14.4: Byzantium from the End of Iconoclasm to the Latin Conquest

Byzantine Iconoclasm and the Triumph of Orthodoxy

by Dr. Evan Freeman

The “Iconoclastic Controversy” over religious images was a defining moment in the history of the Eastern Roman “Byzantine” Empire. Centered in Byzantium’s capital of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) from the 700s–843, imperial and Church authorities debated whether religious images should be used in Christian worship or banned. Who were the players and what was this Controversy all about?

Key Terms

Icons (Greek for “images”) refers to the religious images of Byzantium, made from a variety of media, which depict holy figures and events.

Iconoclasm refers to any destruction of images, including the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries, although the Byzantines themselves did not use this term.

Iconomachy (Greek for “image struggle”) was the term the Byzantines used to describe the Iconoclastic Controversy.

Iconoclasts (Greek for “breakers of images”) refers to those who opposed icons.

Iconophiles (Greek for “lovers of images”), also known as “iconodules” (Greek for “servants of images”), refers to those who supported the use of religious images.

What was the big deal?

Debating for over a century whether religious images should or should not be allowed may puzzle us today. But in Byzantium, religious images were bound up in religious belief and practice. In a society with no concept of separation of church and state, religious orthodoxy (right belief) was believed to impact not only the salvation of individual souls, but also the fate of the entire Empire. Viewed from this perspective, it is possible to understand how debates over images could entangle both Church leaders and emperors.

The arguments

The iconophiles and iconoclasts developed sophisticated theological and philosophical arguments to argue for and against religious images. Here is a quick summary of some of their main points:

The iconoclasts argued that God was invisible and infinite, and therefore beyond human ability to depict in images. Since Jesus was both human and divine, the iconoclasts argued that artists could not depict him in images. The iconophiles agreed that God could not be represented in images but argued that when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born as a human being with a physical body, he allowed himself to be seen and depicted. Since some icons were believed to date to the time of Christ, icons were understood to offer a kind of proof that the Son of God entered the world as a human being, died on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven—all for the salvation of humankind.

The iconoclasts also objected to practices of honoring icons with candles and incense, and by bowing before and kissing them, in which worshippers seemed to worship created matter (the icon itself) rather than the creator. But the iconophiles asserted that when Christians honored images of Christ and the saints like this, they did not worship the artwork as such, but honored the holy person represented in the image.

Timeline of events

Early centuries

Sporadic evidence of Christians creating religious images and honoring them with candles and garlands emerges from as early as the second century CE. Church leaders often condemned such images and devotional practices, which seemed too similar to the pagan religions that Christians rejected.

The seventh century

The Byzantine Empire faced invasions from Persians and Arabs in the seventh century, resulting in significant loss of territory. Trade decreased and the empire experienced an economic downturn. Byzantine anxieties over images likely emerge, at least in part, as a result of these devastating events (which may have been perceived as signs of God’s displeasure with icons).

Through the centuries, icons became increasingly widespread in Byzantium. By the late seventh century, the Church began to legislate on images. Church leaders at the Quinisext Council (also known as the Council of Trullo) held in Constantinople in 691–692 prohibited the depiction of crosses on floors where they could be walked on, which was understood as disrespectful. They also mandated that Christ be depicted as a human rather than symbolically as a lamb in order to affirm Christ’s incarnation and saving works. Around this same time, emperor Justinian II incorporated icons of Christ onto his coins. These events suggest the growing importance of religious images in the Byzantine Empire at this time.

The first phase of Iconoclasm: 720s–787

Historical texts suggest the struggle over images began in the 720s. According to traditional accounts, Iconoclasm was prompted by emperor Leo III removing an icon of Christ from the Chalke Gate of the imperial palace in Constantinople in 726 or 730, sparking a widespread destruction of images and a persecution of those who defended images. But more recently, scholars have noted a lack of evidence supporting this traditional narrative, and believe that iconophiles probably exaggerated the offenses of the iconoclasts for rhetorical effect after the Controversy.

Historical evidence firmly identifies Leo’s son, emperor Constantine V, as an iconoclast. Constantine publicly argued against icons and convened a Church council that rejected religious images at the palace in the Constantinople suburb of Hieria in 754. Probably as a result of this council, iconoclasts replaced images of saints with crosses in the sekreton (audience hall) between the patriarchal palace and Constantinople’s great cathedral, Hagia Sophia, in the 760s (discussed further below).

787 Iconophile Council of Nicaea II

In 787, the empress Irene convened a pro-image Church council, which negated the Iconoclast council held in Hieria in 754 and affirmed the use of religious images. The council drew on the pro-image writings of a Syrian monk, Saint John of Damascus, who lived c. 675–749.

The second phase of Iconoclasm: 815–843

Emperor Leo V, who reigned from 813–820, banned images once again in 815, beginning what is often referred to as a second phase of Byzantine Iconoclasm. Leo V’s ban on images followed significant Byzantine military losses to the Bulgars in Macedonia and Thrace, which Leo may have viewed as a sign of God’s displeasure with icons. Theodore, abbot of the Stoudios Monastery in Constantinople, wrote in defense of icons during this time. Evidence suggests this second phase of Iconoclasm was more mild than the first.

