Download PDF | (New Approaches To Byzantine History And Culture) Francesca Dell’Acqua, Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi - Pseudo-Dionysius And Christian Visual Culture, c.500–900-Palgrave Macmillan (2020).
351 Pages
New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture publishes high-quality scholarship on all aspects of Byzantine culture and society from the fourth to the ffteenth centuries, presenting fresh approaches to key aspects of Byzantine civilization and new studies of unexplored topics to a broad academic audience. The series is a venue for both methodologically innovative work and ground-breaking studies on new topics, seeking to engage medievalists beyond the narrow confnes of Byzantine studies. The core of the series is original scholarly monographs on various aspects of Byzantine culture or society, with a particular focus on books that foster the interdisciplinarity and methodological sophistication of Byzantine studies. The series editors are interested in works that combine textual and material sources, that make exemplary use of advanced methods for the analysis of those sources, and that bring theoretical practices of other felds, such as gender theory, subaltern studies, religious studies theory, anthropology, etc. to the study of Byzantine culture and society.
Introduction
The name Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is recurrent in discussions of late antique and medieval art and aesthetics of the eastern and western Mediterranean. Believed for a long time to be a disciple of Saint Paul, but in truth engineered to appear as such in the early sixth century, the author of the Corpus Dionysiacum developed a number of themes which have a predominant visual–spatial dimension and thus expressed a strong tendency towards ‘visual thinking’ or thinking through images. Included in these themes are topics such as the metaphysics of light, angelic hierarchies, symbolic theology, liturgical rites and their performing space; but there are also visual and artistic metaphors such as ‘luminous darkness’, ‘divine painter’, ‘divine statues’, as well as geometrical metaphors for the movements of angels, souls, and so on. Commentators from different cultural backgrounds and of various Christian traditions, such as the Byzantines and the Latins, the Syrians and the Georgians, the Armenians, and the Arabs, concerned themselves for more than a millennium with the Corpus Dionysiacum, adopting its vocabulary and applying it to their respective needs. Its language and concepts were immensely infuential over the centuries, not only in the realm of theology and ecclesiastical matters. Scholars posited that visual artists and architects ‘translated’ images suggested by the Corpus Dionysiacum into fgural and spatial representations.
As a result, the bearing of Dionysian thought on Byzantine and western art has become a scholarly subject. However, while the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius is demonstrable in the case of textual commentaries by looking at specifc concepts and terminology, it is less so in other felds such as visual arts. An example of this, is the well-known and long-standing controversy surrounding Erwin Panofsky’s thesis that Pseudo-Dionysius’ metaphysics of light greatly infuenced the birth of Gothic architecture.1 What needs to be acknowledged is a growing interest in Byzantine Studies about the eventual Dionysian inspiration for mosaics, icons, and buildings.2 This volume does not intend to cover fully or systematically the wider question of Pseudo-Dionysius’ impact on Christian visual culture. Rather, it invites readers to consider how profound the interaction of the Corpus Dionysiacum has been with many aspects of Byzantine and western cultures, including ecclesiastical and lay power, politics, religion, and the arts in the period of its development, and how long-lasting its impact has been on the visual thinking and fgural art-making of Mediterranean Christianity.
The need to reconsider Pseudo-Dionysius’ infuence during this period arose during conversations between the current editors and other scholars. A workshop convened in April 2014 by Francesca Dell’Acqua at the SISMEL–Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino in Florence under the aegis of its president, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, and its director, Francesco Santi, allowed a group of scholars from different disciplines to discuss the dissemination and reception of Pseudo-Dionysius’ ideas in the East and West between the sixth and the ninth centuries. These scholars were Alexander Alexakis, Marianna Cerno, Réka Forrai, Diego Ianiro, Ernesto S. Mainoldi, Pietro Podolak, and Paravicini Bagliani. The idea for this book emerged in 2015, when some of its future contributors were participating in sessions on Pseudo-Dionysius and the Arts (‘The Visual Rhetoric of Hierarchy’, and ‘Pseudo-Dionysius and the Images’) organised by Francesca Dell’Acqua and Ernesto S. Mainoldi at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds. These sessions were generously sponsored by the ICMA–International Center for Medieval Art, The Cloisters, MET, NYC, directed then by Nancy Patterson Ševčenko.
At Leeds, we were approached by Leonora Neville. Intrigued by our presentations, she suggested we should propose a book on Pseudo-Dionysius and the arts to Palgrave–Macmillan for the newly launched series, New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture, edited by herself, Florin Curta, and Shaun Tougher. Now, a few years later, we have coordinated the efforts of scholars from different felds, having in common the desire to explore the signifcance of the Pseudo-Dionysius in the culture of Byzantium and the western Mediterranean between the sixth and the ninth centuries. We need to thank Katherine Marsengill and Evgenios Iverites for generously helping in the language revision of those chapters authored by non-native English speakers.
