Download PDF | Dreaming In Byzantium And Beyond, By Angelidē, Christina Calofonos, Routledge (2016)
256 Pages
Prologue
Whether ‘the royal road to the unconscious’ or not, dreams are a convenient — if still underexplored — path toa culture’s imagination. In recent decades dreaming has emerged as a novel field of research, attracting the attention of scholars from many disciplines, including ancient, medieval and Islamic studies, and thus providing the context for interdisciplinary approaches. Byzantine studies, however, have been underrepresented in this trend.' In spite of the fact that significant research has been carried out, mainly but not exclusively in the field of oneirocriticism, other aspects of Byzantine dreaming have been explored in a sporadic way.
The present volume of collected studies marks a major turning point in the treatment of the subject. It sprang out of a colloquium which brought together for the first time scholars working on dreams in Late Antiquity and Byzantium from a variety of disciplines ranging from history and philology to anthropology and psychoanalysis. Entitled “Dreams and Visions in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, the colloquium was organized by the Institute for Byzantine Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation (now the Department of Byzantine Research of the Institute of Historical Research - NHRF) and was held in Athens in May 2008.
The purpose of this volume is to explore essential areas of interrelated fields of research: terminology, imagery, dream theory and classification, dream interpretation, literary structure and the function of dream narratives. In fact, each of these themes deserves full treatment, which will only be possible once a critical mass of dream material available in Byzantine sources is compiled, evaluated and commented upon. Therefore, rather than attempting to provide an exhaustive study of the dreaming experience in Byzantium, this volume aims at opening up the discussion by presenting a series of focused contributions on key subjects connected to the themes mentioned above. At the same time, the contributions cover a wide range of primary sources, which include theoretical treatments of dreams, practical guides of dream interpretation and, of course, dream narratives.
Book chapters are organized thematically rather than chronologically. The volume opens with two studies on hagiographical dreaming, given that dreams were essential to the spiritual life of the saints and the faithful alike. Margaret Mullett undertakes a close reading of a middle Byzantine Saint's Life which features an impressive number of complex dream narratives; she contextualizes the latter, while offering a survey of the present state of research on Byzantine dreaming. Miracle collections, the main source for dream narratives, are explored by Stavroula Constantinou, who focuses on the structure and function of narratives particularly in the sub-genre of incubation miracle collections, which consist entirely of dreams.
Byzantium inherited from antiquity the ambiguous distinction between dreams, visions and ecstasy, which were often thought to belong to same mode of perception. In her detailed analysis of the intriguing terminology employed in early Christian literature to designate transcendental experiences, Bettina Kronung goes a long way towards clarifying an obscure picture.
The narratives of journeys to the Other World undoubtedly refer to visions. Carolina Cupane concentrates on the descriptions of the heavenly city, conveyed in such narratives as a surprisingly urban imaginary landscape. She discusses the topography and the impressive transformation of the motif’s function after its migration from hagiographical to secular literature.
Though dream narratives are not common in Byzantine epistolography, a few instances of such dream reports represent rare examples of self-referential narrative. Christine Angelidi’s commentary on a ninth-century ‘autobiographical’ letter shows that a personal dream of this kind bears strong affinities with the apocalyptic hagiographical visions of the time, except that it has been put to private use.
Dreams in Byzantine historiography have a pivotal function within the narrative framework, serving multiple purposes and strategies ranging from the personal, political and propagandistic, to the purely ideological. Ilias Anagnostakis embarks upon a close analysis of a notable dream report from Prokopios’ heavily layered historical narrative of the Wars wherein the political is intrinsically interwoven with the personal. George T. Calofonos’ contribution focuses on the narrative function of dreams in an emblematic text of the tenth century, the Continuation of Theophanes, and argues that the prolific use of dream narratives in this text attests to a revival of interest in prophetic dreaming after the Iconoclast period.
Paul Magdalino offers a different view of dreams in the Continuation of Theophanes, using dream narratives from this work to illustrate a typology of dreaming for middle and late Byzantine historiography. In his impressive survey of historiographical dreams in this period, he discerns originality in only a few ‘subversive’ dream reports. Discussing the same dream material but partly from different perspectives, the contributions of the latter two scholars engage in a potentially fruitful dialogue on the typology of historical dreaming.
The corpus of dreambooks, or oneirokritika, isa well-defined and well-studied group of sources, which exemplifies the Byzantine way of perceiving and interpreting symbolic dreams. Furnishing a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the oneirocritical literature, Steven Oberhelman addresses the question of their dependence on the oneirocritic tradition of antiquity, and discusses the dreambooks’ organization, internal logic and function. He points out in particular the extent to which dreambooks diverge from beliefs and practices of their times.