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey), c. 1400. Tempera on wood, 39 x 31 x 5.3 cm. The British Museum, London, England. (Photo via Smarthistory)

The Triumph of Orthodoxy

The iconoclastic emperor Theophilos died in 842. His son, Michael III, was too young to rule alone, so empress Theodora (Michael III’s mother), and the eunuch Theoktistos (an official), ruled as regents until Michael III came of age. Later sources describe Theodora as a secret iconophile during her husband’s iconoclastic reign, although there is a lack of evidence to support this. For reasons not entirely clear, Theodora and Theoktistos installed the iconophile patriarch Methodios I and once again affirmed religious images in 843, definitively ending Byzantine Iconoclasm.

Imperial and Church leaders marked this restoration of images with a triumphant procession through the city of Constantinople, culminating with a celebration of the Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia. The Church acclaimed the restoration of images as the “Triumph of Orthodoxy,” which continues to be commemorated annually on the first Sunday of Lent in the Eastern Orthodox Church to this day.

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Copying — spotlight: Virgin Hodegetria

by Dr. Asa Simon Mittman

In the early fourth century, the Roman Emperor Constantine decriminalized Christianity and began funding churches and works of art. He also moved the capital of the Empire from Rome to Byzantium, a wealthy city in modern-day Turkey, which he then renamed Constantinople after himself (today we call this city Istanbul). While at the time, its inhabitants still called their empire Rome, we now refer to it as the Byzantine Empire, which lasted about a thousand years, ending in the 15th century, when the army of the powerful Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople. The most characteristic creation of the Byzantine period is the icon—an image of a holy figure or event from Christian tradition, often presented against a gold background and thereby separated from any worldly context.

One of the most common subjects for such icons is the Virgin Hodegetria, literally “She Who Shows the Way” in Greek. These are images in which the Virgin Mary holds Jesus and gestures toward him, guiding the viewer to Jesus and therefore, according to Christian belief, to salvation. Because of its common appearance from Late Antiquity to the present, Hodegetria icons are useful examples of the remarkable continuity of copies of icons throughout time.

At a glance, Byzantine icons strike many viewers as repetitive, that is, as being more or less the same. Their similarity, though, is by careful design. Their makers sought to preserve information about the appearances of their subjects, and traditions of their representations, and thereby to produce images that were both accurate and magically or divinely powerful.

To be clear, the icons discussed here are a few examples out of thousands of this same subject, and there is no evidence that these particular images were directly copied from one another. Rather, they were part of a large network of icons, all based on related models.

Figure \(\PageIndex{16}\): Virgin Hodegetria, painted icon, Rome, c. 500–525, overpainting c. 1100, heavily restored (Santa Maria Nova now called Santa Francesca Romana, originally likely for Santa Maria Antiqua). (Photo via Smarthistory)

Cultural context: Byzantine Icons

Hodegetria icons were considered particularly important and authoritative, since it was believed that the first version was painted by St. Luke, author of one of the four Gospels—the core texts of Christianity. This version was therefore considered accurate and authoritative; artists strove—and still strive—to copy it as exactly as possible, in order to preserve its record of what they believe to have been an actual, historical moment when Luke painted Mary and Jesus from life. There is debate over what happened to this first image. Some believe it was destroyed when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453. Others believe it was smuggled out of Constantinople, and survives in Western Europe, though this camp has not reached consensus on which of several possible icons is the one painted by Luke. Most art historians, though, believe that the form of the Hodegetria developed in the Early Byzantine period, perhaps in the fifth or sixth century.

 

The vita icon in the medieval era

by Dr. Paroma Chatterjee

Figure \(\PageIndex{21}\): Vita icon of St. Nicholas, Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt, late 12th to early 13th century. (Photo via Smarthistory)

The “vita” icon is literally the image of a life. Its usual format consists of the magnified central portrait of a saint surrounded by those episodes in his/her biography that made him/her a saint. In these vignettes, the saint appears in a smaller and relatively more active stance as s/he goes about the business of sanctity by performing miracles, praying, and sometimes, even being martyred.

Image and text

“Vita” icons usually incorporate texts identifying the saint and the episodes from his/her life. While we might expect the narrative scenes in the frames of “vita” icons to parallel written accounts of saints’ lives, or “hagiographies,” which were widely circulated in the medieval era, scholars have remarked on the apparent independence of “vita” icons from the standard textual versions of the lives of the saints depicted. By the 11th century in the Byzantine Empire, saints’ lives had been compiled into a more or less definitive version by Symeon Metaphrastes known as the Metaphrastean Menologion; yet, the “vita” icons from the 13th century do not reflect this book so much as older hagiographies. Some have argued that this was probably because the 13th-century exemplars are copies of even older “vita” icons which, in turn, relied on the earlier hagiographical texts. While this may have been the case from the point of view of the creators and patrons of the icons, from the perspective of the viewer these panels may be read as visual statements in their own right with the inscriptions permitting the identification of scenes, not necessarily intended to evoke specific passages in written hagiographies.

Figure \(\PageIndex{26}\): Vita icon of St. George, Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt late 12th or early 13th century. (Photo: Princeton University, via Smarthistory)

 

Vita icons, east and west

“Vita” icons were most strikingly used in the service of one of the most radical saintly personalities of the medieval west: Francis of Assisi, whose life and many posthumous miracles were included in the format. As the first person to have been recognized officially as a genuine stigmatic (St. Francis was blessed with the wounds of Christ) by the Catholic Church, St. Francis revolutionized ideas of the human body (as an image of the divine), the natural world (Francis preached to birds and other animals), and property (Francis advocated the renunciation of worldly possessions), although a number of Franciscan ideals stemmed from existing strands of ascetic and monastic thought and practice.

