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DIVINE INSPIRATION IN BYZANTIUM
NOTIONS OF AUTHENTICITY IN ART AND THEOLOGY
In this volume, Karin Krause examines conceptions of divine inspiration and authenticity in the religious literature and visual arts of Byzantium. During antiquity and the medieval era, “inspiration” encompassed a range of ideas regarding the divine contribution to the creation of holy texts, icons, and other material objects by human beings. Krause traces the origins of the notion of divine inspiration in the Jewish and polytheistic cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds and their reception in Byzantine religious culture. Exploring how conceptions of authenticity are employed in Byzantium to claim religious authority, she analyzes texts in a range of genres, as well as images in different media, including manuscript illumination, icons, and mosaics. Her interdisciplinary study demonstrates the pivotal role that claims to the divine inspiration of religious literature and art played in the construction of Byzantine cultural identity.
Karin Krause is an assistant professor of Byzantine Theology and Visual Culture at the University of Chicago. Her research has been supported by the German Research Foundation, the Max Planck Society, Dumbarton Oaks, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and the German Academic Exchange Service. Her book The Illustrated Homilies of John Chrysostom in Byzantium won an award from the Southeast Europe Association.
INTRODUCTION This book presents a sustained examination of conceptions of divine inspiration in the literature and visual arts of Byzantium (c. 330–1453). The subject has hitherto never been treated systematically, and its pivotal relevance to the formation of Eastern Orthodox religious doctrine and identity has thus been underestimated. What the book investi gates under the umbrella term “inspiration” encompasses the variety of circumstances under which texts as well as material artifacts were conveyed to human recipients by divine initiative. The thesis guiding this investiga tion is that arguments about the divine origin of sacred literature and art were variously employed in Byzantium to claim and confirm authenticity in order to derive from it religious authority. Byzantine art and literature bear witness to manifold conceptions of humans being enabled to produce texts or works of art upon divine initiative. The notion of mortals being “inspired” in the literal sense – i.e., imbued with the divine breath, pneuma – is rarely made explicit, however, and is only one procedure among several that serve similar ends. This study will explore these different notions and their linkages to beliefs that texts and material artifacts were divinely crafted and conveyed through human vehicles to human recipients in their complete form. Consequently, in this book I examine both literary and visual evidence that illuminates the contents and aims of the Byzantine understanding of inspiration and other forms of divine revelation. 1 Early Christianity derived the concept of the divine revelation of its Holy Scriptures through two different strands, Greco Roman paganism1 and ancient Judaism. Not surprisingly, Christian thinkers made use of many of the expres sions and metaphors traditionally associated with these ideas. While the belief in the origin of texts in nonhuman inspiration is to some extent shared between Judaism, pagan polytheism, and Christianity, during late antiquity in the Christian context the concept underwent crucial transformations that are evidenced in written sources and even more strongly in the visual arts. Novel conceptions as to the process and implementation of divine inspiration served to buttress claims to truth that were directed against real or perceived manifest ations of religious alterity and error. Therefore, from early on and throughout the existence of the Byzantine Empire, claims to divine revelation featured prominently in arguments about the definition of doctrinal normativity, serv ing to distinguish between “true” and “false,” “us” and “them.” Byzantine notions that artisans are divinely inspired or that artifacts of outstanding religious importance result from divine craftsmanship likewise built on ancient Jewish and pagan predecessors. However, these ideas were adopted relatively late, and in the quest of defining and defending religious orthodoxy they experienced significant reinterpretations as well. Ultimately, all arguments voiced in Byzantium about the divine origin of the empire’s most sacred texts and artifacts were aimed at substantiating claims to holiness, reli gious orthodoxy, divinely bestowed privilege, and superiority.