This question is also explored by Maria Mavroudi, who provides a cross-cultural analysis of dream symbolism and its theoretical background, examining the interaction between the Byzantine and Islamic traditions. Paying particular attention to the late Byzantine period, she focuses on the scholarly Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, who contributed to both dream theory and practice through his epistolographic treatise on dreams and the lengthy dreambook associated with him.
Both Oberhelman and Mavroudi draw extensively from oneirocritical material pertaining to, and enhancing our understanding of, the Byzantine notions of sexuality and gender. Sexuality and gender is the subject of Charis Messis, who looks at erotic dream narratives from a wide range of literary sources. In his twofold analysis Messis distinguishes between religious and secular discourse, both of which nevertheless share similar instructive purposes.
Further, he brings out the paramount function of erotic dream narratives in the construction of gender identities. Barbara Tedlock enriches the discussion of gender through her expertise in cultural anthropology and dream studies. She places early Christian material within a cross-cultural and diachronic context. Her analysis, deriving from anthropological field research and theory, is also informed by psychoanalytical concepts. Tedlock emphasizes ‘the self-fashioning work of dreaming’ and its impact on discourses of gendered identity and gender-bending.
Combining the knowledge of Byzantine literature and psychoanalytic expertise, Catia Galatariotou offers in the last chapter of this book an innovative approach tothe series of dream narratives included ina highly self-referential work by the rhetor and philosopher Michael Psellos. As Galatariotou points out from the outset, her study of Psellos’ dreams is a test case for psychoanalytical readings of dreams of the past. Moreover, her analysis reinforces the hypothesis of the emergence of individuality and self-expression in eleventh-century Byzantium.
The 13 chapters presented in this volume vividly demonstrate the interpretative possibilities of deciphering Byzantine dreams. We believe that they provide the elements of a coherent though fragmentary history of Byzantine dreaming. It is our hope that these alternative ways of analysing Byzantine dreams will motivate future initiatives that will make more accessible this important component of the Byzantines’ symbolic universe.
We warmly thank all our colleagues, who eagerly accepted our invitation to participate in the colloquium and prepared their chapters in view of the publication. We are also grateful to Anthony Kaldellis, John Davis, Nikos Livanos, Niki Tsironis and John Petropoulos for their help during various stages of the preparation of the volume.”
We would like to close on a note of remembrance of our friend and distinguished colleague, Titos Papamastorakis (1961-2010), who generously shared with us his enthusiasm, his creative insights and expertise in many of our endeavours.
Christine Angelidi and George T: Calofonos
Note on the Spelling of Names
Names of persons and places are given in the form adopted by The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. A. Kazhdan et al. (New York and Oxford, 1991). Thus we have used Prokopios and Kyros rather than Procopius and Cyrus, but John rather than Ioannes.
Dreaming in the Life of Cyril Phileotes
Margaret Mullett
There is a single image in twelfth-century art which represents the work of contributors to this volume.’ In it the mother of Basil I is shown sharing her dream with a woman dream-interpreter. In the same way we lay out our dream narratives, offer our interpretations and wait for the community to comment and lead us to wiser readings. Unlike the Byzantines telling their dreams to a single wise interpreter, or, like emperors on campaign, consulting a single dreambook,” we need reactions from the representatives of many disciplines: history, philology, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology. For dreams can be many things: a view into the future, a manifestation of the personal past, a means of approaching the divine, a mechanism for healing, a plot device, a medieval cinema, or an alternative plane of existence.
And it seems to me that all these possibilities are open for us: compared with classicists we have but exhausted the potential of dreaming.’ Byzantinists have contributed to dreamwork on a wider compass at various conferences and in various volumes,’ there have been a few theses,° a Belfast day school, important studies of the oneirokritika’ and of Achmet in particular, and of course the Athens project.? There is a real possibility at present of making plans for future research in the field. But whatever we may do, together or separately, in future, we now do what we do. So my own concern at this point is literary. This is not a bad place to be: after all Meg Alexiou’s brilliant analysis, uninformed as it was by ancient dream theory, of the levels of consciousness in Hysmine and Hysminias made space for MacAlister’s reading, which makes dream an event rather than a level of narrative, where Ingela Nilsson excels; Carolina Cupane’s distinctive voice is to be heard elsewhere in this volume." Rather than the novel where it started, or history, where I have recently made a small contribution," or even letters like Jerome’s, so revealing to Patricia Cox Miller,’? I want to look at how dreams function in an experimental twelfth-century Saint’s Life.
