Byzantine Studies Conference Archives

Tenth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference
1-4 November 1984
The University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio

ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS

The Byzantine Studies Conference is an annual forum for the presentation and discussion of papers embodying current research on all aspects of Byzantine history and culture. The Abstracts of Papers is printed from camera-ready

copy supplied by the speakers. Copyright (©) reserved to the Individual speakers. Copies of the Abstracts are presented to each participant paying the General Registration fee, and they are also available for purchase by other interested persons and libraries. Subscriptions are available in five-year units: 1975-79 (Nos. 1-5) for $15; 1980-84 (Nos. 6-10) for $20. Individual copies can be ordered for $5 the copy. All prices include postage. Orders must be prepaid (checks payable to Byzantine Studies Conference) and sent to:

Byzantine Studies Conference
c/o Dumbarton Oaks
1703 32nd Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20007

Byzantine Studies Conference

Abstracts of papers--Byzantine Studies Conference, lst-1975--Madison, Wis.
[etc.] Byzantine Studies Conference.
v. 22 cm. annual.
Key title: Abstracts of papers--Byzantine Studies Conference.
ISSN 0147-3387
1. Byzantine Empire--Congresses
DF501.5.B9a 949.5 77-79346
MARC-S
Library of Congress 77

Abstracts indexed and prepared for printing by Martin Arbagi and Steven Bowman. The Index appears on pages 65-66.

COVER ILLUSTRATION

Justinian II. First reign, 685-695. Gold Solidus. Constantinople, 686/7. 4.43 gr., 21mm. ↓

Obverse: IUSTINIA NYSPEAN Young bust facing, wearing divitision and chlamys fastened at right shoulder by a fibula, and crown with cross and circlet. His right hand holds a globus crucinger.

Reverse: VICTORIA [A]NZUS Cross potent on base and three steps. In exergue CONOB

W. Hahn, Moneta. Imperii Byzantini, III, p. 261 (2). Private collection in Cincinnati

CREDITS

Photo - Huey McClellan

Description - Michael Braunlin

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Friday Morning, 2 November-

• Session A: PILGRIMAGE Page 1
  Gary Vikan (Dumbarton Oaks), Presiding
• Session B: BYZANTINE HISTORY Page 7
  Walter Emil Kaegi, Jr. (The University of Chicago), Presiding
• Session C: EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE LITERATURE Page 10
  Ihor Sevčenko (Harvard University), Presiding

Friday Afternoon, 2 November-

• Session A: THE SLAVS Page 13
  Vladimir Goss (Chapel Hill, North Carolina), Presiding
• Session B: LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY CHRISTIAN ART Page 19
  William Tronzo (The Johns Hopkins University), Presiding
• Session C: JUSTINIAN Page 22
  Bezalel Narkiss (The Hebrew University, Jerusalem), Presiding

Saturday Morning, 3 November-

• Session A: MANUSCRIPTS Page 25
  Kenneth Snipes (The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Presiding
• Session B: EGYPT, SYRIA, AND PALESTINE Page 31
  Robert Gregg (Duke University), Presiding

Saturday Afternoon, 3 November-

• Session A: TYPIKA AND MONASTERIES Page 36
  Michael McCormick (Dumbarton Oaks), Presiding
• Session B: THE CRUSADES Page 41
  Charles Brand (Bryn Mawr College), Presiding

Sunday Morning. 4 November-

• Session A: BYZANTINE ARCHEOLOGY Page 47
  James Morgenstern (The Ohio State University), Presiding
• Session B: BYZANTINE FORTIFICATIONS Page 50
  Timothy E. Gregory (The Ohio State University), Presiding
• Session C: THE MACEDONIAN "RENAISSANCE" Page 55
  Thomas Mathews (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University), Presiding
• Session D: THE YEAR 800 AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE Page 60
  Warren Treadgold (Hillsdale College), Presiding

Presiding: Gary Vikan (Dumbarton Oaks)

The pilgrim festivals belonged to the religion of Israel aiready during the later monarchy, and Muhammed made the Hajj one of the five pillars of Islam. In Christianity, however, although it was a cognate of Judaism and Islam, the compulsion to travel to holy places did not assume significant proportions until the age of Constantine the Great. The contrast is striking. Both the general absence of pilgrimage from the piety of the early church and its sudden flowering in Constantine's day require explanation. This paper will address only the latter problem.

Earlier studies on the beginnings of Christian pilgrimage have devoted most of their attention to reports that a handful of Christians traveled to Palestine in the second and third centuries to visit the holy places. An example is Melito of Sardis, whose journey to the Holy Land in the 160's had the specific purpose of research on the canon of scriptures. For sore scholars the travels of Melito and others like him already included most of the elements that made up the ethos of pilgrimage in the fourth century. In this view Melito and his contemporaries already traveled for the purpose of worship in the holy places, and to experience there as nowhere else the physical reality of Biblical events. Hence Christian pilgrimage might best be interpreted as a natural outgrowth of primitive Christian tradition, with its ultimate origins in Jewish veneration of graves and holy places. This is roughly the position of Hans Windisch and Bernard Kštting among older studies, and more recently E. D. Hunt has adopted it in his book Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire.

Hunt's view--that pilgrimage grew naturally from primitive Christian origins--is untenable. In 1931 Ewald Burger had a1ready pointed out that the ethos of pilgrimage, as revealed in fourth-century texts, is either unknown or not securely attested among Christian travelers in the second and third centuries. Although both Eusebius and Jerome believed that pilgrimage had existed from the earliest days of Christianity (and thus read this view into their accounts of Melito and the like), Eusebius especially makes it clear that the first thronging of pilgrims to Jerusalem corresponded with the end of persecution and the reign of Constantine.

Ewald Burger argued that by the tine of Constantine Christianity had become a popular religion (Volkskirche) and that it imported pilgrimage along with other elements of popular piety from Greco-Roman paganism. There is a great deal of truth in this view, but Burger left unexplained why pilgrimage began to flourish precisely in the reign of Constantine.

A study of St. Helena's pilgrimage in 326 will provide part of the answer. As is well known, thousands of men and women of both aristocratic and more humble status emulated Helena, flocking to Palestine and Jerusalem to visit the holy places of the Old and New Testaments. Helena's importance in the development of pilgrimage is clear; what is less well-known (though suggested, paradoxically, by Hunt) is that her famous journey belonged in a tradition of aristocratic and imperial travel across the Empire extending back into Roman Republican times. Like Helena, the Emperor Hadrian (for example) traveled to emphasize the relationship of the imperial personage with the Empire at large, its cities, and their inhabitants. Helena's pilgrimage can best be understood in that tradition It had roots in the past, not indeed in the world of primitive Christianity but in the touring customs of the most exalted Romans.