Figure \(\PageIndex{29}\): Vita icon of St. Clare (Santa Chiara Dossal), 1280s. (Photo: Web Gallery of Art, public domain)

One major difference between the Byzantine and Western “vita” icons is that the format was almost exclusively used in the east for well-established, long-deceased saints (e.g. Nicholas and George) and in the west for recently minted saints (e.g. Francis), and initially for those associated with the Franciscan Order such as St. Clare of Assisi and St. Margaret of Cortona.

Figure \(\PageIndex{30}\): Master of the Bardi Saint Francis, Bardi Chapel, Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence, altarpiece with scenes from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi (Bardi Dossal), c. mid 13th century. Tempera on panel. (Photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Some of the Franciscan “vita” icons were also used as altarpieces (a work of art set above and behind an altar)—a category of object that was never used in the medieval Orthodox church, but which furnished a focus of devotion and a high degree of visual elaboration in the Roman Catholic churches of western Europe.

 

A work in progress: Middle Byzantine mosaics in Hagia Sophia

by Dr. Evan Freeman

Figure \(\PageIndex{36}\): Isidore of Miletus & Anthemius of Tralles for Emperor Justinian, Hagia Sophia, Constantinople (Istanbul), 532-37. (Photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Who was the artwork’s patron? What were the artwork’s original meanings and functions? When art historians study a work of art, they ask questions about the artwork’s initial creation. But often, works of art and architecture change over time, challenging us to take a longer view of an artwork’s history and position within social networks, something anthropologist Arjun Appadurai referred to as the “social life” of a thing. [1]

This is the case with the Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia—the main cathedral in Constantinople (modern Istanbul)—which the Byzantines often referred to as the “Great Church.” Built by emperor Justinian during the brief period of 532–537, Hagia Sophia was at first primarily decorated with crosses and non-figural motifs. But in subsequent centuries—and particularly following the a ban on religious images (icons) during the Iconoclastic Controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries—several figural mosaics were added to the walls of Hagia Sophia, which dramatically changed the appearance of Justinian’s Great Church. These mosaics illustrate the ways Hagia Sophia became entangled in and responded to theological controversies, imperial donations, and even marriages.

Figure \(\PageIndex{38}\): Apse mosaic with Virgin and Child, Hagia Sophia, Constantinople (Istanbul). (Photo: byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

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Byzantine frescoes at Saint Panteleimon, Nerezi

by Dr. Evan Freeman

Figure \(\PageIndex{54}\): Church of Saint Panteleimon, 1164, Nerezi, North Macedonia. (Pphoto: byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Eastern Roman “Byzantine” Empire is well known for its glittering, gold mosaics. But the medieval artists of Byzantium were also adept at a wall painting technique known as fresco: a less expensive medium than mosaics in which artists applied pigments to wet plaster so that the painting became chemically bonded to the wall itself. A small church located in the village of Gorno Nerezi (commonly just “Nerezi”) on the outskirts of Skopje, North Macedonia, preserves some of the finest examples of fresco from the Byzantine period.

Imperial Patronage

According to a painted inscription in the church, the Middle Byzantine church of Saint Panteleimon (pronounced pan-tah-LAY-mon) was built as a monastery church in 1164 by Alexios Komnenos, a nephew of Byzantine emperor John II (see Figure \(\PageIndex{56}\)). Alexios may have owned land in this region. Nerezi’s five-domed architecture and high-quality frescoes reflect its imperial patronage.

Figure \(\PageIndex{56}\): Church of Saint Panteleimon, 1164, Nerezi, North Macedonia. (Photo: Evan Freeman, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Saint Panteleimon is a modest, cross-domed structure with four smaller domed chapels, making it a five-domed church (anplan in Figure \(\PageIndex{57}\)). Its five-domed design echoes the form of the church of the Holy Apostles in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (destroyed following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453)—which contained relics of the Apostles and the tombs of Byzantine emperors—reflecting Nerezi’s connections with the capital and imperial family.

Like most Byzantine churches, Saint Panteleimon is divided into three main parts, which were adorned with frescoes:

1. the narthex at the western end of the church, which functioned as an entrance vestibule;
2. the naos—the main part of the church—where most of the worshippers attended church services; and
3. the bema, or sanctuary, where the altar was located and where the clergy led the celebration of the Eucharist.

The two eastern chapels connect to the bema, enabling them to function as a prothesis and diakonikon. The two western chapels connect with the narthex and may have been used for services that took place in the narthex.

Frescoes

Figure \(\PageIndex{58}\): Portrait of monastic Saint Arsenios in the southern crossarm of the naos, 1164, Saint Panteleimon, Nerezi. (Photo: byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

While the frescoes in the narthex have been badly damaged and the upper portions of the naos and bema were replaced with post-Byzantine paintings, the naos and bema preserve much of the original, twelfth-century frescoes on the lower levels.

A stunning, blue background unifies the original, twelfth-century frescoes, which have been executed with a range of vivid colors. The figures at Nerezi are slender and often elongated. Nerezi’s painters have made extensive use of lines to define the boundaries of shapes, model forms, and portray emotions in the individualized faces of many of Nerezi’s figures (see Figure \(\PageIndex{58}\)). This elongation of the figures and repetition of lines create a sense of visual rhythms and movement within the church, and were a hallmark of Byzantine painting during the Komnenian period.