The mid-twelfth-century text is of a suburban portmanteau saint of the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries with ascetic credentials, a quite extraordinary family life and imperial clients.'? While we might imagine that visions might be uninteresting, as very much the stuff of hagiography, I have suggested in various places that it is experimental, in the sense that it is generically hybrid, integrating a progressive ascetic anthology with the narrative, and (harder to do) showing more general change in the genre as a result of Bakhtin’s novelisation.'* What I want to do in this chapter is look at the dreams at a level of story-telling, and decide whether they are experimental in terms of narrative, but also in terms of dreaming. I am prepared to include, as I think it is good practice, enypnia, oneiroi and phantasiai, both waking, hypnagogic and sleeping experiences, omar and hypar.”°
There are 15 cases of dreams or visions in the text. Some strike me as unexceptional and the kind of dream which establishes sanctity, others are more complex and harder for us to read. In two cases we see the reaction of the saint to the dreams of others, while another non-subjective dream advances the plot without highlighting issues of diakrisis, or oneirocriticism. Only one is recounted in any detail, and that is one of the darker and less comprehensible dreams. In the passages quoted below, technical terms for dream type and trigger vocabulary are shown in bold and senses and emotions are italicized.
At the beginning, stages in the portmanteau saint’s developmentare signalled by dreams. Chapters 6-9 show Cyril settling into a pattern of askésis in the family home after his wife’s decision in chapter 6 to do all the work of the farm so that he can live a quiet life as an ascetic and hesychast in a cell inside the house. Chapter 10 shows him acting on the way-of-life established with a story about his philadelphia in escorting a young woman to visit her mother. As a reward, or to point out his virtue, he receives a vision from the personification of Theocharia
who brings him happiness. We are told the following:
And that night, when he handed the young woman back to her mother, the saint saw in a dream-like vision a woman beautiful in aspect, wrapped in a stole as white as snow. Her mantle covered the whole earth. When he saw her, he said to her, ‘My Lady, who are you? And why have you come?’ And she said, ‘My name is Theocharia, and I have come to visit you. And with this word, see that she embraced him and covered him with her mantle. The inexpressible perfume which he smelt immediately made him come to himself and filled him with joy, happiness, and pleasure. For thus God knows how to give back glory to those who glorify him.'®
So we know he saw a divine personage because she is beautiful, dressed in white with an enormous mantle. He does not know who she is, but asks her and she identifies herself. He both hears and smells her, and we are told his reaction in terms of emotions.
Ina pair of chapters on evergesia and philoxenia, chapter 12 offers a vision. It marks the saint’s progression to be an Almsgiver, but also helps the plot, since a traveller thereby finds his way to Cyril’s door. He asks for the house of Kyriakos the Merciful, and Cyril (Kyriakos) replies that he is called Kyriakos, no-one else in the village is called Kyriakos, but he didn’t realize that he was also called the Merciful. The traveller replies: In this very bad weather I had lost attention and in my daydream found myself in a storm of logismoi. I strengthened myself by trust in God and I asked him
to close his eyes on my numerous faults and to show me a way of escape. While I was praying like this, a soldier on horseback, very beautiful, presented himself to me and said, ‘Don’t be distressed: God will take care of you. And showing me from far-off this place, he added, “When you arrive, seek out the house of father Kyriakos the Merciful and he will look after you. This is how he spoke with me. But I don’t know what happened to the man who was speaking with me. For the love of truth, it is for this reason that I ask you, my Lord.”
So he is praying, and the vision declares itself through its beauty, though we never identify the horseman, and, its purpose served, we move on. There is no doubt about these visions, nor is there in those where Cyril gains useful skills.
Once Cyril was established as an ascetic in the monastery, there is a group of these. Chapter 26 is about the uses of reading, and it begins with Cyril’s experience of learning the psalms by heart. He had only got halfway when he gave away the book to a poor man, and soon regretted it. He was mourning its loss when he managed to sleep and a man clothed in white appeared to him and said to him: ‘Father Cyril, why are you not chanting?’ And he replied, “My lord, God knows that I have chanted all the psalms and all the prayers that I know’. He said to him, “You haven’t chanted the psalter’ And the saint said to him, ‘I don’t have a psalter any more: I chanted what I knew’. And he said to him, ‘Get up and we'll sing together’. Which they did not once, but twice, then he disappeared.'8
It is simple: we never know the identity of the apparition, sight and sound alone are involved. The result is Cyril’s refound and increased competence.
Later, after the pivotal chapter 29 which marks the transition from Cyril’s development as an ascetic and his mature career, there are further examples of this kind. Chapter 34, the visit of Constantine Choirosphaktes, serves as a foil (as the visit of a good courtier) to the next chapter, the visit of Eumathios Philokales (a bad courtier). But the visionary experience is used to frame the story, and to add force to his argument that he should not be bankrolled by Constantine’s property. The story begins with a heavenly voice quoting Ps 61(62):11: ‘if riches accrue, set not your heart upon them’ Constantine then arrives and makes his offer, and then at the end of the saint’s tactful refusal comes his use of the quotation from the Psalms:
Have you not heard the word of Scripture, if riches accrue, set not your heart upon them? This pious man replied: ‘It is written: if riches INCREASE” The saint replied, “You quote the text as if you had learned it, I as if someone taught it to me” Then the saint spoke of the divine voice which he had kept in his ears, when he saw no-one, and added: “He who is not in need and takes something, draws a double dishonour. He takes without being in need and in giving good to another he falls into vainglory ..?1?
