13.0: Chapter Introduction

Introduction: A Gothic, Roman, Heretic King

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Mausoleum of Thedoric, 520. Ravenna, Italy. (Photo: José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Mausoleum of Theodoric in Ravenna, Italy, looks a little bit like a tiny fortress, a uselessly-short watchtower, or even a not-very-aerodynamic spaceship. Its first floor, built of massive stone blocks, features ten flat slides, each with a rounded, Roman-style arch, and the upper level is a slightly narrower cylinder, decorated with rectangular niches capped by lunettes that echo the arches below. The stone for the building was quarried in Istria, across the Adriatic Sea in what is today Croatia, and each stone was expertly carved to fit together perfectly, without mortar. A rather flat dome with twelve radiating “loops” slightly overhangs the cylinder, capping the hulking building like a giant crown. Remarkably, this dome is not concrete, like the one the Romans used to span the Pantheon four centuries earlier, nor like the ones used in mausolea across the empire through Late Antiquity. Instead, the dome of the Mausoleum of Theodoric is a monolith, carved from a single, gigantic stone. Exactly how the builders managed to place the stone—weighing hundreds of tons—atop the second story remains a mystery.

Another mystery is why Theodoric would do such a thing. Many presume that the garnet cloisonné used in the Sutton Hoo ship burial, discussed later in this chapter, was a labor-intensive substitute for cloisonné enamel, but Theodoric’s builders knew how to make concrete domes. Was he evoking northern burial traditions? Referencing stone-carving techniques and mausolea in Syria and Asia Minor? Or simply displaying his power by creating something a Byzantine emperor could not have done?

Theodoric was from one of those northern “barbarian” tribes, the Ostrogoths, that had become part of the Roman empire at its far reaches. He had been educated, however, in Constantinople, the capital of the eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire and heir to Rome’s artistic and intellectual traditions. In 489, the Byzantine Emperor, Zeno, sent Theodoric, then a commander in the Byzantine army, to take Italy. By 493, Theodoric ruled the Italian peninsula and beyond—and although he professed allegiance to the Byzantine emperors, he minted a coin on which he called himself King Theodoric. His mustache may be northern, but putting his likeness on a coin evokes the Roman Emperors and other great conquerors (Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\).

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Coin depicting Flavius Theodoricus (Theodoric the Great), c. 493-526. Palazzo Massimo, Rome. (Photo: unknown author, CC BY-3.0)

Theodoric’s building program in Ravenna, which had been the capital of the western Roman Empire since 401, was grand and ambitious—though generally more traditional than his monumental mausoleum. In typical Byzantine style, the church now called Sant’Apollinare Nuovo had a plain brick exterior but inside was filled with glittering mosaics. One of these shows Theodoric’s (since destroyed, but at the time neighboring) palace, which melds Classical features, like an arcade of Corinthian columns supporting rounded Roman arches, with Christian symbolism like the Greek cross and guardian angels (themselves modeled on nikes). At another of Theodoric’s church complexes, also in Ravenna, only the baptistery survives. It too is built of brick, and has a concrete—not monolithic—dome, that features an internal ceiling mosaic depicting Jesus’ own baptism.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Ceiling mosaic showing the baptism of Jesus by Saint John the Baptist, c. 500. Ceiling of the Arian Baptistery, Ravenna, Italy. Mosaic. (Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA-4.0)

The scene includes not just Jesus and John the Baptist, but also a muscular older man with flowing white hair and a beard, symbolizing the river itself, and drawn directly from earlier Classical models, such as the Mosaic of Oceanos and Tethys from Gaziantep, Turkey (Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\)).

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Mosaic of Oceanos and Tethys, c. 2nd-3rd century. Mosaic. Zeugma Mosaic Museum, Gaziantep, Turkey. (Photo: Adam Jones, CC BY-SA-2.0)

This building is known as the Arian Baptistery, named after the branch of Christianity to which Theodoric—like many northerners after their conversion to Christianity—adhered. As the previous chapter mentioned, Arianism, which held that since God fathered Christ, Christ was the younger of the two,had been declared heretical at the Council of Nicea. This is one of several times in the early middle ages when Christians declared each other heretics over their explanations of the status of Christ. Most ended with the elimination of the heresy (too often, by eliminating the heretics themselves), but a break that still exists followed the Council of Chalcedon in 451, where the assembled bishops pondered how Christ could be both man and god, and decided that these two natures (human and divine) must each exist in pure form, unmixed, in Christ. Distant Christians, some at war with Persians, were not able to attend the council, and the Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopian churches were among those which ultimately rejected its formulation, adhering to the older idea that the divine and human are mixed in Christ. These churches still remain independent of the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. Fortunately, neither side calls the other heretics these days.

