Images of the Byzantine World

Visions, Messages and Meanings: Studies presented to Leslie Brubaker

Angeliki Lymberopoulou, Angeliki Lymberopoulou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351928786
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'art médiéval

The main themes of this volume are the identification of 'visions', 'messages', and 'meanings' in various facets of Byzantine culture and the possible differences in the perception of these visions, messages and meanings as seen by their original audience and by modern scholars. The volume addresses the methodological question of how far interpretations should go - whether there is a tendency to read too much into too little or whether not enough attention is paid to apparent minutiae that may have been important in their historical context. As the essays span a wide chronological era, they also present a means of assessing the relative degrees of continuity and change in Byzantine visions, messages and meanings over time. Thus, as highlighted in the concluding section, the book discusses the validity of existing notions regarding the fluidity of Byzantine culture: when continuity was a matter of a rigid adherence to traditional values and when a manifestation of the ability to adapt old conventions to new circumstances, and it shows that in some respects, Byzantine cultural history may have been less fragmented than is usually assumed. Similarly, by reflecting not just on new interpretations, but also on the process of interpreting itself, the contributors demonstrate how research within Byzantine studies has evolved over the past thirty years from a set of narrowly defined individual disciplines into a broader exploration of interconnected cultural phenomena.

1

‘Seeing’s believing, but feeling’s the truth’: Touch and the Meaning of Byzantine Art¹

Liz James

One of the central issues with which Leslie Brubaker’s work engages is that of the Byzantines’ perception of art.² It is in that context, and building on her insights into visual perception and the meaning of art, that this paper sets out to explore the role of touch in the perception of Byzantine art. As such, it will look for trends within Byzantium; the picture is far more nuanced than might appear here, for this broad-brush approach inevitably condenses a changing society into an apparently static one.

Considering the sense of touch for an art historian seems almost counterproductive, especially as we are so often instructed not to touch in museums and galleries, lest we contaminate or damage the object. For Byzantine art historians, the everyday sense we are accustomed to dealing with in considering the Byzantine world is sight. We are concerned with the visual appearance of Byzantine art and its visual perception by its Byzantine audience. Even when considering the effects that pictures appear to have had on the Byzantines, we think in terms of how the sight of an image might trigger a response. At times, we consider hearing, especially in the Iconoclast period, when some of the debates seem to have been framed in terms of the efficacy and value of seeing against hearing. We might also, thanks to Béatrice Caseau and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, bring in smell as an element in perception, especially in the links between smell and memory.³ Bissera Pentcheva has stressed the significance of all five senses in the context of icons.⁴ But sight is the primary sense to which we return time and again. In part, this is also reasonable in terms of the Byzantines’ own attitudes to sight: the eighth-century Iconophile theologian John of Damascus said that ‘the first sense is sight’, noting that although ‘We use all our senses to produce worthy images of [God]’, ‘we sanctify the noblest of the senses which is sight’.⁵ This was echoed by the eighth-century patriarch, Nikephoros: ‘we all know that sight is the most honoured and necessary of the senses’.⁶

However, despite our emphasis on sight, evidence from Byzantium, both in the shape of material objects and in the form of written texts, suggests that the fundamental place of touch in our understanding of the Byzantine world has been overlooked. Touch is one of the crucial ways in which we apprehend the world; it is a fundamental medium for the expression, experience and contestation of social values and hierarchies.⁷ Very simply, objects were, by and large, made to be touched and so it is necessary to consider how they functioned not only as images but also as physical objects in the ‘real world’. Projecta’s casket in the British Museum is a case in point. It has been studied in terms of its iconography, what it says about fourth-century Christianity, what it might tell us about gender.⁸ Comments have been made about its perceived value.⁹ But the moment the casket is picked up, its status as an object becomes apparent. The first thing that the bearer is aware of is its weight, which is considerable; the second is how awkward it is to carry and how useless its handles actually are. In other words, holding Projecta’s casket offers a very different reading of it from simply seeing it.

Touch was a pervasive, but perhaps secondary, sense in Byzantium. Almost every Byzantine text contains accounts of touching. The Gospels, perhaps the most important texts in Byzantine ideology, are full of stories of people who touched or were touched by Christ, culminating in Mary Magdalene who was told not to touch (John 20:17) and doubting Thomas who wanted to place his hand in Christ’s wounds to be assured that Christ had risen (John 20: 24–9) Hagiography details a myriad of saints who performed miracles through touch. Saint Artemios, the patron saint of male genital injuries, would appear in visions to the afflicted and heal them through painfully squeezing, trampling or lancing their diseased testicles.¹⁰ Symeon the Stylite (c.389–459) was touched by Antonios to discover whether he was dead; Daniel the Stylite (409–93) was physically defrosted by his followers; Theodore of Sykeon (d. 613) averted a plague of locusts by holding three in his hand and praying over them until they died.¹¹ Ascetic saints used touch in a variety of ways to mortify the flesh, through wearing fetters or hairshirts, or by standing on columns, for example. Touching is apparent in every possible human context, from tearing out tongues to kissing babies. Texts – manuscripts – were themselves tactile objects and touching them formed part of their performative role.¹² In his sixth-century account of the ambo of Hagia Sophia, Paul the Silentiary suggests that during the liturgy, the priest held the ‘golden book’ aloft whilst the crowds strove to touch it with their lips and hands, breaking around the ambo like the sea.¹³ A letter could not only be treasured for what it said but for its actual physical existence.¹⁴ If Byzantine readers used a pointer or their finger to trace words on the page, then the act of reading was itself tactile.