The high quality of Nerezi’s frescoes and similarities with other artworks have led many scholars to conclude that the church’s painters hailed from the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, a major center of artistic patronage and production. Nerezi’s frescoes are particularly valuable since no painted church programs from Constantinople survive from this period (much of Constantinople’s church art was destroyed following the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453).

The Naos

As was common in post-Iconoclastic churches, Nerezi features full-length, nearly life-size portraits of saints at the floor level, with narrative scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary (see Figure \(\PageIndex{59}\)).

Figure \(\PageIndex{60}\): The Meeting of the Lord in the Temple fresco in the southern crossarm of the naos, 1164, Saint Panteleimon, Nerezi. (Photo: byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Bishops in the Bema

Figure \(\PageIndex{73}\): Apse mosaic of bishop Saint Severus, Sant’Apollinare in Classe, c. 533–49, Ravenna, Italy. (Photo: Evan Freeman, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The bema, where the clergy celebrated the Eucharist, displays images that reflect the ritual function of this particular space. Eight bishop saints decorate the bema walls at ground level, two of whom appear to emerge from the side chapels. Images of bishops were a common feature in Byzantine bemas for centuries, where they were usually depicted frontally and holding books, as with the mosaic of Saint Severus at the sixth-century church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe, near Ravenna, Italy (see Figure \(\PageIndex{73}\)).

But the bishops at Nerezi appear in a three-quarter view and strike a more dynamic pose, an innovative approach at this time. Instead of closed books, the bishops at Nerezi hold unfurled scrolls, or “rolls," that display prayers spoken by the clergy in the Divine Liturgy. Such scrolls were actually used by clergy during this period, as seen in a roughly contemporary, twelfth-century example preserved at the British Library.

Nerezi in art history

Byzantine art may be known for its golden mosaics, but the five-domed church of Saint Panteleimon at Nerezi challenges modern viewers not to forget Byzantium’s equally beautiful frescoes. With vivid colors and graceful lines, Nerezi’s frescoes depict elongated figures that exhibit a range of emotions and sometimes occupy naturalistic landscapes, anticipating the Italian Renaissance and demonstrating Byzantium’s importance in the history of art (see Figure \(\PageIndex{77}\)).

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Mosaics and microcosm: the monasteries of Hosios Loukas, Nea Moni, and Daphni

by Dr. Evan Freeman

Middle Byzantine mosaics

While the church of the Pharos has been lost, three churches from around the eleventh century preserve much of their original mosaic programs, which were likely inspired by churches like the church of the Pharos in the capital. These three monuments—Hosios Loukas, Nea Moni, and Daphni—point to common trends in Middle Byzantine mosaics, while also demonstrating the flexibility of church decoration during this period.

Mosaics are patterns or images made of tesserae: small pieces of stone, glass, or other materials. They commonly adorned floors in antiquity but became popular decoration for church walls and ceilings in Byzantium, especially among wealthy patrons such as emperors.

In the Middle Byzantine period (c. 843–1204), domed, centrally planned churches became more popular than the long, hall-like basilicas of previous centuries. While basilicas created a strong horizontal axis between the entrance on one end and the altar at the other, domed churches added a vertical axis that prompted viewers to look upward. New decorative programs developed in tandem with this architectural trend, covering walls and domes with mosaics and frescos of holy figures in complex, new configurations. The lower portions of churches were often decorated with marble revetment (thin panels of marble, often beautifully colored).

Church as microcosm

Byzantine texts interpreted the domed church as a microcosm—a three-dimensional image of the cosmos—associating the sparkling gold vaults above with the heavens, and the colored marbles below with the earth. Within this framework, images often seem to be arranged hierarchically: with a heavenly Christ reigning above, events from sacred history unfolding below, and portraits of saints surrounding the worshippers in the lowest registers. Many of these images took on additional meanings as church services unfolded.

Figure \(\PageIndex{81}\): Left: “spatial icon” of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple at Hosios Loukas (photo: Evan Freeman, CC BY-SA 4.0); right: Masaccio’s Holy Trinity fresco at Santa Maria Novella. (Photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Spatial icons

The mosaicists who decorated these churches made no effort to create illusionistic backdrops for the holy figures, as one often finds in works from the Italian Renaissance, such as Masaccio’s Holy Trinity fresco (Figure \(\PageIndex{81}\)). Instead, the holy figures situated in the curves and facets of these Middle Byzantine churches appear against a gold ground. Often, these prophets, saints, and angels seem to face and even communicate with each other across the space of the church. Such “spatial icons”—as the art historian Otto Demus famously described them—created the impression that the holy figures occupied the same physical space as the worshippers.

Figure \(\PageIndex{82}\): Panagia and katholikon churches seen from the east, 10th and 11th centuries, Hosios Loukas Monastery, Boeotia. (Photo: © Robert Ousterhout, via Smarthistory). Both buildings feature distinctive decoration in red brick.