The original question we posed to our contributors was as follows: Given the vast resonance they immediately gained and enjoyed for long, how did the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius refect and shape the imagination and the perception of the world and of the heavenly orders during its own time and in later centuries? We emphasised that the importance the Corpus had for thinking about the divine in visual and spatial terms should not be overshadowed by Pseudo-Dionysius’ tendency towards apophatism, that is, the belief that God cannot be known and therefore cannot be described, nor by his propensity for logical–philosophical reasoning. Indeed, Pseudo-Dionysius was also very visual in his evocation of the heavenly and world orders, of their members and their mutual interactions. Proof of this lies in the importance Pseudo-Dionysius gained in the discourse of the iconophiles, those supporting the production and cult of sacred images during the Byzantine Iconoclasm or controversy over sacred images (c.726–843).3 However, Pseudo-Dionysius did not advocate for the veneration of images, since he considered them simply functional aids to uplift the mind to the divine.4 Still, as Andrew Louth has noted, ‘his [Dionysius’] works contain not just a metaphysic that relies at every point on the notion of the image, but also evidence (that would have then been taken for evidence of apostolic usage) for the use of images in Christian worship’.5
In other words, the image—be it mental, verbal, or fgural—has a frm place in the Dionysian discourse. Yet the place of images in the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius’ work needs to be clarifed, especially between the sixth and the ninth centuries, when the signifcance of the visual in Christianity was questioned. This is a period in which, in the words of Averil Cameron, ‘Classical Antiquity fnally did become Byzantium’, and when images began to ‘form part of the intellectual framework round which we can see Byzantium reorientating itself’ in search of new authorities.6 In this context, the carefully planned creation of the pseudo-apostolic authority of Dionysius early in the sixth century, when imperial rulership was particularly anxious to establish auctoritas in other aspects of the world order, seems to ft perfectly. At this point we should clarify that, according to the use commonly adopted in Dionysian studies, the contributors to this volume refer to the sixth-century author of the Corpus Dionysiacum both as Dionysius the Areopagite or Pseudo-Dionysius. References to the historical fgure of Dionysius the Areopagite mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as the Athenian disciple of St Paul, will be clearly disambiguated.
Outline of the Book
The following chapters are all concerned with images in one way or another. They explore how ideas and mental images in the Corpus Dionysiacum refected earlier philosophical approaches while also sowing the seeds for thinking about the heavenly and terrestrial realms through images. This book does not aim to promote the idea that Pseudo-Dionysian thought was literally expounded in fgural imagery, but rather that his thought informed the mentality that produced specifc fgural imagery or its layout. However, we should frst draw attention to the historiographical approach followed in this volume, which the authors, from different backgrounds and disciplines, came to adopt independently. Pseudo-Dionysius is here regarded as a reliable follower of the Church Fathers and himself as Church Father fully encompassed in the historical development of late antique Christian thought.
By contrast, the most common view of Dionysius assumes his dependence upon the last Neoplatonists and sees him as a crypto-pagan author committed to preserving the lessons of the School of Athens, which was threatened by the advance of Christianity. This view neglects other aspects that tie his writings to the Christian theological, liturgical, and ascetic traditions. Even in recent, there is a certain reticence to acknowledge the essential contribution offered by Pseudo-Dionysius to the developments of Patristic and early Byzantine thought. Challenged by the need to reposition this author in his historical and most suitable theoretical framework rather than maintaining his place as a Platonic–Christian chimera, the contributors to this volume highlight his originality in late antique Christian thought and in the development of visual thinking between roughly 500–900. The close acquaintance Pseudo-Dionysius had with Neoplatonic philosophical culture is not seen here as impinging on his identity as a genuine Christian thinker, nor on his rightful place in the Patristic and Byzantine tradition of thought.
Chapters 1, 2, and 4 remark upon how ecclesiastical and liturgical concepts as described by PseudoDionysius are essential to understanding the development of visual thinking in Christian mentality during these centuries. Chapters 3 and 4 see Pseudo-Dionysius as an essential link between pillars of Christian thought such as the Cappadocian Fathers in the fourth century and Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus between the seventh and the eighth centuries.7 Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the spiritual–ascetic perspective of the Corpus Dionysiacum, which constitutes one of its major features, both explicitly and implicitly. Again, Chapter 4 with Chapter 7 argue that Pseudo-Dionysius was an author frmly rooted in the spiritual tradition of Byzantine homiletic, having been assimilated into Byzantine theology and spirituality. This explains why his writings also held a central position in the debate on images between the eighth and the ninth centuries, as noted in Chapters 3, 8, and 9. However, such an historiographical perspective on Pseudo-Dionysius as being frmly part of the Christian tradition does not prevent a close examination of his Greek philosophical sources, as can be found in Chapters 1 and 2.
