Manipulating Theophany

Light and Ritual in North Adriatic Architecture (ca. 400–ca. 800)

Vladimir Ivanovici

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9783110418187
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Using light as fil rouge reuniting theology and ritual with the architecture, decoration, and iconography of cultic spaces, the present study argues that the mise-en-scène of fifth-century baptism and sixth-century episcopal liturgy was meant to reproduce the luminous atmosphere of heaven. Analysing the material culture of the two sacraments against common ritual expectations and Christian theology, we evince the manner
in which the luminous effect was reached through a combination of constructive techniques and perceptual manipulation. One nocturnal and one diurnal, the two ceremonials represented different scenarios, testifying to the capacity of church builders and willingness of Late Antique bishops to stage the ritual experience in order to offer God to the senses.

Endnotes

1	Cox Miller 2009: 41. On the “material turn” see ead. pp. 3 – 4; Walker 1990: 81; Frank 2000a: 103. Regarding Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite’s interpretation of Neoplatonic thought, Perl 2007: 93, respectively 32, stated: “‘Of God there is sense-perception’, this stunning but wholly consistent affirmation cannot be overemphasised.” and “For Dionysius, then, as for Plotinus and Proclus, the whole of reality, all that is, is theophany, the manifestation or appearance of God.”
2	Light was associated with divine manifestations also in the ancient world. In both myth and ritual practice, light was indicative of divinity. For the use of light in ancient Greek cults, see Christopoulos, Karakantza, Levaniouk (eds.) 2010; Schneider and Wulf-Rheidt (eds.) 2011.
3	As argued already by Gottfried Semper, architecture is a material expression of the activity it hosts, and it is in the “haze of carnival candles” that one finds its purpose, see Bonnemaison and Macy 2008: 2–4.
4	Infrared thermography, or thermal imaging detects radiation in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum and produces images of that radiation, called thermograms. The amount of radiation emitted by an object increases with temperature; therefore, thermography allows one to see variations in temperature.
5	This is because, according to Fischer 1971: 158, “For art to be effective as wish-fulfilment it must attain a certain degree of plausibility.” The use of a common decorative style and of famous symbols not only assured the transmissibility of the message but it also helped legitimise it.
6	Ashbrook Harvey 2006: 46.
7	As argued by Brown 2012: 201–3, by the fourth century Christianity had only replaced the head of a complex structure, leaving the rest in place. The mundus had to be integrated in the Christian system with all its phenomena.
8	Shaw 1995: 159; Perl 2007: 30–2, 67–9. Both Himmelfarb 1993: 70–1 for Judeo-Christian apocalypses and Perl 2007: 73 for Neoplatonism argued pertinently that the hierarchical order that interposes humanity and God should be seen as connecting rather than as separating them.
9	The motif and the cultural context that prompted its development is studied in detail in a forthcoming monograph, provisionally called Iconic Presences. Embodying the Divine in Late Antique Christianity.
10	Elsner 2012: 2.
11	Janes 1998: 12 “The ritual stage is a place for making a view of the world clear, though that view may be a fiction.”
12	Kiilerich 2012: 22. Ousterhout 1998: 81, on the other hand, pointed out that “Any examination of Byzantine architecture must begin with the ‘deprogramming’ of the modern viewer.”
13	Cf. e. g. Nelson 2000.
14	Coleman and Elsner 1994, Elsner 1995: 118–9, Elsner and Wolf 2010.
15	James and Webb 1991: 3, 9.
16	As pointed out by Cox Miller 2009: 10 and Kiilerich 2012: 20, ekphraseis of churches were meant to manipulate the perception of the space.
17	While ekphraseis were meant mainly for the educated, the visual programs had a broader audience. According to Dautermann-Maguire et al. 1989: 1, “Material culture provides […] an insight into the attitudes and artistic concerns of ordinary people […] The written materials reflect only the reactions of the educated, who were a small proportion of the total population.”
18	Krautheimer 1986: 303 considered Ravenna and Istria the two gates through which Eastern elements penetrated the early medieval architecture of Western Europe.
19	Given that modern translations diluted the literalness of the promises of vision and transformation present in Patristic texts, I reproduced the original whenever the fragment was relevant to the argument. When more than one translation was available, I chose the more literal ones. When English translations were not available, I provided translations in French or Italian. For the original texts the Migne edition was generally used, with the problems that this edition poses. Finally, due to the very large number of titles that were consulted, the subject of the book intersecting themes on which it has been published extensively, the bibliography is restricted to the studies mentioned in the text.
20	Ashbrook Harvey 1998a and 2006; Pentcheva 2010 and 2011; Caseau 2013 and 2014; Williamson 2013 addressed various aspects pertaining to the implications of senses other than sight in the perception of cultic spaces and rituals.
21	Schöne 1954 and 1959. See also Sedlmayr 1960. On the subject see more in Mondini and Ivanovici (eds.) 2014.
22	Caseau 1994; James 2004; Pentcheva 2010; Hunter Crawley 2013a.
23	Bogdanović 2013: 282.
24	Panofsky 1946.
25	Triantafillide 1964.
26	Dendy 1959; Günter 1968; de Nie 1987.
27	Potamianos 1996.
28	James 1996. Various aspects of the illumination of church spaces were studied by Pejakovic 1988; Piotrowski 2000, 2006; Pavolini 2003; Schibille 2004, 2009, 2014a, 2014b; di Bennardo 2005; Nesbitt 2007, 2012; Elsner and Wolf 2010; Knight 2010; Fobelli and Cesaretti 2011; Gavril 2012.
29	Schibille 2004, 2009, 2014a, 2014b; Fobelli and Cesaretti 2011; Gavril 2012.
30	Schibille 2014b. While in the case of Hagia Sophia, the Neoplatonic dimension that represented the main system of thought of the Constantinopolitan intelligentsia might have prevailed, it nevertheless remained only one of many systems of thought to which the space made reference.
31	Schibille 2004: 239....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• Paulinus of Nola and the New Visual Rhetoric of Sanctity
• I Light in Late Antique Baptismal Theory and Practice
• II Light in the Context of the Eucharistic Liturgy
• III Conclusion
• IV Excursus: The Tempietto Longobardo in Cividale
• Bibliography
• Index of Persons
• Index of Places
• Endnotes