Hosios Loukas

The monastery of Hosios Loukas, located in central Greece, is probably the oldest of the three churches. It is named for St. Loukas of Steiris, a local monastic saint who lived on this site and died in 953. Two connected churches survive here. The older church, dedicated to the Virgin and located to the north, features a cross-in-square plan. The katholikon church, built to the south in the eleventh century, utilizes a larger, octagon-domed plan. The katholikon church retains many of its mosaics, undoubtedly the result of rich patronage. St. Luke’s body was interred between the two churches, and the monastery attracted pilgrims who sought the saint’s healing.

Worshippers entered the katholikon through the “narthex,” a vestibule at the western end of the building. Here, they encountered portraits of saints and large images of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection: Christ washing his disciples’ feet, the Crucifixion, the Anastasis, and the incredulous Thomas touching the wounds of the risen Christ.

Figure \(\PageIndex{84}\): Narthex mosaics, left: a group of women saints, right: Christ washing his disciples’ feet, katholikon, Hosios Loukas, Boeotia, 11th century. (Photo: Evan Freeman, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Worshippers then passed beneath a large mosaic of Christ Pantokrator to enter the main part of the church, or “naos.” Christ displays an open book that proclaims him to be the “light of the world” (John 8:12). The mosaic’s gold tesserae reflect sunlight from the front door in the daytime, and flickering candlelight at night.

Nea Moni

Hermit monks founded Nea Moni (“new monastery”) on the island of Chios sometime before 1042, and its katholikon was built with the patronage of emperor Constantine IX Monomachos between 1049–1055. It features a rectangular plan, and its architectural design may have been adapted to accommodate its mosaic program.

Figure \(\PageIndex{90}\): St. Joachim mosaic, 11th century, narthex, katholikon, Nea Moni, Chios. (Photo: Marmontel, CC BY-SA 2.0)

In the narthex, worshippers again encountered an array of saints and large narrative images centering around Christ’s Passion. In the naos, the main dome has lost its mosaics. But remnants of cherubim and seraphim, evangelists, and apostles inhabit pendentives beneath the dome. Further down, eight alternating conches and niches displayed a ring scenes from the life of Christ. The Virgin appears in the eastern apse behind the altar with hands upraised in prayer, flanked by the archangels Gabriel and Michael.

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The Paris Psalter

by Dr. Anne McClanan

The classical past and the medieval Christian present

Why would a Biblical king surround himself with pagans? The Paris Psalter embodies a complex mixture of the classical pagan past and the medieval Christian present—all brought together to communicate a political message by the Byzantine emperor.

The Byzantine Empire, which ruled areas of the eastern Mediterranean from the fourth through fifteenth centuries, left a dazzling visual legacy that has influenced other medieval Christian and Islamic societies as well as countless artists in our own time.

What is a psalter?

The word “Psalter” in the name of this manuscript is the term we use for books and manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Psalms. Psalters were one of the most commonly copied works in the Middle Ages because of their central role in medieval church ceremony.

The images

Figure \(\PageIndex{99}\): David Glorified by the Women of Israel, from The Paris Psalter, c. 900. 14-1/8 x 10-1/4″ / 36 x 26 cm Bibliothèque nationale de France. (Image via Smarthistory)

This work was unusually large and lavishly illustrated, with 14 full-page illuminations included in its 449 folios (a folio is a leaf in a book). Eight of these images depict the life of King David, who was often seen as a model of just rule for medieval kings. Because King David was traditionally considered the author of the Psalms, he is shown here in the role of musician and composer, sitting atop a boulder playing his harp in an idyllic pastoral setting.

This manuscript so carefully follows models from prior centuries that scholars once thought it was made during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. Only later did research demonstrate that the Paris Psalter was actually made in the tenth century as an exquisite imitation of Roman work from the third to fifth centuries—in other words, it was part of an intentional revival of the Classical past. Classical style, as a general term, refers to the naturalistic visual representation used during periods when, for example, the Roman emperors Augustus and Hadrian ruled.

Classical revival

The period of classical revival that produced the Paris Psalter is sometimes called the Macedonian Renaissance, because the Macedonian dynasty of emperors ruled the Byzantine Empire at the time. This classical revival followed Byzantine Iconoclasm. The notion that this Byzantine revival of the Roman past was a Renaissance, in the sense of a full-scale revival of classical thinking and art such as in the Italian Renaissance, has been questioned. However, there is no doubt that we see in this, and other contemporary works, a conscious appropriation of elements of the classical artistic vocabulary.

Thus we have the conundrum of the Biblical David encircled by classical personifications, a figure that represents a place or attribute. In this example, the seated woman embodies the attribute of Melody. David’s seated posture with his instrument is likely based on the classical tragic figure Orpheus, usually shown similarly positioned holding his lyre. Likewise the hazy buildings in the background also belong to the Greco-Roman tradition of wall painting. The meaning of the personifications such as the woman, Melody, perched beside David, is intriguing—within the medieval Christian context she presumably has now become a symbol of culture and erudition as opposed to her earlier significance as a minor deity in the pagan classical world.

Notice how the surroundings including plants, animals and landscape differs from the resplendent gold backgrounds used in the imperial mosaics of Justinian and Theodora at Ravenna or the icon we call the Vladimir Virgin. In contrast, David is depicted naturalistically as a youthful shepherd, rather than the grand king he was to become. The classicizing, more realistic style of the figures and the landscape coupled with the overt classical allusions made by the personifications show the pains taken to render a coherent vision uniting subject and style.

Connecting with great emperors of the past?