Rooted in aristocratic and imperial tradition, Helena's pilgrimage also included decisive innovations. She traveled specifically to Jerusalem, as part of her son's efforts to cement an alliance with the Christian God. As a result of this imperial journey, inhabitants of the Empire would locate themselves more and more not only in miles from Rome but along a line from the imperial capital to Jerusalem. Moreover, Helena was a woman, equipped in the ancient view with the usual physical and moral frailties of her sex. An emperor like Hadrian, with manly virtues and the full resources of the state post, traveled easily and in principle could reach the most distant corner of the Empire even before report of him arrived. Although Helena ranked as Augusta and likewise employed imperial facilities, her sex emphasized the exertions of long-distance travel and the ascetic side of the journey, bringing what had been an imperial and aristocratic practice Into the purview of ordinary Christian devotion.

The Latin early sixth century composition De Situ Terrae Sanctae ascribed to Theodosius, is one of the most important pilgrim guides of Palestine in the Byzantine period.

The work is divided into thirty-two paragraphs, each of them containing a description of one itinerary or bringing an independent source. As a whole, the composition may be divided into two major parts. The first part (paragraphs 1-11) is a detailed and systematic description of Palestine and Jerusalem. The second part (paragraphs 12-32) contains material drawn from different sources and describes sites outside Palestine as well as complementary information on sites in Palestine and Jerusalem. our study will seek to determine the geographical sources for the first part. Paragraphs 1-5 describe five different itineraries starting from Jerusalem toward the east, the north, the northwest, the southwest and the south. The stations along the roads are places of Christian significance. The distances between stations are counted by miles. Paragraph 6 mentions several holy sites in the close neighborhood of Jerusalem. Paragraphs 7-11 point out the main churches and the main pilgrim stations within Jerusalem; the distances between them are counted by paces.

Scholars interpret the first five paragraphs as derived from one of the Holy Land itineraria. For example, J. Wilkinson (Jerusalem Pilgrims Before the Crusades, Warminster 1977, pp. 63-71, 184- 192), assumes that the functional section--the stations and distances--were taken from a civil itinerary guide, to which the editor, Theodosius, added the Christian traditions. However, a careful comparison between our composition and the existing secular itineraria, does not confirm this hypothesis. Differences in routes, stations and distances are recognizable.

We prefer the possibility that Theodosius derived his information not from an ordinary pilgrim guide book, but rather from a map. This was a map for the use of pilgrims, or their tour leaders, who established their base in Jerusalem. Its graphic representation resembled that of the Roman road map of the Tabula Peutingeriana, with depictions of main roads, main stations and settlements and the signs, in numerical characters, of the distances between each station. The Christian cartographer added in the empty spaces short explanations or Biblical quotations which fit the sites. The map was probably drawn on parchment and circulated in a small number of copies. One of these copies came into the hands of Theodosius and became his main source of information concerning names, distances and traditions. This hypothesis can be further corroborated through a comparison with the only existing map of Byzantine Palestine--the Madaba mosaic map--although this map is entirely different in its goals and character, and based on various sources. If we check the sites and the traditions mentioned by Theodosius, we find that they appear on the mosiac map (we can check, of course, only the regions which were preserved on the mosaic). it is our conclusion that the artist who made the Madaba map found a basic framework in a similar pilgrimage map. He used, most probably, a Greek copy of the same Latin map which Theodosius knew.

The description of sites within Jerusalem was drawn from another map--a city map of Jerusalem. The reconstruction of this map will remain, however, beyond the limit of the present paper.

The attraction of the holy sites which brought about the institution of pilgrimage in the early Middle Ages also led to the creation of a variety of souvenirs which served to document the journey. The best known of these are works of the minor arts now known as locus sanctus objects but originally called eulogiai or "blessings" by the faithful. Frequently these objects were containers for secondary relics such as dirt, water or oil from the holy site, and often a schematic representation of the site and the events it commemorated would appear on the container. The objects had a certain prophylactic value, and the combination of image and relic would help to recreate at a distance the sanctity or spiritual validity of the original site. The importance of locus sanctus objects in the visual arts has been examined by Weitzmann (DOP, 1797-4. 33 ff.), while Vikan has clarified the social and functional significance of these objects (Byzantine Pilgrimage Art, 1982). In this paper, I propose to include architecture in the discussion pilgrims' souvenirs.

Numerous "copies" of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem were constructed in Western Europe from the ninth century onward. Since Krautheimer's study of the "Iconography of Medieval Architecture" (JWCI, 1942. 1-33), these copies have been frequently noted in architectural studies, but primarily as curiosities, out of the mainstream of development. However, when viewed in relationship to pilgrimage, the copies help to broaden our understanding of a significant cultural phenomenon. In both form and function, the architectural copies are analogous in concept to the smaller, portable pilgrims' souvenirs. Often constructed by returning travelers, the copies follow a mode of representation which parallels the locus sanctus images: parts were taken to stand for the whole, and the religious significance outweighed the visual similitude. In addition, many copies contained relics from Jerusalem, and the reproduced architectural image and relic worked together to transfer the sanctity of the holy site. Finally, like the locus sanctus objects, the architectural copies could serve a variety of functions which gained in significance by the association with the holy site.

St. Michael at Fulda, for example, is perhaps our earliest certain copy of the Holy Sepulchre. The octagonal chapel contained relics from Bethlehem and Mt. Sinai as well as a copy of the Tomb of Christ, all part of the original construction ca. 820. Both copy and relics were meant to increase the sanctity of an adjacent cemetery. The chapel was thus designed to function as a sort of reliquary, a large-scale locus sanctus object. The combination of relics and image representing different holy sites is not unusual and it paralleled in some reliquaries. The Sanctum Sanctorum casket, for example, contained "blessings" from a variety of Holy land sites which do not necessarily correspond to the painted images on its lid. In both the reliquary and the chapel of St. Michael, the intent was to document in a general way the source of the "blessings."

