will be discussed below. Another Paphlagonian village, Phatrynon, contained another church of St. George renowned for its miracles.30 The great Black Sea port of Trebizond also had its share of shrines. Besides that of St. Eugenios (not discussed here), the monastery of St. Phokas worked miraculous cures that attracted important clients in the thirteenth century, thanks to the tomb of St. Athanasios the Wonderworker that it contained. The more famous church of St. Phokas at Kordyle, west of the city, featured an all-night service and panegyris. It was splendidly restored in 1361 and frequented into the fifteenth century.31 Few shrines are attested in other parts of Asia Minor. Of them the most important was the monastic settlement of Mount Latros, with the tomb of its pioneering monk St. Paul, where a miraculous oil worked cures, and the top of the mountain where a great stone offered a site to pray for rain. It was frequented mostly by locals, but the future patriarch Athanasios, then a monk, came to visit it around 1250.32 The most important city with a minor shrine was Pergamon, where the tomb of St. Antipas was still giving forth a curative oil in the tenth century.33 Not far away on the coast was Atramyttium, where the miraculous oil that issued from the tomb of a local bishop, St. Athanasios, was working cures in the early fourteenth century.34 The spectacular hot springs of Hierapolis in Phrygia were attributed to the prayers of St. Aberkios who was buried there under a stone miraculously transported from Rome.35 This site is at a main road junction; north of it, on another crosscountry road, was the crossing of the Asteles River where St. Therapon was viciously beaten. The tree that grew from his blood worked miraculous cures.36 Not far away is Synaos where St. Agapetos was constantly working miracles in the time of Arab attacks.37 Finally, four sites were situated on the great highways leading from the capital to the eastern frontier. Most unusual, perhaps, was the shrine of St. Michael at the river crossing of Sykeon in Galatia, where the archangel worked miracles through the cross that had accompanied the emperor Herakleios on his campaigns.38 In Ikonion, the long-lived cult of St. Amphilochios effected cures well into the Turkish period.39 The church of St. Theodore 30
For the church of St. Hyacinth, see laudatio of Hyacinth, AASS Jul. 4:230 or PG 105:438, and Synaxarium CP 827; for Potamou (an unlocated site), see Aufhauser, Miracula S. Georgii, 19; for Phatrynon (an unlocated site), see ibid., 103. 31 For St. Athanasios of Trebizond, see his Synaxarium, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus in VizVrem 12 (1906): 139–41; for St. Phokas, see C. van de Vorst, “S. Phocas,” AB 30 (1911): 279; cf. Janin, Grands centres, 293f. for his churches in Trebizond. 32 Vita of St. Paul of Latros, ed. H. Delehaye in Der Latmos, Milet III.1, ed. T. Wiegand (Berlin, 1913), chaps. 18 (stone) and 47 (oil); vita of Patriarch Athanasios of CP, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, “Zhitiia dvukh vselenskikh patriarkhov XIV v., svv. Afanasiia I i Isidora I,” Zapiski istor.-filol. fakulteta imp. universiteta 76 (St. Petersburg, 1905): 7–9. 33 Text cited at BHG 138c, Synaxarium CP 598. 34 Laudatio of Athanasios of Atramythium, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia graeca sacra (St. Petersburg, 1909), 141–47; oil: 145. My thanks to Alice-Mary Talbot for this reference. 35 Synaxarium CP 153–55. 36 Ibid., 711; for the location, see Belke, Phrygien und Pisidien, 194. 37 Vita of Agapetos, ed. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia graeca sacra, 128f. 38 Attested only in the 11th century: Michael Psellos, Oratio in archangelum Michaelem in his Orationes hagiographicae, ed. E. Fisher (Stuttgart, 1994), 230–56. My thanks to an anonymous reader for this reference. 39 Text cited at BHG 74; F. W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans (Oxford, 1929), 2:364f.
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in Amaseia featured a column that was working miracles in the eleventh century, while the memory of St. Blasios was celebrated in his church in Sebaste with lamps, hymns, and great festivities.40 These shrines are mentioned with enough detail to indicate that they were functioning in the Byzantine period. There is another group, however, where the sources are so vague that there is no way to tell whether they are describing active shrines or simply employing formulaic language. These are cases where the source (usually the vita of a saint) makes the bare statement that cures (or miracles) are still being performed at the saint’s church or tomb.41 Without further information, it seems doubtful that these really indicate continuing activity, especially since the phrases in question may simply have been copied from an earlier manuscript. Other sources or sites present specific problems that illustrate the difficulty of arriving at a satisfactory appraisal of pilgrimage in this period. They particularly involve shrines that logically should have attracted pilgrims, but are not attested as goals, and cults which are difficult or impossible to date. Sailors spread the cult of St. Phokas whose martyrium in Sinope attracted great crowds of pilgrims in the fifth century. The church is not mentioned in later sources, though the cult reappears at Trebizond in the tenth century and had a magnificent church near there in the fourteenth.42 Does this mean that the cult at Sinope ceased to function in the Middle Ages, or simply that the rare surviving sources do not mention it? In other words, it would be reasonable to suppose that Sinope remained a pilgrimage site, but there is no evidence for it. There are many cases of late antique cults that attracted pilgrims but are unattested in the Middle Ages.43 In such cases as St. Thekla’s monastery in Isauria, historical circumstances make survival unlikely; this region was constantly exposed to Arab attacks. But many others in more sheltered locations may well have continued to function. Attestation poses a different kind of problem in the case of the festival of St. Konon in the Isaurian village of Bidana. People from the whole district and all Isauria joined a torchlight parade and brought offerings of cattle, sheep, and goats. As they marched, they shouted “There is one god of Konon; Konon’s god has triumphed,” as they had done since his martyrdom in the third century. This is one of the most vivid descriptions of pilgrim-
40
Theodore: Mauropous, ed. de Lagarde, 124; passio of Blasios, PG 116:830. I have noted the following (the list, arranged by region, is certainly incomplete): Bithynia: monastery of Traianou, near the Sangarios (Synaxarium CP 727); the cell of St. Anthousa near Mantineon (ibid., 848); Cappadocia: Caesarea: tombs of St. Merkourios and Eupsychios: passio, ed. S. Binon, Documents grecs inédits relatifs à S. Mercure de Césarée (Louvain, 1937), 39 and BHG 2130; Tyana: monastery of St. Orestes on a mountain 20 miles from the city: passio of Orestes, AASS Nov. 4:399; Mysia: Lampsakos: church of St. Parthenios: vita of St. Parthenios, PG 114:1365; Paphlagonia: Gangra: S. Ferri, “Il bios e il martyrion di Hypatius di Gangrai,” SBN 3 (1931): 87, and text cited at BHG 759f.; Phrygia: body of St. Tryphon in a village near Apamea: passio of St. Tryphon, ed. P. Franchi de’Cavalieri, Hagiographica, ST 19 (Rome, 1908), 73f.; Pisidia: Conana (for the name of the city, which appears in variant forms in the manuscripts, see TIB 7.311): tomb of St. Zosimos: passio of St. Zosimos, ed. B. Latyshev, Menologii anonymi byzantini . . . quae supersunt (St. Petersburg, 1912), 2:82; Pontos: villages of Amaseia: tombs of Sts. Eutropios and Kleonikos: passio, ed. H. Delehaye, Les légendes grecques des saints militaires (Paris, 1909), 213; Comana: church of St. Basiliskos: passio brevior, ed. W. Lüdtke in Archiv für slavische Philologie 35 (1914): 51; Heliopolis (?) near Euchaita: tomb and spring of St. Barbara: passio, ed. J. Viteau, Passion des saints Ecaterine et Pierre d’Alexandrie, Barbara et Anysia (Paris, 1897), 99. 42 See N. Oikonomides, “ÔO a{gio" Fwka'" oJ Sinwpeuv",” ∆Arc.Povnt. 17 (1952): 184–219; cf. Janin, Grands centres, 293f. 43 Compare the list of late antique cult sites in Maraval, Lieux saints with those discussed above. 41
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age in any source.44 The text, from a manuscript of the tenth century, recounts that the festival continues “up to the present day,” but when did the activities actually take place? The location of the cult seems rather to point to late antiquity when Isauria was densely populated and even very important, rather than to the early Middle Ages when it was a bitterly contested frontier area. Likewise, the chanted phrase heis theos has a definite late antique flavor. In this case, it seems most likely that the scribe simply copied an earlier text that may have had no relevance to his own day. There are other cases where contemporary sources describe a shrine which should have been the center of cult and pilgrimage but make no mention of either. A prominent example is the tomb of St. George of Amastris, who died around 810.45 He performed two quite striking miracles soon after his death. First, a great flood overwhelmed the whole city and even the church, but stopped just short of his tomb. More remarkably, when Russian invaders sacked Amastris and attempted to loot the saint’s tomb, they were miraculously paralyzed and immediately converted to Christianity. According to the saint’s contemporary biographer, the miracle was clear evidence of George’s connection with God. Yet he makes no mention of any cult, visitors, or pilgrimage, nor do other sources add anything. This is another case where it would be reasonable to presume that pilgrimage continued, but without sources in support.46 Known pilgrimage sites include three major monastic centers, all on mountains: the Mysian Olympos, Mount Galesion near Ephesos, and Mount Latros (the ancient Latmos), in the vicinity of Miletos. The first two of these, easily accessible from the capital or a major city, attracted a stream of visitors.47 Yet it seems that monastic centers as such did not necessarily attract pilgrims. Most striking, because of its modern fame as a center of tourism, is the great complex of rock-cut churches in Cappadocia. They apparently produced no noteworthy local saints and were not the object of any pilgrimage that can be discovered.48 Equally surprising is the absence of Mount Boratinon, better known by its modern name Bin Bir Kilise, “The Thousand and One Churches,” in Lykaonia near Laranda (modern Karaman). Two sites on this mountain contain some forty-eight churches, mostly late antique, but many of them rebuilt in the Middle Ages. Detailed publication of these sites, with their buildings and publications, provides no indication of pilgrimage.49 It
44
See F. Halkin, “Publications récentes de textes hagiographiques grecques,” AB 53 (1935): 369–74. Vita of George of Amastris, ed. V. Vasilievskii, Russko-vizantiiskiia izsledovaniia (St. Petersburg, 1893), 66ff; for the Russian attack, see most recently M. Whittow, The Making of Byzantium (London, 1996), 254f. 46 There are many aspects of this subject that reach beyond the confines of the present discussion. One of the most important is propaganda: how far do the saints’ lives represent an actual or a desired situation, and how much of them consists of advertisement for particular shrines? Prof. Paul Speck (to whom I am indebted for his comments on this paper) suggests that the life of St. George may have been intended to inaugurate a cult, but simply failed; hence the lack of attested miracles. I would be more inclined to subscribe to this notion if other sources about the site had survived. In any case, this aspect deserves further study. 47 For the phenomenon of monasteries on mountains, see A.-M. Talbot, “Les saintes montagnes à Byzance,” in Le sacré et son inscription dans l’espace à Byzance et en occident, ed. M. Kaplan (Paris, 2001), 263–75. 48 S. Kostof, Caves of God (New York, 1989) makes no mention of pilgrimage, while L. Rodley, Cave Monasteries of Byzantine Cappadocia (Cambridge, 1985), 253f. considers pilgrimage to these churches but gives no evidence for it. 49 See W. M. Ramsay and G. Bell, The Thousand and One Churches (London, 1909) and the detailed analysis of K. Belke, Galatien und Lykaonien, TIB 4 (Vienna, 1984), 138–43, 145–48. 45
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would seem that some monks were considered more holy or as offering more efficacious prayers (or were more conveniently located) than others. Most of the sites that pilgrims visited were already ancient, but the Byzantine Middle Ages added substantially to Anatolia’s stock of sacred sites. Of the eight major sites, Ephesos alone could claim a sanctity that went back to apostolic times. Two cults could trace their origins to the Great Persecutions (Euchaita, Myra) and two more to the fourth century (Nicaea, Caesarea), but Chonai, Euchania, and Mount Olympos were Byzantine phenomena. Although the Archangel is supposed to have worked his miracle at Chonai in apostolic times, the legend seems to have developed only in late antiquity, and the cult itself, with attendant pilgrimage, is apparently a phenomenon of the ninth century and later. The origins of Euchania are obscure, but it appears that the saint’s body was discovered only in the ninth century, evidently as a rival to the more famous cult in Euchaita.50 Both these were successful, with activity continuing as long as Byzantium controlled the areas. The time when the Mysian Olympos became a holy mountain is unknown, but clearly there was nothing substantial there before the eighth century, when it became a notorious center of resistance to Iconoclasm. In the ninth-century heyday of Mount Olympos, local holy men and cults attracted a large following, but there is hardly any text that discusses them later than their (usually contemporary) biographers. The most prominent local saints, to judge by their surviving vitae, were Joannikios (d. 846), Peter of Atroa (d. 837), and Eustratios of Augaros (d. 867). Their memories seem to have faded surprisingly quickly: Joannikios, greatly famed in his own day, has no posthumous miracles or cult, while the others cease to be mentioned a generation after their deaths. A lone text indicates that Eustratios’s monastery survived into the fourteenth century, but nothing else is known about it. Yet Leo VI and Constantine VII made pilgrimages to the mountain in the tenth century, indicating that it remained a prime holy site and some of its monasteries survived until the Turkish conquest, if not longer.51 As a holy mountain, though, Olympos seems to have had a brief moment of glory. Even shorter was the fame of a shrine in the theme of Charsianon. Its general Eudokimos, who had a reputation for sanctity, died and was buried there in the mid-ninth century. His body and the oil in the lamp that burned over it began to work miraculous cures and drive out demons. The saint’s mother soon arrived and, with the help of a monk, opened the tomb to find the body perfectly preserved and giving off a sweet odor. She apparently thought this was too good for a remote village, so she and the monk absconded with the body at night (for the locals wanted to keep their sacred treasure) and took it to Constantinople. The shrine in Charsianon is never mentioned again.52 On the other hand, the life of one shrine can be defined quite closely. The cult of the Archangel Michael at Sykeon in Galatia centered on a cross that Herakleios had taken on 50
See the article of N. Oikonomides, cited above, note 14. For the history and monasteries of Olympos, see Janin, Grands centres, 127–91 (which, however, embraces an area far wider than the mountain itself ); cf. Talbot, “Les saintes montagnes” (as above, note 47); emperors’ visit: Theophanes Continuatus, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1838), 463. 52 Epitome of vita of St. Eudokimos, ed. Latyshev, Menologii anonymi byzantini, 2:230–32; the name of the site is not mentioned. The sweet-smelling, perfectly preserved body is a commonplace of these stories, part of the miracle that identified a saint: see Maraval, Lieux saints, 189. 51
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his campaigns against Persia. Established here in 628, it was still working miracles in the late eleventh century when Michael Psellos described the cult.53 Far less can be said of the other minor sites, but they seem to follow a similar pattern: many of them seem to have functioned continuously since the Great Persecutions, while a few clearly began in the Byzantine age. Among the latter are the cults of the victims of Iconoclasm, Nikephoros and Niketas of Medikion, Makarios of Pelekete, Theophylaktos of Nikomedeia, and the patrician Niketas. Like the cults of Mount Olympos, these appear from surviving sources to have had short lives. Yet, here too, lack of sources may not mean lack of a cult. On the other hand, Mount Latros, which started to attract monks in the seventh or eighth century and came into prominence only in the tenth, was still an active monastic center, worth visiting, in the thirteenth.54 The ninth-century Olympian saint, Peter of Atroa, set out on a pilgrimage to Ephesos and Chonai because he considered holy shrines to be the dwellings of God.55 To experience the presence or see the manifestation of the divine was the essential reason for pilgrimage. Sites achieved holiness by association with apostles or saints, but especially because of miracles that took place there. The miracles took many forms, but were most often associated with healing or with attestation of the divine power. People visited them to see— and thus to confirm their faith—to pray, and most commonly to find cures for their ailments. Examination of the attractions that pilgrimage sites offered will reveal a great variety and reflect the motivation of the pilgrims. A kind of pious tourism brought long-distance travelers to many sites. The richest was Ephesos which offered monuments and sites associated with figures close to Christ—St. John the Evangelist (whom many identified with the apostle John), St. Timothy the Apostle, and St. Mary Magdalene—as well as the scene of the later miracle of the Seven Sleepers. The eighth-century pilgrim Willibald prayed in the church of St. John and visited the tombs of Mary Magdalene and the Seven Sleepers, as well as the top of the mountain where St. John had been wont to pray and still kept free of storm and rain.56 By the twelfth century, sites and relics seem to have multiplied, for the Russian pilgrim Daniel could see not only the tombs of St. John, Mary Magdalene, and the Seven Sleepers, but also the Magdalene’s head and the body of St. Timothy, as well as an image of the Virgin that had been used to defeat the heretic Nestorius. He also visited sites associated with the life of St. John.57 Spurious or genuine, the relics and sites offered inspiration. This kind of pilgrimage was common and long outlasted the Byzantine period, as shown by graffiti at Ephesos. Latins were coming to the tomb of the Seven Sleepers well into the fifteenth century and leaving there names with a simple “hic fuit.”58 The fame of such sites as Ephesos, Euchaita, or Myra outweighed the attraction of in53 See above, note 38 and E. Fisher, “Nicomedia or Galatia? Where Was Psellos’ Church of the Archangel Michael?” in Gonimos: Neoplatonic and Byzantine Studies Presented to Leendert G. Westerink, ed. J. Duffy and J. Peradotto (Buffalo, N.Y., 1988), 175–87. 54 See Janin, Grands centres, 217–40. The future patriarch Athanasios made a pilgrimage here around 1250 on his way back from the Holy Land: see note 32 above. 55 La vie merveilleuse de Saint Pierre d’Atroa († 837), ed. V. Laurent (Paris, 1956), chap. 13, p. 101. 56 Willibald, Itinerarium, in T. Tobler, ed., Descriptiones terrae sanctae (Leipzig, 1874), 60. 57 See The Pilgrimage of the Russian Abbot Daniel to the Holy Land, ed. Col. Sir C. Wilson, Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society 6 (London, 1895), 5f. 58 F. Miltner, Das Cömeterium der Sieben Schläfer [= Forschungen in Ephesos 4.2] (Vienna, 1937), 201–11.
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dividual relics, even of the bodies of the saints celebrated there. Pilgrims continued to visit Euchaita, even from long distances, though St. Theodore’s body is not mentioned after the eighth century, and appears to have been moved to Euchania. The fate of St. Nicholas is better attested: his body was stolen by Italians and shipped off to Bari in 1087. Yet in both instances, pilgrims continued to frequent the churches. The case of Ephesos, which could afford to lose a few relics, is instructive in a different way. The relics of St. Timothy were taken to Constantinople by the sixth century, and Leo VI removed the bones of Mary Magdalene. But somehow, there were bones of both saints present in Ephesos to be admired in the twelfth century.59 Other places provided sacred attractions of different kinds. At Euchaita, it was possible to see the cave (conveniently located under the church) where St. Theodore had slain the dragon, as well as the very image for which he had posed.60 Nicaea offered the church of the First Council, with an image of the Fathers who attended it, while Amaseia had the column where St. Theodore had been tied.61 As in the case of Ephesos, some of these sites were dubious, to say the least. The First Council, for example, met in Constantine’s palace (whose site had long been lost), not a church; in fact, it seems likely that the church “of the Fathers” that Willibald visited in the eighth century was not even the same one that delegates from Rome saw in the thirteenth. But authenticity was not a factor in establishing holiness. In some cases, natural objects witnessed the divine power. Chonai was renowned as the place where St. Michael had cleft a mountain to divert a river and created a healing spring. This and the spectacular hot springs of Hierapolis, attributed to the prayers of St. Aberkios, were perhaps the most grandiose of all these sites. Springs, which have always had curative powers, were often associated with saints and taken as signs of their powers: in Bithynia, the famed Pythia Therma had a church of their patronesses Menodora, Nymphodora, and Metrodora, who took over the role of the ancient nymphs; St. Barbara’s cult in Pontos was associated with a bath, while the spring that flowed from the blood of St. Tryphaena in Kyzikos offered specialized cures. Some holy sites were on a smaller scale. Near Kybistra, a palm tree symbolized an obscure St. Paul who lived in a well where cures were effected after his death. An oak tree on the Asteles River in Phrygia that grew from the blood of St. Therapon bloomed continuously and cured all diseases. Local peasants praying for rain frequented a huge rock on the top of Mount Latros, called hagios lithos. Its origins were uncertain: some said it was one of the twelve stones that Joshua ordered moved from the Jordan, but the hagiographer preferred to believe that its fame rested on a miracle of a shepherd being cured there of an eye problem. Next to it was a sacred spring that had gushed forth in answer to the prayers of a monk.62 Evidence of miracles could be quite humble. In 917, Byzantium made a massive assault on Bulgaria. Soldiers were called up from all regions, including Paphlagonia, where 59 Euchaita: see Zuckerman, “Reign of Constantine V”; Myra: Foss, “Lycian Shore,” 35f.; Ephesos: Foss, Ephesus, 33, 84, 125, 127f. 60 Cave: Mauropous, ed. de Lagarde, 123; image: Mirac. 1, with the discussion of Zuckerman, “Reign of Constantine V,” 201f. 61 Nicaea: see Foss, Nicaea, 110–14. Amaseia: Mauropous, ed. de Lagarde, 124. 62 Wiegand, Der Latmos [= Milet 3.1], 116.
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a certain officer named Leon lived in a village near Amastris. Since he was already well on in years, he sent his son George in his place. George duly participated in the great battle where the imperial forces were routed. Many were killed, but he was captured and forced into slavery to one of the barbarian chiefs. When the news reached his home, his parents were plunged in misery, while George could only long for his home. Finally, on the feast day of St. George (for whom the young man had been named), when everyone was gathered at their houses for a banquet, George and his mother, though far apart, both prayed to St. George for deliverance. At the very moment his parents were feasting, George was carrying a jug of hot water as part of his duties. Suddenly, St. George appeared, carried him off, and set him down in front of his home, jug in hand. His grateful parents dedicated the jug in the church as a witness to the miracle. People came from the whole region to see it and praise God as they witnessed sure evidence of a miracle.63 The humble cooking pot (koukoummion), in other words, became the object of pilgrimage. In one case at least, the venerated deceased did not even have to be a saint to work miracles. When the ephemeral emperor Theodosios III (715–717) was deposed, he was exiled to Ephesos, where he became an embellisher of manuscripts. He lived a life of piety and was eventually buried in the church of St. Philip where some of the locals claimed that his body worked miracles.64 The greatest goals of pilgrims involved miracles. Caves, trees, rocks, and springs all were witnesses of miracles in the distant past, but many sites also offered continuous miracles, repeated annually, that attested to their sanctity and to the active presence of the divine. Most often, these took the form of a miraculous dust or oil that had curative powers. The most famous of all took place at Ephesos. Every year for almost a thousand years, on the 8th of May during the all-night festal service in honor of St. John, a miraculous dust called manna issued forth from his tomb under the high altar in the cathedral. It was explained by the words of John’s Gospel: “Jesus saith unto him: If I will that he [ John] tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die; yet Jesus said not unto him, he shall not die, but if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee.”65 Literal-minded Christians from the earliest time took this to mean (despite Christ’s specific explanation) that St. John was not dead, but sleeping. Since he was asleep, he was breathing, and his breath naturally stirred the dust under the altar. St. Augustine already heard of this story and could not dismiss it outright. In the sixth century, Gregory of Tours in the far West knew of it and explained that the dust was called manna, had the property of curing the sick, and was transported through the world.66 These aspects—the miracle, the dust, the cure, and the distribution—were the features of the greatest miracle a pilgrim could see in medieval Byzantium. 63
Aufhauser, Miracula S. Georgii, 18–44; AASS Apr. 3:xxxii adds the detail about pilgrims coming to see the
jug. 64
Georgius Cedrenus, ed. I. Bekker, vol. 1 (Bonn, 1838), 787f; cf. Origo Civitatum Italie sive Venetiarum, ed. R. Cessi (Rome, 1933), 109, which adds the detail that the church was in the old city, near the harbor. For this emperor, see C. Mango and R. Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History, A.D. 284–813 (Oxford, 1997), 537. 65 John 21:22f. 66 See Foss, Ephesus, 36 for the late antique cult, as well as the ampullae discussed by Duncan-Flowers, “A Pilgrim’s Ampulla.”
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The Anglo-Saxon Willibald, later a bishop and a saint, was the first of many recorded medieval pilgrims to Ephesos, which he visited around 724. Like a host of later visitors, he marveled at the manna that bubbled up from the tomb. The calendar of the orthodox church, the Synaxarion, probably a work of the tenth century, explained that God not only blessed his apostles, martyrs, and saints, but made the places where they lived or were buried brilliant with many miracles. By the blessing of the Holy Ghost, the tomb of St. John brought forth a holy dust, which the locals called manna, suddenly every year on 8 May. It was distributed to the people who used it to ward off and cure diseases as they blessed God and St. John. Symeon Metaphrastes, writing in the tenth century, likened the brilliance of the crowded festival to that of the stars, and added that the fine dust that cured all ills sprang forth and was distributed to the vast crowd. No matter how much was needed, more always poured out. For the unhappy metropolitan George Tornikes (1155– 56), the tomb with its inexhaustible dust was his sole consolation for having to live in what he considered a barbarous place with a dilapidated church.67 The most elaborate description of the miracle dates from the very end of the Byzantine period, written by the Catalan Muntaner who arrived in a mercenary force in 1304: On Saint Stephen’s day, every year, at the hour of vespers, there comes out of the tomb (which is four-cornered and stands at the foot of the altar and has a beautiful marble slab on the top, full twelve palms long and five broad) and in the middle of the slab there are nine very small holes, and out of these holes, as vespers are being sung on St. Stephen’s day (on which day the vespers are of St. John), manna like sand comes out of each hole and rises a full palm high from the slab, as a jet of water rises up. And this manna issues out . . . and it lasts all night and then all Saint John’s day until sunset. There is so much of this manna, by the time the sun has set and it has ceased to issue out, that, altogether, there are of it full three cuarteras of Barcelona. And this manna is marvelously good for many things; for instance he who drinks it when he feels fever coming on will never have fever again. Also, if a lady is in travail and cannot bring forth, if she drinks it with water or with wine, she will be delivered at once. And again, if there is a storm at sea and some of the manna is thrown in the sea three times in the name of the holy Trinity and Our Lady Saint Mary and the Blessed Saint John the Evangelist, at once the storm ceases. And again, he who suffers from gall stones, and drinks it in the said names, recovers at once. And some of this manna is given to all pilgrims who come there; but it only appears once a year.68
Visible, tangible proof of a saint’s power was a prime attraction for pilgrims; so was the reward they received on the spot in the form of a panacea, in this case the miraculous dust that not only cured diseases, general and specific, but could even calm the storm. Ephesos was by far the most famous source of manna, but it was not alone. Another site offered a similar attraction, perhaps in direct imitation of the Evangelist. The martyr St. Hyacinth was buried beneath the church dedicated to him in Amastris on the coast of the Black Sea. Here, too, a miraculous health-giving dust issued forth every year on the saint’s day, 18 July. It came from the depths with a roar, and in such quantities that the lamps were extinguished. The bishop gathered a mass of it and distributed it to the people for the care and cure of their souls and bodies. On one recent occasion, reports a source of the tenth 67
Willibald, Itinerarium, 60; Synaxarium CP 665; PG 116:705; Georges et Démétrios Tornikès, Lettres et discours, ed. J. Darrouzès (Paris, 1970), 154, cf. Foss, Ephesus, 135f. 68 The Chronicle of Muntaner, trans. Lady Goodenough, Hakluyt Society, Series 2, 50 (London, 1921), chap. 206.
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century, a perfectly preserved finger of the saint came out with the dust, reassuring the people that he was really there and offering his blessings.69 Apparently, there could never be too much tangible evidence. The annual miracle took a very different form in Nicaea. That city was the scene of the martyrdom of St. Tryphon, a victim of the persecutions of Decius (249–251). The saint was actually buried in his home village in Phrygia, but his presence was manifested in his church in Nicaea every February 1st. On that day, at the morning service, while hymns were being sung in the saint’s honor, a vast crowd witnessed the miracle: dried lily bulbs put in the martyr’s lamp suddenly bloomed out of season amid the frosts of winter.70 A thirteenth-century emperor, Theodore II Laskaris, described the miracle, the accompanying festival, and the great crowds of people who came to receive the blessings of the saint and experience his power to drive away demons and cure ills. Tryphon was the patron saint of the empire in exile, and his image and lily appeared on its coins. His miracle was the great attraction of its capital, Nicaea. Miracles often had a practical aspect: the dust of Ephesos and the spiritual presence of St. Tryphon had the power to cure disease. In fact, seeking medical help was always a major factor in pilgrimage, especially pilgrimage to local shrines and holy men. In most cases, cures were effected by an oil that appeared miraculously or by the presence of the saint’s body. The case of St. Nicholas in Myra is exemplary.71 Here, too, great crowds gathered on the saint’s day, 8 December. They came especially to collect the oil, called myron, that gushed forth from his tomb. This sweet-smelling oil, credited with the power of preventing and curing all kinds of diseases, was eagerly collected and carried off for future or distant use. Myra, whose very name proclaimed association with the myron, seems to have been the prototype for a great range of cults that involved curative oil, which could work its wonders on the spot or far away. The tomb of Niketas the Patrician in Katesia near Daphnousia on the Black Sea in Bithynia from time to time exuded a perfumed oil that cured blindness and scrofula and worked as a panacea for those who gathered it. Sailors regularly stopped here on their way from Constantinople to Cherson to collect a jug of it. On one occasion, they discovered an unexpected benefit when they were caught in a storm and providentially poured the oil on the seas which immediately calmed.72 Myron, like manna, had many uses. Mount Olympos was especially renowned for its miraculous cures by oil. The tomb of St. Peter of Atroa exuded a perfumed oil, but only from time to time (apparently on the saint’s day) rather than continuously. On one occasion, it poured out during the service on the saint’s day and the congregation rushed up to anoint their faces with the oil. This oil had miraculous powers, curing a great variety of diseases either on the spot or far away wherever it had been taken. It even repaired the broken horn of a cow.73 But the oil was not always available. Fortunately, pilgrims did not have to wait for its miraculous appearance, but could exploit a handy supply of oil that burned in the lamp over the saint’s tomb. 69
Laudatio of St. Hyacinthus, PG 105:417–40; cf. Synaxarium CP 828. See the text and discussions in Foss, Nicaea, 6, 105ff. 71 Texts and discussion in G. Anrich, Hagios Nikolaos, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1917), 516–18. 72 Vita of Niketas the Patrician, ed. D. Papachryssanthou, TM 3 (1968): chap. 30. 73 La Vita Retractata et les Miracles Posthumes de Saint Pierre d’Atroa, ed. V. Laurent (Brussels, 1958), chap. 98 (service), chap. 101 (cow). 70
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This was equally effective whether applied externally or drunk. The tomb of St. Eustratios of Augaros worked similar miraculous cures by means of oil, mostly, it seems, the oil in the lamp. The nearby tomb of St. Constantine the converted Jew, in Atroa at the foot of Mount Olympos, also exuded myron which, along with the oil in the lamp, had curative powers.74 Similarly, in Mount Latros cures were effected by the oil that burned in the lamp over the tomb of St. Paul the monk. It could be used to anoint people or cattle, with satisfactory results, even against leprosy.75 The tombs of St. Antipas in Pergamon, St. Athanasios in Atramyttium, and St. Eleutherios in Tarsos in Bithynia also produced a curative myron, but no details are recorded.76 So did the tomb of the obscure St. Philotheos of the Opsikion theme, which produced a “spring of ever-flowing myron” in a location nowhere stated.77 The holy oil of St. Amphilochios’s tomb in Ikonion is only mentioned in the Turkish period, when it was reputed to be an ancient phenomenon.78 The fact that the saint was already effecting cures in the Byzantine period suggests that the oil had been continuously produced. All these cases involve oil associated with the saint, whether from his tomb or lamp. But very often cures were worked by contact or association with a saint’s body, or sometimes by the appearance of the saint himself, usually in a dream. Direct contact could take a very concrete form: the withered hand of a nun was cured when she placed it inside the hand of St. Eustratios before his coffin had been closed.79 Normally, people came to a shrine because they wanted the miracles worked by a known saint, but even anonymous saints could perform miracles. When the body of St. John the Merciful the Younger was brought to Nicaea in the late thirteenth century, no one knew who he was. Yet the body of the saint cured blindness, and so did the medallions of saints around his neck and the iron staff in his hand.80 Cures could be effected by various other means. Prominent among them were hot springs, which have the advantage of possessing real curative value. A few have already been noted: the spring at Chonai, the hot springs of Hierapolis, and Pythia Therma. The latter two have been constantly renowned since antiquity and continue, as Pamukkale and Yalova Kaplıcaları, to attract throngs of visitors seeking improved health. Since they still function without the saints, it seems safe to presume that the cult of a saint was attached to an existing attraction. In both cases, the information about the saints in question is very vague or dubious. The spring of St. Tryphaena in Kyzikos offered a more specialized cure; its clear waters were extremely helpful for women (or even female animals) who did not produce enough milk.81 Likewise, certain trees associated with saints could somehow work cures, as could the holy stone on the top of Mount Latros. 74
Vita of Eustratios, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, ∆Anavlekta iJerosolumitikh'" stacuologiva", vol. 4 (St. Petersburg, 1897), chaps. 54–61; vita of Constantine the Jew, AASS Nov. 4:653–55, chaps. 82–85. 75 Vita of Paul of Latros, in Wiegand, Der Latmos, chap. 47. 76 Antipas: Synaxarium CP 595; laudatio of Athanasios of Atramyttium, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia graeca sacra, 145; Passio of Eleutherios, AASS Aug. 1:326. 77 Synaxarium CP 48, a brief text that supplies all the essentials of the wordy speech of Eustathios of Thessalonike, ed. T. L. F. Tafel, Eustathii metropolitae Thessalonicensis opuscula (Frankfurt, 1832), 145–51. 78 See above, note 39. 79 Vita of Eustratios, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Analekta, 4:397. 80 Foss, Nicaea, 82. 81 Synaxarium CP 436.
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Unique among wonder-working objects was the cross that Herakleios had taken on his Persian campaigns. When the emperor was returning to the capital in 628, he stopped at Sykeon, on the main highway to the East, and put the cross in the local church of the Virgin. When it came time to leave, the cross could not be budged. It then performed another miracle, as it and the whole church caught on fire. The fire, instead of consuming, purified, leaving cross and church intact. As a result, Herakleios built a shrine to the Archangel Michael on the spot, where the cross itself cured the sick and demented, saved the local bridge from a flood, and aided the emperor to put down a rebel. It was still working four hundred years later. By then, it and the archangel had replaced the local saint, Theodore, and appropriated aspects of his cult and legends.82 Whether pilgrims came to see sacred sites, witness miracles, or seek cures, they all prayed. Long-distance pilgrims, about whom something is known, traveled in order to pray at sacred sites, but the subject of the prayers of the mass of anonymous pilgrims is rarely attested. Help and protection were certainly important desires, as the numerous graffiti at the tomb of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesos attest.83 Protection on a grander scale was also a desire in many periods: saints could defend individuals and whole cities against attack. St. Amphilochios of Ikonion and St. Agapetos of Synaos in Phrygia were invoked for protection against the Arabs, as was St. John of Nicaea against the Turks.84 St. Theodore of Euchaita saved his own body from the Persians and his city from the Arabs, just as St. George of Amastris caused paralysis to strike the Russians who were trying to desecrate his tomb.85 When the prayers of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council saved Nicaea from Arab attack in 726, devotion to their church and image no doubt increased.86 Some saints were described as the bulwarks of their cities, presumably reflecting special powers of defense and efficacy of prayer to them: among these are Sts. Neophytos of Nicaea, Diomedes of Nikomedeia, Hypatios of Gangra, and Eleutherios of Tarsos. Prayers, of course, could be said at a distance, but people also came to shrines specifically to pray for defense or victory. Manuel Komnenos stopped at the church of St. Michael in Chonai before the battle of Myriokephalon in 1176, most probably to pray for victory. On the news of an Arab attack in 863, St. Anthony the Younger set out from Constantinople to pray in the church of St. John in Ephesos. He was especially concerned with the fate of his spiritual son, Petronas, who was commanding the imperial forces.87 The prayers and blessings of living holy men were also good reasons for pilgrimage.88 Toward the end of his life, the ailing emperor Constantine VII made the journey to Mount Olympos to ask the blessing of the fathers there. His father, Leo VI, had made the same pilgrimage.89 Individual holy men of that mountain attracted a clientele for similar rea82
See E. Fisher, above, note 53. See above, note 58; this was the common subject of the Greek graffiti. 84 On Amphilochios: text cited at BHG 74; vita of Agapetos, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Varia graeca sacra, 129; for St. John of Nicaea, see Foss, Nicaea, 82. 85 St. Nicholas had no such luck: see above, note 17. 86 Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1883), 406. 87 On Manuel, see Niketas Choniates, Historia, ed. J. L. van Dieten (Berlin–New York, 1975), 178; for St. Antony, see F. Halkin, “Saint Antoine le Jeune et Pétronas le vainqueur des Arabes en 863,” AB 62 (1944): 218, chap. 14. 88 St. Lazaros of Mt. Galesion is a notable and well-attested example: see above, note 5. 89 Theophanes Continuatus, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1838), 463f. 83
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sons. St. Joannikios received a stream of high churchmen and government officials (he seems to have specialized in the upper classes) who needed blessings or advice. He dealt with these matters more often than cures. His colleagues, St. Peter of Atroa and St. Eustratios of Augaros, however, attracted a humbler clientele who came for cures as well as blessings and advice.90 Likewise, the mountain communities of Latros and Galesion were still attracting people who would travel long distances to visit the holy men who inhabited them as late as the thirteenth century.91 Nicaea was unusual in that the monks of one of its monasteries, the church of Hyacinth, had an international reputation that brought St. Constantine the converted Jew there from Cyprus in the ninth century. He carried with him a sacred relic, the hand of the blessed Palamon, which he deposited in the church.92 Many cures, of course, were successful and many blessings efficacious. Hence gratitude was also a factor—though far less well attested than need—that brought people to shrines. Most of this no doubt was local and on a humble scale. In 753, a grateful Paphlagonian peasant brought a cow as an offering to St. Theodore during the spring festival. Since he arrived just at the time of an Arab attack, he found the church and the whole city surprisingly deserted. Not willing to leave without honoring the saint, he tied the cow to the chancel screen and went away.93 On another occasion, a poor woman was saving a chicken for the saint when it was stolen, while a soldier returning victorious from the wars dedicated his sword.94 Likewise, locals brought wagonloads of grain and offerings of sheep, meat, and wine to the shrine of St. Nicholas of Myra. One rich couple outdid their neighbors by offering 100 gold pieces every year.95 Offerings also came in from long distances. Chonai was the goal of a young man named Manuel who was entrusted with the offerings of the village of Didia near Gangra in Paphlagonia, which amounted to a whole pound of gold. He came on foot and was almost murdered for his money. St. George rescued him, though, and the Archangel received the gold.96 Money was closely involved with pilgrimage in another important way, for the great pilgrimage shrines were also the site of fairs which brought buyers and sellers from whole regions. The most important was probably that of Ephesos, held to coincide with the miracle of the manna. It generated a great deal of business, for the emperor Constantine VI, when he visited the church in 795, remitted the customs duty that the fair generated, a total of 100 pounds of gold according to the chronicler.97 Euchaita and Myra appear also to have been the site of fairs, an important phenomenon that continued through the Byzantine period. In the late twelfth century, the fair at Chonai was attracting huge crowds from 90 Vita of Joannikios by Sabas, AASS Nov. 2:1, passim; vita of Peter of Atroa, ed. V. Laurent (as in note 55 above), chaps. 49–62, 67–72, 74–79; vita of Eustratios, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, ∆Anavlekta, 4:383f. 91 For the visit of the patriarch Athanasios to Latros ca. 1250, see note 32 above; for his visit to Galesion, see ibid., 9–10. On St. Meletios (d. 1286), who lived at Galesion in the 13th c., see his vita, ed. S. Lauriotes, Grhgovrio" oJ Palama'" 5 (1921): 582–84, 609–24. 92 AASS Nov. 4:637; for the church, see Foss, Nicaea, 97–101. 93 See above, note 12, mirac. 9, and Zuckerman’s article for the proposed date. 94 Texts in A. Sigalas, “ÔH diaskeuh; tw'n uJpo; tou' Crusivppou paradedomevnwn qaumavtwn tou' aJgivou Qeodwvrou,” ∆Ep.ÔEt.Buz.Sp. 1 (1924): 317, 328. 95 Anrich, Hagios Nikolaos, 1:286f. 96 Aufhauser, Miracula S. Georgii, 107–13. 97 Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. de Boor, 469f; cf. the commentary of Mango and Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, 645f., and the discussion of P. Speck, Kaiser Konstantin VI. (Munich, 1978), 260, according to whom the money went to the Evangelist’s church.
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all the neighboring cities and provinces and even from the “barbarian Ikonians”—the Seljuk Turks of Konya—who came to buy and sell.98 Whether in great crowds or as individuals, locals and foreigners made their way as pilgrims to the great and lesser shrines. For the most part, their identity is unknown; only a few prominent individuals and foreigners stand out, but it is clear that masses of people were involved in pilgrimage in all periods. The greatest numbers frequented the most famous shrines, but even the humble and local attracted people. Most of them, at all times and in all shrines, were certainly local people, overwhelmingly peasants. In this respect, Asia Minor, with its large number of shrines of local interest, differed from the Holy Land where pilgrims were primarily monks. Travel there, of course, involved vast distances and amounts of time not normally available to the lay population.99 The imperial family set the tone. Constantine VI and Maria, sister of Romanos III (1028–34), prayed at Ephesos; Leo VI, Constantine VII, and the in-laws of Nikephoros I (802–810) came to Mount Olympos; Manuel Komnenos prayed at Chonai, Theodore Laskaris at Nicaea.100 The upwardly mobile St. Joannikios attracted a variety of generals, government and military officials, bishops, and abbots. They could consult him since he was conveniently located on Mount Olympos, easily accessible from the capital. Foreigners, some quite distinguished, also came to the shrines. In the thirteenth century, the wife of the Turkish emir of Sivas in central Anatolia was possessed by a demon. She sought help in Constantinople, where she was referred to the shrine of St. Phokas in Trebizond. A night spent next to the tomb of St. Athanasios in that church cured her.101 Other foreigners included the soldiers of the Second Crusade (1147) and the army of Catalan mercenaries (1304) who visited the church of St. John in Ephesos, but for them pilgrimage was only an incidental motive. Similarly, the Latins who left graffiti at the tomb of the Seven Sleepers were most probably merchants who happened to be in the city, as perhaps were the Armenians who actually maintained a priest at the tomb.102 The English pilgrim Saewulf, who prayed in Myra on his way to the Holy Land in 1102, was apparently a merchant, but most other foreign pilgrims were churchmen.103 They included the Anglo-Saxon monk Willibald (723–724) who visited Nicaea and Ephesos, the Russian monk Daniel (1106) who enjoyed all the attractions of Ephesos as well as Myra, and the German priest Ludolf of Suchem (or Sudheim) who saw the church of Ephesos around 1336.104 The Byzantine pilgrims whose lives and journeys are best known are inevitably saints,
98 S. Lampros, Micah;l ∆Akominavtou tou' Cwniavtou ta; sw/zovmena, vol. 1 (Athens, 1879), 56; for the fairs in general, see S. Vryonis, “The Panegyris of the Byzantine Saint,” in S. Hackel, ed., The Byzantine Saint (London, 1981), 196–226. 99 For the nature of pilgrims to the Holy Land, see Maraval, Lieux saints, 116–33. 100 For Maria, see Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, ed. I. Thurn (Berlin, 1973), 408, and Ioannes Zonaras: Epitome historiarum, ed. M. Pinder and M. Büttner-Wobst, vol. 3 (Bonn, 1897), 594f. For the in-laws of Nikephoros I, see the vita of Joannikios by Peter, AASS Nov. 2.1:391, chap. 14; for the rest, see above, 127, 131, 136, 137. 101 Synaxarium for Athanasios of Trebizond, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, VizVrem 12 (1906): 141. 102 See above, note 58; the Armenian graffiti mention the “priest of the Seven Children” and date to 1354– 1498. 103 Saewulf in Peregrinationes tres, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Corpus christianorum continuatio medievalis 139 (Turnhout, 1994), 61. 104 Willibald and Daniel: see above, 131; Ludolf: J. P. A. van der Vin, Travellers to Greece and Constantinople (Istanbul, 1980), 30–37, 579–83.
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the subject of substantial and often contemporary biographies.105 They have been met already: Lazaros of Galesion, Constantine the Jew, Joannikios, Peter of Atroa, the Georgian George Hagiorites, and the thirteenth-century Athanasios and Meletios. Each of them traveled long distances to worship at one or more shrines, but they were not alone. St. Lazaros’ biographer gives some details of the companions he met along the road. As he set out from Chonai for Jerusalem after the early morning liturgy, Lazaros met a Paphlagonian monk who was also headed for the Holy Land. They decided to join forces, but the Paphlagonian turned out to be a bad character, for when they arrived at the port of Attaleia, he tried to sell Lazaros to a ship captain. The saint was saved only by a miracle. The monk apparently was an Armenian (he addressed the captain in that language) and definitely a kykleutes, a vagabond monk attached to no monastery, but constantly wandering and living by his wits, usually at the expense of the local faithful. Lazaros witnessed the Paphlagonian’s dishonest practices on the road: he would spend the day begging bread and whatever else he needed, then sell it all for a profit in the villages and markets. On his return from the Holy Land, Lazaros again visited Chonai. This time, he was accompanied by a band of kykleutai all the way from there to Ephesos. To judge by these incidents, vagabond monks were present in numbers on the roads and at the shrines. They were a recognized nuisance, regularly denounced by the church authorities from the time of Chalcedon till the fourteenth century.106 On his first trip to Chonai, St. Lazaros also met a group of Cappadocian pilgrims who included a young woman who had been cheated of her money but was anxious to preserve her honor. They appear to have been laymen, not clerics, and as such probably represent the majority of pilgrims. Accounts of the shrines constantly mention the crowds who attended them, especially at festivals. In the early ninth century, the all-night festal service of St. Nicholas of Myra was attracting great numbers, most of them local people. Other shrines boasted an international audience. John Mauropous, describing the spring and summer festivals of St. Theodore of Euchaita in the eleventh century, mentions the huge crowds from all the world who filled the streets and marketplaces, attracted by the miracles and cures.107 Likewise, the festival of Chonai in the thirteenth century was drawing people from the region, from all the neighboring provinces, and even from Turkish territory. This crowd seems to have been largely lay, including many merchants, since the celebrations were also the occasion for a fair. When St. Peter of Atroa visited Chonai in the early ninth century, he found crowds of people tormented by demons. The demons were especially anxious since they had advance warning of the saint’s arrival and knew he would drive them out. He in fact cured the whole lot of demoniacs. The biographer does not state whether Peter was there for the festival, but the life of his contemporary St. Joannikios makes it clear that great shrines attracted great crowds at all times. When he arrived at Ephesos in August (not the season for the miracle or the saint’s day), Joannikios found such a throng that he only got in the church after hours by a miracle. 105
See the paper of M. Kaplan in the present volume. AASS Nov. 3:511, 518; for the wandering monks, see the useful summary of Maraval, Lieux saints, 116f, as well as E. Herman, “La stabilitas loci nel monachismo bizantino,” OCP 21 (1955): 115–42 (an excellent survey); cf. D. M. Nicol, “Instabilitas loci: The Wanderlust of Late Byzantine Monks,” in Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition (Oxford, 1985), 193–202. The term kykleutes, used by the 5th-century St. Neilos, seems not to appear elsewhere in medieval Byzantine sources. 107 Mauropous, ed. de Lagarde, 131, 207. 106
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Mount Olympos, with its rough terrain and scattered shrines, attracted not crowds but individual pilgrims who, as noted, were mostly local people in search of cures for themselves or their cattle. Mount Latros attracted a similar following. Only Joannikios of Olympos drew a high-class clientele. In all these cases, both churchmen and laity made the pilgrimage, with local peasants evidently forming the majority. Evidence for the minor shrines is more fragmentary, but here too it appears that the pilgrims were mostly local. All in all, the available evidence suggests that most visitors to shrines came from the nearby regions, in constant and often large numbers, and consisted mostly of ordinary people, from the city and especially the countryside. Far less information is available about the means and conditions of travel or the way the shrines handled the crowds they received.108 For the most part, pilgrims seem to have traveled by foot: that was certainly the case of Peter of Atroa, Lazaros of Galesion, the young Manuel from Paphlagonia, and others whose vitae support such detail. They wisely traveled in groups, for the roads and accommodations could offer unexpected dangers. The Paphlagonian Manuel, carrying the offerings of his village to Chonai, got tired as he passed through the Anatolic theme and decided to stop before reaching the village where he usually stayed. He wound up in a house of thieves who happily took him in, planning to murder him for the money he was carrying. Likewise, St. Cyril from Phileae in Thrace reached Chonai around 1075 and stayed in an inn ( pandocheion) whose owner robbed him of his money and almost took his clothes.109 More obvious dangers faced saints who insisted on traveling during times of troubles. St. Antony the Younger never reached his destination, Ephesos, because of the prevailing Arab danger; instead his friend Petronas took him off to the safety of a mountaintop fortress. The Georgian George Hagiorites was almost captured by the Turks as he headed for Caesarea in 1059.110 International pilgrims, of course, traveled by sea, as did the sailors who stopped at Daphnousia for their supply of oil and no doubt many other visitors to maritime shrines. The two dangerous pilgrimages to Chonai, incidentally, seem to be the only accounts that mention the places where pilgrims might stay. Those making long journeys, of course, need accommodation along the road as well as at their goal. To judge by these examples, there were villages that regularly received pilgrims, and the great pilgrimage sites had inns, as would naturally be expected. But only the imagination or comparison from the much more abundant evidence for late antiquity can fill in the picture. Likewise, there is virtually no evidence how the churches actually handled the crowds. Only the account of Joannikios, indignant at having to enter the church of St. John with the common herd, shows that the churches shut their doors at a certain time and allowed no one to enter outside the normal hours. These hours are not stated, but at Chonai Lazaros could pray in the narthex till nightfall and then attend an early morning service.111 It seems probable that the pilgrimage churches were open from dawn to dusk. 108
See Maraval, Lieux saints, 163–76, 211f, for information from late antiquity on these subjects. See also the interesting work of E. Malamut, Sur la route des saints byzantins (Paris, 1993). 109 E. Sargologos, Vie de S. Cyrille le Philéote (Brussels, 1964), chap. 18. 110 F. Halkin, “Saint Antoine le Jeune et Pétronas le vainqueur des Arabes en 863,” AB 62 (1944): 218; for George Hagiorites, see F. Peeters, “Histoires monachiques géorgiennes,” AB 36/37 (1917–19): 121f. 111 Vita of Joannikios by Peter, AASS Nov. 2.1:409, chap. 43; vita of Lazaros, AASS Nov. 3:511; M. Kaplan’s article in this volume offers another explanation for Joannikios’s reluctance to enter the church with everyone else.
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Asia Minor, then, was evidently the site of continuous and frequent pilgrimage throughout the Byzantine period. Pilgrims, both lay and cleric, flocked to the major sites, especially at festival time, when they often combined business with spiritual improvement. Yet there was also a network of lesser shrines, now only dimly perceived, that attracted the devotions of local people. These humble villagers probably formed the majority of pilgrims at all times and in all regions. Like their better-known brethren who traveled long distances, they came to renew their faith, pray, and especially to seek cures. Although the brilliant image of late antiquity cannot be reproduced for these long centuries, the evidence, however scattered, suggests that pilgrimage was a living vital force, an essential part of the lives of individuals and communities as long as Byzantium survived, and, in fact, for long after. Anatolia also offered holy places to pilgrims of another religion. From earliest days, Muslims were accustomed to make an annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Many stopped on the way to visit other sites sacred to their faith.112 Some of these were in Asia Minor, but for most of the Byzantine period peaceful travel there was not an option for Muslims whose states were as often as not at war with Byzantium. Inaccessibility posed a real problem in regard to a site especially dear to Islam, the cave of the Seven Sleepers whose legend forms part of the Koran.113 So did identification. Although some understood Ephesos as the site of the miracle, many alternatives were offered, often after serious investigation.114 Tradition traces the search for the cave back to the earliest years of Islam when a certain Ubayda ibn al-Samit was dispatched in 632 to the Byzantine emperor to urge him to convert or face war. Ubayda recounted that his party came to a red mountain that was supposed to contain the Cave. They inquired at a local monastery and were shown the site which he described in some detail. A century later, in 720, Mujahid ibn Yazid was returning from an embassy to Constantinople. He passed by Amorion and Laodikeia and came to a place called al-Hawiya where he found a cave with well-preserved bodies. Both descriptions (which probably refer to the same place) mention the feast day of the Sleepers when the locals wash the bodies. Al-Hawiya, evidently in Lykaonia, has not been identified. In the ninth century, the caliph al-Wathik (842–847) sent a famous scholar, Muhammad ibn Musa the Astronomer, to find the Cave. He determined that it lay in the district of Kharama between Amorion and Nicaea where a mountain had a passage that led to the chamber with its remarkably preserved bodies.115 The geographer Idrisi visited this place in 1117; he confirmed that it, not Ephesos, was the correct site of the story.116 In fact, there is a famous cave in a suitable location, at Inönü, so large that its entrance was blocked by a fortification wall.117 Yet none of these efforts really resolved the problem, nor did they result in a reg112
Full consideration of this subject would reach beyond the limits of this paper; for a general introduction, see J. Sourdel-Thomine, ed. and trans., al-Harawi, Guide des lieux de pèlerinage (Damascus, 1957), xxviii–xlii. 113 Sura 18, Al-Kahf; for the Islamic version and full bibliography, see F. Paret, “Ashab al-Kahf,” in EI2, s.v. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam, 1:309–19 discussed modern Greek and Muslim versions of the story and its location with his usual insights. 114 For what follows, see G. Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems (London, 1890), 274–86, with long extracts from the sources. 115 See the full text in ibn Khordadbeh, Kita ¯ b al-masa ¯ lik wa’l-mama ¯ lik, ed. and trans. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1889), 106f. (text), 78f. (trans.). 116 Géographie d’Idrisi, trans. P. A. Jaubert (Paris, 1836), 2:299f. 117 For this site, see Belke, Phrygien und Pisidien, 281; it contains no trace of Muslim or Christian pilgrimage.
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ular pilgrimage. That was reserved for Arabissos whose Arabic name Afsus was conveniently similar to that of Ephesos, Afsis, and which lay safely in territory controlled by the Arabs since the seventh century. Their pilgrimage site a few miles from the city was long frequented.118 So was a rival site near Tarsos, first mentioned in the tenth century and visited by both Christian and Muslim pilgrims in modern times. Barren women were supposed to be cured by sleeping in this cave.119 One of the visitors to Afsus was al-Harawi who traveled through Asia Minor around 1180, when most of it was safely in the hands of the Muslim Turks. He was a pilgrim in the same sense as the Christians already discussed, visiting sites both sacred and curious. Several were worth attention from a religious point of view.120 After leaving Constantinople, he stopped in Nicaea where, surprisingly, he visited the church that had the image of the First Ecumenical Council. The site was of interest because of a belief that the Messiah himself had been present among the Fathers, for Christ is one of the prophets recognized by Islam (when Harawi was in the Holy Land, his pilgrimage included Christian as well as Muslim sites). From there, he proceeded to Amorion to see the tombs of the martyrs who had fallen in the successful campaign of al-Mu‘tasim in 832. This city was famed among Christians for its own Forty-two Martyrs, who had been captured in the very same campaign; but they had been executed and buried in Iraq, and their cult was celebrated in the capital; there is no evidence for a local church or cult. For al-Harawi, the main attraction of Konya (Ikonion) was the tomb of Plato in the church next to the great mosque. This was the church of St. Amphilochios where both Christians and Muslims were making pilgrimage in the Turkish period. Muslims attributed magical powers to the “divine” Plato who was often accorded the devotion appropriate to a saint.121 Kayseri (Caesarea) on the other hand had several worthy goals: the prison of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiya, son of the caliph Ali; the mosque of the hero al-Battal who had fallen fighting the Byzantines in 740; the bath that the sage Apollonios had built for Caesar, and various antiquities. Nearby was Mount Asib with the tomb of the famous Arab poet Imru’l Kays. Harawi proceeded east to Divrig± i (Tephrice) where he found a cave chamber containing, he was told, the bodies of martyrs from the time of the caliph Umar (634–644). In front of it were a church and a mosque, for the site was frequented by both Christian and Muslim pilgrims. The remarkably well-preserved bodies included a group of twelve resting on a bed. The Christians claimed them as their own, but the Muslims identified them with warriors martyred on the spot in the earliest campaigns of Islam. The description is so close to the early accounts of the Seven Sleepers that it can be taken as referring to the tomb of Hawiya, which evidently was reverenced throughout the Middle Ages. From there, Harawi stopped in Afsus which he thought was the most probable site for the Seven Sleepers (he had visited a rival cavern in Spain), then Malatya (Melitene) and Erzerum (Theodosiopolis), both with reminiscences of companions of the Prophet. These brief accounts may supplement the image of Byzantine pilgrimage. Asia Minor 118 See F. Babinger, “Die Örtlichkeit der Siebenschläferlegende in muslimischer Schau,” AnzW 104 (1957): 87–95, and Hild, Kappadokien, 175, with the references there. 119 See Hasluck, Christianity and Islam, 1:315–18. 120 For al-Harawi’s account of Asia Minor, see his Guide des lieux de pèlerinage, ed. Sourdel-Thomine, 130–36. 121 See Hasluck’s essay, “Plato in the Folk-lore of the Konia Plain,” in Christianity and Islam, 2: 363–69; cf. p. 17.
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had sites that had long been sacred to a variety of religions. In the Middle Ages, at least until the late eleventh century, Christianity was dominant in the region, so pilgrimage is seen as primarily a Christian phenomenon. But Muslims always had an interest in some Anatolian sites, notably the cave of the Seven Sleepers. Unfortunately, for them, the real cave lay in enemy territory, so they had to exercise their ingenuity to find one more accessible. After they occupied most of the country, they could expand their own goals of pilgrimage to sites renowned both in Christianity and Islam. With their final conquest of the whole peninsula, of course, Turkish pilgrimage expanded to far more sites, but Christianity was by no means dead, and its pilgrims, too, continued to frequent goals old and new as long as there was a Greek population in Asia Minor. Georgetown University
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
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Pilgrimage to Healing Shrines: The Evidence of Miracle Accounts ALICE-MARY TALBOT
hroughout the ages mankind has sought healing for injuries, acute illness, and chronic disease, whether from academically trained physicians, from shamans, or at miraculous shrines. The doctors of the ancient Mediterranean world were steeped in the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen, but countless people afflicted with illness sought out instead, or in addition, the healing powers of the god Asklepios, at his shrines in Epidauros, Athens, Corinth, Pergamon, Kos, Smyrna, and Rome, to name only some of the most famous. Pilgrims to the shrines of Asklepios normally engaged in the rite of incubation, in which they spent the night at the temple precinct and were visited in their dreams by the god or his attendants or by sacred snakes or a sacred dog. Upon awakening the pilgrims often found themselves cured of their afflictions; in gratitude they left behind ex-voto offerings and gave testimony to their healing in inscriptions placed on stelae.1 In contrast to the primarily divine and supernatural healing that was a feature of the Asklepian precinct at Epidauros, the complexes at Kos and Pergamon had medical facilities that played a major role in the healing of pilgrims.2 With the advent of Christianity similar phenomena developed in the late antique world, as pilgrims sought healing at both the loca sancta of the Holy Land and the churches of holy apostles and martyrs. John Wilkinson has remarked, “No pilgrims go to the Holy Land expressly for the purpose of healing as far as we are told,”3 by which he must mean that none of the pilgrims who have left accounts give evidence of this motivation for their travels. And it makes sense that the pilgrims from Europe, who embarked on lengthy journeys, probably had to have been in relatively good health to survive the arduous trip. Yet their narratives, particularly that of the Piacenza Pilgrim ca. 570, provide abundant testimony that many of the loca sancta associated with both Old and New Testament figures were famed for their healing powers. To give only a few examples, lepers came for cleansing to the well of the Samaritan woman, the Baths of Elijah and Moses, and the waters of Siloam.4 At the Baths of Elijah they underwent a type of incubation experience, sitting in
T
1 On the private cult of Asklepios at Epidauros, see, for example, R. A. Tomlinson, Epidauros (Austin, Tex., 1983), 19–21. 2 On this distinction between two traditions of healing at shrines of Asklepios, see H. C. Kee, Miracle in the Early Christian World (New Haven, Conn., 1983), 83–104. 3 J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), 42 note 161. 4 Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, 81–82, 84.
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tanks of water all night long and being cured after seeing a vision. Hugeburc’s narrative of the pilgrimage of the eighth-century saint Willibald describes how barren women and the sick were healed by bathing in the Jordan,5 and Willibald himself was cured of blindness when he entered the church of Constantine in Jerusalem (at the church of the Holy Sepulcher).6 Also in late antiquity Christians in search of miraculous healing began to visit the shrines of saints, usually their tombs or another place where their relics were preserved. Examples are Abu Mina in Egypt, dedicated to the martyr St. Menas and functioning by the late fourth century; Sts. Abbakyros and John at Menouthis in Egypt, which flourished between the fifth and seventh centuries; the shrine of St. Thekla in Anatolian Seleukeia (Meriamlik), which is attested between the fourth and sixth centuries; the pilgrimage complex of Qal’at Sem’an near Antioch, at the column of St. Symeon the Stylite the Elder, which was particularly active in the late fifth and sixth centuries; and the shrine of his later homonym, Symeon the Stylite the Younger, at the Wondrous Mountain (6th–7th century).7 These shrines are known through their extensive archaeological remains, through accounts of the posthumous miracles performed by the saints, and through pilgrimage artifacts or “souvenirs,” such as ampullae, designed as containers for holy oil or water, and clay tokens made from the dust of a holy site.8 After a period of intense activity in the fifth and sixth centuries, most of these Near Eastern shrines seem to have fallen into decline as a result of the tumultuous events of the first part of the seventh century, with the invasions of first the Persians and then the Arabs, and many of them disappear from the historical record.9 The healing shrines of the middle and late Byzantine periods can be divided into two groups: those of older saints, both apostles and martyrs, which continued in operation for many centuries (i.e., those of longue durée), and the shrines of new saints, many of which seem to have been short-lived. Other studies in this volume describe some of the long-lived shrines: the church of the martyr St. Demetrios in Thessalonike and the basilica of the apostle St. John at Ephesos, which were both founded in late antiquity and remained active throughout the Byzantine era.10 The cult of St. Eugenios, a fourth-century martyr, had a slow start but prospered be5
Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, 129. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, 131, chap. 25. 7 On these late antique shrines the following basic bibliography should be consulted: for Menouthis and Abu Mina, see D. Montserrat, “Pilgrimage to the Shrine of SS Cyrus and John at Menouthis in Late Antiquity” and P. Grossmann, “The Pilgrimage Center of Abu Mina” in D. Frankfurter, ed., Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (Leiden, 1998), 257–79, 281–302; for Meriamlik, see E. Herzfeld and S. Guyer, Meriamlik und Korykos, Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua 2 (Manchester, 1930), 1–89; S. Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2001), appeared too late to be consulted for this article. For Qal’at Sem’an, see ODB 3:1763; G. Tchalenko, Villages antiques de la Syrie du Nord: Le Massif du Bélus à l’époque romaine, vol. 1 (Paris, 1953), 205–76; for the Wondrous Mountain, see W. Djobadze, Archeological Investigations in the Region West of Antioch-on-the-Orontes (Stuttgart, 1986), 57–115. 8 See G. Vikan, Byzantine Pilgrimage Art (Washington, D.C., 1982). 9 At Abu Mina, cult activity continued on a modest level until the 10th century (ODB 1:8); after cessation of activity at the two shrines of St. Symeon between the 7th and early 10th centuries, there was a revival in the later 10th and 11th centuries (ODB 3:1763 and 2204). 10 On these two shrines, see the papers in this volume by C. Bakirtzis, “Pilgrimage to Thessalonike,” and C. Foss, “Pilgrimage in Medieval Asia Minor.” 6
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tween the ninth and fourteenth centuries in Trebizond.11 Two other shrines of this sort in Constantinople were the church of Sts. Kosmas and Damian (the Kosmidion) and the Theotokos tes Peges, both founded in the fifth century and continuing until the fall of the empire. For some of these shrines there survive abundant miracula, the accounts of miracles that occurred thanks to the healing powers of the saints or Virgin, although many of them date from a period earlier than the seventh century: for Sts. Kosmas and Damian there are the rich miracle collections of the sixth century and a small addendum from ca. 1300; for St. Demetrios, the well-known miracula of the archbishop John of the seventh century, with only a few scattered miracle narratives for the later period; for St. Eugenios, miracula documenting healings in the ninth, eleventh, and fourteenth centuries. For Pege there is an anonymous collection covering the fifth to tenth centuries, and another by Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos dealing with the late thirteenth to early fourteenth century.12 For Ephesos, on the other hand, to the best of my knowledge, no miracle texts are preserved. Many of the richest miracle collections, however, are for cults of new saints, those whom a recent conference in Athens termed “The Heroes of Orthodoxy.”13 Evidence is especially abundant for the saints of the ninth and tenth centuries, and it is on these middle Byzantine healing cults that I will focus, with some attention at the end, for comparative purposes, to a few Constantinopolitan healing shrines of the early Palaiologan period. THE NATURE OF THE HAGIOGRAPHICAL EVIDENCE FOR MIRACULA First, some remarks on the nature of the evidence for posthumous miracles in the middle Byzantine era. Thanks to the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database, which includes the vitae of saints who lived in the eighth to tenth centuries,14 it is relatively easy to survey the healing miracles performed by these holy men and women, both during their lifetimes and posthumously. The data I have generated (Appendix 1) indicate a remarkable shift in patterns of miraculous healing between the eighth and ninth centuries: only two posthumous miracles are attested for eighth-century saints, and they involved touching a holy man’s corpse during a funeral procession rather than visitation of a tomb and a cult of relics. In stark contrast, 142 posthumous miraculous cures are recorded for holy men and women of the ninth century. Even taking into account that only seventeen vitae survive for eighth-century saints, compared with forty-two for the ninth century, this is a notable difference. The twenty-four surviving vitae of tenth-century saints yield 120 posthumous miracles, also a very substantial number. I doubt that such a discrepancy 11
See J. O. Rosenqvist, “Local Worshippers, Imperial Patrons: Pilgrimage to St. Eugenios of Trebizond,” in this volume. 12 Kosmas and Damianos: L. Deubner, Kosmas und Damian (Leipzig–Berlin, 1907); Demetrios: P. Lemerle, Les plus anciens recueils des Miracles de s. Démétrius, 2 vols. (Paris, 1978–80); Eugenios: J. O. Rosenqvist, The Hagiographic Dossier of St. Eugenios of Trebizond in Codex Athous Dionysiou 154 (Uppsala, 1996); Pege, anonymous miracula: AASS Nov. 3:878–89; Logos by Xanthopoulos, ed. A. Pamperis, Nikhfovrou Kallivstou tou' Xanqopouvlou peri; sustavsew" tou' sebasmivou oi[kou th'" ejn Kwnstantinoupovlei Zwodovcou Phgh'" kai; tw'n ejn aujtw'/ uJperfuw'" telesqevntwn qaumavtwn ([Leipzig], 1802) (hereafter Xanthopoulos, Logos). 13 “Heroes of the Orthodox Church: New Saints, 8th–16th c.,” symposium held at the Institute of Byzantine Research of the National Research Foundation, Athens, 25–28 November 1999. 14 The Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database is available on the Internet at http://www.doaks.org/ hagio.html.
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between the eighth century, on the one hand, and the ninth and tenth centuries on the other is merely the result of loss of texts, and would suggest that the Byzantine world did indeed see an upsurge in the phenomenon of healing shrines in the ninth century. Can we in fact date this shift more precisely? Let us look more carefully at the vitae of saints noted for healing miracles. Of the saints who died in the ninth century, fourteen had tombs that are reported to have performed three or more specific posthumous healing miracles (see Appendix 2), a sufficient number perhaps to postulate that their shrines did in fact attract pilgrims in search of miraculous cures. It is noteworthy that nine of these saints died in 840 or later, and that the accounts of all but one of the healing cults were written after 843.15 It does not seem unreasonable, therefore, to suggest a connection between the restoration of icons and a resurgence of faith in the healing power of relics in the post-iconoclastic period.16 The geographic concentration of these healing shrines may also be significant: six were in Constantinople, six in Bithynia (mostly in the vicinity of Mount Olympos), one in Thessalonike, and one on Aegina. It is also important to note the rather brief time lapse between the death of a saint and the date of composition of the vita or separate miracula account that documents the healing miracles. In the case of the fourteen ninth-century saints with well-attested posthumous healing cures, all of the accounts seem to have been written within a few years or at most within a generation of the death of the holy man or woman. This is a significant finding, for it means that in many instances there is positive evidence for the duration of a posthumous healing cult for only about thirty years at the most. To the best of my knowledge, later healing cults are attested for only three ninth-century saints: Theodora of Thessalonike, Theophano, and Michael the Synkellos.17 The same is true for most of the saints of the tenth century, the exceptions being St. Luke the Younger and St. Athanasios of Athos.18 This does not necessarily mean of course that the cults of all these saints ceased 15
The fourteen saints are, in alphabetical order: Athanasia of Aegina, Eustratios of Agauros, Euthymios of Sardis, Evaristos, Gregory of Dekapolis, Ignatios the patriarch, Ioannikios, Makarios of Pelekete, Niketas Patrikios, Peter of Atroa, Tarasios, Theodora of Thessalonike, Theodore of Stoudios, and Theophano. The vita of Euthymios, written in 832, is the exception with regard to its date of composition. It is also hard to prove a posthumous “cult of Euthymios,” since his vita was written very soon after his death and attests to healing miracles only during the initial forty days following his demise. 16 At the same time, it should be noted that recent scholarship has tended to downplay official antipathy toward relics during the iconoclastic era. Stephen Gero has assembled the evidence for the hostility of Constantine V toward relics as part of his attack on the cult of saints. He finds no evidence, however, for “leipsanoclasm” as an official policy of Leo III or the iconoclastic emperors of the 9th century; cf. his Byzantine Iconoclasm during the Reign of Constantine V (Louvain, 1977), 152–65. The horos of 754 does not specifically mention relics. John Wortley (“Iconoclasm and Leipsanoclasm: Leo III, Constantine V, and the Relics,” ByzF 8 [1982]: 253–79) goes even further in dismissing the skimpy evidence for destruction of relics during the iconoclastic period, although he suggests that they may have fallen out of favor during this period. 17 The revival of the cult of Theodora in the Palaiologan period is attested by leaden oil flasks and by the testimony of Russian pilgrims; cf. A.-M. Talbot, ed., Holy Women of Byzantium (Washington, D.C., 1996), 162. For the cult of St. Theophano, see G. P. Majeska, “The Body of St. Theophano the Empress and the Convent of St. Constantine,” BSl 38 (1977): 14–21, esp. 14–17; G. Dagron, “Théophano, les Saints-Apôtres et l’église de Tous-les-Saints,” Symmeikta 9 (1994): 201–8, esp. 201–5; her healing miracles are specifically mentioned by Gregoras; cf. E. Kurtz, Zwei griechische Texte über die hl. Theophano die Gemahlin Kaisers Leo VI. (St. Petersburg, 1898), chaps. 25–26, pp. 44–45. On the Palaiologan cult of Michael the Synkellos, see his vita by Nikephoros Gregoras, ed. F. I. Shmit, Kakhrie-dz ˇami [IRAIK 11] (Sofia–Munich, 1906), 260–79, esp. 278.32–34. 18 The cults of St. Luke and Athanasios continue to this day at their tombs in their monasteries at Hosios Loukas and on Mt. Athos.
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to function after a brief period of activity, merely that we have no firm proof that pilgrims continued to come to these shrines in search of healing miracles. This suggests the possibility that many healing cults of new saints, which seem so important to us at first glance because of the vivid narrative accounts supplied by hagiographers, may in fact have been of relatively short duration and of much less prominence than the well-established shrines of longue durée. HEALING SHRINES OF THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES 1. Which Holy Men and Women Developed Posthumous Healing Cults? I now turn to an overview of some of the characteristics of Byzantine healing shrines, starting with those of the ninth and tenth centuries. First, which kinds of newly created saints tended to end up with healing cults? As analysis of information provided by the hagiography database makes clear, the performance of miracles was by no means essential for the attainment of sanctity.19 Examples of saints for whom no miracles are attested are the ninth-century empress Theodora and the patriarchs Nikephoros and Methodios, all of whom were venerated for their defense of icons rather than for such supernatural qualities as clairvoyance or healing powers. Those holy men and women who were reported to have performed posthumous healing miracles were almost all monastics (among the exceptions are married laywomen, like Mary the Younger and Thomais of Lesbos), and virtually every saint of the ninth and tenth century with a healing cult had been laid to rest in a monastery, usually one in which he or she had resided or died.20 Thus we can conclude that there was an intimate association between the deposition of a saint’s relics in a monastery and the promotion by the resident monks or nuns of a cult and the attendant pilgrimage. A posthumous cult was also often consciously supported by the family of a recently deceased holy man or woman, as can be seen particularly clearly in the case of St. Theodora of Thessalonike and St. Mary of Vizye. The development of a cult that would attract pilgrims might be promoted by publicizing the occurrence of miracles, by commissioning the painting of an icon and the composition of a vita of the saint, and where necessary by the transfer of the saint’s relics to a location more accessible to worshipers. I have argued elsewhere that, although the sanctification of Theodora and Mary was opposed by the church hierarchy, their cults were promoted by their families, who may well have commissioned hagiographers to provide evidence of their relatives’ holiness through accounts of the miraculous cures effected by their relics.21 It is harder to answer the question of why some other monks and nuns, revered during their lifetimes, are said to have performed healing miracles only while they were alive, and why no posthumous cult developed. Occasionally we can determine the reason, as 19
On this subject see the Appendices at the end of this essay. See also the article by M. Kaplan, “Le miracle est-il nécessaire au saint byzantin?” in Miracle et Karama: Hagiographies médiévales comparées, ed. D. Aigle (Turnhout, 2000), 167–96. 20 The one exception seems to be Theophano, originally buried at the church of the Holy Apostles, and only later moved to a convent; see note 17 above. 21 See A.-M. Talbot, “Family Cults in Byzantium: The Case of St. Theodora of Thessalonike,” in LEIMWN: Studies Presented to Lennart Rydén on His Sixty-fifth Birthday, ed. J. O. Rosenqvist (Uppsala, 1996), 49–69.
