Divine Inspiration in Byzantium

As noted earlier in the week, interest in all aspects of Byzantine art and its history remains high. Late next month another scholarly work will deepen our understanding: Divine Inspiration in Byzantium: Notions of Authenticity in Art and Theology by Karin Krause (Cambridge UP, July 2022), 350pp. About this book the publisher tells us this:

In this volume, Karin Krause examines conceptions of divine inspiration and authenticity in the religious literature and visual arts of Byzantium. During antiquity and the medieval era, “inspiration” encompassed a range of ideas regarding the divine contribution to the creation of holy texts, icons, and other material objects by human beings. Krause traces the origins of the notion of divine inspiration in the Jewish and polytheistic cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds and their reception in Byzantine religious culture. Exploring how conceptions of authenticity are employed in Eastern Orthodox Christianity to claim religious authority, she analyzes texts in a range of genres, as well as images in different media, including manuscript illumination, icons, and mosaics. Her interdisciplinary study demonstrates the pivotal role that claims to the divine inspiration of religious literature and art played in the construction of Byzantine cultural identity.

Byzantine and Russian Icons

Interest in Byzantine iconography has seemed to remain constant for a decade and more now. Later this year we will have a new book form a docent at the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, which I visited and greatly enjoyed several years ago now: Visible Image of the Invisible God: A Guide to Russian and Byzantine Icons by Dennis J. Sardella (October 2022), 192pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

A comprehensive and beautifully illustrated guide to Russian icons — the "beating heart of the Christian East" 

Religious icons have been at the spiritual heart of the Christian East for nearly two thousand years. Their mysterious, peaceful quality and almost magnetic power can stop us in our tracks and draw our gaze, without us even knowing why. The sophisticated composition and symbolism of icons emphasize that their subjects are inhabitants of another, transcendent, world. They are not simply the art of the Christian East, but the expression and pulse of its spirituality. And on a personal level for many Christians of all backgrounds, icons are not only objects of admiration, but a deep wellspring of meditation, reflection, and veneration. 

A docent at the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, for many years, Dennis J. Sardella now offers an inviting guide to the most famous icons in the collection. This vibrantly illustrated book will:  

• Introduce you to icons and instill a desire for a deeper appreciation of them 

• Teach you about their origin, their historical evolution, their complex symbolic language, and their role in the spiritual and liturgical life of the Eastern Churches, both Orthodox and Catholic 

• Answer your questions about when and where the first icons were created 

• Show the physical and spiritual steps in their creation 

• Explain the different types of icons, the symbolism that is key to deciphering them, as well as their role in Eastern Christian spirituality and liturgy. 

Those who are knowledgeable about Russian icons and Byzantine icons, as well as newcomers, will find Visible Image of the Invisible God to be a treasured resource. 

Relishing Rather than Rubbishing Byzance avant Byzance

The older I get the more I realize that too much Christian hagiography, and more generally treatment of pre-Christian history, in whatever context, traffics in tendentiousness and gives much evidence of focusing on chosen traumas and chosen glories, to use Vamik Volkan's invaluable language. Too often Christian renderings of history likes to posit a sharp before-and-after break, rubbishing everything before a designated date as "pagan" or "heathen" and portraying the coming of Christianity as unmitigated "enlightenment."

A forthcoming book rather complicates such tales and dynamics: Between the Pagan Past and Christian Present in Byzantine Visual Culture: Statues in Constantinople, 4th-13th Centuries CE by Paroma Chatterjee  (Cambridge University Press, 2022, 350pp.)

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Up to its pillage by the Crusaders in 1204, Constantinople teemed with magnificent statues of emperors, pagan gods, and mythical beasts. Yet the significance of this wealth of public sculpture has hardly been acknowledged beyond late antiquity. In this book, Paroma Chatterjee offers a new perspective on the topic, arguing that pagan statues were an integral part of Byzantine visual culture. Examining the evidence in patriographies, chronicles, novels, and epigrams, she demonstrates that the statues were admired for three specific qualities - longevity, mimesis, and prophecy; attributes that rendered them outside of imperial control and endowed them with an enduring charisma sometimes rivaling that of holy icons. Chatterjee's  interpretations refine our conceptions of imperial imagery, the Hippodrome, the Macedonian Renaissance, a corpus of secular objects, and Orthodox icons. Her book offers novel insights into Iconoclasm and proposes a more truncated trajectory of the holy icon in medieval Orthodoxy than has been previously acknowledged.