I.1 DIVINE INSPIRATION: WHAT THE CONCEPT ENCOMPASSES
The notion of the divine breath, pneuma, bestowed upon mortals was a feature shared among the cultures of Greco Roman paganism, Judaism, and Christianity. Importantly, however, no concept similar to that of the “holy spirit” (πνεῦμα ἅγιον; spiritus sanctus) that Christianity derived from the Septuagint existed in pagan culture.2 In ancient Greek and Byzantine texts, the terms pneuma, pneumatikos, etc. have a wide range of meanings – including “wind,” “breath,” “life,” “soul,” and “spirit” – and pneuma manifests itself in manifold ways.3 To cite a prominent example from the Christian realm, at Pentecost the descent of the Holy Spirit that puts the apostles in a position to prophesy in different languages is perceived by them as “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” (Acts 2:2).4 Pneuma understood as “breath” enables speech, including that spoken directly by the divinity or through human instruments. In the oral cultures where the concept originated, speech was obviously the major means by which divine inspiration was conveyed to mortals, and this continued to be the case long after literacy and written documents had become more common. With pneuma being inseparable from the divinity, the presence of the former automatically signals the presence of the latter: the divinity is present in the very moment a text is being transmitted, and the notion that texts are imbued with the divine pneuma implies that the latter remains with these texts when they are repeated aloud by humans and recorded in writing.
The animating feature of the divine pneuma, the breath of life, which is manifest, for instance, in the enlivenment of Adam (Gen 2:7),5 cannot always clearly be separated from the idea of the transfer of divine wisdom, knowledge, or insight by means of breath. This is, for instance, evident in the notion that the apostles were spiritually “born from above” when the Holy Spirit descended onto them at Pentecost.6 Christians continue to apply this dual sense of pneuma to Holy Scripture. Being inspired with divine wisdom, it is simultaneously enlivened by the divine breath and thus in turn provides spiritual enlivenment to its readers or listeners.7 As we will see, in Byzantium the animating effect of the divine pneuma was reinterpreted in rhetoric about inspired icons that are presented as if they were alive, like their sacred prototypes.8 In Greek texts since antiquity a variety of words referencing breath or breathing is encountered that are used synonymously with pneuma to indicate divine inspiration, such as epipnous, epipnoia, empneusis, empneisthai, and pnoe. 9
Other terms emphasize the idea of mortals being “full of divinity” (entheos), often with the implication that any activity of the mortals’ own consciousness and intellect is excluded. According to ancient notions of mantic inspiration that originate in pagan and Jewish cultures, humans are possessed, or stirred, by the divinity, and in a state of inspired frenzy (e.g., enthousiasmos, mania, mantikon pneuma, katochos, katechesthai).10 Hesiod’s Theogony, probably composed around 700 or in the early seventh century BCE, is the oldest text that explicitly describes divine inspiration as a transfer of breath: the rhapsodist relates how the Muses conveyed poetry to him by means of their breath (“and they breathed a divine voice into me”).11 This straightforwardness is very rare, however, and not only in ancient Greek literature.12 Even when it uses common expressions denoting “inspiration,” pagan literature does not normally provide any clue as to the procedure of exactly how divine wisdom is conveyed to humans, and to what extent it was responsible for the outcome, a situation that most often holds true for Jewish and Christian writings as well. The idea lives on in today’s vocabulary commonly used in English as well as in other modern languages to denote concepts of extra subjective “inspiration,” which may or may not, however, involve tropes of breath.13
Importantly, the term “inspiration” has, since antiquity, been most often used in a purely metaphorical sense. The concept’s very flexibility leaves plenty of scope for the imagination when it comes to its phenomena and effects. Acknowledging the wide range of manifestations of “divine inspiration,” throughout this book the expression is used for the sake of convenience – usually metaphorically – to broadly denote the supernatural, divine origin of texts as claimed in the literature and visualized in the arts of Byzantium. Whether or not they involve the transfer of divine breath, different procedures of the transmission of texts from the divine realm to humanity ultimately all make similar claims to authenticity and hence authority. The first four chapters of this book focus on notions of divine inspiration related to Holy Scripture as evidenced in literature as well as visual images from Byzantium and examine the ambitions governing these claims.