Other Byzantine art from the so-called Macedonian Renaissance, such as the ivory Veroli Casket (see Figure \(\PageIndex{100}\)), also show a renewed interest in classicism that called upon Late Roman artistic models. The patron of the Paris Psalter perhaps sought to liken himself this way with great emperors of the past by reviving a style that had been out of favor for hundreds of years and perhaps evoked a “golden age.” Choice of artistic style could function as a tool for conveying meaning within the sophisticated Byzantine society at the time.

The Paris Psalter was produced in Constantinople, today known as Istanbul, and takes its name from its modern location, Paris’ Bibliothèque Nationale. The Paris Psalter manuscript, like most western medieval manuscripts, was not made from paper, but from carefully prepared animal skins. Medieval manuscripts were far more rare and precious than mass-produced modern printed books. Large-scale examples, such as this, made for an aristocratic if not imperial patron, show how Biblical art of the highest craftsmanship could serve many purposes for its medieval audience and patrons.

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Middle Byzantine secular art

by Dr. Anne McClanan

For many of us, “Byzantine art” evokes gold icons with sacred figures or splendid church interiors. But the Byzantines also created art and architecture with no religious imagery and without explicit religious functions in mind.

Silks

Manuscript illuminations show the gorgeous silk ceremonial garb of the court, as seen in this depiction of emperor Alexios V, whose brief reign ended with the Fourth Crusade‘s conquest of Constantinople in 1204 (see Figure \(\PageIndex{103}\)). The emperor wears deep purple silk, not decorated with religious motifs, but with white medallion patterns that display a griffin at the center. Similar textiles survive, including an example at the cathedral treasury in Sion, Switzerland.

Figure \(\PageIndex{104}\): Byzantine silk with paired griffins in roundels, 11th century, Valère Basilica, Sion, Switzerland. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0)

Ceramics

A menagerie of strange beasts also populates Byzantine ceramics. A twelfth-century plate, recovered from a medieval shipwreck, shows a cheetah attacking a deer.

Figure \(\PageIndex{105}\): Plate with cheetah attacking a deer, mid-12th century, glazed earthenware with sgraffito decoration. Nea Anchialos Archaeological Collection. (Photo: National Gallery of Art, via Smarthistory)

Other Byzantine ceramic vessels featured abstract ornaments or even scenes from popular stories, such as this thirteenth-century plate that might render a scene from the tales of Digenis Akritis which roughly translates as “biracial border lord.” The Digenis Akritis is a Byzantine poem of the twelfth century that narrates the exploits of a fictional hero of Byzantine and Arab descent named Basil on the eastern frontier of the Byzantine empire.

Ivory Boxes

A similar playfulness is seen in the imagery of Middle Byzantine ivory and bone boxes, or caskets, of which over forty survive. Additional panels also survive, detached from boxes that are now lost. While some caskets display Biblical figures such as Adam and Eve, many instead portray an eclectic array of figures that seem calculated to delight rather than edify.

Figure \(\PageIndex{107}\): Veroli Casket, 950–1000, Constantinople, wood overlaid with ivory and bone, traces of gilding and paint. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The tenth-century Veroli Casket includes scenes from classical mythology such as the hero Bellerophon with his winged horse Pegasus. 

Strips of ivory decorated with rosettes, which frame the scenes on the Veroli Casket, are another common characteristic of such boxes. Carved pieces of bone and wood attach to a wooden armature, which come in a few standard shapes. Earlier scholarship assumed these lavish works were made for women, but there is no imagery or other evidence that suggests they were seen as particularly feminine. Instead, what is clear is the use of classical, pagan imagery to signal the erudition and status of the owners, who may have used such boxes to store a range of precious objects.

San Marco bowl

Figure \(\PageIndex{109}\): Bowl, 11th–12th century, enameled and gilded glass, 17 x 33 cm (with handles). Treasury of San Marco, Venice. (Photo © Regione del Veneto, via Smarthistory)

An exquisite tenth-century glass bowl now in Venice’s San Marco illustrates another way the classical is rendered in Middle Byzantine art.

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Medieval Nubian Kingdoms, an introduction

by The British Museum

Figure \(\PageIndex{113}\): This sandstone block is from the cathedral at Faras. It is one of several which formed a decorative frieze around the apse. Between the pillars stands a dove or eagle, wings outstretched, beneath a Coptic-type cross. Both birds were important symbols in Egyptian and Nubian Christianity – representing paradise. Around the neck of the bird on the left is a bulla, a small receptacle worn as an amulet. Sandstone frieze, early 7th century, from Faras (Nubia), Sudan, 25.4 x 43 cm (© The Trustees of the British Museum, via Smarthistory)

Between 500 and 600 CE, the rulers of three Nubian medieval kingdoms, Nobatia, Makuria and Alwa, governed the Nile valley from the first cataract to just south of modern Khartoum in Sudan. Missionaries from the Byzantine Empire, sent by Justinian I and his empress Theodora, converted these kingdoms to Christianity. This introduced a marked cultural change into the region.

Churches replaced temples and simple burials replaced the grand tombs of the earlier pagan rulers. This transformation is visible in numerous objects found in the British Museum collection including the iron cross of Bishop Timotheos and a carved wooden pectoral depicting an archangel.

