Download PDF | Liz James - Constantine of Rhodes, on Constantinople and the Church of the Holy Apostles_ With a New Edition of the Greek Text by Ioannis Vassis-Ashgate (2012).
267 Pages
Preface
Constantine of Rhodes’s tenth-century poem on the wonders of Constantinople and the Church of the Holy Apostles has been regularly used as a source of information about tenth-century Constantinople and as a basis for reconstructions of the Church of the Holy Apostles, which was destroyed after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The poem survives in one manuscript, Athos Lavra 1161, and has been edited twice previously, by Begleri and by Legrand, both in 1896.' Large parts of the poem were translated into German by August Heisenberg in 1908; scattered parts have been published in a range of other languages. The poem as a whole has not previously been published in an English translation.
It is clear from scattered references throughout his work that in the 1940s and 1950s, Glanville Downey and a group of scholars including Albert M. Friend Jr., Francis Dvornik and Paul Underwood were working on a study of the church of the Holy Apostles. In 1951, Downey specifically mentioned that he had prepared a new edition, translation and commentary on the poem as a part of this research.? In his survey of the church and mosaics of San Marco, Otto Demus used the unpublished texts of a lecture on architectural reconstructions of the church given by Underwood and another unspecified lecture by Friend.‘ Friend’s death in 1956 appears to have halted work on the project, though Downey did publish an edition and translation of Nikolaos Mesarites’s account of the Holy Apostles in 1959.° However, whether any of Downey’s translation and work on Constantine of Rhodes still survives is unknown.‘
In this volume, Ioannis Vassis has produced a new edition of the Greek text of the poem. He has also provided an introduction and critical commentary to this text. Liz James has written a commentary on the sites, monuments and people described in the text. She has also discussed the art historical contexts for Constantine of Rhodes’s account of Constantinople and the church of the Holy Apostles. A full literary commentary is lacking and we very much regret this. Simon Lane drew the map and produced the plans.
A Note on Names
There are too many Constantines in this volume: the poet himself together with the emperors Constantine I and Constantine VII. In a bid to try and avoid confusion, Ioannis Vassis and I have referred to the poet as Constantine of Rhodes, and called him Rhodios where necessary. The emperors Constantine are always referred to with their numbers and/or their respective titles, ‘the Great’ or ‘Porphyrogennetos. Transliterations of Byzantine names are taken from the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.
Acknowledgements
The translation of Constantine’s poem was begun some years ago by a group consisting of Charles Barber, Antony Eastmond, Liz James, Katrina Kavan, Ruth Webb and Barbara Zeitler. Ruth Webb and Liz James pressed on with the work, and later drafts were then reworked with the help of Bente Bjornholt and Nadine Schibille, and finally brought to a conclusion by Vassiliki Dimitropoulou, Robert Jordan and Liz James. In the final stages, Elizabeth Jeffreys provided crucial advice, expertise and encouragement. Part-way through this process, Ioannis Vassis freely allowed us to work from his new edition of the text. Even more generously, he agreed to publish this edition alongside the translation.
In translating the poem, we have aimed at accuracy rather than elegance. We benefitted greatly from Dr Ronald McCail’s own private translation of the poem, which renders the Greek both accurately and elegantly. We are most grateful to Dr McCail for providing Liz James with a copy of his translation and to Mary Whitby for facilitating this. Liz James owes an enormous debt to Elizabeth Jeffreys for the thoughtful and substantial giving of her time and knowledge above and beyond the call of duty — and for saving the translation from a great many mistakes and pitfalls. Errors and inaccuracies in the translation are entirely the responsibility of Liz James.
Liz James would like to thank all the above for making this book possible, especially Ruth Webb, who cannot be held responsible for the translation but who nevertheless played a major part in getting it this far. I would also like to thank Margaret Mullett who taught me that texts matter, even for art historians, encouraged me every step of the way and allowed me to take this to Ashgate. I am very grateful to Paul Magdalino for his insights and especially for sharpening the arguments about the poem’s unity and the poet's priorities, and to Foteini Spingou for her thoughtful reading of the text. I have been very aware that Marc Lauxtermann’s volume dealing with Constantine is about to be published and I am grateful to Marc for advice on Constantine and for allowing me to read and use his important forthcoming essay, “Constantine’s City: Constantine the Rhodian and the Beauty of Constantinople’ here.