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with the ninth-century Matthias of Aegina, who drowned in a shipwreck and thus left no relics.22 In the case of other saints for whom no miracles at all are reported, the reason may be the overall paucity of information about the individual (as is true for Germanos of Kosinitza, Nikephoros of Sebaze, and Prokopios of Dekapolis), or by the genre of hagiographical composition, that is, when the source is a rhetorical funerary oration or panegyric rather than a fully developed vita, as in the case of Athanasios of Methone and Plato of Sakkoudion. Theoktiste of Lesbos was a hermitess on an uninhabited island, and thus had no contact with any human beings whom she could heal; and after her death her body mysteriously disappeared, so there could be no cult of her relics.23 But why, for example, are no specific posthumous healing miracles recorded for the three brothers of Lesbos, David, Symeon, and George, nor for Irene of Chrysobalanton, whose family actively promoted her cult?24 2. Types of Afflictions Cured I now turn to the kinds of afflictions for which ninth- and tenth-century pilgrims to saints’ shrines sought cures.25 The most common malady by far was demonic possession, which affected approximately one-third of the individuals seeking healing. The Byzantines apparently included in this category not only mental illness and its various aberrant manifestations, such as dementia, nymphomania, phobias, and obscene behavior, but also physical ills which may have had sudden onset with no obvious explanation and thus were blamed on demons; examples are epilepsy and stroke resulting in paralysis or aphasia. I would propose that certain chronic psychological disorders as well as hysterical afflictions or psychosomatic problems are most amenable to the power of suggestion or the placebo effect, and therefore logically account for such a high percentage of reportedly successful cures. The second most common complaint was paralysis at seventeen percent, while blindness or eye disease comes in third at around nine percent. Many other diseases or chronic problems are mentioned, including dropsy, hernia, leprosy, cancer, dysentery, fever and chills, sterility, and hemorrhage. There are no instances of heart attack, and very little respiratory disease. Fractured limbs are also exceedingly rare. As this enormous variety of illnesses and conditions suggests, most saints’ shrines of the ninth and tenth centuries did not specialize in particular diseases, in contrast, for example, to the earlier Con22
Vita of Athanasia of Aegina, ed. F. Halkin, Six inédits d’hagiologie byzantine (Brussels, 1987), 186.24–30, and L. Carras, “The Life of St. Athanasia of Aegina,” in Maistor: Classical, Byzantine and Renaissance Studies for Robert Browning, ed. A. Moffatt (Canberra, 1984), chap. 16, p. 217. 23 As an anonymous reader has observed, the patently literary focus of the vita of Theoktiste may have meant that description of her cult was not one of the purposes of its composition. For the scanty traces of a post-Byzantine cult of Theoktiste, see A. C. Hero’s introduction to her translation of the vita in Holy Women of Byzantium (as above, note 17), 98–99. 24 For the most recent study of Sts. David, Symeon, and George, see the annotated translation of their vita by D. Domingo Foraste and D. Abrahamse in Byzantine Defenders of Images, ed. A.-M. Talbot (Washington, D.C., 1998), 143–241. On Irene, see J. O. Rosenqvist, The Life of St. Irene Abbess of Chrysobalanton (Uppsala, 1986); the epilogue (p. 112.3–5) alludes very vaguely to pilgrims who come “in search of the cure of whatever his prayers include,” but then goes on to give defendants in lawsuits as examples, so healing miracles are not specifically attested. 25 The following data are derived from listings of posthumous healing miracles in the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database.
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stantinopolitan cult of St. Artemios in the seventh century, which was famed for its treatment of hernias.26 Typical of a “mixed-practice” shrine was the holy spring at Pege whose waters attracted many patients with urinary problems and kidney stones, but helped pilgrims with other health problems as well.27 3. Methods of Healing Classification of methods of healing indicates that the great majority of posthumous miracles (about 85%) involved some kind of contact with or proximity to the saint’s relics or substances associated with the relics. This large percentage highlights the importance of relics in the development of a saint’s cult and their role as the focal point of pilgrimage to a saint’s shrine. The emphasis on access to the saint’s physical remains also provides a rationale for the translation of relics, which took a variety of forms: the remains could be transferred from a communal monastic tomb to an individual sarcophagus with removable cover to permit viewing and touching of the relics (examples are Theodora of Thessalonike and Athanasia of Aegina);28 the relics could be transferred to a different location that would serve more appropriately as a pilgrimage shrine (e.g., the grotto chapel at the monastery of St. Zacharias, to which the relics of Peter of Atroa were translated);29 or the translation might involve a long-distance transfer, as when a holy man died in exile and his disciples wanted to restore his remains to his monastery (e.g., Theodore of Stoudios and Theophanes the Confessor).30 More than forty percent of the ninth-century posthumous healing miracles that I have documented are reported to have been effected as the result of the pilgrims’ touching of the relics themselves or the coffin that contained them, or by the mere proximity of the pilgrim to the coffin or relics. I am including in this category such practices as incubation, that is, spending the night in vigil or asleep within the precincts of the holy shrine. Another forty percent of the miraculous cures in my tabulation were accomplished when the pilgrim was anointed with or consumed a substance that had come into contact with the relics or was closely associated with the coffin. By far the most common such substance was oil from the lamp that normally hung above a saint’s coffin and burned continuously. For example, the hagiographer of Theodora of Thessalonike informs us that the oil in her coffin lamp never needed to be replenished and gushed forth so abundantly that it proved necessary to place a ceramic vessel beneath the lamp to catch the overflowing oil.31 The pilgrim would rub this oil on the afflicted part of the body and would soon be healed. An26 See V. S. Crisafulli and J. W. Nesbitt, The Miracles of St. Artemius (Leiden, 1997). See also the remarks of J. O. Rosenqvist in his article in this volume (p. 196), on the alleged specialization of the shrine of St. Eugenios in curing fever and convulsions. 27 On Pege, see the texts cited in note 12 above. 28 Theodora: S. Paschalides, ÔO bivo" th'" oJsiomurobluvtido" Qeodwvra" th'" ejn Qessalonivkh/ (Thessalonike, 1991), 194–204 (hereafter Paschalides, Bios tes Theodoras); Athanasia: Halkin, Six inédits, 191–92; Carras ed. in Maistor (as in note 22 above), chaps. 26–27, p. 221. 29 V. Laurent, La Vita Retractata et les Miracles Posthumes de Saint Pierre d’Atroa (Brussels, 1958), 147–49, chap. 97. See further discussion in note 53 below. 30 Theodore of Stoudios: see C. van de Vorst, “La translation de s. Théodore Studite et de s. Joseph de Thessalonique,” AB 32 (1913): 27–62; Theophanes: V. V. Latyshev, Mefodiia patriarkha Konstantinopol’skogo Zhitie prep. Feofana Ispovednika (St. Petersburg, 1918), 37–38, chaps. 57–58. 31 Paschalides, Bios tes Theodoras, chaps. 47, 52–53.
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other effective medium for transmitting the saint’s holy powers was the myron or perfumed oil that exuded miraculously from the relics of certain saints: in the case of Peter of Atroa it usually flowed only on his commemoration day,32 while the myron from the coffin of Theodora of Thessalonike apparently flowed more frequently.33 A third, much rarer source of holy oil was an exudation from the icon of the saint, attested only for Theodora of Thessalonike. We are told that sweet-scented oil began to issue forth from the palm of her right hand in such quantities as to wash some of the paint from the icon. A lead receptacle was attached to the icon’s base so the overflowing oil would not be lost.34 Still another method of posthumous healing was for the pilgrim to touch a piece of clothing or a personal possession of the saint. Thus healing was effected by the maphorion and the jasper finger-ring of the empress Theophano, the goat hair sticharion of Athanasia of Aegina, and the heavy iron rings worn by Evaristos to mortify his body.35 In many instances one can perceive a relationship between the affliction of the pilgrim and the method of healing. It is thus not surprising that anointing with oil was deemed an effective method of curing paralysis and external wounds or sores. Likewise, drinking of holy oil (usually from the coffin lamp), myron, or holy water was often the method of choice for internal problems such as kidney stones, food poisoning, or dropsy. But the categories are by no means rigid: demonic possession might be cured either by anointing with lamp oil or by drinking it, as were a chronic cough, high fever, liver problems, and hernia. Or an internal condition, such as severe sore throat with pus, might be cured by external anointing.36 Other factors that might determine the method of healing were the location of the saint’s tomb and whether the cure was effected before or after burial. Obviously it was easier for pilgrims to touch the saint’s corpse before burial while it was laid out on a bier or in the course of a funeral procession. Likewise the pilgrim could have direct physical contact with relics if they were displayed in a sarcophagus with removable cover. In the case of Theodore of Stoudios, who was buried in a family tomb together with his uncle Plato of Sakkoudion and his brother Joseph, pilgrims evidently had no direct access to his relics, so they drank or anointed themselves with oil from the coffin lamp, gazed at his icon hanging on a nearby column, or invoked his name.37 In contrast, those who approached the open coffin of Athanasia of Aegina might place a paralyzed hand under her armpit or lay their head on the relics to cure grotesquely swollen eyes.38 Many posthumous miracles were effected at a distance from the shrine. Sometimes the afflicted individual had a dream vision of the saint and awoke healed. On other occasions, holy oil, myron, or water was brought to the patient at home, normally in ampullae, but in 32
Laurent, Vita Retractata, 149, chaps. 97–98. Paschalides, Bios tes Theodoras, 196. 26–27. 34 Paschalides, Bios tes Theodoras, 174–76, chap. 54. 35 Theophano: maphorion, Kurtz, Zwei griechische Texte, 17–18, chap. 25; ring, 18, chap. 26.24–27; sticharion of Athanasia, Halkin, Six inédits, 194, chap. 18; Carras ed. in Maistor, chap. 32, p. 223; iron rings of Evaristos, C. van de Vorst, “La Vie de s. Evariste, higoumène à Constantinople,” AB 41 (1923): 315, chap. 26. 36 For such cures of quinsy, see the vita of Thomais, AASS Nov. 4:238, and vita A of Athanasios of Athos, ed. J. Noret, Vitae duae antiquae sancti Athanasii Athonitae (Turnhout, 1982), 119, chap. 247.42–52. 37 Drinking and anointing with oil: v. Theodori Stud., PG 99:313D–316A; gazing at icon, 313C; invocation of saint’s name, 313C. 38 Vita of Athanasia, ed. Halkin, Six inédits, 193, chap. 17; 194, chap. 18; Carras ed. in Maistor, chap. 30, p. 222, chap. 31, p. 223. 33
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one instance in an oil-soaked piece of papyrus.39 This was a useful method for those who were bedridden and unable to undertake a pilgrimage or for women who were sometimes denied access to a healing shrine in a male monastery.40 As Evelyne Patlagean has observed, the oil from lamp and relics was essential to the maintenance of a saint’s cult.41 This substance sanctified by contact with relics was a “renewable resource” that was constantly being replenished. If pilgrims did not have access to this oil or myron or to holy water sanctified by contact with the saint’s bones, clothes, or possessions, they would be tempted to take pieces of the saint’s body or clothing which could not be replaced.42 Still on occasion the Church did sanction the cutting up of a saint’s clothing for use as eulogiai, or pious souvenirs. The miracula of Theodora of Thessalonike tell how the priests who effected the transfer of her relics cut off little pieces of her funerary garb to take away with them as a kind of amulet.43 Likewise, on the day of Patriarch Ignatios’s funeral, his peplos was divided up into small pieces for distribution to the faithful. One of these fragments proved its miraculous power when it was applied to the womb of a woman experiencing a difficult labor. The baby had presented itself in breech position, and the desperate physicians were about to perform an embryotomy to save the mother’s life. As soon as the peplos fragment touched the woman’s abdomen, the baby turned headfirst and the birth proceeded normally.44 4. Eulogiai and Ex-voto Offerings Ampullae of holy oil and water and pieces of a saint’s clothing exemplify some of the types of souvenirs or eulogiai that pilgrims might take away from the shrine as pious mementos of their pilgrimage, as objects sanctified by the saint that they might themselves use in case of future need, or containers of holy substances that they could take to ailing friends and relatives forced to stay at home. All too few examples of such middle and late Byzantine pilgrimage artifacts have survived,45 but there are sufficient allusions to them in 39 Examples are the flask of holy oil sent from the shrine of Theodora of Thessalonike to a servant girl in Thebes (Paschalides, Bios tes Theodoras, 178, chap. 56) and two samples of oil from the tomb lamp of St. Luke the Younger sent to a young man with a hernia and to Nicholas of Rhastamitai (C. L. and W. R. Connor, The Life and Miracles of St. Luke [Brookline, Mass., 1994], 130–32, chap. 80; 138–40, chap. 84); Basil Apokaukos brought home myron from the tomb of Nikon ho Metanoeite with which he cured his servant Gregory (D. F. Sullivan, The Life of Saint Nikon [Brookline, Mass., 1987], 166–68, chap. 50). The papyrus is mentioned in the vita of Theodora (ed. Paschalides, Bios tes Theodoras, 210–12, chap. 11). J. Koder (“‘Problemwörter’ im Eparchikon biblion,” Lexicographica byzantina, ed. W. Hörandner and E. Trapp [Vienna, 1991], 188 note 12) has proposed the translation “wick” here for “papyrus,” a suggestion accepted by J. O. Rosenqvist, The Hagiographic Dossier of St. Eugenios, p. 380 at line 449. 40 For bedridden patients, see, e.g., the man with a cancerous ankle healed by lamp oil brought from the tomb of Peter of Atroa (Laurent, Vita Retractata, 141, chap. 93). For methods of healing for women denied access to a healing shrine, see discussion of the tomb of St. Elias Spelaiotes, below. 41 E. Patlagean, “Theodora de Thessalonique: Une sainte moniale et un culte citadin (IXe–XXe siècle),” in Culto dei santi, istituzioni e classi sociali in età preindustriale, ed. S. B. Gajano and L. Sebastiani (Rome, 1984), 45– 46. 42 E.g., the vita of Evaristos of Agauros (ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, ∆Anavlekta ÔIerosolumitikh'" Stacuologiva", vol. 4 [St. Petersburg, 1897], 393.23–26) states that after his death the people of Constantinople were frantically eager to secure pieces of his clothing or body or hairs from his head “as a phylakterion.” 43 Paschalides, Bios tes Theodoras, 204, chap. 7. 44 Vita Ignatii in PG 105:564B–C. 45 Note that virtually all the objects illustrated in Vikan, Byzantine Pilgrimage Art are from the 5th–7th centuries. Among surviving later eulogiai are lead tokens of St. Symeon the Younger from ca. 1100 (P. Verdier, “A
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the texts to assure us that the acquisition of such eulogiai was indeed an important part of the pilgrimage experience. What, in turn, did the pilgrims leave behind as offerings to the saint in thanksgiving for their miraculous healing? The vitae of ninth- and tenth-century saints are strangely silent on this, as if the hagiographers were embarrassed to admit that pilgrims in fact made donations to what were supposed to be “free hospitals,” amistha iatreia.46 The tenth-century miracula of the Constantinopolitan shrine of Pege, however, shed a little light on what must have been a common practice. They tell us, for example, that the empress Irene, after being healed of a hemorrhage by the waters of Pege, in gratitude presented to the church gold cloths and curtains, a crown, and eucharistic vessels adorned with pearls and gems, and had mosaics of herself and her son Constantine VI installed.47 A monk from Chaldia who was healed of an unspecified disease by the Virgin of Pege gave the shrine three nomismata as an offering, and later, when his servant was healed as well, his monastery undertook to send five nomismata to Pege every year in thanksgiving.48 Further evidence of such ex-voto offerings is provided by the epigrams commissioned by donors to accompany the textiles, icon frames, and the like that they presented to a shrine in the aftermath of a miraculous cure. Valerie Nunn has collected a number of such epigrams of the eleventh and twelfth centuries from Marcianus graecus 524, which demonstrate that woven hangings were a favorite sort of votive offering.49 Also in the twelfth century, Manganeios Prodromos composed verses to accompany a peplos donated by the sebastokratorisssa Irene to Pege in thanksgiving for the miraculous cure of her son John Komnenos, who had been struck in the eye during a jousting tournament.50 Many more examples could be cited, but that would be the subject of another paper.51 5. Who Were the Pilgrims to Healing Shrines? Analysis of miracle accounts shows that men, women, and children of all ages visited saints’ shrines in search of healing. Of the pilgrims to the shrines of ninth-century saints Medallion of Saint Symeon the Younger,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67 [January 1980]: 17–27), Palaiologan ampullae from the shrines of St. Theodora and St. Demetrios in Thessalonike (C. Bakirtzis, “Byzantine Ampullae from Thessaloniki,” in The Blessings of Pilgrimage, ed. R. Ousterhout [Urbana–Chicago, Ill., 1990], 140–49), and small Palaiologan clay bowls impressed with the names of St. Demetrios and other saints (D. Papanikola-Bakirtzi, “The Palaeologan Glazed Pottery of Thessaloniki,” in L’art de Thessalonique et des pays balkaniques et les courants spirituels au XIVe siècle. Recueil des rapports du IVe colloque serbe-grec [Belgrade, 1987], 204, and eadem, Byzantine Glazed Ceramics: The Art of Sgraffito [Athens, 1999], figs. 6–7 on p. 22, and cat. nos. 88–89). The question of middle and late Byzantine eulogiai is a topic that would reward further investigation. 46 One rare piece of evidence is found in the vita of Constantine the Jew, where an epileptic in search of a cure sets out for the tomb of St. Ioannikios bearing votive offerings of wax and incense (AASS Nov. 4:650C). It turned out, however, that the man was actually cured en route by Constantine the Jew who had sent him on this pilgrimage because he did not want to take credit for the miraculous healing. 47 Anonymous miracula of the Pege, ed. AASS Nov. 3:880, chap. 8. 48 Ibid., 886, chap. 30. 49 V. Nunn, “The Encheirion as Adjunct to the Icon in the Middle Byzantine Period,” BMGS 10 (1986): 73–102. 50 Ed. E. Miller, “Poésies inédites de Théodore Prodrome,” Annuaire de l’association pour l’encouragement des études grecques en France 17 (1883): 36–37. 51 For examples of ex-voto offerings from the early Palaiologan period, attested by the epigrams of Manuel Philes, see A.-M. Talbot, “Epigrams of Manuel Philes on the Theotokos tes Peges and Its Art,” DOP 48 (1994): 135–65.
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who are listed in my database, thirty-eight percent were women, while for the tenth century the figure is twenty-eight percent. In view of the customary underrepresentation of women in virtually all Byzantine sources, these percentages are in fact quite high. Since visitation to a holy tomb obviously necessitated travel, these miracula shed some light on women’s activities outside the home that are normally passed over in silence by the narrative sources. For the most part the gender of the pilgrim does not seem to have profoundly affected his or her choice of shrine; thus women might seek healing from the relics of male saints and men from the relics of female saints. The data I have assembled do indicate, however, that in general men were somewhat more likely to be healed by the relics of male saints and women by female saints, but not always: for instance, eighteen men received healing at the tomb of Mary the Younger, and only eleven women. Although male monasteries and female convents usually excluded or strictly limited visitation by members of the opposite sex, monastic shrines with healing relics often admitted lay pilgrims of both sexes, as can be seen at the monasteries of Hosios Loukas, Eustratios of Agauros, and Theodora of Thessalonike. There are exceptions, of course, to this pattern of lack of gender discrimination. Thus it is to be expected that only male pilgrims were able to visit the tomb of St. Athanasios on Mount Athos. But even in this extreme case, a rag dipped in his blood effected several posthumous cures outside Mount Athos, including of a woman with a hemorrhage.52 The cures of only five women are reported for the shrine of St. Peter of Atroa, in contrast to fourteen men. Here an explanation may be found in the rigorous principle of abaton or exclusion of women imposed by the typikon of his monastery of St. Zacharias near Mount Olympos.53 Women were likewise excluded by the typikon that the patriarch Tarasios drafted for his monastery on the European shore of the Bosporos, where he was buried. His hagiographer tells us that in order to circumvent this rule two hemorrhaging women, in desperation, disguised themselves as eunuchs so as to approach his coffin. And indeed they were healed after anointing themselves with oil from the lamp hanging over his tomb.54 Yet another healing shrine that denied access to women was the cave of St. Elias Spelaiotes in Calabria where he himself had dug his own grave. Here female pilgrims Very few objects that served as votive offerings have survived from the middle Byzantine period; for a description of one such ex-voto, a copper plaque with St. Hermolaos in the Dumbarton Oaks collection, see S. A. Boyd, “Ex-Voto Therapy: A Note on a Copper Plaque with St. Hermolaos,” in AETOS : Studies in Honour of Cyril ˇevcˇenko and I. Hutter (Stuttgart–Leipzig, 1998), 15–27. Mango, ed. I. S 52 Vita B, chap. 72, ed. Noret, Vitae duae antiquae Sancti Athanasii Athonitae, 206–7. 53 While Peter was still alive, he healed very few women, all outside the precincts of the monastery of St. Zacharias. He agreed to meet one woman, whose son had a growth disorder, in the chapel of the Theotokos outside the monastery walls, and cured the child by a laying on of hands (V. Laurent, La vie merveilleuse de Saint Pierre d’Atroa (†837) [Brussels, 1956], 169–71, chap. 51). Of his posthumous cures of women, two were effected at his initial burial place at the chapel of St. Nicholas near the Balaion monastery (Laurent, Vita Retractata, 137, chap. 88). Twenty months after his death his remains were transferred to the chapel of the Theotokos at the monastery of Zacharias; Laurent (Vita Retractata, 146 note 2) assumes that this chapel, located in a grotto, was inside the monastery, and to be distinguished from the chapel of the Theotokos outside the walls. In this case it is hard to understand how the demoniac woman who was cured by approaching his coffin and drinking oil from the tomb lamp (Vita Retractata, 153, chap. 102) was granted access to his tomb. Another woman and her servant girl were cured by oil that was brought to them in their home (Vita Retractata, 161, chaps. 107–8). 54 S. Efthymiadis, The Life of the Patriarch Tarasios by Ignatios the Deacon (BHG 1698) (Aldershot, 1998), 160– 61, chap. 66.
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resorted to various subterfuges to gain entry or otherwise avail themselves of the saint’s powers. For some it was sufficient to kiss the door to the cave or sleep nearby.55 A victim of demonic possession disguised herself as a man in order to kiss Elias’s tomb and spend the night inside the cave in incubation.56 Another woman secretly introduced her small paralyzed daughter into the cave so the child could sleep near the tomb.57 Finally, I should mention the young blind woman who received special permission from the gatekeeper (after a donation perhaps?) to keep vigil at the saint’s tomb.58 Other women (and men as well) found healing without visiting the holy cave by drinking or anointing themselves with water that had washed Elias’s wooden vessel or staff, or even the sponge used to cleanse his body before burial.59 It was common for women thus denied access to a healing tomb to seek benefit from the miraculous powers of the relics in just this way, by sending an emissary to bring them something that had come into contact with the living saint or his relics, dust from the tomb, for example, or oil from the tomb lamp, or washwater that had touched his bones or objects he had worn or used. Hagiographers do not always indicate the social status of pilgrims, often limiting their identification to merely “an old woman” or “a twelve-year-old boy.” Some vitae, however, provide sufficient information to demonstrate the widespread appeal of healing shrines to peasants, clerics, and high imperial officials alike. Monks and nuns are by far the most common beneficiaries of miraculous healing, not surprising in view of the milieu in which these cures were being effected. Otherwise there are no predominant social groups, with pilgrims ranging from senators and strategoi to coppersmiths, vinedressers, sailors, charcoal makers, and prostitutes. 6. Distances Traveled to Healing Shrines Even less information is provided by hagiographers on another important factor, from our point of view: how far did pilgrims travel to these healing shrines? Did they primarily visit tombs in a local church, or were they willing to travel to another town to seek a miraculous cure?60 Where sufficient evidence is available, it seems that most visitors to a shrine lived in the near vicinity. The miracula of Theodora of Thessalonike, one of the most detailed surviving records of posthumous miracles, demonstrate that about seventy percent of the attested pilgrims to her tomb were local inhabitants of Thessalonike. Two others came from Verroia, a distance of forty-five miles, including a paralyzed woman who had 55
V. Eliae Spelaiotae, AASS Sept. 3:882, chap. 83; 885A, chap. 93. AASS Sept. 3:881–82, chap. 82. 57 AASS Sept. 3:882–83, chap. 86. 58 Latin version of vita of Elias Spelaiotes, ed. M. V. Strazzeri, “Una traduzione dal greco ad uso dei normanni: la vita latina di Sant’Elia lo Speleota,” AStCal 59 (1992): 81, para. 12, lines 1331–41. 59 Wooden vessel: AASS Sept. 3:886E, chap. 96; staff, 881, chap. 81; sponge, 884, chap. 92. 60 Only about 20 miracula of the 9th and 10th centuries provide sufficient information on long-distance pilgrimage for us to determine the actual length of a journey. Even when the hagiographer tells us the pilgrim’s point of origin, it may turn out to be an obscure village or monastery impossible to locate on a map. For general discussions of travel in the Byzantine era, see M. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001), Part IV, esp. chap. 16; A. Avramea, “Land and Sea Communications, Fourth–Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Economic History of Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. A. Laiou (Washington, D.C., 2002), 57–90; and E. Malamut, Sur la route des saints byzantins (Paris, 1993). 56
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to be transported on a pack animal.61 In addition, the monk Antony came from his hermitage on a nearby mountain, perhaps Chortaites, and an Arab from a village of the western Chalkidike, about thirty miles distant.62 Finally, one should mention the wife of the strategos of Thebes who sent to the tomb for an ampulla of oil to heal her blind servant girl;63 in this case she evidently felt 160 miles was too long a journey. The miracula of St. Luke the Younger also provide good information on the hometowns of pilgrims, and we learn of journeys to Hosios Loukas of approximately twelve miles (from Davleia) and of twenty-seven miles (from Thermopylae).64 Longer distances are more rarely attested: in the vita of Athanasios of Athos we learn of a monk from Euboea who traveled about 110 miles to the saint’s tomb at the Lavra,65 and in the anonymous miracles of the Pege we read about a pilgrim from Thessaly who sailed ca. 400 miles to Constantinople and a monk who journeyed to the capital from Chaldia, a distance of ca. 550 miles.66 MIRACULA OF THE EARLY PALAIOLOGAN ERA Finally, I will discuss, much more briefly, the evidence on pilgrimage in the early Palaiologan era, focusing on a group of miracula for Constantinopolitan shrines that flourished during the reign of Emperor Andronikos II (1282–1328). As is well known, Byzantine hagiography experienced a marked decline in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and in the first half of the thirteenth, with a concomitant lack of evidence for miraculous cures.67 Then in the Palaiologan period there is a revival of the appearance of new Orthodox saints, some of whom, like the patriarch Athanasios I, were venerated posthumously at shrines where their relics performed healing miracles. With the shrinking of the boundaries of the empire, most of these new holy men (there were no Palaiologan women saints) were active in Constantinople or in Greece. At the same time, subsequent to the period of Latin occupation of Constantinople (1204–61), when many churches and monasteries had been closed or occupied by Latins, a number of healing shrines were restored and reopened or at the least reinvigorated in the years following the Byzantine recovery of their capital. Thus, as already mentioned, after a long period of silence in the sources with regard to healing miracles at Sts. Kosmas and Damianos, ca. 1300 Maximos the deacon described a small number of miracles that occurred at the shrine in the early Palaiologan period.68 61
Paschalides, Bios tes Theodoras, 192, chap. 2.11–13; 214, chap. 12.1–5. Antony: Paschalides, Bios tes Theodoras, 184, chap. 59; Arab from village of Chalkidike: ibid. 178, chap. 57.1–3. 63 Ibid., 178, chap. 56. 64 C. L. and W. R. Connor, The Life and Miracles of St. Luke, 136, chap. 83.1–2, and 132, chap. 81. Similar distances are attested in the vitae of Eustratios of Agauros (ca. 45 miles from Malagina to Agauros) and of Nikon ho Metanoeite (ca. 30 miles from Helos to Sparta, and ca. 37 miles from Kalamata to Sparta by the road over Mt. Taygetos). See vita Eustratii, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, ∆Anavlekta ÔIerosolumitikh'" Stacuologiva", 4:398.1; Sullivan, The Life of Saint Nikon, 168, chap. 51.1–4; 174, chap. 55.2–3; 178, chap. 56.2–4. 65 V. Athan. Athon. (B), ed. Noret, 204, chap. 70. 66 AASS Nov. 3:881B, chap. 12; 886B, chap. 30. 67 See P. Magdalino, “The Byzantine Holy Man in the Twelfth Century,” in The Byzantine Saint. University of Birmingham Fourteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, ed. S. Hackel (London, 1981), 51–66. 68 µ saints Cyr et Jean (extraits), saint Georges (Paris, 1971), 191–210. My article on the miracula of Maximos, entitled “Metaphrasis in the Early Palaiologan Period: The Miracula of Kosmas and Damian by Maximos the 62
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HEALING SHRINES: THE EVIDENCE OF MIRACLE ACCOUNTS
Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos appended to his vita of the middle Byzantine saint Euphrosyne an account of the healing miracles that took place at her church;69 the same author, after rewriting in higher style the already existing miracula of Pege, added sixteen new miracles that had occurred in his lifetime.70 The hagiographer Constantine Akropolites, frequently termed “the new Metaphrastes,” included three contemporary healing miracles in his reworking of the vita of St. Theodosia, the iconodule martyr of the eighth century.71 Thus we can speak of a revival of healing cults, or, more precisely, of hagiographical accounts of miraculous healing, during the long reign of Andronikos II.72 In the group of five Palaiologan miracle accounts that I discuss here, only one, the logos of Theoktistos the Stoudite on the posthumous miracles of the patriarch Athanasios,73 describes the cult of a new saint; the others are continuations or revivals of older cults. Overall, these miracula provide quite detailed information on name, hometown, and occupation of the individuals cured, and thus are a valuable source of evidence on patterns of pilgrimage. The most numerous are the thirty-nine miracles of the patriarch Athanasios, followed by sixteen at Pege and twelve at the shrine of Euphrosyne. In general, both men and women visited these Palaiologan shrines. For example, twenty-one men and eighteen women are attested as coming to the tomb of St. Athanasios. At Pege, on the other hand, the proportion of male pilgrims is much higher, with thirteen men and three women. The reverse can be seen at St. Euphrosyne, with only one man, and eleven women, but it was a shrine that had infertility as one of its specialties, which would in part explain the gender imbalance.74 Many of these Palaiologan shrines attracted primarily a local clientele, but there is some evidence of pilgrimage from more distant points. Pilgrims to the tomb of the patriarch Athanasios came from such Bithynian towns and villages as Hieron, Kroulla, and even Prousa (some 60 miles from Constantinople), and from the Thracian towns of Medeia and Bizye (60 and 72 miles distant respectively).75 The miracula for Sts. Theodosia and Euphrosyne mention only local pilgrims by name, but we know that four of the Russian travelers venerated the relics of St. Theodosia,76 and the fame of the shrine of St. Euphrosyne Deacon,” is currently in press in the proceedings of the 1999 Athens symposium on “The Heroes of the Orthodox Church: New Saints, 8th–16th cc.” 69 “Vita s. Euphrosynae,” AASS Nov. 3:861–77. 70 For the new miracles, see Xanthopoulos, Logos, 65–94. 71 “Sermo in s. martyrem Theodosiam,” PG 140:924–33. 72 For fuller discussion and complete bibliography, see A.-M. Talbot, Healing Shrines in Late Byzantine Constantinople, “Constantinople and Its Legacy” Lecture Series, 1997, Hellenic Canadian Association of Toronto (Toronto, Ont., 2000). 73 A.-M. Talbot, Faith Healing in Late Byzantium: The Posthumous Miracles of the Patriarch Athanasios I of Constantinople by Theoktistos the Stoudite (Brookline, Mass., 1983) (hereafter Talbot, Miracles of Athanasios). 74 The miracula of Akropolites for St. Theodosia describe the healing of only three men and no women, but we know from the evidence of the Russian traveler Stephen of Novgorod that many female pilgrims came to this shrine as well; cf. G. P. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1984), 346: “<We> went to the convent near the sea named after St. Theodosia the Virgin, where we kissed her . It is quite wonderful; every Wednesday and Friday is like a holiday . Many men and women contribute candles, oil, and alms, and many sick people suffering from various diseases lie [there] on beds, receive cures and enter the church. Others are carried in and are laid before her one at a time. She intercedes, and those who are ill receive healing.” 75 Talbot, Miracles of Athanasios, 80.10, 86.35, 114.9–10, 78.9, 94.22. 76 Majeska, Russian Travelers, 346–51.
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must have reached Rome, since barren Roman women sent to Constantinople for oil from the lamp over her tomb and girdles of silk sanctified by contact with her relics.77 Several visitors to Pege were originally from towns like Sparta and Serres, but seem to have fallen ill while resident in Constantinople, and so must be counted as local pilgrims. The exception is a boy from Nicaea with a carbuncle on his ankle whose mother brought him to the shrine to anoint his afflicted foot with holy water and mud.78 By and large the types of illness documented in the Palaiologan miracula are similar to those of the ninth and tenth centuries. At the monastery of St. Athanasios demonic possession tops the list of afflictions, accounting for eleven of the thirty-nine cases described. Urinary problems are second, and blindness third. Curiously, at Pege, where urinary difficulties had been a common complaint in the middle Byzantine period, Palaiologan pilgrims were more likely to suffer from skin diseases such as leprosy, rashes, or carbuncles and from cancerous tumors. There is only one case of a kidney stone and one of sand in the bladder. As already mentioned, the shrine of St. Euphrosyne specialized in infertility, and also in deafness. Most of the methods of healing remain similar to those reported in the ninth and tenth centuries. Drinking holy water and application of holy mud continue to be the preferred treatments at Pege, but one unique treatment is mentioned. In order to access an internal tumor, holy dust was blown through a tube inserted into the patient.79 At the tomb of Athanasios pilgrims typically anointed themselves with oil from the tomb lamp, drank water that had come into contact with the relics, or practiced the rite of incubation next to the saint’s coffin. An unusual innovation was the burning of tiny pieces of cloth stolen from Athanasios’s garments and inhaling the fumes.80 A curious method of healing deafness at the shrine of St. Euphrosyne was the insertion of the key to the reliquary in the ear of the pilgrim.81 CONCLUSION Between the seventh and fifteenth centuries, Byzantines with chronic and acute diseases often sought healing at shrines, many times after unsuccessful recourse to physicians. Normally they would visit a tomb or reliquary close to home, although journeys of up to 100 miles might be undertaken, even if the individual had to be carried on a pack animal. It makes sense, of course, that someone who is ill would avoid long-distance travel, unless there were no alternative. If visitation to a shrine in person proved impossible, because of distance, the severity of the illness, or because access was denied due to one’s gender, the individual might send for some sort of healing substance that had come into contact with the saint’s relics, normally oil or water. Gender does not seem to have played a major role in choices of healing shrine; Byzantine men and women sought cures from the relics of male and female saints alike. Women are relatively well represented in the lists of cured individuals, and were evidently free to go on at least short-distance pilgrimage without restrictions. 77
Vita of Euphrosyne by Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos, AASS Nov. 3:876A. Xanthopoulos, Logos, mir. 53, p. 71. 79 Xanthopoulos, Logos, mir. 50, pp. 68–69. 80 On this see Talbot, Miracles of Athanasios, 18–19. 81 Vita of Euphrosyne, AASS Nov. 3:877A. 78
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The surviving miracula suggest that there were three periods of particularly intense interest in pilgrimage to healing shrines: the fifth to early seventh century, the posticonoclastic period of ca. 850–1000, and the period following the Byzantine reoccupation of Constantinople in the late thirteenth century. It is possible, of course, that these apparent peaks of activity are due to random preservation of texts. It is more likely, however, that intensification of pilgrimage to shrines with relics was a reaction to triumph over crises within the Church and empire: the Great Persecution, followed by the toleration of Christianity, the establishment of an official church, and an explosion of church construction; iconoclasm, followed by the triumph of orthodoxy, the renewed veneration of icons and relics, and restoration of images; and the Latin capture and looting of Constantinople in 1204, followed by the recovery of the Byzantine capital and the restoration of its despoiled churches. Dumbarton Oaks
Appendix 1 Total number of healing miracles (by century)
8th century
9th century
10th century
Number of vitae surveyed Miracles performed by living holy man/woman Miracles performed posthumously Total
17 17 2 19
42 113 142 255
24 103 120 223
Number of men healed Number of women healed Persons of indeterminate sex healed
15 (79%) 4 (12%) 0
154 (61%) 92 (36%) 9 (3%)
163 (71%) 60 (26%) 7 (3%)
Total
19
255
230
Synaxarion notices have not been included in these statistics, since their summary nature means that miracles are omitted or mentioned only in a summary fashion.
Saints for whom no healing miracles are recorded 8th century Andrew in Tribunal, iconodule Martyr Andrew of Crete, poet and hymnographer Paul of Kaioumas, iconodule martyr Stephen of Sougdaia, iconodule confessor Bakchos the Younger, Palestinian martyr John Eremopolites, Palestinian hermit (very fragmentary vita) Elias of Heliopolis, Syrian martyr Germanos I of Constantinople, iconodule patriarch John of Damascus, iconodule theologian 9th century Theodora, empress, wife of Theophilos Methodios I, patriarch Nikephoros I, patriarch Athanasios, bishop of Methone Germanos of Kosinitza, monk Theophylaktos, bishop of Nikomedeia Nikephoros of Sebaze, iconodule abbot Nikephoros of Medikion, iconodule abbot
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Prokopios of Dekapolis, iconodule monk Joseph the Hymnographer Plato of Sakkoudion, iconodule abbot 42 Martyrs of Amorion—vita Evodii [vita by Michael—generic posthumous miracles] 10th century Theoktiste of Lesbos, legendary hermitess Euthymios, patriarch of Constantinople Saints for whom only posthumous miracles are recorded 8th century Leo, bishop of Catania Philaretos the Merciful 60 Martyrs of Jerusalem
Number of Miracles 1 1 generic only
9th century Theophano, empress Tarasios, patriarch Ignatios, patriarch Theodora of Thessalonike Michael the Synkellos Theophanes the Confessor
5 4 9 17 1 1
10th century Mary the Younger of Bizye Antony Kauleas, patriarch Nikephoros of Miletos Theodore of Kythera
30 4 1 generic only
Appendix 2 Summary of Ninth-Century Healing Miracles
Athanasia of Aegina Matthias of Aegina Anthony the Younger Constantine the Jew David of Lesbos Symeon of Lesbos George of Lesbos Athanasios of Methone Eustratios of Agauros Euthymios of Sardis Euthymios the Younger Evaristos George of Amastris Gregory of Dekapolis Germanos of Kosinitza Ioannikios (vitae of both Peter and Sabas) John Psichaites Theodora, empress Theophylaktos of Nikomedeia Nikephoros of Sebaze Makarios of Pelekete Nicholas of Stoudios Methodios I, patriarch of Constantinople Theodora of Thessalonike Michael the Synkellos Theophano, empress Peter of Atroa Niketas Patrikios Nikephoros of Medikion George, bishop of Mytilene Peter of Athos Niketas of Medikion
Living/ Posthumous
Living: M/F/I
Posthumous: M/F/I
Total: M/F/I
1/11 4/0 4/0 5/1 0 3/0 2/0 0 4/29 1/3 2/0 11/3 1/1 6/10 0 8/3 4/2 0 0 0 6/7 2/1 0 0/17 0/1 0/5 31/21 3/4 0 3/0 1/2 4/1
1/0/0 3/1/0 3/1/0 2/3/0 — 1/2/0 2/0/0 — 2/1/1 1/0/0 2/0/0 7/4/0 0/1/0 4/2/0 — 3/5/0 3/1/0 — — — 3/3/0 0/2/0 — — — — 29/2/0 3/0/0 — 3/0/0 1/0/0 4/0/0
2/7/2 — — 1/0/0 — — — — 19/9/1 1/2/0 — 1/2/0 1/0/0 7/3/0 — 2/1/0 0/1/1 — — — 5/0/2 1/0/0 — 6/11/0 1/0/0 3/2/0 15/4/2 2/2/0 — — 2/0/0 0/1/0
3/7/2 3/1/0 3/1/0 4/2/0 — 1/2/0 2/0/0 — 21/10/2 2/2/0 2/0/0 5/9/0 1/1/0 11/5/0 — 5/6/0 3/2/1 — — — 8/3/2 1/2/0 — 6/11/0 1/0/0 3/2/0 44/6/2 2/5/0 — 3/0/0 3/0/0 4/1/0
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HEALING SHRINES: THE EVIDENCE OF MIRACLE ACCOUNTS Living/ Posthumous
Nikephoros I, patriarch of Constantinople Theodore of Edessa* Theophanes the Confessor Prokopios of Dekapolis Joseph the Hymnographer Plato of Sakkoudion Theodore of Stoudios Ignatios the Patriarch Tarasios the Patriarch Theokletos of Lakedaimon 42 Martyrs of Amorion (vita by Michael) 42 Martyrs of Amorion (v. Evodii)
0 3/0 0/1 0 0 0 3/6 0/9 0/4 1/0 0/** 0
Total
113/142
*plus generic posthumous miracles **generic miracles only
Living: M/F/I — 2/1/0 — — — — 1/2/0 — — 0/1/0 — —
Posthumous: M/F/I — — 0/1/0 — — — 6/0/0 3/6/0 2/2/0 — ** —
Total: M/F/I — 2/1/0 0/1/0 — — — 7/2/0 3/6/0 2/2/0 0/1/0 — — 155/91/9
Appendix 3 Summary of Tenth-Century Healing Miracles
Living/ Posthumous Demetrianos Irene of Chrysobalanton Elias Spelaiotes Elias the Younger Loukas of Steiris Blasios of Amorion Christopher and Makarios Sabas the Younger Michael Maleinos Loukas the Stylite Thomais of Lesbos Mary the Younger Theoktiste of Lesbos Paul of Latros Euthymios, patriarch of Constantinople Peter of Argos Antony Kauleas, patriarch of Constantinople Naum of Ohrid Kliment of Ohrid Nikon ho Metanoeite
Living: M/F/I
Posthumous: M/F/I
0*/0** 2/0 11/23 14/1** 3/17 1/0 1*/0** 20/0** 1/0 17/0 5/6 0/30 0 4/6 0
— 1/1/0 8/3/0 6/4/4 2/1/0 1/0/0 0/1/0 18/2/0 1/0/0 11/5/1 2/3/0 — — 4/0/0 —
— — 13/10/0 1/0/0 13/4/0 — — — — — 4/2/0 18/11/1 — 5/1/0 —
— 1/1/0 21/13/0 7/4/+4 15/5/0 1/0/0 0/1/0 18/2/0 1/0/0 11/5/1 6/5/0 18/11/1 — 9/1/0 —
2/0** 0/4
1/1/0 —
— 2/2/0
1/1/0 2/2/0
*/0 3/1** 7/16
2/0/1 4/3/0
1/0/0 15/1/0
Theodore of Kythera Nikephoros of Miletos Phantinos the Younger Athanasios of Athos (A and B)
0/** — 0/1 — 6/7 5/1/0 12/8 (of which only 3 12/0/0 are at his tomb)
— 1/0/0 5/2/0 7/1/0
Total
109/120
85/34/1
*plus generic living miracles **plus generic posthumous miracles
Total: M/F/I
78/25/6
— 3/0/1 19 (includes several groups) /4/0 — 1/0/0 10/3/0 19 (includes 1 group) /1/0 163/59/7
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2002 © 2003 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America
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Pilgrimage to Thessalonike: The Tomb of St. Demetrios CHARALAMBOS BAKIRTZIS
Most happy martyr of Christ, you who love the city, take care of both citizens and strangers.1
his prayer, which accompanies the mosaic of the distinguished cleric of Thessalonike to whom St. Demetrios frequently appeared,2 reflects the crucial role of citizens and strangers3 in the rebuilding of the basilica of St. Demetrios at the beginning of the seventh century.4 So, in discussing Thessalonike as a pilgrim center from the seventh to the fifteenth century, I turn to the city’s best-known locus sanctus, the tomb of the myroblytes St. Demetrios.
T
I Between the seventh and the fifteenth century, the cult of St. Demetrios may be divided into two periods: before and after the appearance of the myron.5 There is no historical 1 “Panovlbiai Cristou' mavrtu" filovpoli" / frontivda tivqh k(ai;) politw'n k(ai;) xevnwn”; G. and M. Soteriou, ÔH basilikh; tou' ÔAgivou Dhmhtrivou Qessalonivkh" (Athens, 1952), 196: read “Panovlbie tou' Cristou'.” 2 See Th. Papazotos, “To; yhfidwto; tw'n kthtovrwn tou' ÔAgivou Dhmhtrivou Qessalonivkh",” ∆Afievrwma sth; mnhvmh Stulianou' Pelekanivdh (Thessalonike, 1983), 372, and ÔAgivou Dhmhtrivou Qauvmata. OiJ sulloge;" tou' ajrciepiskovpou ∆Iwavnnou kai; ∆Anwnuvmou. ÔO bivo", ta; qauvmata kai; hJ Qessalonivkh tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou, intro. and comm. Ch. Bakirtzis, trans. A. Sideris (Athens, 1997), 414–15, where it is stated that the cleric depicted is the writer of the mosaic inscriptions of the basilica and of the first three chapters of the second book of the Miracula of St. Demetrios. Could it be that the book with the valuable binding he is holding is not a Gospel lectionary but the Miracula of St. Demetrios? 3 For the meaning of the word xevno" as “stranger” or “traveler,” the equivalent of peregrinus, see C. Mango, “The Pilgrim’s Motivation,” in Akten des XII. Internationalen Kongresses für christliche Archäologie, Bonn 22.–28. September 1991, JbAC, Ergänzungsband 20, 2 vols. (Münster, 1995), 1:2. See also M. Mentzou, Der Bedeutungswandel des Wortes “Xenos” (Hamburg, 1964). 4 Soteriou, Basilikhv , 143–46. P. Lemerle, Les plus anciens recueils des miracles de Saint Démétrius et la pénétration des Slaves dans les Balkans, 2 vols. (Paris, 1979–81), 2:110 dated the destruction and reconstruction of the basilica in ± 620. On the extent of reconstruction, see J.-M. Spieser, Thessalonique et ses monuments du IVe au VIe siècle. Contribution à l’étude d’une ville paléochrétienne (Paris, 1984), 46–47. P. Speck, “De Miraculis Sancti Demetrii, qui Thessalonicam profugus venit, oder Ketzerisches zu den Wundergeschichten des Heiligen Demetrios und zu seiner Basilica in Thessalonike,” Poikivla Buzantinav 12, Varia 4 (1993) doubts the historic value of the Miracula. He distinguishes several writers of these hagiographic texts and argues for their final composition in the 9th and not in the 7th century. See analysis by J. C. Skedros, Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki. Civic Patron and Divine Protector, 4th– 7th centuries CE (Harrisburg, 1999), 107–15. 5 Ch. Bakirtzis, “Le culte de saint Démétrius,” in Akten des XII. Internationalen Kongresses für christliche Archäologie (as above, note 3), 2:65–66.
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evidence for myron from the tomb of St. Demetrios until 1040.6 It has been suggested that the myron of St. Demetrios may have appeared even earlier, judging from certain events at the end of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth century reported in the miracles of St. Eugenios of Trebizond assembled by John Lazaropoulos in the fourteenth century.7 Before the myron appeared, the focal point of the pilgrim cult of St. Demetrios was his splendid hexagonal silver-plated wooden ciborium “established in the middle of the church and toward the left side,”8 which Archbishop John of Thessalonike discusses at length in the first book of the Miracula of St. Demetrios.9 However, there are very few archaeological finds to give us some idea of its form and function. A hexagonal marble base or stylobate with sides measuring 2.4 m, which was found under the floor of the nave of the basilica, somewhat to the north, or left, side (Fig. 1:1), is the only proof that Archbishop John is telling the truth and describing something specific.10 The silver ciborium is documented not only by textual sources. It was depicted in the mosaics in the small north colonnade in the basilica of St. Demetrios, which are known to us only from old photographs and colored drawings of them.11 The ciborium depicted in them matches Archbishop John’s description:12 it is hexagonal (eJxagwvnw/ schvmati), closed by walls (kivosin e{x kai; toivcoi" ijsarivqmoi"), with a horizontal cornice supporting the triangular parts of the roof (th;n ojrofh;n wJsauvtw" ajpo; tw'n eJxagwvnwn pleurw'n kukloforikw'" ajnivscousan) and a cross with spherical base on the top of the roof (sfai'ravn te ajrgurevan megevqou" ouj mikrou' fevrousan a[nwqen, . . . w|n pavntwn ejpavnw to; kata; tou' qanavtou pephgo;" trovpaion ajktinobolei'). The mosaic differs from the description only with respect to the columns. 6 Ioannes Skylitzes, Suvnoyi", ed. T. Thurn (Berlin, 1973), CFHB 5, 413.13–17: mia'/ de; tw'n hJmerw'n tw'/ tavfw/ tou' megalomavrturo" Dhmhtrivou proselqovnte" oiJ ejpicwvrioi, kai; pavnnucon ejpitelevsante" devhsin kai; tw'/ muvrw/ tw'/ ejk tou' qeivou tavfou bluvzonti crhsavmenoi, wJ" ejk mia'" oJrmh'" ajnapetavsante" ta;" puvla" ejxevrcontai kata; tw'n Boulgavrwn. See R. Macrides, “Subvention and Loyalty in the Cult of St. Demetrios,” BSl 51 (1990): 194. 7 J. O. Rosenqvist, The Hagiographic Dossier of St. Eugenios of Trebizond in Codex Athens Dionysiou 154 (Upsala, 1996), 300–304, and cf. commentary on p. 431. 8 “kata; mevson tou' naou' pro;" toi'" laioi'" pleuroi'" ejfidrumevnon” (Miracula, 1:10 §87). For the ciborium see D. Pallas, “Le ciborium hexagonal de Saint Démétrios de Thessalonique,” Zograf 10 (1979): 44–58. R. S. Cormack, “St. Demetrios of Thessaloniki: The Powers of Art and Ritual. Themes of Unity and Diversity,” in Acts of the XXVth International Congress of History of Art (1986), ed. I. Lavin, 3 vols. (University Park, Pa.–London, 1989), 3:547–56; Bakirtzis, “Le culte,” 62–64; A. Mentzos, To; proskuvnhma tou' ÔAgivou Dhmhtrivou Qessalonivkh" sta; buzantina; crovnia (Athens, 1994), 56–67. Skedros, St. Demetrios, 89–94. 9 P. Lemerle, Miracles, 2:32–40. 10 G. Soteriou, ““Ekqesi" peri; tw'n ejrgasiw'n tw'n ejktelesqeisw'n ejn th'/ hjreipwmevnh/ ejk th'" purkai>a"' basilikh'/ tou' ÔAgivou Dhmhtrivou Qessalonivkh" kata; ta; e[th 1917–1918,” ∆Arc.Delt., Sumplhvrwma (1918), 32–33, fig. 46. Soteriou, Basilikhv, 100, pl. 26a. 11 P. N. Papageorghiou, “Mnhmei'a th'" ejn Qessalonivkh/ latreiva" tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou,” BZ 8 (1908): 342–47, pls. I–IV; F. I. Uspenskij, “O vnov otkrytyh mozaikah v cerkvi Sv. Dimitrija v Soluni,” IRAIK 14 (1909): 1–61, pls. 1–16; R. S. Cormack, “The Mosaic Decoration of St. Demetrios, Thessaloniki: A Re-examination in the Light of the Drawings of W. S. George,” BSA 64 (1969): 17–52, repr. in idem, The Byzantine Eye: Studies in Art and Patronage (London, 1989). He states that a late 5th-century date of these mosaics is highly appropriate. R. S. Cormack, The Church of Saint Demetrios. The Watercolours and Drawings of W. S. George, Catalogue of an exhibition organized by the British Council (Thessalonike, 1985), repr. in The Byzantine Eye, article no. II. 12 Miracula, 1:10 §87: eJxagwvnw/ schvmati, kivosin e}x kai; toivcoi" ijsarivqmoi" ejx ajrguvrou dokivmou kai; diageglummevnou memorfwmevnon, kai; th;n ojrofh;n wJsauvtw" ajpo; tw'n eJxagwvnwn pleurw'n kukloforikw'" ajnivscousan kai; eij" mivan strogguvlhn wJsei; podo;" ajpolhvgousan suvndesin, sfai'ravn te ajrgurevan megevqou" ouj mikrou' fevrousan a[nwqen, uJf∆ h{n wJ" krivnou blastoi; qaumavsioi perievcontai, w|n pavntwn ejpavnw to; kata; tou' qanavtou pephgo;" trovpaion ajktinobolei'. George colored the ciborium in various tones of gray and articulated it with blue; it seems likely that silver tesserae had been used: Cormack, “Mosaic Decoration,” 32.
1
Ciborium (1), well (2), and tomb (3), Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike, 5th/7th century
2
3
Mosaic, west end of first south aisle, detail: Marble ciborium of St. Demetrios, Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike, 5th century
Marble arch, crypt, Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike, 10th/12th century
4
5
Spring of the myron-cum-holy water and cistern, crypt, Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike
Bowl with monogram of St. Demetrios, crypt, Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike, 13th/14th century
6
Inscription in the south wing of the transept, Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike, 1430–1493
7
Peristyle and phiale, Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike, 1430–1493 (photo: Fred Boissonnas, 1913)
8
Chambers, northwest corner, Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike (after G. and M. Soteriou, ÑH basilikØ toË ÑAg¤ou Dhmhtr¤ou Yessalon¤khw [Athens, 1952], pl. I )
9
Tomb of St. Demetrios, Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike
10 Entrance, tomb of St. Demetrios, Basilica of St. Demetrios, Thessalonike (drawing: Eirene Malle)
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What was the ciborium of St. Demetrios? In the Miracula, a text that reflected the views of the Church of Thessalonike, Archbishop John repeats three times an unconfirmed local oral tradition that the tomb of St. Demetrios was underneath his ciborium.13 He also explains why his knowledge of this is uncertain: during the days of paganism the Christians of the city, fearing the wrathful idol worshipers, quietly and secretly buried the bodies of their martyrs. “Thus even at the present time it is not known clearly where the tombs of those who were martyred in Thessalonike are hidden, except for the tomb of St. Matrona.”14 So we see that, while John avoids taking an overt stand on the existence of the tomb of St. Demetrios, by saying that he does not know where it is, he indirectly gives us to understand that it does in fact exist. John’s position is no different from that taken by his predecessors. When Justinian I (527–565) and Maurice (582–602) asked for some of St. Demetrios’s relics to be transferred to Constantinople, John’s predecessors denied any confirmed knowledge of the precise location of the martyr’s tomb. But without specifically denying its existence, they dug “at a point in the most venerable church, where they thought they would find the sacred relics,”15 though they do not specify in their official replies to the emperors the location of the digging. The excavation was never completed, of course: it was halted by divine intervention, and the existence of the tomb of St. Demetrios was never established. Based on John’s statement in the Miracula, Lemerle suggested that the relics and the tomb of the city’s patron saint were not in the basilica of St. Demetrios in Thessalonike.16 If the Miracula are taken literally, then Lemerle was undoubtedly right. But if the Church of Thessalonike had its own reasons for using more diplomatic language on this subject, neither Archbishop John nor his sixth-century predecessors ever specifically denied the existence of the tomb of St. Demetrios, though they did avoid pinpointing its location. On various pretexts, and substituting the ciborium for the tomb, the hierarchy firmly refused to surrender the relics of St. Demetrios to Constantinople. This act on the part of the Church of Thessalonike, exhibiting local patriotism, was under the influence of Rome’s 13 Miracula, 1:1 §22: e[nqa fasiv tine" kei'sqai uJpo; gh'n to; panavgion aujtou' leivyanon, 1:6 §55: to; hJgiasmevnon mnhmei'on tou' mavrturo" levgetai perievcein, and 1:10 §88: ejkei'se para; tw'n patevrwn hjkouvsamen kei'sqai qeoprepw' " to;n uJperevndoxon ajqlofovron Dhmhvtrion. The excavation carried out by Soteriou in 1917 in the area of the ciborium did not confirm this oral tradition (Soteriou, Basilikhv, 100–101). 14 Miracula, 1:5 §50: devei tou' mh; ta; tivmia swvmata tw'n marturouvntwn aJgivwn toi'" tw'n eijdwlolatrw'n prodou'nai qumoi'", ejcemuvqw" tau'ta kai; musthriwdw'" ejn gh'/ katetivqesan, wJ" mhde; mevcri nu'n thlaugw'" mhdeno;" tw'n ejn aujth'/ marturhsavntwn ta;" aJgiodovcou" qhvka" gnwsqh'nai o{poi tugcavnoien ajpokeivmenai, plh;n th'" semnotavth" kai; panagiva" parqevnou Matrwvnh". See discussion in Skedros, St. Demetrios, 86–88. 15 Miracula, 1:5 §53: e[n tini tou' pansevptou aujtou' naou' dioruvxante" tovpw/, ejn w|/ kai; to; panavgion euJrivskein w[/onto leivyanon. 16 P. Lemerle, “Saint-Démétrius de Thessalonique et les problèmes du martyrion et du transept,” BCH 77 (1953): 673, and Lemerle, Miracles, 2: App. 2, 218. This view is connected with a challenge to the historicity of St. Demetrios and with the view that his cult came to Thessalonike from Sirmium (H. Delehaye, Les légendes grecques des saints militaires [Paris, 1909], 108). For this lengthy debate and the objections to these views, see G. Theocharides, “Sivrmion h] Qessalonivkh; ∆Epanexevtasi" miva" kritikh'" ejxetavsew" th'" peri; aJgivou Dhmhtrivou paradovsew",” Makedonika 16 (1976): 269–306, and Skedros, St. Demetrios, 7–40. It is widely accepted that the relics of St. Demetrios were missing in the period before the myron appeared in his cult. Soteriou, Basilikhv, 61–62, avoids taking a position on the question and argues that the basilica’s enkainion was the tomb of St. Demetrios and that the small glass vial of ground blood inside it was the saint’s relic. See also Mentzos, Proskuvnhma, 56. Skedros, St. Demetrios, 87–88, examines the subject from a theological point of view and, with reference to the absence of the relics, asserts that the bones of St. Demetrios were not available for veneration.
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tradition against the division and relocation of relics.17 Thus I agree with R. Cormack that “we might argue that it was the paraded notion of the lack of relics that protected the city against the physical removal of the saint and his cult to Constantinople.”18 The Church of Thessalonike adopted the same pose of apparent ignorance of the whereabouts of the tombs of other martyrs of the city, apart from that of St. Matrona.19 And it was a pose sometimes adopted by the emperors too. In his letter to the Church of Thessalonike, asking that some of St. Demetrios’s relics be transferred to Constantinople, Maurice stated that he was making the request out of a desire to verify the Thessalonians’ renowned ajkrivbeian pro;" tou;" mavrtura".20 I am of the opinion that the word ajkrivbeia refers not to the “piété fameuse des thessaloniciens envers les martyrs”21 but to “the Thessalonians taking care for the martyrs.”22 When the emperors stopped sending requests that St. Demetrios’s relics be sent to Constantinople, there was no longer reason to profess ignorance about the existence of his tomb. For this reason, the edict of Justinian II, an official imperial document issued in 688/89, twice mentions the existence of the relics of St. Demetrios in his basilica in Thessalonike.23 This text does not contradict the Miracula at all. On the contrary, it states in writing the emperor’s agreement with the Church of Thessalonike’s firm opinion that it should maintain possession of St. Demetrios’s relics.24 There is therefore no reason to detract from the value of this testimony. The ciborium was believed to be the saint’s dwelling place, and anyone who wanted to meet him would go there. This is why the early mosaics show the saint in front of the open door of the ciborium welcoming people coming to see him.25 The ciborium was not always closed. Pilgrims, or some of them at least, went inside to light candles and tapers on a candlestand and to see the low couch in the middle, which was “like a silver bed, on which was imprinted the face of the martyr,” no more than 1.7 or 1.8 m in length.26 One
17
H. Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs (Brussels, 1933), 66. Cormack, “St. Demetrios,” 548. He also states that “St. Demetrios was one of the few, and perhaps even the only, Byzantine saints whose regional cult was not transferred to Constantinople,” and “his localized cult may have helped the city to be one of the few in the Byzantine empire gradually to develop a local identity.” This upholding of the localized and regional importance of relics was not an isolated phenomenon. Antioch’s reply to a request by Emperor Leo I (475–474) for the body of Symeon the Stylite included the statement: “The holy corpse . . . is for our city both a rampart and a fortress” (quoted by Skedros, St. Demetrios, 87 note 9). 19 See note 14 above. 20 Miracula, 1:5 §51: th;n tw'n politw'n pro;" tou;" mavrtura" bowmevnhn ajkrivbeian peira'sai boulovmeno". 21 Lemerle, Miracles, 1:87. 22 See G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, s.v. ajkrivbeia, 3 = John Damaskenos, Vita of Barlaam and Joasaph, PG 96:1057D: ejn th'/ peri; to;n kuvrion mou . . . ajkrivbeian hjmevlhka. 23 J.-M. Spieser, “Inventaires en vue d’un recueil des inscriptions historiques de Byzance. I. Les inscriptions de Thessalonique,” TM 5 (1973): 156–59, no. 8, line 3: dwrea; tw'/ septw'/ naw'/ tou' aJgivou kai; ejndovxou megalomavrturo" Dhmhtrivou ejn w|/ to; a{gion aujtou' katavkeitai leivyanon, and line 8: DONAMUS tw'/ septw'/ aujtou' naw'/ ejn w|/ kai; to; a{gion aujtou' ajpovkeitai leivyanon. Spieser states that “la présence des reliques a un caractère légendaire, et l’on ne savait pas où elles se trouvaient exactement.” 24 Once again, the precise location of the relics (the tomb) inside the basilica is not specified. 25 See notes 11 above and 43 below. 26 Miracula, 1:1 §22: wJsanei; krabbavtion ejx ajrguvrou, e[nqa kai; ejntetuvpwtai to; qeoeide;" provswpon tou' aujtou' pansevptou ajqlofovrou. According to N. Theotoka, “Peri; tw'n kibwrivwn tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou Qessalonivkh" kai; Kwnstantinoupovlew",” Makedonika 2 (1953): 413; Lemerle, Miracles, 2:214; Pallas, “Ciborium,” 50, it was a kind of mortuary kline of the sort found in Hellenistic Macedonian tombs. 18
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pilgrim, a relative of the eparchs of Thessalonike, also saw in a vision inside the ciborium, at either end of the couch or bed, a gold throne with St. Demetrios sitting on it and a silver throne on which sat the Lady Eutaxia, who is the personification of the Tyche of Thessalonike.27 While protecting the relics of St. Demetrios from being divided up, the Church of Thessalonike gave to important pilgrims and sent to the emperors sweet-smelling earth from the spot where the saint lay buried.28 The fragrant earth was kept in the sacristy of Thessalonike’s metropolitan church, which was the large five-aisled basilica on the site of the later Hagia Sophia. We do not know in what kind of reliquaries it was distributed, but they were probably shaped like the ciborium of St. Demetrios. The Moscow reliquary (1059–67) is an exact replica of one of them.29 This also explains the similarities and differences between this eleventh-century octagonal reliquary and the descriptions and depictions of the saint’s early Christian hexagonal ciborium. II The appearance of myron in the cult of St. Demetrios is not an isolated phenomenon in the post-iconoclastic period. We know that myron flowed from the intact relics of saints who enjoyed wide popular appeal and political support after Iconoclasm, such as St. Nicholas at Myra, St. Mary the Younger at Vizye, St. Theodora at Thessalonike, St. Nikon at Sparta, among others. The emergence of myron directly from the intact relics of the saints30 and its distribution to large numbers of pilgrims satisfied demand for direct contact with the redemptive grace of the saints, and at the same time it protected the relics from being cut up into tiny pieces and disappearing. Myron was myron, just as water is water and oil is oil. But if we want to take a more pragmatic approach, we can turn to Niketas Choniates, who, in his account of the Normans’ outrageous treatment of the myron of St. Demetrios when they conquered Thessalonike in 1185, tells us that they fried fish in it and also smeared it on their boots.31 In other words, myron was a kind of sweet-smelling oil. The oil did not first appear in the cult of St. Demetrios as myron. The oil from the lamp of St. Demetrios had therapeutic properties before the myron appeared. The use of this oil is already attested in the last chapter of the sec-
27
On the relation of the Lady Eutaxia with the Tyche of Thessalonike, see Bakirtzis, Qauvmata, 380–83, Skedros, St. Demetrios, 127, and Ch. Bakirtzis, “Lady Eutaxia of Thessaloniki,” Museum of Byzantine Culture 6 (1999): 18–29. 28 Miracula, 1:5 §53: kuvyante" to;n ejn gh'/ cou'n pro; tou' fqavsai to; pu'r o{son oi|oiv te gegovnasin ajnelevxanto, tou' puro;" th;n ojsmh;n met∆ eujwdiva" ajfavtou sunefelkovmenon, and 1:5 §54: ejsteivlamen uJmi'n ejk th'" aujth'" tou' aJgivou coo;" eujlogiva". See also Bakirtzis, Qauvmata, 374. 29 Safh;" pevfuka tou' kibwrivou tuvpo" tou' logconuvktou mavrturo" Dhmhtrivou. reads the inscription of the reliquary; see A. Grabar, “Quelques reliquaires de Saint Démétrios et le martyrium du saint à Salonique,” in L’art de la fin de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Age, 3 vols. (Paris, 1968), 1:446–53, esp. 447 ( = DOP 5 [1950]: 3–28); The Glory of Byzantium. Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843–1261, ed. H. Evans and W. Wixom, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1997), 77–78, no. 36; add to the bibliography I. A. Sterligova, “Vizantiiskii moshchevik Dimitriia Solunskogo iz Moskovskogo Kremlia i ego sud’ba v Drevnei Rusi,” Dmitrievskii sobor vo Vladimire: k 800-letiiu Sozdaniia (Moscow, 1997), 220–54. 30 Eustathios of Thessalonike, “Lovgo" ejgkwmiastiko;" eij" to;n a{gion megalomavrtura Dhmhvtrion,” ed. T. L. F. Tafel, Eustathii metropolitae Thessalonicensis Opuscula (Frankfurt, 1832; repr. Amsterdam, 1964), 171. 31 Niketas Choniates, ed. J. A. van Dieten (Berlin, 1975), CFHB 11, 305.39–306.44.
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ond book of the Miracula, in connection with events that took place in north Africa and are dated before 665.32 Such a radical change in the cult of St. Demetrios also implies changes in the layout of the space to facilitate veneration. Various solutions have been proposed for how the ciborium was adapted to meet the challenge of the appearance of myron, first and foremost being the replacement of the silver ciborium with a marble one.33 The sources cease to mention the ciborium early on. The last reference to the ciborium in the Miracula comes in the last chapter of the second book, which relates events before 665.34 Lemerle suggests that it is not the ciborium of St. Demetrios that is meant here, but the ciborium over the altar in his basilica.35 By the time the myron appeared in the cult of St. Demetrios, the terms tomb (tavfo"), larnax (lavrnax), and soros (sorov") were already established, and new terms, such as fragrant-oil receptacle (muroqhvkh) and fragrant-oil-exuding relic (murorrova sorov") were appearing.36 It is significant that the first historical appearance of the myron (1040) occurred in the saint’s tomb and not in his ciborium.37 The Moscow reliquary is referred to in its inscription as the “ciborium” (kibwvrion) of St. Demetrios, and not as his “tomb” or “larnax” because, as I have already explained, the eleventh-century Moscow reliquary is an exact replica of a sixth-century reliquary, which was a replica of the ciborium of St. Demetrios.38 The precise description of the archbishop of Thessalonike Eustathios, for instance, in the second half of the twelfth century, speaks not of a ciborium but of a taphos (tomb) decorated with gold and silver, and of anterooms (protemenivsmata), where the myron emerged39—a structure that bears no relationship, either ideologically or functionally, to the ciborium. We might even argue that there was no ciborium at this time, if it were not described by the archbishop of Thessalonike Niketas (first half of the 12th century).40 I do believe, however, despite established views to the contrary, that the lengthy description of the hexagonal marble ciborium at the beginning of Niketas’s account of the miracles of St. 32 Miracula, 2:6 §315: ajpallavttontai tw'/ ejlaivw/ th'" aujtou' kandhvla" criovmenoi . . . eij sumbh'/ dhcqh'naiv tina ejk tw'n skorpivwn, ejk tou' ejlaivou th'" kandhvla" aujtou' pericrivetai eij" to; plhge;n mevlo", kai; th'" ojduvnh" qa'tton ajpallavttetai, and Lemerle, Miracles, 2:169. In the Life of St. Phantinos (late 10th–early 11th century), it is stated that the saint sought to heal a little girl from Thessalonike using oil from the church of St. Demetrios (e[laion . . . ejk tou' megalomavrturo" Dhmhtrivou); E. Follieri, La Vita di San Fantino il Giovane (Brussels, 1993), 81; Mentzos, Proskuv nma, 118 note 272. 33 The replacement is not mentioned in the texts. It is generally accepted that the silver ciborium was destroyed by fire ca. 620 (Mentzos, Proskuvnhma, 66). Soteriou, Basilikhv, 19 and 181, supposes that the replacement took place after the siege of Thessalonike by the Saracens (904). 34 Miracula, 2:6 §313, 314; Lemerle, Miracles, 2:169. 35 Lemerle, Miracles, 2:163 note 253. See also Ch. Bakirtzis, “Un miracle de Saint Démétrius de Thessalonique au Maghreb,” in L’Africa romana, Atti del XIII convegno di studio, Djerba, 10–13 dicembre 1998 (Rome, 2000), 1450. 36 Ch. Bakirtzis, “ÔH muroblusiva tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou,” in idem, Qauvmata, 514. The terms leivyanon, lavrnax, sw'ma, and soro;" appear in the hymnography of the iconoclast period: Mentzos, Proskuvnhma, 106–12; D. Vacaros, To; muvron tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou tou' Qessalonikevw" (Thessalonike, 1984): 85–93. 37 See note 6 above. 38 See note 29 above. 39 La espugnazione di Tessalonica, ed. S. Kyriakidis (Palermo, 1961), 106.16, 116.12, 126.32; Eustathios, Opuscula, 171.79. 40 A. Sigalas, “Nikhvta ajrciepiskovpou Qessalonivkh" eij" ta; qauvmata tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou,” ∆Ep.ÔEt.Buz.Sp. 12 (1936): 332.25–333.7. On the identification of Niketas, see Mentzos, Proskuvnhma, 140–41.
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Demetrios does not apply to a contemporary structure, but reproduces an earlier description of an earlier ciborium.41 I base this view on Niketas’s own statement to the effect that the information in the first five chapters of his account is taken from copies of texts on St. Demetrios that predate those in John’s collection, and that he does not intend to add anything new to these.42 This early marble ciborium, older than the silver one, is depicted in the mosaic at the west end of the first south aisle, which shows St. Demetrios in front of his ciborium receiving children who are being dedicated to him.43 The form of the ciborium depicted on this mosaic corresponds to Niketas’s description (Fig. 2): it is hexagonal, with closure slabs decorated with three rows of standing saints in relief and spiral columns with Theodosian capitals (leukoi'" de; sumptussovmenoi eij" eJxavgwnon a{pan to; sch'ma diamorfou'si marmavroi"); the columns are linked by marble arches in which are fishscale metallic (golden?) grilles (ejk livqou de; touvtoi" pavlin marmaivronto" a[nwqen stoai; ejfizavnousin); and the curving triangles of the vaulted canopy rest upon the hexagonal cornice (th'/ eJxagwvnw/ sfendovnh/ kosmouvmenai kai; eij" steno;n komidh'/ to;n o[rofon marmavroi" eJtevroi" aujgoeidevsin eujquvnousi). The mosaic is dated before the fire of ca. 620.44 I am therefore of the opinion that the silver ciborium described by John and depicted in the mosaics in the small north colonnade is more recent than the marble one described by a text that predates John’s and is depicted in the mosaic at the west end of the first south aisle. We have no information about the date of construction of the first ciborium. I suggest that it was built at the same time as the basilica or immediately afterwards.45 I believe that the ciborium was a more monumental replacement for the oikiskos-martyrion (oijkivan, shkov") of St. Demetrios, which was built, according to the Passiones of St. Demetrios, on the site where the martyr was buried, and 41 The description of the ciborium, ““Ekfrasi" tou' Kibwrivou,” is included in the first five chapters of the collection in the fourth chapter. It follows the chapters “Peri; Leontivou ejpavrcou th'" ijavsew"” (On the healing of the Eparch Leontios), “Peri; th'" oijkodomh'" tou' naou'” (On the building of the church), ““Ekfrasi" tou' naou'” (Description of the church), and comes before the chapter “Peri; th'" tou' “Istrou pote; peraiwvsew"” (On the crossing of the Istros). Therefore it is included in the description of the first basilica of St. Demetrios founded by Leontios. N. Theotoka, “Peri; tw'n kibwrivwn tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou Qessalonivkh" kai; Kwnstantinoupovlew",” Makedonika 2 (1953): 399 proposed that Niketas describes the ciborium as it was in his days. This opinion was also supported by later scholars. 42 Niketas, 322 and 334.8–15: Ta; me;n ou\n peri; to;n pistovtaton Leovntion tosau'ta kai; thlikau'ta tou' Qeomavrturo" ta; qaumatourghvmata, crovnw/ de; ejmoi; dokei'n presbuvtera, ajrcaiotevroi" ajntigravfoi" kai; th'/ ge ajkolouqiva/ pisteuvsanti, o{qen kai; ta; presbei'a th'" tavxew" touvtoi" ajpodedwvkamen. Ta; d∆ ejfexh'" tw'/ ejn aJgivoi" ∆Iwavnnh/ suggegrammevna ajkolouvqw" th'/ tavxei lelovgistai kai; suntevtaktai deuvtera, to; paravpan parektroph;n oujdemivan prosdexamevnwn tw'n uJpoqevsewn, o{ti mh; kata; movnhn th;n ejpitomh;n kai; tou'to sunafw'" e{neken tw'n loipw'n dia; to; eujmaqe;" kai; eujsuvnopton. 43 Soteriou, Basilikhvv, 192–93, pl. 62. The marble ciborium is done in gold and silver tesserae to reflect the notion that it radiates spiritual light. It is outlined in dark blue, and the shadows are rendered in three tones ranging from blue to gray. The decoration of the footstool in the same mosaic indicates that it is of marble, not gold or silver; yet it too is done in gold and silver tesserae, because it is in direct contact with St. Demetrios. 44 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 193. A. Xyngopoulos, Les mosaïques de l’ église de Saint Démètre à Thessalonique (Thessalonike, 1969), 16–17, dates the mosaic in the 5th–6th century. E. Kitzinger, “Byzantine Art in the Period between Justinian and Iconoclasm,” in The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval West, Selected Studies, ed. W. E. Kleinbauer (Bloomington, Ind.–London, 1976), 178, dates the mosaic from the end of the 6th to the beginning of the 7th century. R. Cormack, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and Its Icons (London, 1985), 83–84, suggests a number of possible dates between the middle of the 5th to the beginning of the 7th century. For the discussion about the date of the mosaic, see Skedros, St. Demetrios, 72–73. 45 The Passiones of St. Demetrios mention the founding of the basilica but not the erection of the ciborium.