After a brief period of conflict with their Arab neighbors in Egypt, the borders were secured, and the medieval kingdoms flourished for almost a thousand years. The introduction of the water wheel (saqia) allowed agriculture to expand. Villages, towns, monasteries and fortresses lined the banks of the river Nile. Artists attained new heights of achievement, particularly in the fields of mural art and pottery production, and there appears to be a dramatic increase in literacy in Greek, Coptic, Old Nubian, and later Arabic.

From around 1200 onwards, dynastic strife, poor relations with the rulers of Egypt, and the rise of the Funj kingdom in the south, brought about the collapse of the Nubian medieval kingdoms.

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Byzantium, Kievan Rus’, and their contested legacies

by Dr. Evan Freeman

Figure \(\PageIndex{117}\): Virgin of Vladimir, or Vladimirskaya, 12th century with later repainting, tempera on wood. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. (Photo via Smarthistory)

One of the most beloved artworks in Russia is a tempera on wood icon known as the Virgin of Vladimir, or Vladimirskaya. It presents a common composition known as the Virgin eleousa (“compassionate”), which shows Mary and Jesus in tender embrace, their faces pressed together. The Virgin gazes out at us, commanding our attention, but her hands seem to gesture toward her son, destined to die on the cross and rise from the dead as the savior of humankind. Through the centuries, many miracles have been attributed to this icon, and as a result, numerous patrons and artists have sought to produce copies of it.

Christ Pantokrator

Byzantine worshippers probably would have found the interior of Kiev’s St. Sophia very familiar. As in contemporary Byzantine churches, such as Daphni monastery, a bearded Christ Pantokrator (“almighty”) reigns over the church from the central dome. Christ is surrounded by angels with large wings in imperial garb. Apostles fill the spaces between the windows in the drum that supports the dome and the four evangelists (authors of the Gospels) appear in the pendentives just below the windows.

Figure \(\PageIndex{125}\): Annunciation mosaics, St. Sophia, Kiev, begun 1037. (Photos © Archimandrite Seraphim, via Smarthistory)

The Annunciation

The mosaics in the bema where the altar is located similarly mirror contemporary Byzantine churches and point to the function of this part of the church as the place where the Eucharist was celebrated. Gabriel and the Virgin enact the Annunciation from either side of the bema. The angel announces to the Virgin that she will give birth to Jesus, suggesting a parallel between Christ’s incarnation (becoming flesh and blood) through the Virgin and the Eucharistic bread and wine believed to become Christ’s body and blood on the altar below.

Figure \(\PageIndex{126}\): Apse mosaics, St. Sophia, Kiev, begun 1037. (Photo © Archimandrite Seraphim, via Smarthistory)

 

The harmonious colors and rhythmic contours of the symmetrical composition depict three angels who visited and were served food by the biblical patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah in Genesis 18 in the Hebrew Bible or “Old Testament.”Christian theologians long interpreted this visitation of the three angels as an image of the Holy Trinity. Byzantine depictions of this event, as seen, for example, in the sixth-century mosaic at San Vitale in Figure \(\PageIndex{135}\), typically include both Abraham and Sarah, who play a central role in the biblical episode. But Rublev eliminated Abraham and Sarah from his icon, allowing the viewer to focus on the simplified composition of the three angels seated around an altar-like table. Rublev’s innovative icon reflects new Russian contributions to the Byzantine artistic tradition it inherited.

Figure \(\PageIndex{135}\): Hospitality of Abraham and Sacrifice of Isaac mosaic, San Vitale, consecrated 547, Ravenna, Italy. (Image via Smarthistory)Figure \(\PageIndex{136}\): Map with Byzantine Empire and Kievan Rus'. (Underlying map © Google, via Smarthistory).

Contested legacies

The Byzantine Empire and Kievan Rus’ do not survive, and their former territories are now divided among several states (as seen in the maps in Figures \(\PageIndex{136}\) and \(\PageIndex{137}\). Consequently, the legacies of Byzantium and Kievan Rus’ are often contested among these modern successor states, as the following two competing monuments illustrate.

Even as the Byzantines struggled to maintain their preeminent position in medieval geopolitics, their art and material culture continued to be an object of emulation throughout Afro-Eurasia. The Western European mendicant orders were inspired by the affective properties of Byzantine icons, and they imported Byzantine sacred art and artistic forms to the West.

Figure \(\PageIndex{158}\): Berlinghiero, Madonna and Child, Italian, possibly 1230s, tempera on wood, gold ground, 80.3 x 53.7 cm. (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain)

These images generated new styles in devotional painting by the thirteenth century, as evident in the work of artists like Berlinghiero, Cimabue, and Duccio, sometimes described as proto-Renaissance, who drew from Byzantine stylistic and iconographic models.

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Figure \(\PageIndex{159}\): Duccio di Buoninsegna, Madonna and Child, c. 1290–1300, tempera and gold on wood, 27.9 x 21 cm. (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain)

Some medieval Eastern European polities fashioned their religious and royal artistic images in the likeness of Byzantium. The church of the St. Sophia in Kiev, founded by the Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise in the eleventh century, boasts a monumental mosaic and wall painting program in a Byzantine mode and is one of many works of art and architecture that records the robust intercultural relations between Byzantium and medieval Rus’. Byzantine objects and buildings encountered by conquering armies in former Byzantine territories were often converted to new purposes and assimilated with emerging artistic traditions. This is especially apparent in medieval Anatolia, where, beginning in the eleventh century, the Seljuqs repurposed Byzantine sacred and secular structures to serve new needs, sometimes incorporating fragments of Byzantine architectural elements into newly constructed monuments.