So the vision enables him to out-argue the aristocrat, on account of a voice heard (whose we never know) when he was reclining on his rush mat. It may not always be a new skill that is demonstrated. In chapter 33, Cyril shows his communication with the world of the divine by interpreting correctly certain signs of a recent death in the monastery.
One day, when the saint was praying, e smelled a pleasant scent, as if it came from a great deal of incense. He collected himself and asked what this could mean, when he heard the singing of several sweet and melodious voices.”
He strikes the sémantron, a mathétés comes and the monastery springs into action on the assumption that the brother has died. And in chapter 36, the gift of prophecy claimed for him elsewhere rather tenuously is demonstrated through a dream. It is a wonderful dream, narrated in the first person and in present tense, in response to Nicholas’ (the biographer’s) idle question about the news from the Norman War. The context is the saint’s prayers for the emperor as he knelt on his rush mat:
After I finished my nightly doxology, having the custom of remembering the emperors in my prayer, I the unworthy, I began to offer a supplication to God with tears and pain of my soul for him. And who is it who does not pray for such a man? And so saying the trisagion and completing my psalm, The emperor shall joy in thy strength, O Lord, sitting on my rush mat, continuing, as is natural, to preoccupy myself with him. I fell asleep for a little and I saw that I was travelling into a place which was level and all lit up. And looking around me, J see on my right hand an imperial tent with the shape of a church, and a crowd of soldiers around it, and inside the emperor sitting on a high and imperial throne. Looking around, on the left hand side J see a terrible sea with many little boats on it being smashed and cast up against the shore. And there was there lying down a huge dog, black, having blood-red eyes, looking towards the emperor. There was some dignitary holding him tied up with a chain. Then J saw after a little the same brilliant soldier dragging the dog with force and going up, throwing him at the feet of our most blessed emperor. And as it seems to me so will he subject him.
And with God’s help this is what happened. But this is how it was.”!
Light and colour flood this simple but detailed account. For once the word prophecy is not used; the vividness and the accuracy make the case for him. As well as progress in the ascetic life, dreams often mark crucial transitions in Cyril’s life and the structure of the work. One such is the story of how he escaped from the Pechenegs, built a little hut in the marshes and then went to his brother’s monastery and had himself tonsured with the name of Cyril. Then he proceeded to build himself a retreat:
The place where the saint wanted to construct his cell, as he himself told me, was covered with thistles. And he saw in the middle of the thistles a column standing, and having seen this several times he asked the brothers, “What is that column set up in the middle of the prickles? But they, not seeing anything, were in amazement. Having asked them the question twice or thrice, but without learning any more, the saint realized that it was a miraculous sign. He enthusiastically constructed a little cell and entering it he gave the customary prayers to God and said, “This is the place of my rest for the ages of ages; here will I live for I have chosen it???
The supernatural nature of this column is established because other monks could not see it. A more important turning point for the narrative, though not for Cyril’s career, is in chapter 29, a long account of how during another Pecheneg onslaught Cyril stayed in a monastery on the Propontis and suffered from the phthonos of the proestos. He prevails through humility, then dreams:
That night it seemed to the saint that he was on a very high tower. Below was a space which stretched out on all sides. There he saw a very large serpent which loomed up, Aissing and coming towards him with its great mouth open. ‘The saint estimated that the chasm of its mouth would hold thirty or more men. The serpent launched itself to approach the saint. He, not knowing what to do, turned this way and that and saw a reed lying at his feet. He took it, hit the serpent with it once; it died and fell, splitting into two. From it came a smell so fetid that the saint was unable to bear it and came to himself. He said to me: “The reed is humility, although I am far from humble, and the serpent is the demon of pride. IfI had spoken back to the proestos who was rebuking me, I would have been devoured. But because I fell at his feet, bore his reproaches and criticized myself, the commandment of Christ delivered me from the mouth of the monster.”
