The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition

Christopher Walter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351880510
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Christopher Walter's study of the cult and iconography of Byzantine warrior saints - George, Demetrius, the two Theodores, and dozens more - is at once encyclopaedic and interpretative, and the first comprehensive study of the subject. The author delineates their origins and development as a distinctive category of saint, showing that in its definitive form this coincides with the apogee of the Byzantine empire in the 10th-11th centuries. He establishes a repertory, particularly of their commemorations in synaxaries and their representations in art, and describes their iconographical types and the functions ascribed to them once enrolled in the celestial army: support for the terrestrial army in its offensive campaigns, and a new protective role when the Byzantine Empire passed to the defensive. The survey highlights the lack of historicity among the Byzantines in their approach to the lives of these saints and their terrestrial careers. An epilogue briefly treats the analogous traditions in the cultures of neighbouring peoples. Walter draws attention to the development of an echelon of military saints, notably in church decoration, which provides the surest basis for defining their specificity; also to the way in which they were depicted, generally young, handsome and robust, and frequently 'twinned' in pairs, so calling attention to the importance of camaraderie among soldiers. At the same time, this work opens a new perspective on the military history of the Byzantine Empire. Its ideology of war consistently followed that of the Israelites; protected and favoured by divine intervention, there was no occasion to discuss the morality of a 'just war'. Consequently, when considering Byzantine methods of warfare, due attention should be given to the important role which they attributed to celestial help in their military campaigns.

PART ONE
History and Antecedents

CHAPTER ONE

The Christian and Antique Background

Before examining the dossier of individual Byzantine warrior saints, it would be desirable to sketch in their cultural background. Notoriously, Byzantine culture was hybrid, incorporating elements from Old and New Testament tradition, from Antiquity and from other sources, which exercised an influence more particularly on the Eastern regions of the Empire and on Egypt. These latter sources can be treated later in passing, but it is necessary to insist at once upon the Byzantine debt to what is recorded in the Bible, commented and developed by the Fathers of the Church, and upon the heritage of Greek and Roman tradition.

The Old Testament

In the West the Old Testament was known primarily in the Latin Vulgate. Only since the Reformation has serious attention been given to the Hebrew text, while books which existed only in Greek were long set aside as apocryphal. Things were different in the East. There not only the books which had been translated from the Hebrew but also those known as deuterocanonical only existing in Greek were incorporated into the Septuagint.¹ These, supplemented by pseudepigrapha, have always been – and still are – accepted in Byzantine tradition. No doubt the Hebrew text is the more accurate source for the study of Israelite tradition, but failure to refer to the Greek text, of which Western scholars have sometimes been guilty, can lead to errors in interpreting Byzantine texts and imagery. Some possibly forgot that when the Old Testament was quoted in the New, it was invariably from the Septuagint in one of its versions. Here, references to the Old Testament will be made uniquely to the Septuagint.²

When early Christian Fathers and their Byzantine successors interpreted the text of the Septuagint, their method was generally typological. They sought out the prophetic types (

), whose full significance would only become apparent with the advent of Christ. This is particularly evident in their choice of illustrations for the marginal Psalters.³ However, their use of typology was not limited to Christ; it was extended to their capital, Constantinople, of which Jerusalem was the type. Allusions to the city as the New Sion are multiple and commonplace. It followed that the Israelite ethos of Jerusalem became the Byzantine ethos of Constantinople, and that, just as the Israelites were a people protected and favoured by the Lord of hosts, so were the Byzantines.

