Download PDF | Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections, By David Buckton (Editor), British Museum Pubns Ltd, 1995.
242 Pages
Foreword
On behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum, I am pleased to introduce this catalogue describing over 2.50 treasures of Byzantine art and culture from more than thirty collections in the United Kingdom. The carefully chosen objects, brought together for the first time, span the eleven centuries or so between the foundation of the Byzantine capital Constantinople in the fourth century AD and its fall to the Ottoman Turks in the hfteenth. The vast extent of the late Roman Empire and its successor, Byzantium, is represented by finds from as far apart as Britain and Egypt, and Spain and the Crimea.
Previous Byzantine exhibitions in Britain, Masterpieces of Byzantine Art at the 1958 Edinburgh Festival and at the Victoria and Albert Museum and The Byzantine World at Chichester District Museum in 1978, were both strongly supported by the British Museum, which has one of the finest collections of Early Christian and Byzantine antiquities to be seen anywhere. From the National Icon Collection, housed in the BM, we lent to the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition From Byzantium to El Greco: Greek Frescoes and lcons in 1987.
This time we are the hosts, and my thanks and those of the Trustees go to all the institutions and individuals who have supported us by lending their treasures. We thank the scholars who have chosen the exhibits and contributed to this catalogue: their efforts are greatly appreciated. The generosity of the Hellenic Foundation in London and the Foundation for Hellenic Culture in Athens in supporting the educational programme centred on this exhibition is also gratefully acknowledged.
Dr R. G. W. Anderson Director, British Museum
Acknowledgements
Committee of Honour
It is a source of pride and satisfaction that a number of distinguished scholars, most of them closely associated with the British Museum, have given encouragement and support to this project: Professor Hugo Buchthal, Professor Ernst Kitzinger, the Viscount Norwich, Professor Sir Dimitri Obolensky and the Hon. Sir Steven Runciman. Tamara Talbot Rice provided a valued link between this Byzantine exhibition and the one organised by her husband in 1958; sadly, she did not live to see the results of her advice and guidance, and this catalogue is dedicated to her memory.
Acknowledgements
The education programme associated with this exhibition has been funded by the Hellenic Foundation, London, and the Foundation for Hellenic Culture, Athens. Their generous backing is gratefully acknowledged.
A year ago the exhibition Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture had not even reached the planning stage, and, for various reasons, work on it and its catalogue could not begin until ten months before the exhibition opened. The compressed timetable imposed enormous demands on everyone involved, and I am immensely grateful for the forbearance and help received from private lenders and from the staff of lending institutions, whether directors, keepers, librarians, curators, registrars, conservators or photographic personnel. The British Library is our principal lender, and I am especially indebted to Janet Backhouse, Scot McKendrick, Shelley Jones and Michael Boggan.
The effort put into this exhibition by colleagues in the British Museum is greatly appreciated. The Department of Coins and Medals, the Department of Conservation, the Design Office and the Photographic Service, as well as British Museum Press, were especially heavily involved. Barrie Cook and Jonathan Williams relieved me of all responsibility for coins, and | am particularly grateful to them and to Allyson Rae (Conservation), Caroline Ingham (Design) and Alan Hills and Peter Stringer (Photographic) for their quite exceptional industry. My greatest debt is to my research assistant, Christopher Entwistle; for a time, also, I was fortunate in having a special assistant, Elena Angelidis, and two voluntary assistants, Marika Leino and Sophie Anagnostopoulos.
The contributors to this catalogue deserve special acknowledgement, often for advising on the choice of exhibits as well as making time in extremely demanding professional lives to write the catalogue entries. I also thank Mr and Mrs Costa Carras, Anthony Cutler, Robert Perrin, Emmanuel Stavrianakis and family, Nicholas Talbot Rice and family, Edmund de Unger and David Whitehouse.
That this catalogue appeared in time for the opening of the exhibition, or indeed at all, is due to Nina Shandloff, of British Museum Press, who shouldered a near-impossible task with unfailing drive and (seldom failing) good humour.
David Buckton
Introduction
In 1860 the chairman of the Select Committee on the British Binseum, questioning Antonio (later Sir Anthony) Panizzi, the museum's Principal Librarian, prompted: ‘You have also, | imagine, Byzantine, Oriental, Mexican and Peruvian antiquities stowed away in the basement?’ ‘Yes’, replied "anizzi, “a few of them; and, I may well add, that I do not ti ik it any great loss that they are not better placed than they are.’ p antiquities were rescued from the BM basement largely through the scholarship of O. M. Dalton, of : E een of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and d Ethnography. Dalton wrote on everything from flint tools and weapons to post-Renaissance objets d'art, but he is remembered by Byzantinists for his Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities and Objects from the Christian East . . MN Byzantine Art and Arcbaeology (1911) and East Christian Art (1925). These were truly pioneering works and represented immense labour: ploughing the Byzantine furrow, he later remarked, had left him permanently stooped.