The notion of inspiration originated in ancient cultures to establish the authoritative status of holy texts, and it was the divine origin of religious literature specifically that continued to be emphasized throughout the Christian Middle Ages. However, in both ancient Judaism and polytheistic religions one can also find related convictions that material artifacts of out standing religious significance are entirely of divine origin, or that the divinity conveyed their design to human artisans, or that their remarkable craftsmanship results from the artist’s divine inspiration, the pneuma, that imbues the work of art. Importantly, early Christian intellectuals firmly rejected notions about divinely inspired art, and the absence of relevant traditions, I believe, has been much underestimated in its impact on the development and appreciation of Christian art during the early centuries. Claims about inspired art began to resurface during Byzantine Iconoclasm (c. 726/30–787 and 815–84314) to defend the holiness and venerability of religious icons, and they are frequently voiced in religious literature of the Middle Byzantine period (843–1204).
Byzantium ultimately derived its ideas about divinely made or inspired artifacts from pagan and Jewish predecessors, although not without reinterpretations that responded to the specific requisites of its own religious culture. Artifacts, particularly icons, that in Byzantium were regarded as divinely inspired or crafted by God, are the subjects of the last three chapters of the book. These chapters demonstrate that related arguments regarding the divine origin of artifacts served first and foremost to make a case for authenticity, religious orthodoxy, and superiority, as did claims to divinely revealed literature. Remarkably, evidence from Byzantium antedates by several centuries the notion of the divinely inspired artist in Western Europe, which reemerged during the Renaissance.
I.2 AUTHENTICITY: WHAT THE TERM SIGNIFIES
It seems appropriate to explain the understanding and use of “authenticity” and “authentic” in this book, because today’s common meanings of these words are only partly equivalent to those used in Byzantium. In ancient and Byzantine Greek the term αὐθεντία (authentia) in the first place denotes “supreme author ity,” or absolute, sovereign power, for instance, of a ruler.15 In patristic literature it is encountered as a reference to divine power or the authority of Scripture, as an equivalent to the Latin noun auctoritas. 16 The Greek noun αὐθέντης (authentes), among other meanings, references an originator, or author.17 The adjective αὐθεντικός (authentikos), like the Latin authenticus, was used to characterize manuscripts and other written documents as “ori ginal,” “reliable,” “true,” “warranted,” “genuine,” and “authoritative.”18 It also denoted autographs, i.e., documents in the handwriting of their authors, and the noun αὐθεντικόν (authentikon) referenced original documents or char ters, as distinguished from their transcriptions or copies.19 Not surprisingly, this terminology was employed in the legal realm, as is, for instance, reflected in the name Authenticum given c. 1100 or shortly thereafter to the Latin translation of novels, or “new laws” (novellae constitutiones) issued by Emperor Justinian the Great.
Medieval intellectuals assumed that the work represented the original, official translation from the Greek commissioned by the emperor, and that the laws had come from the emperor himself.20 There are in fact many allusions to charters and legal procedures in Byzantine narratives about divinely inspired writings and in pictures showing inspired individuals. Due to its authenticity, the sacred writ is thus characterized as “legally” binding and authoritative to the utmost degree.21 Today, the term “authenticity” is used in various contexts of human life and scholarly disciplines, and, reflecting modern categories, its semantic range has been expanded rather significantly since the eighteenth century.22 This might explain why scholarly investigations have focused almost exclusively on the term’s modern meanings and associations.23 Throughout this book, I use the terms “authenticity” and “authentic” to denote the originality, genuineness, truth, validity, reality, and authority of holy texts as well as material artifacts that were called inspired or otherwise believed to be of divine origin. Byzantine literature and visual images illuminating the concept of inspiration strongly convey claims to all these qualities in accordance with the meaning of the Greek terms authentia, authentikos (etc.).
It must be said, though, that writings from Byzantium use these terms and their cognates relatively seldom. Usually aletheia (ἀλήθεια) or its derivatives are employed to convey notions of truth, originality, reality, and the like. Indeed, the meanings or implications of “truth” and “authenticity” in both the ancient and modern usage of these terms overlap to a significant degree.24 In classical Greek, aletheia can also signify “presence,”25 which, as was mentioned above, is also the case with the divine pneuma and, consequently, divinity. In fact, aletheia in biblical, patristic, and other Christian literature is a very common attribute of God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, all of whom reveal the truth via the inspiration of ordinary humans or saintly persons, in Scripture, doctrines, dogma, material artifacts, etc.26 Early Christian and Byzantine culture devel oped a rich array of ideas and metaphors to denote the authenticity and truth of divinely inspired texts as well as material objects. The wealth of the associated ideas in literature is reflected – and indeed much enriched – in the visual arts.