On an architectural scale, the copy effected a sort of topographical transfer, through which the faithful could visit by proxy the holy sites of Jerusalem. Thus the creation of one pilgrimage could easily become the object of another. The copies took on added significance when it was impossible to visit Jerusalem due to disruptions in the Near Last. The rotunda of Neuvy-St.-SŽpulcre, for example, was apparently constructed by pilgrims who had visited the Holy Land in the eleventh century. It contained a copy of the Tomb aedicula with relics of the Sepulchre. The church was located on one of the main pilgrimage roads which led from northern France to Santiago da Compostella in Spain. Thus the pilgrim to Santiago could conveniently visit "Jerusalem" along the way.

The principal--though by no means the only--Marian relics revered at Constantinople prior to the disruption of 1204 were the girdle (zon) and shawl (maphorion) of the Theotokos, conserved respectively at the Marian churches of Chalcoprateia (encaenia on 2 July) and of Blachernae (21 July,) but this clear distinction of the two relics is characteristic only of a period beginning towards the end of the ninth century, prior to which there was considerable confusion and uncertainty surrounding the questions of which relics lay where. The confusion appears to have arisen in part from the fact that the relics each lay in a sealed casket (soros), the origins of which were at best somewhat ambiguous, the precise nature of the contents very unsure. There are two independent stories of how a soros came to the Capital, both pointing to the third quarter of the fifth century. The so-called Euthymiac History which describes the reactions of Patriarch Juvenal of Jerusalem to an imperial request for corporal relics of the Theotokos, also includes the earliest known statement of what would come to be known as the doctrine of the bodily assumption of the Virgin. This is used to explain why a box (soros) of himatia and entaphia would have to suffice. The other story, the Legend of Galbius and Candidus, narrates the most flagrant case of pious larceny imaginable, perpetrated to deprive a pious Jewess of a robe-containing soros and bring it to the Capital, where it was installed at Blachernae. Not until the eve of the Iconoclastic Controversy is there any mention of the Marian clothing by name, and then it is the girdle which is hailed as guardian of the City. The feast is 2nd July, but there is nothing to suggest the relic has already moved to Chalcoprateia. The later use of an identical office for it and for the maphorion seems to suggest both a common origin and a fairly late separation date. This may well have been ca 900, for the zon seems (for the first time ?) to have been taken out of its soros to perform an act of healing on Zo Carbonopsina. It is likely that it was only in 860 that the maphorion was first revealed for what it was, and gained fame and glory for itself by repelling the R™s. Leo VI may have given the zon independent status at Chalcoprateia.

Soon after Constantine the Great had declared Byzantium his capital he began to remold the image of the city on the Bosporus by importing the antique art lacking in the city and emblems of the newly-favored Christian faith. His success in the latter endeavor would eventually eclipse his activities in the former until it was assumed by many that Constantinople had been founded as a Christian city. The accumulation of evangelical relics instigated by the dowager empress Helen later gave way to the importation of bodies of saints or, once their indivisibility was questioned, parts of the mortal remains of the servants of God. The gradual loss by the Empire of the Semitic East brought more relics from their original locations in the Holy Land as pilgrimage to the sacred sites of Palestine grew more difficult. The final stage in the accumulation of physical tokens of the activity of divine grace came in the period around iconoclasm when Constantinople produced not only many relics of its home-grown saints, but also miracle-working images to belie the iconoclast claims. Constantinople had by then become the world's major treasury of objects of pious Christian veneration.

While the number of hospices in Constantinople testifies to the pilgrim traffic coming to the Byzantine capital in the middle ages, we know little about how the pilgrims were handled or about what particular shrines and relics they wished to venerate. A sort of pilgrim's map of Constantinople before the Fourth Crusade can be created on the basis of descriptions of the city written by an English visitor and by a Russian pilgrim, as well as by a Latin translation of a Greek proskynetarion. The resulting "popular" version of the religious configuration of the city can then be compared with the official depiction of Constantinople's sacred treasures given by Emperor Alexius Comnenus. These two visions of the sacred city can, in turn, be juxtaposed to the lists of religious plunder expropriated by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, yet another pious inventory.

The restoration of Byzantine power in Constantinople coincided with a reconstitution of the marks of Constantinople as a sacred city. The aura of the myth, it seems, overshadowed the reality of the earlier looting. A comparison of the shrines and relics described by "ordinary" pilgrims with the lists of holy treasures shown to official visitors in the Palaeologan period demonstrates the success of the Byzantine authorities in reconstituting the symbols of the sacred city after the looting of the thirteenth century and also demonstrates the meshing of popular and official pieties in the final epoch of Byzantine history.

BYZANTINE HISTORY

Presiding: Walter Emil Kaegi. Jr. (The University of Chicago)

The function of the title "patrician" in the Later Roman Empire remains very imperfectly understood; it has been described simply as a "personal distinction, granted by the emperor to his nearest friends and highest officials" (Jones, LRE p. 106, cf. 528). Furthermore, in the fourth and early fifth centuries the title seems to have been used but infrequently. But by the mid fifth century it had became a good deal more common, and in the west, even though others continued to receive it, the title came to be applied in particular to the first magister militum praesentalis. So here, at least, the title had a much more narrowly applied significance. Another specific use of the title was that employed on occasion by eastern emperors, after the fall of the west, who used it to honor barbarian chieftains (e.g. Odovacar, Theoderic, Clovis).

But what of the many other patricii other than western masters of soldiers and barbarian kings? Do any of them have anything in common, aside from being friends of the emperor or high officials, which might have justified their acquisition of the title? It may be that such can be found in the area of diplomacy, for it appears that many eastern patricians acquired their titles in conjunction with an embassy, and that many ambassadors held this rank. One might note, for example, the embassies of Fl. Taurus to Armenia c.354/355, of Tatian to the Vandals in 464, of Fl. Probus to the Huns c.526, and of Strategius to the Persians in 531. All these individuals appear to have become patricians in conjunction with their embassies. And confirmation that such a policy of endowing ambassadors with this title seems to come from Malchus (fr.3), who reports that Zeno sent Severus to the Vandals in 474 "having made him patrician so that he might make a more majestic impression." Indeed, it may be that it was felt that the granting to an ambassador of the same title often granted to barbarian potentates would have made it particularly appropriate.