It was not until 1958, however, all but a century after
Panizzi’s dismissive remark (the Principal Librarian was a native of Modena, which is, of course, famous for its vinegar), that Britain had its first Byzantine exhibition,
Masterpieces of Byzantine Art, at the Edinburgh Festival and subsequently at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The exhibition was the creation of David Talbot Rice; John Beckwith, of the V&A, collaborated with him on the catalogue. Since then, The Byzantine World at Chichester District Museum in 1978, The Treasury of San Marco, Venice, at the British Museum in 1984 and From Byzantium to El Greco: Greek Frescoes and Icons at the Royal Academy in 1987 have attracted the interest of the British public and kept Byzantine antiquities out of museum basements.
The present exhibition is intended to show the richness and diversity of the art and culture of Byzantium - the name given to the Byzantine Empire — from the inauguration of its capital Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) on 11 May 330 to the capture of the city by the Ottomans on 29 May 1453. In the course of the fourth century, Constantinople
gradually replaced Rome as the administrative centre of the Roman Empire, and in 476 the fall of Rome left the eastern city as the undisputed imperial capital. In the reign of Justinian (527-65) the empire reached its fullest extent since Roman times, and Byzantine art enjoyed its first golden age. It had become very much a religious art, and a theological controversy over the admissibility of religious images eventually resulted in Iconoclasm, which lasted — with one break — from 730 to 8435. Once Iconoclasm had been defeated and the ban on religious images lifted, Byzantine art entered another glorious phase: the later ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the creation of some of its greatest masterpieces, which were regarded with awe by the rest of Europe. There was envy as well as awe: in 1204 the Fourth Crusade abandoned its objective, to drive the Saracen from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and instead attacked and looted the greatest city in Christendom. Constantinople remained under Western control until 1261. Once the Byzantines had re-established their rule, the scene was set for a final magnificent revival of the arts under the Palaeologan dynasty. Political and military endeavours were far less impressive, however, and Constantinople eventually fell to the Ottoman sultan, Mehmet 11, in 1453.
The exhibits range in date from a silver dish of 317 (no. rt), commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Emperor Licinius, whom Constantine 1 (306-37), the founder of Constantinople, was to overthrow seven years later, to a document issued by Mehmet the Conqueror on 1 June 1453, three days after the fall of Constantine's city (no. 234). The objects in the exhibition, all of them chosen from British collections, also reveal links between Byzantium and Britain, which was still à Roman province when Constantine — who had been proclaimed emperor in York — founded the city that was to bear his name. They include silverware (nos 16, $2 and 74) from two sites in Suffolk (one of them the famous ship-burial at Sutton Hoo), a glass flask from an Anglo-Saxon grave in Sussex (no.21), a bronze cross from a field in Cambridgeshire (no. 144), and silks from the tombs of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral and Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey (nos 139 and 166). Other exhibits are witness to the fascination which Byzantium — the name is taken from the ancient town supplanted by Constantinople — has continued to exercise in more modern times: an icon which belonged to John Ruskin (no.229), for instance, manuscripts collected by Robert Curzon (nos 179, 198 and 210), and architectural sculpture brought to Britain and placed in a Byzantine-plan church in Surrey (nos 42, 92, 93 and 211).
The objects in the exhibition have not been chosen primarily to illustrate over eleven hundred years of Byzantine history, and the complex historical background has been only sketchily indicated (suggestions for further reading are given below). Neither are the exhibits intended to represent the vast extent of Byzantium, at one time reaching from northern Italy to Egypt and from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Caucasus. Each object has been chosen on its own merits, as worthy of being seen and capable of speaking for itself; as part of the material remains of Byzantium, however, each one may contribute to the understanding of a story set in imperial palaces and desert monasteries, in busy trading ports and hermits’ caves, and on battlefields and sites of pilgrimage — a story embracing more than a millen-nium and much of the civilised world.
Suggestions for introductory reading
J.M. Hussey, The Byzantine World, London (Hutchinson's University Library), 1957; P. Whitting (ed.), Byzantium: an introduction, Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1971; S. Runciman, Byzantine Style and Civilization, Harmondsworth (Pelican Books), 1975; C.Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome, London (Weidenfeld and Nicolson), 1980; P. Hetherington, Byzantium, London (Orbis Publishing), 1983; R.Loverance, Byzantium, London (British Museum Press) | 1588; A.P. Kazhdan, A.-M. Talbot, A. Cutler, T. E. Gregory and N.P.Sevéenko (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 vols, New York-Oxtord (Oxford University Press), 1991; A[veril] Cameron, The Later Roman Empire, London (Fontana), 1993; L. Rodley, Byzantine Art and Architecture: an introduction, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 1994. All have bibliographies for further reading.
Byzantine coinage
Barrie Cook and Jonathan Williams
The coinage of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine period was firmly based on the empire’s gold issues. The solidus (or, in Greek, nomisma) was introduced by Constantine the Great at seventy-two to the Roman pound (thus weighing 24 carats, or 4.55g). It retained the same general size, weight and fineness well into the tenth century, for most of IZ
that period retaining an importance well beyond the bounds of the empire as the predominant trade coin of the Mediterranean region. From the death of Theodosius 1 (397) gold was normally a monopoly of the Constantinople mint in the east, though gold coin was produced in quantities by the Byzantine mints of Italy, Sicily and North Africa after Justinian’s reconquests.