I.3 DIVINE INSPIRATION: THE ANCIENT ROOTS OF THE CONCEPT
Conceptions of divine inspiration developed in antiquity, in both pagan polytheism and Jewish culture, were highly formative for how the Byzantines imagined the origins of their own religious literature and to a lesser extent their religious art. Whereas the idea of divine inspiration in ancient cultures has received a fair amount of scholarly attention, its various manifestations in Byzantium have not. The same holds true for the medieval Christian West, though that does not form part of the present study, mostly for reasons of scope. It certainly merits an investigation as well, and it would be interesting to compare the observations and conclusions of such a study to those presented in this book. In Byzantine culture, ancient ideas of inspiration and their literary and visual tropes were either adopted unchanged in their entirety or transformed to fit the changed aspirations and expectations characteristic of Christianity, and Byzantine Christianity in particular. Accordingly, I will now briefly outline the main strands and manifestations of the idea in pagan and Jewish antiquity, focusing on those that were especially influential for the concept of divine inspiration in early Christian and Byzantine culture.
The notion that human beings, especially poets, are inspired by gods, particularly the nine Muses, is commonplace in the literature of Greco Roman antiquity, and scholarly literature on the subject abounds.27 As goddesses, in whose honor sacred sites were erected, the Muses were an essential component of the Greek worldview.28 They were not the only deities to convey inspiration to humankind; others, such as their leader Apollo, the Nymphs, Eros, and Asclepius, were also occasionally pictured in this role.29 In the oral culture of ancient Greece, divinely conveyed poetry was communicated to human beings by rhapsodists, through chant accompanied by instrumental music and dance.30 This is why musical metaphors for inspiration abound in ancient literature, and in Byzantine literature as well. The oral communication of divine inspiration, along with its traditional vocabulary and imaginings, remained common long after poetry was put down in writing.31 From the sixth century BCE on and well into the Common Era, the Muses and the individuals inspired by them were also popular topics of the visual arts.32 The first description of how the Muses convey inspiration to poets in Hesiod’s Theogony referenced above is of rare explicitness regarding both the process and its outcome. In the prologue to this poem, Hesiod, a shepherd, claims that he underwent a supernatural experience that enabled him to compose poetry: And this speech the goddesses spoke first of all to me, the Olympian Muses ... : “We know how to say many false things similar to genuine ones, but we know, when we wish, how to proclaim true things.” ... And they breathed a divine voice into me, so that I might glorify what will be and what was before, and they commanded me to sing.33 The description makes plain that the Muses are omniscient and, should they desire, can convey their divine wisdom and truth to mortals to whom it would otherwise be inaccessible.34 Yet it is also strongly expressed that the goddesses may inspire “false things,” meaning fiction – or lies.35 In Christian culture, by contrast, the concept of divine inspiration was from the outset intimately tied to claims of truth. Divine inspiration in fact guaranteed infallibility, an argument that is absolutely central to Byzantine claims of religious orthodoxy. Hesiod’s description clearly reflects the origin of the ancient concept of divine inspiration in an oral culture, an illiterate society. The poet serves as the Muses’ mouthpiece, as an instrument (organon) employed to voice divine poetry to humankind.36
The relatively high level of detail with which the process of the text’s transmission to the poet is characterized notwithstanding, it is equally important to note that Hesiod does not offer any clue as to how far the Muses’ inspiration reached regarding the content or wording of his message. In fact, as has often been pointed out, the questions of the extent to which poetry owes its existence to divine inspiration and how much must be regarded as the human contribution are very much open to interpretation not only in Hesiod, but also elsewhere in Greco Roman literature.37 Such differentiations are mostly lacking in the Christian era as well. The passage cited from the Theogony illustrates that divine inspiration was understood to have a close relationship with memory, which is also crucially important in Christian contexts. Memory, after all, is essential for conserving the tradition and ensuring that it will be passed on to future generations. The Muses passed down to rhapsodists and others their omniscience resting on the divine and infallible memories that they owed to their mother, the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne.38 Indeed, in some places in Greece, the Muses them selves were called