Byzantine Art and Architecture

I have to think that one trick of maintaining a profitable press in these days is to slap the word "Byzantine" on something. Books with that in their title always seem to sell well, and there is no shortage in books so titled, which steadily appear in bunches year after year. 

Along comes another international scholarly collection with some very prominent scholars in it whose names will be familiar to readers of this blog if they reward themselves with a copy of The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture, ed. Ellen C. Schwartz (Oxford UP, Dec. 2021), 784pp. 

About this impressive collection the publisher tells us this:

Byzantine art has been an underappreciated field, often treated as an adjunct to the arts of the medieval West, if considered at all. In illustrating the richness and diversity of art in the Byzantine world, this handbook will help establish the subject as a distinct field worthy of serious inquiry.

Essays consider Byzantine art as art made in the eastern Mediterranean world, including the Balkans, Russia, the Near East and north Africa, between the years 330 and 1453. Much of this art was made for religious purposes, created to enhance and beautify the Orthodox liturgy and worship space, as well as to serve in a royal or domestic context. Discussions in this volume will consider both aspects of this artistic creation, across a wide swath of geography and a long span of time.

The volume marries older, object-based considerations of themes and monuments which form the backbone of art history, to considerations drawing on many different methodologies-sociology, semiotics, anthropology, archaeology, reception theory, deconstruction theory, and so on-in an up-to-date synthesis of scholarship on Byzantine art and architecture. The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture is a comprehensive overview of a particularly rich field of study, offering a window into the world of this fascinating and beautiful period of art.

Performing the Gospels in Byzantium

There are certain verbs and nouns which become trendy and suddenly one sees their proliferation in book and article titles for a decade or so. "Performing" is one such, and is seen in this recent publication of a book that sheds light on Middle Byzantine liturgics and art: Performing the Gospels in Byzantium: Sight, Sound, and Space in the Divine Liturgy  by Roland Betancourt  (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 320pp. About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Tracing the Gospel text from script to illustration to recitation, this study looks at how illuminated manuscripts operated within ritual and architecture. Focusing on a group of richly illuminated lectionaries from the late eleventh century, the book articulates how the process of textual recitation produced marginalia and miniatures that reflected and subverted the manner in which the Gospel was read and simultaneously imagined by readers and listeners alike. This unique approach to manuscript illumination points to images that slowly unfolded in the mind of its listeners as they imagined the text being recited, as meaning carefully changed and built as the text proceeded. By examining this process within specific acoustic architectural spaces and the sonic conditions of medieval chant, the volume brings together the concerns of sound studies, liturgical studies, and art history to demonstrate how images, texts, and recitations played with the environment of the Middle Byzantine church.

Byzantine Art and Architecture

Set for release later this month--and presumably in time to order for all the Byzantinists, artists, historians, and architects on your Christmas lists--is The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture by Ellen C. Schwartz (OUP, December 2021), 664pp. + 150 illustrations. About this book the publisher tell us the following: 

Byzantine art has been an underappreciated field, often treated as an adjunct to the arts of the medieval West, if considered at all. In illustrating the richness and diversity of art in the Byzantine world, this handbook will help establish the subject as a distinct field worthy of serious inquiry.

Essays consider Byzantine art as art made in the eastern Mediterranean world, including the Balkans, Russia, the Near East and north Africa, between the years 330 and 1453. Much of this art was made for religious purposes, created to enhance and beautify the Orthodox liturgy and worship space, as well as to serve in a royal or domestic context. Discussions in this volume will consider both aspects of this artistic creation, across a wide swath of geography and a long span of time.

The volume marries older, object-based considerations of themes and monuments which form the backbone of art history, to considerations drawing on many different methodologies-sociology, semiotics, anthropology, archaeology, reception theory, deconstruction theory, and so on-in an up-to-date synthesis of scholarship on Byzantine art and architecture. The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture is a comprehensive overview of a particularly rich field of study, offering a window into the world of this fascinating and beautiful period of art.

Performing Byzantium

It is always interesting to watch what verbs and nouns become prevalent in academic discussion, and in my short lifetime, "performing" and cognates has become very common, not least when it comes to Byzantine history. A recently published book by an art historian at the University of California continues this trend: Performing the Gospels in Byzantium: Sight, Sound, and Space in the Divine Liturgy by Roland Betancourt  (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 320pp. 