The design of the solidus changed from a profile bust to a three-quarter facing bust in the late fourth century, and to a full facing bust in the sixth century, with occasional fulllength or enthroned figures of the emperor. The normal reverse design of the solidus also changed, from a female Victory to a male angel or a cross on steps, indicating the increasing influence of Christian iconography on the coinage.
Emperors increasingly came to include their heirs and coemperors on the coinage, and also depicted other family members and their own immediate predecessors in order to emphasise dynastic continuity of succession. This sometimes led to several figures being portrayed on both obverse and reverse. Justinian 11 (685-95, 705-11) introduced the image of Christ to the solidus, displacing the imperial image to the reverse. The practice was renewed under Michael 1m (842-67), marking the defeat of Iconoclasm and a revival of religious art, and it was thereafter a normal feature of the coinage.
Fractions of the solidus, the half (semissis) and third (tremissis), were struck, though their long unchanging design (retaining a profile portrait up to the late seventh century) would appear to assign them a secondary importance. They ceased to be struck for regular use in the east under Leo m (717-41) but survived in output of the Italian mints until the Lombard conquests of the 740s and 7505. (In Sicily Byzantine power, and the mint at Syracuse, survived until the Arab conquest of 878.)
The sizeable issue of silver coin in the Byzantine empire was relatively infrequent. However, the hexagram was struck in quantity in the first half of the seventh century, and the milaresion, introduced by Leo m (717-41), was produced until the later eleventh century, its principal design being simple: a cross on steps and the imperial names and titles across the field.
The bronze coinage of the later Roman empire dwindled dramatically in size until it was confined to a coin of about smm in diameter. In about 498 Anastasius had introduced a new series of copper denominations to replace these, large multiple pieces representing 5, 10, 20 and 40 nummi, the last-named being known as the follis. The value in nummi was indicated on the reverse designs by Greek letters: M for 40, K for 20, 1 for ro and E for 5. The obverse design changed from a profile bust to a facing bust in the sixth and early seventh centuries.
From the time of the Anastasian reform, copper coin was struck at several mints in the east besides Constantinople, principally Alexandria, Antioch, Cyzicus, Nicomedia and Thessalonica, until they ceased to operate in the early to mid seventh century following the Arab conquests. The copper coinage dwindled both in size of coin and in denominations issued, until by the mid eighth century only the follis was left. From the reign of John 1 (969-76) to Alexius r's reform of 1092, the follis was anonymous, bearing legends and designs of a purely religious nature.
During the seventh century the inscriptions on coins began a long transition from the use of Latin to Greek, and the titles used for the emperor changed, first from ‘Augustus’ to ‘Basileus’, then to ‘Basileus Romaion'. In the eighth century ‘Despot began to be used and became general from the eleventh century.
In the reign of Nicephorus 11 (963-9) the solidus was divided into two distinct forms. One, known as the histamenon nomisma, preserved the ancient standards, although it became broader and thinner in shape and from the 1040s was distinctly concave. The other, the tetarteron nomisma, was lighter in weight but remained smaller and thicker, preserving the appearance of the original coin. From the 1030s both series were subject to debasement, breaking seven centuries of stability. The fineness fell in stages from 24 to 8 carats by the reign of Nicephorus 111 (1078-81).
A major reform was needed and in rog2 Alexius 1! Comnenus created a new monetary system based on the gold hyperperon, a coin of the same weight as the old nomisma but 204 carats fine. The concave form of the eleventh-century gold was retained and also used for the subordinate denominations in electrum (2i hyperperon) and billon (2i hyperperon initially, though debased to under Manuel 1). Under the Comnenans and Angeli, the emperor alone of the imperial family appeared on the coinage, though some variety was provided by the number of saints who joined Christ and the Mother of God in coin designs. Those used were the leading military saints: George, Theodore, Demetrius, Michael and the canonised Constantine the Great.
The hyperperon survived through the Comnenan period and was also struck by the emperors of Nicaea, though it appears that under the latter its fineness fell to 16-17 carats. This decline continued in the restored empire until the Byzantine gold coinage came to an inglorious end in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. The last gold issues normally carried an obverse design of the Mother of God praying within the walls of Constantinople, with the emperor, often supported by Christ or a saint, on the reverse. The hyperperon survived in name as a unit of account and as silver coinage of poor style, supported by a varied series of copper issues, until the empire's extinction In 1453.