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demolished so that the basilica could be built.46 I base this opinion on a feature shared by both the oikiskos and the ciborium of St. Demetrios: both are connected with the existence of an underground tomb of St. Demetrios beneath them.47 We do not know when the marble ciborium was replaced by the silver one. I could date the replacement purely hypothetically to the reign of Justinian I, being connected with that emperor’s ardent love for St. Demetrios, as evidenced by his request for the transfer of the relics to Constantinople and by a gift he made to the basilica, attested in a very fragmentary inscription.48 No mention of the ciborium exists in the texts of the Latin occupation of Thessalonike (1204–24). On the contrary, we find allusions to the “fragrant-oil tomb” (murofovro" tavfo") or the “fragrant-oil exuding holy larnax” (timiva lavrnax . . . ta; muvra procevousa).49 After the Latin conquest, John Staurakios, the chartophylax of the Church of Thessalonike, in the second half of the thirteenth century—who, unlike Niketas, adapts the details of the miracles to the circumstances of his time and adds new miracles—also ignores the ciborium and refers almost exclusively to the larnax and the taphos of the saint.50 Even the vision of the Lady Eutaxia is described as taking place at the site of the larnax, which was not inside the ciborium, but in some other, unspecified, place metaphorically described as a “divine mansion.”51 The larnax was a double marble structure, with a visible upper section (a cenotaph) and a burial chest below, incorporating the body of the saint from which myron exuded.52 It was, according to Staurakios, not in a ciborium, but in another burial space of the basilica which was not always accessible because its doors were usually closed, was entered from the north aisle in the company of a sacristan, and was called kibotos (kibwtov", “ark”).53 The larnax is replicated by the luxurious reliquaries of Halberstadt, the Great Lavra, and Vato46
For a discussion of the oikiskos, see Bakirtzis, Qauvmata, 354–56. For the oikiskos: Passio prima, §8: th;n perievcousan to; panavgion leivyanon oijkivan. Passio altera, §15: kai; ajneklivqh ejn tw'/ sebasmivw/ shkw'/, e[nqa h\n uJpo; gh'n keivmenon tou' aJgivou to; leivyanon. For the ciborium, see note 13 above. 48 D. Feissel, Recueil des inscriptions chrétiennes de Macédoine du IIIe au VIe siècle, BCH, suppl. 8 (Athens, 1983), 81–82, no. 81. Spieser, Thessalonique, 211 note 298: “l’attribution à Justinien 1er paraît certaine et il s’agit vraisemblablement d’une donation (il est sûr, en tout cas, qu’il est question de Saint-Démétrius et de son église).” 49 Letter of Ioannes Apokaukos, bishop of Naupaktos, to Theodore Doukas in 1217–24: V. Vassilevski, “Epirotica saeculi XIII,” VizVrem 3 (1896): no. 4, 247.25; another letter of Ioannes Apokaukos to Patriarch Germanos II from Thessalonike in 1227, ibid., no. 27, 294.10. In another of his letters to Constantine Mesopotamites, archbishop of Thessalonike (1225–27), he is mentioned as a caretaker (epimeletes) of the tomb (N. Bees, “Unedierte Schriftstücke aus der Kanzlei des Johannes Apokaukos des Metropoliten von Naupaktos (in Aetolien),” BNJ 21 [1971–76]: no. 67, 124.107). Letter of Demetrios Chomatenos to Patriarch Germanos II, who scolded him for crowning Theodore Doukas using the myron of St. Demetrios (J. B. Pitra, Analecta sacra et classica spicilegio Solesmensi parata, vol. 6 (7) [Paris–Rome, 1891; repr. Farnborough, 1967], no. 114, 494). 50 Ioakeim Iberites, “∆Iwavnnou Staurakivou lovgo" eij" ta; qauvmata tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou,” Makedonika 1 (1940): 324–76, §§10, 13, 18, 37. 51 Staurakios, 350.22: to; tw'/ naw'/ perigrafovmenon tou' Megavlou (Dhmhtrivou) qei'on ajnavktoron. 368.23–25: oJ de; newkovro" ejntau'qa to; marturiko;n pro;" o[rqron uJpanoivxa" ajnavktoron . . . eijshv/ei e[kplhkto" h\n qeasavmeno" th;n basilikh;n porfurivda ejfhplwmevnhn lavrnako" th'" marturikh'". 52 Staurakios, 353.10–15: th;n iJera;n metevsthsan lavrnaka kai; marmavrou" ejkei'qen h\/ran ejk mevsou eJpta; kai; pro;" ojrugh;n me;n ajmoibado;n tou' ejkei'se cwvmato" ejnhscovlhnto. . . . ∆Epei; de; hJ ojrugh; fqavsoi phvcewn a[cri triw'n kai; mikrovn ti prov", lavrnax ejfavnh touvtoi" perikekalummevnh marmavrw/ leukw'/. See other examples in Th. Pazaras, “ÔO tavfo" tw'n kthtovrwn sto; kaqoliko; th'" monh'" Batopedivou,” Byzantina 17 (1994): 418–21. 53 Staurakios, 353.8–10: wJ" d∆ ejggu;" th'" qeiva" kibwtou' tou' mavrturo" gevnointo, eijselqevtwn a[mfw ejk tou' laiou' kai; ta;" quvra" metevqento kai; th;n iJera;n metevsthsan lavrnaka. 353.29–31: ei\q∆ ou{tw th;n septh;n kai; pavlin marturikh;n kibwto;n qurhvsante", wJ" provteron, ejxh'lqon kai; tou' naou' kai;; th'" povlew". 357.16–18: tai'" quvrai" th'" iJera'" 47
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pedi, which date to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, contained lythron or myron, and were reserved for important officials.54 The myron exuded from the body of the saint and, flowing through pipes, filled cisterns located in the kibotos around the larnax and in the middle of the nave, where large numbers of pilgrims gathered, taking myron and applying it to their bodies.55 When ordinary pilgrims took myron out of the basilica and away from Thessalonike, they carried it in lead ampullae known as koutrouvia, which resembled early Christian eulogiai in both shape and size.56 The oldest of these ampullae date to no earlier than the eleventh or twelfth century and are decorated with the likeness of St. Demetrios dressed as a warrior on one side and the Virgin, St. Nestor, or St. George and St. Theodora on the other. Apart from the silver reliquaries and lead ampullae, there are also the luxurious encolpia (ejgkovlpia or ejpikovlpia)57 in the British Museum (12th–13th century) and the Dumbarton Oaks collection (13th–14th century), which contained myron and bore a representation, underneath the lid, of St. Demetrios in his tomb. They are respectively inscribed “anointed with thy blood and thy myron” (ai{mati tw'/ sw'/ kai; muvrw/ kecrismevnon) and “revered receptacle of blood of Demetrios with myron” (septo;n docei'on ai{mato" Dhmhtrivou su;n muvrw/).58 Hence, although in the period before the myron the sources mention the ciborium and say nothing about the tomb, in the following period, after the myron had appeared, they mention the tomb and say nothing about the ciborium. This means that, since there was marturikh'" kibwtou' . . . to;n Mevgan dia'rai ta;" quvra" kai; toi'" fanei'si proapanth'sai. 358.1–3: oJ Mevga" . . . au\qi" palinostei' th'/ sorw'/ kai; aiJ quvrai kathsfalivzonto. 375.15–17: oJ Cristomivmhto" hJmw'n ejk tw'n ejggu;" ijatro;" kai; movnh/ th'/ meta; pivstew" ajdistavktou prosyauvsei th'" septh'" aujtou' kibwtou', pa'n ponhro;n makra;n drapeteuvseien. A. Xyngopoulos, “Buzantino;n kibwtivdion meta; parastavsewn ejk tou' bivou tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou,” ∆Arc.∆Ef. (1936): 110 note 2 (repr. in A. Xyngopoulos, Qessalonivkeia melethvmata [Thessalonike, 1997], article V, 79–118), repeated by Grabar, “Reliquaires,” 453, understands the kibotion (kibwvtion) or kibotos (kibwtov") as ciborium (kibwvrion). However, the meaning of kibwvtion is different from the kibwvrion: E. Kriaras, Lexiko; th'" mesaiwnikh'" dhmwvdou" grammateiva" 1100–1669, vol. 7 (Thessalonike, 1985), s.vv. kibwvrion and kibwvtion. 54 Grabar, “Reliquaires,” 437–45; Xyngopoulos, “Kibwtivdion”; Glory of Byzantium, 161–62, no. 108. 55 Staurakios, 353.18–22: Kai; ijdou; murivai trhvsei" tw'/ mavrturi ejk trachvlou mevcri kai; ojsfuvo" aujth'" pepuknwmevnai kai; ajllhvlou" ajkribw'" proseggivzousai . . . skeu'o" oi|on muriopo;n kai; muvrwn murivwn flevbe" ejk tw'n ojpw'n ejphvgazon. 373.3–17: kuvklw/ th'" qeiva" aujtou' sorou' murodovcwn dexamenw'n. Au|tai ejk phgh'" tw'n muvrwn tou' mavkaro" mevcri" aujtw'n decovmenai to;n eujwvdh rJou'n diakrounizovmenon . . . a[ndre", gunai'ke" kai; nhvpia, o{lai" cersi;n o{sa kai; sivfwsi, pro;" eJautou;" to; muvron ejkei'qen ejfevlkousi. Kai; oiJ me;n ojfqalmouv", oiJ de; stovma kai; w\ta touvtw/ kaqagiavzousin, oiJ de; kai; stevrna kai; pa'san tou' swvmato" oJlomevleian tw'/ muvrw/ prosepicrivousi kai; aJplw'" eijpei'n, ajkorevstw" e[cousi th'" ejk touvtou katamurivsew" . . . oJrw'n ou{tw" ajkorevstw" ajleifomevnou" tou;" pavsh" hJlikiva" kai; gevnou" tw'n muvrwn tou' mavrturo" kai; ma'llon gunai'ka" katacriomevna" ajplhvstw" blevfara kai; sthvqh, mastou;" kai; bracivona". 373.34–374.2: kai; th'/ ceiri; katevcwn bakthrivan lepthvn, tauvth/ th;n oJdo;n tou' muvrou dievgrayen, ejk th'" murofovrou kinhvsa" tauvthn sorou' kai; eij" provswpon tou' ejdavfou" kateuqei'an ejxevrrei kai; tw'/ ejdavfei tou' naou' oJmalw'" kai; hjpivw" perielivmnaze . . . au\qi" ajnoi'xai ta;" kleisqeivsa" aujtw'/ to; prwv/hn murodovcou" dexamenav" . . . kai; ou{tw movli" sth'nai to;n ejn tw'/ mevsw/ tou' naou' ceovmenon murovkrounon potamovn. 56 Ch. Bakirtzis, “Byzantine Ampullae from Thessaloniki,” in The Blessings of Pilgrimage, ed. R. Ousterhout (Urbana–Chicago, 1990), 140–49; Glory of Byzantium, 169, no. 118; Museum of Byzantine Culture, Sullogh; Gewrgivou Tsolozivdh. To; Buzavntio me; th; matia; eJno;" sullevkth (Athens, 2001), 34–35, no. 50. Kadhmerinh; zwh; sto; Buzavntio, ed. D. Papanikola-Bakirtzis (Athens, 2002): 184–85, nos. 203–5. 57 Manuel Philes uses the term enkolpia (Manuelis Philae Carmina, ed. E. Miller, 2 vols. [Paris, 1855–57], 1:34, 133–34, 2:74, 238). For the term epikolpia, see Eustathios, Opuscula, 173: polloi; gou'n ejpikovlpia fevronte" toiau'ta ejk tw'n tou' mavrturo". 58 Byzantium. Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections, ed. D. Buckton (London, 1994), 185–86, no. 200; Glory of Byzantium, 167–68, nos. 116 and 117; Kadhmerinh; zwhv, 178–83, nos. 201–2.
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no reason to conceal the relics, after the appearance of the myron the interest of pilgrims shifted from the ciborium to the tomb of St. Demetrios. All the same, I have no reason to believe that the tomb of St. Demetrios, documented by the texts of the second cult period, after the appearance of the myron, has any correlation with a ciborium standing on the hexagonal marble base or stylobate in the nave of the basilica.59 If a kind of ciborium existed somewhere in the basilica, it would have been a kind of baldachin for the saint’s tomb and icon.60 Inside the British Museum and Dumbarton Oaks reliquaries, St. Demetrios is depicted within his tomb, which is under an arch or baldachin.61 Furthermore, in a center of pilgrimage like the basilica of St. Demetrios, there were several loca sancta, roofed and framed by baldachins and arches. We know that a number of marble arches have been found in the basilica. Two of them have similar decoration, are dated in the tenth or twelfth century, and, according to G. Soteriou, belonged to the hexagonal ciborium standing on the marble stylobate in the nave (Fig. 3).62 But, given that more than six arches were found in the basilica, it is most likely that they belong to an octagonal ciborium standing somewhere in the basilica and not on the hexagonal stylobate.63 I believe that, although, as already noted,64 the Moscow reliquary (1059–67) is a replica of the early Christian hexagonal ciborium of St. Demetrios, its octagonal shape is an innovation and reflects the existence in the basilica of St. Demetrios in the eleventh century of an octagonal baldachin, which was erected over his larnax and his icon. The sources do not tell us where in the basilica the receptacle for St. Demetrios’s myron was located, and the subject is shrouded in mystery. This is why the whole question is confused. Soteriou accepted the existence of the ciborium but did not identify the ciborium with the saint’s tomb. He believed that the enkainion of the basilica served as the tomb and that relics of St. Demetrios (i.e., lythron and blood) had been deposited in it.65 He suggested that the myron flowed into the crypt, where the central area was organized accordingly.66 Mentzos, in the belief that Archbishop Niketas is describing a ciborium of his own time,
59
For the texts see Vacaros, Muvron, 85ff; Bakirtzis, “Muroblusiva,” 511ff.; and Mentzos, Proskuvnhma, 106ff. Konstantinos Akropolites, “Lovgo" eij" to;n megalomavrtura kai; murobluvthn Dhmhvtrion,” ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, ∆Anavlekta iJerosolumitikh'" stacuologiva", vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1891; repr. Brussels, 1963), 161.14: gonupethvsa" th;n kefalh;n ejpevqhka th'/ sorw'/ kai; th;n qeivan perieptuxavmhn eijkovna. See the baldachin over the tomb of St. Demetrios in a Palaiologan miniature in ms. gr. Th. Fi. of the Bodleian Library, A. Xyngopoulos, ÔO eijkonografiko;" kuvklo" th'" zwh'" tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou (Thessalonike, 1970), 30–32, pl. III. A baldachin over the tomb of St. Demetrios and not the ciborium is depicted in Decˇani (A. Xyngopoulos, “To; prokavlumma th'" sarkofavgou tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou,” Delt.Crist.∆Arc.ÔEt. 5 (1969): 192, pl. 81a and b (repr. in Qessalonivkeia melethvmata, article XXVII, 474). 61 Grabar, “Reliquaires,” 446, and A. Grabar, “Un nouveau reliquaire de saint Démétrius,” in L’art de la fin de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Age, 3 vols. (Paris, 1968), 1:456 (DOP 8 [1954]: 307–13). See the article by Carr in this volume, Fig. 7. 62 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 19–20 and 179–82, fig. 72, pl. 55 (10th century); A. Grabar, Sculptures byzantines du Moyen Age, II. XIe–XIVe siècle (Paris, 1976), 104, pl. LXXXI (12th century). 63 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 179–82 states that the other six arches have similar decoration but of lower quality and they can be related to the sides of the bema. Mentzos, Proskuvnhma, 143–44 states that all the above arches belong to a proskynetarion or to the templon of the basilica. 64 See note 29 above. 65 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 61–63. 66 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 54–55. 60
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posits the existence in the nave of a Byzantine hexagonal marble ciborium containing a kind of larnax of St. Demetrios with lythron inside it, and suggests that the ciborium was surrounded by basins into which the myron flowed.67 III Early in the fourteenth century there was a significant change in the tradition of the myron.68 In his encomium of Thessalonike’s patron saint, which he wrote in 1330, Nikephoros Gregoras mentions an at first sight rather curious belief that the martyr’s body had been cast into a well, from which rivers of myron had subsequently flowed.69 This remark might have passed unnoticed had it not been repeated by St. Demetrios’s most noted encomiasts, the metropolitans of Thessalonike Isidore (1388) and Symeon (1416/17–29) and by the German soldier Johann Schiltberger (1427), and had it not been mentioned in the inscription on the Palaiologan mosaic icon of St. Demetrios in the Sassoferrato Museum near Ancona.70 This new belief is connected with a change in the constitution of the myron and the mixing of it with water from the well into which the martyr’s body had been thrown. This must have raised questions in the mind of the public and of the multitudes of pilgrims who came to venerate the saint, and the rumor that the myron was “concocted” had to be refuted in a very revealing encomium by Demetrios Chrysoloras at the beginning of the fifteenth century: “myron, which miraculously flows instead of water . . . [myron] is not water, for it is more viscous, but nor does it resemble, nor is it more fluid, nor is it more dry than any other natural substance that is within the earth or around it, nor is it like unto any substance that is concocted.”71 The encomium explains that the myron was a natural substance and describes how it welled up from a source “above the body” of the martyr, was channeled along two pipes, and distributed to the faithful. But where did all this take place? The crypt of St. Demetrios was a kind of eastern atrium to the basilica in the absence of a western atrium. There was a spring of holy water in the crypt from the early Christian period on.72 The system by which the holy water was supplied consisted of a conduit
67
Mentzos, Proskuvnhma, 146, fig. 4. Bakirtzis, “Muroblusiva,” 518. 69 B. Laourdas, “Buzantina; kai; metabuzantina; ejgkwvmia eij" to;n a{gion Dhmhvtrion,” Makedonika 4 (1960): 92–93. 70 B. Laourdas, ÔOmilivai eij" ta;" eJorta;" tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou (Thessalonike, 1954): 22; D. Balfour, Sumew'no" ajrciepiskovpou Qessalonivkh" e[rga qeologikav (Thessalonike, 1981), 192; S. Tambaki, ÔH Qessalonivkh sti;" perigrafe;" tw'n perihghtw'n, 12o"–19o" ai.m.C. (Thessalonike, 1998), no. 4; A. A. Vasiliev, “The Historical Significance of the Mosaic of Saint Demetrius at Sassoferrato,” DOP 5 (1950): 32; M. Théoharis, “Yhfidwth; eijkw;n tou' aJgivou Dhmhtrivou kai; hJ ajneuvresi" tw'n leiyavnwn tou' aJgivou eij" ∆Italivan,” ∆Akad.∆Aqh.Pr. 53 (1978): 508–36. The lead ampulla with the likeness of St. Demetrios and St. Theodora incorporated in to the wooden frame of the icon dates to the 14th century, and in the 17th century it was cased in gold with the inscription To; a{gion muvron. 71 B. Laourdas, “Lovgo" eij" to;n mevgan Dhmhvtrion kai; eij" ta; muvra,” Gregorios Palamas 40 (1957): 349: muvron, w\ tou' qauvmato", ajnq∆ u{dato" rJevousa . . . [to; muvron] u{dwr oujk e[stin, ejpei; to;n carakth'ra fevrei pacuvteron, ajll∆ oujdev tini tw'n ejn th'/ gh'/ h] kai; tw'n peri; aujth;n uJgrotevrwn h} xhrotevrwn a[llw/ met∆ a[llwn o{moion: ajll∆ oujde; tw'n skeuastw'n i[son eJtevrwn. Doubt about the authenticity of the myron of St. Demetrios is also expressed by John Staurakios, 351.26: skeuasto;n to; muvron touti; ejpidayileuvetai. The point of Staurakios’s account of the miracle (written in the second half of the 13th century) was to prove that the myron was not “concocted.” 72 A. Grabar, Martyrium. Recherches sur le culte, les reliques et l’art chrétien antique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1946), 1:453 and 2:207. 68
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that led from the well in front of the northwest pier of the sanctuary to the outlets in the crypt and into the cisterns (Fig. 4).73 If we accept that the well mentioned in the sources since the beginning of the fourteenth century into which St. Demetrios’s body was thrown is the well in front of the northwest pillar of the sanctuary (Fig. 1: 2), then there is no reason not to accept that in the Palaiologan period the myron-cum-holy-water of St. Demetrios was channeled into the conduit of the early Christian holy water and filled the cisterns in the crypt.74 The myron-cum-holy-water was drawn for immediate use in clay bowls, which were impressed or engraved with the monogram of St. Demetrios (Fig. 5) and were found in large quantities during the excavation of the crypt. These clay receptacles, which date no earlier than the second half of the thirteenth century, traveled back home with the numerous pilgrims and have been found in Istanbul and Varna.75 If it is to the appearance of the myron-cum-holy-water in the cult of St. Demetrios that Nikephoros Blemmydes is referring in the lyrics to St. Demetrios written in 1239/40 or shortly afterwards,76 then we could accept that the tradition about throwing the body of the martyr in the bottom of the well as a protection of the relics appears right after the Frankish kingdom (1204–24). The Latin archbishop of Thessalonike Warinus, who sent numerous relics of saints to the West,77 may have been involved with the first known division of the relics of St. Demetrios and the appearance of one of his relics at Mans.78 The discovery in 1978 of the relics of St. Demetrios in the abbey of San Lorenzo in Campo near Sassoferrato is a matter of some interest.79 Documents of 1599 and 1779 indicate that the relics of the “illustrious Thessalonian martyr” were found on 20 June 1520 under the main altar (“altare maggiore”). In the parish register we read that the relics were 73 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 54–55; Xyngopoulos, Basilikhv, 18–9. Recent investigation came to the conclusion that the whole construction had no relation with the preparation of the myron in the 9th century, as Soteriou suggested, but with the holy water spring dated to the early Christian period (Bakirtzis, “Muroblusiva,” 522 note 1). 74 Laourdas, “Lovgo",” 353. 75 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 238–39, pl. 95 c–d. See D. Papanikola-Bakirtzi, “The Palaeologan Glazed Pottery of Thessaloniki,” in L’art de Thessalonique et des pays balkaniques et les courants spirituels au XIVe siècle, Recueil des rapports du IVe colloque serbo-grec (Belgrade, 1987), 204, with related bibliography on the discovery of similar vessels also outside Thessalonike. See also Bakirtzis, “Muroblusiva,” 523, and Byzantine Glazed Ceramics. The Art of Sgraffito, ed. D. Papanikola-Bakirtzi (Athens, 1999), 22, fig. 6, 82, no. 88. 76 A. Heisenberg, Nicephori Blemmydae curriculum vitae et carmina (Leipzig, 1896), 121.42–46: a[llw" de; baptivsmati pollou;" prosfevrwn / ejx ajnivkmou lavkkou me;n u{dwr lambavnei", / oujde;n to; kainovn, wJ" poluv sou to; sqevno". / e[cei" de; pavlin kai; livan kainotrovpw" / ta;" sa'" procuvsei" wJ" e[laion, wJ" muvron. 77 O. Tafrali, Thessalonique des origines au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1919), 213. 78 O. Tafrali, Topographie de Thessalonique (Paris, 1913), 136. The Church of Thessalonike never permitted the saint’s relics to be divided. In 1149, by order of Manuel I Komnenos, the “cover” of the larnax, which bore a representation of St. Demetrios orans, was taken to the Pantokrator monastery in Constantinople, and a new one was put in its place (Soteriou, Basilikhv, 15–17; Xyngopoulos, “Prokavlumma,” 187–99). In 1197 Prince Vsevolod III transferred from Thessalonike to the church of St. Demetrios in Vladimir a piece of the saint’s cloak or of the cover of his tomb, together with a wooden board that had covered his tomb and that bore a representation of St. Demetrios as a soldier (E. Smirnova, “Culte et image de St. Démètre dans la principauté de Vladimir à la fin du XIIe–début du XIIIe siècle,” in International Symposium on Byzantine Macedonia, 324–1430 A.D., Thessalonike, 29–31 October 1992 [Thessalonike, 1995], 267–77; eadem, “Khratovaia ikona Dmitrievskogo sobora: Sviatost’ Solunskoi baziliki vo Vladimirskom khrame,” in Dmitrievskii sobor vo Vladimire: k 800-letiiu sozdaniia, 220–54). 79 Théocharis, “Yhfidwth; eijkwvn,” 517–21; Vacaros, Muvron, 8–21. The relics of St. Demetrios were transferred to the basilica of Thessalonike in 1980.
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taken to San Lorenzo in Campo by a monk from “Thessaly,” as Thessalonike and the surrounding area was called from the ninth century on.80 The documents do not specify when the relics were moved. An inscription accompanying the relics was dated in 1970 by Father Antonio Ferrua and Professor Campana, as experts of the Vatican, to the 12th/13th centuries.81 If the relics were indeed taken from Thessalonike to Italy at that time, then the appearance immediately afterwards, early in the fourteenth century, of the belief that the martyr’s body had been cast into a well seems justified, in the sense that it accounts for the absence of all or some of the relics from the basilica. IV John Anagnostes, who described Thessalonike’s final conquest by the Ottomans in 1430, mentions not a ciborium but a marble tomb of St. Demetrios, which was violently destroyed by treasure seekers.82 He also speaks of the respect that some of the Turks showed for the saint’s healing myron: “but those who were wiser than the others (oi|" nou'" uJpe;r tou;" a[llou" uJph'n), took care to carry it to their homeland and to touch it devoutly and respectfully; for they had heard from men of experience (pepeiramevnwn) that it is more effective than medicinal remedies for any sickness that one takes it for.”83 I believe that Anagnostes is referring in this case to events that took place after the fall of Thessalonike, specifically to pilgrimages not only by Christians but also by Muslims who did not refuse to venerate Christian saints, and whom Anagnostes describes as “wiser.”84 The men of experience (pepeiramevnoi), who Anagnostes says were aware of the healing properties of the myron of St. Demetrios and advised the other Turks to respect it and to take it home, were, I believe, none other than the Turks who had already been established in Thessalonike since 1387 and their descendants, who came into contact with the local Christians and were influenced by their customs and traditions. So the Muslim cult of St. Demetrios-Kasim traces its origins back to this time.85 These devotional connections had already been established when Murad II entered the basilica of St. Demetrios (1430), sacrificed a ram as a token of respect, and ordered that the basilica should remain in the hands of the Christians, while at the same time establishing Muslim participation in the cult of St. Demetrios.86 However, things were not as they had been. The discovery of numerous late Byzantine and early post-Byzantine ceramics in the excavation fill of the crypt means that this part 80
Théocharis, “Yhfidwth; eijkwvn,” 522–33. Théocharis, “Yhfidwth; eijkwvn,” 518–9. 82 Ioannes Anagnostes, Dihvghsi" peri; th'" teleutaiva" aJlwvsew" th'" Qessalonivkh", ed. Y. Tsaras (Thessalonike, 1958): 48.31–50.1: Dio; kai; katabeblhkovte" ta;" ejp∆ aujth'/ marmavrou" tw'n muvrwn e[speudon aujth;n ejkkenw'sai kai; to; iJero;n kai; qei'on leivyanon tou' mavrturo" ejkbalei'n. 83 Anagnostes, 50.6–11: oi|" de; nou'" uJpe;r tou;" a[llou" uJph'n, touvtoi" h\n ejpimele;" pro;" th;n eJautw'n tou'to metakomivzein kai; met∆ aijdou'" a{ptesqai kai; sebavsmato": hjkhkoveisan ga;r pro;" tw'n pepeiramevnwn wJ" ijatrikw'n farmavkwn ejsti;n ejnergevsteron, eij" oi|on a[n ti" crhvsaito pavqo". 84 F. W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans (Oxford, 1924), 16–17 and 263–64. Christian saints were worshiped by heterodox Muslims; see G. Voyatzes, ÔH prwvimh ojqwmanokrativa sth; Qravkh. “Amese" dhmografike;" sunevpeie" (Athens, 1998), 407–17. 85 According to popular Islamic beliefs, Demetrios and Kasim are identical saints; see M. Kiel, “Notes on the History of Some Turkish Monuments in Thessaloniki and Their Founders,” Balkan Studies 11 (1970): 143. 86 Doukas, ÔIstoriva, CSHB, 29, p. 201: Ta; de; tw'n monasthrivwn kreittovtera, wJ" aiJ fh'mai pantacou' ejkhruvttonto, ejpoivhse bwmou;" th'" aujtw'n qrhskeiva", plh;n tou' naou' tou' megavlou mavrturo" Dhmhtrivou: kai; ga;r ejn aujtw'/ eijselqw;n kai; quvsa" krio;n e{na oijkeivai" cersiv, proshuvxato, ei\ta ejkevleuse tou' ei\nai ejn cersi; cristianw'n: plh;n to;n tou' tavfou kovsmon kai; tou' naou' kai; tw'n ajduvtwn a{panta oiJ Tou'rkoi ejnosfivsanto, toivcou" movnou" ajfevnte" kenouv". 81
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of the basilica stopped being used after 1430 and began to be filled up.87 The last to mention the myron are Joos van Ghistele (1483?) and the Russian monk Isaiah, who visited Thessalonike in 1489, fifty-nine years after the conquest and four years before the basilica of St. Demetrios was converted into the Kasimiye Camii in 1493. Joos van Ghistele mentions that pilgrims collected myron in small glass vessels (“slaachclkins van glase”),88 which means that the lead ampullae (koutrouvia) had ceased to be produced and to circulate after 1430. Isaiah, giving a short account of the celebration of St. Demetrios, attests that, after 1430, not only was the tomb of St. Demetrios restored, but the myron continued to exude not continuously but three times a year for the benefit of pilgrims.89 A marble slab for burial use with a sculpted cross and a misspelled inscription, ∆Anekenivsqh oJ iJero;" tavfo" dia; Levonto" tou' ÔEteriwvtou (The holy tomb was renovated by Leon-Heteriotes), dates to this period,90 as does a written inscription in the south wing of the transept appealing for St. Demetrios’s help (Fig. 6).91 It was then that the vaulted peristyle with eight reused columns was built, only 3 m from the west façade of the basilica (Fig. 7), to contain the marble early Christian phiale that filled with myron-cum-holy-water or holy water.92 Travelers in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries explicitly state that the saint’s tomb still functioned as a locus sanctus, common to both Christians and Muslims, even after the basilica had been converted into a mosque.93 Where was the tomb of St. Demetrios at this time? In the northwest corner of the basilica there are two adjoining chambers (Fig. 1: 3 and Fig. 8), part of the preexisting Roman bath, which were preserved intact when the early Christian basilica was built, and were incorporated into it, according to Soteriou, initially as a baptistery and later as a sacristy.94 Access is from the west end of the first north aisle. The first chamber is semicircular in plan and roofed with a semidome; the second has four sides and a low vault. Against the east wall, in front of the marble frame of a sealed doorway, which was converted into an arched recess when the church was restored after it had been destroyed by fire in 1917, stands a marble cenotaph, which is traditionally believed to be the tomb of St. Demetrios (Fig. 9). The tomb of St. Demetrios is now a new four-sided marble structure with a pitched cover, the top and the west end of which are covered by two closure slabs of the eighth to
87 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 238. On p. 57, on the basis of Paul Lucas’s description of the basilica (1714), Soteriou states that the crypt was used until the beginning of the 18th century and that it began to fill up after this. It seems likely that Lucas’s account of the crypt is based on oral tradition. 88 Th. Papazotos, “Merike;" plhroforive" gia; th; Qessalonivkh ajpo; to;n J. Van Ghistele (1483;),” Istoriogeographica 5 (1995): 51–56. 89 Th. Papazotos, “Perigrafh; tou' ÔAgivou Dhmhtrivou ajpo; to;n rw'so monaco; ∆Hsai?a (1489),” Istoriogeographica 4 (1994): 191–92; Tambaki, Perihghtev", no. 7. 90 Papageorghiou, “Mnhmei'a,” pl. IX.3; Soteriou, Basilikhv, 18. 91 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 234: ÔO Q(eo;)" tou' aJghv/ ou Dhmhtrhvo[u]/ pluvqunon to;n / o{ron to;n Kanab/do;n h{na pavnte/" meta; pavnton c/ evromen uJ ejk gevn/ ou" hj" th;n dhak/ onhvan tou' Q(eo)u'/ [Thma'tai . . . oJ Q(eov)".] See other pilgrims’ inscriptions in Papageorghiou, “Mnhmei'a,” 375–7. 92 Papageorghiou, “Mnhmei'a,” 372, pl. XIII.4; Soteriou, Basilikhv, 69–70, fig. 16, dates the peristyle to the end of the Byzantine period, and G. Corbett (1949) dates it to the Turkish period (Cormack, “W. S. George,” 60, fig. 3). Inscriptions of this period in the narthex (Soteriou, Basilikhv, 27) attest repairs to the floor, probably connected with the installation of new plumbing. 93 Tambaki, Perihghtev", 94–96. 94 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 40 and 134–35; A. Xyngopoulos, ÔH basilikh; tou' ÔAgivou Dhmhtrivou Qessalonivkh" (Thessalonike, 1946), 16. N. Moutsopoulos (Byzantina 18 (1995–1996): 316) has argued unconvincingly that the two chambers are connected with the tomb of St. Antony the Homologetes (t843).
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ninth century.95 There is a cruciform aperture in the south side. The present structure is an adaptation of a similar, though humbler, tomb in the same place, which appears in a photograph and a drawing of the early twentieth century.96 This tomb was a low cist-grave, topped with slabs (including the two reused closure Byzantine slabs), set at a slight northwest/southeast angle, and with a round aperture in the south side. The ground inside the tomb was hollowed out. The existence of the tomb of St. Demetrios in these two chambers at the northwest corner of the basilica was not unknown to travelers in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, but it was not accessible to outsiders, being under the protection of a Dervish order.97 Louis de Launay, who visited it in 1897 at the invitation of a Muslim clergyman, gives a detailed account of a ceremony of healing performed by the same clergyman for some Greek Christians and their families.98 During the ceremony, the Muslim used oil from a lamp that burned over the tomb of St. Demetrios and earth from his tomb. Further information about the cult of Thessalonike’s patron saint in these two chambers is preserved by the Cypriot folk poet Christodoulos Andonopoulos, who described the basilica of St. Demetrios and the ceremonies performed at his tomb in a poem about Thessalonike written in 1913.99 The cult was associated with the relics of St. Demetrios, which were inside a “coffin” (kibwvtion) in such a way that “people could not see them, but could only touch them with their hand.”100 According to Christodoulos this “touching” consisted in: (1) the pilgrim’s inserting his or her hand into the “coffin” through an aperture in one side (at the east end of the south side) and making contact with the relics; (2) the sensation of warmth that surrounded the pilgrim’s hand while it was inside the “coffin”; (3) the effusion of a sweet fragrance, which was perceptible not only to the pilgrim but also to others nearby; and (4) the extracting of soil from the interior of the “coffin.” The soil was placed in the oil lamp or else dissolved in water and drunk by both Christian and Muslim women who were about to give birth, to assure them of an easy delivery. The soil, the warmth, and the fragrant odor associated with the relics of St. Demetrios are old elements of his early cult.101 They are mentioned by Archbishop Eusebios of Thessalonike in his letter to Emperor Maurice (582–602), when the latter requested that some of the martyr’s relics be sent to Constantinople.102 Regarding the antiquity of the practice of the cult of St. Demetrios, as attested in Thessalonike at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is worth noting the similarities it shares with the cult of another myroblytes saint, Euphemia, in her church in Constantinople, as described by Constantine, bishop of Tios, eleven centuries earlier, in ca. 800.103 There was an aperture in the upper part of the saint’s 95
Soteriou, Basilikhv, 173, pl. 50. Papageorghiou, “Mnhmei'a,” pl. XVII.1; Cormack, “W. S. George,” pl. 11. 97 Tambaki, Perihghtev", 94–96; Papageorghiou, “Mnhmei'a,” 335 note 2. 98 L. de Launay, Chez les Grecs de Turquie (Paris, 1897), 182–84. 99 Bakirtzis, Qauvmata, 335–43, commentary, 433–36. At this time, the basilica was no longer being used as a mosque, but had not yet been reconsecrated as a Christian church. Both Christians and Muslims had unrestricted access to the tomb. 100 Bakirtzis, Qauvmata, 338: De;n hjmporei' oJ a[nqrwpo" gia; na; to; ajtenivsei / kai; movno me; to; cevri tou duvnatai na; to; ejggivsei. 101 Bakirtzis, “Le culte,” 64. 102 Miracula, 1:5 §53: kuvyante" to;n ejn gh'/ cou'n pro; tou' fqavsai to; pu'r o{son oi|oiv te gegovnasin ajnelevxanto, tou' puro;" th;n ojsmh;n met∆ eujwdiva" ajfavtou sunefelkovmenon. Cf. note 28 above. 103 F. Halkin, Euphémie de Chalcédoine (Brussels, 1965), 85; Mentzos, Proskuvnhma, 115. 96
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larnax, through which pilgrims could touch a small box containing her relics. The same practice is also known in the cults of the Bektashi and Kizilbashi saints: in the Seyyit Ali Sultan or Kizil Deli tekke in eastern Rhodope (western Thrace), which was built in 1402, a wooden coffin is displayed in the turbe containing a receptacle with, according to the oral tradition, a piece of cloth from the sacred cloak (hirka) of Kizil Deli, or, according to another interpretation, his dried blood.104 Soteriou suggested that St. Demetrios’s tomb was transferred to this chamber after the church had been converted into a mosque, the Kasimiye Camii, in 1493.105 This is pure hypothesis, based neither on texts nor on archaeological finds. It seems more likely that the Ottoman local authorities allowed an existing locus sanctus—which had been used by Christians and Muslims alike since 1430 or even 1387—to continue to function, rather than that they permitted the Christians to transfer to a storeroom in the northwest corner of the basilica the relics of Thessalonike’s patron saint, which, as we have seen, were not in the basilica but had been thrown into a well or taken to Italy. I conclude that the saint’s tomb is on the same site today as it was before 1493 and before 1430. The chambers I have described could easily contain all the burial structures described in the Byzantine sources: the double marble tomb, the gold and silver ornamentation, the cisterns for the myron, and the anterooms (protemenivsmata). However, excavations inside them have been incomplete.106 To the west of the chambers there is a large cistern with pipes that discharge both at the west end of the basilica and into the semicircular chamber (anteroom). To the east there is another chamber with hydraulic structures connected with a cistern to the north.107 These adjacent structures would have played an important part in the production of the myron-cum-holy-water and its distribution to the pilgrims during the period 1430–93. Investigations carried out recently at the entrance to the tomb uncovered frescoes of the Palaiologan period showing St. Demetrios on horseback and a standing St. Photeine at prayer (Fig. 10). The depiction of St. Demetrios on a horse by the entrance to the tomb conveys the meaning of a saint “who answers prayers quickly” (gorgoephvkoo"), and the miracle-working St. Photeine is helping those of the worshipping pilgrims who had lost their sight.108 Another fresco was uncovered in the soffit of the entranceway with a decorative theme that dates to the eighth/ninth century. The fact that the entrance is decorated with frescoes from various periods means that the two chambers were in use for many centuries. Soteriou’s hypothesis that they were used as a baptistery must be ruled out, because we now know that Thessalonike had only one baptistery, which was adjacent to the fiveaisled basilica underneath Hagia Sophia.109 I believe that the chambers in the northwest corner of the basilica were connected with the tomb of St. Demetrios and the phenomenon of the myron even before 1430, in the Byzantine period. 104
S. Zeghines, ÔO mpektasismo;" sth; Dutikh; Qravkh, 2d ed. (Thessalonike, 1996), 185–88. Soteriou, Basilikhv, 18 and 40. 106 Soteriou, Basilikhv, 134. 107 ∆Arc.Delt. 25 (1973–74): Chronika, 744 (P. Lazaridis). Post-Byzantine pottery was found in the fill in the cistern. 108 A.-M. Talbot, “The Posthumous Miracles of St. Photeine,” AB 112 (1994): 85–104. 109 M. Falla Castelfranchi, “Sulla primitiva chiesa episcopale di Tessalonica,” Quaderni dell’Istituto di Archeologia e Storia Antica, Roma 2 (1981): 107–25; E. Marke, “ÔH ÔAgiva Sofiva kai; ta; prosktivsmatav th" mevsa ajpo; ta; ajrcaiologika; dedomevna,” Thessalonikeon polis 1 (1997): 54–61; and P. Assemakopoulou-Atzaka, “Ta; problhvmata tou' cwvrou novtia ajpo; to; nao; th'" ÔAgiva" Sofiva" sth; Qessalonivkh,” ibid., 62–71. 105
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If this theory is correct, then it raises the question: why were these chambers the only part of the Roman bath to survive and be incorporated into the early Christian basilica? Why did they contain the myron-exuding tomb of St. Demetrios? The first book of the Miracula makes frequent reference to the healing of the sick. This is why I have, on another occasion, described how a hospital was set up in the late sixth and early seventh centuries somewhere in the north part of the basilica, perhaps in the north wing of the transept of the basilica.110 The patients were healed not only by doctors, but above all by St. Demetrios, who would appear to them in a vision. These appearances attest that the place where the patients stayed in the basilica was a locus sanctus. But why was it a locus sanctus? In the passio altera, the eparch of Illyricum, Leontios, “immediately after he was laid upon the healing tomb regained his health,”111 and in the discourse quoted by Archbishop Niketas that predates John, the sick Marianos laid his mattress beside the tomb, which was some distance from the ciborium with the icon of St. Demetrios.112 Therefore, the place where the patients resided and were healed was a locus sanctus because it was connected with the tomb of St. Demetrios, which was not visible in the period before the myron appeared.113 Thus, since I am of the opinion that the tomb of St. Demetrios was in the northwest chambers in the period after the appearance of the myron, it seems to me that the hospital in the late sixth and early seventh centuries was not in the north wing of the transept, as I originally supposed, but in the northwest chambers. This is where the sick people came to stay and this is where the saint appeared. This is also where the ecclesiastical authorities dug evidently in secret for the tomb of St. Demetrios by order of the emperors. So, to answer my own question, the fact that these two chambers of the Roman bath were preserved as memoria Demetrii in the northwest corner of the basilica reflects a tradition that they are connected directly with the legend of St. Demetrios.114 V On the basis of the foregoing account, the history of the tomb of St. Demetrios may be summed up as follows. 1. Two chambers of the Roman bath, which were connected with the martyrdom of St. Demetrios, were incorporated into the northwest corner of the early Christian basilica of St. Demetrios. 2. A hexagonal marble ciborium was initially erected in the middle of the nave, and is depicted in the mosaic in the south aisle. Archbishop Niketas of Thessalonike (first half of the 12th century) quotes a description of it. The marble ciborium was replaced, probably in the reign of Justinian I, by a hexagonal silver-plated ciborium of wood, which was 110
Bakirtzis, Qauvmata, 368–71. English translation of the passio altera by Skedros, St. Demetrios, 153. 112 Niketas, 335.36 and 336.16–18: para; th;n qhvkhn tou' aJgivou th;n eujnh;n tw'/ ejdavfei scediasavmeno" and badivsa" te parautivka posi;n oijkeivoi" tw'/ aJgivw/ provseisi kibwrivw/ kai; th'/ qeiva/ prosfu;" eijkovni tou' mavrturo". 113 Another example is the tomb-martyrion of St. Isidore at Chios, where people possessed by demons were healed (Bakirtzis, Qauvmata, 378–79). 114 At the beginning of the last century, Petros Papageorghiou, “Mnhmei'a,” 336, preserved a local tradition that the two chambers are connected with the martyrdom of St. Demetrios. The tradition languished after the Church of Thessalonike accepted the scientific opinions that resulted from the excavations and were set forth chiefly by George Soteriou. In his unpublished technical proposal (1990) for the renovation of the two chambers of the tomb of St. Demetrios, the architect Panos Theodoridis returned to the tradition preserved by Petros Papageorghiou. 111
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depicted in the mosaics in the small north colonnade. It is described by Archbishop John of Thessalonike in the Miracula of St. Demetrios in connection with events dated to the early seventh century, after which there is no clear evidence of its existence. 3. St. Demetrios was believed to dwell in the ciborium, and, according to an unconfirmed oral tradition that was widespread among the people, his tomb lay beneath it. Excavations have found no underground burial structure on this site. 4. In the same period, St. Demetrios was wont to appear in the two chambers in the corner of the basilica, miraculously healing the sick people who lay there. There was no visible burial structure in this part of the basilica; but the Church of Thessalonike believed that the tomb of St. Demetrios was located under the floor of these chambers. This was never confirmed, however. The Church of Thessalonike always shrouded in secrecy the precise location of the saint’s tomb, in the hope of protecting his relics from being divided up and taken to Constantinople. Even when there was no danger of this happening, the site of the tomb was not revealed (edict of Justinian II, 688/9). 5. During this period, a tangible object of veneration was the sweet-smelling earth from the spot where St. Demetrios would have been buried. It was presented to important people in reliquaries shaped like the ciborium, a replica of these being the eleventhcentury Moscow reliquary. 6. The appearance of the myron in the cult of St. Demetrios in the mid-eleventh century or earlier attests the existence in the basilica of his intact relics, from which the myron emerged. The myron-exuding tomb of St. Demetrios appeared in the two chambers in the northwest corner of the basilica at this time. The larnax is replicated by the luxurious reliquaries of Halberstadt, the Great Lavra, and Vatopedi (11th/12th centuries). An eightsided marble baldachin was over the tomb and the icon of St. Demetrios. The existence of a hexagonal marble ciborium with the larnax of St. Demetrios in the middle of the church in the Byzantine period is not confirmed either by the texts or by the archaeological finds. 7. In the Palaiologan era there was widespread suspicion that the myron was “concocted,” probably because the saint’s relics had been divided up and some of them taken to the West during the period of Latin rule (1204–24). The Church of Thessalonike explained the absence of the relics, or part of them, and protected them by saying that the saint’s body had been cast into a well inside the basilica. It was from the well that the myron-cum-holy-water flowed, and emerged in the crypt. 8. After Thessalonike fell to the Turks in 1430, the crypt fell out of use, and until 1493 the myron emerged in the northwest chambers, where the saint’s tomb was, and flowed outside the west end of the basilica, where it was collected by Christians and Muslims. After 1493, when the basilica was converted into the Kasimiye Camii, the tomb of St. Demetrios in the northwest chambers continued to be used as a place of veneration by Christians and Muslims alike, and the myron was replaced by the earth from his tomb and the oil from his lamp. Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities, Thessalonike
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Local Worshipers, Imperial Patrons: Pilgrimage to St. Eugenios of Trebizond JAN OLOF ROSENQVIST
he long history of the cult of the Trapezuntine martyr St. Eugenios and his three lesser companions is vividly reflected in the collections of their miracles and, somewhat less vividly, in the various versions of their Passions.1 However, exploring this cult in the context of pilgrimage to shrines in Asia Minor may not seem the most obvious approach when studying these texts. To judge from them, pilgrimage, in the normal sense of the word, does not seem to have been the first priority of those responsible for the organization of the cult at any time of its history. Other martyrs of the area prepared the ground for the development of their shrines into pilgrimage centers with a carefulness that has no parallel in the texts about St. Eugenios. In more than one sense, St. Eustratios of Armenian Arauraka is a case in point. In the Passio of Eustratios and his four companions we are told that, when his execution was close at hand, he dictated a testament in which he provided for all the prerequisites necessary for the desirable development. The testament prescribed that the remains of Eustratios and his fellow martyrs should be buried intact at a certain place called Analibozora in the polichne of Arauraka, and that the yield of his estate should be used to feed those in charge of his martyrion. This foresighted document was attested by the bishop of Sebasteia, who was given the responsibility to transport the bodies of Eustratios himself and Orestes, one of his companions, back to Arauraka. The following day, which was the 13th of December, he died in the furnace prepared for him. The bishop took care of his
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My sincere thanks are due to Professor Anthony Bryer and an anonymous reader whose incisive remarks and criticisms on an earlier version of this article have contributed substantially to its improvement. Since the results of their suggestions are ubiquitous, I have—with one or two exceptions—abstained from acknowledging my debt to them in every case where this would have been motivated. 1 For the miracle collections, see J. O. Rosenqvist, The Hagiographic Dossier of St. Eugenios of Trebizond, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia 5 (Uppsala, 1996). The oldest Greek Passio was edited by B. Martin-Hisard, “Les textes anonymes grec et arménien de la Passion d’Eugène, Valérien, Canidios et Akylas de Trébizonde,” REArm, n.s. 15 (1981): 115–85 (Greek text on 117–46; annotated French translation on 147–64); and, independently, by Od. Lampsides, in ”Agio" Eujgevnio" oJ poliou'co" th'" Trapezou'nto" (Athens, 1984), 53–75. A reworking of the Passio by John Xiphilinos was edited by Od. Lampsides, “”Agio" Eujgevnio" oJ Trapezouvntio". AV.—To; martuvrion tou' aJgivou Eujgenivou uJpo; ∆Iwavnnou Xifilivnou,” ∆Arc.Povnt. 18 (1953): 129–67; repr. with corrections in Lampsides, ”Agio" Eujgevnio" oJ poliou'co", 19–43. See also the Enkomion on the martyrs by Constantine Loukites (first half of 14th century), which retells the story of the Passions in a rhetorically refined form and with some additional pieces of information (text in Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 114–68).
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body and performed the prescriptions in his testament.2 After all these careful prearrangements, the cult was bound to be a success. The shrine at Arauraka became one of the most frequented pilgrimage sites in Asia Minor. The martyrs’ popularity reached Naples and Rome, where their relics are reported to have been brought in the eighth century, and their Passio was translated into various languages, including Latin, Armenian, and Georgian.3 Only the difficult times during the Seljuk invasion in the eleventh century seem to have put an end to this success story. Apart from providing a contrasting example, there is a more specific reason why some words about St. Eustratios of Arauraka may be justified as introduction to a contribution concerned with St. Eugenios of Trebizond. In fact, the Passio of Eustratios and his companions seems, to a considerable extent, to have been the model for the Passio of Eugenios and his companions.4 Both martyrdoms took place under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, in largely the same geographical area, and in similar circumstances. In both instances a group of martyrs, rather than one individual martyr, is involved. What is more, the very character of Eugenios of Trebizond seems to represent a development of one of the lesser characters in Eustratios’s story. This is a young man whom the Passio of Eustratios presents as a civil officer (offikialios) at the praetorium of Arauraka, and who also bears the name Eugenios.5 A comparison of the two, in some points, may therefore be instructive. The Passio of Eugenios of Trebizond, in the oldest form in which we have it in Greek,6 presents the four martyrs—Eugenios himself, Valerianos, Kanidios, and Akylas (Lat. Aquila)—as teachers of the Christians. The social position of Eugenios himself is left undefined, whereas his companions appear to be peasants. We are told that their missionary activities in the area of Trebizond have proved especially dangerous to the Roman army stationed in Armenia. Information is laid against them by people who are enticed by the money awards promised by the imperial authorities, represented in the first place by the doux Lysias, a stock figure in hagiography from this region, who plays his usual role of being responsible for the management of the persecutions. Eugenios’s companions are seized one by one in the Pontic countryside and brought to Trebizond along with a group of Christian soldiers who are being sent into exile as punishment for their religious conversion. As the last among the four, Eugenios is discovered in his hiding place Akanthai (“The Thorns”) in Trebizond. After the usual tortures, including a burning furnace, first his three companions are decapitated, and then Eugenios himself. 2 See the edition of this Passio (BHG 646) in PG 116:468–505. The final part summarized above begins at col. 501B. The text is included in the Metaphrastean menologion but is, in fact, an old text that was taken over virtually unchanged by Metaphrastes. 3 A. Bryer and D. Winfield, The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos, DOS 20 (Washington, D.C., 1985), 166–67, with references in note 14. 4 This fact was noted by Lampsides in his edition of the reworking of the Passio by Xiphilinos, “”Agio" Eujgevnio" oJ Trapezouvntio". AV,” 138f. (in the reprint in Lampsides, ”Agio" Eujgevnio" oJ poliou'co", 19f.). The whole question, including that of connections with other Pontic hagiography, is the subject of a substantial discussion by Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 166–69. Some aspects of this discussion—especially on further sources of the Passio—were developed by J. O. Rosenqvist, “Some Remarks on the Passions of St. Eugenios of Trebizond and Their Sources,” AB 107 (1989): 39–64, esp. 50–62. 5 PG 116:477C. 6 BHG 608y, as edited by Martin-Hisard, “Les textes anonymes,” and by Lampsides, ”Agio" Eujgevnio" oJ poliou'co", 53–75.
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Nothing indicates that the Passio of Eugenios is anything else than what Hippolyte Delehaye called an epic Passio, a literary construction with a strongly compilatory character, written, perhaps, in the sixth century, or in any case long after the events described in it.7 As will have appeared already, the character of Eugenios himself is a literary borrowing, and even as such he is remarkably vague in his outlook. This, along with the fact that Eugenios and his companions enter the story at a point where the Roman army in general, and a detachment of limitanei more especially, have been in focus, and are brought to trial in the company of a group of soldiers converted to Christianity, appears to have caused some confusion concerning what kind of person the martyr was. Thus he is often thought to have been a soldier himself, although it is easy to see that he and his fellow martyrs do not belong to the military. A first trace of this misunderstanding appears, by implication, in the Synaxarion of Constantinople.8 It has left several traces in later iconography (on which more will be said below), in later medieval literature, and in modern literature.9 Actually, however, this mistake has had the positive result of affording Eugenios something he is lacking in the Passiones: a more or less clear-cut personality. In contrast to the Passio of Eustratios, the Passio of Eugenios leaves us in the dark as regards all those details that are essential for the development of a martyr’s cult and a pilgrimage center. In fact, we do not even learn the day of Eugenios’s death. This is only found in a colophon in the unique eleventh-century manuscript by which the text has been transmitted. In addition to providing this important piece of information, the scribe there complains about the difficulties in finding a copy of the text, difficulties to which he refers as an excuse for having copied the Passio at the wrong place in the manuscript.10 Perhaps he drew the information about the date—21 January—from a synaxarion. Not only is the date unclear, however, but even about the places of the martyrs’ burials we are informed in a highly obscure way. About the three companions of Eugenios we are told that their relics were brought separately to the home village of each, which would mean that the remains of Kanidios were brought to Solochaina, those of Valerianos to Ediska (also written Sediska or Sedissa), and those of Akylas to Ediska too or, perhaps, to Godaina.11 The Passio further states that those responsible for this “expected to erect martyria for the saints when the persecutions were over.”12 However, we do not learn whether this really happened. Even about the place of Eugenios’s own burial the Passio lacks precision. We learn that his remains were brought into the city (of Trebizond) and laid down “at a marked [ejpishvmw/] place,” and further that, when the emperors Diocletian and Maximian 7
Rosenqvist, “Some Remarks,” 62–64. Rosenqvist, “Some Remarks,” 54 note 62. 9 This modern literature includes, unfortunately, some of my own publications, for example, Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 67. 10 Ed. Martin-Hisard, chap. 30.25ff. (p. 146); ed. Lampsides, lines 722–24 (p. 75): kai; dia; to; mh; gravfesqai kaq∆ eiJrmo;n hJma'" mhdei;" memfevsqw, o{ti ejreunw'nte" pantacou' kai; euJrivskonte" ta; euJriskovmena ejgravfamen. The manuscript—Chalki, Theol. School 100—is a menologion for the whole year in which the Passio of Eugenios appears after texts for 31 March and 26 April (Lampsides, ”Agio" Eujgevnio" oJ poliou'co", 49f.). 11 The last point does not appear in the Passiones—which associate both Valerianos and Akylas loosely with Ediska—but only in the Enkomion by Constantine Loukites; see the edition in Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 166, lines 882f. (p. 166) and the commentary on pp. 371f. 12 Ed. Martin-Hisard, chap. 25.19–21 (p. 142); ed. Lampsides, lines 626f. (p. 71): prosdokw'nte" meta; to; pauqh'nai tou;" diwgmou;" martuvria ajnasth'nai toi'" aJgivoi". 8
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were dead, “the Christians began to come out and build churches and martyria to God’s glory.”13 There is no information here of the kind we would expect in such a context, that is, a clear reference to the martyr’s relics being preserved in his own church in Trebizond, working miracles, and so on. Whether this curious situation will eventually be illuminated by a remarkable rediscovery that has recently been made at Satala—the place that was the center of the persecutions that eventually brought about the martyrdom of Eugenios and his companions14 — remains unclear. What has generally been regarded as the remnants of an aqueduct situated southeast of the fortress of this Roman city has now been conclusively identified as a large basilica15 (the same interpretation of the evidence was made already in 1874, although it remained unpublished until 1974).16 According to the recent survey of the site by C. Lightfoot, the structure is likely to have been an early Christian church, and in a preliminary report Lightfoot cautiously speculates that it was dedicated to St. Eugenios.17 Further work on the site will perhaps show whether this idea can be substantiated in any way. Satala appears to have been abandoned for good soon after the city was taken by Chosroes II in A.D. 610. If St. Eugenios enjoyed an early cult there, the connection between the martyr and Trebizond established by the old Passio (where Eugenios confirms his Trapezuntine identity when he is interrogated by the judge Lysias)18 would, perhaps, appear somewhat less unambiguous. But it must be stressed that, in spite of the apparent vagueness with which the Passio links the important facts of the martyrdom of St. Eugenios to Trebizond, all our earliest evidence connects the martyr himself as well as his cult with this city. Apart from the Passio, which is probably a late antique composition,19 two independent pieces of evidence may be cited. The first is a passage in Prokopios’s Buildings (mid-6th century), where the historian mentions, not a church, but an aqueduct of “the Martyr Eugenios” in Trebizond.20 The second is provided by the so-called Autobiography of ˇ irak. In this short work the learned Armenian describes the Armenian scholar Ananias of S how he went to Trebizond in order to enjoy the instruction of a certain Tychikos, a learned man and owner of a large library whom he found “at the shrine of Saint Eugenia [obvi13
Ed. Martin-Hisard, chap. 30.15 and 20–22 (p. 146); ed. Lampsides, lines 714 (p. 74) and 719f. (p. 75). In the old Passio of Eugenios, people from Trebizond visit Lysias, then residing in Satala, in order to inform against the martyrs; ed. Martin-Hisard, chap. 5.9ff. (p. 124); ed. Lampsides, lines 183ff. (p. 58). 15 C. Lightfoot, “Survey Work at Satala: A Roman Legionary Fortress in North-East Turkey,” in R. Matthews, ed., Ancient Anatolia: Fifty Years’ Work by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (London, n.d. [1999]), 273– 84, esp. 279. I am indebted to Dr. Eric Ivison for information on this point and for this reference. 16 The interpretation of the remains as representing a basilica had been made by Alfred Biliotti, British viceconsul in Trebizond, who spent nine days at Satala in August and September 1874. However, his report went unnoticed until it was published one hundred years later; see T. B. Mitford, “Biliotti’s Excavations at Satala,” AnatSt 23/24 (1974): 221–44, esp. 233–35 (Biliotti’s interpretation failed to convince the editor; see his rejecting remark in footnote 13, p. 235). 17 Lightfoot, “Survey Work at Satala,” 279. The author cites no evidence for his view in this preliminary publication. In contrast, Alfred Biliotti (see preceding note) thought that the building was intended for secular purposes. 18 Anonymous Passio, ed. Martin-Hisard, chap. 16.1–2 (p. 134); ed. Lampsides, lines 422–23 (p. 65). In a later source, the miracle collection called Logos on St. Eugenios’s Birthday by John Lazaropoulos, we are told that he grew up near a place called Akanthai outside the eastern city wall where he hid in a cave before his arrest; see the edition in Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, lines 107–11 (p. 210). 19 Rosenqvist, “Some Remarks,” 62–64. 20 Prokopios, Peri; ktismavtwn, 3.7.1: ojceto;n . . . o{nper Eujgenivou kalou'si mavrturo". 14
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ously an error for Eugenios].”21 This happened, apparently, ca. A.D. 600. Whatever the role of Satala in the history of the martyr, it is obvious that his cult was firmly rooted in Trebizond from as early a date as our sources allow us to trace its existence. In his rewriting of the old Passio, produced in the early eleventh century,22 the later patriarch John Xiphilinos, who hailed from Trebizond, added a few points aimed at strengthening the links between Eugenios and his own native city. As for Eugenios’s companions, we learn from Xiphilinos that their relics received a befitting burial in the home village of each and that they were thereafter an ever-flowing source of healings.23 This certainly seems to indicate that Xiphilinos knew of a cult of the three companions, but to judge from the way in which he describes the situation, his knowledge was limited to one of the three places: the only village he mentions by name is Solochaina, the home village of Kanidios, although even about this village his wording is vague and noncommittal.24 The fact that Kanidios’s native Solochaina alone among these villages is mentioned by Xiphilinos is, however, significant since there is a piece of independent evidence confirming the cult of Kanidios there: a reliquary of his head which is now preserved in a refugee village near Panayitsa, Edessa, in northern Greece.25 Concerning Eugenios himself, Xiphilinos tells us that he was buried by five pious men (whose names are indicated) near the place where he was executed.26 Again, nothing is said about his church, about miracles being worked by his relics, and so on. In the case of Xiphilinos this cannot be due to any lack of knowledge. This is shown by the simple fact that he also composed a small collection of miracles of the martyr, a kind of literature in which such facts are, of course, taken for granted. He might well have thought that the information about the cult center found in this collection was sufficient. Still it remains striking that even in its new form the Passio lacks so much of what we would expect from the basic document of a martyr’s cult. As far as the Passiones are concerned, therefore, all adds up to the conclusion that, up to the first quarter of the eleventh century, the propagation of St. Eugenios’s church and monastery as a pilgrimage center was not felt to be of major importance in Trebizond. Far more important than the Passiones for the history of the cult of Eugenios are, however, the collections of his Miracles. Three such collections have survived: the one by John Xiphilinos mentioned above, which contains ten separate miracles,27 and two bigger ones by the Trapezuntine John Lazaropoulos, who was metropolitan of his native city during a short period in the 1360s.28 The material found in these collections represents various periods, primarily the ninth to the early eleventh century and the thirteenth to the mid21 See F. C. Conybeare, “Ananias of Shirak (A.D. 600–650 ca.),” BZ 6 (1906): 572–84 (translation of the Autoˇirakaci,” REArm 1 (1964): biography, pp. 572–74), here 573; also H. Berbérian, “Autobiographie d’Anania S 191–94. 22 Ed. Lampsides, ”Agio" Eujgevnio" oJ poliou'co", 19–43. 23 Ed. cit., lines 583–85 (p. 40). 24 Ed. cit., lines 580f. 25 I am grateful to Professor Bryer for kindly informing me about this. It may be significant that Kanidios is the only one among the companions of Eugenios whose local connection is clear-cut already in the old Passio. 26 Ed. cit., lines 652–55 (p. 43). The five men were called Sophronios, Antiochos, Theodore, Anysios, and Herakleios. 27 Edition with facing English translation in Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 170–203. 28 Editions with facing English translations, ibid., 204–45 (Logos), and 246–359 (Synopsis).
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fourteenth century. On the whole, the chronological contexts seem fairly clear, although the exact dating of each individual miracle is often difficult. In contrast, the miracles by Xiphilinos are chronologically homogeneous in that they all take place in the early decades of the eleventh century. In general these collections confirm the conclusion already drawn from the evidence of the Passiones: the cult of St. Eugenios remained a local affair. Any ambition to initiate a different development seems to have been lacking, with one interesting exception. According to one of the miracles told by Lazaropoulos, an attempt was made to establish the martyr’s birthday as a festival in addition to the day of his death.29 This was no doubt because his birthday—allegedly 24 June—is much more attractive to pilgrims, as it is to any visitors to Trebizond, than the day of Eugenios’s death, 21 January.30 According to the first part of this fascinating miracle, this attempt at a reform happened in the early ninth century as the result of a revelation. In connection with the Seljuk invasion in the latter half of the eleventh century—still according to the miracle—the new festival was forgotten. Finally, as the second part of the miracle goes on to tell, an attempt was made to bring it into life again in the early fourteenth century, by the Trapezuntine ruler, Alexios II Grand Komnenos. Actually, the point in telling its prehistory in the ninth century is obviously to give a historical justification for the festival by presenting it not as a renewal but as the continuation of a forgotten tradition. There are strong legendary elements in both parts of this story. One of the most striking and the most puzzling is the martyr’s efficient support of Alexios in fighting a dragon in the mountains south of Trebizond. But whatever the historical foundation on which this double miracle story relies, the attempted innovation was, at best, just a temporary success in the ninth century, and no success at all in the fourteenth century. According to our sources, which happen to be relatively rich for the fourteenth century, and partly of a documentary character—I am referring here to the liturgical typikon of the martyr’s own monastery which is found in a manuscript dated 134631—this second attempt seems also to have failed. Apparently, not even imperial sponsorship was a guarantee for the successful development of the pilgrimage to St. Eugenios. We know nothing about the reasons for this failure. One may have been the fact—emphasized in the story itself and probably thought to give impetus to the new festival—that it coincided with the birthday feast of a superior competitor, namely, St. John the Baptist. After all, the ingenious plan of having St. Eugenios profit from the proximity of St. John in the calendar may not have been a very good one. The fact that the birthday of St. John was a kind of national holiday in the Pontos would not have made competition easier.32 29
Lazaropoulos, Logos, ed. cit., pp. 206–28. Cf. the overall discussion of this Miracle, ibid., 75–81. As pointed out by R. Janin, Les églises et les monastères des grands centres byzantins (Paris, 1975), 266, with note 9. See further Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 169. 31 The text of this typikon was edited by A. Dmitrievskii, Opisanie liturgicheskikh rukopisei khraniashchikhsia v bibliotekakh pravoslavnogo vostoka, 3, Typika, vol. 2 (Petrograd, 1917), 421–57. The better-known illuminations in this manuscript (“Labors of the Months”) were published by J. Strzygowski, “Eine trapezuntische Bilderhandschrift vom Jahre 1346,” Archiv für Kunstwissenschaft 13 (1890): 241–63. On the contents of these illuminations from the point of view of agricultural history, see A. Bryer, “The Estates of the Empire of Trebizond,” ∆Arc.Povnt. 35 (1979): 370–477 (= A. Bryer, The Empire of Trebizond and the Pontos [London, 1980], no. VII), here 392–413. 32 Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 169 (noting that traces of this holiday may still be observed in Turkish Trabzon). 30
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In this attempted development of the cult in the fourteenth century, the emperor is obviously instrumental. This fact is indicative of a shift that the cult of St. Eugenios, as well as the character of the martyr himself, seems to have experienced by this period. The shift of the cult was from popular to imperial, the shift of the martyr from being a protector and helper in private and monastic affairs to being the official patron of the state. This is the impression left by the way in which the various periods in the cult’s history are reflected in the miracles, as far as they can be dated with any reasonable degree of certainty. As expressly stated by the miracles themselves, there was a break in the continuity of the cult in connection with the Seljuk invasion of Anatolia in the late eleventh century.33 This is told in a passage dealing with the martyr’s birthday festival in June, but any difficulties preventing the celebration of such a festival in summer must obviously have been even more serious for his regular festival in January. When the cult was taken up again, in the thirteenth century, it appears to enjoy imperial support from the beginning. The miracles that can be dated in the period from the ninth through twelfth century are concerned either with resolving problems of a private character or with guarding the interests of the martyr’s own monastery. In contrast, the dominating role of the martyr in the miracles from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries can be defined as that of a protector of the state and the emperor. The first of the miracles recorded for the imperial period of Trebizond consists in his decisive help to Emperor Andronikos Gidos fighting a Turkish army under a variously identified prince called “the Melik.”34 Correspondingly, the miracle collection in which this very broadly narrated story is found—the Synopsis by John Lazaropoulos—is introduced by the story of miracles performed to the benefit of the Byzantine emperor Basil II during his Iberian campaigns in the tenth and eleventh centuries.35 In this way the protection of imperial power, whether in Byzantium or in Trebizond, becomes the dominating theme of this collection as a whole. But there are also a few indications that the popular appeal of the martyrs and the popular support of their cult did in fact remain into the imperial centuries. The most interesting piece of evidence for such a view is a miracle in Lazaropoulos’s Synopsis which relates an event that took place in Constantinople. A case had been brought to trial before a certain sakelliou called Gorgoploutos, and as witnesses three merchants from Trebizond were summoned who would only take oaths by St. Eugenios and who all appeared to bear the martyr’s name. Struck by this curious situation, the sakelliou wondered “why the Trapezuntines do not invoke any other among all the saints than St. Eugenios and why most of them are called Eugenios.”36 The story does indeed seem to say that the martyr 33
Lazaropoulos, Logos, ed. cit., lines 197–205 (p. 214). Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 1141ff. (pp. 308–34). For various attempts to identify the Melik, see the editor’s commentary on the Synopsis, line 1154 (pp. 434f.), with refs. 35 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 19ff. (pp. 246–58). The miracle is embedded in historiographic material that is largely in agreement with the corresponding sections in John Zonaras’s Epitome, although there are a few notable differences; see St. Lampakes, “Makedonikh; dunasteiva kai; Megalokomnhnoiv. Scovlia scetika; me; ta; iJstorika; stoicei'a sta; “Qauvmata tou' ÔAgivou Eujgenivou” tou' ∆Iwavnnh—∆Iwsh;f Lazarovpoulou,” Suvmmeikta 8 (1989): 319–33; Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 47–50. Seeing that the discrepancies between Zonaras and Lazaropoulos needed to be explained, N. M. Panagiotakes set out the interesting hypothesis that Lazaropoulos used one of the lost sources listed in the proem of Skylitzes’ Chronicle, suggesting the work of Theodore of Sebasteia as a likely option; see Panagiotakes’ article “Fragments of a Lost Eleventh Century Byzantine Historical Work?” in C. Constantinides, ed., Filevllhn. Studies in Honour of Robert Browning (Venice, 1996), 321–57. 36 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 1839–41 (p. 348). 34
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enjoyed great popularity in his city. It has been observed that this is in contradiction to the striking rarity of the name Eugenios among the population of the hilly hinterland of Trebizond, the Matzouka valley, as reflected in the Acts of Vazelon.37 But the observed contradiction is real only on the assumption that the event told in the story about the sakelliou Gorgoploutos took place some time in the imperial centuries of Trebizond.38 This is by no means certain. As noted above, the collections of Lazaropoulos include—and are indeed dominated by—material from various earlier periods. In the case of this miracle, the eleventh century would be a more likely date than any time after the thirteenth century.39 The story would then testify to a popularity and influence that the martyr once enjoyed, although this belonged to the past when the miracle was written down in the form in which we have it. The impression that the cult of St. Eugenios had a strictly local character is overwhelming in all periods of its history. Its development, after the establishment of the empire of Trebizond, in the direction of a cult with official status and under imperial patronage rather contributed to emphasize this character, and even added a national note to it. This situation is graphically illustrated by the prescriptions for the celebration of the martyrs’ festival which are found in the typikon of St. Eugenios’s monastery. Preparations are to begin two days before the festival by singing the vespers, “when everybody has gathered at the monastery, the emperor with the entire senate, the archbishop of the city, the bishops, the hegoumenoi of the other monasteries and their monks, along with the clergy and all the Christian people.” Then the martyrs’ relics are to be brought from their casket in the monastery to the metochion in the city in a procession “led by the emperor and all the people.” On the morning of 20 January, again “the emperor, the archbishop, the bishops, the hegoumenoi, and the entire pious people” are to gather at the metochion and bring the relics back to the monastery in a new procession. There the celebration will continue, in a manner usual for any saint’s feast, with a vigil in the night of 21 January.40 The heavy presence of all important representatives of the secular and ecclesiastical powers is striking here. It transforms, as it were, the celebration into a state ceremony that seems to reflect the close alliance between the martyr and the emperor that prevailed after the successful cooperation that brought Andronikos Gidos his victory over the Melik. Although there is every reason to stress the fact, repeatedly emphasized above, that the cult of St. Eugenios was bound to his native Trebizond, there is some evidence, modest and 37
Thus A. Bryer, “Rural Society in Matzouka,” in A. Bryer and H. Lowry, eds., Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society (Birmingham–Washington, D.C., 1986), 53–95 (= A. Bryer, Peoples and Settlement in Anatolia and the Caucasus [London, 1988], no. XII), here 78; Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 292 note 248. 38 In PLP (no. 4307) no attempt is made to narrow down the date of the sakelliou within the limits of the Palaiologan period. 39 The name of the Constantinopolitan sakelliou is a point of importance here. Apart from that person the PLP lists only one Gorgoploutos, a paroikos living near Strymon (no. 4308). In contrast, three persons of that name are attested for the short period of 1025–81: A. Kazhdan, Sotsialnyi sostav gospodstvuiushchego klassa Vizantii XI–XII vv. (Moscow, 1974), 120. Relevant to the date of this story is also the fact that the immediately preceding and following miracles may be dated to roughly the same period. See also the commentary on the miracle in Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 465. 40 Typikon, ed. Dmitrievskij (as above, note 31): pavntwn sunacqevntwn ejn th'/ monh'/, tou' te basilevw" meta; pavsh" th'" sugklhvtou, tou' ajrcierevw" th'" povlew", tw'n ejpiskovpwn, tw'n hJgoumevnwn tw'n loipw'n monasthrivwn kai; monacw'n meta; pantov" te tou' klhvrou kai; tou' cristwnuvmou laou', ktl.
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sometimes difficult to interpret, that it might have reached outside this city and even outside the Pontos. A firm piece of evidence is the fact that his Passio was translated into Armenian, at an unknown date that was at least no later than the eleventh century (this is the date of the earliest manuscript).41 This may indicate no more than that such a translation of the basic document of the cult was needed among the monastery’s Armenian connections. At least in the ninth and tenth centuries, Armenians with an interest in the Trapezuntine monastery were found in the city of Paipert (modern Bayburt) on the Anatolian plateau, and the monastery possessed estates in the area. We learn a few things about this in the works by John Lazaropoulos, who also reveals that it was necessary for the martyr himself sometimes to speak Armenian.42 But as far as we can judge, the Armenian interests in the martyr’s monastery were due to personal and economic ties. The details largely remain unclear, but the circumstances seem to reflect the cult’s and the monastery’s semiprivate character during a certain period of its history.43 This, rather than any attempts to widen the geographic circles from which a successful recruitment of worshipers and pilgrims could be expected, is the most likely context for the Armenian translation of the Passio. And whatever the truth here, it must be remembered that throughout the Middle Ages Armenians were a strong or dominating ethnic element in the Pontic region, the city of Trebizond not excepted. Another piece of evidence of some radiation of the cult outside Trebizond is provided by Constantine Loukites, a born Constantinopolitan active as court official in Trebizond in the first half of the fourteenth century. Loukites mentions, in his Enkomion of St. Eugenios, that a church in Cyprus was dedicated to the martyr and that his festival was celebrated there.44 This is in fact the only specific point in a passage in which Loukites tries to demonstrate the worldwide fame of Eugenios. There is no reason to doubt this piece of information, but unfortunately, in the absence of a context and of any additional details, it will remain difficult to evaluate. As a final piece of evidence, mention must be made of a reliquary of Eugenios and his three companions in the treasury of San Marco in Venice, on which more will be said below. Suffice it to say here that, whatever the context in which this reliquary was brought to Venice, it is likely to have played its role there at a formal, official level in state or church rather than as an object of popular piety and pilgrimage. The collections of St. Eugenios’s miracles are a rich source for this locally based cult. As has already appeared, this situation is in curious contrast to the case of a martyr such as Eustratios of Arauraka, whose cult is known to have been widely popular and of which we still have so little evidence of the everyday reality at the cult center, evidence of the kind that miracle stories normally provide. The surviving miracles of St. Eugenios present a stream of visitors to the martyr’s monastery and church, seeking the various kinds of help that people usually seek from holy martyrs. Still, as far as pilgrimage is concerned, this rich material must be characterized in rather negative terms. Actually, if we define the word 41 B. Martin-Hisard, “Trébizonde et le culte de saint Eugène (6e–11e s.),” REArm, n.s. 14 (1980): 307–43, esp. 319–21; an annotated French translation of the Armenian version was published by the same scholar: Martin-Hisard, “Les textes anonymes,” 164–85. 42 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 652–62 (p. 282). 43 Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 71–72. 44 Loukites, Enkomion, ed. cit., lines 857–61 (p. 164), with commentary on p. 371.