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Theodoric's Palace, c. 500. Mosaic. Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy. (Photo: José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Theodoric’s Arian heresy—and Theodoric himself—were deliberately erased when the Byzantine Emperor Justinian regained full control of Ravenna from the northerners. The church that Theodoric had dedicated to Christ was rededicated to an anti-Arian bishop, and depictions of Theodoric and his retinue were erased, similar to depictions of the much earlier Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut. A close look at the columns of Theodoric’s palace show the only remaining trace: ghostly hands against the marble columns, with only fluttering curtains now inhabiting each arch. Theodoric’s bones, interred in his mausoleum, were scattered. The mausoleum itself remains, however, and both it and Theodoric himself reflect some of the indeterminacy, overlapping identities, and cross-cultural exchange that characterize this period.

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Theodoric's Palace (detail showing disembodied hands), c. 500. Mosaic. Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy. (Photo: José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Historiography (Writing History)

Terminology: Medieval

Theodoric would certainly not have thought of himself as living in the “Middle Ages,” nor would anyone alive at the time. In fact, the label medieval, or Middle Ages, was given by later Renaissance thinkers, who saw their own age as a glorious rebirth, or flowering of Classical art and culture that had lain dormant in western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. For them, the thousand years between the fall of Rome and their own rediscovery of scientific observation, philosophy, humanism, and arts, were not just “Middle,” but even “Dark” Ages full of violence, superstition, disease, and illiteracy. Scholars no longer consider this period to be just a “middle,” but instead see it brimming with its own skillful, imaginative, and even fanciful art. Nonetheless, they do still use the term medieval to refer to this particular historical period. During the medieval period, Christianity and Islam became the ruling religions of Europe, North Africa, the Near East, and much of Asia. This period is also marked by armed conflict between Christianity and Islam, between Christianity and Judaism, and between Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Hinduism.

Desegregating the Middle Ages

Surveys and handbooks of art history, like this one, are usually arranged chronologically. Earlier cultures come first, followed by those that arose later. This textbook, like most, has separate chapters on the roughly contemporary civilizations of the ancient Near East and Egypt. Then civilizations parade by in reasonable order: Aegean, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman. The problem of fully contemporaneous cultures reappears, however, in the Middle Ages. Most textbooks use the following order of topics: “Early Christian, Byzantine, Islamic, Early Medieval (including Carolingian and Ottonian), Romanesque, and Gothic,” despite the fact that this has been considered a problematic approach for some time.

As Robert Nelson noted in 1996, this sequence creates “a conceptual break between Byzantium/Islam and Western Europe.” This break means that Byzantium and Islam are effectively removed from the narrative and appear out of time prior to the true Middle Ages, thus shifting the narrative and timeline to move smoothly in a “Western” framework. Major surveys in the United States have even classified Byzantium with Greece and Rome, as “antiquity.” Some surveys place Islam in a separate section of “non-Western” or “non-European” art, despite both the substantial geographical overlap between the medieval Islamic world and the ancient Near East, as well as the Roman Empire, and despite the pejorative connotations of categorizing a culture by what it is not (i.e., “non-Western”).

By segregating Byzantium and the Islamic lands from the medieval narrative, historians of medieval art gave themselves permission to consider these cultures irrelevant. This “othering” of Byzantium and Islam has roots in the origins of the field of art history, in which German-speaking scholars called the middle ages “the German world” and its art “German styles.” To break with this nationalistic and Orientalist understanding of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, this textbook treats the Middle Ages chronologically, dividing the period into Early, Middle, and Later Medieval and addressing not just northern and western Europe, but concurrent developments and exchanges to the south and east.