Byzantine silver Marlia Mundell Mango
Silver plate made in the Empire between 300 and 700 was of high purity (generally between 92 and 98 per cent) and good craftsmanship. Most plate was of hammered body with any attachments possibly cast. Decorative techniques included repoussé, chased and applied relief work, openwork, engraved and niello-inlaid work, gilding, punched beading and other ornament. Written sources refer to imperial objects incorporating gems, other precious stones and pearls. Domestic plate (plates, spoons, ewers, basins, lamps, etc.) continued to be made until at least the mid seventh century. Specific items of church plate (chalice, paten) were introduced by the fourth century at the latest. Traditional mythological subjects continued to decorate silver until the mid seventh century. Contemporary themes (relating, for example, to the hunt) appeared by the fourth century as did, eventually, overtly Christian symbols (e.g. the cross) as ornament on domestic plate. Decoratively inscribed texts were common on state, domestic and church plate. Some types of silver, notably plates and spoons, became increasingly large and heavy after about 300. Between the early fourth century and the mid seventh, some plate was marked with control-stamps, the texts of which are mostly in Greek; by the year 500 they were of some complexity. The precise significance of the stamps is unclear; scientific analysis has demonstrated that stamped and unstamped silver are generally of equal purity. Whatever their intended purpose, the stamps incorporating the names of emperors provide a fairly precise date.
Judging by surviving objects and references in written sources, medieval Byzantine silver plate continued the
earlier traditions of craftsmanship, apparently applied to manv of the same types of object. Church plate (often incorporating other materials such as carved precious stones, enamels and gems) accounts for most extant examples (for example those preserved in San Marco, Venice), but texts prove that domestic plate was still produced. Whether it was ornamented with mythological characters similar to those on tenth-century ivory caskets is a matter of speculation.
With two exceptions (nos35 and sr), the objects in this catalogue belong to the British Museum, which has the world's largest collection of Late Antique silver; unfortunately there is no medieval Byzantine silver in British public collections. Attested find-spots, combined with stamps and inscriptions on the objects themselves, provide valuable information about the origin and destination of silver plate in this period. Only the small plate in the Ashmolean Museum (no.s1) and, possibly, no.134 are without provenance. Fortunately for scholarship, the find-spots of the other objects are known. The silver found at Traprain Law in Scotland (for example no. 35) lay beyond Roman frontiers. Altogether, the find-spots illustrate both the extent of the empire and the ubiquity of plate. Included here is silver from Rome (the Esquiline Treasure, nos 10-14), northern Africa (the Carthage Treasure, no. 36), Syria (the Kaper Koraon Treasure, no. 95), Cyprus (the ‘first’ Cyprus Treasure, nos96 and 135), Asia Minor (the Lampsacus Treasure, nos 76 and 133; the Eros dish, no.75), Illyricum, now Serbia (the Naissus find, no. 1), and Britain (the Water Newton Treasure, no. 4, the Mildenhall Treasure, no. 16, the Corbridge find, no. 15, and the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, nos 52 and 74).
With regard to their ancient origin, control-stamps on six of the exhibited objects indicate their places of manufacture, extending over four centuries: at Naissus in 317 (no. 1), in an unidentified eastern city in the fifth century (no. 51), in Constantinople between 491 and 518 (no. 52), between 527 and 565 (no.76) and between 578 and 582 (no.96), and, possibly, at Tarsus in Cilicia between 641 and 651 (no. 135). À pounced Latin weight-inscription on another object (no. 15) suggests an origin in the Western Empire, while engraved Greek inscriptions (literary and dedicatory) on other silver (nos 95, 133 and 134) point to an eastern source. An owner's Greek name scratched in Greek could mean that other examples (nos 16 a—b) were acquired in the East.
The portability of silver plate is well demonstrated from this information. Although the Naissus dish was found where it was made, objects stamped and made in Constantinople have been discovered in modern times in Britain (no. 52), Asia Minor (no. 76) and Cyprus (no. 96). Other objects probably made in the Mediterranean region have likewise found their way to Britain (nos 15, 16, 35 and 74), much as other objects stamped in Constantinople in the sixth and seventh centuries have been found in northern Russia. Other objects (nos 10-14, 36, 75 and 95), like the Naissus dish, may have been made nearer to where they were eventually found.
Late Antique and Early Byzantine silver can be roughly divided into three main categories according to decoration or function, or both: state, domestic and church plate. The Naissus plate, the Esquiline tyches and, possibly, the Sutton Hoo plate decorated with tyches (nos r, 13, 14 and 52) were official or state objects. Domestic plate is well represented here by what may have been display objects with either ‘pagan’ subjects (the plates illustrating the shrine of Apollo on Delos, pairs of Dionysiac figures, Eros and a ketos, nos15, 16 and 75) or Christian ones (the bowl with a military saint, no. 135). The spoons and knife-handle are ornamented with literary texts to amuse (nos133 and 134). Other utilitarian domestic objects are decorated with neutral subjects (the patera with a frog and the basin with a female bust, nos36 and 74), with a Christian symbol (the plate with a cross, no. 96), or are undecorated (the small plate and the lamp-stand; nos 51 and 76). The ewer with scriptural subjects in relief (no. 35) may be either domestic or ecclesiastical, but the votive inscription on the chalice clearly identifies it as church plate (no. 95).