A sense of tactility does comes across in Byzantine writings about art, above all in mention of different qualities of materials, especially smoothness and roughness, weights and measures: the mention of floors of onyx ‘so smoothly polished’ that they were like water congealed to ice; of unpolished stones used for rough steps; of gilding with pure gold two fingers thick; of corrugated altar-covers; and of gold crosses, 80 pounds in weight and encrusted with jewels.¹⁵ One thing that this tactility reveals is the monetary value of art. It also underlines that touching something serves to verify it in some way, as with the experience of handling Projecta’s casket. Sight does not tell us everything about the intrinsic qualities of an object. It cannot reveal its weight, for example, or its texture.¹⁶ Touch does. So holding something might serve as a guarantee of quality or of quantity.

Although it is never explicitly stated in Byzantine writings, aesthetically Byzantine art invites touch. As I have argued elsewhere, entering a building was in part a tactile experience, with the movement from exterior to interior, warm to chill, the change of materials underfoot, the range of objects to make contact with.¹⁷ The marble sheathing used in great churches offered a sense of coolness to any worshipper who might choose to touch it, and the very stones of a building could be used in tactile prayer, as with the column of Saint Gregory the Wonderworker in Hagia Sophia on which the faithful rubbed themselves in search of healing.¹⁸ The near-three-dimensionality of, for example, some Byzantine ivories or the metal icon of the Archangel Michael, surely offered their owners a tactile experience, unless we believe that they were enclosed in cabinets of curiosities to be kept out of the reach of idle hands.¹⁹ When the appearances and functions of such objects are considered, touch is usually overlooked, but perhaps should be included in these contexts. The hardstone cups, such as the Chalice of the Patriarchs, that spring to life when raised to the light, had to be handled in the first instance.²⁰ How did the enamels and jewels that so often form a part of Byzantine decoration of these objects interact with physical hands on the object? Were they positioned in such a way as to provide a grip for the fingers and a stimulus of touch? As with Projecta’s casket, one would need to handle such objects to see where the hands might best fit. Further, if this particular cup was used as a chalice in the liturgy, then touch would have been very much a part of any user’s experience of it, ahead, perhaps of sight, and so we should consider what it feels like.

It is a truism that the Byzantines engaged physically with works of art. Written sources contain many stories about people holding, kissing, hugging, biting, consuming works of art. Some physically carried icons with them wherever they went, either on their person or in their luggage.²¹ Amulets and pilgrim tokens, or eulogia, were worn or carried by believers, their physical proximity on the body causing relief.²² The fourth-century pilgrim, Egeria, described chunks being taken out of relics of the True Cross via the teeth of the faithful; removing the fingers and toes of saints in this way was also a popular pilgrim activity.²³ One very well-known story tells of a woman healed by Saints Cosmas and Damien after drinking part of a wall-painting of the saints, and clay eulogia were regularly consumed by believers seeking healing or protection.²⁴ One of the most significant of all holy images, the Mandylion of Edessa, was formed not through painting but through touch. As an acheiropoietos image, an image not made with human hands, it was created through physical contact when Christ washed his face and, in drying it on a cloth, left the imprint of his features there. As the cloth came into contact with other objects, so the image continued to replicate itself.²⁵ Paradoxically, bodily contact with images played a major role in Iconoclasm when images were physically destroyed, eyes gouged out, and figures covered up or mutilated in some way.

None of this should be surprising; it would be more remarkable if writers did not mention touch. In a way, touch has been overlooked because it is so banal and everyday a sensation; it is a part of the human condition to be tactile. However, societies have their own rules of touch and so in this context, the contexts of touching in Byzantium can tell us something of the social customs of that society: the socialization of touch; the tactile codes of communication and the rules of contact – what might be expressed as the difference between a handshake and a kiss, what it meant to kiss the feet of an emperor, the hands of a saint, the lips of an icon, how the bite of a dog and the bite of the believer on the True Cross were understood. Issues such as these relate to ideas of social decorum: who could touch whom, when, where and how?²⁶ What was touch for? Why and what did people touch? Which parts of an icon, for example, were touched? How did people touch different things? What did touch achieve? Conventions about tactile interaction (even something as ‘simple’ as gender differences) give information about social differentiation, about defining personhood and status. Standards of acceptable forms of touch change as concepts of proper forms of corporeal behaviour and social order change. There are different rules of decorum. The idea of biting the True Cross is shocking now, but this was a time when relics were treated roughly; they were regularly stolen, snatched, or torn asunder.²⁷

Images of touch can add to our knowledge of hierarchies and relationships between people in Byzantium. It is often assumed, for example, that hands are veiled when coming into contact with holy objects or figures. This is true, but only up to a point. In the sixth-century apse mosaic of the Eufrasian Basilica in Poreč (Fig. 1.1), for examp...