Download PDF | (BAR British Archaeological Reports International Series 1669) Elisabeth Piltz - From Constantine the Great to Kandinsky_ Studies in Byzantine and post-Byzantine art and architecture-British Archaeolo, 2007.
86 Pages
THE RAISON D’ETRE OF RESEARCH ON BYZANTIUM
The abstract image in Late Antiquity and Byzantium — the New Rome — the Renaissances When can we speak about research, in the proper sense of the word, concerning Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, whose existence depended on the decision of Constantine the Great to move the centre of the Roman Empire away from its ancient central point in Italy — translatio imperii — to the seat of Byzantion, an ancient Greek colony founded by emigrants from Megara about 650 BC? What really provoked this decision, which was carried through with much zeal and consequence, and which contributed to the preservation of the Byzantine culture for more than a thousand years, is not known.
The new city, named Constantine’s city, Konstantinoupolis, and New Rome, was adorned with lots of ancient statues that had been brought from Rome and important provincial towns. It was situated close to the Hellespont, the passage to Asia, at a strategic strait not far from Nicomedia, the residence of the East Roman Emperor. The senators were moved there and the state apparatus was established as in Imperial Rome, but developed in the direction of a strictly hierarchic and bureaucratic society with a strong administrative and military division in dioceses and with a well-developed system of taxes, that later on was replaced by the military division into themata.
Perhaps Constantine the Great had great intuition and envisioned what was going to happen with the Western Roman Empire. Already by the end of the 3rd century the essential part of the Empire had been transferred to the east, when the frontiers at the Euphrates and the Donau were attacked by Persians, Goths and Bactrians and in the west the Germans advanced over the /imes and Rhine. In any case the Roman and the Greek traditions that here were cultivated side by side became fused with Oriental impulses from Persia, Syria, Armenia, Egypt, Palestine and Anatolia.
The Empire lasted until 1453, but had been reduced to a minor state during the period 1204-1261, the so-called Latin interregnum, when Frankish emperors had taken possession of Constantinople. During this time in particular the capital was sacked of its treasures and many of these valuable goods were shipped to Venice and Genoa.
When the Empire had finally fallen to the Turks it did not last long, until scholars in the west started to deal with the Greek collections of manuscripts, coins and artefacts. The first attempt at Byzantine research was carried out in Venice in the 16th century. In the 17th century the first text editions started to be printed in France called Byzantines du Louvre. At the same time the erudite Charles du Fresne sire
du Cange published his two Glossaria of medieval Latin and medieval Greek and thereby the fundament was laid for research that today is carried out in all parts of the world.
What is then the raison d’étre of the research on Byzantium? The past lived on in Byzantium, and Western Europe came into direct contact with this Empire during the Crusades, while the Scandinavian and English Varangians were involved in commerce with Byzantium and served as bodyguards and mercenaries in the Imperial army. The Byzantine Empire is a Christian version of antiquity and its culture spread over vast peripheral areas, to Syria, Egypt, the Balkans, Italy, Sicily, Russia, Georgia and Armenia. If we limit ourselves to art history, the Byzantine legacy lies hidden in Romanesque and Gothic art and influenced Scandinavian baptismal fonts and glass windows, particularly on Gotland. There are different varieties of Byzantine crosses on the Runic stones and early tombs in Scandinavia and it is now acceptable to speak of a Byzantine mission in Scandinavia during the first half of the 11th century. It is not an exotic and foreign culture, but as a matter of fact a part of our own European past.
Byzantium can be approached in many different ways, for instance by reading the Old Norse Sagas and their descriptions of Miklagardr, the imposing great city of Constantinople, called by the patriarch Photios the Queen of Cities. One can take into account the travel narratives written by pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, socalled itineraria, including that of Saint Bridget, who in the seventh chapter of her Revelaciones coelestes, Divine revelations, warns the Greeks in Cyprus about the consequences of not subordinating themselves to the Pope of Rome and the Latin rites, and predicts the fall of Byzantium. This happened during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1372 via Cyprus, the year before her death.
Another way is to confront oneself with the visual record, the artefacts in all their various forms. If we turn to Late Antique portraits, mummy portraits, and not least the picture of Constantine the Great (Fig. 1) with the pneumatic form of expression, or to the arch of Constantine (Fig. 2) in Rome that forms a line of demarcation between antiquity and Byzantine art, we notice that something has happened that was not possible since archaic times in the arts of antiquity — the image has become abstract, and this is even stranger considering that there were many well-trained artists very familiar with three dimensional art. In fact it is a visual revolution that is difficult to explain, but the Norwegian archaeologist and art historian Henrik L’Orange has made this the object of his brilliant studies in ancient and Late Antique art and he believed that the answer is to be found in the transformation of societal development to a stricter hierarchical and well-organized system with strong military aspects.
How the arts depend on the social structure is a big mystery and the explanation may partly lie in the ascetic ideals that were spread from the Neoplatonic philosophers to Christianity. But it would be a mistake to call Byzantine art ascetic. On the contrary it is a splendid feast for the eye. It uses specific formulas and schemes that are abstract, but the colours are very substantial and receive special brilliance from the rich amount of gold. Oriental luxury is combined with and reduces the ascetic tendency. Another trait is the strongly emphasized geometrical character of both form and space. The endlessness that already is expressed in the elevated and hieratic supermundane character of the imperial image is expressed with the help of circles and arc forms in exquisite combinations and proportions, both in the interior of Hagia Sophia and in the figure of Christ between the Virgin and John the Baptist (Fig. 3) on the wall of the southern vestibule in the same cathedral. The degree of abstraction varies and leads unfailingly to an overwhelming conscience of the antique legacy that characterizes the Byzantine Renaissance.
Ifthe Justinian era was called a golden age by André Grabar (Fig. 4) — the Empire reached at this time approximately the same size as the earlier Roman Empire at its largest extent and fairly dominated the Mediterranean area — the first real renaissance in the arts originated at the court of the Macedonians about 867, where there was a new concentration of strength after a period of decline in the 8th century. It expressed itself in the arts in conscious pastiches of Late Hellenistic painting. How it expressed itself in the literature is explained by Paul Speck, who has written about and stated this concept with most emphasis in the literature (Scandinavie et Byzance, Acta universitatis Upsaliensis, series Figura, nova series 19, 1981, p. 237242, and in XIX International Congress of Byzantine studies, Copenhagen 1996, Major papers, pp. 17-25).
This Macedonian renaissance is also considered to include the time of the Comnenes and that seems quite in order when reading the historians Psellos and Anna Comnena, but in the arts it is above all during the Paleologian era, when the Empire is threatened on all sides by the Seldjucs and Ottomans that an admirable final floruit takes place after the re-establishment of the Empire in the middle of the 13th century. At this time there is a contemporary development, noticable particularly in the Balkans, toward greater plasticity in the forms, in particular in the frescoes in Saint Clemens in Ochrid, in Sopocani and on certain icons of the 14th century. This is the legacy that Giotto builds on when he creates the preparatory studies of central perspective.
The new capital still plays a crucial part in the life of the Greek Orthodox church and its head, the Ecumenical patriarch, bears the title Archbishop of Constantinople and New Rome. A collection of letters from the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I (Fig. 5) to the author are documented in the manuscript department of the university library in Lund.
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