The table below indicates how this and the following chapters will address this material. The textbook also concludes with Chapter 16, which addresses the Gothic period, which occurs in the late medieval period in western Europe.

Content in Chapters 13-15

Chapter	13	14	15
Title	Medieval I: The Reorganization of the Roman World & the Rise of Islam	Medieval II: Contested Empires, Christian and Islamic	Medieval III: Reorganization of the East
Dates	333-843	843-1260	1260-1453
Material covered	Early Byzantium Introduction/the lives of Jesus and Mary Manuscripts and ivory miniatures The Migration Period Anglo-Saxon Vikings Insular The Early Islamic World Introduction to Islam Mosque architecture Umayyad Abbasid The Islamic West Carolingian	Fractured Islam Fatimid Seljuk Ghaznavid The Islamic West, cont. The Latin West Vikings, cont. Ottonian Pilgrimage Romanesque Byzantium from the End of Iconoclasm to the Latin Conquest Icons, frescoes, and mosaics Macedonian Renaissance Medieval Nubian Kingdoms Kievan Rus’ Norman Sicily	Ilkhanid Timurid Mamluk Late Byzantine Christian East Africa

Nationalism and Orientalism

As noted in discussions of other periods, the way the story of the Middle Ages has been told often reflects less on the objects and cultures themselves than on scholars’ own biases and preconceptions. Historiographies in earlier chapters have noted the tendency of early archaeologists to focus either on the Biblical or Classical world, or on what was close at hand. This encouraged narratives that linked past cultures to modern nations.

Nationalism

By the early 19th century, Englishmen were self-identifying as Anglo-Saxons, a cultural group last dominant in 1066 CE. By declaring this (false) identity, they claimed the British Empire to be Anglo-Saxon, denying any agency to the Celtic Britons of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, much less to colonial subjects in North America and Asia. In light of England’s disagreements with France—over North American colonies, the French Revolution, and Napoleon—it also disassociated the English from the French-speaking Normans, who conquered Anglo-Saxon England. This Anglo-Saxon identity has also been used to nefarious ends in the United States, in order to craft an imaginary and exclusionary vision of white America.

Probably the most insidious use of this kind of archaeology and myth-creation was in Nazi Germany. Building on the scholarship of German-speaking universities, the Nazis used archaeology of the Migration Period to claim territory on the theory that it had belonged to their Germanic ancestors rather than the Slavic peoples who were their actual neighbors in Poland and Czechoslovakia, among other countries. A theory advanced by Polish-Austrian art historian Josef Strzygowski held that European culture was the result of the clash between the Classical and “IndoGermanic,” which supposedly arose with the Aryan invasion of India and spread westward through Persia and the Caucasus, gradually developing into the strong, heroic culture of the German-speaking warlords who opposed the Romans. Despite completing extensive fieldwork in the Caucasus, Jordan, and Syria, Strzygowski rejected the idea of Islamic contributions to the art he studied, and proposed that Gothic architecture originated in Christian Armenia. “Aryan,” and especially “Caucasian,” have been widely used in the United States, alongside “Anglo-Saxon,” to differentiate a supposed white, northern European race from others. The Nazis embraced Strzygiowski’s view of a heroic, white Germanic European culture.

Orientalism

European diplomats, collectors, and scholars imagined that the vast and varied cultures of Asia, the Near East, North Africa, and Islam comprised a single, stereotyped, world they called the “Orient.” This conception of the “Orient” was invented by Europeans—imagining cultures outside of themselves as outliers to mainstream European culture—and as decadent, dangerous, exotic, and foreign. As the Arab American National Museum explains, "'Orientalism' is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates, and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous." However, contrary to this flawed thinking, the biggest and most influential cities of the early medieval world were Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), Turkey; Damascus, Syria; and Baghdad, Iraq. They preserved much of the literature and intellectual traditions of the Classical world—which would later be “rediscovered” during the Italian Renaissance. Intellectual centers of the Islamic world also saw major scientific and technical developments throughout the Middle Ages.

