Download PDF | Wisdom's House, Heaven's Gate: Athens and Jerusalem in the Middle Ages, By Teresa Shawcross , Palgrave Macmillan 2024.
505 Pages
Preface
Imagine a Mediterranean at the dawn of the eleventh century divided between two rival superpowers. One was the Christian Empire— Byzantium—of Basil II, the greatest ruler of the Macedonian dynasty and the other, the Islamic Caliphate of al-Hakim, the greatest ruler of the Fatimid dynasty. Through taxation, these states had at their disposal the vast resources of their territories’ agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and local commerce. They also profted from control of the fow of goods along the networks of long-distance trade that made up the overland and maritime Silk Routes. This book is the story of what the subjects of these superpowers thought—or, rather, of what they were told they ought to think by those who claimed to be their teachers and rulers. It is the story of how particular systems of knowledge and belief came into being. I trace the formation of two intertwined, highly generative versions of Abrahamic monotheism. These are Chalcedonian Orthodox Christianity and Ismaʿili Shiʿi Islam.
Engaged in constant contact and exchange with those on the other side of the border, the proponents of each religious doctrine and rite saw in their enemies a distorting mirror in which they could discern their own truths. Integral to their projects were the claims they advanced over not only the traditional legacies but also the ritual and symbolic landscape of a pair of cities that had long boasted names to conjure with, both within the Mediterranean and beyond: Athens and Jerusalem. Beginning in the Caliphate and provoking a response in the Empire, a revival occurred of Classicism—specifcally of Hellenism—that contributed to the transformation of religion by the seemingly incompatible but nonetheless combined forces of intellectualism and mysticism. Training in philosophical wisdom provided access to another, heavenly world. The selective adaptation and compilation of material from existing works of Neoplatonic thought—together with the composition of new writings—allowed the resources of a carefully curated metaphysical speculation to be combined with dogmatic theology in order to promote the ambitions of competing elites. Statesmen and teachers such as Abu Yaʿqub al-Sijistani and Michael Psellos created the frameworks that sought to render the power exercised by the regimes they served not merely legitimate, but also attractive. For, in the Middle Ages, ideas still mattered. Indeed, they were vital concerns.
They fed a wider cultural fermentation traceable not only in the pages of scholarly manuscripts whose perusal was reserved for a literate minority, but also in public architecture and art. Offcial construction projects coupled with demographic shifts profoundly reshaped—even in regions geographically remote from the confict zone—the environment in which all classes of society participated in organised worship: performing their devotions in order to join the rank of those who had been fully initiated and received the gift of illumination. When analysing the political and religious ideology of Constantinople and Cairo, we have tended hitherto to focus on the hostility these regimes shared for Baghdad, rather than on the rivalry between them. The received opinion has been that the relationship of the Macedonians and Fatimids was generally an amicable one. But the existence of a series of peace treaties between the two dynasties cannot disguise a fundamental incompatibility of territorial and economic interests.
This does not mean that such incompatibility should be equated with a grand civilizational struggle between Christianity and Islam. Continuity with conficts between the Heraclians and the Umayyads or the Isaurians and the Abbasids—often waged primarily by the satellite powers of each—may have been asserted by specifc tenth- or eleventh-century writers eager to analyse and explain current affairs. However, actual policies can be shown to have changed considerably not only from reign to reign, but also within individual reigns. Constant manoeuvring by rulers, as well as by their courtiers and their subjects, manifested itself in escalations and de-escalations of various types. A more nuanced picture thus begins to emerge from a careful reconsideration of the sources. This revisionist work is being initiated by a new generation of scholars.
The study contained here does not pretend to be defnitive or even comprehensive. It aims simply to advance an argument—and to inspire further discussion. In tentatively formulating an outline for an alternative historical narrative, I have preferred, instead of offering a running commentary that would draw attention to points of disagreement and offer a critique, to acknowledge rather in my footnotes our very considerable dependence on the advances made by earlier researchers. This recommended itself as the approach that was not only the most straightforward, but also the most likely to achieve an exposition that would be as accessible as possible to readers. As is always the case when one undertakes to step outside the protection of a specifc discipline or specialism, I have needed a scholarly community with vision and forbearance. I count myself fortunate in that regard. My book would not exist without the award of a New Directions Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation.
It was facilitated by two fellowships at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens—as well as by shorter residencies at Harvard Divinity School, the School of Middle-Eastern Studies at Leiden University, the Department of Asian and North-African Studies at Ca’ Foscari-University of Venice, and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.
It owes a particular debt to the undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and interested members of the wider public who at various times have attended my seminars. Encouragement and support were provided by: Ellen Alvord, Colin Austin, Chris Benfey, Chris van den Berg, Brendan Burke, Rhea Cabin, John Camp, Fred Cheyette, Ioanna Christoforaki, Ioanna Damanaki, Martin and Claire Daunton, Melinda Duer, Sylvie Dumont, Aspasia Efstathiou, Joseph Ellis and Ellen Wilkins-Ellis, Tara Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Key Fowden, Maria Georgopoulou, Geoffrey and Joan Greatrex, Louise Haywood, Catherine Holmes, Tariq Jaffer, Elizabeth Jeffreys, Anthony Kaldellis, Marie Kelleher, Hugh Kennedy, Manolis Korres, Dimitris Krallis, Michael Maas, Fred McGinness, Maria Mavroudi, Peter Meyers, James Montgomery, Barbara Nagel and Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz, Jenifer Neils, Leonora Neville, Pamela Patton, Anna Pianalto, Jamie Reuland, Ian Ryan, Teo Ruiz, Peter Sarris, Martha Saxton and Enrico Ferorelli, Lenia and Derek Shawcross, Jonathan Shepard, Irini Solomonidi, Alan Stahl, Tasos Tanoulas, and Wendy Watson and John Varriano. I am especially beholden to Nikolas Churik, Jeremy Farrell, Greg Fisher, David Gyllenhaal, Luke Madson, Lucas McMahon, and Jean-Marcel Rax for their assistance with technical matters.
The project has had to contend with the transformation of publishing by the outsourcing and automation of tasks such as copy-editing, typesetting and printing that used once to be the responsibility of staff based in house. Recent months have seen an ever greater reliance by publishers on so-called artifcial intelligence. I wish to thank the press’s employees and subcontractors for having striven to fnd solutions for the problems arising out of the limitations of a technology that, while promising, is still in its infancy and struggles to handle multilingual texts. I dedicate this book to my siblings—in gratitude for the many hours we have spent together in play as children and in discussion as adults. They will understand me when I reach for the words of the poet in order to explain what spurred me on to write the pages that follow: “Ἔρως […] τῶν πάλαι θρυλουμένων / ἔγραψε ταῦτα …” 2022, Feast of St Dionysius the Areopagite, location undisclosed
Teresa Shawcross
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