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“pilgrim” as a person who travels to a place with the specific intention of paying reverence to a saint in his or her shrine, no pilgrims visiting St. Eugenios in Trebizond are recorded in the miracles. As far as this fairly large material permits any conclusions, virtually all visitors to St. Eugenios were either Trapezuntines—especially people with a connection of some kind to the martyr’s monastery—or foreigners who visited Trebizond with purposes quite other than pilgrimage. In that sense they may be said to come to the monastery by chance. This does not mean that pilgrims in the narrow sense of the word are absent from these stories. Some do appear, but they appear in the margin: these pilgrims are monks traveling not to St. Eugenios in Trebizond but to Jerusalem.45 It is impossible to say whether the impression that Eugenios was unable to attract any other pilgrims than those who were already present in Trebizond, or even—to use a slight exaggeration—in the monastery itself, reflects the real situation. This impression may be due to the fact that the preserved material is not wholly representative. The latter could, in turn, be due either to chance or to a deliberate selection of material. As mentioned above, a shift in the focus of the cult took place after the thirteenth century, and as we have them, the vast majority of the miracles of Eugenios were collected and “edited” at a time when this development was finished. It is not unlikely that the material has been subject to selection, especially at the last stage of the transmission of the texts, and in fact this heterogeneous corpus of miracles seems to have undergone various manipulations in order to adjust the texts to certain purposes.46 However, that the suppression of evidence for pilgrimage should have been one of these purposes is, of course, highly unlikely; indeed, the opposite would be expected. At all events, as far as we are informed by these sources— whatever the real background of the situation they seem to reflect—we must say that those pilgrims to St. Eugenios of whom we have any knowledge did not travel farther than from the city of Trebizond to the martyr’s shrine on the steep hillside east of the city wall. The cases in which pilgrimage in this sense is involved as the primary reason for the visitors’ presence at the shrine are best represented in the small collection by John Xiphilinos. In that sense, as in many others, the stories found there present a different picture from that which emerges from the fourteenth-century collections by John Lazaropoulos.47 One of the miracles told by Xiphilinos is to the benefit of the city of Trebizond collectively rather than to any individual (Mir. 10).48 Of the rest, five are about people permanently living in Trebizond. There is the writer’s own brother Michael (Mir. 1).49 There is a certain Porphyrios, who was obviously too ill to be able to visit the shrine and instead was healed in his home, by touching the martyr’s cross, which sometimes appears as an efficacious relic (Mir. 2).50 There is further an anonymous woman hailing, perhaps, from Lazia (Mir. 7).51 There is a certain Michael (not the writer’s brother with the same name), who fell ill while traveling in Syria (Mir. 8).52 And there is an anonymous man hailing from 45
Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 627 (p. 280) and 1010ff. (p. 302). For a discussion of these questions, see Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 43–47. 47 This aspect is further developed in Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 28–30. 48 Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., lines 473ff. (pp. 198–200). 49 Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., lines 42ff. (pp. 172–76). 50 Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., lines 131ff. (pp. 176–78). 51 Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., lines 330ff. (pp. 188–90). 52 Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., lines 356ff. (pp. 190–94). 46
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Klaudiopolis, who is saved in a storm at sea by using holy oil from a lamp above the martyr’s tomb which he brings with him absorbed in a wick (Mir. 9).53 The four remaining miracles are about foreigners, all of whom happen to be staying in Trebizond when they are affected by illness or other grievances. One is Niketas, general in the city of Soteropolis, in Abchazia (Mir. 3).54 Further, there are, interestingly enough, three Russian mercenary soldiers from an army detachment mustering near Trebizond (Mir. 4–6).55 As pilgrims, these soldiers would be strange figures, not least because they are obviously not Christian.56 Even more strange is the fact that one of them decides to remain in the monastery, although we do not learn in what capacity.57 Parallels in other texts seem to support the idea that he should have become a monk, although one would expect this to have been expressed more clearly. In Lazaropoulos’s two collections there are thirty-seven separate miracles. Outsiders, in the sense of people without any connection to the monastery and its community, rarely appear in these stories. When they do appear, they do not come as pilgrims by their own choice but rather in a capacity that has something to do with the monastery—administrative or fiscal, for example—although they suddenly find themselves in need of the martyr’s help. The four miracles in Lazaropoulos’s first collection, the Logos, have one peculiar thing in common: they are all about people who eventually get the martyr’s help to solve problems that he himself has created as punishment for their lack of respect for him. For example, a man from Constantinople called Dionysios was asked to “edit” a collection of the martyr’s miracles (which seems, in effect, to mean doing the job that John Lazaropoulos eventually did). When he refused, he was punished with a disease that threatened to kill him, and he only survived because the martyr intervened at the last moment (Mir. 2).58 In the end, the martyr’s treatment of Dionysios turns out to be purely disciplinary as he tells the man, rather cynically, that after all he has no need of his services as a writer.59 Another example in point is the “assessor” Methodios who, apparently in the mid-eleventh century, used the monastery as a temporary residence and was punished for his way of exploiting the monks by being beaten up, very harshly, by Eugenios’s young companion Akylas. The story ends with Methodios finding the cure for his wounds by applying the martyr’s holy oil (Mir. 5).60 The desired effect of such stories seems to have been the perpetration of the plans and wishes of the monastic community by inspiring terror in those who tried to stand in their way. Often those plans and wishes appear to be connected to the monastery’s economy. In fact, if we look for any specialization in the martyr’s way of actually working miracles, the most striking one would be his care for his own monastery’s economic interests and
53
Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., lines 421ff. (pp. 194–98). Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., lines 166ff. (pp. 178–82). 55 Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., lines 206ff. (pp. 182–88). 56 This seems to be true at least about one of the men involved; Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., lines 218ff. (p. 182), with commentary on p. 376. 57 Xiphilinos, Miracles, ed. cit., line 261 (p. 184), with commentary on pp. 376f. 58 Lazaropoulos, Logos, ed. cit., lines 432ff. (pp. 228–30). 59 Lines 472f. (p. 230), tw'n d∆ ejgkwmivwn h[dh th'" suggrafh'", h|" wJmolovghsa" dra'n, ou[toi creiva ejmoiv. 60 Lazaropoulos, Logos, ed. cit., lines 606ff. (pp. 238–42). 54
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prosperity.61 It is difficult to see how such miracles could have contributed to attracting pilgrims to the martyr’s shrine. Rather, if potential pilgrims happened to read them or hear about them, they may well have been discouraged from paying any visits at all to the monastery. The second collection compiled by John Lazaropoulos, the Synopsis, is much more comprehensive and much more variegated than the first. It consists of thirty-three chapters of various lengths. The two most extensive ones—to which reference has already been made above—deal with “political” or “military” miracles aimed at emphasizing and enhancing the martyr’s role as patron of the empire of Trebizond. Of the thirty-one stories that remain, twenty are about monks or other persons connected to the martyr’s own monastery (Mir. 2, 3, 6–12, 15–17, 20, 21, 24–27, 29, 32).62 These miracles reveal the same tendency as those found in the first collection, in that their point is to show the martyr as a guardian of the monastery’s interests, economically and otherwise. The remaining eleven stories are those that interest us most here. We meet in them five men and six women of various social backgrounds. Most are born Trapezuntines. One of them is a certain Eumorphia, wife of a spatharokandidatos called Eustratios, who apparently lived in Trebizond and whom Eugenios healed from excessive menstruation (Mir. 4).63 Eumorphia is treated in a similar way as Dionysios and the assessor Methodios who were just mentioned. When she shows some hesitance in delivering a votive gift to the monastery— a golden lamp made from her bridal gifts—the martyr punishes her by, so to speak, withdrawing his healing until the gift is secured. While the task imposed upon Dionysios, the editing of Eugenios’s miracles, appeared to be of no interest to the martyr when his punishment had restored the man’s respect for him, the precious object required from Eumorphia does not lose its interest until it has been delivered to his monastery. There is further Barbara, the wife of an anonymous kouropalates, who is relieved from a leech that she has swallowed (Mir. 5).64 There is the childless couple George Magoulas and his wife, who are given a son by Eugenios, a son whom they name after the martyr (Mir. 14).65 And there is the wife of the spatharokandidatos Thomas Chardamoukles who is healed from a heavy cyst in her uterus (Mir. 22).66 Finally, there is Leontia, wife of the spatharokandidatos George Arbenos, who is cured of consumption (Mir. 18).67 Her story has a special interest. She begins by visiting the church of St. Nicholas, to whom her mother Maria was especially devoted. But to Maria’s disappointment St. Nicholas leaves her daughter without help. Instead he advises her to go to the church of St. Eugenios, referring to the fact that the latter is a specialist in diseases accompanied by fever and convulsions. In another miracle, Leontia’s daughter Barbara is cured from a similar disease (Mir. 19).68
61
See further Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 69–71. Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 241ff. (pp. 258–64), lines 448ff. (pp. 270–88), lines 820ff. (pp. 290– 98), lines 999ff. (pp. 300–306), lines 1600ff. (pp. 334–46), lines 1869ff. (p. 350), lines 1958ff. (pp. 354–56). 63 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 351ff. (pp. 264–68). 64 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 417ff. (pp. 268–70). 65 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 794ff. (p. 290). 66 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 1087ff. (pp. 306–8). 67 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 954ff. (pp. 298–300). 68 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 991ff. (p. 300). 62
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The way in which this specialization is presented seems to indicate that it was an essential element in the miracle-working of Eugenios and therefore ought to have played an important role in determining the pilgrims’ choice of shrine to visit, in a way similar to that in which St. Artemios in Constantinople, who specialized in hernia, attracted pilgrims suffering from that disease. But apart from the two miracles about Leontia and her daughter Barbara, there are in the entire material only one or two additional examples that could support such an idea.69 This may be a point in which losses in the tradition of the miracles—whether by deliberate choice or by chance—can be held responsible for a somewhat distorted image of the situation. It seems, however, unlikely that a tradition in a better state of preservation would have changed this impression in a radical way. I would rather suggest that the lack of a decided profile that, in spite of what St. Nicholas tells Leontia and her daughter, seems to characterize the martyr’s healing activities reflects a certain halfheartedness in the monastery’s attitude to pilgrimage. There are only two non-Trapezuntines in these eleven stories, and both are imperial civil servants. One is a tax collector called Theodoulos, who has been robbed of a large amount of collected money and has the thief revealed by the martyr (Mir. 30).70 The other is Pothos, judge of the theme of Chaldia, who is saved by the martyr from a burning house (Mir. 33).71 What emerges, then, from these miracles is hardly the picture of a successful pilgrimage center, and, as we have seen, any corresponding ambitions seem rarely to have been operative in the monastery’s history. On the few occasions when such ambitions developed, perhaps twice over a period of some four hundred years, the resulting attempts to attract more numerous crowds of pilgrims seem to have failed. If the first of these attempts, that is, the introduction of the birthday festival, was real—something about which I have serious doubts—its success was stopped by the difficult situation after the Seljuk invasion in the eleventh century. This situation meant a decisive blow to the shrine of St. Eustratios at Arauraka, which relied heavily on its pilgrims.72 The monastery of St. Eugenios in Trebizond may have experienced similar difficulties. But to the Trapezuntine institution the invasion had another important consequence: it prevented the monastery from exploiting its estates on the Anatolian plain, which up to this period used to form its economic backbone.73 The interest in economic matters that is so apparent in the miracles could indicate that the latter problem was felt to be more severe than the former. The ensuing decline was broken, and the monastery of St. Eugenios began to play a more important role after the establishment of the empire of Trebizond in or shortly after 1204. Now its prosperity relied on a different foundation: imperial patronage of the martyr, who was now officially regarded as the patron of Trebizond, the city and the empire.
69 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., Mir. 8, lines 527ff. (pp. 274–77), about two monks stricken by fever as a consequence of drinking bad wine; and Mir. 24, lines 1600ff. (pp. 334–39), about John Lazaropoulos himself, “stricken by fever and heartburn and continuous vomiting.” The fact that these cases are so rare is in curious contradiction to the fact—pointed out by V. Déroche in his review of Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, in REB 58 (2000): 321–23, esp. 322—that the specialization chosen by Eugenios covers virtually the majority of all diseases. 70 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 1890ff. (pp. 350–52). 71 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 1982ff. (pp. 356–58). 72 Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 166–70. 73 Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 84–85 and 412, with refs.
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As pointed out above, the two most conspicuous and most extensively narrated miracles in the collections compiled by John Lazaropoulos were performed to the benefit of emperors—Basil II of Byzantium and Andronikos Gidos of Trebizond—acting as leaders of military campaigns. In these stories the martyr intervened not in response to prayers offered at his shrine, but being called upon from the battlefield. The monastery now played its most important role in the political life of the city. Only to a limited degree does it seem to have revived its position as the center of a popular cult, at least for local worshipers. Among the few Pontic foundations associated with St. Eugenios, the most important is, of course, this monastery outside the city wall of Trebizond, with its still standing church where the relics of the martyrs were preserved. At least in the imperial centuries, the monastery had a metochion inside the city walls, a foundation that has since disappeared. We know something about it primarily thanks to the typikon of 1346.74 Only about the monastery and its metochion can we say that they played an active part in the martyr’s cult. Otherwise, the monumental and iconographic evidence for the cult of St. Eugenios is scarce, but can be supplemented, to some degree, with textual evidence about such objects. To judge from a miracle in the Synopsis of John Lazaropoulos, there seems, not surprisingly, to have been a big picture of the standing Eugenios in his own church, dominating a place of its own. We do not know what it was like—although the appearance of the martyr in visions might offer a clue—and still less when it was made, although we know that it was found there before 1223,75 and may guess that it was restored or renewed several times over the centuries, for example, after the fire that may have partly destroyed the church in 1340.76 The miracles also tell us about a votive church near a place called Kouratoreion, in the district of Kapalin in the Matzouka valley south of Trebizond. It was obviously erected in or immediately after 1223, and appears still to have been standing when Lazaropoulos wrote the miracles in the 1360s.77 That an image of the martyr was part of the decoration of this church is a reasonable guess. To these scraps of textual evidence we can add a piece of information found in a thirteenth-century document included in the Vazelon Acts. We there learn of the existence of a site—perhaps a church—called St. Eugenios near a place called Epikopra in Matzouka, but apart from the fact that it existed the document provides no further information about it.78 If the reference is to a church, there is a slight possibility that it is identical with the votive church in the district of Kapalin mentioned in the preceding paragraph. In any case, we may again guess that St. Eugenios appeared in it, in some pictorial form or other. A few additional monuments that testify to the position of Eugenios have been recorded in modern times or are still existing. They are all located either in the city of Trebizond or in the Matzouka valley to the south. Thus in the tower chapel of the monastery of Hagia Sophia of Trebizond there is a painting reproducing Eugenios as a courtier, hold74
See above, note 31. See esp. Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., line 1556 (p. 332), where a Muslim prince refers to this picture for identification of the martyr in a dream—an event datable to 1222/23—and cf. commentary on p. 455. 76 Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 223–24. 77 Lazaropoulos, Synopsis, ed. cit., lines 1475–79 (p. 328), with commentary on p. 453. 78 F. I. Uspenskii and V. Beneshevich, eds., Vazelonskie akty (Leningrad, 1927), no. 117, p. 87, to; e[nanti tou' aJgivou Eujgenivou. 75
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ing what is probably a tall cross.79 The paintings of this chapel are dated to 1443. The fact that the thirteenth-century monastery of Hagia Sophia was an imperial foundation, and that the tower chapel was a semiprivate room, inaccessible to the public, puts Eugenios in a context suitable for the official patron of the empire of Trebizond rather than for the hero of a popular cult with attraction for pilgrims. In a chapel of the imperial palace of Trebizond, an image is recorded of a holy soldier who was probably St. Eugenios.80 The date of the painting is unknown but ought to have been in the imperial centuries of Trebizond. Similarly to the case of the picture in the Hagia Sophia monastery, the setting of the palace image indicates the presence of imperial patronage rather than the context of a popular cult. In a cave church near the martyr’s monastery in Trebizond, a painting of a cloaked figure is reported to have been seen in the late nineteenth century. According to one report, which is unfortunately contradicted by another, there was an inscription that could be interpreted as identifying the figure as St. Eugenios.81 In the chapel of Elijah at the monastery of Vazelon in Matzouka there is—or at least there was until ca. 1970—probably the best of the preserved wall paintings of Eugenios. He is represented as a soldier, with a military tunic, a cloak, and a shield. The date could be the late thirteenth/early fourteenth century.82 His appearance is similar to that of a miniature found in the typikon of his monastery, a manuscript already referred to above.83 In the so-called “Upper Church” at Sarmas¸ıklı in Matzouka, St. Eugenios is painted as a courtier carrying a tall cross. The date is the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The site may have been a holding of the Vazelon monastery. If that was actually the case, Eugenios may have played some role at that monastery.84 A church dedicated to St. Eugenios at a place called Giannanton in Matzouka is now destroyed but is known to have been decorated with paintings that were probably medieval.85 It must be expected that the dedicatory saint was found in these paintings. It will come as no surprise that Eugenios only rarely appears on lead seals. Two private seals may be noted. One belonged to a member of the Galaton family and is dated to the second third of the eleventh century.86 The other belonged to a certain Theodosios.87 In contrast to the way in which Eugenios of Trebizond is represented in most images, the saint of this seal is beardless, appearing half-length and holding a tall cross in his right hand.
79
Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 236 and fig. 73, where the object in Eugenios’s right hand is reconstructed as a lance. This seems less likely, both in view of the fact that the martyr appears as a courtier and in view of the iconographic parallel at Sarmas¸ıklı mentioned below. 80 Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 215, no. 55. 81 Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 224f. 82 Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 292 and pl. 225c in vol. 2. 83 Metropolitan Chrysanthos [Philippides], ÔH ejkklhsiva Trapezou'nto" (Athens, 1933) = Arc.Pov j nt. 4/5 (1933): pl. 21, with description on p. 415 (repeated, as a frontispiece, in Lampsides, ”Agio" Eujgevnio" oJ poliou'co"). 84 Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 273f. and fig. 83. 85 Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 294, no. 29. 86 J.-C. Cheynet, C. Morrisson, and W. Seibt, Les sceaux byzantins de la collection Henri Seyrig (Paris, 1991), 62, referring to V. Laurent’s unedited catalogue of the seals in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass., no. 57. 87 G. Zacos, Byzantine Seals, vol. 2 (Berne, 1984), no. 787.
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The seal is not dated by the editors, except for the collective dating valid for the whole of the chapter in which it appears, namely, “early 10th century–1204.” In the circumstances, a safe identification—the Trapezuntine or the Araurakan martyr, or some other saint—is not possible in these two cases. If indeed we are dealing with Eugenios of Trebizond, Theodosios as well as the member of the Galaton family should be supposed to have had some connection to Trebizond.88 The martyr is absent from the ecclesiastical seals of Trebizond. This may seem surprising but is explained by the fact that he was not the dedicatory saint of the cathedral church of Trebizond, the Chrysokephalos, which was dedicated to the Virgin.89 In contrast, Eugenios appears on the seals of the Grand Komnenoi, although very few examples have been discovered.90 Their iconography, with both the emperor and the saint represented on horseback, indicates a connection with the new type of aspers that were struck from the reign of the Grand Komnenos Alexios II (l297–1330) and thus a reasonably safe terminus post quem (see further below). Although of very limited significance, the seals would in any case confirm the picture of the cult of Eugenios that emerges from the rest of the evidence: it was before 1204 that this cult was really alive. General considerations would even suggest dating the seal, if Trapezuntine, before the mid-eleventh century. Apparently the official support that Eugenios enjoyed in the empire of Trebizond after 1204 did not make him more popular as a sealing saint than he had been. The Trapezuntine silver coins—the aspers—from the imperial centuries are, unlike the seals, an important source for the iconography of the martyr: in terms of number, by far the richest source of all. At the same time their significance in the context that is in focus here is rather limited. To begin with iconography, two successive types can be recognized in these coins. In the first, the martyr appears, on the reverse, as a standing figure, represented frontally and holding in his right hand a tall staff surmounted by a cross, while the emperor appears in a similar, frontal position on the obverse.91 In the second type the martyr, on the reverse, appears as a holy rider on a horse turned right and holding his staff surmounted by a cross, while on the obverse the emperor appears on horseback in a similar way.92 The second type was introduced by the Grand Komnenos Alexios II in the early fourteenth century and remained in use until the end of the Trapezuntine empire. Around the time of its introduction in Trebizond, similar designs seem to have been in vogue around the Black Sea. Perhaps, however, it should also be connected more specifically with a wish of Alexios II to be visualized in this way. That would be a natural implication of the story about his killing a dragon that is included in John Lazaropoulos’s Logos, and to which 88
The two members of the family recorded in the Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit, Erste Abt. (641– 867) (Berlin–New York, 1999), nos. 1928 (8th century) and 1929 (9th century), did not have any such connections. 89 Noted by J.-C. Cheynet and C. Morrisson, “Texte et image sur les sceaux byzantins: Les Raisons d’un choix iconographique,” in N. Oikonomides, ed., Studies in Byzantine Sigillography 4 (Washington, D.C., 1994), 9–32, here 22 note 51. 90 Published by A. Vishniakova, VestDrIst 6 (1939): no. 1, p. 121 (ref. by N. Oikonomides in Studies in Byzantine Sigillography 3 [Washington, D.C., 1993], 173). Another seal inscribed with the name Komnhnov" and bearing the effigies of an unidentified man on horseback on each side most probably belongs to the same or a similar type; published in Otchety Arkheologicheskoi komissii (1895): 94 (ref. by Oikonomides, ibid.). 91 O. Retowski, Die Münzen der Komnenen von Trapezunt, 2d ed. (Braunschweig, 1974), pls. I–X (pp. 193–202). 92 Retowski, Die Münzen, 135–36, pls. XI–XIV (pp. 203–6).
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reference has already been made.93 The close connection between the martyr and the emperor in the coins gives emphasis to the character of the coins at large: they were a means of imperial propaganda rather than vehicles or objects of popular piety. Their function was to propagate the martyr as officially recognized protector and patron of the empire and its ruler, and to support his position not as an object of pilgrimage but as an object of worship imposed by the state on its subjects. The same iconography of St. Eugenios as that found in the Trapezuntine aspers after Alexios II also appears in a more unusual context. This is a stamped roundel decorating the leather binding of a Trapezuntine manuscript, a sticherarion dated 1365 that is now found at the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai.94 The manuscript was written by a certain George Referendarios in the monastery of St. Eugenios, ejnto;" me;n tou' qeofrourhvtou kavstrou Trapezou'nto".95 Obviously the quoted words cannot refer to the monastery proper, which is not situated inside the city walls.96 Rather the metochion must be meant, and although the evidence of this single manuscript is narrow, it could be taken to indicate the existence in the fourteenth century of a scriptorium at the metochion of St. Eugenios. Perhaps the stamped roundel with the mounted martyr on the leather cover at Sinai was used by the metochion as a mark of ownership. In striking contrast to the warriorlike rider in these images, Eugenios and his companions appear in an unambiguously civilian setting in a splendid icon in the Dionysiou monastery of Mount Athos. This icon is double-sided, and its main face shows Alexios III Grand Komnenos, holding a model of a church in his left hand, and John the Baptist, that is, the donor and the dedicatory saint of the monastery, respectively (Fig. 1). Alexios is clearly recognizable from his famous chrysobull of September 1374, although the icon painter has given him a fuller beard. The reverse of the icon shows, from left to right, Sts. Kanidios, Eugenios, Valerianos, and Akylas (Fig. 2). The martyrs are highly individualized: Kanidios with grizzled hair and beard; Eugenios, with a jeweled chlamys that sets him off as the leading figure, and with black hair and beard arranged in a fashion strikingly similar to his appearance in the typikon of his monastery in the Vatopedi manuscript of 1346;97 Valerianos with reddish hair and beard; and the young Akylas beardless and youthful.98 It is a reasonable guess that this icon is connected to the donation documented in the chrysobull of 1374, most likely as an additional gift to the monastery. It is not mentioned in this document; one may assume that it was too insignificant to fit into a context dominated by arrangements for the housing and the long-term support of the monks. But Alexios devoted some attention to Trapezuntine pilgrims coming to Dionysiou, stating in his 93
Lazaropoulos, Logos, ed. cit., lines 303ff. (p. 220); cf. ibid., Introduction, 79f. Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 224. 95 Bishop Porfirii (Uspenskii), Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum graecorum qui in monasterio Sanctae Catharinae in monte Sina asservantur, ed. by V. Beneshevich, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1911), 159. For George Referendarios, see Bryer and Winfield, Monuments and Topography, 224; Rosenqvist, Hagiographic Dossier, 83–84 and 89–90. 96 R. Janin, Les églises et les monastères des grands centres byzantins (Paris, 1975), 269 note 3, observed the difficulty but thought that it could be resolved by means of a nonliteral interpretation of the phrase. 97 Reproduced in Chrysanthos, ÔH ejkklhsiva Trapezou'nto" (as above, note 83). 98 Description by E. N. Tsigaridas, in Treasures of Mount Athos (Thessalonike, 1997), 95–98, with color plates on pp. 96–97 (in addition, the obverse is reproduced on the dustcover of this publication). Tsigaridas notes the similarity of the two portraits of Alexios but not the similarity of the two pictures of Eugenios. 94
1
Double-sided icon, main face, Dionysiou monastery, Mount Athos, ca. 1374 (after A. Karakatsanis, ed., Treasures of Mount Athos [Thessalonike, 1997], 2.29: 96)
2
Double-sided icon, reverse, Dionysiou monastery, Mount Athos, ca. 1374 (after Treasures of Mount Athos [Thessalonike, 1997], 2.29: 97)
3
Reliquary cover, St. Eugenios and his companions in the Treasury of St. Mark’s, Venice, late 14th or early 15th century (after H. R. Hahnloser, ed., Il Tesoro di San Marco, vol. 2 [Florence, 1971], pl. XXXI)
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regulations for the new foundation that the monks should receive them as benevolently as possible.99 These pilgrims would no doubt also have had the opportunity of venerating the martyrs of their homeland in this icon. Outside Trebizond and the Pontos the iconographic evidence is very meager. The oldest image is of little significance in this context: it is a miniature in the Menologion of Basil II which shows Eugenios being decapitated.100 The picture is purely conventional and lacks any individual features. The explanation why it is found there at all is perhaps the fact that Eugenios has an entry in the Synaxarion of Constantinople.101 We know nothing of a cult of Eugenios in Constantinople, and nothing indicates that the martyrs are presented in the Menologion (and in the Synaxarion, for that matter) in their capacity as a goal for pilgrimage. The reliquary of St. Eugenios preserved in the treasury of St. Mark’s cathedral in Venice (Fig. 3) has already been mentioned. It is a small box of gilt silver, 28 by 14 cm large and 9 cm high. Its cover is decorated with an image in which the enthroned Christ, in the center, is flanked by the four figures of Eugenios and his three companions waiting to receive their martyrs’ crowns, of which Christ is holding one in each hand while the two remaining ones lie ready before his feet. The names of the martyrs are inscribed above their heads: Akylas and Eugenios on Christ’s right, Kanidios and Valerianos on his left. In comparison with the Dionysiou icon there is little individualization in the way the martyrs are represented, apart from the fact that Akylas, the youngest of the four, is beardless unlike his three companions. There is an inscription running in two lines along all four sides of the box. It refers to the image of the martyrs receiving their crowns and ends with the following words: “But I, miserable man full of sin, make you mediators of my salvation, for I wish to escape condemnation.”102 The likely date of the reliquary is now considered to be the end of the fourteenth or the first two thirds of the fifteenth century, a date before the fall of Trebizond in 1461 being more likely than a date thereafter.103 Trapezuntine provenance is surmised. The lack of individualization in the representation of the martyrs could perhaps indicate that, unlike the Dionysiou icon, the reliquary was not produced in close contact with the cult center, where iconographic details and personal facts known from the texts about the martyrs would have been familiar enough to leave more distinct traces on the reliquary. At all events the circumstances in which it was made and the relics brought to Venice are unknown. Various hypotheses have been produced: the reliquary may have been a gift to Venice by a person with a Trapezuntine connection, such as Cardinal Bessarion (perhaps in the context of the donation of his library and a number of other things, among 99
Kai; ei[per tine" . . . parabavllwsi . . . d(i)a; qewrivan kai; iJstoriv(an) kai; proskuv(n)hsin . . . , ojfeivlousin oiJ monacoi; ajspasivw" devcesqai touvtou" ktl.: N. Oikonomidès, ed., Actes de Dionysiou (Paris, 1968), 61, lines 60–61. 100 Il menologio di Basilio II, Codices e Vaticanis selecti 8 (Turin, 1907), pl. no. 335. 101 Synaxarium CP, 406.24ff. 102 See the description by A. Frolow, in H. R. Hahnloser, ed., Il Tesoro di San Marco, sotto gli auspici della Fondazione Giorgio Cini, vol. 2, Il tesoro e il museo (Florence, 1971), 39–40, with pl. XXXI; and that by W. D. Wixom, in D. Buckton, ed., The Treasure of San Marco, Venice (Milan, 1984), 201–3. Further, on the inscription more especially, see A.-M. Talbot, “Epigrams in Context: Metrical Inscriptions on Art and Architecture of the Palaiologan Era,” DOP 53 (1999): 75–90, esp. 83–84. 103 Thus Frolow (preceding note), p. 40, with convincing arguments against earlier dates suggested by previous scholars.
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which reliquaries are known to have been found); or one of the last Trapezuntine emperors, such as David Grand Komnenos; or some wealthy Trapezuntine family—perhaps one of those that fled to Crete—that wished to entertain good relations with Venice.104 The idea that the reliquary’s presence in Venice has something to do with Cardinal Bessarion may seem attractive. Still, what the context for such a connection was like and what part— if any—the cardinal played in the events remains in the dark. Did the contents of this reliquary ever attract any pilgrims? If they were brought to Venice from Trebizond, they could well derive from the relics of Eugenios and his companions preserved in the martyrs’ church in Trebizond and venerated by pilgrims, local worshipers, and imperial patrons. But we may assume reasonably safely that the Venice reliquary itself never became an object of veneration by the broad pious public. Probably this was not even intended. Whatever the circumstances that brought it to this city, the most likely context for such an object in fifteenth-century Venice would rather be one in which it played a formal role at an official level in state or church. Indeed, there are some indications that the reliquary may not even have been used for the intended purpose. An inventory of San Marco dated 1634 specifies that it contained the relics of a number of saints, among whom Eugenios and his companions do not appear.105 We know nothing about what happened to the reliquary from the time it was made up to the year 1634. Still it is difficult to understand why anybody should have removed the relics of the Trapezuntine martyrs from this box—if they were ever found there—and replaced them with the relics of some other saints. I would therefore venture the guess that the relics from Trebizond intended for the reliquary never reached Italy, perhaps as a consequence of the Turkish conquest of Trebizond in 1461. The fact that the cult of the four martyrs of Trebizond had little success outside the confines of their homeland is hardly surprising. It is more surprising to note the limitations from which their success at home too seems to have suffered. It is true that the monastery dedicated to them was an institution of great local importance. It is also true that in some respects—politically, if not economically—this importance increased after the beginnings of the empire of Trebizond. But as far as our sources allow any conclusions, it must be said that the martyrs’ relics and the miracles that these could be hoped to provide had less attraction for pious people in and outside Trebizond than one would expect, and that this situation became especially pronounced after the eleventh century. Although the relics were “richly equipped like treasures, in coffins of silver and gleaming with gold,” as Constantine Loukites described them in his Enkomion on the martyrs,106 few pilgrims appear to have felt the appeal from them and their promises of relief from pain and 104
All three suggestions are put forward by Frolow, loc. cit., and repeated by Wixom in Buckton, ed., The Treasure of San Marco, 203. 105 See R. Gallo, Il tesoro di San Marco e la sua storia, Civiltà Veneziana, Saggi 16 (Venice–Rome, 1967), 314. In addition to the identified relics, it also contained “two ampullas with the blood of anonymous martyrs,” which could possibly derive from the Trapezuntine martyrs (although four ampullas would of course be expected and needed). That would be in agreement with the inscription around the reliquary’s sides, of which the first line refers to the blood shed by the martyrs (text in Frolow [as above, note 102], 40; trans. by Talbot, “Epigrams,” 84). It seems, however, rather unlikely that exactly the relics of the four martyrs for whom the reliquary was made should have been left unidentified. Also, the Trapezuntine texts that deal with the relics never mention the blood of the martyrs but their heads (specifically) and bones (implicitly). 106 Loukites, Enkomion, ed. cit., lines 875f. (p. 166).
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trouble. During the imperial centuries of Trebizond, support from the emperor and the state strengthened the martyrs’—and especially their leader’s—position, although the involvement in local politics at times also proved perilous. Certainly, imperial support was a mighty backing to the monastery. It seems that it was unable, nonetheless, to revive the popular devotion that eventually had been lost. Postscript The fact that a seeming lack of dynamism and popular appeal characterizes the cult of St. Eugenios of Trebizond after the eleventh century—compensated for by imperial support from the thirteenth century—has been emphasized in the preceding pages. The picture of this situation as outlined there has considerable lacunas. One would have been filled by an attempt to answer the question, “If Pontic pilgrims, at least after the eleventh century, did not go to the monastery of St. Eugenios, where did they go instead?” This question was addressed in a fascinating paper, “The Pilgrim Monastery of Soumela as an Economic Paradigm,” presented by Anthony Bryer at the 20th International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Paris, in August 2001.107 According to Bryer, “the authority of Soumela lay . . . in its strategic situation,” and, soon developing into an efficient pilgrim monastery, it left little room for the urban monastery of St. Eugenios to compete. The full publication of Professor Bryer’s paper must be awaited for the necessary further insights into the role played by Soumela here. Correspondingly, my own contribution tells, at best, only half the story. Uppsala Universitet 107
See XXe Congrès International des Études Byzantines. Pré-actes. II. Tables Rondes (Paris, 2001), 90–91.
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
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Drawn to the Blazing Beacon: Visitors and Pilgrims to the Living Holy Man and the Case of Lazaros of Mount Galesion RICHARD GREENFIELD
n the well-known Gospel story of the feeding of the five thousand, a vast throng of people goes out into the countryside in pursuit of Jesus and his disciples who have taken a boat to a remote place in search of some peace and quiet. Jesus finds the crowd waiting for him when he lands and, unperturbed by this unexpected turn of events, takes pity on these people who have made the journey to see him. He welcomes his visitors and provides them with the teaching and healing they seek, before miraculously feeding them.1 As Christianity developed, a paradigm was found in this episode, along with many other similar stories in both New and Old Testaments,2 for the idea and practice of visiting living holy men. It is thus perhaps not surprising to discover abundant evidence for the continuation and rapid development of such behavior in traditions associated with some of the earliest Christian holy men.3 In the central and later periods of Byzantine history, visitors and pilgrims continued to make their way to living holy men, and it is this phenomenon that forms the topic of my paper. It should be made clear at the outset that I am examining the whole range of circumstances in which people approached living holy men, and hence I talk in this paper more of “visitors” and “visitation” than of “pilgrims” and “pilgrimage.” In the study of other societies, cultures, and periods, attempts have been made to define quite rigorously the
I
1
Mt. 14:13–22, Mk. 6:32–45, Lk. 9:10–17, Jn. 6:1–13; cf. Mt. 15:29–38, Mk. 8:1–10. See, e.g., Mt. 4:24–25, Mk. 3:7–8, Lk. 6:17–19; Mt. 13:1–2, Mk. 4:1–2, Lk. 8:4, 5:1–3; Mt. 15:1–2, Mk. 7:1– 5; Mt. 16:1, Mk. 8:11. In these stories people seek out Jesus for a variety of reasons: in the hope of healing or exorcism, to hear his teaching, to receive personal advice, to satisfy curiosity, and, occasionally, even to challenge and test his credibility. There are also many accounts of people seeking help and teaching from living holy men in the Old Testament; see, e.g., the visit of the wife of Jereboam to the prophet Ahijah, 1 Ki. 14:1– 18; or the various episodes involving the prophet Elisha in 2 Ki. 4:18–44, 5:8–19. 3 See, e.g., Athanasios, Vita Antonii, G. J. M. Bartelink, ed., Athanase d’Alexandrie: Vie d’Antoine (Paris, 1994); R. C. Gregg, trans., Athanasius, the Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (New York, 1980), 14: “Moreover when [Antony] saw the crowd, he was not annoyed any more than he was elated at being embraced by so many people. . . . Through him the Lord healed many of those present who suffered from bodily ailments; others he purged of demons, and to Antony he gave grace in speech. Thus he consoled many who mourned, and others hostile to each other he reconciled in friendship, urging everyone to prefer nothing in the world above the love of Christ.” 2
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terms pilgrim and pilgrimage and to classify and isolate behaviors and practices implicit in them.4 While such an approach may have considerable value in many of the contexts in which it has been pursued, the application of any very exact and exclusive understanding is, I believe, inappropriate and unhelpful in the present one, and my inclusive approach to the subject is thus deliberate. For the Byzantines, whose mentality was thoroughly permeated with a Platonic sense of the ideal reflected on an almost infinite number of increasingly imperfect levels, the ultimate pilgrimage was that of theosis, the journey to God in eternity. Thus everything that led to him, everything that involved the movement from earthly image to heavenly original, was, in some sense, a pilgrimage. An understanding of pilgrimage in the Byzantine world, whether to holy places, holy things, or holy people, and whether in a general or more local context, must then embrace, or at least be aware of, the full range of reflections of this ideal. When talking of Byzantine pilgrimage, a spectrum of perception, behavior, and practice should thus be envisaged, growing ever less direct and ever less clear as it passes from the approach to Christ himself on earth in the Gospel stories, through more deliberate, formal, and institutionalized pilgrimage, until it reaches that of the overtly mundane visitor approaching the most local holy object, place, or person. In Byzantine culture, a local villager visiting a nearby monastery for what might seem the most ordinary reasons was still approaching the holy and was perceived to be necessarily touched and affected by it. Although it might be confusing to apply the specific term pilgrim to such a visitor, the activity in which that person was engaged is nevertheless to be understood as being at the opposite end, perhaps, but still on the same spectrum as that of a person who might deliberately travel hundreds of miles to a relic of Christ himself in a traditionally established and officially sanctioned holy place. Thus the words visitor and visitation must be understood, whenever they are used below, as carrying with them at least some of the sense implied by the narrower and more technical terms pilgrim and pilgrimage. The topic of visitation and pilgrimage to living holy men in the Byzantine world has received very little attention in scholarly literature, although a substantial contribution has recently been made in the period of late antiquity by Georgia Frank.5 Neither she nor the other scholars whose work is of most relevance approach the subject from quite the same angle as I do, however, and so, while my paper draws on their contributions, it is primarily based on information derived directly from my own reading of Byzantine sources for the period in question.6 My principal focus is upon the late eleventh-century vita of Lazaros of Mount Galesion, which contains some of the most revealing evidence available 4 Perhaps the most apposite and helpful discussion of pilgrimage theory is that provided by J. Dubisch, In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine (Princeton, N.J., 1995), 34–48, since she deals with the phenomenon in the Greek Orthodox context, albeit in modern times; see especially pp. 45–46 for her treatment of difficulties inherent in the categorization of “pilgrimage.” Also useful for its telling analysis of problems associated with such theory when a living person, rather than a place or object, is the focus of pilgrimage is the discussion by J. Eade and M. Sallnow in the “Introduction” to their Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London–New York, 1991), 1–29. See also the brief discussion in G. Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Calif., 2000), 7–9. 5 Frank, Memory. 6 Frank, Memory, deals only with the late antique period and from a particularly literary slant. Among the work of other scholars perhaps most relevant is that of E. Malamut, Sur la route des saints byzantins (Paris, 1993), which considers the Byzantine period to the 12th century but focuses on the holy men themselves; see especially chap. 6, “Visites des pèlerins et des fidèles,” 195–229. Peter Brown’s work on the holy man is, of course, of unquestionable importance here, although again directed to late antiquity; I return to Brown’s views toward
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from the period under discussion. I then compare this material with information derived from other sources in order to highlight the typical and distinctive features of this type of behavior. Despite the length and continuity of the tradition, however, evidence of visitors to living holy men in this period is scattered and generally quite sparse. It reveals a fair amount about the overt reasons why people visited holy men, about what they did during their visits, and about the responses they received, but it says very little about their deeper individual motivations or perceptions. It is thus hard to answer the sort of questions that recent approaches to pilgrimage by social anthropologists have suggested may be crucial, but some very interesting and useful insights may still be gained by posing such questions, and this I shall do by way of conclusion. Far from being exhaustive and fully developed, my paper should be regarded as a foray into this fascinating and revealing subject, which deserves, and one hopes one day will receive, a much more thorough and penetrating study. LAZAROS OF MOUNT GALESION At the time of his death in the middle of the eleventh century, Lazaros of Mount Galesion had gained widespread recognition in the Byzantine world as a stellar example of the monastic way of life. Then in his mid-eighties, Lazaros had acquired a reputation for holiness that was founded principally upon his extraordinary ascetic conduct, for he had spent some forty years confined on top of a series of pillars on the barren mountain of Galesion, just outside Ephesos. In addition to his asceticism, however, he was known for his remarkable powers of insight, for the wisdom of his advice, and for his generosity to those who sought his help. As his reputation had spread, a cluster of substantial monastic communities had grown up around him on the mountain and in the foothills below, and visitors from all walks of life, humble and powerful, rich and poor alike, gathered to gaze in wonder at the old man who lived there exposed to all weathers with only his tattered leather tunic for shelter, seeing in him a living icon, a proof that the age of true Christian asceticism had not yet passed. the end of this paper. Among his writings see particularly “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” JRS 61 (1971): 80–101, repr. in his Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley–Los Angeles, 1982), 103–52; “Town, Village and Holy Man: The Case of Syria,” in D. M. Pippidi, ed., Assimilation et résistance à la culture gréco-romaine dans le monde ancien (Bucharest, 1976), 213–20, repr. in Society and the Holy, 153–65; Authority and the Sacred (Cambridge, 1995), especially chap. 3, “Arbiters of the Holy: The Christian Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” 57–78. Also valuable on the same period is S. A. Harvey’s work, especially Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints (Berkeley, Calif., 1990). On pilgrimage to the living in antiquity see B. Kötting, “Wallfahrten zu lebenden Personen im Altertum,” in Wallfahrt kennt keine Grenzen, ed. L. Kriss-Rettenbeck and G. Mohler (Munich–Zurich, 1984), 226–34; cf. idem, Peregrinatio Religiosa (Regensburg, 1950). There is no sustained consideration of the topic of pilgrimage to the living in other works on Byzantine pilgrimage, e.g., in R. Ousterhout, ed., The Blessings of Pilgrimage (Urbana–Chicago, Ill., 1990), although Gary Vikan is careful to include reference to it in many of his studies of Byzantine pilgrimage and its art, e.g., “Art, Medicine, and Magic in Early Byzantium,” DOP 38 (1984): 65–86, or “Byzantine Pilgrims’ Art,” in L. Safran, ed., Heaven on Earth (University Park, Pa., 1998), 227–66. This mirrors a similar paucity of treatment in studies of pilgrimage in other times and places; to take but two examples, in M. L. and S. Nolan, Christian Pilgrimage in Modern Western Europe (Chapel Hill, N.C.–London, 1989) there is scarcely a mention, while among the nine papers collected under the title “Pilgrimage and Modernity” in Social Compass 36.2 (1989), only one, that of E. Pace, “Pilgrimage as a Spiritual Journey,” 229–44, deals with the phenomenon.
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Almost all that is known about Lazaros comes from his primary vita, a work written a decade or so after his death by a disciple and prominent member of his community, Gregory the Cellarer.7 Although of considerable length, this is, nevertheless, a refreshingly vivid piece of hagiography that provides not only a wealth of material on Lazaros himself, but also valuable information on Byzantine life in the first half of the eleventh century. The vita, moreover, is not simply an encomium. It shows that, while Lazaros’s reputation, his authority, and, indeed, his holiness were accepted by many, they were questioned and challenged, sometimes with surprising hostility and even violence, by others in the local church, among his neighbors, and even among his own monks. This then is the context of visitation and pilgrimage to him, something that evidently began in his early years on a column below Galesion from about 1011–19 and continued, growing in volume over the years, until it reached a peak in the decade or so before his death in 1053 when he was on his third and final column high on the mountain at the community of the Resurrection. THE PRACTICE OF VISITING LAZAROS The first thing to be examined here is what people actually did when they went to see Lazaros. Visits to him, certainly after he was well established on Galesion, seem to have followed a fairly set pattern of activity. The journey up from Ephesos or its surrounding villages was a difficult and potentially dangerous one—the climb was steep, and there was at least one very narrow pass to negotiate.8 Most visitors and pilgrims seem to have made the journey on foot, but those of superior social standing rode up.9 When they reached their destination, they found themselves in the monastery courtyard,10 where they were probably greeted by one or more of the monks.11 At this point, however, most people were undoubtedly concerned only with the primary object of their visit, for it was here that they first caught sight of Lazaros on his column. Most were deeply impressed when suddenly confronted by the goal of their journey, but some were completely overcome by the sight 7
H. Delehaye, ed., AASS Nov. 3:508–88. For English translation and commentary see R. P. H. Greenfield, The Life of Lazaros of Mt. Galesion: An Eleventh-Century Pillar Saint (Washington, D.C., 2000); other versions of the vita are discussed there, 58–61. 8 The notorious Chalkos Halonios area; see v. Laz., chaps. 41, 56, 77, 154, 155. Over the years the main route came to be punctuated by a series of marked locations that probably served as a combination of shrine, signpost, and resting place; see, e.g., for places marked by a cross, chaps. 41, 77, 154, 155, 174, 176, 199. The path must also have passed near or actually through the three still functioning but earlier monastic foundations of St. Marina, the Savior, and the Theotokos, on its way up to the Resurrection; it may also have led past one or more of the chapels mentioned in the vita. The route was passable even in winter, but was apparently much more difficult, especially when obscured by snow; see chaps. 176, 238. Almost everyone came up from Ephesos, but there was evidently at least one other route, although it was not used by pilgrims or most visitors; see chap. 64 and cf. chap. 207. 9 So the visiting superior, v. Laz., chap. 237, or a visiting ecclesiastical dignitary, chap. 238; cf. the eunuch in a dream, chap. 207. Those making deliveries probably led their animals in the normal way but may have ridden them when there was room. Some, like the thematic judge Nikephoros Proteuon, walked, evidently hoping to maximize the effect, or impression, of their experience, chap. 119. 10 Although the monasteries were unwalled, there was a definite entranceway; see v. Laz., chap. 144. Those who arrived too late in the day evidently spent the night outside under a tree or at some other suitable place, chap. 243; cf. chap. 132. Riders would dismount in the courtyard, unless, like one visitor hoping to catch Lazaros unawares, they had already tied their animals to a tree outside, chap. 238. There was a stable in at least one of the monasteries, chap. 144. 11 So v. Laz., chap. 88; cf. chap. 238.
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of this blazing beacon, this animated relic, this living icon, this earthly angel: one layman is said to have fallen to the ground as if he had been shot and lain there in a pool of tears.12 The effect on others, however, was evidently less moving, and they simply continued with their discussions, in some cases even carrying on quarrels and trading insults.13 Usually people seem to have gone up to see Lazaros straightaway,14 either individually or in small groups.15 To do so, they climbed a ladder which led up to the top of the column where there was a platform large enough for at least two or three people to stand and for someone to sit down. Although Lazaros could be seen by those in the courtyard below when he was standing up,16 those on the platform were separated from him by a wall of some sort which partially enclosed the top of the pillar, and they were unable to see him, or he them, unless he opened the small window that provided access both for communication and for passing things to and fro.17 An interview with Lazaros normally began with a formal greeting18 and was followed by a conversation that included the visitors’ requests for advice, spiritual or material help, and so forth, as well as Lazaros’s responses and words of comfort or wisdom. The interview, which could sometimes be quite lengthy, closed in most cases with a confession from the visitor followed by more advice and penitential suggestions from Lazaros, culminating in his blessing. Occasionally a visitor would ask for, and receive from Lazaros, a token of some sort to be used as a phylactery,19 or would be given money or a note authorizing the provision of goods or clothing by the cellarer.20 The visitor would then prostrate him- or herself and descend the ladder again. Sometimes, however, things did not go according to plan or follow the usual pattern. For example, a woman, overcome by her emotions after her confession and absolution, dared to lean in and kiss Lazaros on the cheek,21 and a demoniac went rushing up and started screaming insults while he hammered and spat on the window. Lazaros sensibly kept it closed on that occasion.22 12
V. Laz., chap. 116. A female visitor stood rooted to the spot, beating her breast and weeping so profusely that her dress was soaked through, chap. 117; cf. chaps. 56, 84, 112, 113. 13 V. Laz., chaps. 120, 122; cf. chap. 125. 14 But see, e.g., v. Laz., chap. 84, where the monk Photios first checks out the sacraments reserved for Lazaros in the church; chap. 238, where Nicholas is first offered a meal; and chap. 117, where the same may have happened with a group visit. The exact sequence of events certainly depended on a number of variable factors: the time of day people arrived, how many there were, how busy Lazaros was, what was happening, both routine and extraordinary, in the monastery, even on the weather. 15 V. Laz., chap. 91, e.g. 16 V. Laz., chaps. 108, 236, e.g. He himself evidently had a clear view not only of the courtyard but over the whole monastery and much of the surrounding terrain. 17 On the layout and construction of his column, see Greenfield, Lazaros, 17–20. 18 This included saying the trisagion (see v. Laz., chaps. 107, 114) and some sort of identification on the part of visitors, unless they were being introduced by a monk who knew them, chap. 72, e.g. 19 V. Laz., chaps. 75, 113; cf. the holy oil mentioned in chap. 76. Further on the practice of issuing such objects, see below, p. 216. 20 V. Laz., chaps. 89, 145, 146, 248. 21 V. Laz., chap. 117; cf. chap. 75. It is worth noting that, despite social conventions, which might be imagined to have discouraged such practice, it was evidently not unusual for women to make the trek up the mountain. In only one case is Lazaros said to have viewed this as inappropriate, that of a nun disguised as a man while traveling with other pilgrims to Jerusalem, chap. 95. Some of Lazaros’s monks and neighboring villagers appear to have been less open, however: see, e.g., the criticism and action prompted by frequent visits on the part of a woman from Ephesos, chaps. 56–57. 22 V. Laz., chap. 219. On another occasion a distinguished visiting ascetic went so far as to force the top half of his body in through Lazaros’s window in order to examine him more closely and, apparently horrified by
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During the interview, those on the platform could evidently be seen by people below,23 and so if anything unusual transpired or else if visitors were well known or distinguished in some way, when they came down from the pillar they might find themselves beset in the courtyard by some of the monks, curious to know what had happened or eager to hear some new evidence of their superior’s wisdom and insight.24 Other visitors were themselves eager to share their elation and amazement with any who happened to be around.25 Indeed, the courtyard of the monastery seems to have been a lively place, especially when there were a lot of visitors, as apparently there often were. At peak times, such as festivals, there must have been many people milling about, and descriptions of Lazaros overhearing, and resolving, disputes going on between visitors, whether about biblical interpretation or real estate, probably belong in this context.26 Mention, too, of beggars “often” standing in front of the pillar helps to fill out the picture, for they would undoubtedly have hoped to receive alms from other visitors and pilgrims as well as from Lazaros himself;27 the monks would also have been keeping an eye on them, for sometimes Lazaros would tell such people to go into the brothers’ cells and take any spare clothing they found there for themselves.28 Add to all this the bustle of monks going about their routine tasks and the intermittent arrival of animals and their drivers making deliveries of food, materials, or water, and one starts to get some impression of the atmosphere that greeted pilgrims and visitors when they entered the courtyard in Lazaros’s heyday. During their time at the monastery, visitors went into the church to look around and pray and probably joined in the offices when they were being said,29 and, at least once a year on the feast day of the biblical Lazaros, they came for the blessing and distribution of holy oil.30 When a venerable and bedridden ascetic in the monastery was patiently suffering his final and particularly unpleasant illness, visitors of all kinds would be sent by Lazaros to see this new Job, as he described him,31 and one passage makes clear that a group of visitors might be treated to a homily from Lazaros himself as they stood around the base of his pillar.32 After the homily, on the occasion mentioned, some monks ushered the visitors to the
the conditions he found, started trying to tear the column down because he claimed it was too much for anyone to bear, chap. 114. Again, an important visitor started holding forth about wars and worldly affairs in an interview, only to find Lazaros had turned his back on him and was refusing to speak, chap. 118. 23 Although their conversation could not be heard unless they chose to address them directly; see v. Laz., chap. 114. 24 V. Laz., chaps. 72, 87, e.g. On one occasion, some of the brothers gathered to laugh at the greed of a poor man who was being laden with food and other provisions on Lazaros’s orders, only to be brusquely told off from above and instructed to help him instead of mocking him, chap. 146. 25 V. Laz., chap. 107, e.g. 26 V. Laz., chaps. 120, 122. 27 V. Laz., chap. 248; cf. chap. 89. 28 V. Laz., chap. 145. 29 V. Laz., chaps. 63, 219, e.g. 30 V. Laz., chap. 76. 31 V. Laz., chap. 168. 32 V. Laz., chap. 95. In doing so they were probably joining the monks rather than receiving special treatment, for Lazaros was evidently accustomed to address his followers in this way, using clear straightforward language rather than heavy rhetoric and making extensive use of examples and extracts from the lives of the early ascetic fathers which he loved to read to his audience; see chap. 128.
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guest house for a meal. The vita refers to this feeding of visitors on several occasions and makes clear that it was part of the customary practice of the monastery. At one point, when Lazaros tells a suspicious visiting ecclesiastic, who has just made the arduous journey up the mountain in deep snow, to go and have a meal in the kitchen before he does anything else, Gregory the Cellarer adds, “For this was always the father’s custom, and whatever time anyone came up to the monastery he would tell them to receive a meal.”33 This meal (the Greek word used is diakrisis)34 was taken by lay visitors in the guest house and by visiting monks, no matter how disreputable, in the refectory, although the latter practice evidently upset some of the regular brethren who complained to Lazaros.35 By the end of his life this had clearly become quite an undertaking, and Gregory who, as cellarer, was involved in the actual logistics of carrying it out, regards as miraculous the fact that “so many guests” could be maintained “in the monastery every day,”36 and that two or even three sittings in the refectory were necessary to accommodate them.37 Lazaros, however, was insistent that this was part of the duty of the monastery and that visitors, both lay and monastic, should receive adequate food and drink even in times of shortage.38 Indeed, Lazaros evidently went so far as to suggest that it was in order to care for the visitors and beggars in this way that the Lord had allowed his monasteries to be founded and to flourish in such bleak and barren surroundings.39 How substantial a meal visitors received is unclear; in times of famine large numbers of people evidently came simply for the food they would be given,40 but on one occasion a visiting dignitary arranged for his own supply of fish to be taken up, so that he would be able to have what he considered something proper to eat.41 Gregory’s insistence that this meal was customary on Galesion may perhaps be an indication that this was not so elsewhere. Many visitors undoubtedly left the same day that they arrived, going down the mountain in the company of those they had met at the monastery,42 but a significant number seem to have stayed longer. The monastery boasted a guest house, looked after by a guest master,43 and, by the end of Lazaros’s life at least, an archontarion, where special guests could stay and sleep in the (comparative and perhaps dubious) luxury of the only two beds on the mountain.44 In general Lazaros let people stay as long as they liked, but this practice irked some of his own monks who complained vehemently and repeatedly about 33
V. Laz., chap. 238. See also chaps. 32, 95, 105, 117, 118. Further on the use of the term in this context see P. Karlin-Hayter, “Lexicographical Notes,” Byzantion 55 (1985): 589–90; E. Trapp, ed., Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität (Vienna, 1994– ), s.vv. diakrisis, diakrinomai; and Greenfield, Lazaros, 185–86 note 422. 35 V. Laz., chap. 150, e.g. When a visiting monk arrives in the middle of normal mealtime he is provided with food in the cell of one of the brothers following his interview with Lazaros, chap. 84. 36 V. Laz., chap. 79. 37 V. Laz., chap. 109. 38 V. Laz., chaps. 150–51, 210–13. Laymen received only one measure of wine instead of two, chap. 213. 39 V. Laz., chaps. 210, 211, 213; cf. chap. 151. 40 V. Laz., chap. 210. 41 V. Laz., chap. 107. 42 V. Laz., chap. 75. In the early years it is probable that they had to be guided down by someone who knew the way, chap. 46. 43 V. Laz., chap. 150. This was probably reserved for lay visitors, while visiting monks had special cells to stay in; cf. chap. 162. 44 V. Laz., chap. 162. 34
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abuses of their hospitality which resulted.45 A number of those who came for longer periods were testing their monastic vocation,46 while some, who had already been tonsured, clearly wished to experience the exceptional quality of life on Galesion for a time.47 Other visitors stayed while they received medical attention or underwent rituals of exorcism which might last a number of days,48 but others again, perhaps the majority, came simply for shelter for a while, including numbers of “vagrant” monks. Although high-ranking guests were obviously treated better than their counterparts of lower social standing,49 at least some of the visitors staying at the monasteries were expected to work. Indeed, it would seem that they might be asked to perform some of the worst jobs, such as hauling water from the river in winter,50 gathering wild leeks high among the mountain crags,51 or shelling beans by hand,52 tasks which they might perform virtuously or not as the case might be.53 MOTIVES FOR VISITING LAZAROS The second question to be examined here is what drew people to Lazaros. What does the vita reveal about people’s motives for visiting him and his communities on Galesion? This is a question to which there is no simple answer. One does not need a profound understanding of human nature to know that, whatever the context and whatever the period, people’s actions may appear to be undertaken for simple reasons but, on analysis, will be found to involve far more complex and multilayered motivations. Thus, although some of the primary reasons why people visited Lazaros may be listed relatively simply, in each case it must be remembered that the overt goal of a visit will almost always conceal or include other less obvious but often no less important goals. There are, for example, several references in the vita to locals supplying the monks with the materials and food that they needed to survive on Galesion, and it is perhaps worth reflecting for a moment on the possible motivations involved in a visit to Lazaros’s monastery by such a neighborhood farmer in order to illustrate the possible complexity that lurks beneath even such an apparently simple visit as one to deliver goods. Just by making the long and difficult trek up the mountain to the monastery the farmer was, to the Byzantine mind at least, performing an act of spiritual as well as material significance; sweat was being shed in a good cause, and, for a few hours, he was moving from the ordinary world into a holy place which possessed inherent qualities and advantages. He would 45 In the end Lazaros was forced to rule that he would comply with standard practice at other monasteries and order the guest master to see that visitors left after three days, but he secretly instructed those concerned to be generous rather than legalistic in their interpretation of this rule, effectively annulling it, v. Laz., chap. 151. 46 V. Laz., chap. 131, e.g. 47 V. Laz., chap. 114. 48 V. Laz., chaps. 70, 73, 151. 49 V. Laz., chap. 227; cf. chap. 162. 50 V. Laz., chap. 176; the monk in question had his beard pulled out as the tips were whipped by the wind against the water skins and froze to them. 51 V. Laz., chap. 131; the man fell to his death. 52 V. Laz., chap. 150. 53 Ibid.; cf. the light-fingered layman who was set to work in the bakery and at other jobs for the cellarer, chap. 241.
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surely believe that saying a prayer in the monastery chapel, watched over by a “living angel,” was more effective than praying down in the village church, while seeing the holy man himself, perhaps exchanging some words with him and maybe even making a confession to him and receiving his absolution, would provide him with an invaluable spiritual boost for months or years to come. Again, the spiritual credit to be earned by supplying a monastery in which a powerful holy man lived would necessarily be a consideration in a society where influence and connection were everything. Even if a fairly substantial material cost were involved in such a visit for the farmer, it would surely still be worthwhile if it meant having someone like Lazaros to put in a good word for him on Judgment Day; in the shorter term, such a powerful friend in the heavenly court might well be thought to have the practical effect of improving next year’s harvest and the like. Quite apart from such considerations, there was usually a crowd of visitors at the monastery, and so a journey there could well be a valuable social experience for the farmer, a chance to meet people from far away, hear the gossip from near at hand, even see some of the rich and famous. Last but not least, there was always something to eat and drink at the monastery, and few people can resist a free lunch. To start at the most obvious level of motivation, then, some people did indeed go to Lazaros with the purpose of providing service to him, to his monasteries, or to their inhabitants. In addition to general references to faithful Christians in the vicinity supplying food,54 there are specific mentions of individuals, both monks and laymen, engaged in this sort of activity. A devoted widow, for instance, makes herself a nuisance at Lazaros’s first monastery by constantly going up to provide him “with anything that he might need,”55 and on another occasion a boy is sent to Lazaros with honeycombs from a nearby village.56 The monasteries were largely self-sufficient and could call on the services of both skilled or semiskilled craftsmen and laborers from within their own flock to do most things that needed doing, but at times, particularly of large-scale construction, people from outside the community went to assist or find employment.57 Others went to work for food and lodging in times of crisis.58 Other individuals went to the monastery to bring messages or as servants of distinguished visitors rather than directly for their own purposes, like the messenger who was sent by the exiled would-be emperor, Constantine Barys.59 The need to be cautious in being too simplistic about the motivation of individuals even in these circumstances is, however, shown by another messenger who brought Lazaros a letter from a protospatharios in 54
Implicit in v. Laz., chaps. 32, 34; cf. chap. 245. V. Laz., chap. 56. 56 V. Laz., chap. 65. Cf. chap. 209, which mentions two monks, sent by the ekklesiarches (or sacristan) at the nearby monastery of Limnai, arriving at the monastery with a pair of mules laden with bread, oil, and wine. 57 The locals at the site of Lazaros’s first monastic experiment near Attaleia quarried a road up the mountain to him and built a chapel and cells for the brothers, v. Laz., chap. 11. At St. Marina, Lazaros’s first establishment near Ephesos in the foothills of Galesion, the monks received help from “some of the Christian faithful” to build their cells, chap. 33; and much later, when the community was at its largest and the monastery of the Resurrection being developed, a named layman, Pantoleon, was doing some work in the monastery, chap. 206. 58 V. Laz., chap. 241. As has been mentioned, most visitors who stayed any length of time were apparently expected to help with the chores, chaps. 150, 176. 59 V. Laz., chap. 105. Cf. an interpreter with a recently converted Arab, chap. 113; or a servant accompanying a monk from Constantinople, chap. 252. 55
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Attaleia, for this messenger was someone who had been miraculously cured by Lazaros sometime before and who thus also had his own reasons for returning to Galesion.60 Other visitors had more obviously spiritual motives, although they may still be classed with those offering or seeking service. Someone, for example, who went to the monastery to present an endowment in person rather than through a messenger or intermediary;61 or someone like the secular priest who used to go up to Lazaros to celebrate the eucharist for him when he was first at the Theotokos.62 A particular group of this sort, who evidently came to the monastery in quite large numbers, were those seeking to be tonsured by Lazaros, the would-be monks. Like Lazaros’s other visitors, these people came from near and far, were young and old, rich and poor.63 Some were undoubtedly drawn by the attractive proposition (a strictly ascetic attraction) of becoming monks in the challenging and demanding environment of Galesion itself,64 but for most the biggest draw was undoubtedly Lazaros’s reputation as a good spiritual father and mentor to the brothers of his flock.65 A few, but presumably not most, came because he was also known to be an easy touch when it came to getting a tonsure and would admit almost anyone without much delay or testing of vocation.66 Like these monastic hopefuls, most people who went to visit Lazaros were undoubtedly drawn primarily by his reputation. The vita refers at a number of points to Lazaros’s reputation spreading far and wide, and, as the title of this paper suggests, the author likes to use the image of a brilliant or blazing beacon to describe the way in which he drew people to him,67 but simply to leave things at this general level of explanation would be unhelpful. The nature and effect of this reputation as a motive for visiting Lazaros need more careful analysis. By the end of his career people all over the Byzantine world from Bulgaria to the Middle East had heard about Lazaros but in fact, on the evidence of the vita, only a few, if any, deliberately traveled far to see him.68 Much more often, it would seem, his visitors either came from some relatively local origin,69 from the vicinity and hinterland of Ephesos itself or at least from southeastern Anatolia,70 or else they were people who happened to 60
V. Laz., chap. 72. Cf. the person deputed by a sailor to bring his promised annual endowment, chap. 75; the slave accompanying Theophylact Sagopoulos, chap. 107; Kyriakos Galesiotes and his friend accompanying the miraculously preserved layman who has fallen over a cliff, chap. 243; or even the imperial eunuch bringing a message in a dream, chap. 207. At a similar level, at least superficially, are those who came to obtain a permission, e.g. locals at Attaleia wanting to gather honeycomb, chap. 13. 61 So the sailor who had been saved from the perils of the sea by Lazaros’s prayer and had promised to bring him half of his profits each year (or to send a deputy if he could not get there himself ), v. Laz., chap. 75. Cf., perhaps, the bishop of Philetos, chap. 11; or the benefactresses Iouditta, chap. 33, and Irene, chap. 56. 62 V. Laz., chap. 64. 63 V. Laz., chaps. 33, 56, 73, 75, 96, 131, 227, 234, 243. 64 So the monk of v. Laz., chap. 61, e.g. 65 As witnessed by v. Laz., chap. 187. But compare the view of Lazaros in this respect expressed by the diabolical old man in chap. 218, and implied by the criticism of chap. 143, suggesting that sometimes he would grow impatient and even violent with some of his younger charges. 66 So, obviously, the fraudulent Damianos Thalassenos of v. Laz., chap. 227. But see also the criticism leveled at Lazaros in chaps. 143, 152, 231–32, 239–40. 67 V. Laz., chaps. 36, 111, 128. 68 Possible examples may be found in the monk Photios of v. Laz., chap. 84, and the distinguished monk from Constantinople of chap. 252. 69 So, e.g., those at Attaleia, v. Laz., chaps. 11, 13–14. 70 V. Laz., chaps. 32, 56.
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be passing through the port of Phygela or the city of Ephesos for some other reason, perhaps often as pilgrims to the basilica of St. John and the other notable sites in the vicinity. These latter went to see Lazaros sometimes because they already knew about him before they arrived, sometimes because they heard about him there. A sailor who believed he had been saved from shipwreck due to the invocation by one of his passengers of Lazaros’s prayer thus went to see him when “some time later [he] happened to come to Phygela,”71 and a monk from the West who was visiting Ephesos to pray heard tales of Lazaros’s extraordinary asceticism and so paid him a visit.72 If the evidence of the vita is accurate in this respect, it means that Lazaros’s reputation was responsible for arousing, at the most basic level, the motive of curiosity in these people. For many this may indeed have been an influential reason for visiting him.73 Lazaros’s initial spot on the foothills of Galesion at St. Marina just outside Ephesos clearly threatened to turn into what might today be described as a tourist attraction, being close to the main road and highly accessible: “Because the father was living in this superior way. . . . And because the monastery was near the road, everyone that passed by there used to go up to him,” says Gregory the Cellarer.74 So people whom we might well label sightseers probably formed a significant proportion of Lazaros’s visitors, but if to their simple curiosity is added the almost inescapable sense, for Byzantines, that spiritual benefit, however vague, might well accrue as a result of such a visit, then even here the nature of the attraction must be regarded as more complex than might appear at first glance. The vita describes or alludes to visits by quite a number of officials and notables of more or less high rank, and these people may be considered as a special group. Perhaps the most prominent person to trek up the mountain was the exalted and then imperially favored strategos, Romanos Skleros,75 but Lazaros was also visited by at least two thematic judges,76 a topoteretes,77 an episkeptites, and a dioiketes.78 For people like these, who held 71
V. Laz., chap. 75. V. Laz., chap. 60. So also the nun disguised as a man on her way to Jerusalem who was visiting Ephesos with a group of pilgrims and who followed along when she saw other visitors going up to Lazaros, chap. 95; the Georgian ascetic from Palestine who had stopped at Ephesos on his way to Constantinople and who went up to check Lazaros out after hearing about him from the metropolitan and his clergy, chap. 114; or, perhaps, the Arab baptized by the metropolitan who does the same, chap. 113. 73 See perhaps various Jews, v. Laz., chap. 112; and a Paulician, chap. 115. Note also the suggestion that, although Lazaros denies it, everyone else in the monastery knows that it is because of his reputation that so many visitors go up to the monastery, chap. 151; cf. chap. 62. 74 V. Laz., chap. 36. 75 V. Laz., chap. 87; cf. chap. 245. 76 These are Nikephoros Kampan<ar>es, Nikephoros son of Euthymios, and Nikephoros Proteuon, v. Laz., chaps. 102, 106, 119, two of whom are probably the same individual. It is impossible to tell which two are to be identified; see Greenfield, Lazaros, 194 note 447, 198 note 463, 208 note 494. 77 V. Laz., chap. 118. The man is not named. 78 V. Laz., chap. 103. Both offices were held by the same man, John of Mita, at the time of separate visits. It would seem such visits were not particularly rare, for, as already mentioned, Gregory the Cellarer refers to two beds being installed when the archontarion was built, specifically for distinguished laymen who visited the monastery (apparently that of the Resurrection), chap. 162. Other evidently important people are referred to by name but without office, e.g., Theophylact Sagopoulos, chap. 107, and perhaps Kosmas Konidiares, chap. 98. Note also the Makrembolites of chap. 101 and the fraudulent Thalassenos of chap. 227. On visits by such people see also R. Morris, “The Political Saint of the Eleventh Century,” in The Byzantine Saint, ed. S. Hackel (London, 1981), 48–49; eadem, “The Byzantine Aristocracy and the Monasteries,” in The Byzantine Aristocracy, IX to XIII Centuries, ed. M. Angold (Oxford, 1984), 115; eadem, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium 843–1118 (Cambridge, 1995), 104–6. 72
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office in the vicinity, it was presumably prudent, quite apart from any personal spiritual motivation, to try to get the local holy man on their side, or at least not to offend him by ignoring his popular presence. It may well also have been wise to investigate his validity and make sure some serious religious fraud was not taking place on their patch, especially if doubts were in circulation, as they evidently were in Lazaros’s case. The same seems also to be true of a series of distinguished ecclesiastical visitors who are mentioned in the vita.79 While Lazaros’s general reputation undoubtedly drew many, it was his reputation in a number of particular, specialized areas that drew others. Lazaros thus had widespread renown for various aspects of his wisdom, such as his ability to prophesy the future, to read the secrets of the human heart and, as a result, both to elicit a thorough and cathartic confession and to deliver sound and helpful advice. After Lazaros foretold the unfortunate accident that caused the death of a local honey collector at his first solitary retreat near Attaleia, he was hailed as a prophet by the villagers. So great was the reputation he gained that he was eventually forced to leave the area as a result of the consequent flood of visitors.80 At Galesion a similar reputation developed. He was popularly known to be able to predict the length of someone’s life, even down to the very day they would die,81 as well as the course of that life, particularly as it involved perseverance in the monastic vocation.82 Perhaps more impressive, to some at least, was his skill at foretelling the outcome of developing political situations, something he apparently demonstrated most clearly at the time of the overthrow of Michael V Kalaphates in April 1042.83 His reputation in this regard evidently prompted a number of visits either from imperial hopefuls themselves or from their trusted messengers.84 Even more importantly, Lazaros seems to have gained the reputation of having predicted the rise to power of Constantine Monomachos and, as a result, the imperial favor and endowment with which the visit by Romanos Skleros may well have been connected.85 Gregory, the author of the vita, is careful to point out for his own reasons (involving the local ecclesiastical politics in which Galesion was embroiled) that the prediction was in fact made by an unscrupulous monk associated with the monastery. But he reveals how widespread Lazaros’s reputation in this 79
So the bishop of Philetos at Attaleia, v. Laz., chap. 11; an impressive Georgian ascetic called Jeremiah, chap. 114; a distinguished monk from Constantinople, chap. 252; a monastic superior called Michael, chap. 237; or one Nicholas who later became oikonomos to the bishop of Batheia, chap. 238. 80 V. Laz., chaps. 13–14. 81 V. Laz., chap. 93; cf. also chaps. 94, 97, 101, 103–4, 227. 82 V. Laz., chaps. 98–100, e.g. 83 V. Laz., chap. 102. 84 The exiled Constantine Barys was prepared to pay handsomely for Lazaros’s inside knowledge of his chances while he prepared a rebellion against Constantine IX Monomachos, v. Laz. chap. 105; and, earlier, an unidentified member of the Makrembolites family had visited Lazaros, perhaps in similar circumstances, with a request for him “to pray that he might enter Constantinople in good health” (and, presumably, some indication of whether or not he might do so), chap. 101. In both cases the visitor obtained a response, although in neither case was it the one for which they had probably hoped; in the former Lazaros refused the proffered donation and made veiled hints about the failure of the enterprise (which were proved correct when Barys went ahead anyway and ended up losing his tongue); in the latter he correctly foretold that Makrembolites would die before he even made it out of the district, let alone to Constantinople. Another political exile, Nikephoros Proteuon, wanted to write to Lazaros while he was in what he considered to be unjust exile to seek his prayers for help, chap. 106. 85 V. Laz., chap. 230, and see Greenfield, Lazaros, 41–48 on this question. The visit of Romanos is described in v. Laz., chap. 87.