Mneiai – “Memories.”39 As an outgrowth of their initial role as the sources of poetry and music, the goddesses gradually became broadly associated with human education and speech, as they passed on their insight to all those whose occupations involved linguistic expression, such as philosophers, orators, politicians, and scientists.40 The Muses provided humans with “knowledge and crafts that attain their end by the use of words” and the “correctness of discourse about valid truth,” as Plutarch neatly, if somewhat idealistically, at least so far as truth is concerned, summarizes their gifts.41 The Muses’ religious significance had depreciated substantially by the beginning of the Common Era.42 This decline resulted from certain socio political developments that also led to the absolute claim to truth being scrutinized, parodied, and even publicly called into question. Consequently, the divine inspir ation of mortals through the Muses gradually became merely a literary trope.43 Despite the Muses’ dubious attitude toward conveying divine truth and their lessened authority, they had a significant impact on conceptions of divine inspiration of Christian holy texts. Although Christianity obviously could no longer permit the Muses and other pagan deities to be viewed as the sources of divine inspiration, typical literary motifs and metaphors expressing the idea in Greco Roman literature were taken up, often along with the traditional vocabulary, by the authors of medieval religious verse and prose.44 In Byzantium, ancient influences are in fact not limited to the textual realm; some typical elements in compositions of Muses inspiring poets are mirrored in the iconography of divine inspiration. Artists, however, made important adjustments that are reflective of fundamentally changed attitudes toward the truth contained in the divine text and the necessity of its accurate conservation. This is why, from early on, Byzantine images often highlight the fact that holy texts are not only preserved in written form, but that they are in fact being faithfully recorded in writing in the very moment of their transmission.45 Since Homeric times, poets have entreated the Muses and occasionally other gods for inspiration, by which they hoped to emphasize the extrasub jective origin of their words and thus their authority.46 The custom of invocation lived on in Christian literature, where the supplication for inspir ation was now usually directed toward God the Father, the Holy Spirit, Christ, or in hagiography, toward saints.47
In the Greco Roman world, poets, because of their special relationship with the gods, were regarded as divine and thus elevated from the realm of ordinary mortals.48 Hesiod, for instance, viewed his poetic inspiration as hallowed, calling it a “divine gift” (ἱερὴ δόσις).49 This idea lives on in Christian writings, conveying, implicitly or explicitly, that inspiration of both literature and art is viewed as a gift of divine grace (χάρις).50 Those who were deemed worthy to receive it were usually regarded as holy, or alternatively their holiness rendered them worthy in the first place. The notion of texts being of divine origin, and hence sacred, was familiar to early Christians not only from pagan culture, but also, and especially, from Judaism, the Scriptures of which were formative for Christian doctrines.51 According to different Jewish legends the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint (LXX), was divinely inspired and therefore accurate to the utmost degree.52 It is clear that early Christian and Byzantine culture derived its claims to the authenticity, exactitude, and permanent nature of its divinely inspired writ chiefly from Jewish models. Along with the establish ment of the canon of the Hebrew Bible emerged a number of legends and theoretical arguments to confirm the divine origin of its Scriptures. The most eminent text of all, the Torah (Pentateuch), was believed to be of divine origin and consequently eternal, having existed with God before the creation of the world.53 Different narratives – implying different degrees of authenticity – are encountered in Jewish exegetical literature of how Yahweh conveyed the Torah to Moses: he either instructed his prophet orally, like a teacher instruct ing his student; he gave Moses the Torah in writing; or he dictated it to him.54 Reflecting the Torah’s outstanding importance, in Jewish thought every existing Torah scroll represents a facsimile of the original one received by Moses.55 Legends about documents written by gods circulated widely in the ancient Mediterranean area and the Near East and were later also taken up in Islam.56 Such documents – heavenly letters and books and other divinely inscribed objects – were in different ancient cultures believed to be preserved in heaven or to have fallen down to earth, or otherwise to have either been conveyed directly to humans or left in a hidden location for them to discover.57 However, in the Tanakh explicit references to divine revelations that were passed down to humans in written form are encountered relatively seldom.58