Byzantine weights Christopher Entwistle
The metrological (or measuring) system employed throughout much of the Byzantine period was a duodecimal one. The linchpin of this system was the Byzantine pound or litra, derived from the Late Roman pound. The /itra was in turn divided into twelve ounces or 72 solidi: the solidus, later known as the nomisma, was the standard gold coin introduced by Constantine the Great and current for hundreds of years thereafter. Imperial legislation of the fourth century records that 72 solidi were struck to the pound. The theoretical weight of the solidus is taken by numismatists to be 4.55 g, thus giving a weight for the Late Roman pound of 327.60g. In reality the weight of both the solidus and
the pound fluctuated. The most recent study of Byzantine metrology suggests a figure for the latter of about 324g from the fourth to the sixth century, 322 g in the sixth and seventh centuries, 320g from the seventh to the ninth century, 319g between the ninth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, and subsequently declining below 319 g. Even these figures should be treated with caution: the British Museum possesses a number of one-pound weights, dating from between the fourth and seventh centuries, which suggest much lower figures.
Although literally thousands of Byzantine weights are preserved in various museum collections, establishing a reliable and precise chronology for them, given the lack of archaeological, epigraphical and textual evidence, has proved elusive. Three materials were emploved in the manufacture of Byzantine weights: copper-allov, glass and, more rarely, lead. Most copper-alloy weights were cast in three shapes: a doubly truncated sphere, a square, and a disk. The limited evidence suggests that the spheroidal type, derived from first-century BC Roman stone weights, was the predominant form from the first century AD until well into the fourth. Gradually it was superseded by the square type, which was in turn replaced by the discoid weight in the latter half of the sixth century. If the stratigraphy at the site of Corinth is to be believed, discoid weights were still being produced as late as the twelfth century.
Typologically, most copper-alloy weights fall into the category of ‘miscellaneous’. Although all are inscribed with denominations based on the pound, the ounce or the solidus and their respective multiples and divisions, a great variety of secondary motifs were employed in their decoration. Inlays of silver and pure copper were also used to embellish their appearance. Perhaps the most striking Byzantine weights to have survived are the ‘imperial’ weights issued in the late fourth and fitth centuries. These are defined by the presence of two or more imperial figures, with attendant regalia, often standing in juxtaposition with tyches or involved in symbolic hunt-scenes (nos 31-3); alternatively, they may be depicted as busts within a victory wreath. Most employ additional symbols or motifs, many derived from Late Roman coinage, to propagandise the legitimacy and stability of the state and to guarantee their validity as ‘honest weights’.
Needless to say, fraud was endemic in the Byzantine period, and imperial legislation recommended ferocious punishments for maletactors. The administration of weights
and measures devolved to a number of officials. Novel CXXVII of Justinian, dated to 545, states that commodity weights were the responsibility of the praetorian pretects and coin weights of the comes sacrarum largitionum; weights which had previously been kept in post-stations were now ‘to be preserved in the most holy church of each city’.
Another official responsible for the issuing of weights was the Prefect of Constantinople. Although by the Middle Byzantine period, according to the Book of the Prefect, his jurisdiction had spread much wider, his responsibility during much of the sixth century appears to have been limited to the control of glass weights. Byzantine glass weights are generally discoid in shape, the majority of them stamped with monograms or inscriptions relating to the prefect of the capital (and probably to provincial eparchs also). Glass had obvious advantages as a material for weights: it was cheap to manufacture, readily detectable if tampered with, and, unlike its metal counterparts, not liable to oxidation or corrosion.
The function of these glass disks has occasionally been disputed on the grounds that they do not correspond exactly with known coin denominations. This argument implies that the weights were intended to be highly accurate and not, as contemporary coin-balances would suggest, rule-ofthumb weights for checking the tolerance above or below which a coin would not be accepted. There seems no reason to doubt that the majority of these glass disks were intended to weigh the solidus/nomisma and its divisions, the semissis and tremissis; a smaller group, as indicated by their denominational marks, weighed not only multiples of the solidus but the ounce and its multiples and divisions.
Over twenty different iconographic types of glass weights are known, but the majority of them fall into seven categories: weights with a box monogram, with a crucitorm monogram, with a box or cruciform monogram and an inscription, with imperial figures, with the bust of an eparch and accompanying inscription, with a denominational mark, and with a plain bust. The most common are those stamped with a box or cruciform monogram. On the basis of parallels with coins and other media, the box type appears to have been the dominant type for the first half of the sixth century, and was subsequently gradually replaced by the cruciform type. Most glass weights belong to the sixth century and the first half of the seventh, when the Arab invasions disrupted the administrative system which controlled the manufacture and distribution of these weights.
metrology suggests a figure for the latter of about 324g from the fourth to the sixth century, 322g in the sixth and seventh centuries, 320g from the seventh to the ninth century, 319g between the ninth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, and subsequently declining below 319 g. Even these figures should be treated with caution: the British Museum possesses a number of one-pound weights, dating from between the fourth and seventh centuries, which suggest much lower figures.