Betancourt is a recently prolific fellow, as you can see from his other recent book which I noted here; and still others here. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Tracing the Gospel text from script to illustration to recitation, this study looks at how illuminated manuscripts operated within ritual and architecture. Focusing on a group of richly illuminated lectionaries from the late eleventh century, the book articulates how the process of textual recitation produced marginalia and miniatures that reflected and subverted the manner in which the Gospel was read and simultaneously imagined by readers and listeners alike. This unique approach to manuscript illumination points to images that slowly unfolded in the mind of its listeners as they imagined the text being recited, as meaning carefully changed and built as the text proceeded. By examining this process within specific acoustic architectural spaces and the sonic conditions of medieval chant, the volume brings together the concerns of sound studies, liturgical studies, and art history to demonstrate how images, texts, and recitations played with the environment of the Middle Byzantine church.

The Angel Beholding the Face of God

Angelico Press continues to have some of the most interestingly varied lists today, and their regular publishing of works in Eastern Christianity does them huge credit. Just this month they have now published a translation of a work by a Russian-American iconographer and founder of the Prosopon school, whose videos I have sometimes used in my own iconography classes: Vladislav Andrejev, The Angel of the Countenance of God: Theology and Iconology of Theophanies, trans. Alex Apatov (Angelico, 2021), 326pp.

About this new book the publisher tells us this: 

Iconography is the study of the history, practice, and symbolism of painted Christian images. Iconology probes deeper still, into the “icon” of Divine Presence in the inner man, who is himself made “in the image [eikón] of God” (Gen 1:26), as the place where Wisdom seeks to make her home. Written by an iconographer with forty years’ experience researching the nature and mission of the icon, The Angel of the Countenance of God explores the biblical epiphanies of God—their translation into images, their mythological parallels, and their Trinitarian and Christological implications. Drawing on his own icon-writing, V. L. Andrejev here focuses on the biblical theme of the “Angel of Jehovah,” distinguishing the “created Angels” of the Heavenly Hierarchies from this “uncreated Angel” of Theophany, that divine Being Moses beheld in the flames of the Burning Bush, and Christian tradition depicts as the royal maiden Sophia, personification of the Wisdom of God. This distinction carries profound consequences for iconography, dogmatic theology, and discipleship.

The icon written on a board is the “spoken” word made visual, but its final significance lies within each person. For it is man himself, as the living icon of the Image of God, who by means of the immaterial, essential Light of God makes visible in icons the “actions” of God. Icon-writing is “symbolic realism,” and though not able to depict God, is able to depict the image of His actions. The fulfillment of the icon, the image of God, is love—the love uniting Bride and Bridegroom in the Song of Songs; that same love hymned by St Symeon the New Theologian and St Maximus the Confessor.

The Angel of the Countenance of God will be of value to all who have an interest in iconography, Trinitarian Christology, Sophiology, and Eastern Christianity.

Church of the Holy Apostles

Edited by two major scholars in the field, published in perhaps the most prestigious series for Byzantine scholarship in the anglophone world, and covering one of the most hallowed churches of Byzantium, The Holy Apostles: A Lost Monument, a Forgotten Project, and the Presentness of the Past, eds. Margaret Mullett and Robert G. Ousterhout (Dumbarton Oaks Papers/Harvard University Press, 2020, 320pp.) is a book about a building that no longer exists physically. As the publisher tells us:

Founded by Constantine the Great, rebuilt by Justinian, and redecorated in the ninth, tenth, and twelfth centuries, the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople was the mausoleum of emperors, patriarchs, and saints. It was also a key station in the ceremonies of the city, the site of an important school, a major inspiration for apostolic literature, and briefly the home of the patriarch. Despite its significance, the church no longer exists, replaced by the mosque of Mehmet II after the fall of the city to the Ottomans. Today the church is remembered primarily from two important middle Byzantine ekphraseis, which celebrate its beauty and prominence, as well as from architectural copies and manuscript illustrations.

Scholars have long puzzled over the appearance of the church, as well as its importance to the Byzantines. Anxious to reconstruct the building and its place in the empire, an early collaborative project of Dumbarton Oaks brought together a philologist, an art historian, and an architectural historian in the 1940s and 1950s to reconstruct their own version of the Holy Apostles. Never fully realized, their efforts remained unpublished. The essays in this volume reconsider their project from a variety of vantage points, while illuminating differences of approach seventy years later, to arrive at a twenty-first-century synthesis.