The eastern association of this title with the office of ambassador also seems to have been applied, moreover, to western ambassadors whom the Byzantine emperors received. one notes, for example, the report of Fredegarius (4.5) that count Syagrius, king Guntram's ambassador to Constantinople in 585, was made patrician "fraude." And other westerners too seem to have gained the title at about the same time as they served on embassies to the eastern court (e.g. Fl. Rufius Postumius Festus in 497, Fl. Agapitus c.509/511, and Q. Aurelius Symmachus c. 510). one wonders whether such grants may have been a means by which the eastern emperor could assert his nominal authority over the west, viz., by granting a title even if he could not grant an office. If so, it could explain the late sixth-century Frankish opinion that such a grant was fraud- ulent.

If the hypothesis that the title of patrician was felt to be especially appropriate for ambassadors can be accepted, it can have important prosopographical and political implications. It can suggest not only when, but also why an individual may have been granted the title, and in some instances such a suggestion can be very revealing. One might suggest, for example, that Sidonius Apollinaris was made a patrician by Anthemius in 468 in order to heighten his status as an ambassador to the Burgundians. Certainly, such a suggestion would be consistent with what is otherwise known of the easterner's western policy, and it might be noted that even here this use of the title seems to reflect an eastern rather than a western practice. Moreover, it may be that the same emperor's promise to make Sidonius' brother-in-law Ecdicius patrician as well was in the same context, and not, as always has been assumed in the past, part of a plan to make him first master of soldiers. And a study of a list of other patricians (unfortunately, there is none in either volume of PLRE) reveals similar instances of how insight into the granting of the title can be gained in a diplomatic context.

In all of Byzantine history there is no ruler who has received such universal condemnation as the emperor Phocas (602-10). George of Pisidia described him as the vengeance of nightmares and Theophylact Simocatta wrote that from the moment Phocas took office disasters and defeats devastated the Empire. The later historians Leo Grammaticus and George Cedrenus left portraits of a wild, scarred visage twisted with drunkenness, lechery and brutality. Most modern historians have followed these sources, and their verdict is hardly less harsh. Recently, however, F. Tinnefeld and P. Speck critically reviewed the sources, condemnation Phocas and found that their bitter judgment was conditioned by their historical context. It is no accident that the hideous caricature that we have received should have issued from the pens of writers who served Phocas, successor and exe- cutioner, the emperor Heraclius. It was a fundamental element of Heraclius' own efforts for self-legitimization that his predecessor's reputation be blackened as thoroughly as possible. The damnatio memoriae imposed on Phocas covered him with obloquy and consigned works that praised him to oblivion.

Phocasâ activity in the capital, moreover, was not limited to murdering aristocrats and debauching other men's wives. Phocas, just as Heraclius after him, came to the throne through the violent overthrow and execution of his predecessor, and similarly required some means of legitimization. From the first, he attempted to bring religion to his aid. His coronation in the church marked a clear departure from previous practice and lent an air of divine approbation to his accession. On the other hand, Phocas' consular celebrations, a traditional element of imperial accession, were celebrated for the last time by Phocas. These elements of imperial presentation constitute a moment of transition in the development of the imperial office.

Besides the ceremonial references, there also exist some sources that were written during Phocas' reign and praise him as one would expect a reigning emperor to be praised. The letters of Pope Gregory heaped praise upon Phocas and thanked God for his accession. In addition, a poem of the later Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, praised Phocas for his piety and his close relations with holy men. Were these sources our only information about Phocas' reign, we would certainly praise his rule as well.

Phocas, as the first successful usurper in nearly three centuries, faced a number of political challenges, one of which was establishing his legitimacy. He failed, and history has preserved the account of his reign left by the writers of his vanquisher. Phocas' overthrow is the best evidence of his political failure and there is no reason to take the rosey praises of the sources literally, just as there is no reason to accept the violent condemnation of the biased authors of Heraclius' reign literally. But the formulaic praises and the ceremonial developments of Phocas' reign set a precedent that was not ignored by Heraclius. A serious examination of the efforts of Phocas to establish his imperial credentials yields important information about the steps taken by Heraclius and deepens our understanding of the process of political change and transition in Byzantium.

For objets dâart and coinage both, Byzantium needed precious metals. Whether the gold and silver in question came from foreign trade or from local mines has been an important question for numerous scholars, and there are useful remarks on the topic by Bryer, Hendy, Vryonis, and a brilliant article by Watson. It was Vryonis who first discussed the mines on the basis of pre- and post-Byzantine evidence, an approach the later generation emulated. Watson pioneered the use of coinage to good effect upon the problem, basing his excellent theory on a thorough plundering of published catalogues.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extraordinary richness of Anatolian silver in the thirteenth century, a silver of such abundance that it fuelled the economy of Mongol Iran as well as the Lascarid and Seljuk revivals. The evidence on which these assertions rest comes from the contemporary coinage of Anatolia, most of which Muslim rulers struck. It includes some twenty thousand unpublished coins drawn from private collections, Anatolian hoards, and museum cabinets in the U.S., Europe, and Turkey. The use of neutron activation analysis in combination with geological surveys has produced information about the fineness of Anatolian silver and has also located the mines from which certain mints obtained the silver they coined. Much of the evidence for this talk, therefore, will be new to the listener.

The interpretation of this evidence will also be new, for the economic history of medieval Anatolia remains to be written, if indeed it can be written with any confidence. First, the terms of trade within the peninsula, and between it and its neighbors, must be addressed once again, in the light of Muslim-Christian currency 'communities'. Second, the evidence forces a new response to the question about east-west bullion shifts. Third, the measure of Anatolia's silver wealth, and of Byzantium's historic share in that wealth, must be taken anew. Finally, an interesting question of method arises in working over the material for this analysis: how to interpret Byzantine 'weakness' and Seljuk Îstrengthâ on the basis of parallel, if not exactly identical, information.

EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE LITERATURE

Presiding: Ihor Sevčenko (Harvard University)

Byzantine letters, as distinct from official and private letters of other sorts, emerge as a separate literary genre in late antiquity, noticeably in the fourth century with a neo-pagan emperor and a Christian bishop among its earliest and most notable practitioners. The most imitated letter writer throughout the entire Byzantine period was the pagan orator Libanius. Yet, it was a Christian saint, Gregory of Nazianzus, who was the first to prepare an edition of his collected letters, and who set down the "rules" of good letter writing, which were carefully observed and referred to a thousand years later. Gregory posits three characteristics of a good letter: conciseness (syntomia), clarity (saphēnia), and elegance (kharis). One should also be careful, he adds, to avoid affectation and excessive use of rhetorical devices, and one should include a bit of pleasantry (paidia).