On a general level, we should also note that one of the most relevant topics in the theoretical framework of this volume is ‘hierarchy’, a term which was coined by Pseudo-Dionysius himself. The Dionysian system of hierarchies—celestial and ecclesiastical—entails an implicit rhetoric of spatiality. This challenged our contributors to examine the deeper implications of hierarchy in explaining its importance for understanding Pseudo-Dionysius’ unique contribution to the visual imaginary of Byzantine and medieval art. The system of hierarchies, in its ecclesial dimension and its connection to the theme of deifcation (which is the ultimate goal of both celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies), is appropriately framed by Chapters 4 and 6. The image of the hierarchical order is also considered as a source of inspiration for fgurative artworks in Chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9, as well as highlighted in Chapter 7, which analyses the ‘visual thinking’ suggested by Andrew of Crete in his homilies. We should now describe the contents of the volume in an orderly fashion. In Chapter 1, Ernesto S. Mainoldi reconstructs the historical and doctrinal rationale behind Pseudo-Dionysius’ image and symbol theory, paving the ground to the following chapters. Mainoldi conceives of Pseudo-Dionysius as a link between early Patristic and Byzantine thought and believes he used the terminology and concepts of late Neoplatonism in order to criticise its theoretical model. Mainoldi also expounds upon concepts and terms relating to the sphere of visual thinking that occupy a central position within the theory of knowledge and the mystical–sacramental vision of Pseudo-Dionysius. Firstly, Mainoldi frames them within the ‘Dionysian system’.
Then, he focuses on the original objectives of Corpus Dionysiacum in order to shed light on Dionysius’ interaction with the on-going theological and ecclesiological debate. He also takes a look at the sources and the historical context in which the Corpus was composed. Finally, the chapter emphasises how Pseudo-Dionysius contributed to the defnition of a new paradigm of thought with regards to the status of the image. This defnition played a decisive role in the formation and the development of Byzantine visual thinking. PseudoDionysius essentially stimulated his audience to conceive theology through images—an approach that we address here as eikonic thought. By this expression, we intend to encompass something greater than mere visual thinking. In fact, the concept of eikon according to PseudoDionysius and to the tradition to which he referred, is rooted in the ideas of the creation of man and the Incarnation of the Word of God. In Chapter 2, Angelo Tavolaro deepens the analysis of aesthetic themes in the Corpus Dionysiacum. In the Celestial Hierarchy and in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Pseudo-Dionysius uses ‘images’ as theological instruments. In particular, he presents two kinds of images: biblical images which are dissimilar to their prototype, and liturgical symbols which are similar to the prototype.
Tavolaro suggests that the PseudoDionysian distinctions between images and symbols and similarity and dissimilarity are mainly inherited from Proclus’Commentary on Plato’s Republic. In fact, the terms and categories used by by Proclus to distinguish poetic genres are also employed by Pseudo-Dionysius, but given other meanings, in order to describe the specifc features of both liturgical symbols and biblical images. One of the elements through which PseudoDionysius’ reliance on Proclus can be demonstrated is the suggestive metaphor of the bishop as the ‘divine painter’ who operates through liturgy. In Chapter 3, Filip Ivanović explores the places material things and senses have in Pseudo-Dionysius, starting from the latter’s claim that divine attributes ‘can be fashioned from material things to symbolise what is intelligible and intellectual’. God’s own majesty is intermingled in sensible things, which thus serve as vehicles for the human mind to ascend to God. Such arguments constitute the core of Pseudo-Dionysius’ ecclesiological doctrine, which relies on the notion that the ecclesiastical hierarchy is the image of the celestial one, and proceeds by interpreting different sensible aspects of sacraments which manifest appearances of beauty, such as odours or light. This chapter also describes PseudoDionysius’ aesthetic soteriology, or doctrine of salvation. Accordingly, Pseudo-Dionysius’ soteriology centres around deifcation and union with God and cannot be completed without the aid of sensible things. Ultimately, this chapter offers insights into Pseudo-Dionysius’ infuence on the doctrine of icons that was laid out during the iconoclastic controversy in the eighth and ninth centuries. In Chapter 4, Evgenios Iverites investigates the ecclesiastical hierarchy as outlined in the Corpus Dionysiacum, which subordinates monks to bishops and other clergy while assuming holiness as the norm for the latter.