The Monasteries and Churches of Moldavia

Forthcoming early next year is a book that looks to be rewarding indeed to peruse and soak up vicariously the artistic splendors and Revelations of Byzantium: The Monasteries and Painted Churches of Northern Moldavia by Octavian Ion Penda (Illustrator), Alan Ogden  (Centre for Romanian Studies, 2021), 288pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

The monasteries and painted churches of Moldavia stand today as a testament to the rich cultural and spiritual heritage of the Romanian people. As the Romanians living in the historical provinces of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, which today form modern Romania, struggled to maintain their autonomy against Ottoman expansion, their relative freedom allowed them to express themselves both artistically and culturally. Among their most remarkable creations are the monasteries and painted churches of Moldavia, in northeastern Romania, the subjects of this book. These monuments, unique in the world, reflect a cultural legacy inherited from Byzantium and the Roman Empire.

On Black Icons of the Jewish Jesus and His Mother

This moving and powerful image, of the Mother of God cradling her dead Son, is making the rounds today for obvious reasons, and it has set off some foolish white people who claim to be Catholic while understanding little about theology and even less about iconography. So herewith a brief note about some relevant books on iconography, which I teach regularly, with special reference to a tradition I deeply love, the Ethiopian.

General Studies:

Of the three primary traditions of iconography one finds in the Christian East, the Ethiopian is perhaps the least known. The Byzantine tradition is of course far and away the most widely and popularly practiced, not least because of its associations with the empire of that name. When people typically think of Eastern or Orthodox iconography, it is the Byzantine style that they almost invariably imagine and turn to. There are hundreds of books about this tradition, including many that have been published just in the last two decades, and most of these by Western Christians suddenly "inventing" (in both senses of the word) the tradition and eager to explore its riches. Searching on here using the relevant labels (at bottom of this post) will bring up dozens and dozens of posts about recent publications, scholarly and popular. If you asked me to name just 3 for those with no background, I would recommend the following:

First, for your average Roman Catholic today, start with Sr Jeana Visel's book (which I reviewed here). Second, for those desiring more historical and theological depth, then Lossky's book has long been a standard text. Third, for still more depth and detail, Ouspensky's two-volume set has long had an obligatory place on every bibliography.

Finally, for those who clearly do not understand the doctrinal approval (albeit ambivalent) given to the use of images, and who do not realize that such approval said absolutely nothing at all about what we today would call "racial" or "ethnic" differences, then this new book--one of several in an invaluable series from Liverpool University Press--will bear careful reading about the acts of Nicaea II in 787. Precisely as the defined and received doctrinal teaching of the Catholic and Orthodox Church, and precisely because it was, after all, given at an ecumenical (="whole inhabited world") gathering, we should not expect to find the diverse divines there assembled forbidding or requiring that Christ, the Theotokos, and the angels and saints be portrayed as Africans or Greeks or Copts, Romans or Armenians "for all are one in Christ Jesus."

The Coptic Tradition:

But there are other traditions within the Christian East, including the Coptic, which differs sharply from the Byzantine for all sorts of complex historical (and other) reasons we will not get into here. But this tradition lacks the vast number of books in English that the Byzantine tradition has. For those who read French, this is not a bad, if now dated, overview. For those who want a scholarly overview of iconography in all the so-called Oriental Churches, including the Coptic and Ethiopian, then Christine Chaillot's book reads like a dissertation.

For those who want to begin to understand the historical complexities around what could even be said to constitute "a tradition," as though such a thing exists in isolation from other traditions, then Magdi Guirguis's recent book will take you into some fascinating cultural alleyways.

To see Coptic iconography situated in a wider cultural context, there are numerous books, including this one, this one, and this one. I would also recommend the respected work of the scholar Nelly Van Doorn-Harder in several places, including this book which has a chapter on Coptic art.

Ethiopian Christianity and Iconography:

And now to the Ethiopian tradition. For some general studies that will give you historical context, there are several recent volumes. See, e.g., this one. For those who read German, this book (which I have only skimmed) appears to offer a wide-ranging overview. Like the Guirguis book above, this scholarly study looks at the complex cultural connections between Ethiopian iconography in a period of turbulence and transition.