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respect was when he reports that, on an earlier mission while this same monk was on a preaching trip that ended up in Bulgaria, he was in the habit of telling everyone for his own nefarious purposes that “‘The father [Lazaros] who has sent me out on this mission is a prophet and, because he has the gift of prognosis and precognition, he predicts to all the people who come to him what will befall each in the future. And so, because he has also given me this gift through prayer, he has sent me out to teach and to prophesy to everyone about everything.’” Gregory concludes: “By saying this <sort of> thing he persuaded almost everyone that this was the case, especially when they heard the father’s name <mentioned>.”86 Lazaros’s reputation for possessing the grace of being able to see and reveal to people “the secret things of their hearts”87 perhaps proved an attraction to a wider group of visitors. It is clear that many people came to him specifically for the purpose of making their confession, while many others ended up doing so, whether they had intended to or not. For most, it would appear, confession was one of the principal elements of a visit to Lazaros.88 As with any successful psychoanalyst today, part of the attraction was that he was evidently very good at getting people to unburden themselves of things they found hard to get out, things that had been weighing on their consciences.89 Trust was another factor. People seem to have believed that their secrets would be completely safe with Lazaros, whereas with some other confessors confidentiality was not always assured—Lazaros himself once recounted to Gregory the salutary tale of a local confessor who was sufficiently unprofessional as to reveal the identity of a woman’s lover to her husband, an error that sadly led to her murder.90 The quality of the advice that followed confession, the nature of the “therapy” prescribed by Lazaros, was also a key element both in attracting visitors and in sending them away satisfied enough to spread the word. Gregory describes how people would visit Lazaros every day with this sort of concern and asks: “Who would be able to tell in detail, case by case, how those who had fallen into various sins obtained appropriate <spiritual> healing from him in a most discriminating fashion?”91 It is unclear of what 86
V. Laz., chap. 228; cf. chap. 78. V. Laz., chap. 78. 88 A particularly clear example is provided in v. Laz., chap. 117; cf. also, e.g., chaps. 63, 75, 93, 94, 104, 116. 89 Typical, perhaps, is the account of a man who was struck dumb with embarrassment at the crucial moment; as he stood there by Lazaros’s little window, unable to speak, he heard Lazaros patiently ask him several times what it was he wanted to say and then, when he still remained tongue-tied, listened in amazement as the holy man named first one and then another of his sins and so led him to confess the rest himself, v. Laz., chap. 96; at other times Lazaros might bully the confession out of an unwilling visitor for the good of his soul, as on the occasion he refused to dismiss the monk Meletios until he had heard what he knew the man needed to tell him, chap. 226. 90 V. Laz., chap. 127. A vivid example of Lazaros’s own scrupulous respect for the confidence of the confessional is provided by the story of a local priest’s wife who, having suffered years of abuse, finally resorted to magic in an attempt to drive her husband insane and so provide her with grounds for divorce. The plan backfired, however, when the priest gave to his congregation at the eucharist the foully doctored wine she had concocted for him. The distraught woman hurried to Lazaros as fast as she could and confessed her sin. Her husband, still unaware of what had happened, but puzzled by his wife’s erratic behavior, followed her up the mountain and unfortunately arrived while she was still at the monastery. But when the couple approached the holy man together, Lazaros refused to say anything about why the woman had gone to him and advised the priest not to inquire any further. Like his wife, the priest was to go immediately to a monastery and, none the wiser, was to see nothing more of her ever again, chaps. 125–26. 91 V. Laz., chap. 124; cf. chaps. 36, 123. 87
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exactly this advice consisted, but there appears to have been a range of responses depending on circumstances. These evidently involved suitable penance, regulation of future conduct, prescription of specific actions or avoidance of specific activities, and practical suggestions that were sometimes even accompanied by material assistance. One recurring theme, although how common is hard to tell, was encouragement in the right circumstances to adopt the monastic way of life.92 But above all Lazaros’s responses included words of comfort and created the necessary sense of forgiveness, so that those who confessed to him went on their way with their minds healed and at peace.93 Undoubtedly good advice about future behavior and spiritual well-being normally followed confession, but other people seem to have gone up the mountain specifically for advice on a large range of matters not only spiritual but also material. Advice was clearly often sought at times of crisis,94 but it was also looked for as a matter of course,95 and perhaps was not even the main motive for visiting Lazaros. If someone had made the journey for another reason, or simply out of vague interest or curiosity, it would surely have been tempting to seek advice while they were there about any problem that was bothering them.96 The vita refers to the fact that a lot of people, especially at festivals, would bring questions about their everyday lives to Lazaros, such as disputes about real estate and the like. Unfortunately details are not provided, but such arguments in progress were evidently taken up the mountain and continued in the monastery; Lazaros is said to have waited patiently for the quarrels and insults to die down and then to have settled the issue with a few calm and well-chosen words.97 One special area of advice for which Lazaros apparently gained a reputation concerned the foundation of new monastic communities and the details of the rules that would govern them, something doubtless due to the obvious and visible success of his own foundations in such an unpromising and hostile environment as Galesion. As in so many other areas, his advice here tended to be liberal, kind, and considerate, rather than harsh or legalistic.98 Another element of Lazaros’s reputation which drew visitors was the power believed to reside in his blessing or prayer (for which the Greek term euche is always used). Indeed, the desire to receive this blessing is the commonest specific reason provided in the vita as to why people went to see him in person.99 There is also good evidence to suggest that, 92
V. Laz., chaps. 73, 123, 125–26. See esp. v. Laz., chap. 123; also chap. 118, where Gregory describes how one visitor had his ears filled “with salvific and spiritually helpful words that rolled serenely and soothingly from [Lazaros’s] holy tongue,” and how, consequently, when he went away, his heart was overflowing with “as much gladness and joy as was possible instead of his previous grief.” See too chaps. 36, 63, 126, 199; cf. chap. 194 and Greenfield, Lazaros, 285 note 745. 94 As in the case of the priest’s wife mentioned above, v. Laz., chaps. 125–26. See also the general comment of chap. 36; the examples of the recently widowed Irene, chap. 56, and the monk who has just accidentally slept with his daughter, chap. 63; cf. some of those seeking political advice mentioned above. 95 V. Laz., chaps. 199 and 107, e.g., Cf. Lazaros’s own visits to stylites, chaps. 6, 41. 96 As has already been mentioned above, an unnamed topoteretes left the mountain in a huff after Lazaros refused to reply to him at all, let alone shed the pearls of wisdom he had been led to expect by his reputation; only later did it emerge that he had talked about purely secular affairs in which Lazaros was not interested, and, after being persuaded to return and discuss spiritual matters, he duly received the marvelous counsel he had hoped for, v. Laz., chap. 118 and see above, note 89. 97 V. Laz., chap. 122. 98 V. Laz., chap. 187. 99 For visitors see v. Laz., chaps. 46, 88, 97, 116, 120, 187, 210, 219. It was also common for Lazaros’s monks to seek and receive his blessing in interviews. 93
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even when this was not the primary reason for a visit, almost all who did see him received his blessing as they were departing.100 Occasionally a clear reason is provided as to why people sought such a blessing, for example when someone was taking up a new appointment,101 but generally there is no specific purpose mentioned, and it is undoubtedly to be connected with the pervasive Byzantine notion of spiritual patronage.102 The degree of power that was believed to be concentrated in Lazaros’s prayer is not to be underestimated, however, or regarded only as some vaguely supportive force. Monks can banish demonic apparitions by reciting it, and, most tellingly of all, perhaps, two of the brethren use it precisely as a binding spell to control a flock of goats.103 If Lazaros’s blessing had such a reputation of power at the popular level, it is not hard to understand why the desire to secure it should have been such a compelling reason for visiting him. It is interesting to note that on two occasions in the vita visitors specifically ask for and receive a tangible token of this blessing. In one case an Arab convert to Christianity visited Lazaros with an interpreter and refused to leave “until he had received something from Lazaros’s own hands that he might have as a phylactery ( phylakterion) and a safeguard (diokterion) against every danger.”104 In the other, a sailor who was talking to Gregory the Cellarer produced a lead seal stamped with an image of the Theotokos which he wore hanging round his neck. He explained that, on his first visit to Galesion, when he had asked Lazaros for “something from his own hands [. . .] as a phylactery and safeguard in every difficulty,” the father had produced the seal and given it to him.105 What is not clear is whether these visitors received a purpose-made pilgrimage medallion or simply something that happened to be at hand on Lazaros’s pillar. Certainly such lead eulogiai are known from other pilgrimage centers in this period, particularly from the shrine of St. Symeon the Stylite the Younger at the Wondrous Mountain near Antioch, a site that Lazaros had himself visited.106 Regular lead seals bearing an impression of the Virgin were also very common at this time, however, and so it is possible Lazaros simply produced something for his visitor which he had lying about. In that case the medallion would be rendered holy for its recipient by the fact that the sanctity of the donor was so respected rather than because of any deliberate intent in its manufacture. No actual pilgrimage medallions from Galesion have ever been found,107 and the fact that the first story does not 100
See v. Laz., chaps. 63, 65, e.g. So John Libanos, v. Laz., chap. 97. Compare the seeking of a blessing by monks being sent out on business, chap. 249, e.g., although in such cases it is perhaps as much a permission as anything else. 102 Compare the words of Romanos Skleros, v. Laz., chap. 87. 103 Against demonic apparitions, see v. Laz., chaps. 50, 154–55; for the binding spell, see chap. 77. The brothers in the latter episode acknowledge that Lazaros intensely disliked people doing this sort of thing, but what is significant here is the fact that they still do it and that even Gregory the Cellarer himself is prepared to accept that it could work. Cf. the people who believed they had been saved from inevitable shipwreck because a passenger invoked it: “Holy Lazaros make haste and deliver us from our present danger!” he cried, “God help us through the blessing (euche) of holy Lazaros who is on Galesion!” chap. 75. 104 V. Laz., chap. 113. 105 V. Laz., chap. 75. 106 V. Laz., chap. 25. On the eulogiai from the Wondrous Mountain, see G. Vikan, “Art, Medicine, and Magic in Early Byzantium,” DOP 38 (1984): 73–74; idem, Byzantine Pilgrimage Art (Washington, D.C., 1982), 39–40; idem, “Byzantine Pilgrims’ Art,” 258–60; J.-P. Sodini, “Nouvelles eulogies de Syméon,” in Les saints et leur sanctuaire à Byzance, ed. C. Jolivet-Lévy et al. (Paris, 1993), 25–33. 107 Although a seal from Galesion, bearing an image of St. Antony and the legend Th'" m(o)nh'" tw'(n) Galli[sivou] and dated to the 11th or 12th century, has survived. See V. Laurent, Le corpus des sceaux de l’empire byzantin, vol. 5.2 (Paris, 1965), 151–52, no. 1227. 101
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mention that a special pilgrimage token was provided, while there is no reference to such a thing anywhere else in the vita, may well be an argument for assuming that these were exceptional gifts rather than part of a general pattern of pilgrimage to Lazaros. What is clear, however, is that some people left Galesion with some sort of token that Lazaros had given them, a token that they thought of and used as an amuletic device, as a material, tangible evidence that they possessed his blessing and the power and influence which that ensured. Above all, perhaps, Lazaros was renowned for his generosity, something displayed not only in his kind words, but also in his deeds. If his biographer is to be believed, and there were certainly some who did not share this view, his extraordinary generosity was perhaps the aspect of his reputation that actually drew the greatest number of people up the mountain to visit him. The first half of the eleventh century was apparently not an easy time for the ordinary people who lived in the vicinity of Ephesos, perhaps no time was, but the vita of Lazaros reveals clearly that one recourse they had in their plight, as they struggled to eke out a living and avoid ruin or even death by starvation, lay in a visit to the monasteries of the holy man on Galesion. The poor evidently came up the mountain in droves seeking not spiritual sustenance but food, clothing, and other supplies for their bodily needs.108 “A year before our holy father’s death [i.e., 1052] a severe famine afflicted the region,” recalls Gregory, “and one could see a crowd of poor people coming up to the monastery every day. No one who came up left without receiving food, however, and so I said to [Lazaros] many times (for I was then cellarer), ‘Surely you don’t think all these people are really coming up here to receive a blessing?’ The father smiled and said to me, ‘No, of course not! The majority of them are coming up to be fed, and for this reason God is sending their food here so that we too may be fed through them.’”109 This passage contains perhaps the clearest expression of a theme that is echoed at a number of points in the vita and almost certainly reveals an element of Lazaros’s own conviction, namely, that his foundations and all the success they had achieved had been brought about almost entirely to feed and look after the poor.110 Lazaros thus clearly saw a major aspect of his life’s work, perhaps even the central purpose of it, as being a practical involvement in providing welfare to the poor and unfortunate.111 If the vita is to be believed, it was quite normal for at least one beggar to be stationed in front of Lazaros’s pillar. Some of these people were given 108
See, e.g., v. Laz., chaps. 145, 146, 150–51, 161, 210, 211, 212, 213, 248. V. Laz., chap. 210. 110 V. Laz., chaps. 151, 211, 213. 111 The vita provides an explanation in Lazaros’s own unhappy and all too frequent experience of the coldhearted absence of Christian charity. He first encountered this in some of his early monastic teachers and associates including his own uncle Elias, v. Laz., chap. 3; see also chaps. 4, 8–9, 24. Even more influential, perhaps, was that shown him by villagers in Anatolia as he trudged northwards toward Pontos on his journey from Jerusalem. Chaps. 27–28 contain a vivid account of his rejection in a village somewhere between Caesarea and Euchaita on a cold March evening and on the following day, the feast of the Forty Martyrs, when no one would take him in or even give him a crust of bread. After a wretched night spent standing beside the cooling ashes of a bread oven while warding off the village dogs with a piece of kindling wood, Lazaros promises that if it is ever God’s will for him to settle down anywhere, he will not eat by himself the bread that God sends to him, but will also serve it as food to all those, rich and poor, who come to him in God’s name. This promise is specifically recalled in relation to his first ministry at the monastery of St. Marina, where he is said to have fed and provided for all who went to him, despite the dismay and disapproval of the monks who had been there before him at the sight of such lavish and unrestrained charity, chap. 32. 109
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money,112 some clothing,113 but all seem to have been fed, in some cases taking considerable quantities of provisions away with them.114 One particular and perhaps unusual element of this provision for visitors has already been mentioned above, namely, the custom of providing a meal to all who arrived at the monastery. If one wants to know, then, why Lazaros proved such a major attraction to visitors while he was alive, there is probably no need to look further than the simple, practical answer that he provided food, clothing, and money in times of crisis to those who had nothing. Whatever deeper spiritual goals some visitors may have had, whatever spiritual spin-offs there may have been for them, and however great Lazaros’s reputation as a confessor, as an adviser, and as an ascetic may have grown, many, perhaps even most, people visited him in the first place for much more mundane reasons. Despite objections by others, he himself saw nothing wrong with this and in fact believed it was the central aspect of his work. Finally, when considering the motives of visitors to Lazaros, two important negative points should be noted. The first is that, although there is some evidence of Lazaros being known for providing protection against snakes and scorpions,115 his reputation for healing seems to have been quite limited. There were evidently few real curative miracles associated with him, despite Gregory’s best attempts to provide some, and not many people appear to have visited him for this purpose.116 At one point Gregory speaks in general of “those who used to go up to Lazaros every day and receive from him appropriate healing and release from their grievous woes,”117 but it is unclear how many of these actually went for physical healing.118 There are also a few instances in which possessed people were specifically brought to Lazaros for treatment and were cured as a result,119 but other demoniacs arrived in the company of other visitors and were probably not primarily looking to be healed.120 The second negative to be borne in mind is that another significant category of Lazaros’s visitors is made up of the unscrupulous, the hostile, and the disbelieving. Some people certainly went to him in order to exploit and defraud, some actually to steal, while others went because they wanted to catch him out, to prove he was a charlatan.
112
V. Laz., chaps. 89, 145, 248. V. Laz., chap. 145; cf. chaps. 143 and also 66. 114 Gregory tells the story of one desperate wretch who was given a nomisma, a goat, four measures of wine, oil, pulses, cheese, bread, and vegetables and was still willing to accept more, even though he could not carry anything else and was being openly mocked by the brothers for his apparent greed, v. Laz., chap. 231. See also chap. 161, where poor people and beggars go to the monk Kerykos, who is looking after the goats, in order to get milk. 115 V. Laz., chaps. 55, 59, 67. 116 The most elaborate healing story in the vita is that of a man, Leo of Attaleia, with a grotesquely paralyzed arm. His cure, however, took place not directly at Galesion but as the result of a dream he had after visiting Lazaros, v. Laz., chaps. 71–72. 117 V. Laz., chap. 123; cf. chap. 36. 118 The only other evidence of any general association of pilgrimage to Galesion with healing is the mention of a nun who is said to have visited the monastery every year to obtain healing oil which she took back to Chios, v. Laz., chap. 76. John of Mita asks Lazaros to pray for his gout-stricken uncle, but his visit seems equally, if not primarily, motivated by other concerns, chap. 103. Lazaros did, however, cure a number of his monks from physical illness. 119 John Kouphalides from Attaleia, v. Laz., chap. 70, and Laurentios Halmyrenos, chap. 73. 120 V. Laz., chap. 219; cf. chap. 220. Lazaros also cured some of his monks from possession. 113
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Visitors who abused Lazaros’s generosity have already been mentioned.121 Others would visit with more elaborate scams, like the fake demoniac who approached him at Attaleia with a complicated plan to defraud the locals of their valuables by supposed prophecy.122 At Galesion, Lazaros’s reputation, also mentioned above, as someone who was ready to tonsure those who wished to become monks without demanding any significant period of vocational testing, appears to have attracted a number of dubious visitors hoping or needing to take the habit, at least temporarily, for their own nefarious reasons.123 Less subtle were those visitors who came to steal outright, one of whom at least was an exmonk of the community hoping to exploit his inside knowledge of its layout and operation.124 Other visitors were motivated by suspicion and even outright hostility toward Lazaros and his community. At Attaleia in his early days of solitary practice, Lazaros had been subjected to visits by a group of local heretics who mocked, insulted, and physically assaulted him in an attempt to get him to move away.125 When he established himself on Galesion, relations with the village that lay at the foot of the mountain were evidently so lacking in cordiality that the headman, in an attempt to discredit and remove him, sent a gang of youths up the mountain to rape a nun and her companions who were in the habit of visiting him.126 Indeed, an important theme of the vita concerns local hostility and opposition to Lazaros, although this appears to have come primarily from the metropolitan and ecclesiastical authorities in Ephesos. Before they arrived at Galesion, some visitors had thus been exposed to rumor and innuendo in the town and neighboring monasteries which suggested Lazaros was far from being the virtuous ascetic he appeared. Their visits were, then, motivated as much by a wish to check out the validity of his conduct as by any more noble reason. For example, a monk from Jerusalem called Photios, who was on his way home from Constantinople, heard about Lazaros and decided to visit him, but when he stopped at the nearby monastery of Kouzena and asked for more information, one of the 121 Some of these people simply told exaggerated stories, hoping that the old man would fall for them and, for example, sponsor their children. According to Gregory, Lazaros would always give them what they needed, even though he saw through their deceit, v. Laz., chap. 146. 122 V. Laz., chap. 12. This individual was evidently making the rounds of monastic and ecclesiastical establishments in search of unscrupulous accomplices, but he failed, of course, to persuade Lazaros who instead counseled him to take up a more honest occupation. 123 Most prominent of these in the vita was a handsome young fraud who claimed to be a member of the Dalassenos family, although quite what he was up to is not revealed. After this fellow had failed to persuade Lazaros to perform the required tonsure, he tried to force the father’s hand by engineering a raid on the monastery by fake imperial agents pretending to be out to arrest him; the tonsure was performed, although not by Lazaros himself, and the man stayed in the monastery for a while, where he apparently did quite well for himself, receiving special treatment in accordance with his supposed noble status. After a time, however, he must have tired of life on the mountain and absconded, eventually being murdered by one of his servants while continuing his dubious way of life elsewhere, v. Laz., chap. 227. Cf. the anonymous monk of chaps. 228– 30. For criticism of Lazaros’s policy in this respect, his own answer, and Gregory’s defense of him, see chaps. 227, 231–32. 124 V. Laz., chap. 66; cf. chap. 142. See too the theft of a horse and equipment, chap., 144, and the demonic thieves of chap. 48. One local layman worked in the kitchens for a time while passing quantities of goods to an accomplice who picked up the stolen property on visits and then transported it to the man’s mother in a nearby village. Gregory the Cellarer realized what was happening and told Lazaros, hoping to have the fellow arrested, but Lazaros, out of pity for the man’s poverty, let him go unpunished, even though he knew he was making off with a sack of flour and some hides from the storeroom as a final fling; chap. 241. 125 V. Laz., chap. 10. 126 V. Laz., chap. 56.
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brethren “poured forth a great stream of abuse and criticism” of Lazaros. Shaken, but determined to get to the bottom of the matter, Photios made the ascent of Galesion and, with the aid of one of the monks, went into the church and examined the elements of the communion which Lazaros would be given, hoping to make sure that he was not being supplied with the large quantities of bread and wine he was apparently rumored to receive in this way.127 In two other episodes, the hostile and suspicious intent of the visitors is made quite explicit. A certain Nicholas, who later became an episcopal steward and so was evidently in, or at least trusted by, the ecclesiastical administration, made the difficult and dangerous journey up the mountain in the snow in order to arrive unexpectedly, and refused the offer of a meal upon his arrival to prevent any hasty cover-up from taking place. Instead he went straight up to Lazaros and “stood there examining <everything> carefully if he . . . could see anything he had been sent .” Later, convinced that Lazaros was not faking, he went back up to him and told him “about the affair” which had been instigated by the metropolitan.128 What he said must have echoed the motivation demonstrated by an earlier group of visitors led by a monastic superior called Michael. These men had also turned up unexpectedly with the poor excuse that they “happened to be passing” and had subjected Lazaros’s pillar to close, but unrevealing, scrutiny. Gregory concludes the tale by recounting that “When they arrived [back] at the Theologian [Ephesos], they reported what they had seen and heard to the metropolitan and everyone <else>. But even then the treacherous servants of the Evil One were not convinced and to keep quiet, for they <started> saying that the superior had lied about these things because he was thinking of himself and wished to glorify Lazaros.”129 It is an interesting possibility that this hostility may have been motivated to some extent, if not primarily, by the emergence of Mount Galesion under Lazaros as a rival pilgrimage attraction to the “official” sites of Ephesos, or at least as one that might threaten to taint their credibility and international renown with its dubious authenticity. VISITATION OF OTHER LIVING HOLY MEN COMPARED TO THAT IN THE VITA OF LAZAROS If a general conclusion is to be drawn from comparing the evidence of the vita of Lazaros with other source material, it is that people visited living holy men for a range of reasons which are almost always similar to those apparent in the case of Lazaros. Depending on particular circumstances, the nature of the times, and especially on the character and style of the individual holy man, however, emphases within that range are different. It may, then, be instructive to look briefly at some of the areas described above in this light. For example, people seem generally to have behaved in very much the same ways when 127 V. Laz., chap. 84. See also the incident in which an impressive Georgian ascetic from Palestine learned about Lazaros while being entertained by the metropolitan and his clerics. His behavior when he visited the mountain, however, suggests that they had not been entirely supportive in their account, for he leaned in through Lazaros’s little window, looked carefully around to see what was in his “cell,” and even went so far as to put his hand inside Lazaros’s tunic to feel his body. The visitor was suitably amazed by what he discovered and declared Lazaros to be the greatest ascetic he had encountered in his considerable experience, but the clear impression given by the story is that he had come to find evidence of fraud and was actually checking out the veracity of Lazaros’s lifestyle, chap. 114. 128 V. Laz., chap. 238. 129 V. Laz., chap. 237. For general checking out cf. the visit of the bishop of Philetos at Attaleia, chap. 11 and, as mentioned above, perhaps also the visits of some local secular officials.
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they visited other living holy figures as when they went to Lazaros, but their precise actions may be quite significantly modified by both the style of life adopted by the holy man and the location in which he lived. Some of the themes surrounding the actual practice of visiting Lazaros are thus clearly governed by the fact that he lived in an isolated place and was also both fixed to a particular spot and distanced from his visitors because he was a stylite. While descriptions of what visitors did in his vita are thus closely paralleled by the actions of those in the lives of other pillar saints, and to an extent in those of holy men who chose to live in remote and inaccessible places,130 they differ from those associated with pilgrimage to holy men who were more accessible and freer to interact with their visitors. In such cases the journey, except when it has involved travel from an unusual distance or exceptional effort or danger, is not normally commented upon. Nor does it seem that the first impression made by the appearance of the holy man was quite so immediately astounding if he was at ground level and, as was often the case, living simply like another monk. Here people would come directly before the object of their visit and speak with the holy man face to face. In the accepted Byzantine gesture of honor, individuals of whatever status would usually prostrate themselves at his feet,131 but, once the initial formalities were out of the way, the visitor and the holy man might engage in a relatively private, even intimate conversation, either one on one or in the presence of a small group of other visitors and, perhaps, disciples. One may think, for example, of Luke of Steiris sitting on the shore of the Gulf of Corinth talking with his visitors while they watch the sunset with the breeze ruffling the water and the fish jumping.132 In these interviews the usual sort of conversation appears to have taken place, with particular issues and concerns being discussed, advice being given, and appeals for help made and granted; often, too, the encounter would culminate with a confession followed by absolution and then a blessing and dismissal.133 At the opposite end of the spectrum, however, when the holy man had become a 130 E.g., in the cases of Symeon the Stylite the Elder, ed. P. Canivet and A. Leroy-Molinghen, Théodoret de Cyr, Histoire des moines de Syrie, vol. 2 (Paris, 1979), 158–215, trans. R. M. Price, A History of the Monks of Syria by Theodoret of Cyrrhus (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1985), 160–76; of Daniel the Stylite, ed. H. Delehaye, Les saints stylites (Brussels, 1923), 1–94, trans. E. Dawes and N. H. Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (New York, 1977), 7–71; or of Luke the Stylite, ed. Delehaye, Saints stylites, 195–237. 131 See, for some examples among many, the Life of Peter of Atroa, ed. V. Laurent, La vie merveilleuse de Saint Pierre d’Atroa, SubsHag 29 (Brussels, 1956), chaps. 51, 77; the Life of Theodore of Sykeon, ed. A.-J. Festugière, Vie de Théodore de Sykéôn, SubsHag 48 (Brussels, 1970), trans. E. Dawes and N. H. Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (New York, 1977), 88–185, chaps. 36, 54 (where this action is performed even by the distinguished general and future emperor Maurice); the Life of Theoktiste of Lesbos, ed. H. Delehaye, AASS 4 (Brussels, 1925): 224–33, trans. A. C. Hero in Holy Women of Byzantium, ed. A.-M. Talbot (Washington, D.C., 1996), 95–116, chaps. 9, 17, 18. In the Life of Elisabeth the Wonderworker, F. Halkin, “Sainte Elisabeth d’Héraclée, abbesse à Constantinople,” AB 91 (1973): 249–64, trans. V. Karras in Talbot, ed., Holy Women, 117–35, a distraught father seeking a cure for his daughter casts her at the saint’s feet, p. 260; in the Life of Nikon a mother does the same thing, ed. and trans. D. F. Sullivan, The Life of Saint Nikon (Brookline, Mass., 1987), chap. 27. 132 Life of Luke of Steiris, ed. and trans. C. and R. Connor, The Life and Miracles of St. Luke of Steiris (Brookline, Mass., 1994), chap. 22. Cf. all those, important and unimportant, who visit Maximos Kausokalybites, ed. F. Halkin, “Deux vies de S. Maxime le Kausokalybe, ermite au Mont Athos (XIVe s.),” AB 54 (1936): 38–112; see, e.g., chaps. 4, 5, 15. Cf. also the formal but still personal interviews with John Eleemon when patriarch of Alexandria, ed. A.-J. Festugière and L. Rydén, Léontios de Néapolis, Vie de Syméon le Fou et Vie de Jean de Chypre (Paris, 1974), 257–637, trans. E. Dawes and N. H. Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (New York, 1977), 199–262, chap. 5. 133 See, e.g., Luke of Steiris, chap. 27; Theodore of Sykeon, chap. 142; or Maximos Kausokalybites, Life by Niphon, chap. 4.
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well-known figure or when a particular feast day was being celebrated, he might be surrounded by a milling throng and his appearance greeted by an enthusiastic and organized public spectacle.134 Here, instead of being raised up in isolation above the hustle and bustle of the courtyard like Lazaros, the holy man was right down in the middle of it all. Another variation in the pattern which became possible when the holy man was not isolated or static manifests itself in two main ways; first, visitors might come to him and request that he accompany them to their homes or some other location in order to deal with a problem they were experiencing; second, visitors might approach the holy man when he himself was visiting a different locality to that in which he normally lived.135 Again, the pattern here is one of greater accessibility and fluidity than may be apparent from the vita of Lazaros, one in which the locus of visitation may move about; holy men who are not fixed in one place can make house calls and even go on tour. The offering of a formal meal of some sort to all visitors at Lazaros’s monastery was noted above as probably being unusual, but it is obvious that rituals surrounding the sharing of food played an important part in much of the activity involved in visiting holy men. Large-scale feasting might occur on occasions of mass visitation, as is evidenced by passages in the vita of Theodore of Sykeon,136 but more normally the sharing of food seems to have taken place in the quieter and more intimate settings described above. Such meals, for instance, form a distinctive theme in descriptions of visits to the Athonite holy man of the fourteenth century, Maximos Kausokalybites.137 Finally, the fact that few people seem to have visited Lazaros in search of healing was mentioned above. As other papers in this volume make clear, the quest for healing is a very common goal of pilgrimage in general, and it is also a prominent factor motivating visitors to some living holy men. I will be suggesting in a moment that such holy men may, in fact, have been the exception and that those who, like Lazaros, are not much involved in healing may have been the norm, but a visit to a living individual with whom healing powers were associated clearly contained some significant practical differences. The visit in such cases thus tended to be structured almost entirely around the search for, and implementation of, a cure. The interview with the holy man was significantly affected by this purpose, in that curative or exorcistic actions would usually follow the confession or might replace it entirely. The poor physical condition of many of the visitors as well as lengthy waits for an interview and prolonged periods of treatment meant that in these circumstances particular facilities developed at the site and interaction with the holy man or his assistants might be considerably extended. From the very beginning of the period under 134
As in the case of Theodore of Sykeon, e.g.; see chaps. 36, 43, 66, 101, 112. See, e.g., Theodore of Sykeon, chaps. 36, 43, 44, 45, 65–66, 101, 114–16, 118, 141; Peter of Atroa, chaps. 51, 52, 61–62; Luke of Steiris, chaps. 44, 45, 59; much of Nikon’s life was spent “on the road” preaching; see especially here, however, chaps. 30, 33, 35, 39–41, 43. See also Cyril Phileotes, E. Sargologos, La vie de saint Cyrille le Philéote moine byzantin († 1110) (Brussels, 1964), chap. 17; and Malamut, Route, 140–44. 136 Theodore of Sykeon, chaps. 69, 112. 137 See, e.g., Maximos Kausokalybites, Life by Niphon, chaps. 5, 8, 15, 17, 18, 19; cf. Life of Niphon of Athos, ed. F. Halkin, “La vie de Saint Niphon ermite au Mont Athos (XIVe s.),” AB 58 (1940): 5–27, chap. 17. Luke of Steiris kept a garden in which he grew vegetables for the meal he usually provided for visitors, chaps. 19, 20, 28; on at least one occasion this practice evidently gave rise to suspicion that Luke was rather too fond of his food, chap. 63. Theodore of Sykeon gave visitors bread and fruit, chap. 30, and ate with them on occasions, e.g., chaps. 72, 74, 124. See also, e.g., the Life of Theoktiste of Lesbos, chaps. 13–14; or of Nikon, chap. 43. 135
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consideration here the case of Theodore of Sykeon exemplifies visitation patterns of this type, while a little later the vita of Peter of Atroa shows how a holy man could become the object of large-scale curative pilgrimage without a permanent infrastructure developing at the site where he lived, at least not until after his death.138 Turning to the reasons why people came to these holy men, the same multiple and multilayered range described in the vita of Lazaros appears in most instances. There are thus many accounts of people going to living holy men to receive their blessing,139 to make confession, to receive their absolution and spiritual counseling,140 to benefit from their gifts of prophecy and insight,141 to seek their advice about religious and secular matters of all sorts,142 or to benefit from their material generosity.143 In a number of cases, too, there is evidence of people visiting holy men on occasion for nefarious reasons or out of hostility.144 138 For the developing institutionalization of curative visitation in the Life of Theodore of Sykeon, see chaps. 35, 40, 81, 103, 110; for Theodore as a doctor, see esp. chaps. 145–46. The pattern evident in the earlier Life of Daniel the Stylite may be compared, but, in the case of Peter of Atroa, although there are numerous specific episodes in which people visit him in search of healing and there are several general complaints of him constantly being bothered by those seeking cures, e.g., chaps. 20, 22, he does not allow the same sort of infrastructure to develop around him. 139 See, e.g., the monks who go to be blessed by Peter of Atroa, chap. 55; the local villagers who seek a blessing from the dying Luke of Steiris, chap. 64; or the man who visits Isidore I Boucheiras for this purpose: see his vita by Philotheos Kokkinos, ed. A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Zapiski Istoriko-filologicˇeskogo fakulteta S.Peterburgskogo Universiteta 76 (1905): 52–149, chap. 41. For this and the other reasons mentioned in this paragraph, see Malamut, Route, 212–15. 140 For confession and absolution see, e.g., the women who visit Luke of Steiris, chap. 28, or the murderer of a fellow traveler there, chap. 30; also the woman who goes to John Eleemon, chap. 46. For spiritual therapy and counseling see, e.g., the case of the lapsed superior who seeks out Peter of Atroa for pardon, chap. 28; the wrestler Epiphanios visiting George of Choziba, ed. G. House, AB 7 (1888): 95–144, 336–72, trans. T. Vivian and A. N. Athanassakis, The Life of Saint George of Choziba and the Miracles of the Most Holy Mother of God at Choziba (San Francisco–London, 1994), chaps. 16–18; the woman who visits Stephen the Younger for advice about becoming a nun, ed. and trans. M.-F. Auzépy, La Vie d’Étienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre (Aldershot–Brookfield, Vt., 1997), chap. 21; the audiences in general who attend Nikon’s many sermons, but also, e.g., his words to John Malakenos, chap. 43; various episodes in the Life of Cyril Phileotes, chaps. 16, 19, 38; or the general description of this aspect of Theodore of Sykeon’s work, chap. 147. See also on visits by notables cited below and, on “spiritual fatherhood” in general in Byzantine society, Morris, Monks and Laymen, 92–102. 141 E.g., the brothers who visit Luke of Steiris seeking buried treasure they have inherited, chap. 27; the imperial agent who appeals for his help after his gold was stolen at Corinth, chap. 44; or Basil Apokaukos who seeks Nikon’s prophetic advice at Isthmia, chap. 40; cf. the doctor who seeks the aid of Isidore I Boucheiras in solving a theft, chap. 68. See also Morris, Monks and Laymen, 102–3. 142 See, e.g., the general description of Theodore of Sykeon trying to help those who had come to hate each other, had become involved in lawsuits, or had religious doubts, chaps. 145, 147; the spiritual and practical advice offered by Maximos Kausokalybites, chaps. 15, 29; that sought of Isidore I Boucheiras, chaps. 23–24, 37; of Dionysios of Athos, ed. B. Laourdas, “Metrophanes, Bios tou hosiou Dionysiou tou Athonitou,” ∆Arc.Povnt. 21 (1956): 43–79, chap. 27; or of Romylos, ed. F. Halkin, “Un ermite des Balkans au XIVe siècle. La vie inédite de Saint Romylos,” Byzantion 31 (1961): 111–47, trans. M. Bartusis, K. Ben Nasser, and A. Laiou, “Days and Deeds of a Hesychast Saint: A Translation of the Greek Life of Saint Romylos,” ByzSt 9 (1982): 24–47, chap. 15. 143 See the many examples of Luke of Steiris feeding and caring for travelers, e.g. chaps. 20–23, 40, 52; the help provided by Theodore of Sykeon for those oppressed by tax collectors and officials, chap. 147; that given to the poor during times of famine by Cyril Phileotes, chaps. 44, 48; that given by Isidore I Boucheiras, chaps. 63–64; or, particularly, the assistance given to the needy by John Eleemon. See also Morris, Monks and Laymen, 111–14. 144 So a visitor to Luke of Steiris who spies on him because he is suspicious of his practice of keeping vigil, chap. 17; or another who is suspicious of his eating and drinking habits, chap. 63. Compare the man who at-
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Take, for example, powerful and influential visitors who, in almost every case, were among those who made the effort to seek out living holy men. Mostly they seem to have gone for the same sort of reasons as other visitors, but, given their official status and position, they had particular reason to check out the holy man’s credentials, to gain the favor of this locally powerful individual, to obtain his blessing before they undertook an official duty, or to seek his advice, even about important political matters and affairs of state.145 The holy man who became the object of visitation of this sort in its most developed form was surely Daniel the Stylite in the fifth century, but his role as an imperial counselor, and as a kind of living exhibition to show state visitors that both the current regime and Byzantine rule in general enjoyed divine support, did not become a normal one. As was mentioned above, few seem purposely to have traveled a long way to see Lazaros, most of his visitors being either locals or else people who happened to be in the vicinity for other reasons. By and large, this also appears to be true of most visitors to most holy men. Locals, or at least people from the same general region, form the vast majority of visitors, while people from further away are usually attracted by the holy man’s reputation when they are passing through. They hear about him when they are on the road or staying in the nearby town, they are told of him by associates who live in the area, or, even though they may have heard of him in their distant homeland, they only go to see him because other business has brought them there.146 tacks Theodore of Sykeon, chap. 76; or the sorcerer who opposes him, chaps. 37–38. Also the iconoclast imperial agent who tries to secure Stephen the Younger’s signature on a heretical decree, chap. 30; or Nikon’s opponent at Sparta, John Aratos, chap. 35. Cf. the bishop of Trajanopolis whose antics when he visits Maximos Kausokalybites may perhaps indicate a desire to test his powers and so suspicion of him, Life by Niphon, chap. 27, Life by Theophanes, chap. 30. On suspicion and hostility toward holy men in general in the 12th century, see P. Magdalino, “The Byzantine Holy Man in the Twelfth Century,” in Hackel, Saint (as above, note 78), 51–66. 145 Thus the bishop of Corinth checks out Luke of Steiris, chap. 42, as do two strategoi of Hellas, chaps. 58– 59; the imperial kourator, Eustathios, visits Peter of Atroa for a blessing before going to his estates, chap. 57; the chartoularios and future emperor Maurice visits Theodore of Sykeon, chap. 54, as does Domnitziolos, the nephew of the emperor Phokas, when going on campaign, chap. 120, and the consul Bonosos, chap. 142. Basil Apokaukos seeks Nikon’s help, chap. 40, as does John Malakenos when he is arrested by imperial agents, chap. 43, although in both cases Nikon agrees to visit them. There are many such visits in the Life of Cyril Phileotes, including the emperor Alexios I and members of his family and entourage, e.g., chaps. 34–35, 46–48, 51, 53. Matrona of Perge was beset in Beirut by men and women, but “especially noblewomen,” ed. H. Delehaye, AASS 3 (Brussels, 1910): 790–813, trans. J. Featherstone in Talbot, ed., Holy Women (as above, note 131), 18–64, chap. 19, cf. chaps. 22 and 26. Maximos Kausokalybites was visited by the emperors John V Palaiologos and John VI Kantakuzenos, Life by Niphon chap. 4, Life by Theophanes chap. 21, and also by the patriarch of Constantinople Kallistos, Life by Niphon chap. 7, Life by Theophanes chap. 22. Athanasios of Meteora was unimpressed by the behavior of the caesar Prealebos when he visited him, ed. N. A. Bees, “Symbole eis ten historian ton monon ton Meteoron,” Byzantis 1 (1909): 237–70, chap. 18. Compare the request by Isaac II for the prayers of the stylites and other holy men of Constantinople when he was in danger of being overthrown, recorded by Niketas Choniates, J. L. van Dieten, ed., Historia (Berlin–New York, 1975), 383. See also Malamut, Route, 199–205, 219–26; Morris, “Political Saint,” 48–49; eadem, Monks and Laymen, 104–7; eadem, “Byzantine Aristocracy,” 113–16, where she sums up the situation as regards the consultation of holy men by aristocrats involved in political intrigue and the like: “But however significant this activity was for the political life of the Empire, it centered on the granting of advice, essentially the same process as the few simple words of guidance given to a community stricken by drought or to a peasant suffering from diabolical visions,” p. 116. 146 Thus, e.g., two old monks traveling to Rome come across Luke of Steiris, chap. 21; an imperial agent who has been the victim of a robbery is told of Luke and so seeks his help, chap. 44; and one strategos of Hellas, Pothos, is recommended to seek his aid by an official, while another, Krinites, hears of him when he arrives in
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The same general picture of motivation established with Lazaros thus holds true for visitors to all holy men, but occasionally there are definite variations in emphasis. For example, there are some rather different features apparent where the visitors in question are monks or would-be monks. As has been mentioned already, the theme of monastic visitation is certainly present in the vita of Lazaros,147 but it receives greater emphasis elsewhere, and it is a definite phenomenon to be noted in connection with the general topic of visits to living holy men. Throughout the Byzantine period, it would seem, young men who were desperately hoping to become monks, or who had recently done so, made up a considerable proportion of those who visited holy men as they sought out experienced spiritual leaders to guide and educate them, as they moved about seeking the spiritual mentor who would best suit them, or, perhaps more simply, as they sought to witness in person the exceptional proponents of the way of life they themselves wished to lead. But other older and more experienced monks joined the throng as well, seeking advice or encouragement, a change of regime or scenery, or, like some of their younger brethren, simply to gape in amazement at the living exemplars of all they had ever aspired to in the spiritual life but had never been able to attain themselves.148 Unlike their lay counterparts, such people did evidently tend to travel great distances in order to see particular spiritual leaders with whose reputation they had become acquainted,149 and they also tend to form the majority of visitors to solitary, or virtually solitary, holy men. With such holy men who deliberately remain as solitaries for long periods of time or who choose to live with only a single disciple or very small group of followers, another variation in emphasis is also apparent. Distinctive here are the more or less regular visits by those supplying them with food and drink, or making sure they are safe and well during periods of bad weather or in dangerous times. This emphasis is reminiscent of that found the vicinity, chaps. 58–59. The notable characters cited in the previous note as visiting Theodore of Sykeon all hear about him when they arrive in the area or while passing through, chaps. 54, 120, 142; while an imperial prisoner and his guards want to receive his prayers as they are passing by, chap. 125; at the same time the local origin of the majority of his visitors should be noted. A troubled wrestler on pilgrimage to the Holy Land is directed to George of Choziba, chap. 16. A man caught in a storm finds his way to Cyril Phileotes’ house, chap. 12. Two women who happen to be passing by Matrona of Perge’s lodgings are attracted by the sound of her psalmody, chap. 38. Somewhat earlier, one might imagine Daniel the Stylite to be an exception, but in fact most of his long-distance visitors are in Constantinople for other reasons. It is unclear how far some visitors travel to see Stephen the Younger while he is in exile on Prokonnesos; see e.g., chaps. 47, 51, 54; see also Malamut, Route, 205–7. 147 Note also Lazaros’s own wanderings and the other monks he encounters on his way, v. Laz., chaps. 8–9, 20–31. 148 The attraction of holy men, to both monks and aspiring disciples, is a common theme of hagiography from the earliest times. See, e.g., Theodore of Sykeon, chaps. 24, 40, 49; Peter of Atroa, chap. 79; Cyril Phileotes, chaps. 19, 38; Romylos, chaps. 12, 15; Dionysios of Athos, chap. 11; Athanasios of Meteora, chaps. 3, 9; Niphon of Athos, chap. 2; Maximos Kausokalybites, Life by Niphon, chap. 3, Life by Theophanes, chap. 4. To be noted there too is the description of pilgrimage to Gregory Sinaites, who evidently became a major goal of this sort of activity in the 14th century, Life by Theophanes, chaps. 13–18. Isidore I Boucheiras was among the many who traveled to see Gregory Palamas, who enjoyed a similar vogue, chap. 22. Compare the way orthodox monks are said to have gathered around Stephen the Younger during iconoclast persecution, chaps. 27, 47. The topic of monastic travel, including journeys by both holy men themselves and others in search of them, is studied extensively in Malamut, Route. 149 Holy men, like Theodore of Sykeon, John Eleemon, or Isidore I Boucheiras, who came to hold official positions and were thus forced to live away from their original base, also seem to have attracted more longdistance visitors of all types, either because these people were coming from the holy man’s home or because they were visiting him on official business.
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in descriptions of visits to some of the very early Egyptian holy men, but in this period it is associated particularly with the fourteenth-century hesychast holy men.150 Finally, another significant variation in motive may be seen in the case of holy men who, unlike Lazaros, did have a reputation for healing. In these cases visitors of all sorts flock to the holy man hoping to be cured of their diseases and ailments, to be freed from the demons who torment them, or to receive his help with every physical difficulty imaginable, from infertility to disobedient animals, from mass hysteria to floods. Such holy men were clearly also visited by people seeking other things, such as spiritual wisdom, blessing, insight, aid, and practical advice, and they were able to provide this, but here, whether a visit is made by individuals or small groups or by vast crowds on feast days, the attention, the expectation is largely focused on the miraculous and the dramatic which tends to overshadow the less spectacular part of the holy man’s work.151 In fact, however, when the whole range of holy men is taken into consideration across the Byzantine period, those with this type of reputation clearly stand out as exceptional and unusual. Holy men like Lazaros, known primarily for the quality of their advice, spiritual help, and material generosity, are far more normal. Because the power and favor of God is upon them, they are capable of healing, just as they are of performing wonders, but they do not do this very often or very publicly.152 As a result, it may be concluded that visitors to living holy men seem in general to have been motivated by the desire and expectation of the miraculous only in relatively rare and quite particular circumstances. Even holy men who did attract visitors for these reasons were also sought out by people with a much broader and perhaps less ambitious range of motives. VISITING THE LIVING HOLY MAN INSTEAD OF OTHER LOCA SANCTA If this is so, it may help to suggest some answers to the most important question remaining to be considered here, why people should have chosen to visit living holy men rather than the older, better authenticated loca sancta about which so much has been said 150
See, e.g., the vita of Antony, chap. 51. Here see, e.g., Luke of Steiris, chap. 31; Theodore of Sykeon, chap. 16; Maximos Kausokalybites, Life by Niphon, chaps. 10, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, 29; Niphon of Athos, chaps. 12, 17. Compare also the journey of Zosimas to take both communion and food to Mary of Egypt, recorded in her vita, PG 87:3697–3726, trans. M. Kouli, in Talbot, Holy Women (as above, note 131), 70–93, chaps. 34–37; cf. Theoktiste of Lesbos, chaps. 18–19. Note also the food brought to Stephen the Younger by an iconoclast imperial agent, chap. 30; and the first fruits brought to George of Choziba to be blessed, chap. 8. 151 For healing, exorcism, miracle, and spectacle, see the vitae of Theodore of Sykeon and Peter of Atroa, passim. To be compared here, although fewer examples are presented, are the cases of Nikon, see chaps. 27– 30, 32, 33, 36, 41–42; of Elisabeth the Wonderworker, pp. 259–61; and perhaps that of the holy man Matthaias, who is described as healing various sick people in the vita of Athanasia of Aegina, ed. F. Halkin, “Vie de sainte Athanasie d’Egine,” in Six inédits d’hagiologie byzantine (Brussels, 1987), 179–95, trans. F. L. Sherry in Talbot, Holy Women (as above, note 131), 142–58, chap. 8. See also R. Macmullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven–London, 1997), 136–38. 152 So, e.g., Luke of Steiris cures a boy in a coma, chap. 45, and indirectly cures a woman in Thebes, chap. 61; George of Choziba brings a dead child back to life, chap. 8; Matrona of Perge “effects many cures,” chap. 33, including that of a noblewoman called Antiochiane, chap. 34; Stephen the Younger cures visitors (monks and laymen, men and women, rich and poor) of such things as fever, blindness, hemorrhage, disability, and possession, chaps. 46, 49–51, 54; Cyril Phileotes cures a man of ptosis (drooping of the upper eyelid), chap. 32; Maximos Kausokalybites cures one possessed layman indirectly, Life by Niphon, chap. 5, and another directly even though the man had not come seeking help, Life by Niphon, chap. 17, by Theophanes, chap. 20; Niphon of Athos cures paralysis, chap. 5, bleeding, chap. 11, headache, chap. 13; Isidore I Boucheiras cures infertility, chap. 33, a dying infant, chap. 43, hemorrhage, chap. 66.
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both in other papers in this volume and elsewhere. Why should a living person have proved an alternative, perhaps for some even a superior, attraction to those venerable places that were consecrated by the deeds and relics of the sanctified dead and that possessed the full and unqualified endorsement of the established church? On many occasions, as I have shown, the sources appear to indicate that superficial motives were often no different for making a visit to a living holy man than to another type of holy site. People were moved as much by curiosity, by novelty, and simply by issues of convenience as by any sense of greater efficacy or appropriateness. People in search of many kinds of help and healing might visit either “official” or “unofficial” sites. At either they might hope to find immediate solutions to their problems in the form of a cure, of alms, or perhaps of spiritual renewal and support; at either they might hope to secure a vehicle, perhaps in the form of a token or a flask of oil, which would serve to transport at least some vestiges of the power inherent in the holiness located at the site for their own benefit in far-off times and places and for the benefit of others who had been unable to make the journey. Both types of destination usually provided eat-in or take-out menus for visitors, as it were. But the living holy man did have advantages. Here the primary factor surely has to be immediacy. A person who visited a living holy man had the opportunity to converse face to face, perhaps even negotiate, with someone who was thought to have access to the heavenly court and to whom some of its authority had demonstrably been delegated. It was like talking directly with one of God’s angels, it was like tapping into a hot line to heaven. As Romanos Skleros started up the ladder to see Lazaros on his column, he suddenly stumbled back holding his head in his hands and on the verge of fainting: the holy man had opened his window and looked out, and, to Romanos, Lazaros’s face had appeared like fire. He was undoubtedly in the presence of the holy.153 Thus, while the power of God was present at the loca sacra of pilgrimage and could effect cures and exorcisms with equal, perhaps greater, efficacy than in the case of a mortal and thus fallible man, relics and holy places could not talk, could not respond, except perhaps through the vague and uncertain medium of dreams and portents. Hence the stress on the role of holy men as mediators and problem solvers, as confessors and advisors. Here were people who could not only listen but could reply, clearly, immediately, and effectively. Here were people who could resolve problems on the spot, who could distribute, directly, without the interpretation of others, the sort of practical advice and practical help sought so frequently there. Here, in other words, is Peter Brown’s “good patron” of late antiquity, still at work in the later periods of Byzantine history.154 Brown uses his analysis of the late antique situation to argue that the spiritual patronage of the type offered by the holy man is to be regarded as a mechanism for dealing with newfound, perhaps rather dubious, freedoms and the uncertainties that went with them.155 For him, holy men thus reveal traces of social instability, they are markers of a time where “the objectivity associated with the supernatural” is no longer “lodged in imper153
V. Laz., chap. 87. Cf. Frank, Memory, “Glowing Faces,” 160–65. Brown, “Holy Man,” 129. For later reservations by Brown on seeing the late antique holy man primarily or exclusively in the role of “good patron,” see, e.g., his Authority and the Sacred (Cambridge, 1995), 59–60, 63– 64. 155 Brown, “Holy Man,” 148. 154
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sonal and enduring institutions” like great temple sites.156 In the conclusion to his paper Brown suggests that he believes the particular period he examines is special, “a distinct phase of religious history,” as he terms it, sandwiched between the ages of the great temples of antiquity and the cathedrals of the Middle Ages.157 But a look at the continuing phenomenon of the visitation of living holy men in Byzantium may suggest something different, may point toward a need to find a more dynamic model in which modes of religious expression wax and wane, perhaps according to the stability of the society in which they occur, perhaps according to dominant models of political organization.158 Here a study by Richard Stirrat of shifts in pilgrimage patterns in Sri Lanka provides some fascinating insights and some tantalizing clues as to ways in which the Byzantine situation might be analyzed.159 Stirrat suggests that in a situation where there is a “congruence between secular polity and the world of the gods,”160 something long and very widely assumed in the Byzantine context, changes in the pattern of pilgrimage may be seen to reflect changes in the political system. In particular, he argues, the development of a strong patronage system in the postcolonial Sri Lanka polity is to be linked not only with the dramatic rise of the god Kataragama to become the “patron par excellence”161 and so the focus of massive Sinhala Buddhist pilgrimage, but also to the rise of new, “person centered” pilgrimage patterns in Sinhala Catholicism. Here it is holy men who have become the focus of pilgrimage, individuals who can dispense religious and spiritual patronage, at the expense of traditional place-specific shrines. Other significant factors are also at work, but surely tempting is the parallel to Lazaros in mid-eleventh-century Byzantium, a period known precisely for the rise of individual patronage and the weakening of central government influence and control. There is no space to develop this point here, but I think it is one well worth further examination. Something else that needs further study in the context of the visitation of Byzantine holy men, but which can only be alluded to in passing here, is the suggestion by recent social anthropologists that pilgrimage should be viewed as a far less homogeneous phenomenon than it has often been in the past. Consequently, it is argued, a new and deeper level of understanding may be achieved by an appreciation of its essential heterogeneity, by recognizing that pilgrimage “is above all an arena for competing religious and secular discourses.”162 Here the motivations and perceptions of those involved become crucial, for, if the object of pilgrimage (in this case the holy man) derives his power from his “capacity to absorb and reflect a multiplicity of religious discourses, to be able to offer a variety of clients what each of them desires,” he is, then, at base a “religious void,” a “vessel” which all the different pilgrims and visitors fill with all their various motivations, aspirations, and 156
Brown, “Holy Man,” 148. Brown, “Holy Man,” 151. 158 For other criticisms and suggestions of directions in which Brown’s work on the holy man may be fruitfully developed, see J. Howard-Johnston and P. A. Hayward, eds., The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1999); especially relevant there are the papers by Averil Cameron and Philip Rousseau, 27–59. 159 R. Stirrat, “Place and Person in Sinhala Catholic Pilgrimage,” in Eade and Sallnow, eds., Contesting the Sacred (as above, note 3), 122–36. 160 Stirrat, “Sinhala Pilgrimage,” 131. 161 Stirrat, “Sinhala Pilgrimage,” 133. 162 Eade and Sallnow, “Introduction,” 2. The italics are mine. 157
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perceptions of what they are doing.163 How the holy man views himself in this role, how his disciples view him, how the local or wider church views him, how the majority of visitors view him, how each individual visitor views him, all are parts of a complex and often competing image which cannot be appreciated from one generalized perspective. In the Byzantine context, as in any other, when visitors chose a holy man over some other loca sancta, whether they did so for profound or frivolous reasons, whether they did so deliberately or unthinkingly, they were (or appeared to be) sending a message. When the holy man accepted or rejected their visits, he too was (or appeared to be) sending a message. What, for example, did the established church, particularly at the local level, make of both? Was the holy man perceived as living proof that the age of miracles and prophets was not yet past and thus as a pillar and support of the established church? Or was he seen as a criticism, an overt indicator of how far that church had lapsed from the ideal? Were the visitors thus supporting the established church or expressing, deliberately or unintentionally, dissatisfaction and discontent? Consequently, was the holy man to be embraced and encouraged by that church or to be seen as a threat and rival, and so dismissed, discredited, or destroyed? And what of the holy man himself? Did he try to avoid becoming the center of such activity, recognizing not only the threat these visitors might pose to his solitude but also to his reputation and even physical well-being? Or did he welcome, perhaps encourage them, realizing that without such overt expression of popularity he could never attain sufficient stature to right the ills he saw besetting church and society, even though this might inevitably involve drawing on himself the jealousy and hostility of the establishment? Of course, the Byzantine historian is not looking through the clear, if multifaceted, lens of the social anthropologist who may be present at the visit or pilgrimage and gain insight by directly interviewing those involved. A Byzantinist must perforce peer through the hardened and distorting crystal of historical source material where one perception tends to push all others from view, and this is a serious problem when pursuing such a line of inquiry. However, even crystals may have their flaws and cracks, and in these, in the hints and allusions, the unsophisticated papering over of awkward elements that one finds in such sources, particularly in some hagiography, there may still linger, on the margins of vision, evidence of the varied and conflicting discourses that existed in the arena of visitation and pilgrimage to living holy men.164 In conclusion, I would suggest that the vita of Lazaros of Mount Galesion is a good example of a source where a glimpse may be caught of the type of complexity and heterogeneity that have been described. As I mentioned above, hostility toward Lazaros is a constant and at times urgent theme of the vita. Clearly there was a perception on the part of the local ecclesiastical authorities in Ephesos and some other religious establishments in the vicinity that Lazaros was a fraud and a threat or both. For the established church in the area, then, a visit to him must necessarily have been perceived as an act of criticism, of disapproval perhaps, or at least of dissatisfaction with what Ephesos had to offer. Consequently the religious authorities there became engaged in a propaganda battle against Lazaros and his foundations for the hearts and minds of the visitors, attempting to dis163 164
Eade and Sallnow, “Introduction,” 15. Cf. Eade and Sallnow, “Introduction,” 2.
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credit him and discourage them. The visitors, however, whether they came with open or already made-up minds, had their own vastly differing motives and perceptions ranging, as we have seen, from the curious to the hopeful, from the convinced to the skeptical and downright nefarious or hostile. And then there were the perceptions of Lazaros’s monks who had to cope and compete for resources and attention with the streams of visitors. At times they viewed them as a blessing and recognition of their superior’s virtue and stature, but at others there were those who saw them as a nuisance and a threat to their spiritual and physical well-being. Finally Lazaros himself, like most holy men, clearly had mixed views of those who sought him out; at times he struggled to avoid them, but at others he saw them not only as the proof of the success of his life’s work, but also as the real reason for it; he recognized the dangers they posed for him, but also the value of what he might do for them and, through them, for the world and the furtherance of God’s purposes in it. In the vivid and often unintentionally revealing record of Gregory the Cellarer, Lazaros, as an object of visitors or pilgrims, emerges clearly as the focus of many obviously competing and deeply conflicted discourses. Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario
New Insights into Byzantine Monasticism: The Evidence of the Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium, 3–4 March 2000
To mark the impending publication of Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, edited by John Thomas and Angela C. Hero in five volumes (Washington, D.C., 2000), a colloquium was held at Dumbarton Oaks on 3–4 March 2000, focusing on typika as a genre of document and on the types of information that these documents can provide on monastic life in Byzantium. A small selection of the papers is published in this volume.
The Management of Monastic Estates: The Evidence of the Typika KONSTANTINOS SMYRLIS
he study of the great estates that acquired a dominant position in the Byzantine countryside from the ninth century on has received the attention of several scholars dealing with the rural economy. The examination of the management of the great estates is essential in understanding how an increasingly important part of the land was exploited. Paul Lemerle, Michel Kaplan, and more recently Jacques Lefort have published studies on the management of great fortunes, using to a greater or lesser extent the information found in typika.1 Given the lack of sources directly concerning lay or imperial estates, the evidence from monastic sources—that is, archives or typika—has been used to make up for this deficiency. It has been widely assumed that the exploitation of lay and state fortunes resembled in most respects that of monastic fortunes. This article presents a study of the management of monastic estates from the tenth to the fifteenth century based on the body of the typika contained in the new translation of the texts.2 The combination of the information coming from explored and previously unexplored texts permits the building of a relatively comprehensive image of the management of monastic estates. Providing a clearer definition of monastic management has the added interest of helping us distinguish and better understand the management of nonmonastic estates and can lead to a more accurate use of the sources. I begin by presenting the typika as sources and then describe the main model of management seen in these texts; I also examine the information on direct and indirect exploitation of the estates; finally, I explore how the revenues were managed and registered. Monastic typika are certainly the richest source of information on the management of the estates of monasteries. Many texts written by monks who were heads of monasteries reflect the practices used by these establishments to administer their fortunes. Monastic
T
1 P. Lemerle, Cinq études sur le XIe siècle byzantin (Paris, 1977); M. Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre à Byzance du VIe au XIe siècle. Propriété et exploitation du sol, Byzantina Sorbonensia 10 (Paris, 1992), esp. chap. 7; idem, “Les moines et leurs biens fonciers à Byzance du VIIIe au Xe siècle: Acquisition, conservation et mise en valeur,” RBén 1/2, 103 (1993): 209–23; idem, “The Evergetis Hypotyposis and the Management of Monastic Estates in the Eleventh Century,” in The Theotokos Evergetis and Eleventh-Century Monasticism, ed. M. Mullett and A. Kirby (Belfast, 1994), 103–23; J. Lefort, “The Rural Economy, 7th–12th Centuries,” in The Economic History of Byzantium (Washington, D.C., 2002), 231–310. 2 Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, ed. J. Thomas and A. Constantinides Hero (Washington, D.C., 2001).
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typika are also the most important source for the study of the management of great estates in general, whether these were lay or state owned: first, because the founders of the monasteries were very often members of the aristocracy and were certainly aware of and made use of the practices employed in the managing of lay estates; second, because on several occasions the monastery’s fortune was nothing more than the continuation of a lay or an imperial fortune. Despite their great value, typika have the drawback of containing mostly regulatory information, which is by definition very general. Information coming from archival evidence supplements and often confirms what we learn from typika, showing how management was actually carried out in certain concrete cases. The greatest part of the information from typika comes from a few texts that contain more or less detailed provisions on management. The majority of the surviving typika say very little or nothing about the management of the estates. When they say anything, it is often laconic or vague. Although practically all founders acknowledge the importance of providing for both the soul and the body, the latter does not seem to get its fair share of attention in most texts. Clearly there was a widespread distaste for the treatment of technical matters in typika. The monks, after all, were not meant to occupy themselves with mundane affairs. This attitude, present throughout the middle and late Byzantine period, often made typika look more like edifying literature than rules for the running of monasteries. In contrast to this phenomenon, typika including explicit information on management begin to appear with Nikon the Metanoeite at the turn of the eleventh century and Lazaros of Mount Galesion in the middle of that century. However, the first really detailed typikon is that of Attaleiates dating from 1077. It is followed by a number of other detailed typika dating from the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries up to the middle of the fourteenth (Table 1). Detailed typika devote significant space to and are straightforward in the treatment of economic affairs. Beginning with the typikon of Kecharitomene in the early twelfth century they introduce regulations of increased complexity. This phenomenon runs parallel to an increased complexity manifest in the regulation of the management of cash in monasteries (Table 1). This evidence suggests the existence of a greater interest in economic matters in Byzantium—or at least a greater desire to discuss them—as well as the introduction of more elaborate management techniques from the eleventh century on. Although this impression could be partly owing to the fact that relatively few typika survive from the period before the eleventh century, it does tie in well with the image of neglected monastic estates depicted in a novel of Nikephoros Phokas dating from 963/4.3 GENERAL AND LOCAL MANAGEMENT Beginning with the examination of the main model of management presented in the typika, one may note that the administration of the properties of the monasteries varied considerably depending on the importance and the spread of the possessions, on whether it was a male or a female monastery, and finally on the origin and process of constitution of the fortune. Despite variations in the provisions of different typika, one can establish a 3 N. Svoronos, Les novelles des empereurs macédoniens concernant la terre et les stratiotes (Athens, 1994), 160.98– 109. Cf. P. Lemerle, “Un aspect du rôle des monastères à Byzance: Les monastères donnés à des laïcs, les charisticaires,” Académie des inscriptions, comptes rendus (1967): 25, in idem, Le monde de Byzance: Histoire et institutions (London, 1978); Kaplan, “Les moines et leurs biens fonciers,” 223.
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main model of management that was applied to a lesser or greater extent by all monasteries. The principles of the model remained the same throughout the period in question. Table 1 illustrates the geographical spread of the model, attested in many parts of the empire, from Cyprus to Bulgaria and from Sicily to Bithynia.4 Information comes mostly from typika containing detailed information. Many other typika that include cursory or random information highlighting only some instances of management affirm the wider adoption of the model or its variations. The main model can be described in the following terms: the management of the estates was divided into general and local administration; at the head of the general administration was the hegoumenos or more often the oikonomos charged with the supervision of the local managers, that is, the superintendents residing in the estates, whether these were called metochiarioi or pronoetai.5 This system was fully developed in the case of important and dispersed fortunes. The greater and more spread out the fortune, the more populous and more complex its management was. In the case of smaller or concentrated fortunes, simpler solutions were applied. The possessions of the houses of Attaleiates and of Kosmosoteira, for example, were managed by a single person answering directly to the head of the monastery.6 The typika show that two different versions of this model were used for the management of monastic estates. Without altering the principles of the model these two versions provided for different ways of staffing the administration. In the one version, as seen in the typikon for Lavra,7 management was done entirely by monks, while in the other version, witnessed in Kecharitomene for example,8 this task was performed by laymen. The version applied in each case seems to have depended on the origin and constitution of the fortune. In the case of management by monks, the head of the general administration of the estates would be the hegoumenos and the oikonomos.9 The role each one played varied according to each typikon, ranging from a complete absence of an oikonomos, where the hegoumenos seems to have been the main person responsible for economic management,10 to an oikonomos with extensive powers.11 Usually, the responsibilities were shared, and while nothing was done without the permission of the hegoumenos, the oikonomos received the greatest burden in the management of the affairs of the monastery.12 The superinten4 A number of the typika come from areas that were no longer part of the empire at the time of composition, but the texts themselves lie within the Byzantine tradition. 5 Cf. Lefort, “Rural Economy,” 293–95. 6 The five estates dedicated by Attaleiates to his foundation at Rhaidestos were situated mainly in Thrace; Attaleiates, 43.424–45.447, 99.1315–101.1342. Cf. Lemerle, Cinq études, 102, 109–10. They were administered by a person chosen by the successors of Attaleiates; Attaleiates, 53.580–83. Kosmosoteira had vaster possessions, including thirty villages or estates; however, they were all concentrated in two groups around the Maritsa Delta. The first group of holdings was around Neokastron and the second around Ainos; Kosmosoteira, 52.7– 53.5. The episkepsis of Neokastron should be identified as the domain around the monastery itself, situated about 20 km north of Ainos; cf. ibid., 72.10–12, 24–28. All the estates were administered by a pronoeteuon; ibid., 71.15, 72.9. 7 Lavra, 119.24–120.34, 127.25–35. 8 Kecharitomene, 55.646–59.706, 63.768–74. 9 The oikonomos of the main house was often called great (mevga") oikonomos; cf. Actes d’Iviron, vol. 2, Archives de l’Athos 16, ed. J. Lefort, N. Oikonomides, and D. Papachryssanthou (Paris, 1990), no. 43 (1085), line 5. Cf. also Pakourianos, 107.1461; Ptochoprodromos, ed. H. Eideneier (Cologne, 1991), 145.123. 10 For example in Eleousa, 87.18–21 and Boreine, 329.30–32, 330.31–39. 11 As in St. Michael, 781.20–31. 12 On the duties of the hegoumenos and the oikonomos in the management of the estates, cf. Kaplan, “The Management of Monastic Estates,” 114–16.
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dence and carrying out of the exploitation of the estates were undertaken by monks residing there permanently.13 This form of supervision by the monks was sometimes organized into metochia, the resident monks being called metochiarioi.14 The head of the metochion would normally be called oikonomos. The number of the metochiarioi varied; often only one person, the local oikonomos, resided there permanently.15 Archival evidence permits us to see what these metochia looked like. They comprised a church, residences for the monks and the workers, a kitchen, storehouses and stables, possibly a tower and other secondary buildings.16 Often without fortification, they resembled smaller, more basic monasteries. Other metochia were originally independent monasteries that became dependencies of more powerful houses.17 The monks made efforts to group their properties in order to form integral estates, which would be managed by the metochion. The vast majority of acquisitions documented in the monastic archives concern lands adjacent to or very near existing estates.18 In the case of lay management, the general manager, often also called oikonomos, and the superintendents of the estates were hired laymen. The lay oikonomos was under the command of the hegoumenos or hegoumene of the monastery, as in the case of Kecharitomene.19 In most cases he had a considerable degree of discretion, the role of the superior being mainly to examine his accounts.20 Several typika did not provide for a pure lay management but instituted a hybrid one, most often entrusting the position of the oikonomos to a monk or a nun (Table 1). The local superintendents or pronoetai,21 chosen by the hegoumenos or the oikonomos,22 lived, like the monks of the metochia, in or near the estates of which they were in charge.23 Archival evidence shows that the centers of the estates managed by lay pronoetai were very similar in appearance to the metochia.24 Metochia would have 13 Lavra, 127.25–35; Nikon, 255.137; Galesion, p. 565, chap. 2, lines 53–58; Messina, 126.21–26; Machairas, 39.10–15. Cf. also the case of the monks of Patmos living on the estates of the monastery in Leipsos and Leros at the end of the 11th century, MM, 6:146.12–27. 14 In the sources the term metochion may, depending on the context, refer either to an estate belonging to a monastery or simply to its administrative center; cf. Lefort, “Rural Economy,” 240–41. Here I use the term to denote a center of exploitation of an estate. 15 Cf. MM, 6:146.12–27. 16 Actes d’Iviron, 2: no. 52 (1104), lines 186–93, 228–330, 428–40; cf. Ch. Giros, “Remarques sur l’architecture monastique en Macédoine orientale,” BCH 116 (1992): 409–43. Cf. also the description of the metochia in Messina, 126.21–26. 17 As in the case of St. Andrew of Peristerai in western Chalkidike which became a dependency of Lavra in 964; Lavra, 119.24–31. 18 See, for example, the case of the Lavriote estate of Drymosyrta in the katepanikion of Kalamaria; dating presumably from the 11th century, it grew spectacularly during the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century owing to consecutive acquisitions of adjacent lands and estates; Actes de Lavra, vol. 4, Archives de l’Athos 11, ed. P. Lemerle, A. Guillou, N. Svoronos, and D. Papachryssanthou (Paris, 1982), 90–92 and map 4. 19 Kecharitomene, 55.647–49, 59.700–702. 20 Kecharitomene, 59.691–95. 21 While the term pronoetes is a rather common one (Kecharitomene, 57.665; Pantokrator, 113.1430; Kosmosoteira, 53.21) other names were also used for the lay superintendents of the estates: pronoeteuon (Kosmosoteira, 72.9) and energon (Bebaia Elpis, 48.27). The superintendents of the urban possessions of Kecharitomene were called oikologoi; Kecharitomene, 57.665. 22 Kecharitomene, 79.1069–70; Pantokrator, 113.1428–33; Lips, 119.23–26. 23 Kecharitomene, 57.688–89; According to Lips, the superintendents could be responsible for one or more estates; Lips, 119.23–26. 24 Buzantina; e[ggrafa th'" monh'" Pavtmou, vol. 2, ed. M. Nystazopoulou-Pelekidou (Athens, 1980), no. 50 (1073) lines 110–14; ibid., no. 52 (1089), lines 99–107d.
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looked quite different only when they housed significant numbers of monks living there permanently, thus resembling monasteries. Lay management was very often applied to female monasteries (Table 1). This comes as no surprise since it was normally forbidden for nuns to leave the monastery.25 However, certain typika for female monasteries show a tendency to follow the monastic model as much as possible by using a hybrid system. The typikon for Kecharitomene provided that the oikonomos, who at the time was most probably a layman, would in the future be chosen among the eunuch priests residing in the monastery or from outside. His aide ( paroikonomos), and most probable successor, had to be one of the eunuch priests.26 The later typika of Bebaia Elpis and Baionia go even further, instituting female oikonomoi chosen from among the nuns.27 Bebaia Elpis provides that the nun in charge of economic affairs may leave the monastery on some exceptional occasions.28 While the superintendence of the estates of these monasteries had to be entrusted to lay pronoetai, in all three cases general administration was essentially monastic. Interestingly, male monasteries, although not forced to, also followed a system of lay or hybrid management. This was the case of the foundations of Attaleiates,29 of Pantokrator in Constantinople, and of Kosmosoteira in Thrace. The monasteries of Pakourianos and St. Michael30 probably also made use of this system to some extent. The foundation of Pantokrator, which was more of a pious house (euages oikos) than a monastery, was endowed largely with imperial estates, which already possessed their own system of management. Its founder, John II Komnenos, clearly wanted his establishment to inherit this system without any alteration. According to the typikon for this monastery, the superintendents of the estates had to be laymen; monks should not be given duties involving a stay outside the monastery.31 This stipulation, however, may not have been respected for very long. According to an act from the cartulary of Lembos, a monk from Pantokrator was sent during the reign of Manuel I Komnenos to conduct a survey of an estate of the monastery near Smyrna.32 The foundation of Kosmosoteira was endowed with what was probably the greater part of the personal fortune of John’s brother, the sebastokrator Isaac Komnenos. It was not a new fortune; it consisted of properties, most probably of state origin, that had been donated to Isaac by his father, Alexios I Komnenos.33 Although in the typikon the hegoumenos of Kosmosoteira, helped by an oikonomos, appears as the main administrator of the mate25
Cf. Kaplan, “The Management of Monastic Estates,” 118; cf. idem, Les hommes et la terre, 310. Kecharitomene, 55.649–57.653, 59.702–4, 59.716–20. 27 Bebaia Elpis, 48.1–49.12; Baionia, 108.32–109.3. 28 Bebaia Elpis, 48.16–17. 29 See note 6. 30 Michael VIII Palaiologos, who restored and endowed the monastery of St. Michael (St. Michael, 772.9– 10), provided that the oikonomos was to be chosen from among the monks and that the superintendents of the estates might be either monks or laymen; St. Michael, 781.14–31. The permission to use lay pronoetai may reflect the state of administration of the estates donated to the monastery, possibly of state origin. 31 Pantokrator, 63.559–63, 63.569–70. Pantokrator does not mention any general manager visiting the estates regularly to supervise the superintendents; the latter may have reported directly to the oikonomoi, who were monks and normally did not leave the monastery; Pantokrator, 113.1414–115.1440. The same seems to have held at Bebaia Elpis, where the nun in charge of economic affairs left the monastery only on rare occasions; Bebaia Elpis, 48.16–17. 32 MM, 4:187.33–34. 33 Kosmosoteira, 52.7–8. 26
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rial affairs of the monastery and its surroundings,34 the estates would continue to be run by a manager called pronoeteuon.35 The pronoeteuon is without doubt a relic of the management of the fortune before its dedication to Kosmosoteira. His position in the future is not threatened by any provision of the typikon. However, a certain shift toward management by the monks is visible. Isaac stipulated the creation of two metochia: one in Constantinople to be inhabited by three monks, and one in the port of Ainos, one of the two centers of the fortune, ruined in the past by the management of the pronoetai.36 Gregory Pakourianos, like Michael Attaleiates and Isaac Komnenos, endowed his foundation with his own fortune.37 He seems to have opted for a monastic general management, stipulating that the two main regions of landholding should be managed by two epitropoi chosen from among the fifty monks of Petritzos.38 These epitropoi obviously acted as oikonomoi supervising the local superintendents. Pakourianos does not say a word, however, about any metochiarioi. It is hard to imagine that Pakourianos went so far as to dismantle the entire administrative apparatus of his fortune and that he replaced the experienced pronoetai with monks.39 The superintendence of the estates probably continued to be carried out by laymen. The situation was different in monasteries whose fortunes were not continuations of lay or imperial ones, but were built gradually through the efforts of the monks. The administrative system seems to have developed following the growth of the possessions. To name a few examples, the monasteries of Lavra in the tenth, Evergetis in the eleventh, and Machairas in the thirteenth century follow a pure monastic system of management.40 Finally, monasteries that received an important initial endowment consisting of other monasteries and their properties apparently also maintained the monastic system of management. This seems to have been the case of Christ Savior in Messina and of St. Demetrios-Kellibara.41 Lay founders of monasteries could choose the monks of their houses and certainly tried to place experienced people at their head.42 They could have staffed their administrative system entirely with monks. It seems, however, that in most cases they preferred to maintain the preexisting administration, at least on the local level. With the exception of 34
Kosmosoteira, 26.34–36, 50.1–5, 51.8–9, 51.19–23 (hegoumenos) and 24.31–32, 41.11ff., 67.35–36 (oikonomos). 35 Kosmosoteira, 72.9. The pronoeteuon of Kosmosoteira does not seem to be a local superintendent. He is most probably an oikonomos administering all the estates and villages of the monastery; not only because of his title (71.15 to;n pronohteuvonta tw'n cwrivwn hJmw'n) but also because he is mentioned in connection with both groups of properties belonging to the monastery; Kosmosoteira, 71.15 (group around Ainos), 72.9 (group of Neokastron). 36 Kosmosoteira, 70.21–71.2, 53.18–25. 37 Pakourianos, 35.257–41.362. Most of these properties probably came from imperial donations; Lemerle, Cinq études, 181–82. For the location of these properties, see ibid., 175–81. 38 Pakourianos, 59.656–58, 85.1101–87.1115. 39 Cf. the mention of the ex-pronoetes Bardanes active in the area of Mosynopolis; Pakourianos, 129.1832–33. 40 Lavra, 119.24–120.34, 127.25–35; Evergetis, 49.592–94, 73.1022–23, 75.1061–67; Machairas, 37.18–25, 38.16–39.16, 47.24–48.4. The typikon of Machairas prohibited the use of laymen as metochiarioi, in exact contrast to the stipulations of the typikon of Pantokrator; Machairas, 48.5–7. 41 Messina, 126.21–26, 128.19–130.6. On the endowment of this monastery, see Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, 638. St. Demetrios-Kellibara, 473.10–474.7. 42 Attaleiates, for example, mentions accountants (logariastai) among the people that should be preferred as additional recruits; Attaleiates, 59.704–8.