The transition is marked by this dream which explains after the event rather than instructing in advance. We hear the explanation through the biographer Nicholas, long after the event, but the dreaming itself was after reconciliation and justification, followed in the text by Cyril’s reflections on the importance of humility. He then makes the final breach with the world: After being tonsured the saint did not want to see again his closest relations or to converse with them. For desire for God has extinguished desire for relatives.”4
It is the debate over monastic leadership which is underlined in the dream and sets him free to live the ascetic life. The dream is not signalled as such, simply that night he appears to be standing ... and it goes on. Vivid description does not require sophisticated categorization. Similarly straightforward are the dreams after his death. The first is a vision of his ascension, which I have always thought resembles that of Neophytos the Enkleistos.** He merits a full first-person dream narrative:
There was an old woman, pious and Godfearing, whose confidence in the saint was great. She said with conviction to some of them who suffered from incredulity: ‘Tam unworthy of heaven and earth, but I have seen in a vision and not in a dream (hypar not onar), two men wearing brilliant garments; J could not see their face; they were holding father Cyril to right and left and chanting this psalm: Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered, let them also that hate him flee before. The sweetness of their voices was unspeakable. When they arrived at the height of the sun, Behold you saw the heavens open, and the holy man, together with those with him, were covered with an ineffable light. When they arrived at the height to the heaven, as I was looking at them again, here, I saw the heavens open, and the saint, with those who accompanied him, was covered with an unbearable light. His vestment was white like the snow. I, the miserable one, not being able to support this light, J was troubled and went back to myself . Though she makes a claim which she thinks will advance her cause, internal elements do it for her. Sound, light, sweet music, white garments, all the signs are there. The white garments are usually worn by angels, and here they convey Cyril to heaven. The old woman’s narrative went on to include stories of Klapas’ healing, and to conclude:
But why speak of Klapas? The saint was delivered from his own maladies and afflictions many other afflictions, and those of many other people. And he did it in a grander manner when he had left the earth and when his head was discovered, he contemplated the glory of the Lord. These were the words pronounced by this worthy old woman.”
This led to Nicholas’ discovery of the head 11 years later, and to another vision, as seen by the widow Phokas:
Suffering terribly, she saw once in her sleep a very august woman who said to her, ‘It is in vain that you are tiring yourself and consult doctors; you cannot be healed any way other than by the head of the venerated gerén, of father Cyril. Having seen this and heard it two or three times, she talked about it in her neighbourhood.”*
But she didn’t know what to do because the head had not yet been found. When it was, she took action and recovered her sight. All these dream experiences underline the worthiness and the spiritual progression of the saint, especially at key points in the narrative. But these are only two-thirds of the narratives in the Life.
Some dreams are exceptions in that they have a more trivial function in the narrative. One such is chapter 25 which tells of a false step taken by Cyril. The Life is very clear in that economic activity beyond survival is not to be countenanced, and we hear that Cyril makes cowls to ward off accidie, the professional vice of ascetics, rather than to make money. Here he is persuaded into sending them to market, but clearly has second thoughts:
He once gave eleven cowls he had made with his own hands to a Christ loving man who went to Anchialos to sell them for wheat, remembering that neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought but these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. But when he went, the man forgot to take them. And returning with sadness he went off to the saint, asking forgiveness and relating his false step. The saint said to him, “Your doings are not the cause of
what happened, but Christ. For J saw in a dream a man, beautiful and fearsome in appearance, saying to me, “Abba Cyril, why did you give the cowls to that man and not to me? For if you had given them to me I would have taken them there, no problem”. And I said to him, “And who are you, my lord?” And he said, “Tam called Elpidios”. And I again said, “I hope in God that if these things are not thought unworthy, I shall give them to you and to no other”. For I realized, brother, that God is the hope and nurturer of all. So it was not you, but my Lord who was the cause of you bringing these things back.”
The dream here serves to smooth over the embarrassment both of the man who forgot the cowls and of the saint who has decided not to sell them. And chapter 27: here Cyril’s son wants to join the monastery but is unsure: he has to choose between his mother and sister on the one hand and his father on the other. Cyril then dreams, and it persuades him how to proceed with his son: That night, the saint saw in a dream a figure clothed in white and bright to the eyes asked him for the sacrament, and as he had some in his hand he gave it to him. When he woke and understood the sense of the dream, he wished to test the boy through his family affection not once but twice and thrice ...*°
Cyril knows how to interpret this dream, as he did with the dragon in the dream of humility, and it is clear that dream interpretation was something that spiritual fathers did along with hearing /ogismoi. In chapter 31 a monk comes to him and tells him of a disturbing dream:
Having repeated this prayer for the third time, I sat, tired, but my spirit was full of the thought of God in a calm and profound peace. Then, whether I had been seized by sleep or not I don’t know exactly, a delicate, snowy to see, hand appeared and gave me a blow on my right cheek which was neither violent nor light. And that hand was so perfumed that for a whole week my face gave off a pleasant scent. At the same time as it gave me the blow, I saw the hand extending from the wrist. For a whole week I was not hungry for bodily food. And so, Abba, these things which happened to me, how am I to think of them, from God or from the devil? For my mind is torn about them.*!
The monk poses a key question for monastic dreaming. Where do dreams come from?** This is what diakrisis is for, and that is what monastic heroes have cultivated.*? We might have been influenced by the fact that the monk is addressing his guardian angel when the hand appears and hits him. But Cyril hears the story, makes an analogy and decides that the sweet smell, the whiteness of the hand and above all the fact that the monk was not hungry for a week is testimony to the divine nature of the dream. All is well.