Narrowing in slightly on Ethiopian churches and monasteries, which of course feature icons, we are starting to see several books devoted to these appear in English in the last decade, including this one. Just this year we had an historical overview of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. I have not read it yet, but the author, John Binns, is a respected scholar at Cambridge whose other works I have read and recommended.

This book treats just one form of images/symbols, viz., Ethiopian crosses. This book, from the invaluable Gorgias Press (which all those interested in Eastern Christianity should keep regular eye on), does something similar in a more scholarly way.

This book looks at royal connections between Ethiopian art and court.

This book looks at illustrated Ethiopian manuscripts at Oxford. Similarly, this book looks at Ethiopian illustrated gospel books.

Finally, turning to iconography proper, let me end by recommending two "coffee table" type books I sometimes look at again and again just for the sheer exuberance and joy of the colours and details: African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia by M. Heldman and S. Munro-Hay. Published by Yale University Press in 1993, there are still copies floating around for those who are interested.

And then this hefty collection, now twenty years old, but still worth tracking down: Ethiopian Icons : Catalogue of the Collection of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies Addis Ababa University by Stanislaw Chojnacki.

There is, let me note in conclusion, still ample work to be done here studying this tradition if there are aspiring graduate students out there. There are, as I noted at the outset, often dozens of new books in English alone in one year alone devoted to the Byzantine tradition alone. The Coptic and Ethiopian (to say nothing at all of other lesser known Eastern Christian traditions--e.g., the Georgian, Armenian, Syro-Malabar, etc.) traditions are still comparatively poorly understood by anglophone historians and theologians; but the Ethiopian is a profound, venerable, beautiful tradition deserving of all the once and future love we call scholarship that we can devote to it.

Ps-Denys and Christian Visual Culture

Recently released is a book that treats one of the most mysterious and debated figures of Christian antiquity in the context of ante-iconoclastic history: Pseudo-Dionysius and Christian Visual Culture, c.500–900, eds. Dell’Acqua, Francesca, Mainoldi, Ernesto Sergio (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), xxix+329pp; 8 b/w illustrations, 25 illustrations in colour.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book uses Pseudo-Dionysius and his mystic theology to explore attitudes and beliefs about images in the early medieval West and Byzantium. Composed in the early sixth century, the Corpus Dionysiacum, the collection of texts transmitted under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, developed a number of themes which have a predominantly visual and spatial dimension.  Pseudo-Dionysius’ contribution to the development of Christian visual culture, visual thinking and figural art-making are examined in this book to systematically investigate his long-lasting legacy and influence. The contributors embrace religious studies, philosophy, theology, art, and architectural history, to consider the depth of the interaction between the Corpus Dionysiacum and various aspects of contemporary Byzantine and western cultures, including ecclesiastical and lay power, politics, religion, and art.

Searching for Sacred Images

Aidan Nichols is a prolific fellow, as we have long known. Just a couple of weeks ago I featured his new book on sophiology, and now we have another devoted to iconography, a topic of perennial interest to Christians both East and West: In Search of the Sacred Image (Gracewing, 2020), 288pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

What sacred images should surround the faithful at worship and be available to them for instruction, in meditation and in prayer? This historical study is driven by questions of catechetical, doctrinal and liturgical urgency. Aidan Nichols, one of the most respected and prolific Catholic writers of our time, has investigated the relation between Christianity and the visual arts in a number of books covering the history of Christian art from its beginnings through to the partial triumph of the Modernist movement in the 1950s. Now he looks in detail at the development of spiritual art in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He traces how in Russia the great tradition of classical iconography from the mediaeval period came to be preserved, paradoxically as a result of its very persecution, and then rediscovered. Simultaneously, artists in Western Europe were re-appraising the so-called 'Primitive' artists of mediaeval Italy, Flanders and Byzantium, while in Britain the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood revolutionized art and aesthetics. This fascinating study of these parallel movements sheds new light on the spiritual art of the period. More importantly, it asks us to look again at that art and its role in divine revelation, to see what riches are there and what lessons may be learned for a reinvigorated sacred art today.

Russian Modernism and Byzantine Iconography

The more we study the immediate ante-revolutionary period in Russia the more we are coming to see that there was a fascinating fermentation of ideas for serious social reform. Russia was not nearly so monolithic as some have portrayed, nor so reactionary. A new book helps us to see how widespread some of these ideas were, touching many spheres: The Icon and the Square: Russian Modernism and the Russo-Byzantine Revival by Maria Taroutina (Penn State, 2018), 288pp.