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female houses, it is probable that in several cases the monks eventually replaced all lay managers. Monastic administration had the advantage of being performed entirely by monks not relying on hired managers, who were sometimes accused of negligence.43 Moreover, the system of metochia that sometimes housed small communities probably allowed for better supervision and exploitation of the estates. The monks living in the metochia were working to provide food for their brothers, and this was considered a pious occupation.44 When they grew old they could expect to retire to the main monastery and be taken care of,45 while successful oikonomoi of metochia could rise in the hierarchy and become hegoumenoi.46 HOW THE EXPLOITATION OF MONASTIC ESTATES WAS ORGANIZED We may now turn to how the exploitation of the estates was organized and to the roles of the oikonomos and local superintendents. According to the prevailing economic theory, the arable land of the great estates was exploited indirectly, mainly rented out to paroikoi who produced primarily cereals. The paroikoi paid in return a rent in kind or in cash.47 A usually much smaller proportion of the land was exploited directly by the monasteries, mainly through the labor services the paroikoi had to perform, but also by the monks and by hired workers.48 The typika confirm to a great extent the assumptions regarding the exploitation of the land of great estates. The predominance of indirect exploitation is certain, although the typika have very little to say on the question. Often the information amounts to the simple mention of the paroikoi installed on the lands of the monastery.49 Besides the leasing of land to paroikoi, another way of indirect exploitation, of a much lesser importance was the leasing of the land for short periods for an annual rent.50 Attaleiates envisages the leasing for a definite period only of the lands not used for the production of wheat.51 Finally, the leasing of properties for a rent was a standard way of exploiting urban buildings, such as houses and workshops.52 43
Kosmosoteira, 53.21. Cf. P. Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180 (Cambridge, 1993),
171. 44
Lavra, 127.25–35. Cf. MM, 6:146.12–20. 46 As in the case of Ignatios, the brother of Lazaros and oikonomos of an estate of Galesion; Galesion, p. 575, chap. 2, lines 18–21. 47 Rent was paid in cash in the estate of Baris; Buzantina; e[ggrafa th'" monh'" Pavtmou, vol. 2, no. 50 (1073). In the village of Radolibos, rent was paid mostly in kind; Actes d’Iviron, vol. 2, app. 2. Cf. N. Oikonomides, Fiscalité et exemption fiscale à Byzance, IXe–XIe s. (Athens, 1996), 125–29, and Lefort, “Rural Economy,” 305–6. 48 On the methods of land exploitation, see Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 343–59; Lefort, “Rural Economy,” 240–43. 49 Evergetis, 93.1358–62; Attaleiates, 77.980–86; Pakourianos, 35.253; Pantokrator, 119.1494; Kosmosoteira, 52.13, 52.22, 52.33, 56.9–19, 58.34–59.5, 66.40–67.20; Machairas, 17.3–4. For the monastery of Nikon the Metanoeite, cf. D. Sullivan, The Life of Saint Nikon (Brookline, Mass., 1987), 196.29–30, 238.7–8. 50 Cf. Lefort, “Rural Economy,” 242–43. 51 Attaleiates, 51.573–79. Attaleiates is most probably referring to twenty-nine-year contracts; see Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 353–55. These lands, apparently unsuitable for plowing, may have been turned into vineyards by the lessees; cf. the later evidence for such contracts in Actes de Vatopédi, vol. 1, Archives de l’Athos 21, ed. J. Bompaire, J. Lefort, V. Kravari, and Ch. Giros (Paris, 2001), no. 32 (1301) and p. 210. 52 See the mention of rented buildings (enoikika) in Attaleiates, 43.433–45.448, 53.590; Pantokrator, 115.1455, 119.1489; Kosmosoteira, 70.28; Lips, 131.20–21. 45
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Most of the information on the exploitation of land comes indirectly from passages regulating the duties of the administrators. With regard to lands rented out to peasants, the attention of the superintendents went mostly to the control of land exploited by each paroikos and to the collection of the rent.53 The collection of revenues by the superintendents was supervised by the general administration.54 According to Pakourianos, the revenues arrived at the monastery in September.55 Many typika refer to revenues both in kind and in cash.56 Revenues in kind, mentioned in the typika, come in most cases either from the rent paid by the paroikoi or from the lands exploited directly by the monastery. The cash revenues, however, may have come from a variety of sources, such as the annual income of rented buildings and possibly from the income of lands exploited by peasants who paid a rent in cash. But they may also have come from the land tax of paroikoi, ceded to the monastery by the state,57 or from the sale of products. The superintendents examined whether or not the amount of land the paroikoi worked corresponded to their rent. If the paroikoi were found to be exploiting more land than that allocated to them, their rent would be raised.58 The superintendents, on their own initiative or on that of the landowner, apparently tried to increase the revenues of the monastery by extracting more dues from the peasants. Some typika include passages restricting the increase of the rents and other obligations of the peasants.59 The collection of rent was not the only domain in which the superintendents and the oikonomos were active. Although not explicitly stated, it is certain that the often-mentioned duty of the oikonomos and superintendents to preserve and augment the revenues or to make unproductive lands productive60 did not only concern the lands directly exploited. Archival evidence shows that the monks undertook projects of expansion of the land under cultivation, settling peasants, and making land improvements. They may also have provided poor peasants with the equipment necessary for cultivation.61 The typika give little information as to the arable land that the monastery did not rent out to paroikoi. The most certain reference to direct exploitation of arable land is the men53
Lavra, 127.31–32; Attaleiates, 53.581–89; Kecharitomene, 57.673; Kosmosoteira, 72.8–10. Attaleiates, 53.587–89; Kecharitomene, 57.665, 57.671–75; Pantokrator, 63.569–70; Bebaia Elpis, 48.25–30. 55 Pakourianos, 69.835–36. Cf. Galesion, p. 585, chap. 2, lines 12–15. 56 See, for example, Nikon, 255.131–35 (in kind); Attaleiates, 27.156–57, 51.575–79 (in kind), 49.518 (in cash), cf. Lemerle, Cinq études, 110; Pakourianos, 59.668 (in cash), 111.1533–37, 112.1565–67, 112.1570–73 (in kind); Kecharitomene, 57.674–80 (in kind and in cash); Bebaia Elpis, 48.25–49.10 (in kind and in cash). 57 The possessions of Pakourianos, for example, were exempted from the land tax; Pakourianos, 129.1820 and Oikonomides, Fiscalité et exemption fiscale, 190–91. 58 Cf. Attaleiates, 77.984–86. An act from the cartulary of Lembos dating from the late 12th century shows the superintendent (energon) of the estates of the Constantinopolitan monastery of Pantokrator in the area of Smyrna verifying the dues of a peasant; it is unclear whether these dues concern the land tax or the rent; MM, 4:184.20–185.18. 59 Attaleiates, 77.980–86; Kosmosoteira, 56.9–19, 58.38–59.1. 60 Kecharitomene, 57.671–74; St. Michael, 781.23–25; Lips, 120.8–15; Bebaia Elpis, 48.29–49.3. 61 Cf. Lefort, “Rural Economy,” 246 n. 74, 294–95. The superintendents played an active role in the expansion of the estates, making acquisitions on the part of the landowner. One of the pronoetai of Pakourianos had personally bought houses and a monastery in the kastron of Mosynopolis (Pakourianos, 129.1832–33). Documents preserved in monastic archives show similar acquisitions made by the oikonomoi of the metochia; cf. Actes d’Iviron, vol. 1, Archives de l’Athos 14, ed. J. Lefort, N. Oikonomides, and D. Papachryssanthou (Paris, 1985), vol. 1, no. 23 (1017). 54
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tion in some typika of plow teams owned by the monastery.62 The typikon of Kosmosoteira provided that the oxen used in the plowing should be led to rest in the monastery’s stables by the farmers.63 The typika of Pakourianos and of Boreine indicate the number of plow teams the monastery owned, thus permitting an appreciation of the importance of the land cultivated through their labor. The monastery of Pakourianos had an impressive forty-seven pairs of oxen.64 No less remarkable, given the size of its holdings, are the eighteen plow teams possessed by Boreine.65 The planting of vineyards, gardens, and groves in the lands surrounding the establishments was a common practice for rural monasteries and metochia;66 it was also practiced, to a lesser degree, by Constantinopolitan houses.67 Of course, in most cases the cultivation of vineyards and gardens in the vicinity of the monasteries must have had a very limited economic significance. While the monks did some gardening and vine tending, it was principally the paroikoi68 and the hired laymen (misthioi)69 that led the plow teams, whether these belonged to them or to the monastery. The tending of the herds of the monastery was also undertaken more often by lay shepherds ( pistikoi) than by monks.70 THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PRODUCE Analysis of the management of the revenues in kind coming from the exploitation of the estates is essential not only for understanding how a monastery provided for its needs but also for finding out how the surplus produce was commercialized. This last point is relevant to the question of the role of monasteries and of great fortunes in general in the Byzantine economy. The period of the harvest of the crops of lands directly exploited, as well as the collection of rents in kind from the paroikoi, was the busiest time of year and required the greatest effort and attention on the part of the superintendents. According to some typika, the general oikonomos, or other monks of the monastery, had to visit the estates at that time in order to help with and supervise the gathering of the crops.71 In many cases the produce 62 Attaleiates’ restriction of the leasing of wheat fields (Attaleiates, 51.573–79) apparently also concerned directly exploited lands; Kaplan, Les hommes et la terre, 349–50. 63 Kosmosoteira, 68.4–5. 64 Pakourianos, 125.1761–62; cf. Lemerle, Cinq études, 189. 65 Boreine, 338.3–4, 338.12. 66 Lavra, 105.23–24, 139.12–13; Kosmosoteira, 50.5–6, 51.7–10, 57.35; Machairas, 39.11–12; Boreine, 337.16– 18, 337.21–22; St. Michael, 780.28, 781.26; Menoikion, 170.15. Nuns also undertook this task; see Baionia, 108.16–17. 67 Pantokrator, 61.543. St. Mamas, located in a less urban area of the capital, near the Xylokerkos gate, had a vineyard and a garden; St. Mamas, 277.14. On the location of St. Mamas, see R. Janin, Le siège de Constantinople et le patriarcat oecuménique. 3. Les églises et les monastères, 2d ed. (Paris, 1969), 318–19. There is no mention of gardens or vineyards, however, with regard to the female urban monasteries. 68 Cf. the mentions of the services the paroikoi had to perform: in Attaleiates, 77.980–86, and in Pakourianos, 35.253, 111.1539–113.1542. 69 Pakourianos, 99.1336; cf. Lemerle, Cinq études, 189; Christodoulos, 65.31–34, 74.33, 75.7; Kosmosoteira, 50.5– 6, 49.26–27; Machairas, 38.21, 39.13, 48.5–7. The typikon for Machairas suggests that the hired laymen may have been paid by allowances in kind (siteresion). The laymen working for Patmos were fed by the monastery; Christodoulos, 86.23–29. 70 Machairas, 48.5–7; Boreine, 338.7. 71 Kecharitomene, 79.1071–72; Machairas, 38.23–27. Cf. MM, 6:146.15–27.
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would not be transported immediately but would be stored on the estates.72 This is clearly stated in the typikon of Kecharitomene, which asks the oikonomos to go to the estates to supervise the storing (synkleismos) of the produce.73 Grapes may have been made into wine in local winepresses.74 Practical reasons may explain this system, for example, the need to keep the crops until shipping was possible. A part of the revenues, in kind and in cash, was retained for local needs (Table 2). The administration of the estates involved certain expenditures.75 These would include the seed needed for direct exploitation and allowances and provisions for the pronoetai or the metochiarioi and hired laymen.76 In most cases the local superintendents themselves subtracted the amount of the revenues needed for local expenditures and then shipped the remainder away.77 The amount of the regular local expenditure was presumably fixed in advance;78 the general administration would decide only on extraordinary expenses.79 The typikon of Machairas, however, restricted the control of the metochiarioi over the revenues and asked the oikonomos to allocate what was necessary for the running of the estate.80 Probably the greatest part of the revenues81 was eventually shipped away, often on ships owned by the monastery.82 At least a part of these revenues in kind83 was transported to the main house and was allocated to the different storehouses the monastery possessed: 72 Cf. the mention of storehouses and granaries in certain estates; Messina, 126.22–24; Buzantina; e[ggrafa th'" monh'" Pavtmou, vol. 2, no. 52 (1089), line 105. 73 Kecharitomene, 79.1071–72; Cf. MM, vol. 6, 146.15–17. 74 Cf. the description of the estate of Temenia in Leros, possessing a winepress and an olive press; Buzantina; e[ggrafa th'" monh'" Pavtmou, vol. 2, no. 52 (1089), line 107g. Cf. also Actes d’Iviron, vol. 3, Archives de l’Athos 18, ed. J. Lefort, N. Oikonomides, D. Papachryssanthou, and V. Kravari (Paris, 1994), 31 and no. 67 (1295), lines 107–8. 75 Cf. Buzantina; e[ggrafa th'" monh'" Pavtmou, vol. 2, no. 50 (1073), lines 316–20, and Lefort, “Rural Economy,” 295–96. 76 Machairas, 38.21, 39.10–15. According to the typikon of Pakourianos, certain estates had to make payments in kind to the hostels of the monastery that were situated near them; Pakourianos, 111.1530–115.1589. 77 This seems to have been, for example, the practice in Lavra and in Kecharitomene; Lavra, 127.31–32; Kecharitomene, 57.673–80. This procedure was applied on the Athonite estates of the monastery of Iveron at the beginning of the 11th century; some of the necessary provisions for these estates were sent by the main monastery; B. Martin-Hisard, “La Vie de Jean et Euthyme et le statut du monastère des Ibères sur l’Athos,” REB 49 (1991): 121.1116–19. Local expenses were apparently subtracted locally also in the case of the imperial estate of Baris that was given to Andronikos Doukas; Buzantina; e[ggrafa th'" monh'" Pavtmou, vol. 2, no. 50 (1073), lines 316–20. According to the typikon of Pantokrator, all the dependent monasteries should use their revenues to cover their needs and send to the main monastery only the surplus; Pantokrator, 1.690–95. 78 Cf. Buzantina; e[ggrafa th'" monh'" Pavtmou, vol. 2, no. 50 (1073), lines 316–20. 79 Cf. Pantokrator, 113.1428–36. 80 Machairas, 38.21, 39.10–15. It appears that these payments made by the oikonomos to the metochiarioi concerned provisions and cash that would be sufficient for longer periods, for months or for a year. The foundation of Nikon in Sparta probably followed the same system; Nikon, 255.131–37. 81 Cf. Actes d’Iviron, vol. 2, app. 2 (first decade of 12th century), lines 44–45, and Lefort, “Rural Economy,” 295–96. 82 Kecharitomene, 57.676–77; Buzantina; e[ggrafa th'" monh'" Pavtmou, vol. 1, no. 39 (1271), line 8; see also the case of the ship of the Constantinopolitan monastery of Psychosostria that during the reign of Andronikos II Palaiologos brought the necessary foodstuffs to the monks; Arkadios Vatopedinos, “Gravmmata th'" ejn Kwnstantinoupovlei monh'" th'" Qeotovkou th'" Yucoswstriva",” BNJ 13 (1937): no. 3, lines 168–72. Lavra and Kosmosoteira are also known to have possessed ships; Actes de Lavra, vol. 1, Archives de l’Athos 5, ed. P. Lemerle, A. Guillou, and N. Svoronos (Paris, 1970), no. 55 (1102); Christodoulos, 82.5–13; Kosmosoteira, 53.5–7. 83 For the management of cash in Byzantine monasteries, see J. Lefort and K. Smyrlis, “La gestion du numéraire dans les monastères byzantins,” RN 153 (1998): 187–215.
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granaries, wine cellars, and oil cellars.84 These provisions were destined for the internal use of the monastery, that is, the feeding of the monks, the everyday needs of the church, and the charitable distributions at the gate.85 The evidence available for provincial as well as for Constantinopolitan houses suggests that, for the greatest part, monasteries must have provided for their needs in basic foodstuffs, such as bread, thanks to the revenues in kind coming from their own estates.86 Other provisions, such as olive oil and fresh fish, were bought more readily, especially in the capital.87 The needs of a monastery were more or less known in advance, and this permitted the immediate establishment of the surplus products.88 Part of the produce of the estates, the importance of which varied according to the importance of the production and needs of each house, was destined for sale. The typika say very little about the sale of surplus produce. The most probable procedure would be for the entire produce of certain estates, after local expenses, to be transported, on carts89 and ships, directly to the closest or most profitable markets.90 Such is the case of estate A in Table 2. Other estates may have shipped part of their produce to the monastery and sent the rest for sale (Table 2, estate B). Finally, some estates may have catered exclusively to the main monastery (Table 2, estate C).91 In the case of produce sent to be sold, the ships would take back to the monastery the proceeds of the sale or other products bought at the market.92 This system of produce management and sale was the one that the great Athonite monasteries were asked to follow, as can be seen in the typikon of Monomachos dating from the middle of the eleventh century. What they did in reality went beyond the simple sale of their surplus in order to acquire other necessary products. The same typikon mentioned and prohibited the commercial use of the large and often tax-exempt monastic ships that bought products and sold them in the cities for profit.93 Table 3 illustrates another system of commercialization of the surplus, probable in the case of monasteries situated near major markets. In this case, the produce of the estates may have been taken first to the monastery. After keeping what was necessary, the rest 84
See, for example, Kecharitomene, 67.865–69.882. Cf. Attaleiates, 53.602–10. 86 See the mentions of revenues in kind arriving at the monastery: Nikon, 255.131–37; Attaleiates, 27.156– 57, 51.575–79; Kecharitomene, 57.674–80; Bebaia Elpis, 48.25–49.10; and the provisioning of the monastery of Iveron; Martin-Hisard, “La Vie de Jean et Euthyme,” 121.1092–98. Cf. the differing opinion of Magdalino who thinks that Constantinopolitan oikoi covered their needs in wheat largely through the market; P. Magdalino, “The Grain Supply of Constantinople, Ninth–Twelfth Centuries,” in Constantinople and Its Hinterland, ed. C. Mango and G. Dagron (Cambridge, 1995), 35–47. 87 Unlike wheat, there are several mentions of the purchase of fish or other edibles to supplement the food offered at the refectory (prosphagion). They were bought either by monks individually or by the monastery itself; Attaleiates, 69.870–71, cf. 47.497–99; St. Mamas, 275.25; Cf. Ptochoprodromos, 144.92–93, 145.122, 146.140– 41. The typikon of Kosmosoteira mentions the purchase of olive oil and wine, but it is foreseen that in the future the monks may cover their needs in wine by the planting of a vineyard; Kosmosoteira, 50.1–7. Purchase of wheat is mentioned in Machairas in relation to a famine; Machairas, 13.8–10. 88 Cf. Galesion, p. 585, chap. 2, lines 12–19, and Attaleiates, 53.602–5. 89 Cf. Michael Attaleiates, Historia, ed. I. Bekker, CSHB (Bonn, 1853), 201.20, and Magdalino, “Grain Supply,” 40–41. 90 Cf. Actes de Docheiariou, Archives de l’Athos 13, ed. N. Oikonomides (Paris, 1984), 14. 91 As in the case of the estates neighboring Iveron at the beginning of the 11th century; Martin-Hisard, “La Vie de Jean et Euthyme,” 121.1116–19. 92 Cf. Actes du Prôtaton, Archives de l’Athos 7, ed. D. Papachryssanthou (Paris, 1975), no. 8 (1045), lines 64– 67 and MM, 6:146.27–31. 93 Actes du Prôtaton, no. 8 (1045), lines 53–77. 85
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would be sold. In this way the monastery would have served as a storehouse or even a selling point of the surplus produce of the estates. This is probably what Attaleiates was envisaging when he provided that all the revenues of the estates should be gathered in his foundation at the market town of Rhaidestos.94 This was certainly the case with one of the products that entered the monastery of Kecharitomene in Constantinople, coming no doubt from the revenues of its estates which were probably scattered all around the Aegean Sea. Since it was clear from the beginning that the needs of the monastery would never exceed 500 pounds of wax, it was stipulated that all the excess produce, estimated to be much more important, should be sold as soon as it entered the monastery.95 The case of wax, however, is probably exceptional. Bulkier surplus products may never have physically entered the monastery but may have been stored at storehouses near the market or by the landing stages. The granary owned by the monastery of Lips, situated near the Horaia Gate on the Golden Horn, may have been used as a temporary storage place for the wheat to be sold.96 What was left in surplus, after consumption, at the end of the year would either be kept for the following year or presumably be sold.97 REGISTRATION AND ACCOUNTING The administration of monastic estates produced an important number of statements, recording the different amounts of produce at given times. This enabled the administration to have a clear knowledge of the provisions available; it also ensured the transparency of the entire process. The information included in the typika is once again inconsistent. Often registration can only be deduced from the obligation of certain officers to account for their management. The first typikon regulating registration and accounting in detail is that of Attaleiates. Many typika suggest, explicitly or implicitly, that the amount of the produce collected or harvested should be registered.98 Normally this was done by the superintendents, sometimes in the presence of the oikonomos, who went out to the estates precisely for this reason.99 The part of the revenues destined for local expenses must also have been registered in most cases, although this is mentioned explicitly only in the typikon of Machairas.100 The registration of revenues and of local expenditure helped prevent embezzlement by the superintendents, an all too common concern of the founders.101 Typika ask that the amount of the produce arriving at the monastery be registered.102 The produce could be 94
Attaleiates, 27.156–57, 53.602–4. Cf. Lemerle, Cinq études, 110–11. Kecharitomene, 67.845–49. 96 Lips, 132.2. The Horaia Gate was situated at the tip of the Akropolis (Saray burnu); R. Guilland, “La chaîne de la Corne d’Or,” ∆Ep.ÔEt.Buz.Sp. 25 (1955): 117. The Golden Horn was at the time the commercial center of Constantinople; N. Oikonomides, Hommes d’affaires grecs et latins à Constantinople (Montreal, 1979), 106. 97 According to the typikon for the monastery of Lips, the nun in charge of the provisions had to register what was left in excess at the end of the year; Lips, 118.16–17. 98 Attaleiates, 53.602–3; Machairas, 38.23–28. Cf. the accounts of the Georgian oikonomos of Radolibos, a dependency of Iveron at the beginning of the 12th century; Actes d’Iviron, vol. 2, appendix 2. 99 Kecharitomene, 79.1071–73; Machairas, 38.23–27. 100 Machairas, 39.10–15. 101 See, for example, Kecharitomene, 57.673; Menoikion, 167.35–36. Cf. Geoponica, ed. H. Beckh (Leipzig, 1895), 79.20–21. 102 Kecharitomene, 59.703–5; Kosmosoteira, 44.9–14. 95
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received at the monastery directly by the officers responsible for its storage and distribution, such as the cellarer103 or the granary steward (horeiarios) and the wine steward (oinochoos).104 It could also be received in a centralized fashion, by the oikonomos or the cellarer, who would then allocate the produce internally. Kecharitomene’s is the first typikon to institute a system of centralized reception,105 a system that appears in later typika with some frequency.106 Finally, the officers in charge of storing and dispensing the provisions in the monastery were often required to give account of their management;107 this meant that they had to keep distribution records. According to the typikon for Lips, the cellarer also had to record at the end of the year what was left of the produce entrusted to her.108 CONCLUSION The examination of the evidence from the typika demonstrates the existence of a main model for the management of monastic estates. In spite of the inconsistency of the information, it seems that this model had a very wide application, albeit with occasional variations. The typika also indicate a close relation between the management of lay and imperial estates and that of monastic estates. The distinction was not always clear, as many monasteries employed lay management, a system that seems to have remained in use during the entire period in question. There is, however, a visible tendency for monasteries to replace lay managers with monks. A final remark concerns the elaboration and complexity in the management techniques witnessed in the typika from the eleventh century on. Typika instructed managers, with growing frequency, not only to guarantee but also to augment the revenues of the estates.109 Clear division of duties among officials and strict regulation of the management and registration of the produce were geared not only toward assuring the supplies needed to feed the monks but also toward creating and commercializing a surplus. Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance Collège de France–C.N.R.S.
103 At the beginning of the 11th century, in the monastery of Iveron, foodstuffs were received by the cellarer, who then provisioned the refectory; Martin-Hisard, “La Vie de Jean et Euthyme,” 121.1083–98. 104 See, for example, Christodoulos, 75.7–9; Kosmosoteira, 44.9–14; St. Mamas, 270.32–271.5. 105 Kecharitomene, 67.865–69.882. It seems that the nun responsible for the reception of all foodstuffs (67.865–72) allocated the wine to the oinochoe and the wheat to the horeiaria. 106 Machairas, 39.20–28; Bebaia Elpis, 49.3–7. Cf. St. Michael, 782.36–783.2. 107 Pakourianos, 107.1461–65; Areia, 249.21–23; Machairas, 46.19–47.4; Lips, 118.6–18. 108 Lips, 118.17–18. 109 Kecharitomene, 57.669–73, 57.689–90; Kosmosoteira, 51.7–10, cf. 62.35–39; St. Michael, 781.20–25; Lips, 120.8–17; Bebaia Elpis, 48.29–49.3.
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Areia: G. A. Choras, ÔH “ÔAgiva Monh;” ∆Areiva" (Athens, 1975), 239–52 Attaleiates: P. Gautier, “La diataxis de Michel Attaleiate,” REB 39 (1981): 5–143 Baionia: S. Petrides, “Le typicon de Nil Damilas pour le monastère de femmes de Baeonia en Crète (1400),” IRAIK 15 (1911): 92–111 Bebaia Elpis: H. Delehaye, Deux typika byzantins de l’époque des Paléologues (Brussels, 1921), 18–105 Boreine: S. Eustratiades, “ÔH ejn Filadelfeiva/ monh; th'" ÔUperagiva" Qeotovkou th'" Koteinh'",” ÔEllhnikav 3 (1930): 325–39 Charseianites: I. M. Konidares and K. A. Manaphes, “∆Epiteleuvtio" bouvlhsi" kai; didaskaliva tou' oijkoumenikou' patriavrcou Matqaivou AV (1397–1410),” ∆Ep.ÔEt.Buz.Sp. 45 (1981–82): 462–515 Christodoulos: MM, 6:59–90 Elegmoi: A. Dmitrievskii, Opisanie liturgicheskikh rukopisei, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Kiev, 1895), 715–69 Eleousa: L. Petit, “Le monastère de Notre-Dame de Pitié en Macédoine,” IRAIK 6 (1900): 1–153 Evergetis: P. Gautier, “Le typikon de la Théotokos Évergétis,” REB 40 (1982): 5–101 Fragala: V. von Falkenhausen, “Die Testamente des Abtes Gregor von San Filippo di Fragalà,” HUkSt 7 (1983): 174–95 (1st testament, 1096/97), and G. Spata, Le pergamene greche esistenti nel Grande Archivio di Palermo (Palermo, 1861), 197–204 (2d testament, 1105), 211–13 (3d testament, 1105) Galesion: AASS, Novembris III, dies septimus (Brussels, 1910), 508–606 Kecharitomene: P. Gautier, “Le typikon de la Théotokos Kécharitôménè,” REB 43 (1985): 5–165 Kosmosoteira: L. Petit, “Typikon du monastère de la Kosmosotira près d’Ænos (1152),” IRAIK 13 (1908): 17– 77 Koutloumousi: Actes de Kutlumus, ed. P. Lemerle (Paris, 1988), 113–16 (1st testament), 117–21 (2d testament), 135–38 (3d testament) Lavra: P. Meyer, Die Haupturkunden für die Geschichte der Athosklöster (Leipzig, 1894), 102–40 Lips: H. Delehaye, Deux typika byzantins de l’époque des Paléologues (Brussels, 1921), 106–36 Machairas: I. Tsiknopoullos, Kupriaka; Tupikav (Nicosia, 1969), 1–68 Menoikeion: Les archives de Saint-Jean-Prodrome sur le mont Ménécée, ed. A. Guillou (Paris, 1955), 161–76 Messina: J. Cozza-Luzi, Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, vol. 10, pt. 2 (Rome, 1905), 117–37 Meteora: N. Bees, “Sumbolh; eij" th;n iJstorivan tw'n monw'n tw'n Metewvrwn,” Buzantiv" 1 (1909): 191–332 Neophytos: I. Tsiknopoullos, Kupriaka; Tupikav (Nicosia, 1969), 71–104 Nikon: O. Lampsides, ÔO ejk Povntou ”Osio" Nivkwn oJ Metanoei'te (Athens, 1982), 250–56 Pakourianos: P. Gautier, “Le typikon du Sébaste Grégoire Pakourianos,” REB 42 (1984): 5–145 Pantokrator: P. Gautier, “Le typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantocrator,” REB 32 (1974): 1–145 Sts. Anargyroi: H. Delehaye, Deux typika byzantins de l’époque des Paléologues (Brussels, 1921), 136–40 St. Demetrios-Kellibara: H. Grégoire, “Imperatoris Michaelis Palaeologi de Vita sua opusculum necnon Regulae, quam ipse monasterio S. Demetrii praescripsit, fragmentum,” Byzantion 29/30 (1959–60): 446–76 St. Mamas: S. Eustratiades, “Tupiko;n th'" ejn Kwnstantinopovlei monh'" tou' ÔAgivou Megalomavrturo" Mavmanto",” ÔEllhnikav 1 (1928): 245–314 St. Michael: A. Dmitrievskii, Opisanie liturgicheskikh rukopisei, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Kiev, 1895), 769–94 Tmolos: T. Drew-Bear and J. Koder, “Ein byzantinisches Kloster am Berg Tmolos,” JÖB 38 (1988): 197–215 Xenos: N. Tomadakes, “ÔO a{gio" ∆Iwavnnh" oJ Xevno" kai; ejrhmivth" ejn Krhvth/, 10o"–11o" aijwvn,” ∆Ep.ÔEt.Buz.Sp. 46 (1983–86): 1–117
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TABLE 1 TYPIKA DEALING WITH ESTATE MANAGEMENT Monastery Lavra Tmolos Nikon Xenos Galesion Evergetis Attaleiates Pakourianos Eleousa Christodoulos Fragala Kecharitomene (F) Pantokrator Areia/female (F) Areia/male Messina Kosmosoteira St. Mamas Elegmoi Machairas Neophytos Boreine St. Michael St. Demetrios-Kellibara Lips (F) Sts. Anargyroi (F) Menoikeion Bebaia Elpis (F) Meteora Koutloumousi Baionia (F) Charseianites
Date of Typikon
Location
c. 970 975–1000 after 997 1031 1053 1065 1077 1083 1085–1106 1091–93 1096–1105 1110–16 1136 1143 1143 before 1149 1152 1158 1162 1210 1214 1247 1261–81 1282/3 1294–1301 1294–1301 1332 1327–35 1350–83 1370–78 c. 1400 1407
Athos Lydia Lacedaemon Crete Ionia near CP Thrace-CP Bulgaria Macedonia Aegean Sicily CP CP Argolid Argolid Sicily Thrace CP Bithynia Cyprus Cyprus Lydia Bithynia CP-Caria CP CP Macedonia CP Thessaly Athos Crete CP
Type of Management M (L) M (M) M M L hybrid M (M) M hybrid hybrid (L) M M hybrid
M (M) M (hybrid) (M) L L M hybrid (M) (M) (hybrid) (M)
Detailed Complex Cash Typikon Management
+ +
+ + +
+ +
+
+ +
+
+ + + +
+ +
+
+
Key: F: female monasteries; CP: Constantinople; L: lay; M: monastic; in parentheses: probable type of management Note: Complex cash management: involving more than one till; see J. Lefort and K. Smyrlis, “La gestion du numéraire dans les monastères byzantins,” RN 153 (1998): 187–215
260
THE MANAGEMENT OF MONASTIC ESTATES TABLE 2 THE MANAGEMENT OF MONASTIC REVENUES IN KIND
local expenses
estate A revenues (cereals, wine, etc.) sale
local expenses
local expenses
estate B revenues (cereals, wine, etc.)
estate C revenues (cereals, wine, etc.)
revenues arriving at the monastery
cash and products
KONSTANTINOS SMYRLIS
261
TABLE 3 THE MANAGEMENT OF MONASTIC REVENUES IN KIND: MONASTERIES NEAR MAJOR MARKETS
local expenses
local expenses
local expenses
estate A revenues (cereals, wine, etc.)
estate B revenues (cereals, wine, etc.)
estate C revenues (cereals, wine, etc.)
revenues arriving at the monastery
known surplus
sale
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. Issue year 2002 © 2003 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America
www.doaks.org/etexts.html
Coinage and Money in Byzantine Typika CÉCILE MORRISSON To the editors of Archives de l’Athos, past and present, and in memoriam Paul Gautier
ou shall not possess anything of this world, nor store up anything for yourself as your own, not even one piece of silver” (ou[te ajpoqhsaurivsei" ijdiorivstw" eij" eJauto;n mevcri kai; eJno;" ajrgurivou).1 Theodore Stoudites’s words ruling against worldly possessions were more than once repeated in later typika such as Athanasios’s for Lavra. His strictures of course applied only to individuals, although there were frequent exceptions.2 But inevitably attention had to be paid to monastic property and finances as a means of insuring the foundation’s permanence and its fidelity to monastic duties, as well as the maintenance of the community members and above all the exercise of their charitable activities. Although the traditional mistrust of money led some typika to avoid the subject, a third of them (some twenty of the sixty-one assembled in the “Surviving Founders’ Typika and Testaments” translated in Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents) do deal in varying detail with monetary matters. Byzantine monetary history is therefore greatly indebted to the typika for evidence on one of its most complex periods, the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Since the first edition of a typikon was that of the Kecharitomene in Montfaucon’s Analecta Graeca published in 1688,3 Charles Du Cange had no knowledge of any such documents when he wrote his learned De imperatorum Constantinopolitanorum seu de inferioris aevi vel imperii ut vocant numismatibus dissertatio. This was published in 1678 as an appendix to his Glossary of medieval Latin and included long commentaries on several coin types and names.4 Among the nineteenth-century scholars, Jean N. Svoronos, in a group of short essays on various coin names and monetary inscriptions, cites only the Kecharitomene.5
Y
I would like to thank the two anonymous readers of the manuscript for their valuable help and suggestions, as well as Alice-Mary Talbot for her patience in editing the text in all respects. 1 Theodore Stoudites, PG 99:1817. 2 G. Constable, “Preface,” in Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, ed. J. Thomas and A. C. Hero (Washington, D.C., 2000), 24 (hereafter BMFD). 3 See BMFD, “Introduction,” 1–2. 4 Reprinted also as an appendix to G. A. L. Henschel and L. Favre’s edition of his Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis in 1887 (vol. 9). 5 J. N. Svoronos, “Buzantiaka; nomismatika; zhthvmata,” JIAN 2 (1899): 348–63, at 352, after Cotelier’s edition in Ecclesiae Graecae Monumenta (Paris, 1677), 72.
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COINAGE AND MONEY IN BYZANTINE TYPIKA
More recently Anatole Frolow6 and later Vitalien Laurent7 attempted with limited success to untangle their rich evidence. My own first contact with the typika goes back to Paul Lemerle’s 1965 seminar on Pakourianos and other eleventh-century documents which prompted me to study the michaelaton and related coin names of the period.8 It was Michael Hendy who properly sorted out the apparent confusion about Komnenian coins lamented by previous authors. He made extensive use of the whole series of twelfthcentury typika in his path-breaking book of 1969.9 In chapter four on “The Monetary Terminology of the Twelfth Century,” typika account for a good half of the documentation he cites. Although they must be complemented by other textual evidence from historical sources or more frequently from archival documents, whether Greek, Latin, or sometimes Georgian, the typika present well-dated factual material. This is due to their often dual composition combining rules and customs—often but not necessarily formulaic in character—and data of a testamentary and autobiographical nature. The collection of translations offered by the Dumbarton Oaks publication is most welcome since it enables one to obtain an exhaustive view of the material. While Konstantinos Smyrlis deals in this volume of Dumbarton Oaks Papers with the general management of monastic estates, I propose to examine how typika reflect the monetary systems of their time and try to give a brief insight, however partial, into the image they offer of the relations of monasteries with the monetary economy. COINAGE AND MONETARY SYSTEMS AS REFLECTED IN TYPIKA That typika reflect fairly exactly the existing currency of their time will be shown in what follows. Even formulaic stipulations adapt to the changes. The seventh-century Apa Abraham testament (BMFD 1), though unfortunately vague, uses the Evangelical assarion (Matt. 10:29 and Luke 12:16),10 but also mentions the main types of contemporary currency: “6 ounces of gold,” that is half a pound, as a penalty, the “trimesion” or one-third of a solidus as the lowest gold unit, and the “obol” as an equivalent of the follis or as a general name for the smallest available unit.11 The statement in the typikon of Apa Abraham and similar later declarations about the monks’ renunciation of any kind of private property, which go back to the rule of Basil of Caesarea, show this evolution over the course of time. As mentioned already, Theodore Stoudites (BMFD 3) refers to “not even an argyrion,” a term used in the early Byzantine period for the billon-surface silvered coin and later bronze unit.12 It probably referred then, in 826, as it does in Theophanes Continuatus, in 6
A. Frolow, “Les noms de monnaies dans le typikon du Pantocrator,” BSl 10.2 (1949): 241–53. V. Laurent, “Bulletin de numismatique byzantine (1940–1949). Dix années de trouvailles et d’études,” REB 8 (1950): 192–251 (“II. Le vocabulaire numismatique,” 199–206). 8 C. Morrisson, “Le michaèlaton et les noms de monnaies au XIe siècle,” TM 3 (1968): 369–74 (repr. in eadem, Monnaies et finances à Byzance: Analyses, technique [Aldershot, 1994], art. V). 9 M. F. Hendy, Coinage and Money in the Byzantine Empire 1081–1261, DOS 12 (Washington, D.C., 1969). 10 Cf. P. Grierson in DOC 5.1:25. 11 C. Morrisson, “Monnaie et prix du Ve au VIIe siècle,” in Hommes et richesses dans l’empire byzantin, vol. 1 (Paris, 1989), 239–60 (repr. in Monnaies et finances, art. III). 12 Argyrion is used in the 4th century (PRyl. IV, 607 and POxy. XXIV, 2729). For later 5th- and 6th-century examples and its abbreviation on bronze coins as AP, wrongly interpreted as meaning antiquo pondere, arca praefecturia, or as a reference to the scrinium ad pecunias, see C. Morrisson, “L’économie monétaire byzantine,” RN 29 (1987): 248 note 3 with references. 7
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the Book of Ceremonies, or later in the Palaia Logarike, to the silver miliaresion.13 In Athanasios’s rule (BMFD 11, 228), ca. 963, the whole range of coins from the high-value gold to the smallest bronze is encompassed in the phrase h] nomivsmata h] noumiva, which the translator has rendered as “coins or currency.” This is also the technical vocabulary still used in the early twelfth century in Alexios I’s fiscal rescripts included in the Logarike.14 In the Kecharitomene typikon (1110–16), the formula adopts the equivalent “even to the extent of an obol.”15 This equivalent to the follis is often found in the works of learned and educated writers of the twelfth century, such as Niketas Choniates,16 and it is no surprise to find it in the classicizing pen of the author commissioned by Anna Komnene’s mother, Empress Irene, to write the typikon, perhaps Anna herself. The evolution cannot be followed any further since this interdiction on monks’ possession of private property seems not to have been repeated. However, in a different context, limits are set in terms of the current units of the time. In 1406, in forbidding a “restive” brother seeking solitude to ask for any allowance from the monastery, the typikon of Manuel II Palaiologos (1406) states that he should not demand “any hyperpera,”17 implying the silver coin of the period. In Crete, in 1400, the testament of Neilos Damilas threatens with excommunication “anyone who is found to have a passionate attachment to her relatives or children and wishes to give them money from her own work, even one grosso,”18 that is, the silver coin of Venice whose minting had resumed in 1379 on a slightly changed standard of fineness probably inspired by the need for a simple equation with the new Byzantine silver hyperpyron.19 More precise details appear only from the late eleventh century onward, and it is no surprise that this coincides with the last and worst period of the eleventh-century debasement, but also (see Smyrlis, Table 1, p. 253) more or less with the typika dealing also with complex cash management. Attaleiates (BMFD 19) offers the first mention of the trachy, a term evolving from the adjective holotrachy qualifying the state or condition of gold coins, whether full weight or not, from the late tenth century (Bari, 971, Panteleimon and Esphigmenou, 1034)20 into a proper qualification of a denomination, contrasted in the text with the tetarteron for a sum to be paid half in trachea, half in tetartera. The denomination was created by Nikephoros II and is mentioned in earlier documents (e.g., the chrysobull of Constantine X for Iveron, in 1065) which specified the same half and half payment to make the two balance.21 13
C. Morrisson, “La Logarikè: Réforme monétaire et réforme fiscale sous Alexis Ier Comnène,” TM 7 (1968): 419–64, esp. 422 and 440 (repr. in Monnaies et finances, art. VI). 14 Zepos, Jus 1:335. 15 “So then, practice utmost poverty, not only as regards money even to the extent of an obol, but also in food and drink even to the smallest amount” (BMFD 27, 694, §50–Gautier, 101). 16 Historia, ed. J. L. van Dieten, CFHB (Berlin–New York, 1975), 1:57. 17 BMFD 59, 1618. 18 BMFD 54, 1471. 19 F. C. Lane and R. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice (Baltimore, 1985), 402–4 and fig. 20 Grierson, DOC 3:51, 55. 21 Actes d’Iviron, II. Du milieu du XIe siècle à 1204, ed. J. Lefort, N. Oikonomidès, and D. Papachryssanthou, in collaboration with V. Kravari and H. Métrévéli (Paris, 1990), 113, no. 38, lines 2–3; Grierson, DOC 3:39; M. F. Hendy, “Lightweight Solidi, Tetartera, and the Book of the Prefect,” BZ 65 (1972): 57–80 (repr. in idem, The Economy, Fiscal Administration and Coinage of Byzantium [Northampton, 1989], art. IX).
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COINAGE AND MONEY IN BYZANTINE TYPIKA
The contribution of the Komnenian period typika to our understanding of the contemporary monetary system looms large: three documents require particular attention. In the biographical part of his testament, Pakourianos (BMFD 23; 1083) provides the detailed list of the cash (logarion) that formed part of the valuables he entrusted to his brother Apasios, while he was commanding in the East as duke of Theodosioupolis:22 “the old coinage of Romanos [III Argyros], the trachy of [Constantine IX] Monomachos, the coins of [Constantine X] Doukas and the scepter coins; there were also coins minted by Michael [VII Doukas].”23 This enumeration is remarkable in following, I believe (pace Grierson, DOC 3), a strict chronological order following that of debasement whose phases generally coincided with a change in types. The respective fineness of nomismata histamena, called trachea in the documents, amounted to the following averages: Romanos III, more than 90 percent; Constantine IX, ca. 87 percent; Constantine X, ca. 80 percent; Eudokia,24 75 percent; Michael VII, ca. 58 percent. Although it is not quite clear how debased coins were handled in circulation, this indicates how aware the public was at the time of the declining quality of the coinage. Pakourianos’ typikon is not the first document to attest coins being named by the emperor issuing them, but the Georgians were particularly careful in qualifying the coins or drawing up detailed lists such as those in the testaments of Kale and Symbatios Pakourianos (Iviron, 2: nos. 44 and 47) and the Synodikon of Iveron. However, the regulations of rogai (allowances) are stated in “nomismata” with no other qualification than that they should be “in standard trachy coinage.” Apparently Pakourianos’ wealth enabled him to provide rogai in full-weight coins as opposed to the half trachea/half tetartera rogai offered by the civilian Attaleiates for the monks of his foundation in Rhaidestos. The folleis are clearly the lowest and most despicable monetary unit, only mentioned once in an ironic (?) context: “If any of our relations is discovered to be without a legacy . . . and is very insistent that he get a share, we rid this person in every way of this wicked notion and decree that he should receive 12 folleis25 only as a bequest from our administrators and should cease from this shameless insistence” (dwvdekti fovllei" movna" lovgw/ legavtou).”26 The testament of Christodoulos for Patmos with its codicil (BMFD 24; March 1093) is most notable for its evidence on the reformed coinage of Alexios I Komnenos. As is known from Hendy’s 1969 study, the coins of the first part of his reign, badly debased trachea and tetartera that contain a mere 10 percent gold, debased miliaresia and rare folleis, were then replaced by a stable three-tier system with the gold hyperpyron at its top followed by its third part, the electrum gold-silver alloy trachy, and its 48th part, the billon, silverwashed trachy, not to mention the petty copper divisions, the stamenon and tetarteron. This private testament is the first document of Komnenian times that mentions hyperpyra 22
After 1071, according to P. Lemerle, Cinq études sur le XIe siècle byzantin (Paris, 1977), 167. BMFD 23, 526. Palaio;n logavrion rJwmana'ton, tracu; monomaca'ton, douka'tovn te kai; skhptra'ton, pro;" de; kai; micahla'ton. 24 Grierson considers it the first type of Constantine IX’s histamena where the emperor is shown holding an elaborate cross-scepter. I have proposed to identify the skeptrata (scepter coins) in the typikon of Pakourianos with Eudokia’s coins (Morrisson, Monnaies et finances, art. V, 370). However, since skeptron in the sources, notably in the De cerimoniis, refers to a processional cross or, mainly, to the labarum (Hendy, DOC 4.1:172), one can think that it refers here to Constantine X’s first issue (emperor standing, holding labarum) as opposed to the second one (emperor and Virgin standing). 25 12 folleis would have sufficed to buy bread for less than a month at 2 pounds a day. 26 BMFD 23, 541 = Gautier, 88, lines 1151–54. 23
CÉCILE MORRISSON
267
nomismata, in its list of the four boats bequeathed to the Patmos monastery, and it is part of the evidence for dating the creation of the restored coinage to 1092–93.27 Nomismata termed chichata, once qualified as kala, are clearly the same denomination. My interpretation of these as coins “with a chi,” alluding to the IÇ CÇ on the obverse of the hyperpyron, as opposed to the Virgin on the base-gold coin, later called theotokia (chrysobull, Patmos, 1119?), has been generally accepted.28 B. Koutava-Delivoria29 has, however, pointed out earlier occurrences of the term in Symbatios Pakourianos’ testament dated 1090 (Iviron, no. 44, 15–16) and collected all later examples with related forms (chinata, chinati in Georgian texts). She argues that the X alludes not to Christ but to a particular form of the labarum ending on some of Alexios I’s hyperpyra and that their issue must go back to ca. 1089. This is a matter to be solved by numismatists, so let us proceed to the Pantokrator (BMFD 28; 1136) typikon which has attracted so much attention since its first publication by A. A. Dmitrievskij in 1895. The apparent complication of its multiple coin names, “which more than double” (according to Frolow) the four denominations found in the Kecharitomene (BMFD 27; 1110–16) typikon,30 is in fact an illusion, as will be seen. The Kecharitomene is more concerned with the management of income and expenditure and the accounts to be rendered by the docheiarios of unspecified “nomismata,” meaning cash in precious metal (gold and electrum) in general. But three of the five (or six) denominations of the Komnenian system appear in one place or the other: (1) one hyperpyron nomisma for the clothing allowance of the nuns in the Ta Kellaraias dependency; (2) 24 trachea nomismata for their normal allowance, which must be the silvered copper coin; (3) noummia for various distributions (noummiva nomismavtwn tracevwn dwvdeka or noummiva nomismavtwn tracevwn e{x),31 translated as “coins”—or noummia—“of twelve,” or “six,” or “four,” or “three trachea nomismata (sic),”32 but which must be understood as “noummia to the value of twelve, six, four, or three trachea” and which must be the smallest change, the tetarteron (the bronze coin that Alexios I distributed to the poor pilgrims of the First Crusade33). The only denomination omitted in the Kecharitomene typikon is the electrum one-third hyperpyron, which the empress was rich enough to pass over in favor of the gold hyperpyron, as Pakourianos was able to do with trachea, which he preferred to tetartera. The Pantokrator typikon (BMFD 28; 1136) with its detailed list of salaries (with related cash and food allowances), supplies, and coin distributions provides complete evidence for all known Komnenian denominations. As is natural for this outstanding and generously endowed imperial foundation, with its staff of 103 for the hospital with 50 to 61 patients, the majority of entries (78 out of 96 in Gautier’s index) refer to the gold hyperpyron under five different epithets: novmisma uJpevrpuron (nomisma hyperpyron, i.e., refined “in fire”34 ), 27
Hendy, Coinage and Money, 39–49 and DOC 4.1:16; Morrisson, “Logarikè,” 449. Morrisson, “Michaèlaton,” 372. See Hendy, DOC 4:58, referring to Hendy, Coinage, 38. 29 B. Koutava-Delivoria, “Les chichata, les protocharaga et la réforme monétaire d’Alexis I Comnène,” RBN 141 (1995): 13–36. 30 Frolow, “Les noms de monnaies,” 241. 31 BMFD 27, 699 and 701. 32 BMFD 27, 696, § 59 and § 63; 701, § 71, etc. 33 Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), 5.10, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), 188–89. 34 And not “hyper-pure” as sometimes erroneously stated; see P. Grierson, “From Solidus to Hyperperon: The Names of Byzantine Gold Coins,” NCirc 74 (1966):123–24. 28
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COINAGE AND MONEY IN BYZANTINE TYPIKA
novmisma uJpevrpuron kainouvrgion (“new” nomisma hyperpyron), novmisma crusou'n protimwvmenon (“the preferred gold nomisma”), novmisma kainouvrgion protimwvmenon (“new preferred gold nomisma”), palaio;n uJpevrpuron (“old” hyperpyron). The document is particularly interesting, however, in stipulating the exchange of one denomination for a handful of lower-value ones and even on one occasion giving the rate of exchange. We are thus informed that on the days of commemoration of the emperor and his wife and son, 50 hyperpyra were to be distributed to different participants, comprising 32 hyperpyra given out in gold coins, while “the rest [i.e., 18 hyperpyra] should be changed into hagiogeorgata nomismata and distributed to the banners” (uJpallattevsqwsan eij" aJgiogewrgavta nomivsmata).35 The identification with the Constantinople electrum coin of John II36 is straightforward, as it is the only issue of the reign bearing an image of St. George and was incidentally the first in Byzantine coinage to show the image of this saint. The term theotokia could apply to the hyperpyra of John II depicting him with the Virgin,37 as Hendy assumes: but the context of their being given to the infirmarian for small expenses (for vine oil: uJpe;r oijnanqivou—3 nomismata theotokia; for cold cauterizers: yucrokauthvrwn—2 nomismata theotokia; for “lamps”: kandhlw'n—1 nomisma theotokion)38 rather point to their being of smaller value than the hyperpyron mentioned in the same paragraph for more important expenses. The electrum coin is also intended under the designation of nomismata trikephala to be distributed, one to each of the fifty patients who get their feet washed on Holy Thursday39 or to constitute the monthly allowance (mhnai'on) of the doctor and his assistants. The origin of this nummus trino capite insignitus, as Du Cange defined it,40 must be sought in a three-headed type such as Alexios’ coronation electrum coin41 or Thessalonican coins.42 The term could apply here to John’s electrum coins with St. George or St. Demetrios, but the three-headed type is not necessarily specific to them and could be used for the hyperpyron where John appears with the Virgin. It is probable that already by then the term trikephalon was alluding to its 1:3 relationship with the hyperpyron.43 Some forty years after the coinage reform, monetary terminology is still “in the making.” As we will see, shifting away from its iconographical etymology, trikephalon becomes the common coin name of the base gold Komnenian and later Nicaean silver issues. The typikon of St. Mamas (1158) considers it better that the items of clothing be supplied to each of the brothers through the use of money, putting an end to contentions and grumblings even in this matter. Therefore, there shall be given to each of the brothers . . . equally, except for the old men who do not toil . . . at the present time two hyperpyra each and two old trikephala each; that is at the beginning of September one hyperpyron each and one trikephalon each and at the beginning of March similarly one each. But, if, indeed, as time progresses, 35
BMFD 27, 756 = Gautier, 83, lines 899–900. DOC 4: pl. IX, 8a.1–8d.3. 37 DOC 4: pls. VII–VIII, 1a.1–3b.4. 38 BMFD 27, 761 = Gautier, 95, lines 1104–06. 39 BMFD 27, 762 = Gautier, 99, line 1165. 40 C. Du Cange, Glossarium ad Scriptores Mediae et Infimae Graecitatis (Lyons, 1688), s.v., col. 1605. 41 DOC 4: pl. IV, 21. 42 DOC 4: pl. IV, 23a.1–23c. 43 Hendy, DOC 4:58 dates this transformation in the reign of Manuel I whose hyperpyra generally had two figures, while most of his trachea had three. 36
CÉCILE MORRISSON
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the monastery should prosper, as I hope and pray, it is our wish that even three hyperpyra be given them for the whole year.44
The increase of the allowance, time permitting, from 22⁄3 hyperpyra to 3 full hyperpyra confirms the value and identification of the trikephalon in the text with the one-third hyperpyron piece.45 The Pantokrator typikon stipulates other small expenses, distributions, or monthly allowances of lesser personnel in trachea and defines the value of the trachy as 1 ⁄48th of the hyperpyron: “two aspra trachea nomismata or a twenty-fourth part of the preferred gold nomisma of the day . . . for incense and candles for each of the sick who die.”46 This is one of the very few documents of the twelfth century giving the relative value of the billon. The “folleis” mentioned as being spent on the decoration of baskets47 or for buying soap on various occasions48 are apparently the name of the old denomination transferred to its contemporary equivalent. Whether the “billon” aspron trachy—the stamenon of Latin documents—or the tetarteron is implied is difficult to tell. Smaller change is to be given to the fifty patients for their daily expenses for wine and all other refreshment when one trachy nomisma for each is not available.49 The mention of the hyperpyron as “the preferred of the day” distributed in tetarthrw'n h] noumivwn implies changing down the gold coin in order to give each of the fifty patients the equivalent of one trachy in tetartera, 288 trachea then equaling one hyperpyron.50 The same sort of changing down was implied in the Kecharitomene typikon, which provided for the distribution at the gate of “coins of 12 (or 6) trachea nomismata” (sic in trans.), that is, “12 (or 6) trachea nomismata in noumia” (noummiva nomismavtwn tracevwn dwvdeka).51 Documents of the late twelfth century and of the thirteenth century, though still dealing in detail with the management of monetary revenues,52 offer a much simpler picture of circulating medium, most of them mentioning only the two higher denominations, except Elegmoi (BMFD 33) where a distribution is also provided in “tetartera to the value of two trikephala nomismata”53 in a passage that has, however, been copied from the typikon of St. Mamas. Trikephalon has now become the current and universally accepted name of the fraction 44
BMFD 32, 1013–14; Eustratiades ed., Hellenika 1 (1928), chap. 28, p. 283. The ambiguous cases of references to the trikephalon are apparently not as numerous as Hendy (Coinage, 33) assumes. 46 BMFD 28, 762 = Gautier, 99, lines 1162–63. 47 BMFD 28, 759 = Gautier, 91, lines 1032–33. 48 BMFD 28, 760 = Gautier, 91, line 1047; BMFD 28, 764 = Gautier, 103, line 1245. 49 BMFD 28, 759 = Gautier, 91. 50 See the discussion in Hendy, DOC 4.1:48–49. He understands tetartera noummia. The value of the silvered tetarteron of Constantinople is convincingly shown by Hendy, ibid., 49–50, to have amounted to 1⁄6 of the billon trachy, that is 1⁄288 of the gold hyperpyron, instead of 1⁄18, that is 1⁄864 of the gold hyperpyron for the copper tetarteron issued by provincial mints. Allowing for a commission of ca. 10%, to change the hyperpyron, instead of the usual 1⁄24th (0.4%) (Hendy, “The Gornoslav Hoard, the Emperor Frederick I, and the Monastery of Bachkovo,” in C. N. J. Brooke et al., eds., Studies in Numismatic Method: Essays Presented to Philip Grierson [Cambridge, 1983], 188 and note 59, citing his then forthcoming Studies), each of the patients would have received 5 tetartera for one billon trachy. 51 BMFD 28, 701 = Gautier, 120–21. 52 See Smyrlis’s article, in this volume, 239–56. 53 BMFD 32, 1088 = Dmitrievskii, 769. 45
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of the gold coin, abbreviated GKL in the manuscripts, notably in the cartulary of the Lembiotissa. But as F. Dölger has shown, F. Miklosich and J. Müller could not decipher it and left lacunae in the text of their publication, which has still not been replaced.54 This brings me to what I thought a hitherto unnoticed hapax, when I started working from the index of BMFD: the gellion in document no. [61]. In fact, numismatics, added to other compelling arguments developed by Laurent, contributes to solving the “problematic dating” of this last document of the series, the inventory of the monastery of the Mother of God Eleousa in Stroumitza, left, with all due caution, by the translators, under 1449, but which needs to be moved back to 1164.55 The document ends by stating that: “Beyond these things that are indicated in the present register, nothing else will be found, no nomismata of imperial stamp, not even a gellion [sic] or hyperpyron or any other coin as God is [our] witness. Rather we had even debts up to thirty gellia [sic] because of a tax collector’s extraordinary requisition on pretext of indebted Vlachs, the lord George Tetragonites acting as tax collector during the tenth indiction before the last.”56 Gellion (gkellivon) is not to be found in the usual dictionaries nor in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, but fascicle 2 of the Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität (Vienna, 1996), s.v. refers to the praktikon of the Latin bishopric of Kephallenia dated 1264, edited by Tzannetatos,57 and to Hendy, Coinage and Money (1969, 226 note 10, where Dölger’s note is quoted). In fact, L. Petit developed into “gellion” in the text of his edition the abbreviation G el (?) that he found in Miller’s “apographon” of the document, a nineteenth-century copy preserved in a Bibliothèque nationale de France manuscript (Suppl. gr. 1222). The original of the cartulary available to Miller is not presently to be found in Iveron, according to J. Lefort. We may, however, assume that the abbreviation was similar to that in the Kephallenia documents: Tzannetatos’ plates show GK ligatured with epsilon and lambda above the epsilon ( ),58 hence it was also developed by this editor into “gellion,” a word that the Byzantines probably never used and a misreading for trikephalon. There is no need to comment here on the later development of the trikephalon, which in the thirteenth century had turned into a pure silver coin worth 1⁄10th or 1⁄12th of the hyperpyron,59 current in the Asian as well as in the Western provinces of the empire. This is shown respectively by the typikon of Maximos for Boreine60 (BMFD 35; 1247) mentioning 54 F. Dölger, “Chronologisches und Prosopographisches zur byzantinischen Geschichte des 13. Jahrhunderts,” BZ 27 (1927): 296 note 30, citing several documents from the Lembiotissa cartulary (MM 4:65.5, 79.15, 90.29, 125.1, 127.23, 130.16, 183.27) dated from 1208 to 1272. 55 BMFD 61, 1668 note 1. V. Laurent, “Recherches sur l’histoire et le cartulaire de N.-D. de Pitié,” EO 33 (1934): 15–27, esp. 15–23. Lefort adheres to these conclusions which he reexamined on the occasion of a seminar in the École Pratique des Hautes Études. 56 BMFD 61, 1674, § 7 = Petit, 124, lines 10ff., and following Lefort’s correction. 57 Th. St. Tzannetatos, To; praktiko;n th'" Latinikh'" ∆Episkoph'" Kefallhniva" tou' 1264 kai; ejpitomh; aujtou' (Athens, 1965). 58 I am grateful to Michel Cacouros for checking this abbreviation on Tzannetatos’s plates reproducing photographs taken by D. Zakythinos of this no longer extant manuscript. 59 See C. Morrisson, “Byzantine Money: Its Production and Circulation,” in The Economic History of Byzantium, ed. A. E. Laiou (Washington, D.C., 2002), 909–66 and P. Schreiner, “Die Prachthandschrift als Gebrauchsgegenstand: Theologische und wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Notizen auf dem Verso des Josua-Rotulus (Vat. Palat. Gr. 431),” AnzWien 134.1 (1997–99): 43–62. 60 Not Koteine or Skoteine as stated respectively in Gedeon’s edition or Na ˘sturel’s commentary and BMFD. See J. Bompaire, J. Lefort, V. Kravari, and C. Giros, eds., Actes de Vatopédi, I. Des origines à 1329, Archives de
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chrysa hyperpyra and trikephala, by the Lembiotissa cartulary cited above, and by the documents from Epiros commented on by A. Laiou.61 Another abbreviation problem is raised by the aspra of Chariton’s testament for Koutloumousiou (BMFD 51, pp. 1420, 1422, 1423; testament B = Lemerle, no. 30, p. 118.50, p. 120.113, 116; 1370). They were difficult to put into context when I first encountered them, since it seemed too early a mention for the Byzantine silver coin, until I discovered that the reading had been corrected en passant by P. Lemerle in his second edition (1988) to hyperpyra.62 Plates XLV–XLVI (“acte 30,” lines 50, 113, 116) give the clue:
a. Second testament of Chariton, 1370, Actes de Kutlumus, Pl. XLV, no. 30, lines 49–51
b. Second testament of Chariton, 1370, Actes de Kutlumus, Pl. XLVL, no. 30, lines 112–117
The abbreviation for hyp or hyper was probably mistaken for an alpha or alpha sigma ligatured with pi-rho superscribed, hence the reading aspra. Lemerle’s correction makes the account of the monastery’s financial troubles more consistent: the debt of a thousand hyperpyra lamented by Chariton in testament B § 563 is what remains of the 1,200 ounces of ducats expended by the monastery on the construction of the still extant fortification, and mentioned by Chariton in testament A, §11.64 The ounce being equal to 6 fine gold nomismata and the hyperpyron then having only half of its fineness, an ounce of ducats would have to contain 12 ducat pieces, here meaning the silver grosso. It was one of the many ways of stating that hyperpyra had to be paid in the “current” (silver) ducats that by 1250 were penetrating the area.65 The typikon of St. John l’Athos 20 (Paris, 2001), no. 15, 136–62, at p. 142: Le nom du monastère. “. . . On lit, dans la suscription de Maxime (1.2 du document), Borènès (cf. planche XIX).” 61 A. Laiou, “Use and Circulation of Coins in the Despotate of Epiros,” DOP 55 (2001): 207–15. 62 Actes de Kutlumus, nouvelle édition par P. Lemerle, Archives de l’Athos 22 (Paris, 1988); see the “analysis” of the document (p. 374, line 1; p. 375, line 5). In the index, under “aspron” (p. 444), there are no more references to these occurrences. They are, on the contrary and rightly, to be found under “hyperpyron” (p. 469). 63 BMFD 51, 1420 = Lemerle, no. 30, p. 120, lines 44–50. 64 BMFD 51, 1417 = Lemerle, no. 29, p. 115, line 58. 65 The relevant texts are assembled in T. Bertelè, “Moneta veneziana e moneta bizantina,” in Venezia e il Levante fino al secolo XV, ed. A. Pertusi (Florence, 1973), 59–64. On the circulation of the Venetian grosso, see
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Prodromos on Mount Menoikeion near Serres (1332) offers a good example of another similar expression: “Concerning allowance to the brothers . . . I . . . order that the allowance which is customarily prescribed and the grant of shoes and of anything else to the brothers need be carried out in the following way. To each one of the brothers is given each year one [and] a half hyperpera, or nine hexagia [of silver], that is, 18 large ducats.”66 These megala doukata, which were also valued at 12 to the hyperpyron, are the same Venetian silver ducats called “large” as opposed to the Byzantine coins of inferior value and fineness to which they were naturally preferred.67 There are very few mentions of money in the few later foundation documents, except for the nomismata and kokkia (moneys of account68) in the Kecharitomene inventory (early 15th century),69 and the exemption of 3 hyperpyra that Patriarch Matthew obtained from the emperor for the monastery of Charsianeites.70 These few mentions, and the lack of typika for the period, are no doubt due to the general impoverishment of the period and the increasing scarcity of potential founders who, like the Notaras family, understandably preferred to invest in Italian imprestiti (public debt bonds) rather than in monasteries. In summary, the typika collection contains some thirty coin denominations of both a general or more specific nature. Mostly dating from the eleventh to the early fourteenth century, they include some three-quarters of the Greek coin names that are listed in the relevant volumes of the Dumbarton Oaks coin catalogues71 (omitting those found in Latin or Georgian documents), a fact that demonstrates the importance of the evidence from the typika on these matters. TYPIKA EVIDENCE ON THE MONETARY ECONOMY Since absorbing and mastering the vast amount of evidence provided by the typika collection are beyond my capabilities and the scope of this study, I refer the reader to KonM. Galani, “Sumbolhv sthn kukloforiva Benetikw'n grossi 13–14 Ai. ston ÔElladiko Cwro. Me aformhv ena qhsaurov” (Contribution on the circulation of Venetian Grossi of the 13th and 14th centuries in Greece, inspired by a hoard), ∆Arcaiologika; ∆Anavlekta ejx ∆Aqhnw'n 21 (1988 [1993]): 163–84; A. Stahl, “European Coinage in Greece after the Fourth Crusade,” Mediterranean Historical Review 4 (1989): 356–63; idem, “Coinage and Money in the Latin Empire of Constantinople,” DOP 55 (2001): 197–206. 66 BMFD 58, 1600 (§ 12); A. Guillou, Les archives de Saint-Jean Prodrome sur le mont Ménécée (Paris, 1955), 170, lines 10–14: Peri; th'" eujlogiva" tw'n ajdelfw'n . . . Th;n dev ge ajpotetagmevnhn sunhvqw" eujlogivan kai; uJpovdesin kai; a[llhn tina; tw'n ajdelfw'n creivan bouvlomai kai; ajpodevcomai kai; diatavssomai givnesqai ou{tw": divdosqai toi'" ejni; (sic) eJkavstw/ ejniautw'/ uJpevrpuron e}n h{misu, h[goun eJxavgia ejnneva, h[toi doukavta megavla dekaoktwv. 67 The Venetian ducat with its 2.18 g at 96.5% Ag had a ca. 12% higher metal content than the Byzantine basilikon with its average 2.02 g at 92.7% (Grierson, DOC 5:32, 50; C. Morrisson, J.-N. Barrandon, and V. Ivanisˇevic´, “Late Byzantine Silver and Billon Coinage: Its Chemical Composition,” Metallurgy in Numismatics, Royal Numismatic Society Special Publication [London, 1999], 4:52–70). 68 DOC 5:28. Kokkion, properly a wheat grain of a quarter of a carat, was used as an equivalent of keration/carat, the 24th part of the nomisma, in documents of the 13th to the 15th century. The ms. Paris. suppl. gr. 387 cited by V. Laurent, “Le Basilicon,” BZ 45 (1952): 53–54, states that to; novmisma e[cei kokkiva kdV xuvlina. 69 BMFD 27, pp. 712–14 passim, referring to taxes owed to the monastery. 70 BMFD 60, p. 1639. 71 DOC 3:44–62: section I, F on “Monetary Terms and Coin Names” records some nine Greek names. DOC 4 includes no such section on coin names, but Hendy, Coinage, chap. 4, on “Monetary terminology of the Twelfth C.,” 26–38, includes some seventeen Greek names. DOC 5, section I, E on “Written Sources and Coin Names” lists fourteen names. Allowing for overlaps (“hyperpyron” for instance is mentioned in all three volumes), the thirty-one entries in the typika compare favorably to the ca. forty in DOC for the same period.
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stantinos Smyrlis’ forthcoming dissertation for a detailed analysis of the business affairs of the monasteries and conclude with a few soundings into the evidence offered on daily use of coins, storage or hoarding, prices, and salaries. The colorful story that Neophytos of Cyprus (BMFD 45) reports in his testament dated 9 May 1214 provides a concrete introduction to these matters. In chapter 4 dealing with his “establishment in the hermitage and certain mysteries,” Neophytos describes his five years of service in the monastery of St. John Chrysostom on Mount Koutzovendis, then his journey to the Holy Land, his pilgrimages there, and his return after six months to Cyprus to his former monastery where he is not accepted: “Departing from there too, I arrived at the fort of Paphos, wishing to sail toward Mount Latros. . . . But having been detected by the guards of the harbor and been seized by them as a fugitive, I was put in jail for a night and a day. They deprived me even of the two nomismata which I had for the fare. In their mistaken belief that they would find something more on me, the workers of greed even searched the very seams of my clothes.”72 Can the cost of the fare from Paphos to Miletos be inferred from the 2 nomismata mentioned here? It is impossible to answer since their type is not specified; they could refer to either Byzantine hyperpyra or, more likely, trikephala or Cyprus bezants. That coins could be hidden or simply kept in the seams of one’s clothes is well evidenced in antiquity and the Western Middle Ages and must be added to the list of portable Byzantine cash (logavrion) containers, mainly bags or purses:73 ballavntion (“purse,” from bavllw, which can mean to put money on deposit), marsuvpion (“pouch”), ajpovdesmo" (“a secured bundle,” from desmov", “band, bond”), ejpikovmbion, ajpokovmbion (“fastened with a buckle,” kombivon),74 sakkivon (a sack of larger size), proceivrion (“handbag”), but also coffers like a kovdrion (“square box,” from Latin quadrum).75 Other containers, more appropriate to the fortunes of great monasteries, are to be found in the provisions for the “management of currency” studied by Lefort and Smyrlis.76 A “secured box” (kibwvtion kathsfalismevnon)77 is apparently the most frequent expression, while docei'on78 or glwssovkomon kleisi; kathsfalismevnon kai; sfragivsi79 are also attested.80 Sums handled by some monasteries needed such security since many of them were
72
BMFD 45, 1351 = Tsiknopoullos, 76. Morrisson, Monnaies et finances, art. VII, 322. For proceivrion see the story of Metrios in Synaxarium, AASS, Nov.: 721, line 33. Cf. the dia; rJafh'" sunhmmevna pro;" a[llhla ejgceivria in De cerimoniis, 2:23, Bonn, 621: “des serviettes cousues les unes aux autres”—in Gilbert Dagron’s forthcoming translation—in which the emperor’s son’s hair was collected on the day of his kouvreuma ([first] haircut) to be given to his godfathers (ajnavdocoi). The first of these ejgceivria (handbags) was a golden one (i.e., a golden woven cloth). J. M. Featherstone points out to me that the proceivrion of the merchant Metrios, containing 1,500 nomismata and secured with a silk thread (ajsfalisavmeno" meta; seiradivou shrikou', ibid. lines 48–49), may have been similar to the imperial ejgceivria. 74 Hendy, Coinage, 306–7. 75 I am grateful to John Nesbitt for his help in finding appropriate translations. 76 J. Lefort and K. Smyrlis, “La gestion du numéraire dans les monastères byzantins,” RN 153 (1998): 187– 215. 77 E.g. St. Mamas, chap. 10, BMFD 32, p. 1002 = Eustratiades, 270 or Lefort and Smyrlis, “La gestion du numéraire,” 209, and many other instances. 78 E.g., Areia, in 1143, BMFD 31, p. 962 = Choras, 242 = Lefort and Smyrlis, “La gestion du numéraire,” 207. 79 Machairas, in 1210, BMFD 34, p. 1051 = Tsiknopoullos, 44 = Lefort and Smyrlis, “La gestion du numéraire,” 210–11. 80 Morrisson, Monnaies et finances, art. VII, 323; G. Vikan and J. Nesbitt, Security in Byzantium: Locking, Sealing, and Weighing (Washington, D.C., 1980). 73
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more and more involved in commercial activities and selling their surpluses during the eleventh century and twelfth centuries, as the well-known examples of Lavra, Patmos, or the Pantokrator show. Here too the typika contribute evidence of the “economic expansion” of Byzantium.”81 They show that the role of the monks was not only a predatory one as sometimes claimed, simply benefiting from imperial or private endowment and exemptions, but also an active one, investing labor and money in clearing, planting, and exploiting tracts of lands, sometimes comparable to that of the Cistercians in the West. This tradition survived in the late thirteenth century when the delimitation of the convent of Bebaia Elpis in Constantinople founded by Theodora Synadene in ca. 1295–1300 states that the boundary “bends to the east along the same public road and stretches as far as the other road which is near St. Onouphrios, where there is a vineyard, which I purchased from Kaligas as ordinary land for 400 hyperpyra, and then planted it so that it has turned into the vineyard which is seen now.”82 Not all of the monasteries in the typika collection took part in this monetary expansion to the same degree: some out of an ideal of autarkeia, such as the monastery of Nikon Metanoeites in Sparta (BMFD 17; after 997), which apparently relied solely upon revenues in kind83 (§10), or the Black Mountain establishment near Antioch (BMFD 20, §75; ca. 1055), which refused any cash offerings and insisted that the monks should buy the cheapest clothing available on the market—so after all there must have been some kind of monetarized transactions going on, and the monks may have received some cash from the sale of their products. For other richly endowed monasteries such as Bachkovo, the problem lay in its remote location in a place where the local panegyris (fair) took place only once a year at Easter while all the revenues of every kind are gathered during the month of September and the demands are dealt with then, the brothers could have received the cost of their clothes then too. But for this reason, namely so that the brothers, on the pretext of buying clothes and doing business, should not be compelled to travel too far, depart from the monastery, and neglect their service to it and their praying, we have ruled that they should receive these declared allowances, i.e., the cost of their clothes, at the time of the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday, when it has also been fixed that a fair be held beside the most holy monastery so that all of them may purchase their necessities. For everything that is necessary will readily be found at this fair.84
This is apparently a perfect example of sluggish monetary circulation in the hinterland.85 The great Constantinople monasteries offer a contrasting image of active and intense 81
See Economic History of Byzantium, ed. Laiou (as above, note 59), with previous literature. BMFD 57, 1563, §145 = Delehaye, 95. 83 BMFD 17, p. 319, §10: “Let all the revenues of the churches of Sthlavochorion and Parorion, which I built, that is, the dependencies along with their incomes, be stored up and collected in the church of the Savior, not only the yield of the vineyards and small farms and olive trees, but also the yield of fruit-bearing and non–fruit-bearing trees.” 84 BMFD 23, p. 533, chap. 10. 85 See M. F. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy (Cambridge, 1985), 298, and A. Laiou, “Use and Circulation of Coins in the Despotate of Epiros,” DOP 55 (2001): 207–15, on the seasonal rhythm of transactions in 13th-century Epiros. Simon Bendall, however, points out that this stricture may simply have meant that “the head of the monastery didn’t want his brothers to wander.” 82
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monetary circulation, and the “great” twelfth-century typika indicate a full range of allowances and distributions. The typika collection will greatly facilitate their study, which will also benefit from progress in our understanding of the monetary system and terminology. When, for instance, one takes into account the amount of roga in cash in the Pantokrator typikon and tries to evaluate the food allotment ( prosphagion), the inconsistencies (“l’ordre déconcertant des rémunérations”) that P. Gautier (REB 32 [1974]: 17) noted at the intermediate level between the 4 nomismata roga assigned to the meizoteros (steward) and the grave-diggers’ 2 nomismata (1:2 ratio) are corrected to a 1:3.5 ratio (71⁄3 to 3 nomismata altogether). The typika are the main evidence on the incomes of monks:86 when a monetary estimation of prosphagion or sitesion is added to the rogai in cash, yearly incomes amounted to 12 to 19 hyperpyra, which put them above the range of modest salaries (cf. the cook at 6 1⁄2 hyperpyra) but well below military or high civil officials, a status appropriate to the monks’ avowed ideal of poverty. Nuns may have observed this ideal even more rigorously, for at least the four nuns at Ta Kellaraias received an annual allowance (roga) of only 24 trachea each and one hyperpyron each for clothing, altogether the equivalent of some 8 hyperpyra at the utmost, inferior to that prescribed in the Pantokrator typikon.87 Many other notices of monetary interest in the typika collection could be cited, such as the presence of “gold nomismata of [Constantine IX] Monomachos bearing crosses”88 (stauvrata monomacavta [sic]), weighing 4 litrai, donated in 1144, a century after their issue, to the monastery of Phoberos,89 or the prices of construction or land.90 But thanks to the typika collection, the lid of the pot containing so many treasures has been lifted for good, and its riches will prove a long-lasting resource.
86
See J.-C. Cheynet and C. Morrisson in Economic History of Byzantium, p. 868, Table 19. BMFD 27, p. 699, to be compared with some of the various rogai for this other Komnenian foundation in Constantinople: “the leading priests should each receive fifteen hyperpyra nomismata . . . the other six priests similarly fourteen hyperpyra nomismata each . . . , the ten deacons thirteen similar nomismata each” (BMFD 28, §70, p. 755). 88 Evidently nomismata histamena showing the emperor holding a cross-scepter (DOC 3, “Class III,” 740– 41, pl. LVIII, 3.2–3.17). 89 BMFD 30, p. 928 = Papadopoulos-Kerameus, p. 63. 90 E.g., prices of construction or repairs listed in the Bebaia Elpis typikon (BMFD 57): 87
1327–35: 72 hyperpyra for the winepress at Pera (1567, §140 = Delehaye, 93; 200 hyperpyra for repairing the cells (eij" ajnavktisin tw'n kellivwn) (1562, §143 = Delehaye, 94) 1400: 200 hyperpyra for restoration and repair of the church and bell tower etc. nails, tiles etc. (1568, §158 = Delehaye, 104) prices of land in the same typikon: 1327: 300 hyperpyra so that an estate (ktema) might be purchased (1567, §158 = Delehaye, 102) 1394: courtyard transformed into a wheat field valued at 300 hyperpera (1568, §158 = Delehaye, 104) Or the amount for the rent of a mill mentioned in the typikon of St. John the Forerunner on Mount Menoikeion near Serres: 1332: 12 hyperpyra (BMFD 58, p. 1609).