Chapter Overview

Introduction to the Early Middle Ages

Although scholars may disagree on exactly what to consider “Early Medieval,” it is clear that the period (the early fourth through the ninth centuries) includes four roughly contemporary and deeply-linked cultures and periods, divided by languages, religions, and geography:

1. early Byzantium
2. the various tribes and kingdoms the Romans classed as “barbarian,” often referred to as the cultures of the Migration Period
3. early Islam (beginning in the 7th century)
4. the Carolingian Renaissance (beginning in the late 8th century)

The material in this chapter could have been arranged in a number of ways, including by artistic medium. Under that organizational structure, a section on manuscripts would introduce the two texts most commonly produced in the Middle Ages: the Christian Bible, especially the Gospels, and the Islamic Qur’an. A section on architecture would compare buildings derived from Roman basilicas and ones with centralized plans. And a discussion on sculpture would examine how in the Early Middle Ages, sculpture in the round was rare, replaced by reliefs in ivory, wood, metal or stucco. Instead, this chapter moves between the four cultures temporally (as outlined above and introduced below), inviting readers to recognize similarities and differences between them.

Early Byzantium (333-843)

The name Byzantium comes from Byzantion, the small Greek town which the Emperor Constantine rebuilt and renamed after himself, making Constantinople into the new, eastern, capital of the Roman Empire. During this Early Byzantine period, the Empire transitioned into a fully Christian, mostly Greek-speaking realm. It is worth noting that, unlike the Latin church to the west, the Byzantine church did not expect converts to use Greek; the Bible was translated into Armenian, Coptic, and many other languages, which were used in Christian liturgies. Roman architectural traditions continued in churches of ambitious size using impressive vaulting systems. In 726, the institution of iconoclasm, which ruled that images should not be used in Christian contexts, shook the Byzantine world. Until 843, the imperial court supported first iconoclasts, then their opponents, then iconoclasts again. With imperial support, iconoclasts destroyed a great deal of Early Byzantine imagery, but enough survived in remote areas, in secular settings, and in illuminated manuscripts to demonstrate its unique characteristics, which adapted Late Antique styles to painting, mosaics, and relief sculpture.

The Migration Period

By establishing his capital on the eastern edge of Europe, on the west bank of the Bosphorus, Constantine contributed to the dissolution of Roman power on the other side of the continent. Another factor in the decline of Roman power was the mass movement of various peoples westward out of central Asia and across Europe from the fourth through the sixth century, often called the Migration Period. It overlaps with the end of Late Antiquity as well as the Early Middle Ages. Most of the newcomers moved as groups of warriors. Thus the Goths, including Theodoric, came to rule Italy in the fifth and sixth centuries, while another group of Goths took Spain. For this chapter, the main example is Britain. As seen in the last chapter, as Roman power in Britain waned, raids by the Celtic peoples the Romans had conquered led to the burial of the Mildenhall Treasure. But soon other peoples migrated across the North Sea. From what is now the Netherlands and Germany came peoples including the Angles and the Saxons, who began to coalesce into various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the fifth century; in 927 these united into a kingdom called England. All across Europe, small linguistic and cultural groups moved in search of land and power. A massive reorganization of what had been the Roman Empire west of the Balkans, as well as of the lands that had been the Romans’ northern neighbors, took place during the Migration Period.

The Rise of Islam and the Umayyad Dynasty (661- 750)

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity before it, is a monotheistic religion, and adopts many of the scriptures, prophets, and tenets of those forebearers. Adherents to Islam, known as Muslims, believe that over a period of 23 years, starting in 610, the angel Gabriel delivered the word of God (his final message) to the Prophet Muhammad, then a merchant living in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. These were God’s final messages to mankind and Muhammad recited those revelations. After Muhammad's death, Islamic scholars gathered the revelations into the holy text known as the Qur’an. The Umayyad dynasty (661- 750) supported this editorial project, as well as the development of the first mosques built for large congregations. Islam spread with remarkable speed, and by 719, Muslim leaders had conquered the Middle East, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Persia. Muslim occupation of the Holy Land, home to sites sacred to Muslims as well as to Christians and Jews, was an ongoing source of conflict with the Byzantine Empire. The Roman and Byzantine Empires’ centuries-long struggle with Persian empires was over, replaced by a new neighbor with a formidable culture that made steady inroads into imperial territory, while adapting Roman and Byzantine forms to a new religion and new social structures.