But all is not well in our last two dreams. One is narratologically complex, the other an extraordinary account. The first comes at the height of Cyril's career, the other as the first signs of old age.
Nicholas Tells a Story which Includes a Dream Narrative
We have just had an account of Cyril’s way of life, and we are soon to see him fasting and resisting demonic attack before hosting his most important series of imperial visitors: Alexios twice, the protostrator Michael (in preparation) and George Palaiologos (in support).** Nicholas’ story in chapter 42 shows the developing relationship of biographer and subject.*> Nicholas’ questions ease along the florilegium throughout, so as to give us the impression that he is a fly on the wall at the most intimate discussions of Cyril and his wife: he is very much the author in the text. He is with Cyril when they meet the greedy monk or overhear an argument between proestos and monks, and it is his question about the Norman War which sparks the Bohemond prophecy.** We see him develop in three stories which bear on him rather than Cyril, of which this is one (the others are his gastric illness cured by the spring, and his decision to move monastery),*” and at the end we see Cyril’s physical decline through his eyes, coming to find him in a dreadful state, struggling with the mathétés to look after him properly.**
Chapter 42 is long and involved. It is not about dreaming, it is about tears.” It begins with an apparently naive question from Nicholas (‘can you weep whenever you want?) which Cyril responds to with four sections of florilegium about tears. Nicholas then prompts him to talk about the tears that come from demonic attack. Cyril isn’t really interested but talks briefly about the dangers of vainglory. Then we understand. Nicholas has a story to tell and is determined to tell it. He doesn’t know about servile tears or filial tears — but he does know something about tears which come from the Devil. Cyril tells him to go ahead. Nicholas’ story (42.8-13) is long and involved, and it hinges ona monk he, Nicholas, as monastic superior (he is himself called osios, often used of monastic founders), took in. Two sections (8 and 13) concern him, telling the rise and fall of his monastic career, from army veteran playing the fool and living on cabbage parings to disgraced hesychast, running round town naked, ‘eating and doing what is not appropriate’ playing the holy fool.” Three sections in the middle tell of his spiritual father at Androsthenion, of excellent Black Mountain pedigree, his pre-eminence in penthos and his conversations with Nicholas. His sickness is described, the doctors are clueless and Nicholas diagnoses it as a result of extraordinary weeping:
You wept to the words of compunction of your book and you didn’t hold back; you gave yourself to weeping without measure because of your love for God, and you emptied through your eyes al the water of your body. You are dehydrated and you can neither eat nor drink; the proof of my words is that you taste water without cease but because of your weakness you cannot drink. Nature is trying to replace what is missing.
Nicholas takes away his copy of the katanyktic canon, but restores it when the geron is on the verge of death, and the gerén (Auxentios we are now told he is called) sends him his mathétés, the cabbage-eating veteran. It becomes clear that he has aspirations to emulate his gern, and Nicholas is suspicious. He sets another monk to watch him but is already convinced of some demonic involvement. When challenged the monk showed arrogance and Nicholas took the opportunity to expel him from his monastery. He then goes to a monastery in the city and becomes a hesychast. And immediately he comes unstuck. He sees, aisthetos,
the demons as deacons of the Great Church having with them some imperial person (basilikon) and saying to him that “The emperor, having taken the counsel of the synod, has decided to elect you patriarch because of your virtue, to bring you from mourning to consolation. Blessed, says the Gospel, are them that mourn for they shall be comforted. Hearing this, he declared himself unworthy of such an honour. But the alleged deacons insisted: “God has taken in affection your work and tears and has even led the emperor to think of you.”
He is fooled, and falls: When they had left him, the future patriarch set out immediately under the pretext of hiding himself in humility. Going off to some people he knew, he went in and said, ‘Close the doors, the doors. And they said, “What is this?? And compelled by them he said, ‘I am going now to be patriarch. Amazed, they stared at him and didn’t know what to say or to think ...
So he throws off his clothes and reverts to his life as a fool. Note that Nicholas was in no doubt of the origin of the vision, and note the emphasis on the senses, aisthetos. Cyril picks up the story and comments: One of the wise men seeing a rich fool eating olives and drinking water said to him, if you have dined with your senses, you will not sup without your senses. In the same way, the brother wouldn’t have become a fool with his senses if he hadn’t played the fool with all his senses.“
He dilates on the dangers of pride, but there is more at stake than this, there are the dangers of heresy. Messalianism lurks round the corner where a monk believes that through prayer he can see visions with his senses.
