Download PDF | Images Of The Mother Of God Perceptions Of The Theotokos In Byzantium, Routledge ( 2017).
440 Pages
Foreword
Angelos Delivorrias
Although the Millennium celebrations passed untroubled by the shadows of the ominous events to come – these emerged only later – the year 2000 was to set a decisive mark on the dark landscape of the new era. Yet we should not forget that this was also the year in which Greece experienced two events of deep spiritual significance, two safeguards of its pre-postmodern humanitarian values: the inauguration of the renovated Benaki Museum and the superb ‘Mother of God’ exhibition. While the remodelling of the Museum’s Greek collections aimed at a dynamic presentation of the cultural parameters of the past, emphasizing the vital role of historical memory in enabling us to ‘know ourselves’ today, the ‘Mother of God’ exhibition ventured to broadcast a message of consolation, a message which I would call universal in its scope.
For the sanctity of motherhood, the supreme symbolic expression of human feeling, far transcends the time and space of Byzantium and the specific landmarks of Christian iconography to touch such chords of sensitivity as may still vibrate in the globalized conditions of today’s world. To the receptive, or rather the informed visitor, the international character of the exhibition must have been evident from the selection of material on display, which contained a wealth of objects representing countries from all over the world. This international aspect was also to the fore in the associated ‘Mother of God’ conference, in whose papers the sensitive reader may look beyond the immediate justification of specialized scholarship and perceive the ecumenical dimension of a subject which transcends specific issues and activates intellectual processes of a different order. If the publication of the exhibition catalogue by Skira Editori fulfilled the hopes of the organizers for the diffusion of its message beyond the frontiers of Greece, the involvement of Ashgate Publishing Ltd in this edition of the conference proceedings is a vindication of the spirit which animated the entire enterprise at its deepest level.
On behalf of the Trustees of the Benaki Museum I would like to express thanks to Maria Vassilaki for supervising the preparation of this volume with the dedication and sense of responsibility that she brings to every task she undertakes; also to Yannis Varalis for editorial assistance and for compiling the index, to Panorea Benatou for secretarial support and the handling of the photographic material, to Maria Kretsi for word-processing and to John Avgherinos for translating the articles written in Greek. Averil Cameron deserves a special mention for her willingness to take on the writing of the introduction, as does Evangelos Chrysos for hosting the conference at the Hellenic National Research Foundation in accordance with the wishes of the late Nicolas Oikonomides. Gratitude is naturally due to all those who attended the conference, the speakers who played an active role in its proceedings, and especially the authors of the papers included in the present volume. But most of all I would like to thank Ashgate for this fruitful collaboration with the Benaki Museum, and specifically John Smedley, who ungrudgingly shouldered the burden of the editorial process, and contributed immeasurably to the quality of the final product.
Preface
Evangelos Chrysos When an institution such as the Benaki Museum – whose position at the forefront of Greek cultural life has recently been recognized with the award of a prize from the Academy of Athens – collaborates with the Hellenic National Research Foundation, something remarkable may be expected. And ‘remarkable’ is the word I would use to describe the ‘Mother of God’ conference – an academic forum which took place against the background of the magnificent exhibition with the same title. It reflects the high aesthetic and academic sensibilities and the scholarly acumen of the organizers who arranged the programme, complemented by the intellectual distinction of the scholars from far and near who accepted the invitation to take part in the colloquium and place on record the distillation of their research.
This tribute to the organizers of the conference represents the public acknowledgement of a debt which can be expressed freely and unstintingly by the present writer, who did not have the good fortune to make any personal contribution to the preparations; for when I succeeded the late Nicolas Oikonomides as Director of the Institute for Byzantine Research the basic concept, the choice of topics and of speakers, the sponsorship and the organizational details were virtually complete. For this reason the dedication of the conference was never in doubt. The untimely death of this great scholar, eminent Byzantinist and indefatigable administrator made it unthinkable that the conference, and now this volume, should be dedicated otherwise than to the memory of Nicolas Oikonomides. Many important conclusions were reached during the conference on particular aspects of Byzantine art history relating to the portrayal of the Virgin Mother and to her glorification through hymnography. The present volume, together with the superb catalogue of the exhibition, provides an authoritative record of the current state of scholarship on all these issues. There are, however, two further topics that I suggest would merit further research, in the wider context of studies dedicated to the Mother of God.