Although literally thousands of Byzantine weights are preserved in various museum collections, establishing a reliable and precise chronology for them, given the lack of archaeological, epigraphical and textual evidence, has proved elusive. Three materials were emploved in the manufacture of Byzantine weights: copper-allov, glass and, more rarely, lead. Most copper-alloy weights were cast in three shapes: a doubly truncated sphere, a square, and a disk. The limited evidence suggests that the spheroidal type, derived from first-century BC Roman stone weights, was the predominant form from the first century AD until well into the fourth. Gradually it was superseded by the square type, which was in turn replaced by the discoid weight in the latter half of the sixth century. If the stratigraphy at the site of Corinth is to be believed, discoid weights were still being produced as late as the twelfth century.
Typologically, most copper-alloy weights fall into the category of *miscellaneous'. Although all are inscribed with denominations based on the pound, the ounce or the solidus and their respective multiples and divisions, a great variety of secondary motifs were employed in their decoration. Inlays of silver and pure copper were also used to embellish their appearance. Perhaps the most striking Byzantine weights to have survived are the ‘imperial’ weights issued in the late fourth and fifth centuries. These are defined by the presence of two or more imperial figures, with attendant regalia, often standing in juxtaposition with tyches or involved in symbolic hunt-scenes (nos 3 1-3); alternatively, they may be depicted as busts within a victory wreath. Most employ additional symbols or motifs, many derived from Late Roman coinage, to propagandise the legitimacy and stability of the state and to guarantee their validity as ‘honest weights’.
Needless to say, fraud was endemic in the Byzantine period, and imperial legislation recommended ferocious punishments for malefactors. The administration of weights and measures devolved to a number of officials. Novel CXXVIII of Justinian, dated to 545, states that commodity weights were the responsibility of the praetorian prefects and coin weights of the comes sacrarum largitionum; weights which had previously been kept in post-stations were now ‘to be preserved in the most holy church of each city’.
Another official responsible for the issuing of weights was the Prefect of Constantinople. Although by the Middle Byzantine period, according to the Book of the Prefect, his jurisdiction had spread much wider, his responsibility during much of the sixth century appears to have been limited to the control of glass weights. Byzantine glass weights are generally discoid in shape, the majority of them stamped with monograms or inscriptions relating to the prefect of the capital (and probably to provincial eparchs also). Glass had obvious advantages as a material for weights: it was cheap to manufacture, readily detectable if tampered with, and, unlike its metal counterparts, not liable to oxidation or corrosion.
The function of these glass disks has occasionally been disputed on the grounds that they do not correspond exactly with known coin denominations. This argument implies that the weights were intended to be highly accurate and not, as contemporary coin-balances would suggest, rule-ofthumb weights for checking the tolerance above or below which a coin would not be accepted. There seems no reason to doubt that the majority of these glass disks were intended to weigh the solidus/nomisma and its divisions, the semissis and tremissis; a smaller group, as indicated by their denominational marks, weighed not only multiples of the solidus but the ounce and its multiples and divisions.
Over twenty different iconographic types of glass weights are known, but the majority of them fall into seven categories: weights with a box monogram, with a cruciform monogram, with a box or cruciform monogram and an inscription, with imperial figures, with the bust of an eparch and accompanying inscription, with a denominational mark, and with a plain bust. The most common are those stamped with a box or cruciform monogram. On the basis of parallels with coins and other media, the box type appears to have been the dominant type for the first half of the sixth century, and was subsequently gradually replaced by the cruciform type. Most glass weights belong to the sixth century and the first half of the seventh, when the Arab invasions disrupted the administrative system which controlled the manufacture and distribution of these weights.
Byzantine sculpture
Rowena Loverance
The tradition of sculpture in the round was already under strain in the late Roman period, as portraiture gave way to the demand for more symbolic representations, of which the porphyry tetrarchs of San Marco in Venice are perhaps the most famous example. The empire's official adoption of Christianity seems to have exacerbated this trend, with large-scale three-dimensional statues being firmly associated with the pagan past. However, as the group associated with the Victory statuette (no. 25) suggests, mythological subjects rendered on a more domestic scale may have continued to appeal to both pagan and Christian patrons.
Funerary art continued to be a fruitful source of sculptural images in the fourth and fifth centuries. The quantity of surviving sarcophagi, or fragments thereof, from production-centres in Rome, Ravenna and Arles allows a close study of the adaptation of classical and Old Testament themes to Christian use (no. 23) as well as providing some of the best evidence for emerging New Testament iconography (no. 24).
Much of the surviving material from Egypt also comes from funerary contexts, although, as this was frequently not recognised at the time of its original excavation, some confusion of interpretation still exists. Unnecessary distinctions have been sought between pagan and Christian, and between Coptic and Byzantine, though it remains the case that sculpture in marble, which was largely imported, was more likely to reflect trends in Constantinople, while local limestone was subject to local variations (no. 39).
Church building was a great spur to the production of architectural sculpture, though the demand was such that columns and capitals were frequently re-used from earlier buildings, which complicates understanding of the dating sequence. The standard Early Christian church was a rectangular basilica, with a colonnaded nave and aisles and perhaps galleries. Sites of particular appeal to pilgrims, such as those associated with the tombs of saints like that of St John at Ephesus, might have more centralised structures, in this case a cross-shaped church with four radiating arms, built in the fifth century (no. 42). The sixth century saw more ambitious architectural forms, especially in Constantinople; the church at Ephesus was rebuilt, still on its cross-shaped plan but now as a vaulted structure with six domes (no. 92).