Most scholars recognize a definite break, generally placed in the seventh century, between the civilization of late antiquity and that of the Byzantine period. Yet, there was continuity in one important respect, the education of the upper classes, their literary interests, and their manifestation of these in their correspondence. The practice of fine letter writing was carried on continuously by the Byzantines from the fourth century to the fall of their empire in 1453.

The literature of the Byzantines, their letters in particular, have often been criticized, and not without reason. But scholars have recently begun to judge the letters on their own merits and not simply according to modern tastes. This is indeed the only way to understand them and the people who wrote and who read them. However artificial they may seem to us, and whatever else they may have been, Byzantine letters were real letters written to real people. They valued the art of writing letters very highly and devoted a great deal of time and energy to it. Approximately some fifteen thousand such letters survive, clearly only a fraction of those written.

In addition to bearing a message, the Byzantine letter evolved into a vehicle designed to convey emotion, akin, as one scholar has noted, to lyric poetry. It was not poetry, of course, but neither was it prose in the ordinary sense of the term. It was a literary objet d'art, the product and the badge of an intellectual elite. It bound educated men and women in an exclusive group which included pagan and Christian, cleric and lay, monk and emperor.

While addressed to one individual, the Byzantine letter was intended for a wider public, and for posterity as well. One could argue that the formal letters written by the Byzantines were one of their greatest literary achievements. One of the very few scholars to have studied them in detail claimed that "according to absolute aesthetic standards, they belong to world literature". This was also, although they would certainly not admit it, the one area in which they surpassed their ancient models. A careful reading of the letters composed by the Byzantines may provide us with some historical and prosopographical information. More importantly, though, they can tell us what they thought and how they felt, and they can add another dimension to their personalities.

The existence side-by-side of a literature of devotion and a literature of education, each representing different values, constituted a problem which educated Christians have dealt with in a variety of ways. The radical rejection of pagan literature of Tertullian and others gave way to the more moderate solution espoused by St. Basil, since the religious debate under the Roman Empire forced Christian apologists to exploit the arsenals of pagan rhetoric and literature.

Refractory elements in the pagan legacy could be dealt with in various ways; 1) simple avoidance (St. Basil; warnings of Photius' Bibliotheca); 2) finding Christian connections for the author (Nonnus' Dionysiaca preserved because of his conversion and authorship of a paraphrase of John's Gospel; Socrates' story of Heliodorus' conversion); 3) allegorical interpretation (Demo on Homer; Philip Philagathus on Heliodorus).

Achilles Tatius' novel Leucippe and Clitophon was a particularly difficult case because in matter and language it is much less restrained than Heliodorus. Photius concluded that "the extreme indecency and impurity of the content make the reading of it repugnant and to be avoided" (Bibl. cod. 87). Though Psellus seems to share Photius' qualms about the book on moral grounds, he asserts the rhetorician's right to "pluck flowers" from the garden of Achilles Tatius as well. The Byzantine rhetorician sees literature as essentially a quarry to be mined. Just as in his letter to John Xiphilinus Psellus asserts his right to combine pagan lore with Christianity in his own way, so here he wants to assert his freedom as a rhetorician to choose decorative elements from various sources as he pleases.

Attitudes such as these helped to protect such works against moral sanctions. This was surely also Psellus' aim in an essay in which he argues that Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius should be read, not at the beginning, but at the culmination of one's literary studies, an attitude which adumbrates the modern solution of channeling specific types of entertainment to specific audiences on the basis of their maturity.

As has recently been noted (A. Thion, Byzantion, 51 [1981], 603- 624), Byzantine astronomy is a relatively neglected area. This is inevitably true also of elementary presentations of astronomy, i.e. descriptive non-technical surveys contributing to general education. Matters are complicated by the absence of any canonical Byzantine handbook of elementary astronomy such as Sacrobosco's Sphaera in medieval and early modern Europe, and no strong reliance on any ancient text such as we find occurring in sixteenth-century Europe with Ps-Proclus' Sphaera. Progress has been made in defining the Byzantine reception of relevant ancient material through the research of J. Martin and G. Aujac into the manuscript traditions of Aratus and Geminus respectively (J. Martin, Histoire du Texte des PhŽnomnes d'Aratos (Paris, 1956), and Scholia in Aratum Vetera (Leipzig, 1974); G. Aujac, GŽminos: Introduction aux PhŽnomnes (Paris, 1975), Introduction, XCI-CXIX.), but so far little work has been done on the fortuna of Cleomedes whose elementary survey of astronomy (the KuklikŽ Theoria) had a wide diffusion and influence. In this communication I would like to summarise findings that have resulted from work on a new Teubner edition of this author, and on an article for the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum.

Cleomedes was known in the eleventh century to Michael Psellus and Symeon Seth, but not surprisingly became better established during the well-known revival of interest in astronomy in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (on which see e.g. Thion art. cit., and D. Pingree, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 18 [1964], 135-160). Most of the earliest manuscripts of this author belong to the period 1270-1350 (at least twelve compared with three of Geminus). He was used by Nicephorus Blemmydes in his EpitomŽ Physica (cf. W. Lackner, "Zum Lehrbuch der Physik des Nikephoros Blermnydes," Byzantinische Forschungen, 4 (1972), 157-169 at 166) and George Pachymeres in his Quadrivium. A collection of the older scholia was augmented by John Pediasimus. One manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Ms. Adv. 18.7.15) is an autograph of Maximus Planudes (see A. Turyn, Dated Greek Manuscripts of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries in the Libraries of Great Britain, 57-59). Finally, there are more arguable associations with Demetrius Triclinius and Nicephorus Gregoras.

I shall survey this material, laying particular stress on the use made of passages from Cleomedes containing numerical information, or susceptible to reformulation in geometrical terms. In the latter regard, we can observe that Theodosius' Sphaerica and de habitationibus, and Euclid's Elements and Optics, were particularly exploited in explaining and criticising Cleomedean passages. Pediasimus' compilation is interesting from the standpoint of education. His recension of the older scholia involved introducing Aristotelian perspectives, and emphasising issues of method. His reconstruction of Eratosthenes, celebrated measurement of the earth (Cleom. 1.10) is the most extensive investigation of the topic after antiquity. Also one of the scholia that he adds appears to be an introduction to basic astronomical concepts, presumably for the students using his notes. (For Pediasimus I shall be drawing on unpublished material that I am editing.)