The Carolingian Renaissance (751-843)

The Carolingian Empire takes its name from Carolus Magnus: in Latin, Charles the Great, and in French, Charlemagne. Originally the king of the Franks, Charlemagne united what is now France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, and northern Italy under his rule—the first time Western Europe had been so united since before the fall of the Western Roman Empire. With the support of the pope, Charlemagne called this reunited realm the Roman Empire and sought to revive Roman traditions in governance, law, architecture, and the figural arts. The Carolingian Empire was divided in 843, coinciding with the end of Iconoclasm, although its influence continued into the late tenth century.

Objects Overview

This chapter covers a range of objects and buildings, from portable luxury and status items like intricate jewelry and elaborate, handcrafted books—to houses of worship for Christian and Muslim populations. In many, we see a combination of Classical influence, religious significance, and local artistic traditions. Perhaps the most striking are:

• the Vienna Genesis, a luxury manuscript illustrated in an illusionistic, Hellenistic style
• an ivory panel of the Archangel Michael, mixing a convincing body with ethereal space
• Hagia Sophia, a building that seemed miraculous when it was built
• San Vitale, a centralized church sparkling with marble revetments and mosaics, including portraits of its patrons, Justinian and Theodora
• the icon of the Virgin and Child with Saints George and Theodore, one of a handful of early Byzantine icons to survive iconoclasm
• the Sutton Hoo Purse Cover, incorporating precisely cut gems and gold
• the Oseberg Ship Burial, preserving masterful Viking wood carving
• the Lindisfarne Gospel, incorporating Anglo-Saxon and Celtic motifs into Christian art
• an exquisite folio from a Qur’an, annotated to demonstrate the principles that governed its design
• the Great Mosque of Damascus, which adapts Byzantine forms to support Islamic communal prayer
• the Dome of the Rock, using Byzantine forms to proclaim the power of Islam
• Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel, adapting Roman and Byzantine ideas to reinforce the ruler’s legitimacy
• Carolingian Evangelist Portraits, an attempt to revive and rival Roman painting

By the time you finish reading this chapter on the art of the early medieval period, you will be able to:

• Contrast the use of animals as decorative motifs in the arts of early Islam and the Migration period
• Compare early Byzantine and early Islamic mosaics
• Discuss the persistence of Migration period styles in the Book of Kells or the Lindisfarne Gospels
• Compare the representation of the human body in Byzantine ivories and manuscript illuminations
• Compare the representation of the ruler in the Justinian mosaic at San Vitale and the caliph from Khirbet al-Mafjar
• Explain the relationship of the Prophet Muhammad's house in Medina to the hypostyle mosque (e.g., at Kairouan or Cordoba)
• Identify the actions and people portrayed in major scenes from the life of Christ
• Discuss the role of the name of Christ in the Chi-Rho page in the Book of Kells

Want to know more?

Here are some additional resources you can explore to further your understanding of the art discussed in this chapter.

• Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• “Central Asian Metalwork in China,” by Boris I. Marshak, in China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200–750 A.D
• San Vitale and the Justinian Mosaic, for Smarthistory
• Dress styles in the Mosaics of San Vitale, for Smarthistory
• Orientalism, for Khan Academy
• What is Orientalism?, in “Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes” for the Arab American National Museum, April 2011
• James M. Harland, Race, Racism and the Middle Ages essay series for Public Medievalist
• Helen Young, Where Do the “White Middle Ages” Come From?, for Public Medievalist
• Sutton Hoo, for Google Arts & Culture
• The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, for Google Arts & Culture
• The Dome of the Rock, for Google Arts & Culture
• Hagia Sophia, for Google Arts & Culture
• The Christian Bible (British Library Sacred Texts), for the British LibraryWalters Museum
• Erica C D Hunter, Translations of the Bible in Eastern Christianity, for the British Library
• Basilica of San Vitale, for Google Arts & Culture
• Thelma K. Thomas, “The Honorific Mantle as Furnishing for the Household Memory Theater in Late Antiquity: A Case Study from the Monastery of Apa Apollo at Bawit,” in Catalogue of the Textiles in the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection, ed. Gudrun Bühl and Elizabeth Dospěl Williams (Washington, DC, 2019)
• Scot McKendrick, The Christian Bible, for the British Library