About this book the publisher informs us thus:

In The Icon and the Square, Maria Taroutina examines how the traditional interests of institutions such as the crown, the church, and the Imperial Academy of Arts temporarily aligned with the radical, leftist, and revolutionary avant-garde at the turn of the twentieth century through a shared interest in the Byzantine past, offering a counter-narrative to prevailing notions of Russian modernism.

Focusing on the works of four different artists—Mikhail Vrubel, Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir Tatlin—Taroutina shows how engagement with medieval pictorial traditions drove each artist to transform his own practice, pushing beyond the established boundaries of his respective artistic and intellectual milieu. She also contextualizes and complements her study of the work of these artists with an examination of the activities of a number of important cultural associations and institutions over the course of several decades. As a result, The Icon and the Square gives a more complete picture of Russian modernism: one that attends to the dialogue between generations of artists, curators, collectors, critics, and theorists.

The Icon and the Square retrieves a neglected but vital history that was deliberately suppressed by the atheist Soviet regime and subsequently ignored in favor of the secular formalism of mainstream modernist criticism. Taroutina’s timely study, which coincides with the centennial reassessments of Russian and Soviet modernism, is sure to invigorate conversation among scholars of art history, modernism, and Russian culture.

Theodore the Studite on Icons

It's been almost 40 years since St. Vladimir's Seminary Press published a translation of St. Theodore the Studite's On the Holy Icons. Apart from that, the only other work came out in 2015: another translation of his Writings on Iconoclasm.

But what we have not had until now has been a wide-ranging historical context in which to consider him and this work of his. That lacuna will be remedied in July with the publication of St Theodore the Studite's Defence of the Icons:Theology and Philosophy in Ninth-Century Byzantium by Torstein Theodor Tollefsen (Oxford UP, 2018), 208pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

St Theodore the Studite's Defence of the Icons provides an investigation of the icon-theology of St Theodore the Studite, mainly as it is presented in his three refutations of the iconoclasts, the Antirrhetici tres adversus iconomachos. Torstein Theodor Tollefsen explores Theodore's 'philosophy of images', namely his doctrine of images and his arguments that justify the legitimacy of images in general and of Christ in particular. Tollefsen offers a historical, theological, and philosophical exploration of Theodore's doctrine of images and his arguments justifying the legitimacy of images and of Christ. In addition to the main elements of Theodore's defence of the icon, like the Christological issue, the relation between image and prototype, the question of veneration, his explanation of why we may say of an image that 'this is Christ', and his innovative thinking on the representative character of the icon, the book has an introduction that places Theodore in the history of Byzantine philosophy: He has some knowledge of traditional logical topics and is able to utilize argumentative forms in countering his iconoclast opponents. The volume also provides an appendix which shows that the making of images is somehow natural given the character of Christianity as a religion.

After Dying in Byzantium, Where Does Your Soul Go?

If you hang around any Orthodox blogs or apologetics sites, you'll soon come across heated discussion about "toll-houses" and related matters trying to figure out the soul's fate post-mortem. The scholar Stephen Shoemaker, whom I have interviewed on here in the past in connection with his other works, has an excellent essay here.

Shoemaker's essay references, inter alia, recent works on the topic, including a book released just this spring:  Death and the Afterlife in Byzantium: The Fate of the Soul in Theology, Literature, and Art 
by Vasileios Marinis (Cambridge UP, 2017), 214pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

For all their reputed and professed preoccupation with the afterlife, the Byzantines had no systematic conception of the fate of the soul between death and the Last Judgement. Death and the Afterlife in Byzantium marries for the first time liturgical, theological, literary, and material evidence to investigate a fundamental question: what did the Byzantines believe happened after death? This interdisciplinary study provides an in-depth analysis and synthesis of hagiography, theological treatises, apocryphal texts, liturgical services, as well as images of the fate of the soul in manuscript and monumental decoration. It also places the imagery of the afterlife, both literary and artistic, within the context of Byzantine culture, spirituality, and soteriology. The book intends to be the definitive study on concepts of the afterlife in Byzantium, and its interdisciplinary structure will appeal to students and specialists from a variety of areas in medieval studies.