The first of these concerns the clues that may be extracted from representations of the Theotokos as to the perception which Byzantine society held or cultivated regarding the archetypal Woman, Mother, Life-companion and Intercessor. How did they visualize the external form of the ideal woman, what aesthetic predilections are projected by the images of the Mother of God in her various identities as ‘Brephokratousa’, ‘Galaktotrophousa’, ‘Glykophilousa’, ‘Virgin Kykkotissa’, ‘Virgin of the Passion’, ‘Hodegetria’, ‘Deomene’, ‘Platytera’ and ‘Regina’? Bishop Theodotos of Ankyra, who played an active role in the Third Ecumenical Council, where the Mother of God was pronounced to be ‘truly the Theotokos’, described the appearance and the attributes of the Virgin in terms which are clearly indicative of the general sensibilities, moral and aesthetic, of the Byzantines towards the archetypal Woman and Mother, and which indirectly suggest how Mary should be depicted.
In the translation of Dr Niki Tsironis a typical passage on the subject reads as follows: The Virgin, not casting her eyes to any inappropriate view, not dishonouring her natural beauty by covering colours, not sheathing her cheeks with the fake colour of the Phoenicians, not making conspicuous her honourable head by adding vain ornaments, not making her neck glitter by adding jewellery made of precious stones, not allowing her hands and her feet to be spoiled by golden chains … but full of the smell of the Holy Spirit, being dressed by the Holy Grace as with a garment, keeping the thought of God in her soul, having God as a wreath over her heart, her eyes shining of holiness … her lips dripping wax, beautiful in her way of walking, even more beautiful in her manners and so to speak, all good (µëç êáëÞ). It may be that further study will confirm the proposition that all the manifestations of the central and symbolic figure of the Virgin Mary in Byzantine art are indirect but incontestable evidence of Byzantine criteria of morality and taste regarding the ideal woman. Secondly, and in the same context, it would be useful to have a comparative study of the depiction of the Theotokos in eastern and western art. The basic guidelines of her portrayal developed in parallel in East and West and scholarship has drawn attention to instances of mutual influence and interdependence.
A well-known and appropriate example is the role of the Byzantine princess Theophano, when empress of the Frankish-Saxon Empire, in the introduction and diffusion of the cult and iconography of the Virgin as bona angelorum imperatrix augusta. In the words of Krijnie Ciggaar, Theophano was raised in a religious ambience where the Virgin was venerated daily. By bringing images of the Virgin to the West and by venerating these she contributed to the popularity of the Virgin Mary in the West. Images were important in the Middle Ages because they carried a message and so the Virgin became a carrier of culture, of Byzantine culture, to the West.
It is a truism that in the West the cult of the Virgin acquired a distinctive form, fundamentally dissociated from honorific veneration, and culminated in the divinization of Mary with the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and of her corporeal Assumption into heaven. As Konstantinos Kalokyris remarks: The East accepted and rehabilitated the female persona to the extent of human equality with Christ, and honoured the woman primarily in the fulfilment of her role as mother, while the West went to the limits of sensuality in a manner unknown and unacceptable to Orthodoxy, celebrating her in forms of erotic adoration: for monastic orders it is the Virgin Mary, not the Mother of God, who becomes the symbol of sacred love for the archetypal female.
This is why certain women – often the artist’s inamorata, as in the case of Lippi, Raphael, Rubens and Titian – with blatant sensual attractions, lent their charms to serve as a model for depictions of the chaste Virgin. Here we have an example of a situation that the scholar often chances on, and which is indeed one of the delights of scholarship: for while the subject of the ‘Mother of God’ illuminates the world of Byzantine faith and ideas, the aesthetics and the self-knowledge of the society that created the works of art and used them in their day-to-day devotions, it also reflects our present-day aesthetic, academic and intellectual interests and inclinations. And thus it serves as a mirror to assist us in our own self-understanding.
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