The transmission of the incised stone tablets of the law by Yahweh to Moses on Sinai constitutes a particularly prominent exception that underscores the outstanding importance of their writ. The event is described in several passages in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy relating that the commandments on the first set of tablets were written by Yahweh himself (Exod 24:12, 32:16; Deut 4:13, 5:22), specifically with his finger (Exod 31:18; Deut 9:10).59 The material surface requiring engraved or carved characters emphasizes the tablets’ duration and immutabil ity and thus the law’s lasting authority.60 Divine legislation is imagined as being physically present in and on the bodies of God’s people who are instructed to take to heart – i.e., memorize61 – his commandments (Deut 6:6) and to “bind them as a sign” on their own hands (Deut 6:8). In the Pentateuch the tablets are called “God’s work” by virtue of his handwriting (Exod 32:16). The notion of a divine autograph conveyed to humans of course makes the strongest possible claim regarding the authenticity and authority of the writ they internalized and thus acknowledged as binding. This is what made the episode attractive for the Byzantines in various contexts as a point of reference, and for appropriation of its implied arguments. The earliest visual rendering of the event survives in ancient Jewish art, among the third century murals of the synagogue in Dura Europos.62 Significantly, Moses receiving the tablets from God is one of the most frequently depicted episodes in Byzantine iconography. Unsurprisingly, it is the subject of the first transmission of the tablets – both hewn and inscribed by God – that artists at all times favored over depicting the prophet writing the substitute text.63 For after Moses had broken the original set of tablets out of rage when he saw his people adoring the golden calf (Exod 32:19), God instructed him to cut out of stone new tablets like the former ones, onto which Moses himself wrote the commands that God had proclaimed orally (Exod 34:27–28).64 Rabbinic literature depicts God’s engraving of the letters into the first set of tablets as a powerful act that is both visible and audible to the Israelites, involving God’s loudly thundering voice and flames.65 Along with the idea of the divinely incised writ as such, these motifs were in Byzantium taken up to underscore the authenticity and authority of some of the empire’s most sacred texts and objects.
Importantly, however, textual and visual references to the divine law engraved in the stone tablets serve in the first place to emphasize that the new Christian Covenant has superseded the old, established between God and the ancient Israelites.66 The latter argument is a key feature of many Byzantine claims of receipt of divine favors that manifested themselves in inspired or otherwise divinely conveyed literature and art. In ancient Judaism and paganism are also encountered claims regarding both the inspiration of artisans and divinely crafted artifacts provided to humankind in their complete form, conceptions that were likewise taken up in Byzantium. Yet, unlike notions of divinely given texts, they were adopted more reluctantly and experienced novel interpretations in light of specifically Byzantine concerns. The majority of the sources convey that the related claims were triggered by debates about the validity of icons and sought to substantiate orthodox Christological doctrines cited during these debates. It seems that notions of the divine origin of artifacts in antiquity are ultimately grounded in the belief, shared by different ancient cultures, in the creative power ascribed to certain gods, especially Divine Sophia, the creator of the universe.67 Both texts and artifacts were seen as products of divine wisdom and care, although the latter lacked the strong and prom inent tradition showcasing divine origin associated with the former. Significantly, in ancient Greece the inspiration of artists was not among the tasks of the nine Muses. This is due to the fact that the pagan concept of the divine inspiration of texts emerged at a time when the visual arts (technai) executed by artisans (banausoi) were viewed as mere handicraft.68 In the Tanakh man made artifacts have an ambiguous status, yet what is commonly termed the Second Commandment prohibits not only depic tions of Yahweh, but also mimetic images more generally for fear of idolatry.69 Similar anxieties are evident in passages highlighting the “dead” materials employed for man made artifacts.70 In the pagan context, it is during the first centuries of the Common Era, in the literature of the Second Sophistic, that we encounter the express view that artists, too, are the recipients of the divine pneuma, although this privilege seems to have been limited to individuals who had acquired some fame. It seems that the argument was first made with regard to the so called daidala, works of sculpture viewed as products of the legendary craftsman Daedalus.71 Interestingly, due to the enlivening effect of the pneuma, the daidala were perceived as animate, a notion that appears to be a reinterpretation of the view widespread in antiquity that statues were inhabited by the divinities they represented.72