Byzantine Canopies

Study of all things Byzantine remains steady, and that is no less true for the Byzantine liturgical tradition as well, which certainly commands far more scholarly attention in North America today than, say, the Armenian, Alexandrian, or various Syriac traditions.

Released this summer is another study that adds to other works highly focused on very particular parts and details of the Byzantine liturgical tradition: The Framing of Sacred Space: The Canopy and the Byzantine Church by Jelena Bogdanovic (Oxford UP, 2017), 456 Pages + 141 color and 44 black-and-white illustrations.

About this book we are told:

The Framing of Sacred Space offers the first topical study of canopies as essential spatial and symbolic units in Byzantine-rite churches. Centrally planned columnar structures--typically comprised of four columns and a roof--canopies had a critical role in the modular processes of church design, from actual church furnishings in the shape of a canopy to the church's structural core. As architectonic objects of basic structural and design integrity, canopies integrate an archetypical image of architecture and provide means for an innovative understanding of the materialization of the idea of the Byzantine church and its multi-focal spatial presence.

The Framing of Sacred Space considers both the material and conceptual framing of sacred space and explains how the canopy bridges the physical and transcendental realms. As a crucial element of church design in the Byzantine world, a world that gradually abandoned the basilica as a typical building of Roman imperial secular architecture, the canopy carried tectonic and theological meanings and, through vaulted, canopied bays and recognizable Byzantine domed churches, established organic architectural, symbolic, and sacred ties between the Old and New Covenants. In such an overarching context, the canopy becomes an architectural parti, a vital concept and dynamic design principle that carries the essence of the Byzantine church. The Framing of Sacred Space highlights significant factors in understanding canopies through specific architectural settings and the Byzantine concepts of space, thus also contributing to larger debates about the creation of sacred space and related architectural taxonomy.

Byzantine Architecture and Aurality

I hope soon to run an interview with Nicholas Denysenko about his new book, Theology and Form: Contemporary Orthodox Architecture in America.

But this is a rich summer for those with an interest in such topics, as Bissera Pentcheva has just edited and published Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual (Routledge, 2017), 272pp.

About this collection the publisher tells us:

Emerging from the challenge to reconstruct sonic and spatial experiences of the deep past, this multidisciplinary collection of ten essays explores the intersection of liturgy, acoustics, and art in the churches of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Rome and Armenia, and reflects on the role digital technology can play in re-creating aspects of the sensually rich performance of the divine word. Engaging the material fabric of the buildings in relationship to the liturgical ritual, the book studies the structure of the rite, revealing the important role chant plays in it, and confronts both the acoustics of the physical spaces and the hermeneutic system of reception of the religious services. By then drawing on audio software modelling tools in order to reproduce some of the visual and aural aspects of these multi-sensory public rituals, it inaugurates a synthetic approach to the study of the premodern sacred space, which bridges humanities with exact sciences. The result is a rich contribution to the growing discipline of sound studies and an innovative convergence of the medieval and the digital.

Pentcheva also has a monograph coming out in September under her own hand, clearly related this topic: Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (Penn State, 2017), 304pp.

About this forthcoming book, the publisher tells us:

Experiencing the resonant acoustics of the church of Hagia Sophia allowed the Byzantine participants in its liturgical rituals to be filled with the Spirit of God, and even to become his image on earth. Bissera Pentcheva’s vibrant analysis examines how these sung rites combined with the church’s architectural space to make Hagia Sophia a performative place of worship representative of Byzantine religious culture in all its sensory richness.

Coupling digital acoustic models and video with a close examination of liturgical texts and melodic structures, Pentcheva applies art-historical, philosophical, archeoacoustical, and anthropological methodologies to provide insight into the complementary ways liturgy and location worked to animate worshippers in Byzantium. Rather than focus on the architectural form of the building, the technology of its construction, or the political ideology of its decoration, Pentcheva delves into the performativity of Hagia Sophia and explains how the “icons of sound” created by the sung liturgy and architectural reverberation formed an aural experience that led to mystical transcendence for worshippers, opening access to the imagined celestial sound of the angelic choirs.

Immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully illustrated, this exploration of Hagia Sophia sheds new light on sacred space, iconicity, and religious devotion in Byzantium. Scholars of art and architectural history, religious studies, music and acoustics, and the medieval period will especially appreciate Pentcheva’s field-advancing work.