I shall also give some attention to Planudes' autograph of Cleomedes; it does not contain the radical revisions found in his treatment of Aratus (also in the Edinburgh manuscript), but may be of some interest because of a possible connection with Pediasimus' scholia.

In sum, my thesis in this survey will be that Cleomedes was part of the revival of interest in astronomy in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; study of some neglected evidence shows the penetration of his influence, and how his work helped complement at an elementary level the more advanced continuations of Ptolemaic astronomy.

This paper will propose a new solution to the old problem of Synesius' de Providentia and a new interpretation of the anti-German factor in the politics of Arcadius' reign.

O. Seeck showed in 1894 that the 'kingship of Egypt' in Synesius' allegory represented the praetorian prefecture of the East, and since 'Typhos, succeeds 'Osiris' as 'king' in Synesius' story, and Osiris is certainly Aurelian (prefect 399-400), it follows that Typhos must be the prefect who succeeds Aurelian in 400. According to Seeck this was Caesarius, but in 1964 A.H.M.Jones argued that it was Eutychian instead. I shall show that Seeck was right about Caesarius, but wrong in his overall interpretation of the de providentia. For Seeck argued, on the basis of a misreading of Synesius, (1) that Typhos/Caesarius fell from power, and then (2) that Osiris/Aurelian returned to and held on to power for some time, finally putting into effect his policy of 'degermanizing' the state. The execution of the Gothic general Fravitta, dated to 401, is usually seen as the culmination of this process of degermanization. It is further (and more extravagantly) implied in many current works that this degermanization of the eastern state was a salutary move that saved it from the fate of the western empire.

This far reaching hypothesis must be completely abandoned. There is no evidence in the law codes that the antigerman Aurelian returned to the prefecture, and Synesius (if read carefully) clearly implies that he did not. The truth is that the progerman Caesarius remained in power for several years, and there was no antigerman purge. The death of Fravitta took place not in 401 but several years later. There is not the slightest evidence that antigermanism as such was a serious factor in the political infighting for the power behind the throne of Arcadius.

THE SLAVS

Presiding: Vladimir Goss (Chapel Hill, North Carolina)

In about 1166 a major dynastic change occurred in Serbia. The old dynasty, represented by four brothers (Uroû II, Desa, Beloû, and Primislav) was replaced by a new one, also represented by four brothers (Tihomir, Stracimir, Miroslav, and Stefan Nemanja). It was headed at first by Tihomir who was quickly overthrown and replaced by his brother Stefan Nemanja. This new dynasty was to reign in Serbia until 1371.

Where the founders of this new dynasty came from and what--if any--connection they had to the preceding dynasty is a matter of great controversy. Most scholars have concluded the four new brothers were somehow related to the preceding dynasty. Later Serbian and Dalmatian sources from the 16th and 17th centuries state Nemanja was the son of Desa. A relationship to the previous dynasty is also suggested by the fact that Nemanja's charter issued to Hilandar in 1198 and the biographies of him written by his sons (Sava and Stefan the First-Crowned) state that Nemanja's great- grandfather and grandfather had ruled the land, but not his father. If this last statement is accurate, Desa could not have been his father. Also militating against Desa as his father is an inscription written by Nemanja's brother Miroslav in a gospel which states that Miroslav was the son of Zavid. Nothing else is known about Zavid--though that name appears in later genealogies as a brother of Nemanja-- though he might have been an otherwise unknown brother of Uroû II and Desa.

The life of Nemanja by his son Stefan states that Stefan Nemanja, the youngest son of a man whose name is not given--which is odd if that man were Desa or one of his brothers--, was born in Zeta after his father, having involved himself in a power struggle with his brothers, had fled Raûka for Zeta. Later the father returned to the "place of the throne" (stolnoje mesto). Did this mean that he simply returned to the capital city as a place or did this mean, as Anastasijević argues, he returned to the throne itself, i.e. returned to rule? When this unnamed father died each son received a hereditary appanage. Precedence went to the eldest son, Tihomir. Nemanja's appanage lay in the region of the Ibar River. Though no dates are given in any source as to when Nemanja received this appanage, it probably was about 1166, the approximate date when the four brothers replaced Desa as joint rulers of Serbia, with seniority going to Tihomir.

It seems likely this family was installed by Manuel, and one would expect him to turn to the existing ruling family for rulers. Manuel's role and the approximate date of 1166 for the change of rulers finds support in a Byzantine oration (discussed in the paper), published by Browning. Since 1166 is about the date other sources give for Tihomir's coming to power, it makes sense to conclude that Tihomir was the ruler appointed in that year over the Serbs by Manuel. The paper then briefly traces the struggle between Nemanja and Tihomir, resulting in Nemanja's expelling Tihomir and assuming the throne of Serbia in 1167 or 1168.

The bulk of the paper will be devoted to analyzing the contradictory evidence from our various sources: the later Serbian genealogies and 16th and 17th century Dalmatian chronicles and histories, the two biographies written by Nemanja's sons, the limited amount of biographical information included in Nemanja's charters, and the Byzantine evidence from the oration and from Niketas Choniates. Nemanja and his brothers, sons of the mysterious Zavid, seem to have emerged from nowhere to take over Serbia, with Byzantine help. But was Nemanja really the son of Zavid? We know only that Miroslav was his son. Could "brother" mean a first cousin--in this case as it does in modern Serbian-- leaving Miroslav Zavid's son as a cousin rather than brother of Nemanja? In that case Nemanja's father could be Desa or one of Desa's brothers. I shall then examine the vague account of the uprising that led to Nemanja's father being expelled from Raûka. Is there any grounds for Anatasijevićâs view that this account, written by Nemanja's son, implies the father had been and later returned to be again the ruler of Serbia? If this was the case, did his sons suppress this fact? If so, why might they have done this? And finally do the later (16th and 17th century) Serbian and Dalmatian sources contribute any hard information, as opposed to legends, to the question?