The intimate connection between inspiration and animation is highlighted especially strongly in the late antique ekphrases of particularly outstanding ancient sculptures by the Greek sophist and rhetorician Callistratus, active in the late third or fourth century.73 Praising the remarkable skills of their divinely inspired sculptors, Callistratus describes these statues as utterly alive, as moving, breathing, and speaking. The fourteen ekphrases are the only known works of this author, and it is difficult to assess to what extent Byzantine intellectuals were familiar with them. What is clear, however, is that texts like these were particularly formative for notions of inspired and “living” Christian icons that emerged in the centuries after Iconoclasm, a phenomenon that has been much neglected in scholarship.74 Views about inspirited works of art parallel the notion of Christianity’s Holy Scriptures as being imbued with life due to the lasting presence of the divine pneuma in them. The idea of inspired, “living,” statues responded to the disparagement in the ancient world of works of the visual, particularly plastic, arts, due to their having been fashioned by human hands out of inanimate materials. The fear of idolatry expressed in the Old Testament is intimately tied to this negative assessment of material artifacts. Psalm 113:12–16 aptly illustrates the anxieties present in Jewish culture concerning “dead” art and its negative effect on those exposed to its products – idols: The idols of the nations are silver and gold, works of human hands. A mouth they have and will not speak; eyes they have and will not see. Ears they have and will not hear; nostrils they have and will not smell. Hands they have and will not feel; feet they have and will not walk about; they will not articulate in their throats. May those who make them become like them, and all who trust in them!
The lifelessness of man made artifacts was also problematized in early Christian literature, especially disdainfully by Clement of Alexandria, who called even the most talented sculptors of classical Greece “stupid fashioners ... of stones”; only the “the Creator of the universe” is capable of creating living beings, a point that is, for instance, also made in Jeremiah 10:12–16. 75 Confirming the inferior status of man made artifacts, the Old Testament narrative about the building of the Tabernacle and its contents in the Book of Exodus (25–27) relates that God conveyed to Moses the “pattern” (παράδειγμα) of the tent and its furnishings along with detailed descriptions – and, just as with the stone tablets of the law, God’s instructions were delivered to the prophet on the mountain (Exod 25:9). Those who were to fashion the priestly vestments were singled out specifically and “filled with the spirit of perception” (Exod 28:3). To design the tent, God appointed as chief architect and craftsman Beseleel (Bezalel), about whom God explained: “I have filled him with a divine spirit of skill and intelligence and knowledge in every work, to be designing and to construct” (Exod 31:3–4).76 Beseleel was joined by other selected craftsmen, whom God gave “intelligence” (Exod 31:6). It is thus more specifically divine knowledge, skill, and intelligence that Yahweh inspired into the artisans involved in the Tabernacle project, who might otherwise have remained “stupid, without knowledge,” as Jeremiah characterized human artisans in general (Jer 10:14). God also conveyed to Moses the form, i.e., design, of the Tabernacle’s most sacred furnishings. The “pattern” God showed to Moses of the Menorah is singled out specifically in the Book of Exodus (Exod 25:31–40, esp. 40).77 According to the Babylonian Talmud, God visualizes for Moses by means of fiery forms the design of three outstanding artifacts altogether so that they may be imitated accordingly – the Menorah, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Table: It is taught in a baraita: Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Yehuda, says: An Ark of fire and a Table of fire and a Candelabrum of fire descended from the Heavens, and Moses saw their format and fashioned the vessels for the Tabernacle in their likeness. As it is stated after the command to fashion these items: “And see that you make them after their pattern, which is being shown to you in the mount” (Exod 25:40).78 It is interesting that the letters and words of the laws engraved by God in the stone tablets are imagined in similar fashion in Rabbinic literature, being likewise visible to humans as flames, an idea that influenced Byzantine legends about divinely made icons of Christ.79 Claims that the idea to build sanctuaries was divinely inspired or that their construction plans originated in heaven are articulated in different cultural contexts of antiquity. For example, several temples erected under King Ptolemy X of Egypt were believed to have been built according to a plan contained in a book that had fallen down from heaven.80 According to an inscription from the second century BCE, divine epipnoia led the people of Magnesia on the Maeander to rebuild the Temple of Artemis.81 To cite an example from the Christian context, according to Eusebius, Constantine the Great was divinely inspired to excavate Christ’s tomb in Jerusalem, demolish a pagan temple standing on top of it, and construct in its place the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.82