This is an extract from:
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
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Singing with the Angels: Foundation Documents as Evidence for Musical Life in Monasteries of the Byzantine Empire ROSEMARY DUBOWCHIK
usic historians who study the sacred chant of the Byzantine Empire draw primarily on manuscripts containing the liturgical texts and melodies, of which more than a thousand survive for the period of the tenth to the fifteenth century.1 In copies of books such as the sticherarion, heirmologion, evangelion, and octoechos, the substance of the daily round of psalms, hymns, and scriptural cantillation has been preserved. From some of these sources, tunes of the more elaborate hymns may be revived, and even subjected to analysis for what they reveal about the methods by which Byzantine composers created the enormous musical repertory.2 There are no surviving manuals that lay out the “rules” of musical composition, if indeed these ever existed, but a handful of extant theoretical treatises on music focus on details of the unique system of Byzantine musical notation and the intricacies of the church modes.3 These treatises were not in general use for the practical
M
I thank Alice-Mary Talbot for inviting me to prepare a study of references to music in the ktetorika typika for the Dumbarton Oaks colloquium on 3–4 March 2000 in celebration of the publication of Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders’ Typika and Testaments, ed. J. Thomas and A. C. Hero, 6 vols. (Washington, D.C., 2000). All references in this paper to the ktetorika typika refer to this translation, and the Greek editions consulted are those referenced in the translation for each typikon; references to typika in square brackets (e.g., Mamas [16]) are to chapter numbers. A version of this paper was read at the annual conference of the American Musicological Society in Toronto on 3 November 2000. I thank Kenneth Levy and Matthew Shaftel for their comments and suggestions about many aspects of this study. 1 Kenneth Levy estimates the number of manuscripts with musical notation at 1,200–1,500, excluding those with ekphonetic notation, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), s.v. “Byzantine Rite, music of the.” 2 Analytical studies of compositional methods are too numerous to provide an exhaustive list here. For outstanding examples, see J. Raasted, “Compositional Devices in Byzantine Chant,” Cahiers de l’Institut du MoyenAge Grec et Latin 59 (1989): 247–69; C. Thodberg, Der byzantinische Alleluiarionzyklus: Studien im kurzen Psaltikonstil, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, subsidia 8 (Copenhagen, 1966); N. Schiødt, “The 741 Final Cadences from the Hymns of the Twelve Months Compared with Other Cadences in the Byzantine Sticherarion Coislin 42 from Paris,” International Musicological Society Study Group “Cantus Planus”: Papers Read at the Fourth Meeting, Pécs, Hungary, 3–8 September 1990, ed. L. Dobszay (Budapest, 1992), 267–81; and G. Amargianakis, “An Analysis of Stichera in the Deuteros Modes: The Stichera Idiomela for the Month of September in the Modes Deuteros, Plagal Deuteros, and Nenano (Transcribed from the MS Sinai 1230, A.D. 1365),” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin 22/23 (1977). 3 See the following editions: D. Conomos, ed., The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, the Lampadarios, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Corpus Scriptorum de Re Musica 2 (Vienna, 1985); C. Hannick and G. Wolfram, eds.,
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training of church musicians;4 instead, for this purpose, we find, at the beginning of some manuscripts of music, brief primers for learning to read musical notation.5 As for other sources, although much is surely to be gained from study of comments about music in Byzantine letters, saints’ lives, histories, and travelers’ accounts, these have not yet been collected and subjected to contextual examination, a project that more than one musicologist has described as necessary, but none has yet tackled.6 Among these resources, only the theoretical treatises can be said to constitute a systematic commentary on music.7 However, with the increased accessibility made possible by the collection and translation of the monastic ktetorika typika under the auspices of Dumbarton Oaks, music historians have another body of literature to consider, one that addresses the social, spiritual, aesthetic, and practical aspects of chanting the liturgy. Of the sixty-one documents in the edition, approximately half contain information that is of interest to the music historian (see Table 1). In general, the documents that comment on music are those that regulate daily life, rather than juridical documents or the type that function as will-and-testament. The importance of the ktetorika typika lies in the fact that they do not contain incidental remarks made by casual observers, but comments that were meant to be prescriptive, in some cases even being read aloud to the monks and nuns at regular intervals.8 Individually and collectively, they reveal the concerns of the monastic Gabriel Hieromonachos: Abhandlung über den Kirchengesang, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Corpus Scriptorum de Re Musica 1 (Vienna, 1985); B. Schartau, Hieronymos Tragodistes: Über das Erfordernis von Schriftzeichen für die Musik der Griechen, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Corpus Scriptorum de Re Musica 3 (Vienna, 1990); B. Schartau, ed., Anonymous: Questions and Answers on the Interval Signs, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Corpus Scriptorum de Re Musica 4 (Vienna, 1998); C. Hannick and G. Wolfram, eds., Die Erotapokriseis des PseudoJohannes Damaskenos zum Kirchengesang, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Corpus Scriptorum de Re Musica 5 (Vienna, 1997); and C. J. Bentas, “The Treatise on Music by John Laskaris,” Studies in Eastern Chant 2 (1971): 21–27. The theoretical works by Manuel Bryennios, George Pachymeres, Nikephoros Gregoras, and most of the treatise known as the Hagiopolites belong to a Byzantine tradition of transmitting ancient Greek theory. See C. Troelsgard, “Ancient Musical Theory in Byzantine Environments,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin 58 (1988): 228–59. 4 Manuel Chrysaphes appears to criticize musicians for not caring about music theory when he writes, in the introduction to his treatise: “Those who pride themselves on knowing how to chant and on being experts in chanting do not understand the matters on which they pride themselves; and they mislead anyone who wishes to pay attention to them because they have not embarked upon this art with exact and unerring knowledge”: Conomos, The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, 37. 5 These elementary teaching devices take two forms. Examples of brief treatises of the type called papadike may be found in Mount Athos, Lavra E. 148 and Lavra E. 174. Sources that contain versions of the “Ison Poem,” a mnemonic device for learning to sing from musical notation, include Athens, National Library 2458 and 897. 6 See J. Raasted, “Byzantine Liturgical Music and Its Meaning for the Byzantine Worshipper,” in Church and People in Byzantium, ed. R. Morris (Birmingham, 1986), 53–54; and B. Schartau, “On Collecting ‘Testimonia’ of Byzantine Musical Practice,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin 57 (1988): 159–66. Some early references occur in the collection for the early Christian period by J. McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, Cambridge Readings in the Literature of Music (London, 1987). 7 Very little information about Byzantine sacred music can be educed from iconography. There does not appear to be a tradition of depicting angels playing instruments in Byzantium, as there is in the medieval Latin West (see K. Meyer-Baer, Music of the Spheres and the Dance of Death: Studies in Musical Iconology [Princeton, 1970]). However, see N. Moran, Singers in Late Byzantine and Slavonic Painting (Leiden, 1986) for a significant treatment of late Byzantine iconography of church singers. 8 For example, Mamas [16], Lips [8], Neophytos [11], and Bebaia Elpis [120].
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TABLE 1. KTETORIKA TYPIKA THAT REFER TO MUSIC Document name and number
Date, author, and foundation for which typikon was written
I. Traditional Private Religious Foundations 2. Pantelleria Late 8th century, by the monk John, for St. John the Forerunner on the island of Pantelleria (southwest of Sicily and due east of Tunisia) 3. Theodore Stoudites Early 9th century, by Theodore the Stoudite, for St. John Stoudios in Constantinople 4. Stoudios Early 9th century, by an anonymous author in the Stoudite tradition. Two versions exist: “A” from a 13th–14th-century ms. at Vatopedi on Mount Athos, and “B” from a late 9th- or early 10th-century Italo-Greek ms. 7. Latros 955, by Paul the Younger, for Theotokos tou Stylou on Mount Latros 9. Galesios 1053, by Lazaros of Mount Galesios 10. Eleousa 1085–1106, by Manuel, bishop of Stroumitza, for Theotokos Eleousa in Palaiokastron II. Athonite Monasteries 11. Athonite Rule 963, by Athanasios, for the Great Lavra on Mount Athos; perhaps revised ca. 1020 III. The Protectorate 19. Attaleiates 1077, by Michael Attaleiates, for his almshouse in Rhaidestos and monastery of Christ Panoiktirmon in Constantinople 20. Black Mountain 1055–60, by Nikon of the Black Mountain IV. Early Reform Monasteries of the Eleventh Century 22. Evergetis 1054–70, primarily by Timothy Evergetinos, for Theotokos Evergetis 23. Pakourianos 1083, by Gregory Pakourianos, for Theotokos Petritzonitissa in Bacˇkovo in Bulgaria 24. Christodoulos 1091, by St. Christodoulos, for St. John the Theologian on the island of Patmos V. Imperial and Royal Monasteries of the Twelfth Century 26. Luke of Messina 1131–31, by Luke of Messina, for San Salvatore in Messina 27. Kecharitomene 1110–16, by Irene Doukaina Komnene, for the convent of Theotokos Kecharitomene in Constantinople, jointly founded with a male monastery (Christ Philanthropos) 28. Pantokrator 1136, by Emperor John II Komnenos, for Christ Pantokrator in Constantinople 29. Kosmosoteira 1152, by the sebastokrator Isaac Komnenos, for Theotokos Kosmosoteira in Thrace VI. Early Reform Monasteries of the Twelfth Century 30. Phoberos 1113, by the monk John for St. John the Forerunner of Phoberos; he died before revisions in 1144 31. Areia 1143 by Leo, bishop of Nauplia, for Theotokos in Areia, near Nauplia in the Argolid 32. Mamas 1158, by Athanasios Philanthropenos, for St. Mamas in Constantinople 33. Heliou Bomon 1162, by Nikephoros Mystikos, for Theotokos tou Heliou Bomon or Elegmon
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Document name and number
Date, author, and foundation for which typikon was written
VII. Independent and Self-Governing Monasteries of the Thirteenth Century 34. Machairas 1210 by Neilos, bishop of Tamasia, for Theotokos of Machairas in Cyprus 35. Skoteine 1247, by the monk Maximos, for the monastery of Theotokos at Skoteine 36. Blemmydes 1267, by Nikephoros Blemmydes, for Lord Christ-Who-Is at Ematha near Ephesos 37. Auxentios 1261–80, by Michael VIII Palaiologos, for Michael Archangel on Mount Auxentios 38. Kellibara I 1282, by Michael VIII Palaiologos, for St. Demetrios of the Palaiologoi Kellibara in Constantinople 39. Lips 1294–1301, by Theodora Palaiologina, for the convent of Lips in Constantinople 40. Anargyroi 1294–1301, by Theodora Palaiologina, for the convent of Sts. Kosmas and Damian (the Anargyroi) in Constantinople; crossreferenced to Lips VIII. Later Private Religious Foundations 45. Neophytos 1214, by the monk Neophytos, for hermitage of the Holy Cross near Ktima, Cyprus 46. Akropolites 1295–1324, by Constantine Akropolites, for the Anastasis in Constantinople 51. Koutloumousi 1370s, by the superior Chariton, for the monastery of Koutloumousi, Mount Athos 52. Choumnos ca. 1374, by Makarios Choumnos, for Nea Mone in Thessalonike 54. Neilos Damilas ca. 1400, by Neilos Damilas, for the convent of Theotokos Pantanassa at Baionaia, Crete IX. Independent and Self-Governing Monasteries of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 55. Athanasios I 1303–5, by Patriarch Athanasios I, in an attempt to issue general legislation binding on the empire’s monasteries 57. Bebaia Elpis ca. 1330, by Theodora Synadene (niece of Michael VIII Palaiologos), for the convent of Theotokos Bebaia Elpis (Sure Hope) in Constantinople 58. Menoikeion 1332, by Joachim, metropolitan of Zichna, for St. John the Forerunner on Mount Menoikeion, near Serres 60. Charsianeites 1407, by Patriarch Matthew I, for Charsianeites (Theotokos Nea Peribleptos) in Constantinople 61. Eleousa Inventory 1449, by an anonymous author for Theotokos Eleousa in Stroumitza
founders, and while it is not possible to generalize from these documents, given the independence of monastic institutions in Byzantium and the lack of uniformity among the typika themselves, we can look at them as a source of information about what the parameters were. Just how large or small might a “normal” choir be? Who might be put in charge of the music? How might singers be rewarded after the extra effort required by an all-night vigil? This study presents an overview of the concerns about music to which the monastic founders gave voice and examines their significance in the broader context of Byzantine music history.
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ATTITUDES TOWARD MUSIC As recently as 1986, the late Jørgen Raasted suggested that all that was necessary to understand “the effect of Byzantine religious music on the mind of worshippers” would be to read Byzantine literature from one end to the other for relevant excerpts.9 However, in the ktetorika typika there are numerous comments about the meaning of music, not just for a handful of Byzantine writers, but intended for the enlightenment of the monks and nuns to whom they were addressed. The most striking image, which recurs in several of the typika,10 is that of the angelic choir singing continuously in heaven above, accompanied by (or alternating with) the human choir below.11 Through this act of singing with the angels, humankind is brought closer to heaven itself. This image, derived from scripture,12 and perpetuated in the writings of the church fathers (most notably, St. Basil)13 and the hymnody of the church,14 is used by St. Christodoulos of Patmos: Before all else, it is . . . fitting to speak of our true employment . . . the doxology of praise to God. For it is in view of this one thing that . . . we have been brought into being and adorned with reason, in order to honor the Creator with uninterrupted hymn-singing. Besides everything else, the fact that the character and pursuit of the monastic life is called angelic leads to this conclusion. Hence it is that God’s creature, man, is shown to be, in the words of [Gregory] the Theologian, “the angels’ descant [ajntivfwnon],” repeating what they do as closely as his nature will allow. Then let this hymn be uninterrupted and unlimited.15
Christodoulos refers to music here both in its literal sense and as a metaphor for the strivings of monastic life, illustrating how, in the life of monastics assigned to perform the liturgy, performance and meaning were fused. Ideally, the act of singing became a spiritual path, a form of nourishment for the soul and enlightenment for the mind, just as food, clothing, and sleep were necessary to satisfy the body.16 This dichotomy between the body and soul was extended beyond the individual monk to the whole monastery. In the words of Timothy Evergetinos: “For as we are made up of two parts, I mean body and soul, so also are the activities of the monastery. The whole daily divine office expressed in the singing of psalms could reasonably be thought of as the soul of the monastery, whereas the monastery itself and all the things that benefit our bodies could be considered its body.”17 For Gregory Pakourianos, again echoing St. Basil, singing psalms was “a mystical in9
Raasted, “Byzantine Liturgical Music and Its Meaning,” 54. See Christodoulos [A17], Lips [28], and Choumnos [B24]. 11 Christodoulos [A17] uses the image of humans answering the angels, in a kind of antiphonal praise. In other sources, such as Lips [28], the image is one of both angels and humans singing continuously: “[The] nuns who are involved with the holy sanctuary and the divine hymnody . . . have received a pure angelic model. For the angels above sing in an inspired fashion, while the human choirs below sing in a more solemn manner, and the former sing without pause, the latter continuously, the former serenely, the latter purely.” 12 See Isaiah 6:2–3, Luke 2:14, and Revelation 4:8–9. 13 See, for example, Basil’s Homily on Psalm One, in Exegetic Homilies, trans. Sr. Agnes Clare Way, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 46 (Washington, D.C., 1963), 152–53. 14 See, for example, the text of the Cherubic Hymn, in which the choir sings: “We who mystically represent the Cherubim sing the Thrice-Holy Hymn to the Life-Giving Trinity. Let us put away all worldly care so that we may receive the king of all, invisibly attended by the angelic hosts.” 15 Christodoulos [A17]. 16 Menoikeion [8], Mamas [17], and Phoberos [4]. 17 Evergetis [9], recopied by the authors of Kosmosoteira [20], Machairas [61], and Phoberos [20]. 10
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cense-offering,” wafting its way heavenward to join the angelic throngs, where it could be “a very swift summoner of angelic help.”18 Several founders comment on the power of psalm-singing to keep the mind focused on spiritual matters and away from more dangerous thoughts,19 and Lazaros of Mount Galesios even goes so far as to recommend four specific psalm verses to be sung by a monk in the throes of the temptations of lust.20 The notion of singing with the angels, as defense against evil or a way of transcending the human condition, is fundamental to Byzantine musical thinking. It not only forms the rationale for the monastic act of virtually continuous singing, but, as Dimitri Conomos has pointed out, it is the foundation of the entire musical tradition: for the practice of singing traditional chants; for the practice of making many chants out of the same formulaic, authoritative bits of melody; and even for the anonymity of composers until the fourteenth century.21 If the inspiration for the chants is angelic or divine, then they must not be altered. For many monastic founders, the importance of singing as a spiritual exercise seems to be the basis of a marked concern with getting the chants right, that is, performing them properly; and it is the resulting need for organization and discipline in the choir that gives music its place in these regulatory documents. THE BYZANTINE MONASTIC CHOIR Considerable resources were devoted to the performance of the liturgy in most monasteries. Many of the ktetorika typika indicate that the monks or nuns were divided into two groups. The first, called church monks (ekklesiastikoi), were generally literate and devoted much of their time to chanting the liturgy. The others (diakonetai), often not literate, were responsible for manual labor and waiting on the choir monastics. The singing of hymnody was to have benefits for all, however, literate or not. Bebaia Elpis states that the nuns who do manual work should hurry to the church when they hear the singing “like thirsty harts towards pure and fresh flowing streams,” singing psalm verses on their way. If they are literate, they are to join in the liturgy.22 Lazaros of Mount Galesios compared the choir monks to reapers in the field, and the manual monks, who cannot read and do not know 18
Pakourianos [14]. In his homily on Psalm 1, St. Basil describes the psalms as “a city of refuge from the demons, a means of inducing help from the angels,” and “the work of angels, a heavenly institution, the spiritual incense.” St. Basil, Exegetic Homilies, 152–53. 19 See, for example, Phoberos [4]: “But here in the spiritual struggle a very important weapon that brings death and destruction to the one who makes war on us, namely mortal-slaying Satan, is the power that comes from the singing of psalms itself and from prayer.” See also Bebaia Elpis [27]: “Make this your most important task, smiting these unseen and dangerous enemies as with arrows shot from the hand of a mighty man [Ps. 126:4], through psalmody, prayer, vigil, abstinence, contrition, tears, all the other weapons of the Holy Spirit. Thus you will defeat the enemy with all your strength and utterly vanquish them.” The same kind of thinking is evident in other monastic writings, for example in the treatise On Prayer by John the Solitary: “For God is silence, and in silence is he sung by means of that psalmody which is worthy of him. I am not speaking of silence of the tongue, for if someone merely keeps his tongue silent, without knowing how to sing in mind and spirit, then he is simply unoccupied and becomes filled with evil thoughts. . . . There is a silence of the tongue, there is a silence of the whole body, there is a silence of the soul, there is the silence of the mind, and there is the silence of the spirit.” Translation from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook, by Paul Halsall at http://www. fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1c.html. 20 Galesios [196]. 21 D. Conomos, “Change in Early Christian and Byzantine Liturgical Chant,” Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario 5 (1980): 49–51 and 61. 22 Bebaia Elpis [61–62].
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TABLE 2 THE NUMBER OF CHOIR MONKS/NUNS Typikon Pakourianos Kecharitomene Pantokrator at Eleousa Kosmosoteira Auxentios Kellibara I Dependency of Lykos Lips Anargyroi
Total number
“Choir”
“Manual”
50 + superior 30 + superior not less than 80 50 74 40 36 24 50 30
27] (54%) 24] (77%) 50] (63%) [24] (48%) 50] (68%) 16] (40%) 15] (42%) 17] (71%) 30] (60%) 18] (60%)
[23] 6 [30] [26] 24 24 21 [7] 20 12
how to sing, to “those who follow behind the reapers and pick up the ears that fall or are overlooked.” Although it is through the choir monks that the liturgy is celebrated, they may sometimes be careless and introduce impurities; whereas the illiterate who stand and pay close attention hold what they manage to collect safe in their minds.23 Choumnos is unusual in recommending ten years of manual labor for monks who should then “rest from bodily toil and take up spiritual labors, singing continually to God and praying and reading, with occasional manual labor breaks.”24 Christodoulos and Neophytos make it clear that kelliotai were expected to sing some psalmody,25 but Charsianeites seems to imply only a minimal amount of singing for idiorhythmic monks: “If one of [the regular monks] should ever be ridiculed by the superior, or ordered to perform a difficult task, he will immediately look to the idiorhythmic monk as a model. With the devil as his advocate, he will say, ‘Why would God not support me like this monk, who has no one to order him about and lives a trouble-free life, without singing many psalms.’’’26 The proportions of the groups range from 40 percent choir monks and 60 percent manual monks at Mount Auxentios, to 77 percent choir and 23 percent manual in the typikon for the convent of the Theotokos Kecharitomene. Table 2 provides the relevant statistics.27 Thus, according to the evidence of the ktetorika typika, anywhere from fifteen to fifty monks or nuns formed a choir, depending on the size of the monastery and the degree of dedication to liturgy.28 However, in some monastic churches, such as Eleousa at Pantokrator (which had twenty-four choir members), it seems that only half of the choir monks sang each week; and in some small dependencies, hospitals, and cemetery chapels a single priest, or two or three monks, sang the necessary hymns.29 23
Galesios [182]. Choumnos [B18]. 25 Christodoulos [A24] and Neophytos [15]. 26 Charsianeites [B18]. 27 Additional typika that indicate a division, but for which numbers are not specified: Galesios, Evergetis, Mamas, Neophytos, and Bebaia Elpis. Typika of institutions in which all monks may have participated in singing include Attaleiates, Luke of Messina, and Areia. 28 This kind of information is rare. Scholarly literature has hitherto cited only the size of the choir at Hagia Sophia and adjoining churches, set at twenty-five by Justinian in his law code in 535. 29 For example, at the St. Lazaros Chapel, Akropolites [6] specifies “a precentor who is a priest,” and two other clergy members, to do the singing. Although the size of the church is clearly relevant to the number of 24
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The Byzantine church choir was often divided into left-hand and right-hand halves, as evidenced by several of the ktetorika typika.30 By alternating verses of the psalms or longer hymns,31 each half of the choir would actually sing only half of the music, with pauses to rest their voices and, perhaps, to reflect on the meaning of the text. We know, too, that the two choirs were physically separated in at least some monastic churches, since the typikon of Stoudios specifies that during the vigil of Palm Sunday at the “O Lord, I have cried,” the choir changes places, those on the right crossing over to the left side and those on the left to the right side.32 Leadership of the monastic choir seems to have been assigned to a variety of officials, as demonstrated in Table 3. In a study of music manuscripts of the Palaiologan period, Dimitri Conomos cites numerous references to the official called the domestikos (usually translated as choir leader).33 There were normally two of these, one for each side of the choir. Their duties included singing the intonations (echemata) of the chants; interjections such as duvnami"; and the kratemata, elaborate units of teretismata (wordless syllables such as te, re, ti, ri, to, ro) inserted in or after the late Byzantine chants. However, if the domestikos performed these significant musical functions in the monastic choir, there is surprisingly little evidence in the ktetorika typika. The only specific reference is in Menoikeion, where the domestikos leads an acclamation to the emperor. There are a surprising number of references in the ktetorika typika to musical responsibilities being assigned to the ecclesiarch, one of the highest officials in the monastery34 who was chosen for his knowledge of the church rituals and whose duties included care of the books, documents, and sacred objects.35 Musicologists have not previously considered the singers for the divine liturgy, orthros, or vespers, other offices could be held in even smaller spaces, such as the narthex of the church (e.g., Kecharitomene [38], Mamas [31], and Heliou Bomon [32]); the exonarthex (e.g., Kecharitomene [33]); or even in individual cells (e.g., Phoberos [12], Black Mountain [24], and Areia [1]). The practice was clearly not uniform. 30 As described in Machairas [114]: “[the disciplinary official] at every service ought to post in the left choir those who are going to start the singing . . .” [and persuade a monk who is sleeping] “to rise and make in the middle of the holy church three prostrations and one each to the two choirs.” 31 Pakourianos [12] specifies that the alternating choirs should not “snatch up [psalm] verses hastily from each other . . . so the singing should take place in a pious and reverent manner.” According to O. Strunk, “The Byzantine Office at Hagia Sophia,” DOP 9/10 (1956): 175–202, repr. in idem, Essays on Music in the Byzantine World (New York, 1977): 130, the chanted office alternated whole verses, the monastic half-verses. 32 Athonite Rule [17] mentions one disciplinarian in each choir, as does Stoudios [18], without actually saying that they both served at once. Evergetis [9] mentions only one disciplinarian. Lips [4] may imply that the entire choir sang together (“30 of the 50 nuns should concern themselves with the divine sanctuary, all of them together unceasingly rendering up to God the divine hymns and holy doxologies prescribed for monastic life”). 33 D. Conomos, Byzantine Trisagia and Cheroubika of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: A Study of Late Byzantine Liturgical Chant (Thessalonike, 1974), 45, 64, 68, 78, 94, 100, 116, 141–42, 150, 262, 296–300, 308–13, and 321–24. Moran, Singers, 16 cites John, bishop of Kitros, who in the 13th century stated that the domestikos is the prefect in charge of chants and that he is the leader of acclamations to the patriarch or celebrant. 34 According to Attaleiates [33], monks receive allowances, but the amounts are not specified and distinctions among choir and manual monks are not made. Pakourianos [9] states that the monks are to receive allowances to buy necessities, with some distinctions made according to rank: the superior received 36 nomismata; fifteen top officials get 20 (including the ecclesiarch); fifteen men get 15; and the remaining twenty get 10. 35 For duties of the ecclesiarch/issa see Christodoulos [A21], Kecharitomene [20], Mamas [8], Heliou Bomon [8], Menoikeion [para. no. missing], Skoteine [12] and [22], Lips [24], and Bebaia Elpis [48–53].
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TABLE 3 TERMS FOR MUSICIANS AND CHOIR OFFICIALS Title Psaltes: singer**
Ekklesiastikoi: choir monastics Domestikos: choir leader*
Ecclesiarch/issa: church steward
Kanonarches: precentor
Anagnostes: lector Aphypnistes: waker
Horologos: clock-monitor
Duties according to ktetorika typika • Not specified in Phoberos, Mamas, or Heliou Bomon. • In Lips, refers to professional musicians (kalliphonoi) from outside of the convent. • In Kecharitomene, refers to male chanters who are not to enter the convent. • Perform offices and liturgy; contrasted with manual laborers (Galesios, Kellibara I, Lips, Bebaia Elpis, et al.). • Lead singing of a toast (acclamation) to emperor on Sundays (Menoikeion). • Not specified in Pantokrator, which also names Paradomestikoi (assistant choir leaders).* • Main church official. Sometimes (e.g., Menoikeion) there was also an assistant. • Direct liturgy (Tzimiskes, Athonite Testament, Attaleiates, Heliou Bomon, Menoikeion, Bebaia Elpis; at Skoteine he was to consult the typikon). • Care for items (e.g., candles, oil, books, decorations) used in church (Pakourianos, Christodoulos, Areia, Mamas, Lips), and for title deeds (Christodoulos). • Sound signal at dawn (Stoudios); decide when semantron is to be struck (Auxentios). • Begin Six Psalms (Kecharitomene); lead Six Psalms from center of church (Pantokrator). • With the priest, begin singing offices on time (Mamas). • Assign places in church (Pantokrator, Bebaia Elpis). • Discipline choir sisters, and set a good example (Bebaia Elpis). • Regulate the “measure of the voices” for services (Auxentios). • Control the tempo of the singing (Auxentios). • Sound the semantron (Stoudios A). • Read the sermon from the ambo (Stoudios A). • Read in the refectory (Black Mountain). • Lead the choir (Pakourianos, which specifies a subdeacon). • Read out correct texts before they are sung (Pantelleria). • Reside at chapel and conduct offices with 2 other clergy at same time as they are sung in the main church (S. Lazaros chapel, Akropolites). The kanonarches must be a priest. • Not specified in Pantokrator (there are 4), Mamas. • Stoudios version B omits all references to the precentor found in Stoudios A. • Not specified in Pakourianos (specifies a subdeacon) or Phoberos. • Wake everyone for orthros (Stoudios); sound the semantron (Pantokrator). • Wake those who sleep during the readings at orthros (Athonite Rule). • Summon monks to church (Pantokrator); sound the semantron (Evergetis).
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Title
Duties according to ktetorika typika
Laosynaktes: people-caller* Taxiarches: choir monitor* Epistemonarches: disciplinarian*
Kandelaptes: candle lighter
• Not specified in Pantokrator; elsewhere*** summoned clergy, called absentees. • Maintain order (Stoudios). • Urge slow monks to run to services after semantron sounds (Athonite Rule). • Stand in the choir; remind monks to stand in an orderly manner (Athonite rule). • Watch monks as they enter for services and meals (Evergetis, Machairas). • Wake monks for mesonyktikon and during other services (Machairas). • Post monks who are going to begin the singing in the left choir (Machairas). • Discourage nuns from talking (Kecharitomene). • Not specified in Stoudios. • Sound the semantron for mesonyktikon (Machairas).
*Some sources specify two. **In Auxentios, the term used is Hieropsaltes. ***See. J. Darrouzès and B. Outtier, “Notice arménienne sur les dignités de l’Église,” REB 40 (1982): 204.
ecclesiarch a musical official, but the typikon for Mount Auxentios states that the ecclesiarch shall regulate “the measures of the voices” for the liturgical services; at Pantokrator the ecclesiarch is to stand in the middle of the church and lead the monks in chanting. More extensive specifications are given in Bebaia Elpis, where the ecclesiarchissa36 will assume responsibility and leadership in all the holy church services. . . . [She] should be a nun who is able to sing and chant in tune and with skill, and is much more familiar than the others with the ecclesiastical office and rite . . . spiritually passionate and zealous with regard to the holy hymns and doxologies. . . . [She] should encourage the other choir sisters . . . and be able to persuade them of her own accord not to succumb to laziness or . . . any carelessness with regard to the hymns which should be offered up daily to God . . . she should be well qualified lest on account of some inexperience and ignorance some part be omitted of the prayers and psalms ordained from above, or some mode of the doxology be removed and inserted in the wrong place, which I personally consider just as serious as omitting it, since confusion is called “a vehicle of the devils.” . . . She is to assign the proper place and position to each of the choir sisters. . . . The young nuns who devote all their efforts and zeal exclusively to chanting and to learning their letters will be under her authority and will be assigned to obey her, so that these [offices] may thus be performed in good order, gracefully and without any omissions, and so that the duty of directing the choir offices may be performed with all elegance and good order.37
36
It is possible that the role of the ecclesiarchissa was enhanced to compensate for the absence of male officials, since it is clearly stated in Bebaia Elpis [113] that the nuns were not able to participate in the liturgy in all of the same ways as monks: “the prayer and supplication on their behalf should be made by the priests alone, but not by you—for it is not permitted for you to sing and stand together with the priests.” 37 Bebaia Elpis [49–53].
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Another official with musical duties was the kanonarches, or precentor, traditionally a member of the choir who read aloud the lines of the texts of the canons before they were sung.38 However, his authority appears to have been more extensive in some monasteries, and the suitability of giving him the preeminent role in the context of monastic services is made clear in this passage from Pantelleria, regarding what to do when mistakes are made. When you are standing in the church for song, listen to what the precentor says and sing exactly as he is prescribing. Let no one have the power to change any word or to sing a different troparion. Even if you become aware that the precentor is mistaken, only those who are in the front shall have the right either to change any of the words or to begin a different song. All others of you keep observing the proper order. Should anyone dare to break the present rule, let him be liable to the punishment of lying face downward.39
In most monasteries, the tasks of waking the monks for offices and maintaining discipline in the choir were given to minor officials, as outlined in Table 3. With the exception of the typika of Kosmosoteira and Bebaia Elpis, which mention bells, most typika indicate that the semantron was used to call the monks or nuns for services and meals.40 There is very little information in the ktetorika typika or elsewhere about the kind of musical training available for Byzantine monastic singers,41 but Luke of Messina makes it clear that some specialization was recognized: “We were eager to assemble God-loving men . . . who have some experience of sacred things, are initiated in the inspired scripture, and 38 The musical rank of the kanonarches seems to have been among the lowest. When money was paid, as at the Eleousa church of Pantokrator monastery (see Pantokrator [32]), the two leading priests received 15 hyperpyra nomismata and 25 maritime modioi of grain each; deacons and domestikoi were given 13 hyperpyra nomismata and 24 maritime modioi of grain each; the 2 laosynaktai and 16 chanters (psaltai) somewhat less (12 hyperpyra nomismata and 20 maritime modioi of grain each); and the lowest paid were the four precentors (kanonarchai), who were given 6 hyperpyra nomismata and 15 maritime modioi of grain each. Orphan lamplighters received 4 hyperpyra nomismata and 12 maritime modioi of grain each. It is of interest to note that Lazaros of Mount Galesios served as kanonarch at the monastery of St. Sabas. See R. P. H. Greenfield, The Life of Lazaros of Mount Galesion: An Eleventh-Century Pillar Saint (Washington, D.C., 2000), 96. 39 Pantelleria [10]. The “front” was presumably occupied by monks of highest rank, perhaps the “elders,” since the author of this typikon is especially concerned [1–2] with the monks standing and moving according to rank. 40 The semantron is mentioned frequently in many of the typika. See, e.g., Pantelleria [1] and [15], Stoudios [18] and [26], Athonite Rule [1], [8], and [17], Black Mountain [9], [12], [15], and [17], Evergetis [6], Kecharitomene [35–40], and Pantokrator [1] and [11]. Normally, monks were summoned by the semantron, although in two typika there are references to bell towers. Bebaia Elpis [158] states that Xene Philanthropene paid for the restoration and repair of the church and bell tower, which were in danger of collapsing; and Kosmosoteira [9] states: “I wish the monks to get ready to ring the two bells quite loudly with [their] hands before the hymnody—I mean the two bells which I hung high up in the tower, in place of semantra . . . [later] . . . the two bells hanging quite high up in the tower to be rung loudly, as long as necessary—these being the very bells I had hung up in fervent faith and in my reverence toward the Theotokos.” For more on the semantron and the use of bells in Byzantium, see E. Williams, The Bells of Russia: History and Technology (Princeton, N.J., 1985), 10– ´urcˇic´ of Princeton University reported 17 and 21–24. At the Dumbarton Oaks colloquium, Prof. Slobodan C that he has found extensive evidence for bells before 1204–60, contrary to the situation described by Williams. The reference in Kosmosoteira, which dates from 1152, also predates the Latin occupation. 41 In general, musical skills were probably not taught theoretically, but were developed over many years of singing the liturgy. According to Machairas [115]: “Nor may lay boys be accepted for study of the sacred scriptures, only those who . . . have the first growth of beard on their cheeks. In order to understand the [liturgical] office of the church, let the boys who wish to become monks be placed in a special cell of the monastery and taught the sacred psalter and all the rest of the office, and thus let them enter and be accepted.”
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have been trained in the discipline of church melodies.”42 As stated above, the ecclesiarchissa at Bebaia Elpis should be able to “chant in tune and with skill.” The typikon of Mount Auxentios states that monks should not use “their excellence in singing psalms” as an excuse to avoid other work,43 suggesting that some may have been recognized for exceptional skill or talent; and Pantokrator states that when the hypakoe is sung, the “specialist chanters” should stand in front of the sanctuary and sing this in “a fitting and orderly way.”44 The ability to read and recite the psalms was a skill taught at some monasteries. Stoudios specifies that: “It should be known that after we have recited the psalter the one in charge of the canon signals three times at the third doxology so that those who are still learning the psalter can be assembled so we can sing the canon together. For these [brothers] go out after the Six Psalms and study up until this time.”45 Whatever the training of monastic singers, professional singers were barred from at least some monasteries.46 At the convent of Lips, “chanters ( psaltai) who are called kalliphonoi” are not to attend feasts; only the nuns and their priests are to sing the hymns.47 An exception is made when the emperor attends the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos, on which occasion “the kalliphonoi who have been chosen by lot are to precede him unhindered, and when the emperor departs they are to leave without any delay whatsoever.” Equally strong is the prohibition by Constantine Akropolites, concerning the feast of St. Lazaros: “Kraktai (to whom most people give the more euphonious name of kalliphonoi, “singers with beautiful voices”) should not be invited, nor should they come and enter uninvited; for when there is a congregation of people, it is intended that they should sing, but only monks should perform the hymns of the vigil.”48 The concern, in each case, seems to be that the monastics themselves chant, rather than relying on professional singers, which is consistent with the attitude that singing is a spiritual exercise. Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos provides evidence that in the tenth century the kraktai were court singers, that is, court officials and other laymen, who led the people in singing acclamations to the emperor at the coronation and at secular ceremonies.49 The term kalliphonoi is generally understood to mean church singers who performed the kalophonic chants, the very elaborate melodies of the maistores of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but Akropolites’ 42
Luke of Messina [4]. Auxentios [6]. 44 Pantokrator [5]. 45 Stoudios [36]. 46 The role of eunuchs and boys in the choirs of Byzantium is a subject that calls for further investigation. Eunuchs and young boys were banned in many typika, including Pakourianos [17], Christodoulos [A10], and Kosmosoteira [3]. Machairas [115] banned young boys, while Attaleiates [30] encouraged eunuchs but not boys. Kecharitomene [14–15] had eunuchs as stewards and priests. Evidence cited in Moran, Singers, 1, 24–26 suggests that outside the monastic environment the vocal qualities of both eunuchs and boys were valued and they were included in choirs. See Richard Witt, “The Other Castrati,” in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond, ed. S. Tougher (London–Swansea, 2002), 235–60. 47 A similar prohibition occurs in Kecharitomene [75], but the term used is simply yavlta". While this probably indicates a professional singer, in light of the date (1110–16) it was not one who sings kalophonic chant. 48 Akropolites [7]. 49 Constantin VII Porphyrogénète, Le Livre des Cérémonies, ed. and trans. A. Vogt (Paris, 1935). References are scattered throughout, including vol. 1:29–45, 56; vol. 2:3–15, 24–25, 29–30, 70–73, 88–93, 103–4, 121– 36, 149–59, 167–69, 173, and 179–80. 43
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assertion that the kraktai were also called kalliphonoi obviously calls for a reassessment, perhaps a broadening, of this terminology. A possible connection of the kalliphonoi and kalophonic style of chanting with secular music will be discussed further below. VIRTUES AND VICES OF MONASTIC SINGERS The typikon of Bebaia Elpis lays out the virtues to which monastics assigned to sing the liturgy and offices were to aspire: [the choir nuns] should . . . show themselves as first in zeal and eagerness through the sobriety of their soul in the divine singing of hymns of the holy gatherings. They should disregard every bodily pain and every physical weakness through the courage and nobility of their soul, standing before God and serving him with great fear, and praising him with love, and worshiping him, trembling with boundless joy of heart. Moreover, when their mind is for the most part distracted and dispersed to external matters, they should make it concentrate once more, and attend to the meaning alone of what is sung and chanted; for thus it can beautifully ascend to a conception of God and be brightened and illuminated and sweetened and made pleasant by the brilliant light which shines therefrom.50
But for those who found the daily routine of offices somewhat grueling and were tempted to stray, the expected demeanor is defined by many prohibitions, which include, first and foremost, not missing services. Neophytos exempts monks who feel too tired from half of the midnight service in the summer, when nights are short;51 but at all other times, he considers oversleeping and missing offices an offense deserving excommunication.52 Neilos Damilas specifies that those who miss services will receive only bread and water. In the rather more colorful language of Lazaros of Mount Galesion: “If any monk, except from compelling necessity, takes food before singing his hours, God will reckon it as if he has skinned seven dead donkeys and eaten with unwashed hands.”53 Among other prohibitions, we find the following: do not stand as if lifeless and indolent;54 do not sit, except during the readings;55 do not walk around the church during services;56 do not fall asleep;57 do not laugh, not even with “the merest smile,” as Pakourianos states;58 do not lean against the wall59 or bring a staff to lean on;60 do not shuffle feet;61 genuflect to the floor, not to a footstool;62 do not do handiwork in church;63 and do not chatter, because, according to the typikon for Mount Latros, this might “arouse the Divinity’s 50
Bebaia Elpis [56]. Neophytos [C2]. However, they must be present for half, “for the half-withered is preferable to the completely dried-up, and the one-eyed is better than the entirely blind.” 52 Neophytos [CB7]. He does not specify how long the excommunication lasts. 53 Galesios [184]. 54 Eleousa [8]. 55 Blemmydes [13]. 56 Blemmydes [13]. 57 Stoudios [18]. 58 Pakourianos [12]. 59 Athanasios I [4]. 60 Athonite Rule [20]. 61 Pakourianos [12]. 62 Athonite Rule [20]. 63 Bebaia Elpis [63], Kecharitomene [26]. 51
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irritation while we intend to propitiate him.”64 At Pantokrator, however, some quiet talking was allowed during the kathisma “if someone being uncertain wishes to learn something for his own benefit.”65 In addition to this general behavioral code, there are some recommendations directed at the singers. First, the music must be neither too loud nor too soft, or, as Nikon of the Black Mountain writes, “neither in the forbidden full voice nor again hushed, but in medium voice.”66 Neilos Damilas recommends that one nun should lead with a loud voice while the others follow her with quieter voices,67 and at Pantokrator the ecclesiarch is to recite clearly enough to be heard while the monks follow him in the singing quietly, not in a shrieking or raucous way.68 Second, the music should not be rushed. At Mount Auxentios, the ecclesiarch shall “favor the clarity of voice which comes from slowness and he shall reject the confusion which comes from going too fast.”69 The singers must try to stay together, according to Timothy Evergetinos;70 and Pakourianos specifies that the alternating choirs should not “snatch up [psalm] verses hastily from each other . . . [but] the singing should take place in a pious and reverent manner.”71 These rules are perhaps not all of great significance in and of themselves,72 but certainly it is worth observing that many founders felt it necessary to lay down a code of suitable behavior during church services. Isaac Komnenos comments that “I have seen in various holy monasteries a considerable—and unbecoming—indifference with regard to the hymnody, on the part of the monks.” His own solution was to have the monks roused early, so that they would have plenty of time to complete the offices alertly and vigorously.73 SINGING AS LABOR There are two aspects of singing as labor, rather than as a purely spiritual exercise, that are addressed by monastic founders. First, beyond the spiritual benefits to be derived from singing, founders often had the more tangible objective of receiving endowments tied to commemorations for which there were payments to the monastery to ensure continuing psalmody for the deceased.74 Second, some ktetorika typika specify rewards for in64
Latros [11]. In a similar vein, according to Pakourianos [12], disrupting the holy singing would be “assisting the evil spirits whose job it is to do this and support those doing it.” Blemmydes [13] and Kecharitomene [26] also have bans on talking. 65 Pantokrator [5]. 66 Black Mountain [18]. 67 Neilos Damilas [12]. 68 Pantokrator [3]. 69 Auxentios [7]. 70 Evergetis [6]. 71 Pakourianos [12]. 72 Of all the rules for the choir, perhaps the most unusual is given in Kosmosoteira [82], where the monks are instructed to wear special “fresh and spotless” shoes; however, this turns out to be unrelated to music, but to protect the marble floors from scuffs! 73 Kosmosoteira [68]. Punishments for the transgression of rules varied. They range from lying face-down on the floor, to being given solitary confinement with only bread to eat, to paying a fine. Whipping was not a suitable punishment for a monk, although it was considered appropriate outside the monastery. 74 For the emperor and empress, benefactors, and family members; for examples, see Kecharitomene [71], Pantokrator [8], or Bebaia Elpis [appendix]. For more on commemorations, see R. Morris, Monks and Laymen in Byzantium, 843–1118 (Cambridge, 1995), 109.
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dividual singers, expressing concern over the strenuousness of singing a long office.75 On some occasions, such as the singing of the Akathistos Hymn,76 the monks who sang the offices were to receive some extra food or an extra measure of wine.77 According to the typikon of Mamas, “if [those who chant] drink water only, they would neither be able to chant more sonorously nor, indeed, perform more easily the continuous bending of the knees.”78 At Pantokrator’s Eleousa church, the regular pay for musicians was supplemented on the feast of the Metastasis of the Theotokos, when the clergy received a cash payment for their singing of the vigil;79 those who did not participate not only did not get this bonus, but they had to pay a fine out of their own pockets.80 THE MUSICAL REPERTORY Singing went on around the clock in most monastic institutions as the usual round of services took place, and funerals, commemorations, and processions were held. It is not my purpose here to discuss details of the liturgy, since questions concerning what was actually sung are better answered by consulting the liturgical typika and music manuscripts. However, it should be noted that many of the ktetorika typika state which liturgical typikon was to be followed,81 and some have embedded within them significant sections that are essentially liturgical typika and that contain the same kinds of information, including references to the modes in which specific chants were sung, who was to sing them, or where they were sung.82 I wish only to highlight three areas for which the comments about the musical repertory in the ktetorika typika are of special significance. The first concerns what to do when conflicts arise over two ways of chanting the liturgy, a subject rarely alluded to in Byzantine writings. On the island of Pantelleria, newcomers were to adapt to the prevailing practice: “we order [you] to sing . . . according to the habit 75 Auxentios [8] specifies that there are to be no all-night vigils on Sunday so as not to overburden the monks. A similar concern is expressed in Kosmosoteira [11]: “On other feasts in the year let a vigil be performed with comparable illumination—even if it is not an all-night one, so that the singers are not burdened with too much effort. Wherefore I do not wish to drag them . . . like some wage-earners, [to shoulder] the unbearable load of great efforts on my behalf, or to require them to celebrate the vigil on my behalf every Saturday, as is the custom in most monasteries.” 76 Machairas [69]. 77 According to Evergetis [appendix], the monk lord Antony, “feeling pity for the brothers because of standing throughout the night and the prolonged chanting and sleeplessness,” ordered that they should get extra wine on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays of Lent. At Machairas [69], on Wednesday and Thursday of the Great Canon the monks did not get any supper, but “on Friday a refreshment must be given to the singers on account of the Akathistos hymn.” According to Galesios [161]: “the church [brothers] have a job to do, service in the church, and something should be allowed them, especially since they had received nothing more than was supplied at table. . . . For his instructions to the cellarer were to supply a little more food and drink to those who had services than to the others.” Athonite Rule [30–31] specifies similar rewards of extra wine and bread for muleteers, metalworkers, shipwrights, and carpenters; for bakery workers when they have kneading to do; and for vineyard workers when they are pruning. 78 Mamas [18]. 79 Pantokrator [32]: 14 hyperpyra nomismata. 80 Pantokrator [33]: the fine was 2 hyperpyra nomismata. 81 Generally the Palestinian (Sabas), Stoudite, or a mixture of these. 82 For example, Pantokrator [5] specifies that the hypakoe was sung by specialist chanters in front of the sanctuary; and Phoberos [19] that stichera at vigils after the canons of the night office are sung standing in the middle of the church.
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acquired from deacon John. Let all sing in this way. Should any of you be accustomed to sing differently, we request him to relinquish his habit, and adapt to his brothers’, so that harmony among the brethren be displayed in this matter.”83 However, Neilos Damilas writes to his nuns: “when your priest happens to be present, let him chant according to his order, and you follow him in your chanting, as best you can.”84 Obedience, for the nuns, may have been ranked higher than their own musical tradition; but whatever the situation, this comment—if it refers to melodies and not simply texts—raises some interesting questions that are not readily answered. How different might one musical practice have been from another in the same region (if we can presume that the priest assigned to Bebaia Elpis was local)? Does the comment refer to the simple singing of psalmody or to the more elaborate melodies of the hymns? At what point would enough variance in the melodies be recognized by Byzantine monastic singers to refer actually to a “different” practice? Second, the ktetorika typika provide rare information about singing at meals.85 It was customary at some monasteries to sing psalm verses86 on the way from the narthex of the church to the refectory,87 and at Pantokrator the refectorian led the chanting of verses during the meal;88 “Blessed is God who nourishes us” was sung while the leftovers were collected in a basket;89 and at the dismissal the refectorian led the singing of more psalms.90 According to Machairas, a monk who talked or did “something that is not pleasing” had to stand and intone “Have mercy on me, O God” and ask for forgiveness,91 and from Menoikeion we learn that on Sundays the monks were given a treat of an extra glass of wine with which to acclaim the long life, happiness, salvation, and triumph over enemies of the emperors. An acclamation was to be intoned by the priest and sung “slowly and melodiously by the choir leaders [domestikoi] in the same fashion.”92 A final topic concerns changes in musical style, and here I would like to highlight two significant comments in the ktetorika typika. The typikon for Skoteine (or Boreine, cf. Morrison, this volume, p. 267 n. 60), composed by the monk Maximos in 1247, includes lists of books owned by the monastery. From them we learn that the main monastery had a chantbook of the type called the sticherarion, with “neophonon”; and the dependency of the Saints had the same type of book with “palaiophonon.” In his edition of 1939, Manuel Gedeon suggested that these terms mean “new notation” and “old notation.” This is a reasonable suggestion, since the Byzantine musical notation did undergo a significant change during the 1160s and 1170s. By the time of the Skoteine inventory, two types of old notation (today known as “Chartres” and “Coislin”) had been displaced by a “new” Round, 83
Pantelleria [10]. Neilos Damilas [12]. 85 Singing also took place during periods of manual labor, but the psalms are not specified. 86 Kasoulon [8] specifies Psalm 144:1 (I will extol you, my God). See also Areia [3] and Evergetis [9]. Pantokrator [11] also specifies Psalm 21:26–27 (The poor shall eat and be satisfied). 87 Kasoulon [para. no. missing] has a similar provision, but only on Holy Saturday in the evening after divine liturgy, on the Baptism of Christ, and on Pentecost. 88 Pantokrator [11]: Psalm 91:4 (O Lord, thou hast made us glad) and Psalm 4:6–8 (For thou hast caused me to dwell securely). 89 Pantokrator [9]. 90 Pantokrator [11]: Psalms 121 and 83. 91 Machairas [124]. 92 Menoikeion [16]. 84
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or Middle Byzantine, notation. However, fwnhv is not the usual term for musical notation in Byzantine writings. The theorist and composer Manuel Chrysaphes, writing in 1458, makes a distinction between notational signs (shmei'a) and sounds (fwnw'n),93 and wherever fwnhv is used it refers to sounding music rather than notational signs.94 Furthermore, in manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we find some chants labeled as palaion, signifying that they belong to an old, traditional layer of chant rather than the new kalophonic compositions, and Manuel Chrysaphes calls the unelaborated stichera the palaiw'n stichrw'n.95 Could the terms neophonon and palaiophonon refer to two styles of music in the sticheraria, one old and one new? For the answer to this question, it is useful to review the history of the sticherarion. Around the year 1050, this book of chants was edited, chants of only local significance were eliminated, and a Standard Abridged Version containing a repertory of simple, traditional, highly formulaic melodies was widely circulated.96 Two centuries later, when the Skoteine inventory was written, this could certainly have qualified as “palaion.” What might a “new” style mean in the mid-thirteenth century? Manuel Chrysaphes attributes the “method”97 for composing the kalophonic stichera to [Xenos] Korones,98 who probably belonged to the generation of Koukouzeles, working fifty years or more after the Skoteine inventory; and the earliest extant copies of the kalophonic sticherarion date from approximately a century after the Skoteine typikon,99 too late to be confident that it existed in 1247. The same chronological objections can be offered with regard to significant work on the sticherarion attributed to Koukouzeles.100 Another Byzantine chant repertory, that of the Asmatikon and Psaltikon, lies stylistically between the old sticheraric style and the or93
Conomos, The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, 40–41. Constantine VII uses fwnhv to mean “chanting” in his Book of Ceremonies, vol. 1, pp. 35ff. We also find it, for example, as part of the term “ekphonesis,” a style of reciting biblical lections; and as part of “kalophonic” in the rubrics of Palaiologan music manuscripts, where it designates chants in a highly ornate style. See Conomos, Byzantine Trisagia and Cheroubika, 45. It is even used in this sense in the nickname “angelophonos,” given to John Koukouzeles according to his Vita. See E. Williams, “John Koukouzeles’ Reform of Byzantine Chanting for Great Vespers in the Fourteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1968), 493. 95 Conomos, The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, 43. 96 Standard Abridged Version was the designation of Oliver Strunk. See his “H. J. W. Tillyard and the Recovery of a Lost Fragment,” Studies in Eastern Chant 1 (1966): 95–103, repr. in idem, Essays on Music in the Byzantine World, 234–35. 97 The meaning of Chrysaphes’ expression “method of the theseis” is discussed by Conomos in The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, 75–80. Theseis bear the same relationship to parallage in music as syllables do to individual letters in speech. 98 Conomos, The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, 40–41. Xenos Korones, father of Manuel, was a composer and protopsaltes at Hagia Sophia. His settings for the prooemiac psalm appear in Athens, National Library 2458, dated 1336. See M. Velimirovic´, “The Prooemiac Psalm of Byzantine Vespers,” in Words and Music: The Scholar’s View. Festschrift for A. Tillman Merritt (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 330. 99 Sinai, St. Catherine’s Monastery 1311 may be the earliest copy, dated ca. 1356–91 in unpublished notes of Kenneth Levy. 100 See J. Raasted, “Koukouzeles’ Revision of the Sticherarion and Sinai gr. 1230,” in Laborare fratres in unum: Festschrift Laszlo Dobszay zum 60. Geburtstag, Spolia Berlinensia 7, ed. J. Szandrei and David Hiley (Hildesheim, 1995), 261–77; and J. Raasted, “Koukouzeles’ Sticherarion,” in Byzantine Chant: Tradition and Reform: Acts of a Meeting Held at the Danish Institute in Athens, 1993, ed. C. Troelsgård (Athens, 1997), 9–21. On the date of Koukouzeles’ activity, see E. V. Williams, “A Byzantine Ars Nova: The Fourteenth-Century Reforms of John Koukouzeles in the Chanting of Great Vespers,” in Aspects of the Balkans: Continuity and Change: Contributions to the International Balkan Conference held at UCLA, October 23–28, 1969, ed. H. Birnbaum and S. Vryonis (Paris, 1972), 212. 94
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nate “art-objects”101 of the kalophonic sticheraria, still formulaic and anonymous but more florid than the “old”; and the earliest extant manuscripts of Asmatikon-Psaltikon repertory date from the same period as the Skoteine inventory.102 Ultimately, the historical evidence is too problematic to allow identification of the style of this repertory with the “neophonon” of the Skoteine inventory; yet the existence of these sources strengthens the possibility that the Skoteine inventory is documenting a lost notated sticherarion in a musical style different from the ones that are extant.103 Even without positive identification of a specific “new” style, the Skoteine inventory constitutes a significant landmark in the woefully undocumented road from the simple syllabic “palaiophonic” Standard Abridged Version of the mid-eleventh century to the elaborate, personalized style of the kalophonic sticherarion of the fourteenth century. Furthermore, it could be argued that if books of stichera in a “new” style existed, the notation of the standard version of the sticherarion would not routinely have been treated like a skeleton, to be fleshed out formulaically at sight by the singers.104 The old, standard sticherarion would simply have continued in use for singing the chants in the traditional, syllabic manner, a practice that continued into at least the fifteenth century when Manuel Chrysaphes complained that some singers found this to be adequate.105
101 On the significance of the development from an anonymous, formulaic style to an awareness of artistry, see K. Levy, “Le ‘tournant décisif ’ dans l’histoire de la musique byzantine: 1071–1261,” in Actes du XVe Congrès International d’Études Byzantines, Athènes, Septembre 1976 (Athens, 1979), 475–76. 102 Grottaferrata, Badia graeca G.g.3 dates from 1247, the same year as the Skoteine inventory; Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Ashburnhamenis 64 is from 1289; Grottaferrata E.b.7 is from 1214–30; and Grottaferrata G.g.5 from 1225. 103 Although the Asmatika and Psaltika manuscripts preserve chants derived from the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite, they are, with a single exception (Kastoria, Cathedral Library 8), from southern Italy. Furthermore, the Constantinopolitan origin of this repertory has been identified on the basis of melodic features shared with the Slavic kondakarion repertory, imported from Byzantium prior to the 11th century, so while it may have been different from the standard sticheraric repertory, the Asmatikon-Psaltikon style was not “new” in the mid-13th century. See K. Levy, “The Earliest Slavic Melismatic Chants,” in Fundamental Problems of Early Slavic Music and Poetry, ed. C. Hannick, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Subsidia 6 (Copenhagen, 1978), 197– 200. A third consideration is that none of the southern Italian sources are sticheraria. However, stichera included in some manuscripts (notably fragments of two miscellanies, Messina, Universitaria San Salvatore gr. 161, fols. 1–19v and Grottaferrata, E.g.9, fols. 1–12v and 26v–30v) are labeled “kalophonic.” See A. Rocchi, Codices Cryptenses seu Abbatiae Cryptae Ferratae (Abbatae Cryptae Feratae, 1883), 430–31; and B. Di Salvo, “Gli asmata nella musica bizantina,” Bollettino della Badia greca di Grottaferrata, n.s. 13 (1959): 50. The question of how these “kalophonic” stichera of the southern Italian sources relate to the repertory of the Standard Abridged Version and to the 14th-century kalophonic repertory that developed in Constantinople and environs is a difficult one that has not been adequately studied (in part due to the poor condition of the sources) but clearly merits investigation. 104 For the “exegetical interpretation,” see G. Stathis, “Problems Connected with the Transcription of the Old Byzantine Notation into the Pentagram,” Proceedings of the International Musicological Society, Copenhagen, 1972 (Copenhagen, 1974), 778–82; idem, “The ‘Abridgements’ of Byzantine and Postbyzantine Compositions,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin 44 (1983): 16–38; and idem, “Ioannes Koukouzeles’ ‘Method of Theseis’ and Its Application,” in Byzantine Chant (as above, note 100), 189–203; and for arguments against this position, see Levy, “Le ‘tournant décisif ’,” 477–79. See J. Raasted, “Thoughts on a Revision of the Transcription Rules of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin 54 (1987): 31–33 for the important bearing this argument has on transcription policies of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae. 105 He writes that “the science of chanting does not consist only of parallage as some of the present generation imagine”: Conomos, The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, 38–39.
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The second passage occurs in the typikon of Neilos Damilas106 at the turn of the fifteenth century, which incorporates a lengthy quote from the Suvntagma kata; stoicei'on of Matthew Blastares, dated 1335.107 [Canon 75 of the Council in Trullo108] enjoins those who pray in church and recite the psalms not to utter undisciplined and high-pitched sounds, but to make their prayers and recitations of the psalms with contrite heart and sedate character and attentive mind. . . . Nor should you make use of undignified tunes, varied in modulation, and excessive variety of hymns and trilling of odes, which are more fitting for actors on a stage than for a church of God. These [practices] have been forbidden many times by many patriarchs with severe penalties, and it has been ordained that one should use simple and unadorned [music] in the singing of psalms for night offices and services for the departed, as was the old custom dear to God. But this does not happen any more,109 since the desire of the multitude prevails over divine commandments.110
The language is interesting: “excessive variety” is poikiliva, which can be translated as “embroidered,” precisely what the composers of the kalophonic style did, musically, to the old formulas of the chants;111 and the “trilling of odes,” or wjdw'n teretivsmasin, appears to be a reference to the teretismata that were inserted into the kalophonic chants. By contrast, the music that is ordained is ajpoivkilon. Damilas and Blastares, it seems, do not approve of the kalophonic style. The traditional chant, the inspired “angel’s antiphonon,” was clearly being relegated to a lesser position in the early fourteenth century in favor of a musical style that was, if we are to believe Blastares, rooted in secularism. Were Blastares and Damilas alone in their resistance to the new style of Byzantine music, or were their objections more widely shared in the monastic environment? What are we to make of the comment that many patriarchs have forbidden these practices?112 The bans against the kalliphonoi in the typika of Lips and Akropolites may be telling; and the emphasis on correct performance and chanting as a spiritual exercise in the ktetorika typika suggest a leaning toward conservatism. Against this, though, must be weighed hints of a more progressive mind-set in some places, not only the situation that provoked the diatribe by Blastares, echoed by Damilas, but also the in106
I am grateful to Alice-Mary Talbot for providing me with a photocopy of the Greek edition. G. A. Rhalles and M. Potles, eds., Matthew Blastares, Suvntagma kata; stoicei'on (Athens, 1859), 297–98. 108 Canon 75 of the Council in Trullo (692) states: “We will that those whose office it is to sing in the churches do not use undisciplined vociferations, nor force nature to shouting, nor adopt any of those modes which are incongruous and unsuitable for the church: but that they offer the psalmody to God, who is the observer of secrets, with great attention and compunction.” Trans. in H. R. Perceval, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d series, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace, vol. 14: The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Peabody, Mass., 1994), 398. 109 End of the quotation from Matthew Blastares. 110 Neilos Damilas [12]. 111 See Conomos, The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, 41–43: “But, O my friend, do not think that the manner of the whole musical art and its practice is so simple and uniform that the composer of a kalophonic sticheron with appropriate theseis who does not adhere to the manner of the old sticheron can think that he has done well and that which he has written quite good and free from every condemnation—since, if what he has composed does not include the method of the old sticheron, it is not correct. . . . Thus even in the kalophonic stichera the composers of these do not depart from their original melodies but follow them accurately, step by step, and retain them.” 112 At least one patriarchal prohibition against using secular chanting in church, by Nicholas III Grammatikos (1084–1111), is listed in Les Regestes des actes du Patriarcat de Constantinople, fasc. 3: 1043–1206, ed. V. Grumel (Paris, 1932–47), 411. 107
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triguing presence of the two sticheraria at Skoteine, one “old” and one “new.” The role of monasteries in stylistic changes of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is one that is not yet understood, and evidence of the ktetorika typika clearly needs to be considered.113 However, perhaps the ultimate importance of these documents, for music historians, lies in their very existence. They make it clear that many monastic founders cared about music and believed it served an important function in the daily life of the monastery. Luke of Messina wrote of the pleasure of music which, when mixed with the sacred hymns, acts as a palliative in the same way as honey coats a medicinal cup.114 Gregory Pakourianos describes the “harmonious and sweet-sounding chants” which combine with the beauty of the decor and the fragrance of incense to make the church like a divine paradise.115 Ironically, Nikephoros Blemmydes provides, through his prohibitions against music, a strong statement about the pleasure of listening to hymns, in a chapter entitled, “The recitation of prayers to God without sung hymns and the perfect order to be observed in the church”: Those who have dedicated themselves completely to [God] . . . who have rejected the things of this world . . . are to abandon completely all thought and endeavor for what is pleasurable. . . . In consequence, let them not hanker after the use of hymns and singing for their prayers, with tunes and varieties of tones—not because such singing is always to be rejected . . . but simply because the better is to be preferred to the good, and the more honorable to the honorable. For those who are fervent the most suitable is to strive and struggle with the unadulterated tension of one’s soul toward the Lord, without any distraction of pleasure and relying on spiritual happiness alone.116
In conclusion, here are the words of the sebastokrator Isaac Komnenos, in the typikon for the monastery of the Theotokos Kosmosoteira: “I enjoin [you] to drink with enjoyment from the soul-benefiting springs of the soul-sustaining hymnodies of the church. . . . Let the hymnody be performed for the Lord’s sake with attention and fear, for even though I myself have wallowed in the slime of sin, my soul has loved it very much since the days of my childhood.”117 Southern Connecticut State University
113 There is little concrete evidence that can place the composers of kalophonic music in a monastic milieu. Some exceptions are David Rhaidestinos, who was a monk at Pantokrator on Mount Athos; Ioakeim Monachos at Charsianeites; and John Koukouzeles, who at the height of his fame went to a cell near the Lavra on Mount Athos. On the problem of the monastic role, see K. Levy, “A Hymn for Thursday in Holy Week,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 16 (1963): 157; and A. Lingas, “Hesychasm and Psalmody,” in Mount Athos and Byzantine Monasticism: Papers from the 28th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, March 1994, ed. A. Bryer and M. Cunningham (Aldershot, 1996), 155–68. 114 Luke of Messina [4]: “For mixing the pleasure of music with the sacred hymns makes the ascetic more zealous in singing and praying to God. So, too, whenever the experienced among the physicians offer some unpleasant medicines to the sick, at that moment they coat the cup with honey.” See St. Basil’s Homily on Psalm 1: “The delight of melody [the Holy Spirit] mingled with the doctrines so that by the pleasantness and softness of the sound heard we might receive without perceiving it the benefit of the words, just as wise physicians who, when giving the fastidious rather bitter drugs to drink, frequently smear the cup with honey.” Basil, Exegetic Homilies, 152. 115 Pakourianos [5]. 116 Blemmydes [13]. 117 Kosmosoteira [75].
This is an extract from:
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Archaeological Investigation at Konjuh, Republic of Macedonia, in 2000 CAROLYN S. SNIVELY The project entitled “Archaeological Investigation at Konjuh,” a joint project of Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the Museum of Macedonia in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, carried out excavation and survey at and around the site of Golemo Gradisˇte, village of Konjuh, administrative district of Kratovo, Republic of Macedonia, from 26 June until 21 July 2000. This was the first season of a five-year project. Funding was provided for the 2000 season by a Research and Professional Development Grant from Gettysburg College, by a Project Grant from Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., and by the Museum of Macedonia. This report presents not only the results of our first season of excavation but also an introduction to the ancient urban site of Golemo Gradisˇte at Konjuh including a brief discussion of its features. Although known in local archaeological literature, the site has been visited by few archaeologists even from the Republic of Macedonia and is almost unknown outside the Dr. Dragi Mitrevski, director of the Museum of Macedonia, and Dr. Carolyn S. Snively, associate professor of classics at Gettysburg College, served as the codirectors of the project. Other members of the staff were: Dancˇe Golubovska, archaeologist-conservator, Republic Institute for the Protection of the Monuments of Culture (hereafter Protection Institute), Skopje; Dr. Virginia AndersonStojanovic´, archaeologist and ceramics analyst, professor of classics and fine arts, Wilson College, Chambersburg, Pa.; Biljana Pacˇkova-Kufojanakis, architect, Skopje; Miroslav Dimovski, photographer, Museum of Macedonia, Skopje. In addition to the members of the staff and the funding agencies, we also wish to thank Dragisˇa Zdravkovski, deputy director of the Museum of Macedonia, for his help and kindness, and Jovan Kondijanov and Mitko Prendzˇov, director and associate director of the Protection Institute, for the excavation permit and other assistance.
borders of the former Yugoslavia. Only one monument from Konjuh, the unique Rotunda church, has found its way into handbooks on Byzantine architecture. LOCATION OF THE SITE Golemo Gradisˇte is located 41 km east of Skopje. It lies ca. 6 km south of the KumanovoKriva Palanka highway, on the Kriva River,1 in a mining region. The Roman road from Skupi (Skopje) to Serdika (Sofia) ran several kilometers to the north of the city, which stood on a secondary east-west road leading to Kratovo.2 The ancient name of the site is not known; one proposed identification is Tranupara.3 In the late antique or early Byzantine period, the city was probably located in the province of Dardania, whose capital lay at Skupi, although our knowledge of the exact boundaries of late Roman provinces is so uncertain that it might equally well have been included within the neighboring province of Dacia Mediterranea. 1 The modern village of Konjuh is located ca. 2 km south of Golemo Gradisˇte. 2 B. Georgievski, “Rimskite patisˇta vo Kumanovskiot region,” Macedoniae Acta Archaeologica 10 (1985–86) [1989]: 153–59. According to Georgievski, this secondary road diverged from the main one at the village of Klevcˇovce and ran southeast, passing fortresses near the villages of ˇopsko Rudare, and Filipovci on the Dovezence, Konjuh, S way to Kratovo. The same author suggests that a local road connecting the major east-west route with an eastern branch of the Naissus (Nisˇ) to Thessalonike highway may also have passed by Konjuh. To what extent these proposed routes should be connected with the rock-cut road in the ravine east of Golemo Gradisˇte or with the bridge over the Kriva River reported by S. Radojcˇic´ (as in note 5 below) remains unclear. 3 V. Lilcˇic´, “Razmisluvanja okolu ubikacijata na Tranupara,” Kulturno nasledstvo 17/18 (1990–91) [1994]: 33–47.
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ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION AT KONJUH IN 2000 HISTORY OF THE INVESTIGATION
The site at Konjuh first entered the professional literature in the 1940s with the publication of fragmentary inscriptions from the area.4 Svetozar Radojcˇic´ visited Konjuh in 1938; in 1952 he published a survey of the site and a detailed study of the very unusual church, the Rotunda, which had been excavated by local villagers in 1919.5 In the early 1970s Ivan Mikulcˇic´ surveyed the site and described a number of its archaeological features,6 as did Viktor Lilcˇic´ two decades later.7 Borka Dragojevic´-Josifovska collected the inscriptions from the vicinity and published them together in 1982.8 ˇ ivojin Vincˇic´ of the Protection InIn 1988 Z stitute directed a project focused on the eventual conservation of the Rotunda.9 The construction of the Skopje-Sofia railroad line led to emergency salvage excavations in 1995 directed by Milan Ivanovski of the Protection Institute; in the cemetery area of K’sˇla, across the river from Golemo Gradisˇte, a number of prehistoric and early Roman burials were discovered as well as a small early Byzantine church associated with a large vaulted tomb.10 In June 1998 a Macedonian-American project, directed by Kiril Trajkovski of the Museum of Macedonia and Carolyn S. Snively of Gettysburg College, surveyed the site and its immediate environs. Their objectives were to find, identify, and describe the features of the site visible on the surface and to record them on a topographical plan; to examine the Rotunda for 4 N. Vulic´, “Anticˇki spomenici nasˇe zemlje,” Spomenik 98 (1941–48): 96–97, nos. 211–13. 5 S. Radojcˇic´, “Crkva u Konjuhu,” ZRVI 1 (1952): 148–67. 6 I. Mikulcˇic´, “Anticˇki gradovi kod Drenova i Konjuha u Makedoniji,” Arheolosˇki pregled 15 (1973): 179–82; idem, “Über die Grösse der spätantiken Städte in Makedonien,” ˇiva antika 24 (1974): 207–8; idem, “Dva bezimeni docZ noanticˇki grada vo Istocˇna Makedonija,” Zbornik na Arheolosˇki Muzej Skopje 6/7 (1975): 115–21; idem, Srednovekovni gradovi i tvrdini vo Makedonija (Skopje, 1996), 223–26; idem, Anticˇki gradovi vo Makedonija (Skopje, 1999), 320–22, 358–61. 7 Lilcˇic´, “Razmisluvanja,” 36–37. 8 B. Dragojevic´-Josifovska, Inscriptions de la Mésie Supérieure VI. Scupi et la région de Kumanovo (Belgrade, 1982), 177–80. 9 ˇ. Vincˇic´ et al., “Elaborat za konzerSee the report by Z vacija i prezentacija na Rotondata vo seloto Konjuh, 1988,” in the archives of the Protection Institute. 10 See the brief note about the burials by M. Ivanovski, “K’sˇla,” in Arheolosˇka karta, vol. 2 (Skopje, 1996), 185. The church has not yet been published.
answers to specific architectural and liturgical questions; and to collect and analyze ceramic material from surface survey and test trenches in order to understand the diachronic occupation of the site and its commercial and cultural connections. The results of that pilot project have been incorporated into this report. DESCRIPTION OF THE SITE The hill known as Golemo Gradisˇte11 rises nearly 100 m above the Kriva River to a height of 440 meters above sea level (Figs. 1, 2). It served as the acropolis and the middle section of a fortified ancient city divided into three parts. This steep hill, nearly 500 m in length east-west, is one of a series of cliffs along the south bank of the Kriva River. In contrast to the generally steep and craggy terrain of the acropolis, the eastern end of the hill consists of a narrow plateau that slopes gently down from north to south and west to east. Beyond the eroded remains of rock-cut rooms visible along the northern side of the plateau, the bedrock drops to a steep, narrow terrace. The terrain then falls precipitously to the northern part of the city beside the Kriva River. This second, northern part of the site consists of a gentle slope running from the foot of the acropolis north to the river. The line of the fortification surrounding this section of the city may be traced, and the fabric of the wall is visible in places, resting on a bedrock foundation beside the river (Fig. 3). The location of a north gate and the probable locations of an east and possibly a west gate can also be seen. Within this fortified area, the outlines of several large buildings are visible.12 When Radojcˇic´ visited the site, he saw near the foot of the acropolis the walls of a large early Byzantine basilica,13 which 11 In a strict topographical sense, Golemo Gradisˇte refers to the hill, i.e., the large hill as opposed to Malo Gradisˇte, the smaller hill or long ridge to its south. The term gradisˇte, however, means a town site. Golemo Gradisˇte is used here to refer to both the large hill and the site generally. 12 A heavy covering of grass and bushes prevented the collection of pottery from this part of the site in 1998, so that the date of occupation—except for the 5th- or 6thcentury basilica—remains uncertain. In June 2001, however, we examined material from a hole illegally excavated in this part of the site; although the pottery included a number of identifiably “Roman” sherds, the two levels of occupation dated to the 3rd– 4th and 5th– 6th centuries respectively. 13 Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” 149.
1
Plan of Golemo Gradisˇte (plan: G. C. McArdle, after I. Mikulcˇic´, M. Milojevic´, and the National Survey Institute)
2
Golemo Gradisˇte, acropolis, from the northwest
3
City wall foundation, north side along the Kriva River, from the northeast. The city wall is visible in places both above and behind the foundation.
4
5
Room in center of the acropolis, from the east. Note the placement of niches and a window so as to resemble a face.
Entrance to rock-cut room in western part of acropolis, from the east
6
Cistern, Sector 1, acropolis, from the east, during 2000 excavation
7
Eastern plateau, acropolis, from the west, before 2000 excavation
8
Western room, Sector 1a, acropolis, from the south
9
Sector 1b, Trench 3a, acropolis, from the north. Note the test trench dug (foreground) through the floor north of Wall 1 (center) and nearby steps (left). Wall 2 appears as a rounded feature (left middle ground); the fortification wall marks the trench’s south end.
➝N 10 Plan of rotunda (plan: M. Milojevic´)
11 North half of rotunda, from the southeast, 1988. Note apse (lower right), large northern pier (center), and modern chapel (upper left).
12 The newly cleaned St. George, from the northeast, 2000
13 The newly cleaned St. George, from the west, interior, 2000
CAROLYN S. SNIVELY since that time has been almost completely destroyed by illegal excavation. The narrow third section of the city lay between the lower south side of the acropolis and a nearly parallel ridge or outcropping of bedrock known as Malo Gradisˇte, which served as the foundation for a city wall. The eastern end of Malo Gradisˇte has been destroyed, and the eastern third of this section of the city has been leveled for the purpose of cultivation.14 A large city gate near the foot of Malo Gradisˇte provided access to this part of the city. Two parallel lines of city wall ran from the gate to the west end of the acropolis hill. Outside the fortified city, a deep ravine separates the east slope of Golemo Gradisˇte from the next cliff to the east, Gagin Kamen. A road, partly cut into the rocky bottom of the ravine, partly paved with large stone slabs, runs through the ravine.15 Presumably of Roman or late antique construction, the road was still being used for local traffic in 1998. Outside the city and across the Kriva River to the northwest, on a plateau known as K’sˇla, a few grave inscriptions and the discovery in 1995 of forty-six early Roman burials indicate the presence of a Roman necropolis. Of the six published Latin inscriptions from Konjuh,16 five appear to be funerary; only two preserve complete texts. The epitaph of Sabinus Antius, a thirty-five-year-old soldier, has been dated to the second half of the third or the beginning of the fourth century.17 Some or all of the excavated early Roman graves had been dug into a tumulus; both inhumations and cremations were found in arched tile graves, that is, graves consisting of one or more pairs of pantiles with their long sides leaning against each other at the top to form a kind of arch over the body or the cremated remains. At Crkvica, near the southern edge of K’sˇla, 14 According to local informants, in the early 1980s the Kratovo-based company Sileks used heavy machinery to destroy the east end of the ridge and thus made the southeast part of the site accessible to tractors and combines. The plans of the site drawn by I. Mikulcˇic´ in the 1970s show Malo Gradisˇte with a tower marking its east end and the southeast corner of the city. 15 Lilcˇic´, “Razmisluvanja,” 36–37. 16 Dragojevic´-Josifovska, Inscriptions, 177–80, nos. 234– 39. A seventh inscription found on an impost capital in the Rotunda is described below. 17 B. Josifovska, “Jedan novi vojnicˇki natpis iz Konjuha,” ˇ iva antika 13/14 (1964): 166–70. Z
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are the remains of a small early Byzantine church. Definitive statements must await its publication, but the combination of large vaulted tomb and small church is paralleled at a number of sites nearby and further south, for example, the enormous tomb beside the earliest church at Morodvis in the Bregalnica Valley, the cemetery church on Karatasou Street within the fortification walls of Beroia, and Basilica B at Argos Orestikon (ancient Diocletianoupolis?) near Kastoria. THE ACROPOLIS OF GOLEMO GRADISˇTE AND THE EXCAVATIONS IN 2000 Almost all visitors to the site have commented on the rock-cut features of the acropolis, which appear at first to be a confused jumble of cells, walls, streets, water channels, niches, cuttings for columns, rooms, staircases, and other features (Fig. 4). Closer observation has shown at least two quite different approaches to the utilization of the bedrock cliffs and, on the eastern portion of the hill, successive phases of use. The rooms along the north side of the eastern plateau were created by quarrying and cutting down into the bedrock from the top and leaving sections of it standing to serve as foundations for walls. The rooms are roughly square or rectangular with an occasional apse. Corridors and staircases run parallel with or at right angles to adjacent rooms, and the stairs provide access to rooms located in the north face of the cliff or to the narrow terrace along the north edge of the acropolis. Odd features abound, but the assumption of the right and the ability to adapt the landscape to their needs by removing and shaping large sections of bedrock, as well as the organization and manpower required, point to a Roman or more likely a late antique date for the original creation of the architectural complex on the eastern plateau. On the western part of the acropolis the bestknown feature is the room (3.80 × 3.35 m) that was created by digging horizontally into a cliff face (Fig. 5). This room included a rock-cut bed on the south side under a window, a bench around the west and north sides, and a tomb in the middle of the floor.18 The doorway opens 18 Despite references to rooms or cells in the plural, this is the only one of its kind. It was described and drawn by
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onto a terrace, and cuttings in the rock above the entrance suggest a porch or a second room built in front of the rock-cut one. Around and above this terrace are niches of various shapes and sizes, a number of curving staircases that consist of footholds and even handholds carved into vertical rock faces, and cuttings for beams that point to rooms built against the cliffs. The people who occupied this part of the acropolis seem to have had both less ability to cut and quarry bedrock and possibly a more benign attitude toward the utilization of the cliffs of Golemo Gradisˇte. The evidence suggests that a small community once lived around the terrace. The hypothesis we inherited, that it was a monastic community in the medieval period, awaits further investigation. The collection and analysis of surface pottery on the acropolis in 1998 had indicated occupation in the prehistoric, Hellenistic, late Roman/ late antique, and medieval periods.19 Pottery of the fourth–sixth centuries was by far the most common. With the exception of several types of late Roman amphorae from Carthage, however, imports were rare, not only on the acropolis but everywhere ceramic material was collected. The usual Roman finewares were entirely absent, and no pottery dating between the third century B.C. and the third century A.D. could be identified. Two test trenches dug on the acropolis in 1998 revealed debris from a late sixth- or early seventh-century destruction. In the first one, near the south edge of the central part of the acropolis, numerous fragments of large storage vessels and cooking pots were found in a room formed by two rock-cut north-south walls. In the second test, in the southwest part of the eastern plateau, part of a poorly preserved oven or kiln came to light.20 Radojcˇic´, “Crkva.” The other rock-cut spaces opening from the terrace look more like storage spaces, complete with cuttings along the front edges for the insertion of boards, than monastic cells. One other, fairly sizable room, dug horizontally into the south face of the acropolis, has been discovered further to the east and at a lower level; although partly filled with earth, it appears to be a simple room without amenities. 19 V. Anderson-Stojanovic´ provided this summary of the ceramic material in her 1998 report. Fields south and west of the acropolis yielded pottery of prehistoric to Turkish date. Pottery from a field on K’sˇla was dated to the 3d century. A number of sherds found in 2001 in late antique or medieval contexts have now been identified by Vojislav Sanev of the Museum of Macedonia as local wares of the Neolithic and the Iron Age.