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The visual culture of Norman Sicily

by Dr. Ariel Fein

Royal Architecture

The Cappella Palatina

Figure \(\PageIndex{164}\): Detail of muqarnas ceiling, Cappella Palatina, c. 1130–43, Palermo. (Photo: Ariel Fein, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

As part of their vast project to transform Palermo into the thriving capital of their new kingdom, the Norman kings built on an unprecedented scale. They furnished the kingdom with an elaborate royal palace, the Palazzo Reale (also known as the Palazzo Normanni), and its prized chapel, the Cappella Palatina, cathedrals in nearby Cefalù and Monreale, and extensive suburban dwellings. The most famous of the Norman royal monuments, the Cappella Palatina masterfully combines diverse architectural and decorative sources, including Byzantine-style mosaics, an Islamic-style painted muqarnas ceiling, opus sectile floors, and multicolored marble and stone wall revetments. The resulting aesthetic transformed the building into a visual manifesto of the king’s Mediterranean ambitions.

Cefalù Cathedral

Figure \(\PageIndex{166}\): Detail of central apse with Pantokrator, Cefalù Cathedral, 1131–1240. (Photo: Gun Powder Ma, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Like the Cappella Palatina, the Norman kings’ other churches and cathedrals similarly evoked a synthesis of Byzantine, Islamic, and Romanesque forms. Roger II’s Cefalù Cathedral, built between 1131 and 1240, intertwines the region’s diverse decorative traditions. Its overall design is reminiscent of Norman and French architecture in Northern Europe, following a Latin abbey design, and furnished its interior with mosaics executed in a Byzantine style, including images of Christ Pantokrator, the Virgin, apostles, and prophets in the apse. While the high quality of the chapel’s mosaics has led many scholars to conclude that Roger II imported Byzantine craftsmen to Sicily to decorate his churches, it is also possible that the chapel’s mosaics were executed by local artisans.

Documenting Religious Diversity

The majority of the surviving art and architecture from Norman Sicily was built by and for the island’s Latin-Christian Norman kings. However, some surviving works reveal glimpses of the art and identity of the island’s diverse population. The most famous of these monuments is the Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio in Palermo, better known as the Martorana. George of Antioch, the Arab-Christian grand-vizier, or prime minister, to King Roger II, built the church as a private burial chapel for himself and his family as well as for the city’s Greek- and Arab-Christian communities. On the one hand, it closely resembles King Roger II’s Cappella Palatina in its mosaics, opus sectile floors, and marble revetments. On the other hand, the church’s Arabic epigraphy draws more heavily upon George’s own Arab-Christian identity. The church’s mosaic dome, with images of Christ Pantokrator surrounded by archangels, is encircled by a narrow band of wood, now faded, but once brightly painted with the Arabic translation of two texts from the Greek liturgy.

Figure \(\PageIndex{180}\): Dome with Christ Pantokrator surrounded by archangels and Arabic and Greek epigraphy, Martorana Church, Palermo, 1143. (Photo: Ariel Fein, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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Global Connections: The Book of Morals of Philosophers

In cosmopolitan cities of the Islamic world, scholarship flourished. The material wealth of Muslim courts, combined with tolerance of Christianity and Judaism, supported the synthesis of existing knowledge and the discovery of new ideas. Many words in the English language that are related to mathematics and numeric problem-solving, for instance, have their roots in Arabic. Algebra, for example, comes from Muhammad ibn Musa al-Kwarizmi’s ninth-century book ‘ilm al-jabr wa'l-muqābala (meaning, “the science of restoring what is missing and equating like with like”). Al-jabr initially meant setting broken bones.

In the video below, Stephen Zucker and Ronnie Perelis discuss a particularly vivid example of the scholarly exchange that took place between Christian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures during a “period of transformation.”

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Articles in this section:

• Dr. Evan Freeman, "Byzantine Iconoclasm and the Triumph of Orthodoxy," in Smarthistory, February 2, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• ​​Dr. Asa Simon Mittman, "Copying — spotlight: Virgin Hodegetria," in Smarthistory, June 7, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Paroma Chatterjee, "The vita icon in the medieval era," in Smarthistory, June 21, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Evan Freeman, "A work in progress: Middle Byzantine mosaics in Hagia Sophia," in Smarthistory, February 26, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Evan Freeman, "Byzantine frescoes at Saint Panteleimon, Nerezi," in Smarthistory, November 20, 2020 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Evan Freeman, "Mosaics and microcosm: the monasteries of Hosios Loukas, Nea Moni, and Daphni," in Smarthistory, June 17, 2020 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Anne McClanan, "The Paris Psalter," in Smarthistory, August 8, 2015 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Anne McClanan, "Middle Byzantine secular art," in Smarthistory, February 22, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• The British Museum, "Medieval Nubian Kingdoms, an introduction," in Smarthistory, March 9, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Evan Freeman, "Byzantium, Kyivan Rus, and their contested legacies," in Smarthistory, May 10, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Alicia Walker, "Cross-cultural artistic interaction in the Middle Byzantine period," in Smarthistory, July 30, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Ariel Fein, "The visual culture of Norman Sicily," in Smarthistory, May 21, 2021 (CC BY-NC-SA)