The Devil’s Liturgy and the Beginning of the End for Cyril
This story has added resonance when we come to a parallel in Cyril’s own life, the famous story of the visit of John Komnenos in chapter 53. “Buy the book and read it!’ said Festugiére in his review.” It is another long story, set clearly at the onset of Cyril’s old age. Cyril is used to receiving John but on one occasion his visit is different. The devil shows Cyril, through the means of his senses:
near his cell, an erected marquee. Inside it was a couch, strewn and covered with red rugs, where the sebastos was sitting, surrounded by a crowd. Seeing him opposite him, the saint was amazed. He blamed at once the sebastos for behaving like this against custom, and his brothers for not preventing him.”
They go through the usual exchanges but Cyril is worried. He asks if he can set up a liturgy in Cyril’s cell and Cyril gives him carte blanche. Kata phantasian he sees on the interior of his cell, an altar, the prothesis, patens, chalices and veils for the holy vessels. Then false priests entered with their co-celebrants, made the preparations and began their loathsome liturgy. The saint then saw, with the eyes of his body, that in the twinkling of an eye the roof of his cell had been taken off with a rush and it became spacious enough to hold the accursed sebastos and his retinue.“
Cyril cannot hear much and finds himself incapable of taking communion. The next five sections show Cyril’s recovery from the event. We knew from the beginning that it was a phantasia of the Devil: Cyril thought it was real. In section 4” Cyril has a dialogue with his sathétés and learns that not everyone can see the false sebastos and his marquee (picking up the vision of the column as he took his final step to become a monk); in section 5® he has a conversation with a specialist monk about the implications; in 6°! he reflects and assimilates; in 7” Nicholas talks to him, appropriating the florilegium (Nicholas comes of age as a geron); and in 8 Cyril recovers from the experience and recovers the florilegium. But this is temporary: he again sees the sebastos, tries to hit him and hits the wall instead. The vision demonstrates to us, in contrast to the vision of the column,™ and in contrast to the tented vision of Bohemond,* how his powers are failing. The story of the deterioration of Cyril had perhaps begun in chapter 43 when Nicholas finds him physically devastated by demonic attack.** But then he knew it was demonic. His last illness is treated in graphically realistic terms: he wanders off into the night to relieve himself and falls and has to be rescued the next morning; he gets bedsores, he can’t manage to fast, he is incontinent. Nicholas is present at his death:
When I approached him I smelled an unbearable smell: having seen him, I filled a jug of warm water, and having stripped him, I poured it over him. And it was a terrible sight to be seen. The tender parts of his buttocks and thighs were completely stinking and full of worms from being bedridden and the urine. He lay in the warm water, moving only his holy hands and moving lightly. I renewed the water two or three times and changed his clothes and the bedding; then he lived a few more days without eating. Then he put his blessed soul in the hands of God.”
And that is it. No foreknowledge of death, no melodious sounds, no waft of incense. It is a very unhagiographic death, prepared for by unhagiographic dreaming, by a fantasy rather than an onar.** But it is the death of a geron who at the height of his powers handled dream as a plane of reality as real and familiar as the monastery around him.
Conclusion
So, let us take stock. From a narrative point of view:
Dreams provide the only colour (literally) in the text, and also a strong sensual charge: smells and blows, lights and sweet sounds. They have emotional force, creating happiness or relief. They progress the plot. They point up structural shifts in the narrative and key moments in the career of both Cyril and Nicholas. They draw morals, reward the achiever, demonstrate decline.
From a dreaming point of view:
1. They are a varied group of narratives. Four are identified as hypar, one of which is ‘hypar not onar’. In three more the dreamer is clearly awake, and in a fourth we are not told that the dreamer is asleep, merely reclining on his mat. In no case is any described as onar or oneiros, but in one the dreamer appears to sleep, in another he sleeps a little and sees, in another hora pote kath’ hypnous, in a fourth we are only told that it is at night. In one other the narrator doesn’t know whether he was awake or asleep. One is confidently described as a phantasia and another is clearly so by analogy. Are these categories significant?
Well, there is no exypnion, no insignificant, non-impactful dream, but in hagiography it could be argued that that would be a waste of space. It is not clear that Aypar is more highly rated than omar despite the certainty of the pious old woman. Cyril's most confident prophetic dream (full of significance for the empire) is after he has slept a little, maybe in the hypnogogic state.” Trigger vocabulary is there in force, as well as support vocabulary since only one-third of the cases are given a dreaming identifier. So figures appear, dreamers see, saints seem, dragons loom. The receiver is allowed to decide that dreaming is happening, which is not difficult with all the shining faces and white clothing populating the narrative. The exceptions are the two devil-generated phantasiai, where it is clear from the beginning that the monk saw demons as deacons of the Great Church and the devil showed Cyril the tent.”
2. Scene-setting is elaborate, for the dream narratives are encased within the delicate relationship of narrative and florilegium. We watch Cyril hear the singing, smell the perfume and make his deductions; we watch him listen to the monk who was hit by the white hand; we watch Nicholas the hagiographer elicit the vision of Bohemond by an idle query about the news of the day. The condition of consciousness we have seen is also quite varied: in nine cases awake, in three unsure (one himself unsure), in three asleep, suggesting a long continuum. In some there is a context of dream (the waves of logismoi experienced by the traveller) or sleep (Cyril’s bedtime practices). Time and place are usually recorded.