I also owe thanks to Simon Lane who produced the map and the plans, to Bente Bjornholt for her editorial assistance, Gemma Hayman at Ashgate for her work, Florentia Pikoula who helped with the modern Greek, Alexandra Loske who helped with the late nineteenth-century German, Michelle O'Malley who acted as a lay reader, and to all those who responded to questions and pleas for assistance: Christine Angelidi, Dirk Krausmuller, Michael McGann, Tassos Papacostas, Dion Smythe, Shaun Tougher, the University of Sussex Interlibrary Loans team, especially William Teague; and finally, my family, George and Alex, for their patience. Albrecht Berger and Peter van Deun kindly gave permission to use plans originally published in Byzantinische Zeitschrift and Byzantion. lam also grateful to Walter Kaegi, Peter Guardino and Edward Watts (Indiana), and Shalimar White, James Carder and Deb Stewart (Dumbarton Oaks) for help and advice in trying to track down Glanville Downey’s work on Constantine of Rhodes.
Introduction to the Greek Edition
Ioannis Vassis
1 Manuscript Tradition and Editions of the Text
The verse ekphrasis, written by Constantine of Rhodes, describing the church of the Holy Apostles is preserved in a single manuscript of the fifteenth century, Athos Lavra 1161 (A 170), on fols. 139'-147". The manuscript, measuring 26 x 20 cm, is composed of 171 paper folios. The first folio of the text, fol. 139r., which contained lines 1-24 on its verso, became detached from the manuscript and was replaced by the present fol. 139r. on which were copied the same verses (on the basis of Begleri’s edition) at some stage after 1896. The manuscript contains a number of other interesting texts, including orations by Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzos, John Chrysostom and Maximos the Confessor, together with commentaries by Niketas the Paphlagonian and some verse compositions (iambic canons and verse vitae).!
The ekphrasis of Constantine of Rhodes was first brought to scholars attention by K. Sathas in 1872 when he published a catalogue of the most important manuscripts held in the monasteries of Mount Athos.” The text, however, was only published nearly a quarter of a century later, in 1896, in two editions that came out almost simultaneously: one by E. Legrand; and the other by G. Begleri The main reason for this double edition was the interest shown in the text by a learned monk of the monastery of Great Lavra, Alexandros Evmorfopoulos, who had sent both editors copies of the text made by himself. Only Legrand, however, managed to get his hands on photographs of the manuscript, on the basis of which he made his somewhat hastily prepared edition.‘ Nevertheless, besides a number of oversights in transcribing the text and a few typographical errors, both editors made valuable suggestions in the process of restoring various passages, as can be seen from a glance at the apparatus criticus that accompanies the present edition.°> Later corrections to Legrand’s edition were proposed by Maas, Heisenberg, Bartelink, Criscuolo and Speck.*
2 Form and Structure of the Text
The verses of Constantine of Rhodes are generally held to be of only mediocre poetic worth,’ while his style has, with some justification, been described as artificial and over-elaborate.* His text has more than its fair share of rambling digressions and parenthetical phrases, accumulation of parallel figures, repetition, pleonasm, excessive use of interdependent genitives, frequent use of enjambment and various syntactical irregularities that obscure the meaning or interfere with grammatical coherence. However, the reasons for some of these phenomena need to be sought, in part, in the form in which the poem has been handed down to us.
The work preserved under the general title 2tixo1 Kwvotavtivov donkpity tob ‘Podtov can be divided into the following five parts:
A. Lines 1-18: an epigram (with an acrostic constructed on the genitive form of the author’s name, Kwvotavtivou ‘Podtov), in which the ekphrasis of the church of the Holy Apostles is dedicated to the emperor, Constantine Porphyrogennetos, who had commissioned the work.
B. Lines 19-254: detailed description of the seven wonders of Constantinople.
C. Lines 255-422: transitional section, a kind of preface with general references to important monuments of the capital, in which the forthcoming description of the churches of the Holy Apostles and of Hagia Sophia is announced.
D. Lines 423-436: verse title and second epigram, in which the ekphrasis of the church of the Holy Apostles is dedicated to Constantine Porphyrogennetos.
E. Lines 437-981: ekphrasis of the church of the Holy Apostles: history (437-532), architecture and marble decoration (533-750), mosaic decorations (751-981).
Although the work is prefaced by an epigram in which Rhodios dedicates the ekphrasis of the church of the Holy Apostles to Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, the text that follows does not appear to have reached the final form that would have been presented to the emperor. The various opinions that have been expressed on this text tend to concur on the observation that what we have before us is an unfinished work, or a series of sketches and poetical drafts. Whatever the case, the last section of the work — the description of the church of the Holy Apostles (lines 437-981) — does possess internal coherence. That Constantine of Rhodes was working on the basis of a specific design is evidenced by lines 536-537, in which he states that he will return to his account of the mosaics in the church; in lines 751-981 he fulfils his promise. A similar phenomenon can be seen in section C: in lines 317-320 he returns to his theme following a digression that begins in line 284. The poem appears to have reached a final form,’ although, as scholars have already noted, it ends abruptly: after the description of the seventh mosaic, in which the Crucifixion is depicted, and following the lament of the Virgin, one might have expected some kind of epilogue that would round off the work in a balanced way.'" The other sections of the work present yet more problems.