Moses transmitted to his people the Ten Commandments, of which the sixth was: Thou shalt not kill (

, Exodus 20:17). However, this prohibition was not extended to enemies. Not only was it interpreted by the lex talionis: ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ (Deuteronomy 19:21), but also the celestial emissaries of the Lord of hosts intervened to help the Israelites in war and to protect them from their enemies, perpetrating hecatombs on their behalf. All the first-born in the land of Egypt were smitten (Exodus 12:29); the Red Sea was held back so that the Israelites could pass, and then allowed to flow again in order to drown their pursuers: ‘Horse and rider he has thrown into the sea’ (Exodus 15:1). They were helped to occupy the Promised Land after the indigenous population had been expelled or exterminated, and, once established there, to defend their territory against hostile neighbours, notably the Philistines. This conduct may seem far from our contemporary ethos, according to which, at least in theory, the rights of indigenous people are respected; however, it was imitated by the Byzantines.

King David had a character with multiple facets. Author of the Psalms, man of prayer, ancestor of the Messiah, he was also an outstanding military hero, the slayer of Goliath and triumphant in battle. ‘Saul made havoc among thousands but David among tens of thousands’, sang the Israelite women to Saul’s disgruntlement after one of David’s victories (I Kings 18:7).⁴ David was an exemplar for Byzantine emperors to whom the sobriquet New David was frequently attributed.

The ethics of the bellicose Israelites were accepted more readily by the Byzantines, it seems, than the gentler teaching of Christ, who, even if he said that he had come not to bring peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34), nevertheless rejected the lex talionis in favour of turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:38–9) and of loving one’s enemies (Luke 6:27). Byzantine behaviour in war against neighbouring peoples, Persians, Arabs, and Slavs, latter-day Canaanites and Philistines, was modelled on Old rather than New Testament precedents. Examples will turn up in due course.

The Lord of hosts did not intervene directly in the life of the Israelites but rather through the intermediary of his celestial retinue, his angels, or, more exactly, his messengers. They have nothing in common with the winged figures, so familiar in Christian iconography, which were modelled on Antique angels of victory. In the Old Testament, they were presented differently, usually taking on human form. At Mambre Abraham’s visitors (one of whom may actually have been Jehovah himself) are described as three men (

) (Genesis 18:2); Lot was visited by two angels (

) (Genesis 19:1). Abraham was stayed from sacrificing Isaac by an angel of the Lord calling him out of heaven (

) (Genesis 22:11).

There are references (Job 1:6; 2:1) to the angels of God, called ‘his sons’ in Hebrew, assembling before the Lord, in order to receive his commands. Although the word ‘angel’ is not used specifically in the passage (III Kings 22:19), Mihaeas is said to have had a vision of the God of Israel sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven standing to his right and left (

) (III Kings 22: 19). However, their functions, benevolent for the Israelites except when they were punished for infidelity, were not always military. Angels with a proper name only emerge late, Raphael as the guide and companion of Tobias (Tobit 5:4–5) who appeared under the guise of a young man, Gabriel, who explained a prophetic vision to Daniel (Daniel 8:16–27), and Michael, described as one of the first princes (

), who intervened against the Persians (Daniel 10:13). The title

is first attested Joshua 5:15 and in the apocalypses.⁵

God communicated with the Israelites rather through his prophets than his angels, who, moreover, did not exercise the office of intercessors. The notion that members of the celestial court could intercede for men on earth only appeared with the Maccabees, together with that of survival after death and of accession to heaven by martyrdom. The four books of Maccabees were composed very late, the first probably in the second century BC in Hebrew. The second was composed before 63 BC, possibly earlier, partly in Aramaic but mainly in Greek, the third between 120 BC and AD 70 and the fourth between AD 35 and 100, both in Greek.⁶ This last book belongs rather to the genre of hagiography For our purposes the second is by far the most important as a source for the origins of the cult of martyrs in general, not only of warrior saints, even if the Maccabees, by reason of their struggle for the Law and the Temple, were themselves warrior saints avant la lettre.

The notions of the resurrection of the dead, implicit in Esaias 26:19 (

) and less so in Job 19:26 (

), is explicit in Daniel 12:2–3, but even more so in II Maccabees 7:9, where the second Macc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Plates
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One History and Antecedents
• Part Two The Byzantine Warrior Saints
• Part Three Conclusion
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index