That the Serbian King Stephan Uroû Milutin restored the monastery of Chilandari on Mount Athos and supposedly replaced its existing katholikon by a new, larger church, is known from the King's biography written by Milutin's contemporary Danilo, the Archbishop of Serbia. He, however, speaks about this resto- ration in rather general terms giving neither the date nor the reasons why a new church had to be built there. In addition to Danilo's reference to the rebuilding of Chilandari main church by King Milutin, there is a long painted inscription above the southern of the three doors that lead from the narthex into the naos of the church in which it is said that the King pulled down the original katholikon in order to erect and decorate a new one on the same place in the year 6801 A.M., i.e. in 1293 A.D. That year has been accepted by virtually all the students of Chilanadari history as the date of Milutin's restoration of the monastery in spite of the fact that the year given is incom- patible with Milutin being called in the same inscription a son- in-law of the Emperor Andronicus II: the Serbian King married the Princess Simonis only in 1299. The explanation, often repeated, that the year in the original inscription -- which was retouched when the church was repainted in 1804 -- read SωIA (6811 = 1303) was altered by the negligent painter of the 19th century, does not seem possible: there is simply no room between the ω and A for another letter.

Of the 14th century frescoes in the church, several individual figures and compositions have been cleaned recently. To the same period belongs a group of portraits in the southwestern corner of the naos, among them one, well preserved, of King Milutin. Judging by the King's age, this portrait should be placed somewhere between the likeness of Milutin as donor at Staro Nagoričino (painted in 1318) and the last one in the long series of portraits of Milutin that were painted during his life-time, one in Gračanica which was painted in 1321, i.e. in the same year in which Milutin died. To resolve the discrepancy between the year given in the inscription and the King's age in his Chilandari portrait, scholars now suggest that the church was built in 1293 (or, possibly, in 1303) while the frescoes were painted in 1318-1320. This is not only an unlikely but also unnecessary proposal. In a charter with which Milutin donated the hamlet of Uljari to the Archbishop's cathedral at Peć, there is a reference to a meeting of the Council of the State which was held in Peć somewhere around 1318 and at which several decisions were made, among them that the monastery of Chilandari should be restored. The charter is preserved, that is true, only in a copy from the beginning of the 15th century (Chilandari Archive, Nr. 143), but several recent studies have shown that the authenticity of its text is beyond doubt. On the basis of this, until now completely overlooked reference to the restoration of Chilandari, the rebuilding of the katholikon of the monastery can be placed between the years 1318 and 1321, which fully agrees with the testimony provided by the King's likeness in the naos of the church.

The implications of this conclusion are manyfold. First of all, an extensive restoration of Chilandari katholikon, and many other buildings of the monastery, can be much more easily understood if it took place after the serious damages were inflicted upon the monastery in the course of several attacks on Chilandari by the Catalan mercenaries who, having been let go by the Byzantine Emperor who could not afford to pay for their services any longer, devastated first Thrace, then the hinterland of Thessaloniki, and, finally, Athos itself, attacking its monasteries including Chilandari. Danilo's anonymous biographer claims that, under the brave Abbot's leadership, Chilandari withstood the siege which lasted for over three years (from the spring of 1307 through the summer of 1310), but leaves no doubt that the monastery suffered a great deal. Secondly, if Milutin's restoration of Chilandari katholikon consisted, as I have argued earlier (at the Byzantine Studies Congress in Vienna, 1981), in addition to the repairs of the church (the scope of the 14th century repairs on the main part of the church will be hopefully determined by the study, now in progress, of the fabric of the church, being conducted by Prof. P. Mylonas) also of the construction of the spacious exonarthex which is traditionally ascribed to the time of Prince Lazar (1371-1389), then the connection between the architecture of Chilandari and several 14th century churches in Serbia becomes much clearer. To the direct influence of the Chilandari katholikon as restored and enlarged my Milutin, one could ascribe the building of open exonarthex in Gračanica, Sopoćani, the Cathedral of Prizren and, lastly, but most importantly, at the Archbishop's cathedral in Peć. Here Archbishop Danilo, former Abbot of Chilandari, and who might have also supervised Milutin's restoration of the Serbian monastery at Athos, built, in front of the three parallel churches, a spacious open exonarthex which not only in general design and construction but also in architectural details and decoration virtually paraphrases the exonarthex of Chilandari.

And, finally, the addition of a large exonarthex to the ka- tholikon of Chilandari in the last years of Milutin's reign, can be explained as the consequence of the introduction in the Ser- bian Church of the so-called Typikon of Nikodim, in fact a tran- slation from Greek of the Synaxarion, or the second part of the so- called Jerusalem Typikon, the translation that was completed by, or, at least, at the request of Nikodim, at the time the Archbishop of Serbia. The Typikon prescribes that many different services should be performed in the narthex, presumably the exo- narthex which is also known as the 'liti'. If the exonarthex was added to the main church of Chilandari in the last few years of King Milutin's reign, then it would represent the first archi- tectural response to the liturgical requests of Nikodim's Typikon, soon to be followed by a series of such additions to many major churches in Serbia itself.

The thirteenth century has been seen as a time of great stylistic creativity in Byzantine art. In the frescoes of Serbia, the development of a new volumetric style presented in terms of light and shadow has been traced from Studenica (1208/09) to Sopoćani (c. 1265). But alongside this style, there persists a more archaic style relying on line, which appears in a large number of monuments.

There appear to be four explanations for this persistence of linearity in Balkan fresco painting at this time. The first is the use of archaic models, seen in the Bulgarian frescoes of Bojana. Dated to 1259, these paintings exhibit stylistic traits of the early twelfth century. This may be explained by the Byzantine occupation of Bulgaria, 1118-1185, when new types in art and architecture were introduced, to be copied in monuments decades later.

A second factor explains the archaisms evident in many of the frescoes in Macedonia, such as those at Manastir (1271). These small provincial churches exhibit stylistic tendencies typical of the Late Comnenian frescoes in the same region, a case of local persistence in a cultural backwater.

The most interesting of the Serbian frescoes are those which use elements from the volumetric style, but define them in terms of the old linear motifs. While several of these ensembles have been attributed to a single workshop (Bogorodica Ljeviûka, c. 1220; Sv. Nikola at Studenica, c. 1240; and Morača, 1252), most of them are clearly not the work of the same artists. In some cases, such as Mileûevo (c. 1234) and Sopoćani (c. 1265), the linear style occurs in the same churches as the volumetric, but is relegated to subsidiary spaces. Here the older style seems to have been preserved in the work of lesser masters, hired to decorate the less important and/or less visible areas of the churches.