Theodore Preger was the first to suggest that the surviving text is not the final version, basing his hypothesis on a comparison of section B of the ekphrasis with the more detailed account of miracles 2-7 contained in the Chronicle of Kedrenos, which apparently contains fragments of trimeters from Rhodios’s account.'! Preger observed that some of the fragmentary verses in Kedrenos cannot be traced to the ekphrasis and must surely have derived from a later version (of, at least, section B of the poem) by Constantine that has not survived elsewhere. It would have been a copy of this later version that provided the source for Kedrenos’s Chronicle.”
Glanville Downey came to the conclusion that the poem as we have it is unfinished, advancing the following arguments: i) in section C (lines 272, 282), Constantine leads us to believe that he intends to provide also a description of the church of Hagia Sophia, which, however, is not forthcoming; ii) there are aconsiderable number of prefatory and dedicatory sections (1-18, 19-40, 270ff., 423-431); iii) the statue of Justinian mounted on a horse is described twice (36-51 and 364-374); iv) the description of the mosaics (751-981) appears to be incomplete — one would expect the description to extend also to the other mosaics of the church; v) the poet’s name is mentioned in three parts of the work (lines 1-18 [acrostic], 424, 426).!° Christine Angelidi agreed with this outline. She noted that the Lavra codex preserves a series of verse works, a collection of draft poems and other poetical essays." In her opinion, Rhodios did not manage to complete his work, thus leaving us with a body of somewhat disjointed and ill-conceived descriptions.
Proceeding, therefore, on the assumption that the ‘Verses by the asekretis, Constantine of Rhodes’ do not comprise a single complete work, but rather an assortment of more or less related verses, Paul Speck examined the structure of the work preserved in the Lavra manuscript on a different basis, by trying to suggest the generative phases that led to the form in which we possess it today.'> He argued that at least two of the poems appear to have been intended as separate, self-contained works: the description of the seven wonders of Constantinople (19-254) and the description of the church of the Holy Apostles (423-981, which lacks an epilogue). The third poem (255-422) functioned as a long proem to two ekphraseis describing the large churches of the Holy Apostles (this ekphrasis survives) and of Hagia Sophia (this does not). In this section, besides the columns and the wonders, the author refers to other monuments of the imperial capital, which have not, however, been mentioned or described anywhere in the previous verses. Speck remarked that the prose heading that follows line 18 must be referring to the dedicatory epigram that precedes it and to a description of the statues and the high and lofty columns of the city. Consequently the prose heading belongs to a position somewhere before the dedicatory epigram. In the verses that follow (19-254), we find only a description of the columns and little on the statues. Speck believed that the prose heading must refer to the statues of the theatre, of the forum ‘richly decorated in gold; and of the Strategion, which are simply mentioned in lines 255-263, without being included among the seven wonders (19-254) of the city described beforehand. Consequently, the surviving poem on the seven wonders must have been transformed later into a new poem, which included the account of the statuary and the columns, or into two new poems, one on the columns (seven?) and one on the statues (seven?).
The latter two, of course, have not survived, but they must still have been in existence when the epigram before line 19 was written."
In his attempt to explain how the present form of the work came into being, Speck assumed that, having written the two (initially) separate poems, the description of the church of the Holy Apostles (423-981) and the account of the seven wonders of the city (19-254), and having dedicated his work (at least, the first poem) to the emperor, Constantine decided to compose a work ofa different kind: a general description of all the major monuments of Constantinople.” This new work must have contained the following parts: proem and dedication (not preserved); seven (?) columns and seven (?) statues (not preserved); the transitional section (lines 255-422); the church of the Holy Apostles (lines 423-981, probably as it has come down to us, though with the addition of at least one epilogue); and the church of Hagia Sophia (not preserved). There was no place in this new work for the description of the seven wonders (preserved most probably in draft form: 19-254) or for the dedication of the description of the church of the Holy Apostles (1-18). All of these poems must originally have been contained in separate quires.