In this latter case, the argument of divine inspiration clearly serves to underscore the legitimacy of the emerging religion and its superiority over paganism (indeed, his biographer believed Constantine’s adoption of the Christian faith resulted from divine inspiration as well).83 Similar to the div inely made patterns of the Temple implements that Moses saw in the sky, Constantine was shown in a heavenly vision the design of his famous military standard, the labarum, associated by Eusebius and others with the triumph of Christianity over paganism.84 In the tenth century, Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus tells us that not only were the imperial robes and diadems of his great namesake Constantine I handed to him (Constantine I) by an angel, they “were not fashioned by men, nor by human arts devised or elaborated.” In Constantine VII’s days these divinely crafted insignia were still preserved in the Hagia Sophia among the empire’s inalienable property.85 The idea of divine craftsmanship is encountered in other texts from the Middle Byzantine period. For instance, in ninth century Constantinople the Patriarch Photius praises the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos, whose beauty surpasses man made churches: “On beholding it you might say that it is not the work of human hands, but that a divine power superior to ours has formed its beauty.”86 The trope of divine intervention in outstanding projects of archi tecture is in fact encountered earlier in Byzantium and was inspired by ancient models, especially the Old Testament Tabernacle. Procopius famously remarked that the Hagia Sophia is not a work of “any human power or skill,” but its splendor rather results from God’s decisive influence (ῥοπή).87 In a hymn composed by Paul the Silentiary for the church’s dedication ceremony in 562, the building is likened to the Tabernacle, and Emperor Justinian is presented as the new Beseleel.88 According to the Narrative on the Construction of Hagia Sophia, an undated account that forms part of the Patria compiled in tenth century Constantinople, an angel of the Lord provided the plan of the church to Justinian in a dream.89 Divinely crafted artifacts are relatively frequently encountered in ancient Greek and Roman myths. Statues called diopetes (διοπετής – “that fell from Zeus”) were believed to have fallen from heaven, similar to books and other written documents.90 These statues were equipped with the divine power of protection, the palladium of Troy, i.e., the statue of Pallas Athena, being the most prominent example.91 In Byzantium, ancient legends about diopetes statues inspired narratives about divine craftsmanship manifesting itself in the so called acheiropoietoi icons – i.e., icons “not made by a (human) hand.” Byzantium’s acheiropoieta share the protective power of the ancient diopetes statues, and the most prominent one, the Mandylion, was the palladium of Edessa in Mesopotamia before assuming the same role in Constantinople. However, as we will see, Byzantium’s acheiropoieta depart in significant ways from their pagan predecessors.92
While their legends draw rather heavily on those of the diopetes statues of ancient Greece, the adjective acheiropoietos used in Byzantine sources points to a second, more relevant source of inspiration: acheiropoietos (as opposed to cheiropoietos) is used in the New Testament to reference the heavenly kingdom Christians hope to attain. Acts 7:48 clarifies that God the creator does not “dwell in houses made with human hands (χειροποιήτοις),” and other passages in the Bible use similar metaphors to reference Christ incarnate and his work of salvation as “not made with human hands,” alluding to the heavenly “temple” or kingdom.93 In the New Testament, the term acheiropoietos thus references the idea of the spiritual “temple,” a concretization of the promise of salvation and eternal life. As the last two chapters of the book will argue, the acheiropoieta must likewise be understood metaphorically: instead of being visual portraits of Christ (as has hitherto been taken for granted), they were in medieval Byzantium understood as relics embodying Christ, as well as signifiers of the new Christian Covenant and the promises it makes.94 Along with the legends and rites attached to them, these objects served to advance claims to truth and religious superiority, just like inspired or divinely written texts.
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