On the basis of information from the survey material and the test trenches, we expected to find substantial remains from the late antique period on the hill. In summer 2000 we therefore excavated in three sectors on the eastern half of the acropolis. In each area, rock-cut architecture was visible on the surface, and the trenches were placed to investigate that architecture and, if possible, to elucidate its use. Sector I “Cisterna” Near the highest point of the acropolis, above and west of the eastern plateau, we investigated a large room, ca. 4 × 10 m, dug down more than 2 m into the rock21 (Fig. 6). Two test trenches were dug to the floor of the room, one in the northwest corner along the north wall, and a second one running north-south across the room to the east of its midpoint. In Trench 1, two bedrock features projecting from the surface of the north wall and the floor nearby suggest their deliberate use in the plan or function of the room when it was hewn from the rock. In Trench 2, two roughly circular depressions near the north wall of the chamber could have been created at any time during the use of the building, perhaps for storage jars. The excavator concluded that the room had functioned as a storage chamber, a cellar below a building constructed of large, carefully worked stone blocks. After the structure went out of use, the walls collapsed into the underground room; a section of wall composed of sizable blocks was excavated where it had fallen into Trench 2. No evidence for the original date of construction was found, but the underground 20 For both test trenches we took advantage of holes dug by illegal excavators, cleaned their profiles, and then dug stratigraphically beside them. 21 Virginia Anderson-Stojanovic´ was the excavator in this sector; this account is based on her season report. As indicated by the name given to this area, we had originally assumed that the room was a cistern. Anderson-Stojanovic´ points out that no traces of plaster or mortar exist on any of the already exposed or newly excavated surfaces, and that several deep cracks through the bedrock argue against a water-tight container. Our original identification as a cistern raises the problem of water supply on the acropolis. There is and probably was no source of water on the hill. All water must be carried up either from the river or from three springs outside the city or collected during rains and stored for later use. An archaeologist from the Kumanovo Museum has mentioned evidence for an aqueduct bringing water to the site, but we have not yet verified details and location.
CAROLYN S. SNIVELY room and its superstructure seem likely to have formed a part of the late antique complex on the acropolis. After the collapse of the superstructure, the room was used as a garbage dump, as suggested by many animal bones and much fragmentary pottery. All of the material found in the room was later than the late antique period and remains to be studied and a chronological determination made. Sector IA To the east of the subterranean room, the terrain drops abruptly to the eastern plateau (Fig. 7). Sector IA is located near the foot of that drop, at the western end of the plateau, and stretching back from its northern edge. Within an excavated surface area of ca. 100 m2, two rooms of a large building, possibly administrative but more likely residential, were found.22 Room 1 at the west had interior dimensions of 3.60 × 9.40 m; it displayed an apse at the north and a doorway in the south wall (Fig. 8). The dimensions of room 2, adjoining the first room on the east side, were 4.0 × 9.0 m. Near its south wall a round hearth (diameter 1.20 m) was cut into the bedrock floor. The western wall of room 1 consisted of a bedrock socle above which a wall of stones and mortar once rose. The north walls of both rooms had been almost completely destroyed, but their impressions could be traced in the mortar substructure. The south wall was carefully built of similarly sized stones bonded with lime mortar. Evidence for two phases of construction are visible in the building. The east wall of room 2, constructed of stones and mud mortar, appeared to the excavator to have subdivided an originally larger room. Two doorways once connecting rooms 1 and 2 had been closed in the second phase. The floor of room 1, almost completely preserved, showed two circles formed from small pieces of gray or white limestone against a background of red tile fragments. In room 2, a leveled bedrock surface formed part of the floor, with pieces of tile filling the intervening spaces. The depth of fill in Sector IA did not exceed 0.50 m. The stratigraphy was relatively simple: (1) a surface layer of grass and earth with a great deal of post-late antique pottery, and (2) a 22 Dancˇe Golubovska was the excavator in this sector; her season report is the basis for this account.
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layer of debris heavy with large stones, which rested on the floor. The small finds included sherds of coarse pottery, metal belt buckles, knife blades, and an earring. Unfortunately nothing found in the two rooms provides any evidence for their function. A first half of the sixth-century date has been tentatively proposed for the building.23 The two excavated rooms lie at the northern edge of the plateau. The building almost certainly extended to the east and the west. The discovery of this building demonstrates the presence of monumental architecture on the acropolis of Golemo Gradisˇte. Several fragments of stone moldings, including one of marble, point to a degree of provincial elegance. Sector IB In three trenches in Sector IB we investigated the north-south width of the eastern plateau, from the eroded rock-cut remains of an apsidal room and a corridor at the north, to the line of the fortification/terrace wall marking the south edge of the plateau, a distance of ca. 17.5 m. The surface of the plateau drops ca. 1.5 m from the north to the south side.24 Excavation in the first 5 × 5 m trench at the north quickly revealed a very rough surface of beaten stones and earth covering the leveled bedrock in the apsidal room; east of the room ran a rock-cut corridor, whose north end connected with two staircases carved into the cliff forming the northern edge of the plateau. The depth of earthen fill in Trench 1 nowhere exceeded 0.20 m. Trench 2, also 5 × 5 m, was located one meter to the south of the first one. As a test later showed, the level of the bedrock dropped ca. 0.50 m in the space between the two trenches; bedrock was not reached in Trenches 2 or 3. The third trench was located one meter to the south of Trench 2 and extended to the south edge of the plateau. The north face of the fortification/terrace wall formed the effective southern edge of Trench 3, whose length became 5.60 m along the east side and 6.20 m along the west. Excavation in a 2 m wide strip along the west side, Trench 3a, reached a final 23 The pottery on which Golubovska bases this date comes from within the building and on or above the floor; it does not therefore provide reliable evidence for the date of construction. 24 Carolyn Snively was the excavator in this sector.
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depth of ca. 2.6 m beside the fortification wall (Fig. 9). Wall 1, running east-west across Trench 3a parallel to and ca. 3.5 m north of the terrace/ fortification wall, appears to have separated a paved room to the north from a cellar at the south. A deposit of debris with roof tiles and large fragments of smashed pottery covered a floor of stones and packed earth north of Wall 1. Testing below this floor revealed a very solid packing and substructure. Three stone steps of a stairs, built beside the north face of Wall 1, led from this floor up to the east, perhaps to an upper story above the cellar on the south side of Wall 1. South of this wall, the western face of a second wall appeared in the scarp of Trench 3a. Wall 2, which lack of time did not permit us to investigate, was associated with deposits of clay. Below those deposits and the bottom of Wall 2, a layer of debris ca. 0.90 m deep appeared in the space between Wall 1 and the terrace/ fortification wall. It included, among other things, many roof tile fragments and large sherds of broken pots, window glass, and vessel fragments, five loom weights, 5 small millstones (?), iron fragments, and a small marble slab. No identifiable floor or use level was found beneath this debris, a circumstance which suggests that the artifacts fell from an upper floor into this subterranean space. Although the bottom of the debris and of the fortification wall lay at nearly the same depth, we continued to excavate another ca. 0.60 m of earth, of which the final 0.30 m was sterile soil. The fortification wall is preserved in Trench 3a to a height of ca. 2 m. Although its north face displays a solid construction of fieldstones and lime mortar, the southern exterior face of the wall could not be found and appears to have been destroyed to its foundation. Given the very limited area of excavation in Sector IB, particularly Trench 3a, we can reach only preliminary interpretations and conclusions. The ceramic material from the destruction debris above the floor north of Wall 1 and from the 0.90 m deep deposit of debris at a lower level south of Wall 1 appears on initial examination25 to be similar and probably to represent the late sixth- or early seventh-century 25 Anderson-Stojanovic´ did not have the opportunity to analyze the pottery from the last week of excavation, so that
destruction encountered elsewhere on the site. This conclusion, which may require revision, would indicate that Wall 2 and associated deposits represent post-late antique activities on the acropolis, behind the shelter of the still existing terrace/fortification wall. Our present hypothesis, to be tested in future seasons, states that the gently sloping plateau on the eastern third of the acropolis is an artificial construction of the late antique period. The remains of rock-cut walls along the north side of the plateau show that the bedrock once rose to a greater height. Because it drops off toward the south, however, a relatively level space was created by building a series of terrace walls and one major wall that probably served (1) as terrace wall, (2) as the supporting south wall of buildings, and (3) as a fortification along the edge of the newly created plateau. THE ROTUNDA CHURCH Ca. 160 m south of Malo Gradisˇte and thus outside the fortified city, the remains of an unusual early Byzantine church in the form of a Rotunda are visible (Figs. 10, 11). Local villagers excavated the building in 1919, and it has stood exposed to the elements for more than eighty years with only minimal conservation. The use of large, cut stone blocks in the walls and piers of the Rotunda is typical of the region and is probably a factor in the partial survival of the excavated structure. Radojcˇic´’s article,26 describing the state of the church in 1938, remains an essential source for scholars who wish to study the Rotunda, because he documented and discussed elements of the church that no longer exist. The exterior walls of the church form a trapezoid, ca. 21 m long, whose east and west walls are parallel. A rectangular apse protrudes from the east wall and buttresses in the form of small towers from the east corners. A central doorway in the west wall gave access to a small narthex flanked, within the west corners of the trapezoid, by apsidal rooms. A modern chapel was constructed over the northwest apsidal room in 1955, so that Radojcˇic´’s photo27 prothe preliminary conclusions about chronology here and in Sector IA are those of Snively and Golubovska respectively. 26 Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” 152–67. 27 Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” fig. 16.
CAROLYN S. SNIVELY vides the only view of it. Cleaning in 1998 verified that the east end of the southwest room was apsidal and that a platform had occupied the apse. From the narthex, through a tribelon, one entered a U-shaped aisle or corridor whose east ends formed pastophoria beside the presbyterium. A circle of four piers and six large mullion columns divided the aisle from the round nave, which could be entered at the west through a second tribelon and through two entrances beside the eastern piers. Screen slabs resting on a low wall closed the other four intercolumniations, at north and south. The two large, irregularly shaped piers at the east side of the nave marked the west corners of the presbyterium; between them stood a chancel screen of slabs supported by six posts. The southern half of the base for the screen is still preserved. Radojcˇic´ found no trace of an altar on the east-west axis in front of the apse. His plan showed the destruction of the central stone slabs of the presbyterium floor, suggesting that the reliquary normally to be found under the altar had been removed in antiquity or between 1919 and 1938. Cleaning in 1998 revealed one slab of the floor still in situ at the north side of the presbyterium. Clergy benches at the north and south sides of the presbyterium abutted the piers marking the west ends of the apse; some blocks of the southern bench are preserved. Between them and the piers at the west corners of the presbyterium, narrow openings allowed access to the pastophoria, from which doors in the north and south wall of the church opened to the exterior. A unique feature of the Rotunda was the blind corridor within the apse. As Radojcˇic´ showed both in plan and in photograph,28 the inner side of the rectangular apse was semicircular, but a wall—straight on its west face, convex on the east—ran across the chord of the apse, except at the south side where the entrance to the blind annular corridor formed by the two concentric apsidal walls was located. Three steps cut into the front of the wall on the chord of the apse presumably led up to a platform on top of the wall or above the corridor; there the episcopal throne or the seat of the 28
Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” figs. 11, 12.
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presiding clergyman once stood. The only part of this construction now preserved consists of several precariously balanced blocks at the north corner of the apse. Cleaning carried out in 1998, in the hope of finding traces of a foundation for the vanished inner apsidal wall, indicated that no foundations had been employed in the church for any features except loadbearing walls and piers. Small rectangular spaces were noted at the corners of the apse, a feature not shown on Radojcˇic´’s plan. The annular corridor may be related to the kykleia noted in sixth-century churches further south, for example, in Basilica A at Amphipolis, or conceivably even to the apsidal crypts found in churches in Macedonia.29 But the precise purpose of the blind annular corridor in the Rotunda at Konjuh remains and probably will remain a mystery. Between the northwestern part of the aisle and the apse of the northwest room, where the wall was quite thick, Radojcˇic´ noted a doorway opening to a staircase leading to an upper story. In 1998 no evidence for the staircase was extant. A shallow niche occupied a similar position in the southwest wall of the corridor. Radojcˇic´ assumed that the dome, the arches above the colonnade, and the vault covering the aisle had been constructed of brick, of which many examples were still visible in the debris at the time of his visit; hexagonal bricks also paved the floors of nave and aisle. Not even small fragments of brick or tile now remain in the building.30 A reconstruction of the upper portions of the Rotunda, including the dome, the roof above the narthex and aisle, and possible galleries, awaits further study of the remains.31 Radojcˇic´ found a large number of pieces of architectural sculpture in the Rotunda; some were removed to the Archaeological Museum, 29 C. Snively, “Apsidal Crypts in Macedonia: Possible Places of Pilgrimage?” JbAC, suppl. 20.2 (1995): 1179–84. Also of relevance may be P. Chevalier’s discussion of the “synthronos libre” in Dalmatian churches in her book, Ecclesiae Dalmatiae. L’architecture paléochrétienne de la province Romaine de Dalmatie (Rome, 1996), 2:117–18. 30 A large number of ancient bricks are visible in a 20thcentury building near the Rotunda. Workmen from the village of Konjuh have told us that bricks and rooftiles from the site are very valuable for the construction of ovens. 31 One of the goals of the Konjuh Project is to carry out additional minor investigations in and around the Rotunda and to publish a definitive study of this unique monument.
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now the Museum of Macedonia, in Skopje, while others remain on site.32 In addition to the bases of the mullion columns of the colonnade and pieces of the columns themselves, Radojcˇic´ recorded three impost capitals; one carried a brief, enigmatic inscription. The function of four smaller capitals remains uncertain. Fragments of the posts from the chancel screen base also appeared, richly carved in a soft, green local stone. Radojcˇic´ divided the pieces of flat and curved screens into three groups: (1) those with relief carving, mostly of animals, on only one side; (2) fragments from the chancel screen, carved on both sides with variations of crosses in circles;33 and (3) pieces from the ambo.34 From the time of its initial publication, the date assigned to the Rotunda on the basis of its plan and its architectural sculpture has been the sixth century.35 I. Nikolajevic´ dated the sculpture to the middle of the sixth century, citing its connections with Justinianic monuments in Serbia, for example, at Caricˇin Grad.36 Neither the investigations of the Protection Institute in 1988 nor ours a decade later revealed any new archaeological evidence for dating the building; almost no pottery was found. Nevertheless, the plan and the architectural sculpture are not consistent with the fourth-century date recently advanced for the Rotunda by Blaga Aleksova.37 Radojcˇic´ posed the question whether there had been more than one phase of construction. The investigations of the Protection Institute and ours confirmed Radojcˇic´’s own conclusion that no major renovations had 32 Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” 154–55; I. Nikolajevic´-Stojkovic´, Ranovizantijska dekorativna plastika u Makedoniji, Srbiji, i Crnoj Gori (Belgrade, 1957), 47–50, 91; R. F. Hoddinott, Early Byzantine Churches in Macedonia and Southern Serbia (London, 1963), 220–26. Snezˇana Filipova, from the University of Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, is restudying the architectural sculpture from Konjuh. 33 K. Petrov, “Staurodekoracija od Konjuh,” Zbornik na Arheolosˇki Muzej Skopje 2 (1957–58): 31–45. 34 K. Petrov, “Rekonstrukcija na ambonot od rotondata vo Konjuh,” Godisˇen Zbornik na Filozofski Fakultet, Skopje 22 (1970): 271–302; J.-P. Sodini, “La sculpture architecturale à l’époque paléochrétienne en Illyricum,” in Actes du Xe Congrès International d’Archéologie Chrétienne, Thessalonique, 1980 (Thessalonike–Vatican City, 1984), 1:293–94. 35 Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” 163. 36 Nikolajevic´-Stojkovic´, Dekorativna plastika, 50. 37 B. Aleksova, “Konjuh: Golemo Gradisˇte,” in Arheolosˇka karta, vol. 2 (Skopje, 1996), 184–85; eadem, Loca Sanctorum Macedoniae. The Cult of Martyrs in Macedonia from the 4th to the 9th Centuries (Skopje, 1997), 259–60.
taken place in the church; it was basically a onephase building. The only piece of evidence for change or renovation was the walling-up of the north exterior doorway.38 Radojcˇic´ also asked whether the Rotunda had served as a martyrium, adducing its central plan and the inscription on an impost capital, DOMATRIRS, interpreted as domus martyris. He suggested that relics might have been kept in one of the western apsidal rooms or that the grave of a martyr might have been located under the altar.39 Aleksova identified the building as a martyrium and assumed that members of the local elite had been buried in the western rooms.40 The most significant discovery made by the Protection Institute in 1988 was that the building had been constructed on a nearly sterile site. Everywhere, except in the southwest room, a layer of yellow clay appeared below the surface humus and broken pieces of the substructure of the now vanished floor. Additional cleaning along the east-west axis of the presbyterium in 1998 exposed undisturbed yellow clay immediately below the surface deposit and indicated that only a small and shallowly placed reliquary could have occupied the space under the altar. The modern chapel makes investigation in the northwest room impossible for the foreseeable future. Below the southwest room, however, the Protection Institute uncovered two walls forming the right-angled corner of an earlier structure. The walls were smaller than those of the Rotunda and of different construction and orientation. No evidence of burials was reported. The Protection Institute’s trench along the outer face of the church walls was excavated through yellow clay without finds. The central plan and the inscription remain the only evidence for a martyrium. No burials were found in the church or immediately 38 Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” 155. As indicated above, on the acropolis of the city there is clear evidence of a late 6th- or early 7th-century destruction; an extramural church would not have escaped that destruction. We found no evidence to support Aleksova’s contention that the church had functioned again in the 9th and 10th centuries, although the general area including the Rotunda to the south of Malo Gradisˇte is known as Selisˇte and seems to have been occupied for some period between late antiquity and modern times. We shall never know if evidence for later reuse existed in 1919 and was swept away. 39 Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” 154–56. 40 Aleksova in Arheolosˇka Karta, 185; eadem, Loca Sanctorum, 256, 259–60.
CAROLYN S. SNIVELY around it.41 Although a church of the sixth century would certainly have included a relic under the altar, the data are insufficient for us to say whether the Rotunda served as a martyrium in any additional sense. Ca. 150 m southeast of the Rotunda a hagiasma, of unknown antiquity but still in use in 1998,42 is located within a grove of trees. The shrine consists of an enclosure focused on a small structure that stands above the mouth of a well. The springhouse, if it may be so called, is built of stone blocks.43 Icons decorate the facade of the structure, and niches in the enclosure wall hold cups and other containers for water. The mineral water from the well is said to be a panacea.44 Although the distance between the Rotunda and the hagiasma leaves any connection between them uncertain, the existence of the latter reminds us that numerous pagan shrines may have stood in the countryside around Golemo Gradisˇte and offered sites and reasons for the construction of churches. CLEANING AND DOCUMENTATION OF THE CHURCH OF ST. GEORGE Ca. 300 m southwest of the site and ca. 400 m west of the Rotunda, within the functioning cemetery of the village of Konjuh, stands the roofless church known as St. George (Fig. 12). The building and the graveyard are isolated from the surrounding fields by ravines and can be easily approached only from the southeast. St. George stands a few meters east of the deep ravine through which a small stream runs north to the Kriva River. A spring rises in the ravine near the church. St. George is a one-aisle building with a protruding eastern apse. It is approximately 7 m long by 4.5 m wide. It was built in part of large stone blocks, presumably taken from the ruins of the ancient city; small stones, brick and tile fragments, and mortar fill in the spaces between the blocks. A fragment of a Roman tombstone was built into the outer face of the south 41 A pile of stone slabs in a field some distance to the south of the Rotunda is the only evidence for burials in the vicinity. 42 In summer of 2000 the shrine appeared to be neglected and no longer in use. 43 We observed a similar little stone building built over a spring in the ravine southwest of the church of St. George. 44 Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” 152, mentions the spring briefly as does Aleksova, Loca Sanctorum, 252.
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wall. Wooden beams, visible on the interior, reinforced the structure. The use of smaller stones and different construction, especially near the top of the walls, suggests interventions and perhaps a new roof at some point. The remnants of the roof indicate that it too was of stone. A band of decorative brickwork is still preserved across the east wall above the apse. Three niches break up the monotony of the exterior face of the north wall. A narrow window opened at a relatively low level in the apse, and an apparent second window was located in the south wall. The only entrance is centered in the west wall. The floor had been paved with large stone slabs of varying shape; they rested on a stone foundation. At some time, probably after World War II, treasure hunters pried up the stone slabs of the floor and left them projecting at angles here and there with gaping holes between. Two trees took root within the ruined floor and grew higher than the preserved walls. The date when the roof collapsed is not known but predated Radojcˇic´’s visit in 1938. Two vertical slabs of the chancel barrier remain in situ, as does the base for the altar within the chancel area. Severely damaged remains of fresco are still visible on the east wall (Fig. 13). The church was declared a “monument of culture” and placed under legal protection in 1954 under the name of St. George.45 Nevertheless, neither the original dedication nor the date of construction is known; the proposed dates run from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. Radojcˇic´, in his survey of the site, described and briefly discussed this church, provided a plan and photograph, and identified it as a church of the Holy Archangel. He cites as evidence for this identification the fresco in the lunette above the entrance, now vanished without a trace; he was, in fact, arguing against an earlier identification as St. Nicholas.46 In July 2000 we took the following measures. 45
Information provided by D. Golubovska. Radojcˇic´, “Crkva,” 148–49, figs. 6–7. There has been considerable controversy about the dedication of this church, including the question whether Radojcˇic´ might have confused its saint with that of another church still standing in the vicinity in 1938. We know from local informants that a church once stood near the modern bridge over the Kriva River, only a few hundred meters from the one now referred to as St. George. 46
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The two trees inside the shell of the church were removed without damage to the standing walls. The floor slabs, torn from their places, were replaced. Loose earth was removed from the interior of the building. The architectural pieces and spolia found inside the church were documented and arranged along the walls. A trench immediately outside the west doorway, presumably dug by treasure hunters, was cleaned, examined, and backfilled. Architectural pieces and spolia found outside and around the church were examined, separated from heaps of unworked stone, and drawn or photographed. The terrace wall near the south side of the church and the two stone “tables” for funerary meals, located to the southeast and north of the building, were cleaned of vegetation. The present condition of the church was documented both photographically and by means of architectural drawings. It will now be possible to study the building, which presents several interesting features. We also hope that documentation of the present precarious condition of St. George will move it up in the long queue of churches awaiting conservation. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS Our excavations on the acropolis of Golemo Gradisˇte, together with observations about other parts of the site and its environs, have led to several conclusions, some of which may require revision in the future, and to a number of hypotheses to be tested in coming seasons. It now seems clear that the general area was occupied, at least sporadically, from the late Bronze Age to the period of Turkish domination, although the natural fortification of Golemo Gradisˇte and the site of the late antique city were not always the focus of activities. The locations of any prehistoric, Hellenistic, and early Roman settlements remain to be discovered. Although no stratified, post-late antique deposits were found on the acropolis in 2000,47 the amount of later pottery points to 47
Medieval levels are being excavated in 2001.
long-term or intensive occupation in the medieval period. Analysis of the excavated material and its correlation with pottery from other parts of the site will eventually provide a clearer idea of the shifting patterns of activity on and around Golemo Gradisˇte through the centuries. In late antiquity a heavily fortified city occupied the site. To what extent this was a rebuilding, a fortification, and an enlargement of an earlier town remains unclear. The number of sixth-century coins found on and around the site point to major activity here in the sixth century.48 Very likely this city participated in the Justinianic building program described by Procopius (De aedificiis 4.4). One might then ask if reconstruction was needed because the Scupi earthquake of 518, described by Marcellinus Comes 100, had devastated this region. The discovery of relatively large and substantial buildings on the acropolis in all three sectors investigated points to intensive adaptation and use of at least the eastern part of the hill in the late antique period. The time and effort required to carve rooms into the bedrock and to construct a fortification wall and terrace walls in order to create the eastern plateau do not reflect emergency response to a threat but rather a planned and deliberate program of building. But intentional and long-term occupation of an acropolis so inaccessible raises a series of questions. What segment of the population chose or was compelled to live there? Local officials? A military garrison? And why? For defensive or strategic reasons? The answers to such questions are not available yet, but our work in 2000 has begun to fill in with facts and details the general picture of the site painted by survey. We expect that investigations in future seasons will allow us to answer some of the questions about this fascinating site. Gettysburg College
48
E.g., Lilcˇic´, “Razmisluvanja,” 37 and figs. 7–9.
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Excavations and Survey at Androna, Syria: The Oxford Team 1999 MARLIA MUNDELL MANGO Androna (modern al-Andarin) lies in the socalled basalt massif located between the betterknown Limestone Massif to the west and the Syrian steppe or desert to the east.1 The area was in the midst of several ancient cities: Epiphaneia (modern Hama) to the southwest, Apamea to the west, Chalcis to the northwest, Anasartha (and the bishopric Gabbula) to the north, and Sergiopolis/Rusafa to the east (Fig. 1). Between Gabbula and Anasartha lies a salt lake exploited in the Byzantine period2 and today. Pliny states that the region of Chalcis was “a most fertile part of Syria”; it produced cereals, fruit trees, and vines, while the olive appears on its coins.3 On the basis of their aerial survey in the 1930s, R. Mouterde and A. Poidebard concluded that the steppe of upper Syria was a pastureland surrounded by a belt of cultivated land supported by extensive irrigation works.4 The date of these works and whether they were state or privately funded are central questions posed for the entire region as well as for Androna, which lies in the zone receiving 250–300 mm of rainfall per annum (see below) and whose water supply system was extensive. This system was, apparently, not maintained much beyond antiquity. Today, in the area of Androna the modern has recently been grafted onto the primitive: beduin still graze flocks on sparse 1 On part of this area, see recently C. Foss, “Syria in Transition, A.D. 550–750: An Archaeological Approach,” DOP 51 (1997): 232–37. 2 As indicated by an inscription of 553 at er-Rouhweyb in the Gebel il-Hass; R. Mouterde and A. Poidebard, Le limes de Chalcis. Organisation de la steppe en haute Syrie romaine (Paris, 1945), 190–91. 3 Pliny, Naturalis historia 5.19.81; Mouterde and Poidebard, Le limes, 13 and note 2. 4 Mouterde and Poidebard, Le limes, 234f., 238f.
grass while they irrigate thirsty crops such as cotton and watermelon with water tapped by motorized pumps from drilled wells up to 90 m deep;5 tents, traditional mudbrick qubbes, and modern breeze-block houses stand side by side. Androna is first attested as a mansio on the Palmyra-Chalcis route (leading on to Antioch) in the late third-century Antonine Itinerary,6 and is described as in ruins by Yaqut writing in A.D. 1225.7 Although identified as a kome in an early Byzantine mosaic inscription,8 Androna was not a typical village and offers interesting points of contrast with villages of the Limestone Massif to the northwest. Lacking city ( polis) status, Androna nevertheless enjoyed certain urban facilities, being about a mile across with two sets of circuit walls and large extramural reservoirs; its communal buildings included a barracks (kastron), a public bath (loutron), and a dozen churches. The entire space within the circuit walls is filled with collapsed buildings best seen in aerial photographs (Fig. 2). In 1905 the Princeton University Archaeological Expedition to Syria, under H. C. Butler, planned parts of the site,9 and in the 1930s Mouterde
5 See M. Decker on agriculture in Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998” (see note 16 below). 6 Mouterde and Poidebard, Le limes, 61–63, 174. On the date of the Antonine Itinerary, see ibid., 17 note 3. 7 Yaqut, Geographical Lexicon, 1.373 (1225), cited in G. LeStrange, Palestine under the Moslems. A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500 (1890; repr. Beirut, 1965), 394. 8 H. Salame-Sarkis, “Syria grammata kai agalmata,” Syria 61 (1989): 322–25. 9 PPUAES (Leiden, 1907–49): H. C. Butler, F. A. Norris, and E. R. Stroever, Geography and Itinerary (1930), 52–53; H. C. Butler, Architecture, Section B, Northern Syria (1920), 47–63; B. W. K. Prentice, Greek and Latin Inscriptions, Section B, Northern Syria (1922), nos. 909–45.
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and Poidebard included it in their aerial survey of “the limes of Chalcis.”10 Butler identified two phases of building: a Roman phase (2d century?) represented by a hypostyle structure (the “praetorium”), inner circuit walls, and the reservoir southeast of the site, and an early Byzantine phase represented by the other public buildings and attested by numerous Greek inscriptions (eight precisely dated between A.D. 507 and 583/4),11 including those of the kastron built in A.D. 558–559 by the same individual (Thomas) who built the bath opposite.12 The kastron has been linked with a network of sites that were fortified in the second half of the sixth century, considered by Mouterde and Poidebard as an inner bulwark against the Persians between the Euphrates and Antioch.13 “Farmers” may be mentioned in the bath inscription,14 and an early Arabic text, ‘Amr Ibn Kulthum’s Mu‘allaqa, states that Androna was noted for superior wine production.15 Trade probably passed through the site, as it was a mansio on a main road. The current international project,16 started in 1997 by three collaborating teams from the Syrian Department of Antiquities (under Dr. A. Zaqzuq, director of the Hama Museum) and the universities of Heidelberg (under Prof. C. Strube) and Oxford (under Dr. M. Mango),17 aims to elucidate the diachronic development (from Roman to Islamic) of Androna’s resources, defenses, size, and spatial organization. This is being done by means of survey, excavation, and study of the water supply, circuit 10
Mouterde and Poidebard, Le limes, 15, 171–74, 217, pls. CX–CXIII. 11 IGLSyr 4 (1955), nos. 1676–1713. 12 Ibid., no. 1682. 13 Mouterde and Poidebard, Le limes, 229–40. 14 C. Mango on inscriptions in Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998” (see note 16 below). 15 Mouterde and Poidebard, Le limes, 15 note 1; E. Honigmann, “Syria,” RE 1562.5. 16 C. Strube and M. Mundell Mango, “Excavations at Andarin/Androna,” in La Syrie moyenne de la mer à la steppe (Damascus, in press); M. Mundell Mango, “Oxford Excavations at Andarin (Androna): September 1998,” with contributions by M. Decker, C. Mango, N. Pollard, C. Salter, and A. Wilson, AArchSyr (in press); M. Mundell Mango, “Oxford Excavations at Andarin (Androna), September 1999,” AArchSyr (in press). 17 Oxford’s participation was made possible by funding from the University of Oxford, principally a generous grant made by the Research and Equipment Committee specifically for the first season of work in 1998; this was supplemented by an award from the Craven Committee and grants from St. John’s College and the Modern History Faculty.
walls, and public and domestic buildings. Heidelberg’s topographical survey of the site in 1997 revealed evidence of an orthogonal plan and two variant systems of building alignment that could have phasing implications (Roman and Byzantine). This problem may be clarified by excavation of central structures, namely the bath and the kastron, being carried out by Oxford and Heidelberg, respectively, as well as parts of the main street (Fig. 2). Heidelberg’s geophysical survey and soundings of the circuit walls, planned for 2000, may help to prove site expansion from the Roman to the Byzantine period rather than the reverse, a hypothesis to be further confirmed by excavation of domestic complexes next to and between these walls. Excavation to date has revealed some traces of Islamic period activity at Androna (e.g., an oven [?] in the bath; pottery and inscriptions in the kastron). Oxford’s work on buildings, such as the bath (Fig. 5), and installations linked to the water supply (Figs. 20, 21) as well as agriculture, will help to assess the technological and financial resources available to a desert site in the Byzantine period. Survey and soundings of the reservoirs and foggaras (subterranean inclined galleries that tap aquifers, leading water to the surface) will clarify the dating and nature of the settlement at Androna, and in particular answer the question whether the large investment in the irrigation system was pre-Roman, Roman, or Byzantine, public or private. Work on the bath and water supply continued in 1999.18 18 Members of the Oxford team in 1999 were: Dr. Marlia Mango, director; Tyler Bell, Amanda Claridge, Michael Decker, Cassian Hall, Prof. Cyril Mango, Dr. Nigel Pollard and Dr. Andrew Wilson, archaeologists; Richard Anderson (also kite photographer) and Tassos Papacostas, architects; David Hopkins, draftsman; and Dr. Robert Hoyland, translator and general organizer in Syria. We were joined by two Syrian archaeologists, Fatima Mahmud and Afamiya alQasab. Our local workmen and women numbered twentytwo. Excavation took place during the month of September. The season’s work was made possible by generous grants from Dumbarton Oaks, the Council for British Research in the Levant, and the Craven Committee of Oxford University. For support in securing these grants, we are grateful to Prof. Clive Foss, Prof. R. R. R. Smith, Prof. Jean-Pierre Sodini, and Dr. Bryan Ward-Perkins. I should like to thank Bob Wilkins and Ian Cartwright of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, for making the photographic prints for this and other articles. Excavation in 1999, as in 1998, was carried out according to a strategy devised by Amanda Claridge. The following report on the excavation of the bath building is based on the notes written by the respective trench supervisors identified below and on personal observation.
1
Map of Syria. The limestone massif is indicated in black (after G. Tchalenko, Villages antiques de la Syrie du Nord. Le Massif du Bélus à l’époque romaine, vol. 2 [Paris, 1953], pl. XXXIX)
2
Computerized plan of Androna (after A. Wickham, 1977, from an aerial photograph in R. Mouterde and A. Poidebard, Le limes de Chalcis.Organisation de la steppe en Haute Syrie romaine [Paris, 1945], pl. CXI)
3
Plan of bath, as excavated in 1999, Androna (drawing: R. C. Anderson)
4
Bath, showing east court excavated to presumed Umayyad level, north at top, mid-season 1999, Androna (photo: R. C. Anderson)
5
Bath, north at top, end of 1999 season, Androna (photo: R. C. Anderson)
6
Bath, east entrance court, general view, looking west toward an Umayyad “kiln” (center) and surrounded by a layer of trampled masonry, Androna
7
Bath, east entrance court, looking southeast, Androna. Note the reerected columns of peristyle and an Umayyad “kiln” (center).
8
Bath, frigidarium looking north to 20th-century qubba complex, Androna
9
Bath, frigidarium, looking southeast, Androna. Note the qubba installed over central north apse of bath, fill of collapsed mudbrick upper walls being cleared.
10 Bath, frigidarium, overview, looking southwest toward two pools flanking south door, Androna
11 Bath, fragments (from frigidarium) of marble door moldings, Androna
12 Bath, fragment (probably from frigidarium) of marble-fluted basin in west well, Androna
13 Bath, frigidarium, limestone and slate pieces of opus sectile from mural panel found near east entrance, Androna
14 Bath, frigidarium, part of hand from small marble statue, Androna
15 Bath, southwest caldarium, hypocaust, looking west, Androna
16 Bath, caldaria, semicircular pools on south, looking east, Androna
17 (below) Bath, caldaria, looking northeast to raised drainage channels along exterior walls, Androna
18 Bath, west service area, passage B24 (possibly the wheel house), looking west toward well under arch, Androna
19 Bath, pottery: (1–3) finewares; (4–5) coarseware bowls; (6–7) amphorae; (8) saqiya jar; Androna
20 Southeast reservoir, Androna (photo: R. C. Anderson)
21 Northwest reservoir, Androna (photo: R. C. Anderson)
MARLIA MUNDELL MANGO THE BATH In addition to the important question of its water supply in this desert site and its close links (date, common donor) with the barracks opposite being excavated by Heidelberg,19 Oxford chose to excavate the bath for several other reasons: the relative rarity of bath architecture in late antiquity compared with that of churches; the interest of a bath in a non-polis setting; and the possibility at Androna of an architectural form more complex than that of baths in the Limestone Massif. Furthermore, the bath presented the opportunity to assess the level of technology employed and the quality of the building’s construction and decoration, as reflecting the resources available to an apparently untitled individual (Thomas) at a rural site during this period. Both the bath and kastron, built in ca. 558 by private initiative, provide contrary evidence to the theory that the plague of 542 precipitated a general decline in the empire.20 The bath built by Thomas at Androna in ca. 558 was identified by Butler, thanks to an inscription carved on a loose lintel that calls the building a loutron.21 Butler produced a plan of the bath whose features were found to correspond only generally to the building we are now uncovering (Figs. 4, 5).22 During the 1998 season we laid out a grid 45 × 25 m over the area indicated by Butler. Excavation was carried out horizontally in order to establish the overall extent of the building, and on average it was limited to a depth of 0.50 m with the removal of topsoil. The basalt and brick bath building was divided into four parts (Fig. 3): (1) an entrance court on the east; (2) a frigidarium on the north; (3) a tepidarium and caldaria on the south; and (4) a service area on the west.23 Notable finds from the bath made in 1998 included part of a second inscribed lintel referring to the loutron,24 figural wall paintings in the 19 Strube and Mundell Mango, “Andarin/Androna,” fig. 6. 20 See, e.g., H. Kennedy, “From polis to madina,” Past and Present 106 (1985): 3–27. 21 See C. Mango on inscriptions in Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998.” 22 Butler, Architecture, B, II, ill. 61; Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998,” fig. 2. 23 Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998,” figs. 3–4, 9–11. 24 Excavated by the Heidelberg team in 1998 to the west of the kastron. See C. Mango on inscriptions and figs. 17–18 in Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998.”
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entrance court,25 a water-lifting (saqiya) jar (on which see below), standing upright in a corner of the court, containing four Byzantine coins of the sixth–seventh century (Fig. 19.8),26 and a quantity of marble and other decorative stonework, some being champlevé carved fragments.27 We continued to excavate in the four main areas of the bath in 1999. The East Entrance Court (supervised by A. Claridge; in final stages by C. Mango and A. Al-Qasab) On the east side we uncovered much of the stone-paved court which had a peristyle plan formed by L-shaped piers and pairs of columns surmounted by capitals decorated with simple leaves (Fig. 3). In 1999 excavation advanced to the east as far as the doorway onto the street and revealed evidence of two periods: that of the bath’s construction in ca. 558 and that of its (partial?) destruction—perhaps up to a hundred years later—which was apparently contemporary with the court’s reuse for industrial activity. Destruction layers were encountered under the topsoil. First was a layer (20–30 cm high) of lightly compacted mudbrick that overlay a thick ashy deposit. The mudbrick and ashy deposit were removed to reveal a crusty surface (B157) formed over the fallen masonry of the collapsed peristyle superstructure of the court (Figs. 4, 6). The building debris had been trampled from the height of the top of the Lshaped piers on the east side of the court (B155, B156), which had apparently been reduced to a uniform low level, downward toward the center of the court to the base of a later circular structure (B104/B148) built soon after the destruction of the court (Fig. 7). This later structure (B104/B148), the west half of which had been uncovered in 1998 by N. Pollard, had been built directly onto the court floor (B84), its walls (ca. 1.00 m thick) composed of two bottom courses of tapering basalt blocks (including one 6th-century capital from the peristyle) topped by mudbrick. A 25 Excavated by N. Pollard. Mundell Mango on the frescoes and figs. 11, 22–23 in “Andarin 1998.” 26 These were two 40-nummi and two 20-nummi pieces, with the equivalent value of the entrance fee to the bath for six persons, 120 nummi. See C. Mango on coins and fig. 27.4 in Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998.” 27 See Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998,” figs. 19–21.
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stoke hole with tiled pointed top (B290) in the center of the east side opened into the interior whose vertical walls have a plaster or burned mudbrick lining. The structure, possibly a kiln, contained ten levels of deposits, the lower two of which were sampled for flotation and have yielded various grains now being studied at Oxford.28 Identification of other recovered material should clarify the function of the structure. The broad layer of trampled masonry was cleared from the north side of the court down to pavement level (Figs. 5, 7). From under the later accumulations of mudbrick, ash, and compacted fallen masonry emerged original features of the court structure (Fig. 3). These included the two east piers (B155, B156) mentioned above; the sites of the columns (B171, B172), now lost, between them (Fig. 4); and two other, fallen columns, collapsed arches, and a series of iron nails from the north peristyle superstructure. Two further columns of the peristyle had been left standing at the time of destruction. Likewise exposed was a circular cistern head (B265) situated in the center of the court directly opposite the stoke hole of the “kiln”; samples were taken of the silty earth filling the cement-lined shaft down to 0.90 m from the opening surface. The southeast corner (B162) of the building was also uncovered, as was the threshold (B195) of the entrance to the bath building from the street, situated in the center of the east edge of the court, fronted by a curb (B294). Stones from near this entrance were found to have been robbed, as was the paving (B266) around the central wellhead and at the northeast corner of the court (B249). Coin evidence recovered in the court pertains to both its period of construction and at least partial destruction. In 1999 a sixthcentury 20-nummi piece, presumably dropped during the period of construction (which is placed ca. 558 by the inscribed lintel; see note 21), was found under the threshold (B195) of the street entrance to the bath. The four 20and 40-nummi pieces (of the 6th–7th centuries) found in 1998, mentioned above, were inside a jar (Fig. 19.8) sealed in a corner of the court under the rubble of the collapsed west 28 By Dr. Mark Robinson. As noted in the 1998 report, the diameter of the supposed oven is close to that of Umayyad pottery kilns built on the Byzantine agora of Scythopolis; G. Mazor and R. Bar-Nathan, “The Bet She‘an Excavation Project 1992–1994,” Excavations and Surveys in Israel 17 (1998): 18–20, fig. 16.
aisle of the peristyle. They therefore provide a terminus post quem for the destruction of at least that part of the court, possibly in the later seventh or early eighth century. At the end of the season we reerected two newly uncovered fallen columns in the north side of the peristyle and two parts of a column broken by vandals after our 1998 season, which were set into the two western sockets (Fig. 7). The North Frigidarium (supervised by C. Hall, C. Mango, A. Al-Qasab, and M. Mango) The frigidarium has a roughly symmetrical layout with five apses (Fig. 3). Only the upper part was excavated in 1998, and in 1999 we continued down to floor level. This section of the bath had been partly built over by a circular beehive-shaped qubba (B3) (a local type of structure). Its postulated dating to the twentieth century was confirmed in 1999 by the discovery of modern material while emptying the mudbrick collapse of the upper wall filling the qubbe (Fig. 9). Embedded in the clay bonding with its lower stone wall was a glass bottle with “50” written on its base in raised letters and a length of barbed wire; a piece of nylon stocking was also found in the fill. Within the layers of compressed organic matter composing the lowest level covering the stone pavement droppings observed indicate that the qubba had been used to house animals. An attached rectangular room (B357) and open yard (B358), both enclosed by a combination of mudbrick, new stone walls (B14, B21, B356), and original bath construction (B19, B20), were contemporary with and attached to the qubba (Fig. 8). For the time being, the stone walls of this late complex were left in place. Likewise of modern construction was a low curved wall of uneven stone masonry extending from the southeast apse (B8) to the main doorway (B50) on the east side of the frigidarium. Within this enclosure was found a piece of plastic mixed in with older material from the bath. Like the qubbe complex, this wall was sited directly on the bath pavement (B326). Excavating the rest of the frigidarium (starting with an exploratory section at the east doorway and three others dug to a depth of ca. 0.20 m), we encountered mostly building rubble from the superstructure including brick, mortar, and stone, as well as decorative materials such as marble, which had accumulated on the pave-
MARLIA MUNDELL MANGO ment as the building collapsed, perhaps gradually. The following successive deposits were noted in front of the east doorway: (1) directly on the pavement was a layer of fragmentary thin sheets of gypsum (from a window above the door?), over which lay (2) a piece of molded marble revetment (from the door frame?) and brick fragments; followed by (3) a layer of clay (5 cm high), above which was (4) debris to a height of 15 cm and on the top (5) a layer of numerous opus sectile pieces, apparently from a panel once attached to the wall above the door (see below). No sign of a general conflagration was observed. Other possible causes of destruction (earthquake, progressive decay following abandonment) will be discussed in a future publication, when the particular historical circumstances in this, the region of Chalcis at the time of the Arab conquest, must be taken into consideration. The original architectural features of the frigidarium (Fig. 10) included doorways in the east (B50), south (B341), and west (B34) walls, that on the east preserving an iron door pivot (B340) in situ in its sill; large fragments of marble revetment moldings, found near this and the south door, may have decorated their inner faces (Fig. 11). Two pools (B35, B307) were exposed, flanking the south door. These are formed by pairs of large marble blocks (B12, B13, B330, B331) joined by a pier and built against the south wall (B11, B10) of the hall and the projecting lateral walls (B9, B11) of the south apses. Each block has moldings on its outer face and a bench on its interior. Vestiges of marble revetment remain on the piers and back walls of the pools, which have a cement floor and a drain hole on their north side. Stone posts had been set upright in the pavement in front of the pools, part of one being found in situ. The pavement of basalt slabs (B326) revealed in the frigidarium (Fig. 10) is the same as that in the entrance court (Fig. 7) and resembles that in the nearby palace at Qasr ibn Wardan of contemporary date (564). At Andarin, the pavement is laid out differently in the entrance court and in the frigidarium, where oblong stones are aligned north-south except across the middle area where broader stones forming a contrasting east-west pattern connect the two opposite doors. The two south apses (B138, B18) had a different type of floor of opus sectile paving (B327, B328), of which a setting bed re-
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mains and some octagonal slabs of Proconnesian marble were recovered.29 As in 1998, a large amount of Proconnesian and other marble was excavated in the frigidarium, which had been richly decorated. As well as the opus sectile paving and the doorway moldings (Fig. 11) mentioned above, this included many other pieces of wall revetment, surrounds, and champlevé carving30 of the type known at Antioch, Qal‘at Sim‘an, in Cyprus, and in Lebanon.31 The fragmentary mural panel of opus sectile, found fallen just inside the east door, was composed of pieces cut from limestone, slate, and other stone (Fig. 13); contemporary comparanda are found at Apamea and Pella.32 Offcuts from marble moldings, of various colors and already polished, used as packing for the uneven surfaces of the basalt walls, were found still adhering to the wall (B7) by the east doorway and fallen into a heap in the northeast apse. The vertical wall surface thus corrected was then revetted with sheets of marble. A large slab of plaster, embedded with an iron clamp for securing a marble slab, was found loose by the southwest pool. Lumps of plaster still set with glass mosaic tesserae and pieces of gypsum probably used as windowpanes (see above) were retrieved from the frigidarium; window glass has also been recovered from various parts of the bath. A fragmentary marble fluted basin (Fig. 12) excavated in 1999 nearby in the western service area (B337) may have originally sat atop one of two posts that once stood beside the frigidarium pools (Fig. 10). Part of a hand from a small marble statue (Fig. 14), possibly of the type still produced in the fourth and fifth centuries for display in houses and baths,33 was found by the southwest pool. 29
Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998,” fig. 19. Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998,” fig. 20; Strube and Mundell Mango, “Andarin/Androna,” fig. 6. 31 Mundell Mango on marble and other stones, “Andarin 1998.” See K. Weitzmann in R. Stillwell, ed., Antioch-on-theOrontes, III, the Excavations 1937–1939 (Princeton, N.J., 1941), 135 ff.; S. Boyd, “Champlevé Production in Early ˇevcˇenko and C. Moss, eds., Byzantine Cyprus,” in N. P. S Medieval Cyprus. Studies in Architecture and History in Memory of Doula Mouriki (Princeton, N.J., 1999), 49–51. 32 Mundell Mango on marble and other stones, “Andarin 1998,” fig. 21; on Pella, see R. H. Smith and L. P. Day, Pella of the Decapolis. 2. Final Report of the College of Wooster Excavations in Area IX, The Civic Complex, 1979–1985 (Sydney, 1989), 43–44, pl. 24; on Apamea, J. C. Balty, Guide d’Apamée (Brussels, 1981), 120, figs. 133–34. 33 E.g., in Byzantium, Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture, ed. D. Buckton (London, 1994), no. 25. 30
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EXCAVATIONS AND SURVEY AT ANDRONA, SYRIA
The South Tepidarium and Caldaria (supervised by M. Mango, C. Mango, and A. Al-Qasab) The south section of the bath (Figs. 3, 6), partially excavated in 1998 (the west hypocaust and two pools in the northwest corner), was built entirely in brick as a complex of further apsed rooms (a tepidarium on the north [B133/ B134] and three caldaria on the south [B106, B107, B136]). These incorporate a series of marble-lined or plastered pools (B140, B105, B107b, B338) or substructures thereof (B107a, B136a), hypocausts (B150), and furnaces (B139, B261, B341–B343), and yielding pipes,34 flues, and other apparatus. In 1999 we enlarged the area of excavation to the south, starting with room B106. Clearing the topsoil to establish the extent of the room, we found that its floor and parts of its upper walls had collapsed into the hypocaust (B150) below. This lower space contained a compacted mix of broken brick, mortar, fragments of pilae (small pillars), floor bedding, and other rubble from both rooms, to a depth of 1.14 m. Under this debris, the layer of ash (0.12 m deep; B173) accumulated on the floor (B174) was sampled for flotation and cleared. Engaged pilae once supporting the hypocaust floor (B179, B181, B182) still stand at heights up to 71 cm against three walls of the hypocaust, and those on the west (B180) reach approximately 1.4 m (Fig. 15), while only the impressions of square pilae (B175) remained on the center of the concrete floor (B 174). Judging by their preserved heights and the distance between the floors of B106 and B150, the pilae were originally relatively tall. Five heating shafts (B178) led from the hypocaust under the semicircular pool (2.2 × 1.1 m; B338) on the south side of room B106, which was revetted and paved in marble (2.2–4.5 mm thick) covered in lime scale (Fig. 21). We left unexcavated the arched opening (B176) leading into the hypocaust from the furnace on the west (B139), rooms B107 and B136 and their hypocausts to the east, and the tepidarium (B133/134) to the north. Among the rubble in the excavated hypocaust, the debris from room B106 included remnants of a white limestone tessellated pave34
Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998,” fig. 14.
ment35 and numerous pieces of plaster, some preserving traces of up to three layers painted in different colors, ranging from pale blue/gray to vivid yellow and red brightly colored designs, some suggestive of lettering. Patches of painted plaster remain adhering to the east wall above the floor level of room B106. Other decoration reported in 1998 included marble revetment still in situ on the south jamb of the doorway between this room and B107 to the east. Along the base of the exterior southwest corner of the caldaria was uncovered a double-level raised channel (B264, B344, B346) into which emptied the drains (B349, B348) from the pools above (B338, B107b) (Figs. 16, 17). This channel ran from the east where it abutted the first of the four low walls (B261, B343, B342, B341) projecting from the south side of the bath (B143) as vestiges of furnaces heating the hypocausts below rooms B107 and B136. A trench laid along the exterior south wall (extending between walls B127 and B66) revealed several deposits, composed at the east end of an upper layer of topsoil (0.70 m deep; B220), a middle one of building rubble (0.60 m deep; B237) from the collapse of the bath, and a lower one of ash (ca. 0.30 m deep; B247). Near the stoke holes (B183, B184) of the two furnaces, above layer B237 was a deposit (B236) of thirty-one sets of recovered animal bones. At the west end of the trench, additional mudbrick layers (B234, B235, B238) between the topsoil (B220) and the rubble layer (B237) may represent an additional phase of activity. The furnaces at the west and east ends of the trench had produced deep deposits of ash that were sampled for flotation. The West Service Area (supervised by C. Mango and A. Al-Qasab) In 1998 we uncovered archaeologically complicated remains just under the topsoil on the west side of the bath where the service area was situated (Figs. 3, 7). In 1999 we began excavation of two parts of this area: the blocked passage B24 and the space (B323) enclosed by the furnace B139 on the east, a basalt wall on the south (B128) and west (B127, B74), and the massive brick constructions (B23, B25) flank35 See also Mundell Mango on the south section: tepidarium/caldarium, “Andarin 1998.”
MARLIA MUNDELL MANGO ing the passage B24 on the north. In clearing the north half of this enclosed area down to a floor at ca. 1.50 m below the 1998 level (17.915), we exposed the east face of the furnace and its arched stoke hole (ca. 1.20 m high); the interior of the furnace was left unexcavated. To the north of the furnace we uncovered a narrow staircase (B353) leading up to an elevated tank (B41a) where pipes led through the east wall into room B36, which has a small pool.36 The surface of the staircase is encrusted by the downward flow of water which then emptied into the passage B24, the second area of excavation in 1999. Nearly half of the diagnostic pottery sherds (amounting to 65 pieces) found in the bath in 1998 belonged to saqiya jars37 (one 33 cm high found complete; Fig. 19.838) which were secured to a chain or wheel used to lift water from the ground. Heavy lime deposits on pipes39 and the semicircular pools in the south section (B107b, B338) indicate that groundwater from a well, rather than rainwater from a cistern, supplied the bath. As suggested in our first preliminary report following the 1998 season, both the large curved wall (B73) and the north-south passage (B24) in the west service area resemble in plan fifth/sixth-century water-lifting installations in the bath at Abu Menas near Alexandria, namely a circular area trodden by a pair of oxen operating a saqiya and a narrow space housing a lifting wheel, respectively.40 Exploration of these and a rectangular collapsed area (B94) that may correspond to a well or cistern, should help to confirm these possibilities. During the 1999 season we began excavation of the blocked narrow passage (B24) that may have provided the housing for a wheel—like that at Abu Menas—to which the saqiya jars may have been strapped in order to lift groundwater to elevated tanks. Within the passage we found a curious construction of unmortared 36
Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998.” N. Pollard on pottery and fig. 27.4 in Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998.” 38 Four coins of the 6th–7th century were found in the jar excavated in the entrance court; see note 26 above and C. Mango on coins in Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998.” 39 Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998,” fig. 14. 40 Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998,” figs. 15–16. See T. Schiøler, Roman and Islamic Water-lifting Wheels (Odense, 1973), 131–36; J. P. Oleson, Greek and Roman Mechanical Water-lifting Devices: The History of a Technology (Toronto, 1984), 181–82. 37
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stacked bricks (B334) at ground level at the south end and discovered a clay oven left there from a later period of use at the north end. Between these two features we uncovered a broad north-south arch (B336) in the wall (B25) on the west side of the passage (Fig. 18), under which was sunk a vertical shaft (B337), positioned at an oblique angle to the passage, arch, and bath. On the opposite, east wall (of B23) were encrustations apparently deposited by water lifted by a wheel or chain. The abundant ash that filled the passage and shaft was sampled for flotation. In addition to the marble fluted basin mentioned above (Fig. 12), the shaft yielded a small copper alloy bell which it is tempting to associate with an animal operating a saqiya lifting device nearby. We also started excavation by the main street (B303) which runs between the bath and the kastron of Thomas being excavated by Heidelberg, as well as small areas to the southeast (B216, B217, B222) and a series of low walls (B191, B198) and other features (B200) to the north of the bath building which may relate to earlier and later building phases, respectively (Fig. 3). In sum, during work carried out in 1998 and 1999, three phases of occupation of the bath site have so far been noted: (1–2) that of the bath itself, its construction in ca. 558 and its period of operation probably into the seventh century, at least until the time of the Arab conquest in ca. 640; (3) a phase possibly dating to the Umayyad period (pottery and glass evidence), as seen in the entrance court, where a “kiln” was constructed making use of material from the bath building; and (4) a modern phase, in the twentieth century, when parts of the north hall were reoccupied by a qubba complex. The south section of the bath requires further excavation to establish whether it went out of use entirely after the Byzantine period. Further exploration of the south and west areas may bring to light other phases of occupation. There is some evidence of reuse in and outside of passage B24 on the west side of the bath. Concerning the question posed above about resources spent on technology and architecture, certain preliminary observations may be made. The bath (40 × 23 m) is larger than contemporary rural baths in Syria at Kaper Barada, Sergilla (473), Midjleyya, and
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Babiska.41 Furthermore, the range of decorative material (wall mosaics, wall paintings, imported marble revetment) used in the bath indicates that it was, like the kastron, considered by its builder Thomas to be a prestigious building. During the coming 2000 season we intend to explore further the evidence for the technology employed in the operation of the bath. The large number of saqiya jars excavated exceeds all published finds outside Egypt and is therefore noteworthy.42 THE POTTERY The following information was provided by Nigel Pollard. The pottery finds made during the 1999 season of excavation of the Androna bath followed general trends visible in the previous season.43 Comparisons can be made with material from other sites in northern Syria such as Rusafa, Dehes, and Dibsi Faraj and to a lesser extent sites in southern Syria and Jordan.44 Recognizable imported finewares (Fig. 19.1–3) were Late Roman C ware (Phocaean Red Slip, Hayes’ forms 3 and 10) and African Red Slip (including Hayes’ forms 105 and 109), consistently in sixth- to mid-seventh-century forms. Diagnostic sherds of Late Roman C outnumbered those of African Red Slip ware by about three to one.45 A very high proportion of the excavated pottery came from amphorae and jars. Most is in a calcareous buff fabric, presumed to be local, and much of it has combed decoration (Fig. 19.7). However, most contexts also produced some of Riley’s Carthage Late Roman 1 41 See F. Yegül, Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 329–39; G. Charpentier, “Les bains de Sergilla,” Syria 71 (1994): 113–42. On baths built and/or maintained in the period in general, see M. Mundell Mango, “Building and Architecture,” CAH 14, Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600, ed. A. Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins, and M. Whitby (Cambridge, 2000), 934–40. 42 On saqiya jars see Schiøler, Water-lifting Wheels, 92–109; Oleson, Water-lifting Devices, 354–70. 43 N. Pollard on pottery in Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998.” 44 M. Mackensen, Resafa, I. Eine befestigte spätantike Anlage vor den Stadtmauern von Resafa: Ausgrabungen und spätantike Kleinfunde eines Surveys im Umland von Resafa-Sergiopolis (Mainz, 1984), 50–55; R. P. Harper, “Athis-NeocaesareiaQasrin-Dibsi Faraj,” in J.-Cl. Margueron, ed., Le moyen Euphrate, zone de contacts et d’échanges (Leiden, 1980), 335–41; J.-P. Sodini et al., “Déhès (Syrie du nord), campagnes I–III (1976–1978). Recherches sur l’habitat rural,” Syria 57 (1980): 234–66. 45 N. Pollard is grateful to John Hayes for examining and commenting on much of this material. Form references are to J. W. Hayes, Late Roman Pottery (London, 1972) and idem, A Supplement to Late Roman Pottery (London, 1980).
(LR1) amphora specimens (now generally considered to be of Syrian/Cilician manufacture46), which have now proved to be more common on the site than was suggested in the 1998 report. Less frequently found in 1999 than the LR1 is the “North Syria amphora” material, with red painted decoration on the shoulder (Fig. 19.6). Well represented in the 1999 assemblage are “Brittleware” cookwares and closed forms, of which better examples were excavated of all the major groups recorded in 1998. Neckless and high-necked cookpots and casseroles with a flat rim to take a lid feature among these. All categories of coarseware excavated in 1998 appeared in quantity in 1999, including saqiya jars (Fig. 19.8)47 and small bowls with decorated everted flat rims (Fig. 19.4–5).48 In general, datable material excavated in both 1998 and 1999 appears to be overwhelmingly of the sixth and seventh centuries, late Byzantine-Umayyad, while very little is likely to be fifth century or earlier, and nothing is clearly Abbasid. WATER SUPPLY SYSTEMS AND AGRICULTURE AT ANDRONA Reports made in 1998 by Andrew Wilson and Michael Decker assessed the climate, soil, and water conditions of Androna with regard to supply and exploitation of resources. In sum,49 lacking rivers and streams, Androna relied on ground and rainwater and is consequently dotted with wells and cisterns. Soil conditions are described as a mix of xeric and aridic, gypsiorthid, and/or calciothid;50 in future the soil at Androna will be sampled for specific identification. Although dry farming, of barley for example, was possible there on the margin of the pre-desert with 250–300 mm annual rainfall, other crops such as wheat, olives, or the grapes used to make Androna’s recorded wine required field irrigation. This was provided by
46 J.-Y. Empereur and M. Picon, “Les régions de la production d’amphores impériales en Mediterranée orientale,” in Amphores romaines et histoire économique, dix ans de recherche. Actes du colloque (Rome, 1989), 236–43. 47 See note 40 above. 48 D. Orssaud, “Le passage de la céramique byzantine à la céramique islamique,” in P. Canivet and J.-P. ReyCoquais, eds., La Syrie de Byzance à l’Islam: VIIe–VIIIe siècles. Actes du Colloque International 1990 (Damascus, 1992). 49 See A. Wilson on water systems and M. Decker on agriculture in Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998.” 50 See the bibliography cited by M. Decker in “Andarin 1998.”
MARLIA MUNDELL MANGO extramural reservoirs (61 × 61 m; Figs. 2, 20, 21) fed by a system of foggaras or qanats, subterranean inclined galleries that tap aquifers, leading water to the surface.51 Vertical shafts give access to the galleries. The foggaras supplying Androna’s reservoirs originated at some distance from the site.52 Work on the water supply and agriculture at Androna, started in 1998 by Andrew Wilson and Michael Decker, was continued in 1999. A sounding carried out in 1999 at one edge of the southeast extramural reservoir, planned by Butler,53 confirmed the results obtained the previous year by drilling at its center, thus establishing the relatively shallow depth (3.3 m) and providing the water-holding capacity (Fig. 20). The traces of this reservoir’s foggara at ground level have been plowed out. Northeast of the reservoir, slag and related material from industrial activity were observed (see below). Similar survey and sounding were carried out at the northwest reservoir (depth ca. 2.5 m),54 where a discharge system was observed on the side opposite the entry channel from the foggara (Fig. 21); industrial waste was likewise observed to the east of the reservoir. Pottery recovered during the soundings is being studied by Nigel Pollard. At the end of the 1999 season, a brief exploratory assessment was made of the extent of the foggara systems feeding both reservoirs, with a view to applying to the Department of Antiquities in Damascus for an extramural survey permit. Likewise an attempt was made to verify verbal reports of the location of other large reservoirs said to have served the site. Similar foggara and reservoir systems in the basalt region were recorded by Mouterde and Poidebard.55 The two reservoirs studied at Androna appear contemporary. As stated above,
51 For bibliography see Wilson in “Andarin 1998,” which cites, among others, D. R. Lightfoot, “Syrian Qanat Romani: History, Ecology, Abandonment,” Journal of Arid Environments 33 (1996): 321–36. 52 Mouterde and Poidebard, Le limes, 174. 53 Architecture, II, B, 63, ill. 63. 54 Mentioned by A. Zakariyya, Jawla athariyya [Archaeological tour] (Damascus, 1934). We should like to thank Prof. Irfan Shahîd for drawing our attention to this publication and Dr. Robert Hoyland for translating the relevant passages. 55 Mouterde and Poidebard, Le limes, 108, 110–13, 117– 25, 149–50. See now also B. Geyer and M.-O. Rousset, “Les steppes arides de la Syrie du Nord à l’époque byzantine ou la rouée vers l’est” in B. Geyer, ed., Conquête de la Steppe (Lyons, 2001), 111–21.
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Butler dated the southeast reservoir to the second century on the basis of its architectural moldings. However, other factors must be considered, and the reservoirs and foggaras cannot yet be precisely dated. Our agriculture specialist Michael Decker began recovery of palaeobotanical material in excavated areas, which, after flotation, will be studied by Mark Robinson in Oxford. In addition to the production of wine at Androna attested by a written source and well within required soil and temperature conditions, archaeological evidence of oil processing has also been encountered. The basins of olive mills (of mola olearia type56) observed at and near Androna— far east of what is considered the zone of olive cultivation—suggest industrial-scale production of oil; one mill was found by the north wall, lying with column shafts possibly reused as rollers. The upper parts (catilli) of flour mills excavated in the bath are being studied. Animal bones collected in 1998 and 1999 will be studied in relation to the exploitation of livestock at Androna where pastoralism probably played a large part in the economy. INDUSTRY AT ANDRONA Chris Salter of the Department of Materials, Oxford University, reported in 1998 57 on pyroceramic material collected at two locations in Androna. One sample, a small slag cake (smithing hearth bottom, SHB), found in the bath (room B136), suggested ironworking. The samples taken from north of the southeast reservoir (see above) included pieces from a hearth-lining and slaglike material. The high temperatures required to vitrify or melt the hearth surface observed, suggest metal or glassworking at the site. Further slag was collected at Androna in 1999 and is also being studied at Oxford. Institute of Archaeology University of Oxford
56 On which see R. Frankel, S. Avitsur, and E. Ayalon, History and Technology of Olive Oil in the Holy Land (Sheffield, 1994), 31–32. 57 In Mundell Mango, “Andarin 1998.”
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Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 56 Editor: Alice-Mary Talbot Published by
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Late Byzantine Thessalonike Dumbarton Oaks Symposium 2001 The annual Byzantine Studies symposium at Dumbarton Oaks was held May 4–6, 2001 under the direction of Jean-Michel Spieser. Fourteen papers explored various aspects of urban life in Thessalonike during the Palaiologan period, from the 13th to 15th centuries, a time when the city’s significance increased, after the re-establishment of the Byzantine capital in Constantinople by Michael VIII Palaiologos. Even in the middle of the civil wars, which were so frequent in the 14th century, Thessalonike on occasion became almost a rival of the capital. Despite its troubled situation, Thessalonike experienced a flourishing religious, intellectual, and artistic life: in no other period since early Christian times were so many churches built and decorated. The symposium was intended to give fresh insights into the second city of the empire, and to provide a new synthesis, based on the increasingly rich documentation which has become available over the course of the last century.
Program Session I: Historical and Topographical Frames Jean-Michel Spieser (University of Fribourg) Introduction John Barker (University of Wisconsin) The Trials and Tribulations of a Second City Charalambos Bakirtzis (Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities, Thessalonike) Topography of Late Byzantine Thessalonike: Urban Continuity and Extent ´ urcˇic´ (Princeton University) Slobodan C The Role of Thessalonike in Late Byzantine Church Architecture in the Balkans Session II: Society David Jacoby (Hebrew University) Foreigners in Thessalonike
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LATE BYZANTINE THESSALONIKE Nevra Necipog ˘ lu (Bog ˘ aziçi University) The Aristocracy in Late Byzantine Thessalonike (14th–15th centuries) Franz Tinnefeld (University of Munich) Intellectuals in Late Byzantine Thessalonike Session III: Administration and Economy Cécile Morrisson (C.N.R.S.–Collège de France) The Emperor, the Saint, the City: Coinage and Money in Thessalonike (13th–15th centuries) Angeliki Laïou (Harvard University–Academy of Athens) Economic Concerns and Attitudes of the Intellectuals of Thessalonike Session IV: Arts
Euthymios Tsigaridas (Aristotle University, Thessalonike) L’activité artistique des peintres thessaloniciens Manuel Panselinos et Georges Kaliergis: Nouveaux éléments Sharon Gerstel (University of Maryland) Pride of Place: Civic and Regional Influences on Subjects Portrayed in Macedonian Wall Painting Katia Tsigaridas (Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities, Thessalonike) Les arts mineurs à Thessalonique pendant la période paléologue Session V: Religious Life George Dennis (Catholic University of America) Metropolitans of Thessalonike Christophe Giros (C.N.R.S.–Collège de France) Présence athonite à Thessalonique Alexander Lingas (St. Peter’s College, Oxford) Cathedral Worship in Late Byzantine Thessalonike: Liturgy, Music, and Mystagogy Angeliki Laïou (Harvard University–Academy of Athens) Conclusion
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56
AArchSyr Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes. Revue d’archéologie et d’histoire, vols. 16–26 (Damascus, 1966–76) AASS Acta sanctorum, 71 vols. (Paris, 1863–1940) AB Analecta Bollandiana ActaIRNorv Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia, Institutum Romanum Norvegiae AHR American Historical Review ∆Akad. ∆Aqh.Pr. ∆Akadhmiva ∆Aqhnw'n Praktikav AnatSt Anatolian Studies AnnEPHE Annuaire de l’Ecole pratique des hautes études AnzWien Anzeiger der [Österreichischen] Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, Philosophisch-historische Klasse AOC Archives de l’Orient chrétien ArchCl Archeologia classica ∆Arc.Delt. ∆Arcaiologiko;n Deltivon ∆Arc.∆Ef. ∆Arcaiologikh; ∆Efhmeriv" ∆Arc.Povnt. ∆Arcei'on Povntou ArtB Art Bulletin AStCa Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania BAcBelg Bulletin de la Classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, Académie royale de Belgique BCH Bulletin de correspondance hellénique BBTT Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations BHG Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca, 3d ed., ed. F. Halkin, 3 vols. (Brussels, 1957) BK Bedi Kart[h] lisa BMGS Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies BNJ Byzantinisch-neugriechische Jahrbücher BSA The Annual of the British School at Athens BSCAbstr Byzantine Studies Conference, Abstracts of Papers BSl Byzantinoslavica ByzArch Byzantinisches Archiv ByzF Byzantinische Forschungen ByzSt Byzantine Studies/Etudes byzantines BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift CAH Cambridge Ancient History CFHB Corpus fontium historiae byzantinae
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ABBREVIATIONS
CorsiRav Corsi di cultura sull’arte ravennate e bizantina CSCO Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum CSHB Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae DACL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie DDC Dictionnaire de droit canonique Delt.Crist. ∆Arc.ÔEt. Deltivon th'" Cristianikh'" ∆Arcaiologikh'" ÔEtaireiva" DOC A. R. Bellinger, P. Grierson, and M. F. Hendy, Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1966–99) DOCat Catalogue of the Byzantine and Early Mediaeval Antiquities in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, vols. 1–2 by M. C. Ross (Washington, D.C., 1962–65); vol. 3 by K. Weitzmann (1972) DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers DOS Dumbarton Oaks Studies EHR English Historical Review EI 2 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed., vol. 1- (Leiden–London, 1960– ) EO Echos d’Orient ∆Ep.ÔEt.Buz.Sp. ∆Epethri;" ÔEtaireiva" Buzantinw'n Spoudw'n FM Fontes minores [part of Forschungen zur byzantinischen Rechtsgeschichte] GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten [drei] Jahrhunderte (1897– ) GNO HUkSt Harvard Ukrainian Studies IGLSyr Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, ed. L. Jalabert, R. Mouterde, and Cl. Mondésert, 7 vols. (Paris, 1929–70) IRAIK Izvestiia Russkogo arkheologicheskogo instituta v Konstantinopole JbAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum JDAI Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts JEChrSt Journal of Early Christian Studies JGS Journal of Glass Studies JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies JIAN Journal international d’archéologie numismatique JÖB Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, vol. 18– (Vienna, 1969– JRS Journal of Roman Studies Kupr.Sp.
)
Kupriakai; Spoudaiv
MAMA Monumenta Asiae Minoris antiqua Mansi J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 53 vols. in 58 pts. (Paris– Leipzig, 1901–27) MASP Mémoires de l’Académie impériale des sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, Sciences politiques, histoire et philosophie MélRome Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, Ecole française de Rome MM F. Miklosich and J. Müller, Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi—sacra et profana, 6 vols. (Vienna, 1860–90) MonAnt Monumenti antichi, Accademia nazionale dei Lincei NCirc The Numismatic Circular
ABBREVIATIONS
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OCP Orientalia christiana periodica ODB The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. A. Kazhdan et al., 3 vols. (New York–Oxford, 1991) OrChr Orientalia christiana PBSR Papers of the British School at Rome PG Patrologiae cursus completus, Series graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne, 161 vols. in 166 pts. (Paris, 1857–66) PL Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. in 222 pts. (Paris, 1844–80) PLP Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit, ed. E. Trapp et al. (Vienna, 1976–96) PPSb Pravoslavnii palestinskii sbornik (1881–1916) PPUAES Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904– 5 and 1909 PrOC Proche-Orient chrétien RACr Rivista di archeologia cristiana RBén Revue bénédictine RBK Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. K. Wessel (Stuttgart, 1963– ) RBN Revue belge de numismatique RE Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, new rev. ed. by G. Wissowa [and W. Kroll] (Stuttgart, 1894–1978) REArm Revue des études arméniennes REB Revue des études byzantines RendLinc Atti dell’Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Rendiconti, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche RendPontAcc Atti della Pontificia accademia romana di archeologia, Rendiconti RevBibl Revue biblique RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions RN Revue numismatique RQ Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und für Kirchengeschichte SBN Studi bizantini e neoellenici SC Sources chrétiennes ST Studi e testi StP Studia patristica (Papers of the International Conference on Patristic Studies) SubsHag Subsidia hagiographica Synaxarium CP Synaxarium ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae. Propylaeum ad Acta sanctorum Novembris, ed. H. Delehaye (Brussels, 1902) TIB Tabula imperii byzantini, ed. H. Hunger (Vienna, 1976– ) TM Travaux et mémoires TU Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig–Berlin, 1882– ) VestDrIst Vestnik drevnei istorii VetChr Vetera christianorum VizVrem Vizantiiskii vremennik Zepos, Jus Jus graecoromanum, ed. J. and P. Zepos, 8 vols. (Athens, 1931; repr. Aalen, 1962) ZMNP Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia ZRVI Zbornik radova Vizantoloskog instituta, Srpska akademija nauka
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STYLE GUIDE FOR THE DUMBARTON OAKS PAPERS anuscripts should be submitted in duplicate to the director of Byzantine Studies. Illustrations accompanying initial submissions should be photocopies, not originals. Changes made in an article once set into type are costly, and authors who request excessive changes will be charged for amounts above 10 percent of the initial cost of composition. They should, therefore, submit only clean and carefully revised copy, prepared according to the following style guide. A manuscript not prepared in this manner, even though accepted for publication, may be returned to its author for revision and retyping. Authors will normally receive only first (or galley) proofs for proofreading.
M
Manuscript preparation 1. All manuscripts must be typewritten, double-spaced, with pages numbered consecutively throughout the text and footnotes. Use good-quality paper, leaving wide margins of at least one inch on all sides. Leave extra space between paragraphs only if it is required in the printed article. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively and must be double-spaced on separate sheets of paper following the text of the article. Submit the original manuscript and one clear, clean copy; retain a copy for your own record. In some cases it may be feasible to use the computer disk copy of articles in the editing process. If you have a disk copy, please submit it with the final version of your article. 2. Foreign words and abbreviations that have become current in English should not be italicized. For example, ca., ibid., passim, idem, and s.v. should not be italicized or underlined. Do not italicize Greek. 3. Follow standard American usage for spelling. Consult Webster’s Third New International Dictionary or its abridgment, Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. Capitalization should be consistent throughout the text. For guidance in this, as well as on grammar and punctuation, use a standard reference work, preferably The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. (Chicago, 1993), or W. Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 3rd ed. (New York, 1979). Footnotes 1. Verify all references and quotations before submitting your manuscript. Include all required facts of publication. Incomplete contributions will be returned to the author for completion. 2. In writing footnotes the author should consider completeness, clarity, and brevity, in that order. For abbreviations of commonly cited journals, series, and reference works, use the Dumbarton Oaks List of Abbreviations, available on request. The first reference to a book or article must be complete. For subsequent references use the author’s last name and a shortened form of the title; ibid. should be used sparingly. 3. All titles should be cited in the original languages, not in translation. Slavic transliterations should follow the Dumbarton Oaks system (available on request). Citations of Greek should be clearly legible.
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STYLE GUIDE
4. Examples: Books 1
C. Diehl, Manuel d’art byzantin, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1926), 2:442-61.
2
E. Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire (Paris, 1949), 1:77 ff.
3
Diehl, Manuel, 193 ff, fig. 90.
4
Les gestes des Chiprois, ed. G. Raynaud (Geneva, 1887).
5
Eusebios, Vita Constantini, 1.3, PG 20:914-16.
6
Stein, Bas-Empire, 1:777.
Articles 1
G. Ostrogorsky, “Observations on the Aristocracy in Byzantium,” DOP 25 (1971): 1-32.
2
R. Guilland, “ Vénalité et favoritisme à Byzance,” REB 10 (1953): 35-39.
3
Ostrogorsky, “Aristocracy,” 12-14.
4
Guilland, “Vénalité,” 36.
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