Download PDF | Leslie Brubaker, John Haldon - Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca 680–850)_ The Sources_ An Annotated Survey (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies)-Routledge (2001).
392 Pages
Introduction
The present volume grew out of a joint venture of the authors, namely a survey history of the Byzantine state and society in the eighth and ninth centuries. In the opening stages of preparing this project it became apparent that any attempt to reassess the period through such a general survey would necessarily entail a presentation and discussion of the sources. The categories of written and non-written evidence for the history of the Byzantine world during the eighth and ninth centuries are numerous and diverse, however. Because of the problem of ninth-century iconophi Ie rewriting or suppression of older material, any attempt to get to grips with that history must face the problems of methodology and interpretation which accompany both the written and the non-written sources.
This volume is intended as a brief survey of this source material and a guide to the sorts of problems with which the historian will be confronted, and will need to resolve, in exploiting the information it can provide and in attempting the interpretation of such information in a historical context. We have tried to present, however cursorily, all the major categories of data, and where appropriate also a very brief introduction to the secondary literature to be consulted. In so doing, we have highlighted some of the major problems associated with a particular source or type of source, not in order to offer definitive answers, but merely in order to make the reader aware of the issues and to suggest approaches appropriate to their resolution.
We should like to stress this point at the outset: although we have presented an analysis of some types of source or individual texts and monuments, the material assembled is intended to assist researchers in locating key sources within each category, to provide them with brief notes on the nature ofthe source, to offer a brief overview of the category or categories to which it belongs, and a summary of associated methodological issues, supported by relevant recent or important secondary discussions. This volume is emphatically not an analysis of each sourcemany of which require a volume to themselves - but rather a guide to such analysis, which those engaged upon research in this period of Byzantine history will necessarily have to carry out.
The context within which these sources, of all categories, should be understood will be examined in greater detail in a second publication, dealing with the history of Byzantine state and society during the period of iconoclasm. The presentation of the sources has been arranged by theme or category of material, primarily to facilitate an overview of the types of material and the methodological issues each brings with it. Inevitably, this has certain disadvantages, in particular where individual authors are concerned, since although some wrote only single works, or works which all belong to a single category, many wrote several works belonging to several different categories. Thus the oeuvre of a particular writer will appear under several separate headings (such as 'Hagiography', 'Homiletic', 'Letters', for example), which may themselves overlap, as in the cases of hagiography and homiletic writing.
The disadvantages are obvious, in so far as this will obscure important issues - for example, of particular developmental trends, or of the authorship or interpolation of texts associated with a particular author - issues which are especially intractable for the period from the later sixth and seventh centuries through to the later ninth century, particularly in respect of what we may define very broadly as 'theological' literature. In spite of this, however, we do not believe the alternative would have been an improvement. Guided by our initial purpose, to produce a volume intended primarily as a work of reference, rather than an analysis of genres and literary cultural development, we believe that the structure adopted achieves this end more effectively than does the alternative. We have attempted briefly to highlight some of these other issues in the introductory paragraph to each section.
The period from the late seventh until the later ninth century witnessed the birth and formation of the characteristic features of middle Byzantine state and culture. The transformations which took place during the seventh century, and especially after the first Arab Islamic conquests, were accompanied by shifts in the direction of both secular and ecclesiastical literary culture. One of the most obvious developments was the drastic reduction in all types of secular literary production from the later years ofthe reign ofHeraclius until the last years of the eighth century, from historiography to verse, a change which was to a degree a result of the transformations in urban culture and in the structure and nature of elite society at this time. It was also a reflection of changed priorities and concerns, as subjects of the empire had to confront and make sense of a dramatically altered world.
Naturally enough, therefore, literature which grapples with theology and dogma, with issues of belief and the meaning oflife, indeed the purpose ofthe Roman empire itself, comes to the fore. It is important to realize that what is now referred to as the iconoclast controversy was part of this continuum, another facet of an ongoing quest for meaning and reaffirmation, and that while it also reflects changes in power-relations within society, altered perceptions of the imperial position, as well as more concrete transformations in social structure, state administration, and material culture, it is also, and essentially, about understanding the relationship between heaven and earth, how that relationship was conceived, how it was perceived and represented, and what the implications of misconstruing these issues were.
But the nature of the literary production of the first period of iconoclasm is very different from that which was generated by the period following the seventh ecumenical council in 787 and by the period of the second iconoclasm, from 815 until 842. This reflects several developments. First, the theology of images was in its infancy during the period up to the council of787: both sides were, so to speak, learning from one another's polemic, both in respect of how to manipulate texts and in terms of the development of their own theology. The issues which emerged from the council of 787 concerned not simply religious-theological matters, however. As the empire found itself in a more stable political, military, and economic situation towards the end of the century (largely due to the efforts of the emperor Constantine V), as a new social elite began to consolidate in both Constantinople and the provinces, and as the reasons for the adoption of iconoclasm by Leo III and its promotion by Constantine V began to be worked over, so Byzantines, especially the literate elite in Church and state, began also to look for meaning in the past and to search for connections between their own times and those of an earlier age, in particular, the 'golden age' of the emperor Justinian!.
As well as serving as weapons in the theological struggle, texts now became also weapons in an increasingly intense struggle to establish a firm cultural identity, in which the Roman past and a sense of historical development and purpose became important issues.2 It is no accident that the later patriarch Nikephoros appears to have been the first to produce a history which ran from the period of the reign of Heraclius to his own times (in spite of a lacuna for the reign of Constans II), nor that the greatest medieval Greek chronographical history, that of the monk Theophanes, appeared a few years later, based on many ofthe same sources. Theophanes drew on the work of George, a sygkellos at the patriarchal court during the patriarchate of Tarasios, who had collected a body of material from various sources, including Palestine, for his own Selection from Chronography (Ekloge chronographias). Nor is it an accident that the greatest period of medieval Greek hagiography coincides with this period, for hagiographical texts were not simply encomiastic and miracle-filled accounts of saints or martyrs for the faith (and, especially, to iconoclasm), but represented also a form of history writing through which the past, and orthodoxy, could be reappropriated for the new age.
Finally, it is worth noting that the appearance of minuscule writing - more compact than uncial script, written at greater speed and using more ligatures to connect or combine letters - also occurs at about this time (early evidence from Palestine and Constantinople from ca 800), a development which seems greatly to have influenced the rate of reproduction of older manuscripts on either parchment or papyrus, as well as the production of new texts, and possibly also the record-keeping systems of the imperial administration. All these factors are relevant to the production of texts of this period. 3 This process of reappropriation affected all forms of literary activity. Study of the texts which provide us with most of our information about the iconoclast controversy has begun to illustrate the extent to which anti-iconoclast theologians and others in the later eighth and ninth centuries rationalized the past in constructing their narratives of what happened.
This raises many problems about the extent to which texts were interpolated or tampered with, in particular texts which were used in these polemical conflicts to support one position or the other. The issue is complicated by the fact that many of the texts employed no longer survive in their original form, so that comparison with an original is impossible. It also raises issues of motivation and intention: it has been argued, for example, that iconophile writers in the later eighth and especially in the ninth century did not, on the whole, tamper with 'the facts', nor did they deliberately manipulate 'the truth'. Rather, the cultural effort of rethinking and re-appropriating the past coincided with the need to copy out, in order to preserve, many older texts which were beginning to decay; and since the copyists and commentators on these texts were, for the most part, working in a monastic context, and largely in Constantinople or its environs, the ideological context rendered it relatively easy for them to write their own common-sense assumptions about the past, as well as about the values and morality of their own culture, into the texts they copied out.
Thus if it was accepted that holy images had always been venerated in the form defined by the Seventh Ecumenical Council (and the sessions of the council went to great lengths to show that this was indeed the case), adding references to images in texts to make them 'make sense' in the light of such beliefs became straightforward. There is no need to assume that this happened to all texts, nor that it was necessarily all innocent. But it does mean that each text has to be examined on its own merits, put in a context of genre, authorship, and style, and conclusions drawn accordingly. It means that the history of the many key texts for the period is especially complicated. As well as the texts themselves, the economic and material context for their production is also important, a factor which impacts directly on how texts were employed. The degree of literacy in the Byzantine world at this period remains a matter for debate, but it was probably fairly limited, at least as far as a good knowledge ofthe classical language and literature of the ancient and Roman periods was concerned.
Functional literacy and numeracy was certainly more common, and indeed the imperial administration depended upon it to work properly.4 But education appears to have been limited to Constantinople, and possibly one or two of the few remaining major urban centres, where private tutors might school those from families who could afford to pay; and to monasteries, where biblical and patristic texts were the staple. In the provinces, literacy was very much more limited, and some rural clergy may not have had much more than a very basic ability. Only private teachers, who cannot have been very numerous at this period, would provide instruction in the traditional syllabus, including rhetoric, philosophy, and arithmetic, along with a knowledge and an understanding of ancient writers. But the Church frowned on the pre-Christian literature of the ancient world, which had a further dampening effect on interest as well as on its availability. Classical literature could be employed allegorically or formalistically, however, so that it retained a niche in the more explicitly and self-consciously Christian context of the fifth and sixth centuries onwards (a tendency which intensified during the seventh century).5
The number of those equipped with this sort of cultural capital must nevertheless have been quite small, a fact reflected in the surviving literature from the period in question which is, as noted, predominantly of a theological and religious character. 6 While we would agree that book-ownership in itself is not a conclusive indicator of literacy, the sources suggest that substantial libraries were relatively limited in number. Some monastic contexts, and perhaps also the patriarchate at Constantinople, could furnish a complete range of studies of Biblical and patristic literature as well as some elements of rhetoric (which was fundamental to the writings of many of the theologians and polemicists of the period up to the sixth century); and there existed a strong continuity of tradition in this respect through the seventh and into the eighth century, in the writings of such theologians as Maximos Confessor, for example, or Anastasios of Sinai. But only with the expansion in the traditional classical curriculum in higher education which took place after the middle of the ninth century, partly under imperial auspices, did this picture of restricted access and breadth of education change.
The association between the availability of different types of education, the cultural and political context which facilitated them, and the literary output ofthe period, has only recently become the focus of serious scholarly attention. 7 By the same token, since parchment was expensive, its conservation and reuse played an important role in the ways through which literary and theological texts were preserved. Further, few private individuals had more than a small number of books, and the patriarch Germanos himself notes (in a letter written probably after his abdication as patriarch in 730, and thus not from the physical setting of the patriarchate) that his arguments against iconoclast ideas suffered because he was unable to consult the necessary patristic texts. 8
The imperial household and palace appear to have had a library, as did the patriarchate, but their extent is unclear.9 Limited access to key texts meant that selections from authorities were collected to illustrate particular issues or arguments, so that the role of such compendia, known asflorilegia (see Part II below), becomes especially important during the iconoclast era. The reliability and trustworthiness of quotations of this sort was also a problem, however, and supporting evidence began to be demanded, already to a degree at the council of 680, but notably at the council of 787, to demonstrate the authenticity of texts used by the different sides in discussion. Many of the texts at the heart of the discussion over the nature ofthe iconoclast debate are problematic in these respects, and as proof of the genuineness of a text, the demand for appropriate patristic authority, and more sophisticated means of verifying texts mark the debates of the period, a further complicating dimension is added to the problems confronting the historian of the theological discussions ofthe period from the seventh century on.IO
A number of source handbooks have appeared in the last thirty or so years, some dealing with the whole Byzantine era from the fourth or fifth to the fifteenth century, others with specific periods within this time-frame, some with particular categories or genres, others with the whole range of sources. Of these, the two most comprehensive and useful in respect of both the written and several categories of non-written evidence are the Quellenkunde by Karayannopoulos and Weiss, and the Prolegomena to the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit, which deal respectively with the whole Byzantine period, on the one hand, and the years 641-867, on the other.ll We have not attempted simply to reproduce the infonnation these different compilations provide in this volume since, given their breadth and detail of coverage, this would be to produce an extremely long and very unwieldy volume. Rather, while also drawing upon the material they make available, we have produced an annotated survey of the sources for the period from ca 680 to ca 850, covering the last years of the seventh century and the immediate background to the development of imperial iconoclasm at Constantinople under Leo III, up to the restoration of orthodoxy shortly after the death ofthe emperor Theophilos in 842.
There are no English-language equivalents for the handbooks in question, although useful translations of short extracts from many texts relevant to the material culture of the period, as well as to the issues associated with iconoclasm, are included in Mango's collection The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453. But this is an isolated example. Untranslated extracts from many sources directly connected with iconoclasm are assembled in Hennephof's Textus Byzantinos ad iconomachiam pertinentes in usum academicum; while a detailed survey of the theological aspects of the iconoclast debate and the associated texts can be found in Thiimmel's Die Friihgeschichte der ostkirchlichen Bilderlehre. It seemed to us appropriate, therefore, and in view of the difficulties presented by the sources for this period, to produce something which would not only be of general value to scholars and students of the Byzantine world at this time, but which would more specifically address the needs of an English-language readership, and in particular, undergraduate students, those just commencing a programme of research, and those at a more advanced stage. As well as providing some guidance and bibliographical assistance for the Greek sources, however, we have also attempted to point to the most important sources in other languages.
For in addition to the considerable number of written sources in Greek, there are also a number of non-Greek sources, in particular those in Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Annenian, in the fonn of letters, theological and hagiographical collections, histories and chronicles or annalistic records, as well as geographies and works of a more literary character - historical poems, for example - which provide valuable corroborative or additional infonnation about the history of Byzantine society and politics and its relations with its neighbours during the eighth and ninth centuries. 12 Material culture has been treated in a similar manner, though we have been more restrictive here, beginning rather later, with the reign of Leo III, and ending rather earlier, with the patriarchate of Met hodi os. In part this was because there is so much material: had we begun in 680 rather than 717 and ended later in the ninth century, Part I would have doubled in length.13 But our most compelling justification for the decision to focus heavily on the years of iconoclasm was lead by the sources rather than by the pragmatics of publishing. Artisanal production was effected by iconoclasm to a greater extent - and sometimes more interestingly - than was text production. The years preceding 717 certainly impacted on the works made thereafter, and we have signalled that impact, but in fact the issues that arose during iconoclasm form a coherent context for a fairly self-contained body of material, and we have respected its autonomy. For the same reason, we have focused far more on the Byzantine heartland, the empire itself, in our dealings with material culture than in our dealings with the written sources, though work produced outside Byzantium is also considered where relevant. We have also emphasised artisanal production rather than archaeology. Although we have provided a general overview of the archaeological data, a rough guide to the material, the current state of knowledge about the eighth- and ninthcentury remains 'on the ground' is limited, incomplete, and in a state of continual revision. An entire study could (and should) be devoted to the issues raised - but this is not the place to write it.
The particular importance of the relationship between certain aspects of artisanal production and the phenomenon of iconoclasm persuaded us to open our study with a survey of material culture. The more 'traditional' arrangement, which places textual before material evidence, implicitly privileges the former, an imbalance that seemed to us singularly inappropriate to a consideration of iconoclasm. Finally, we would like to stress that, although we have tried to deal with all the many different categories of source materials, and indeed to provide information on each individual item within these categories, in some cases this would not be possible without unnecessarily extending the volume or providing long lists of documents and publications which can be reached just as easily by following up the bibliographical guidance offered. There seemed little value, for example, in attempting to produce a complete bibliography of all Byzantine inscriptions, or seals, since reference to the most recent works, which we have listed, will provide this information more readily. In addition, since further biographical details for most of the authors of the various works dealt with in this volume can readily be found alphabetically arranged by first name under the appropriate entries in the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire, and the Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit, the reader should refer in the first instance to these works for such information: references to the respective entries in these volumes are not included here.
In consequence, we make no claim to have been absolutely exhaustive in our coverage; indeed, there is such a vast range of secondary literature on so many of the sources and authors covered that to reproduce this bibliography alone would extend the present undertaking by more than half Wherever possible, therefore, we have given the most recent publications dealing with key themes, texts or persons, and in particular those that contain good surveys of the reference literature, which the reader should use to follow up specific issues. We hope that the editions oftexts, relevant literature, and bibliographies and catalogues of materials which we have included will provide the appropriate support for those already engaged in, or presently embarking upon, a study of the history of the Byzantine world in a period which was, without doubt, crucial to the evolution of Byzantine culture.
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