Churches of the Middle Byzantine period catered for a much smaller population, and are often associated with monasteries (no. 93). The basilica form gave way to a more compact ‘cross-in-square’ building around a central dome, which, with the gradual evolution of the low chancel screen into the more substantial Middle Byzantine templon, gave a wide variety of uses for architectural sculpture. The themes and treatment of sculptured slabs of this period (no.151) often draw on Near Eastern motifs, perhaps reflecting Byzantine military expansion into Anatolia in the tenth century.
Three-dimensionality made a partial return to Byzantine sculpture in the thirteenth century, with figures in high relief appearing on capitals and on funerary monuments. Much of the evidence for this period, however, comes from the wider Byzantine world, from the Balkans and, especially, from Venice, where the influence of sculptures brought from Byzantium in 1204 inspired local craftsmen to develop a lively Italo-Byzantine range of forms and motifs (no. 199).
Byzantine textiles Hero Granger-Taylor
Most of the textiles in this catalogue are typically Byzantine in being all-silk and in a complex weave. Silk had been used in the Mediterranean area at least since the fifth century Bc but in the early Byzantine period came to be associated in particular with new, more advanced weaves with mechanically repeating patterns. The early general term for such weaves was polymitos, *|woven]| with multiple shafts’. The variety which came to be dominant and which is represented here by nos49, 50, 111, and 136-9 is now called ‘weft-faced 1:2 compound twill’. This weave was known in late medieval Europe as samitum, a term derived from the Greek bexamitos, ‘[woven] with six shafts’, a reference to the three or six shafts required for the binding warp of these fabrics.
The textiles in weft-faced compound twill here, starting with the Akhmim silk with its small-scale abstract pattern in two colours only (no. 49) and building up to the Durham silk with its much larger multicoloured roundel design (no. 139), illustrate well the development of this weave. The Durham silk has been known to be certainly Byzantine since the discovery on it of the remains of a Greek inscription. With many other examples, however, the source is less certain. Weft-faced compound twill weave may have originated in Persia rather than the eastern Mediterranean and was certainly also used there. By 600 or so it had begun to spread eastwards into central Asia and by about 700 had reached China. Inscribed non-Greek examples include one made in Tunis in the eighth century, excavated in Egypt, and one of about the same date labelled as *Zandaniji', from the neighbourhood of Bukhara, in the treasury of Huy Cathedral in Belgium. Silks of varied origins are often found together, whether in archaeological or church contexts, and Byzantine and Persian products are particularly difficult to tell apart: both were produced in a similarly fine and compact quality and in terms of style and iconography appear to have fed each other constantly.
The most magnificent Byzantine textiles have been preserved in reliquaries and the tombs of saints in western European churches and because of this circumstance are sometimes understood to have been woven specially for church use. In fact this was seldom the case, and even the silks with very large repeating designs were probably made for secular dress (see no.190). Recent discoveries at Moshchevaya Balka in the northern Caucasus of kaftans and other garments made from central Asian, Byzantine and Persian silks with roundel designs give an idea of what such textiles looked like when made up into clothing. The pagan iconography of certain Byzantine textiles of the eighth and ninth centuries, for example the Maastricht Dioskouroi silk with its depiction of animal sacrifice (no. 137), is less surprising when viewed in the context of fashionable dress.
For large-scale furnishings, the older technique of tapestry weave remained in use. The pair of curtains from Akhmim (no.112) are typical of Egyptian tapestry in combining wool and linen. Elsewhere tapestries were being woven in all-wool, as in the surviving western European tradition, and also in all-silk. The best surviving example of a Byzantine tapestry is the so-called *Gunthertuch' at Bamberg Cathedral, a silk wall-hanging found in the tomb of Bishop Gunther which shows a mounted emperor between the tychai of two cities. Gunther was probably bringing the tapestry as a diplomatic gift from the Byzantine to the German emperor when he died on the journey home In 1065.
The elephant silk at Aachen, probably placed in the tomb of Charlemagne by the Emperor Otto 111 in the year 1000, is perhaps the latest of the extant Byzantine weft-faced compound twill silks with multicoloured designs. From the late ninth century a taste had been growing for silks with monochrome patterning, and by the eleventh century this had brought about the eclipse of compound twill by two new classes of weave using contrasting textures rather than colours. The modern general terms are *weft-patterned' and ‘lampas’ but contemporaries used the adjectives diaspros, diarbodinos, diacintrinos (lit. ‘two whites’, ‘two pinks’, ‘two yellows’), and so on. The white-on-white versions were by far the most common (see nos 166 and 190), and in the long run the Latin word diasprum came to refer to these weaves, whatever the colour. The technology perhaps again originated in Persia but the prevalence of the Greek terms indicates that in the early part of the second millennium such textiles were being produced by the Greeks themselves.