Speck explained the existence of two dedicatory epigrams (lines 1-18 and 423-436) for the same poem, the description of the church of the Holy Apostles, as follows: the first would have been recited in order for the poet to obtain leave to continue; the second constituted a kind of verse title to the description itself, and would not have been recited, it merely existed in the manuscript given to the emperor.'®
It should be noted, however, that the second dedicatory epigram (lines 423436) ends with a prayer addressed to the Apostles requesting that they protect the emperor from all danger, and from the threats of ‘wretched’ enemies, who are not specified, while the first epigram (lines 1-18) ends with a request to the emperor to protect the poet, a feature that lends, as I think, the work as a whole the air of a poem asking for some reward. In the second epigram, the emperor Constantine is addressed as copoc PaotAevc and deondtng¢ (423), and TMavoopos vag (427), but is presented as being under threat, while in the first he is described as the mighty (kpatiotos) Porphyrogennetos, the continuer of the Macedonian dynasty and rightful heir to the throne, the emperor of whose sympathy and understanding the poet is in need (lines 17-18). The different conclusion to each of the two dedicatory epigrams and the general tone of each, together with the choice of different characterisations for the emperor Constantine, perhaps indicate that they were each written under different circumstances and, in all probability, at different periods. Furthermore, it is conceivable that the second dedicatory epigram that prefaces the description proper of the church of the Holy Apostles was not intended for inclusion in the ‘new work’ since two lines (431 and 433) are reused almost word for word in the immediately preceding section (lines 420 and 422), which constitutes a kind of proem to the ekphrasis of the two churches. Of course, lexical and phrasal repetitions are not wholly absent from the work of Constantine, but the repetition of two entire lines within such a short distance of one another looks somewhat suspicious.
Given the fact that the work as we possess it today appears to be contradictory and inconsistent in form, Speck suggested that the text in the Lavra codex represents a posthumous edition produced on the basis of various poetic fragments of the poet.’ The publisher found the dossier containing the various quires on which were written the poems of Constantine, but some were still only in draft form and had not been completed. He therefore attempted to bring them together into something more nearly approaching a finished whole. That some of the poems have not survived in the form in which they were given to the emperor Constantine is evident from the fact that they bear clear traces of reworking: some of the lines disrupt the meaning, while others do not tie in syntactically to their context and must have been removed by the poet, being a part of a previous version of the work (see, for example, lines 35 and 362-363). Either the publisher was not in a position to discern the different stages in the birth of the text, or he was being highly scrupulous in trying to include in his edition whatever work by the poet he happened to come upon. Lastly, even the title under which the work has come down to us seems to refer, in its generalising wording, to the (unordered) material found by the later editor.”°
Speck’s interpretation has received much credence, though it has now been challenged by Marc Lauxtermann who argues that the editor of the poem was, in fact, Constantine himself.
3 Date
The conventional date for the poem is at a point in the period 931-944. Taking as his starting point lines 22-26, which mention four rulers together, Reinach was the first to suggest that the work of Rhodios must have been written at some time between August 931 (the death of Christopher, Romanos Lekapenos’ eldest son) and December 944 (the fall of Emperor Romanos Lekapenos himself), a period marked by the reigns of four emperors: Romanos Lekapenos, Constantine Porphyrogennetos, and the two sons of Romanos, Stephen and Constantine.”
This proposal was accepted by later scholars. Only Speck questioned this dating, suggesting that lines 22-26 were an interpolation.” His arguments were as follows: i) only in these lines are the four emperors addressed, while none is actually named. In the lines that immediately follow (27-28), however, Constantine Porphyrogennetos is addressed separately, and named. This distinction in favour of the only rightful occupant of the throne would have been tantamount, on the poet’s part, to sedition. In the rest of the work, Constantine refers to, or addresses, only Constantine Porphyrogennetos; indeed, the latter is named as the person who commissioned the ekphrasis;” ii) line 22 imitates the original line 8. Thus lines 22-26 must have been added at a later date by someone who was preparing an edition of the unpublished works of the poet.”
The observation that in one of his epigrams (AP 15, 15) written immediately after the death of Leo VI, Rhodios stresses that he is a faithful servant (Oepamwv) of the father of Constantine, a remark he repeated twice in the ekphrasis,”* led Speck to the view that the ekphrasis must have been written shortly after the death of Leo (11 May 912), and that it therefore constitutes a didactic poem addressed to the young emperor-to-be, Constantine Porphyrogennetos.” Although the epigram cited by Speck was not written after, but before the death of Leo (between 15 May 908 and 11 May 912),”* it remains a fact that in his ekphrasis, written certainly after 912, Rhodios also stresses his devotion to Leo. This, however, does not necessarily imply that the composition of the work has to be placed on all accounts immediately after the death of the father of Constantine Porphyrogennetos.
However, the question of the date of the poem remains problematic and unresolved, and it is an issue to which Liz James will return in some detail later in this book.
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