However, this position contrasted with contemporary widespread views. Pseudo-Dionysius’ teaching on this matter is therefore examined in itself and through its reception by three early Byzantine readers of his Corpus—John of Scythopolis, Antiochus of Mar Saba, and Maximus the Confessor. Aware of tensions between monastic and episcopal authority, these writers formulated ascetic models for clergy and developed canonical norms for ecclesiastical governance. This chapter also suggests the importance, in this process of refection, of the use of images, both fgural and literary, as symbols that articulate synthesis without obviating tensions. Chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9 investigate how the iconic thought inspired by Pseudo-Dionysius eventually infuenced the production of artworks. These chapters not only highlight Dionysian motifs in specifc artworks, but also pinpoint the theoretical frame that his thought offered to the conception of sacred art in the Mediterranean region up to the ninth century. Among the various facets to this conception of art, as they recur through the chapters, we should note the intended ‘theophanic’ purpose of artworks, that is their capacity to manifest the divine while operating an uplifting effect on the beholders, thus bring about their spiritual elevation. In particular, Chapter 5 by Katherine Marsengill explores how the late antique perception of a vertical arrangement of supernatural and intercessory powers became incorporated into Christian mentality by the sixth century. This arrangement apparently facilitated spiritual ascent because it functioned as a means for divine revelation and mediation. Pseudo-Dionysius articulated this Christian mindset, not just in terms of mysticism, but in the more practical visualisation of mediation. Marsengill maintains that portraits of holy men incorporated into visual programmes from the sixth century onward demonstrate the admittance of members into a hierarchy that extended beyond the most elevated saints to include other, more familiar fgures in local communities. In Chapter 6, Vladimir Ivanovici discusses the relationship between the architecture and decoration of churches built during the reign of Emperor Justinian (527–65), liturgical performances, and the PseudoDionysian idea of the theophanic potential of matter. According to Pseudo-Dionysius, liturgical performances functioned as genuine revelations, at least for the less educated members of their audiences. Ivanovici stresses on the one hand the existence of an under-explored perceptual dimension of the mise en scène of liturgical performances, and on the other their interaction with hierarchically organised space and decoration in churches built under Justinian. Through an array of artifces embedded in church architecture, decoration, and ritual performance, the faithful could imagine entering heaven and encountering angelic orders.
This strategy was deployed to promote the sacraments as capable of collapsing heaven and earth, as well as to assert the hierarchical organisation of Christian communities and the wider society. In Chapter 7, Mary B. Cunningham examines the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius’ ideas about images as refections of divine reality in the material world in the writings of the early eighth-century preacher, hymnographer, and archbishop, Andrew of Crete. Like Dionysius, Andrew understood the ‘visual’ metaphor as enabling Christians to ascend towards God, and therefore placed importance on ‘images’. This chapter also attempts to determine whether Andrew of Crete sympathised openly with the iconophile cause. In Chapter 8, Francesca Dell’Acqua maintains that Dionysius the Areopagite had a long-lasting impact on the way the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, that is, her transition to the afterlife, was imagined and represented in words and pictures in medieval Byzantium and in the West. In fact, a passage from Pseudo-Dionysius is believed by some to be the earliest authoritative account of Mary’s Dormition. Eighth-century homilists, particularly Andrew of Crete and John of Damascus, explicitly quote Dionysius among their sources for the Dormition and connect Mary’s Assumption into heaven to the belief that her womb had contained the uncontainable. Because the image of the Virgin Mary as ‘Wider than the Heavens’ (Platytéra) seems also to be alluded to by Pseudo-Dionysius, and its earliest known fgural developments coincide in dating with the Corpus Dionysiacum, this chapter also suggests that the fgural illustration of the Platytéra seems to refect Pseudo-Dionysian thought. In Chapter 9, Natalia B. Teteriatnikov examines the hierarchical system of decoration in churches which were built or refurbished after Iconoclasm.
The role played by Pseudo-Dionysian thought in ecclesiastical decoration of this period has been previously overlooked, probably because little is known about the perception of PseudoDionysius and his writings in ninth-century Byzantium. A specifc interest in his writings emerged during Iconoclasm, when both iconoclasts and iconodules had recourse to them in their apology or rejection of sacred images. Teteriatnikov suggests that the veneration of Dionysius the Areopagite as a saint, which was promoted after Iconoclasm, also stimulated an interest in his works, inspiring new layouts in Byzantine church decoration. In fact, in the second half of the ninth century, when centrally planned domed churches became popular and image veneration was re-established, the concept of the hierarchical order of celestial and terrestrial beings seemed to be stated through new schemes of decoration.
Through a hierarchical order of images, churches could thus provide a link between heaven and earth, thereby mirroring the universe as conceived by Pseudo-Dionysius. In sum, our collection embraces religious studies, philosophy, theology, art and architectural history. We hope it fulfls the original scope of the series in which it appears, offering an interdisciplinary view of specifc questions about Byzantine culture and society to a broad academic and non-academic audience.
Four Oaks and Morimondo September 2018
Francesca Dell’Acqua Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi
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