Wherever technically complex textiles are produced, a strong workshop tradition is needed to ensure that skills are passed on between generations and that standards are maintained. The disruption at Constantinople brought about by the Fourth Crusade and a general decline in city life no doubt seriously damaged the Byzantine silk-weaving industry. Silks with relatively simple designs continued to be made, and indeed are still made for use in the Orthodox Church. But the court must have become increasingly dependent on imports: a fifteenth-century wall-painting in the Kariye Camii in Istanbul depicts a couple in coats made of textiles with Byzantine monogram designs but worn over undergarments of much more splendid Italian silks.
From weaving, the focus of attention turned to embroidery, and all the great extant Byzantine embroideries date from the period after 1204. Byzantine embroidery developed not as a means of depiction but as a type of enrichment, growing out of the practice of sewing gems, pearls and enamel plaques to textiles. The terms chrysoklabarika and chrysokentita ('ornamenting with gold’, from the Latin clavus, or woven band, or ‘embroidering with gold') reflect the importance of silver-gilt threads in these embroideries. Later to emerge, Byzantine embroidery was technically quite distinct from that of western Europe, and the effect of its abundant metal thread, sometimes in the form of wire and laid over cotton quilting, was to make it less flexible and more robust. The tradition has been kept alive through the agency of the Orthodox Church, in Russia and the Balkans as well as in Greece, but originally, like the woven silks, gold embroideries had secular as well as religious applications. No. 225 in this exhibition, made for a Serbian patron, is one of the very few secular examples to have survived.
Byzantine lamps Donald Bailey
The lamps of Byzantium were technically no different from lamps used in earlier periods in the Mediterranean area: a container to hold the fuel and a wick to draw up the fuel so that it would burn in air; all other aspects were refinements: a nozzle to hold the wick so that it could be tamped down to produce a smokeless flame; handles and suspension devices; stands to support the lamp; aesthetic considerations, including decoration to attract the customer and devices of a religious nature. Such a lamp would produce a given amount of light: to improve the lighting more nozzles plus wicks were added when designing a lamp, or several lamps were used: there was no improvement to this situation until the invention in the nineteenth century of the circular wick combined with a glass lamp chimney. Vegetable oils were used as fuel, mainly olive oil and, in Egypt, sesame-seed oil. Wicks were of cloth, often linen, the fibres of which, by capillary action fed the flame with oil.
Most surviving lamps are of fired clay and were made in their thousands in two-part moulds; some of the most decoratively complex examples were of bronze, one-off products of the lost-wax process. It is often possible with the clay lamps, from their style and their tabric, to identify closely where they were made and to suggest their approximate date; the metal lamps are often more difficult to place in these respects, particularly concerning their dating, which sometimes cannot be brought closer than a couple of centuries. Although they were occasionally used earlier, the fifth century saw the introduction in quantity of glass lamps suspended in metal holders (polycandela), and these were used for at least two hundred years. The glass lamps themselves were a regression technically, being a simple container for oil holding a floating wick impossible to keep from smoking. After the seventh century, mould-made clay lamps become uncommon, and coarse wheel-made lamps, often coated with a vitreous glaze, were produced in Byzantine lands for several centuries. Bronze lamps later than the seventh century are largely unidentihed.
Byzantine enamel David Buckton
Enamel is, quite simply, coloured glass. When heated to its melting point, glass bonds to metal with which it is in contact, creating a jewel-like laminate. The best metal for enamelling, gold, was often relatively plentiful in Byzantium, compared with the West, and enamellers had a convenient supply of coloured glasses in the tesserae from which Byzantine mosaics were made.
In the period before the onset of Iconoclasm in the eighth century, Byzantine enamellers worked in a technique derived from the ancient hellenistic tradition of filigree enamel. The enamel was contained in gold strip, soldered edge-on to the surface of the object; other features, including any inscriptions, were rendered in round-section filigree wire and not enamelled. A typical example of Early Bvzantine enamelling is the little bird-pendant, no. 98.
The cloisonné enamel for which Byzantine enamellers became famous was introduced from the West at the end of Iconoclasm. At first, from the middle of the ninth to the middle of the tenth century, the subject had a background of translucent enamel, usually green, completely covering the metal of the plaque. Inscriptions were composed of letters of gold strip set on edge in the enamel of the backgrounds. Characteristic is the Beresford Hope cross, no. 14 1.
From the middle of the tenth century onwards, the cloisonné enamel was let into and silhouetted against the metal of the plaque instead of having an enamelled background. Inscriptions were incised into the metal surround and filled with enamel, a technique which amounted to champleve. This stvle of enamel is found on a reliquary-cross in the exhibition, no. 165.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the fashion was again for enamel completely covering the metal of the plaque, but this time the backgrounds were opaque. Inscriptions were fully enamelled, comprising characters fashioned from gold strip bent to conform to the outline of the letter. The letters would then be filled with an opaque enamel contrasting with the enamel of the background: white characters against a dark blue ground were particularly popular. A good illustration is the pendant reliquary, no. 200.
With the use of opaque enamel, especially for backgrounds, gold became something of a luxury, and copper was increasingly used. Examples of this final phase of Byzantine enamelling are the double-sided medallions of saints, no. 2OT.
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