The paintings of Peć (c. 1240-65) and Arilje (1296) seem to have a fourth reason for their archaism. While the work of Pećâs Master A shows cognizance of the developing three-dimensional style, his draperies are articulated by lines which form geometric patterns. These paintings find no parallels in Serbia; the closest are the frescoes of the Vlacherna monastery near Arta in northern Greece. The frescoes of Arilje, despite their later date, exhibit a body type and linear definition close to that seen at Peć. And Arilje, too, has ties to northern Greece: the discovery of the acrostic marpou links the workshop directly to Thessaloniki in the years before 1261. Thus the archaism of Arilje and its similarities to Peć are due both to the use of old-fashioned models and to the common origin of both ensembles in the art of northern Greece. Perhaps, just as Constantinople has been suggested as the home of the volumetric style, the artistic centers of northern Greece may be posited as the home of the new linearism--a style which interpreted the new forms of the thirteenth century in the formal language of the twelfth.

The arrangement of annexed spaces in Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture has been the focus of several studies in recent decades. Among the various schemes for subsidiary spaces, a plan emerges in Early Russian architecture, which utilizes projecting porches attached to the north, south, and west facades of a cross-in-square core. These churches have been discussed in the general context of annexes in centrally-planned buildings, and as a characteristic product of thirteenth-century Byzantine architecture in a general sense, but have not been studied as an individual group. I suggest, however, that an analysis of these projecting porches in medieval Russian architecture reveals a definite evolution of function and form. The analysis of this development will, in my opinion, lead to a better understanding of similar architectural forms in other regions of the Byzantine world.

This paper traces the development of the "three-porch" plan in Early Russian architecture. The earliest examples are found in, or near, Kiev and date from the late eleventh or the early twelfth centuries, such as the Church of the Savior in Berestovo. The porches at this stage were small, single-storied annexes, isolated from the naos, and devoid of any apparent liturgical function. In the course of the twelfth century, the plan was disseminated to various Russian principalities. The twelfth and thirteenth-century examples are marked, however, by the addition of apses and arcosolia, the introduction of a two-storied arrangement, and a more open access between the porch and naos, indicating a new conception of these subsidiary spaces. Examples of this development may be seen at the Church in the Upper Citadel in Polotsk (mid-twelfth century), the Church of the Archangel Michael "Svirskaia" in Smolensk (ca. 1180- 97), the Church of Paraskeva-Piatnitsa in the Market Place in Novgorod (1207), and the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin in Suzdal (1222-25). At Polotsk one finds the introduction of apses into the lateral porches. At Smolensk the north and south annexes contained an apse, evidence of an arcosolium was discovered in the west porch, a two-storied arrangement was introduced in the annexes, and the porches were no longer isolated from the principal church core. This spatial relationship was continued at Novgorod, where two-storied porches with arcosolia were open to the naos on both levels. Finally, the Suzdal Cathedral illustrates the continuity of the "three-porch" plan, with its open access between the lateral projecting porches and the naos, well into the thirteenth century. Subsidiary spaces in these examples show a change from simple porch areas, separated from the interior of the church, to chapels with definite funerary function, and spatially integrated with the naos.

Our understanding of this functional and formal development of Early Russian porches may be used to illuminate related developments within the broader context of Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture. Porches attached to centrally-planned monuments in Georgia, Serbia, Trebizond, and elsewhere, roughly contemporary with the Russian material, have been recognized as part of a general development in Byzantine architecture. The particular aspects of the functional and formal evolution of the "three-porch" plan in Russian architecture constitutes new valuable information for the understanding of Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture in the broadest sense.

LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY CHRISTIAN ART

Presiding: William Tronzo (The Johns Hopkins University)

Among the paintings of the synagogue at Dura Europos, that on the face of the Torah shrine has long been recognized as unique. Differing in style, technique, and iconographical details from the narrative cycle, it is generally accepted as an earlier work and appears to belong to an original decorative scheme that did not include a narrative cycle. Nonetheless, scholars, with few exceptions, have interpreted the Torah shrine images in relation to the narrative paintings. This paper is an attempt to re-evaluate the painting as a work of art complete in itself, which was created and remained unaltered as the focus of worship for the congregation throughout the synagogue's history.

At the center of the composition is a tetrastyle structure flanked on the left by the menorah, lulab, and ethrog, and on the right by the Sacrifice of Isaac. Citing collections of cult objects that appear on Jewish gold glass and in mosaics, scholars have interpreted the painting as a general evocation of the Jewish cult with the Sacrifice of Isaac functioning purely symbolically as well, although the nature of its symbolism is disputed.

Two factors argue against this interpretation. First, the painting does not present the traditional collection of cult objects despite ample space to do so. Second, the Sacrifice of Isaac is depicted with an unprecedented richness of narrative detail, making its function as a purely symbolic motif questionable.

An alternative explanation is that the painting was meant to evoke a specific event, the Feast of Tabernacles, which it represents both as it was celebrated in the past and as it will be celebrated in the future.

Originally a harvest festival, the Feast of Tabernacles became in post-Exilic times the pre- eminent festival of the Jewish year, characterized by an array of historical associations and by its eschatological focus. The festival drew its name from the requirement that participants dwell in specially made booths for its duration, a practice begun by Abraham who, according to Jubilees, instituted the feast and celebrated it after the Sacrifice of Isaac. Tabernacles was, in addition, the first festival celebrated by Solomon at the dedication of the Temple, an event that was commemorated in the special lections for the feast, as was the hope of its rebuilding in a time of blessedness, peace, and perpetual light when all nations would come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (Zachariah XIV).

The feast thus became a major vehicle through which the messianic hopes of the Jewish people were expressed. After the destruction of the Temple, moreover, it continued to be celebrated in the synagogue, where many of its essential elements were retained, including the special lections, the lulab and ethrog that were specific to the feast, and even the dwelling in booths.

At Dura, it is through the evocation of this feast that the Jewish faith in the future is expressed. On the right the celebration of the feast after the Sacrifice of Isaac is depicted by the small figure who stands before or within his booth. Through the faithful celebration of the feast he is assured, as is the congregation at Dura, of a heavenly booth in the world to come, and of a place in the paradise prophesied by Zachariah where, as indicated by the hand of God, the temple will stand rebuilt and all nations will celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles with lulab and ethrog in the perpetual light, symbolized by the menorah, of the messianic age.

Since Otto Brendel (JRS, 1941) suggested that the Corbridge lanx might be associated with Julian the Apostate's sacrifice at Delos in 363, it has often been considered one of the few securely dated pieces of Late Antique silver with a certain Eastern provenance. However Brendel's hypothesis should not be elevated to the status of a fact. