Experiencing Byzantium

Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011

Claire Nesbitt, Mark Jackson, Claire Nesbitt, Mark Jackson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317137825
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

From the reception of imperial ekphraseis in Hagia Sophia to the sounds and smells of the back streets of Constantinople, the sensory perception of Byzantium is an area that lends itself perfectly to an investigation into the experience of the Byzantine world. The theme of experience embraces all aspects of Byzantine studies and the Experiencing Byzantium symposium brought together archaeologists, architects, art historians, historians, musicians and theologians in a common quest to step across the line that divides how we understand and experience the Byzantine world and how the Byzantines themselves perceived the sensual aspects of their empire and also their faith, spirituality, identity and the nature of 'being' in Byzantium. The papers in this volume derive from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held for the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies by the University of Newcastle and University of Durham, at Newcastle upon Tyne in April 2011. They are written by a group of international scholars who have crossed disciplinary boundaries to approach an understanding of experience in the Byzantine world. Experiencing Byzantium is volume 18 in the series published by Ashgate on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.

SECTION VI
Experiencing Stories

15. Experiencing the Byzantine Text, Experiencing the Byzantine Tent

Margaret Mullett

The editors of this volume cleverly left their contributors plenty of scope in which to address their concerns. Textual scholars can look at reception theory or reader-response criticism,1 art historians can address ‘the viewer’s part’ or phenomenology,2 we are urged to think about sensory perception,3 and to engage with the affective and emotive aspects of life in Byzantium.4 There is also scope for considering modern experience of life in Byzantium, just as valid as Byzantine experience.

Receiving the Text

It is easy enough to envisage how Byzantines encountered their literature. Sermons and hymns and readings from the scriptures and synaxaria they heard in church.5 Basilikoi logoi and ceremonial verse they heard in the palace.6 Progymnasmata they wrote and heard at school.7 Acclamations were heard and participated in at the hippodrome or on the streets.8 At home they might hear texts written for birthdays or deaths or weddings,9 and read privately (but probably aloud) from the scriptures, the fathers, or from the illustrated Metaphrastes.10 In theatra in private houses they might hear little plays or perhaps satiric verse, or sections of fictional works or previews of longer prose works.11 In monastic refectories they heard sections of saints’ lives, and monastic classics like the Ladder of John Klimakos, and perhaps there or in the abbot’s lodgings the wonderful stories of the gerontika and texts like the Athonite epistolary narrative the Diegesis merike.12 Inscriptions they read or performed as they walked the streets, walked around churches, stared at wall-paintings, or reflected on the content of books.13

It is harder to establish how they reacted to the experience of reading, or being read aloud to, or of performance. If we are to collect direct evidence for reception of Byzantine literature we need to go beyond the mapping of performance indicators,14 which in fact we still need to collect. But we can of course easily recall examples of Byzantine engagement with a Byzantine text. Here is the reception of a letter:

I thought that the season was already autumn and not spring. Where then did this nightingale of spring come from? Listening to the liquid notes I stand spellbound. Yet though the voice of this most beautiful bird is that of a nightingale, its form is of a swallow: its song is clear and melodious like the nightingale’s, but on its body two contrasting colours are wonderfully blended together like the swallow’s. Whether a nightingale or a swallow, this marvellous letter filled me with complete joy.15

This text involves all the senses: the feel of the parchment or of a book brought with it, the sound of the text as read aloud, the marks of ink on the page, ‘like rich purple embroidery on a shining and translucent material’, the scent of gifts like perfume or spices or stinking sheepskin or cabbage or of course fish.16

Equally familiar is the experience of the Russian ambassadors in the Russian Primary Chronicle:

Then we went on to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.17

In the twelfth-century images of the ascension in the Kokkinobaphos manuscripts, the dramatis personae, the heavenly beings, have stepped out of the frame and, along with the prophets, appear to experience on earth that beauty.18

On the streets we can see another outsider’s view of acclamation in imperial ceremony both in text and image. The image shows the stoning of Nikephoros Phokas in the Madrid Skylitzes through a probably colonia...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Editors’ Preface
• Section I: Experiencing Art
• Section II: Experiencing Faith
• Section III: Experiencing Landscape
• Section IV: Experiencing Ritual
• Section V: Experiencing Self
• Section VI: Experiencing Stories
• Index