Pentcheva is the author of two earlier studies in iconography, both of which were very positively reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. In 2006 she published Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium.

In 2010 she published The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (Penn State, 320pp).

Both books deserve a prominent place in any library serious about iconography.

Byzantine Art and Devotion

As I have very often noted on here, interest in all things "Byzantine" remains high, and this is never more true than when it comes to Byzantine art and iconography, as three recent publications happily illustrate. The first, Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium by Ivan Drpić, has just appeared in a Kindle edition from Cambridge University Press, 2016, 514pp.
by Ivan (Author)

About this book we are told:

This book explores the nexus of art, personal piety, and self-representation in the last centuries of Byzantium. Spanning the period from around 1100 to around 1450, it focuses upon the evidence of verse inscriptions, or epigrams, on works of art. Epigrammatic poetry, Professor Drpić argues, constitutes a critical - if largely neglected - source for reconstructing aesthetic and socio-cultural discourses that informed the making, use, and perception of art in the Byzantine world. Bringing together art-historical and literary modes of analysis, the book examines epigrams and other related texts alongside an array of objects, including icons, reliquaries, ecclesiastical textiles, mosaics, and entire church buildings. By attending to such diverse topics as devotional self-fashioning, the aesthetics of adornment, sacred giving, and the erotics of the icon, this study offers a penetrating and highly original account of Byzantine art and its place in Byzantine society and religious life.

The second also comes to us from Cambridge UP. Authored by Cecily J. Hilsdale, Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline, at 424pp. is a hefty tome about which the publisher tells us:

The Late Byzantine period (1261 1453) is marked by a paradoxical discrepancy between economic weakness and cultural strength. The apparent enigma can be resolved by recognizing that later Byzantine diplomatic strategies, despite or because of diminishing political advantage, relied on an increasingly desirable cultural and artistic heritage. This book reassesses the role of the visual arts in this era by examining the imperial image and the gift as reconceived in the final two centuries of the Byzantine Empire. In particular it traces a series of luxury objects created specifically for diplomatic exchange with such courts as Genoa, Paris and Moscow alongside key examples of imperial imagery and ritual. By questioning how political decline refigured the visual culture of empire, Cecily J. Hilsdale offers a more nuanced and dynamic account of medieval cultural exchange that considers the temporal dimensions of power and the changing fates of empires."

The third collection treats biblical art in Byzantium but also more widely: Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, The Art of the Bible: Illuminated Manuscripts from the Medieval World  (Thames and Hudson, 2016, 336pp.).

About this book we are told:

A beautiful and informative exploration of the illuminated manuscripts of the Bible over a millennium and across the globe, shedding new light on some of the most significant, yet rarely seen, paintings of the Middle Ages

For two millennia the Bible has inspired the creation of extraordinary art. Within this history illuminated biblical manuscripts are among the best tools for understanding early Christian painting and artistic interpretations of the Bible.

This extensively illustrated new book, compiled and written by two internationally renowned experts, transports readers, by way of forty-five featured manuscripts, across the globe and through 1,000 years of history. Passing chronologically through many of the major centers of the Christian world, from Constantinople and imperial Aachen to Canterbury, Mozarabic Spain, Crusader Jerusalem, northern Iraq, Paris, London, Bologna, and Rome, Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle shed light on some of the finest but least-known paintings from the Middle Ages, and on the development of art, literature, and civilization as we know it.

The Birthday of the Theotokos

Though I'm sure thoughts of the liturgical calendar rarely if ever enter into publisher's timelines, it is nonetheless a felicitous coincidence that just this month, in time for today's feast of the nativity of the Theotokos, an affordable paperback edition of an important book published in 2005 (and very favourably reviewed thereafter in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies), has been made available: Maria Vassilaki, Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium (Routledge, 2016), 416pp.

About this book we are told:

Fully illustrated in colour and black and white, Images of the Mother of God complements the successful exhibition catalogue of the 'Mother of God' exhibition at the Benaki Museum in Athens. It brings together the work of leading international authorities and younger scholars to provide a wide-ranging survey of how the Theotokos was perceived in the Byzantine world. It embraces the disciplines of art historians, archaeologists, traditional and feminist historians, as well as theologians, philologists and social anthropologists. Images of the Mother of God will appeal not just to those interested in Byzantine art and culture, but also to scholars of Western Europe in the Middle Ages who are looking for comparative materials in their own work.