3. Incontrast some of the dreams themselves read as somewhat perfunctory, and the dream figures are not developed or even identified. We know of Theocharia, Elpidios (named for the wordplay with e/pis?) Bohemond and the sebastos John, but the soldier saint who directed the traveller, the most august lady, the angels of the ascension and the psalm-singing and sacrament-requesting white figures do not reveal themselves. Margaret Kenny suggests that Byzantine dream in hagiography has better developed dream figures than dreamers,' but I suspect that is most likely to be true of miracle-collections. Tangible they can be though, witness the giant hand. The rule that angels and Christ appear only to saints, and saints and prophets to ordinary people is broken by the ascension of Cyril. Perhaps this is why the pious old woman was so proud.
4, The impression of variety is sustained in that only the early dreams and the last ones are the kind of audiovisual standard fare suggested by Hanson. Two are purely visual, one sound and smell, one touch, one singalong and visual, and the serpent episode involves sight, sound, smell and touch. Four are told in the first person, but they do not seem to be particularly favoured or significant dreams; though the Bohemond vision gains from its first-person narration, and the proud status-seeking account of the pious old woman has some charm, the Elpidios appearance is inconsequential in the extreme.
5. Genre intervenes in that all but one can be seen as demonstrating the sanctity of the saint, and in that the dreamer, where that is the saint, is more central than the dream figure. The first reception of the narratives is obscured by the genre, since most are third-person accounts, and we cannot hear them told to Nicholas. Only in the Choirosphaktes story does Cyril refer back to a supernatural experience, using it to score over the courtier and clinch his argument about economic support.
Two things are notable about these narratives and show signs of the experiment we are looking for. One is they are not entirely free-standing. Bohemond’s tent and John Komnenos’ tent, the realization that no-one else can see column or liturgy, and the elaborate and laughable rise and fall of the Messalian monk preparing us for the shock of Cyril’s own deterioration show a crafting of the dream record.
Secondly, dreams and diakrisis are at the heart of the Life, knitted into the plot. And, though these are the kinds of dreaming that do not need oneirocriticism, or open themselves to symbolic interpretation or appear in dreambooks, the dream interpreter is just as important in this text as the dreamer. We watch Cyril hearing the dream narratives as he must have heard logismoi, and we hear him draw together the threads of Nicholas’ rambling story within a story. The gerén Auxentios was in physical danger from penthos and his disciple is in worse, spiritual, danger. Cyril saw the dangers of heresy underlying the katanyktic practice and the folly of expecting aisthetén phantasian through prayer. Ultimately we see Cyril in the hands of another expert in d1dKptotc. Both visions and tears come from different sources and it is vital to know the difference. The matter-of-factness of much of Cyril’s dreamworld where you hear angelic voices, soldier saints direct travellers to your door and you are bailed out when you give away your psalter is matched by the emphasis on diakrisis. Monastic dream interpretation, the poor cousin of the great courtly interpreters and their skilled sisters, comes to the fore in this text. As ever in this text, the point is the judgement and discretion available to the empire if it only took holy men seriously. This is what dreaming is about in this Life.
The great revival of interest in dreams both in the second sophistic and Byzantium came from the oneirokritika and in particular the larger prose dreambooks. The discovery that dreaming can tell you about a society in the present of the narrative (rather than the future as dreamers hoped, or the past as Freud originally said) was what got scholars so excited about Artemidoros and then Achmet. I suspect that oneirocritical dream systems are one way in which the Byzantines represented an overview of their own world, the others being visions of the underworld and panoramas of the desert.
But without the systematic corpus of dream narratives to match Steven Oberhelman’s corpus of oneirokritika, or indeed the body of surviving oneirological works, we are not going to be able to make secure comments on society from texts like the Life of Cyril. Even if ‘authentic dream experience is rarely recorded in Byzantine literature’ — but how do we know? — we need to collect, compare and critique. I end with a problem for which in the absence of such a corpus I have no answer, though I have a guess. In phantasia, what are the implications for the reputations of figures impersonated by demons?
I have suggested that given the connection between demonology and Kaiserkritik” there may be a whiff of cordite about the figure of John Komnenos the sebastos in Cyril’s demonic mass. But then, where, given the excoriatingly negative press given to the cabbage-eating veteran, does that leave the deacons of the Great Church? Do we see here professional jealousy between the didaskaloi and the intellectual metropolitan monasticism represented by Nicholas, and was their representation as demons a pleasurable jibe? Until we have the corpus, or I should say, until we make the corpus, we are not going to know, maybe not even then.
Dreams are among the most complex of all human communications.
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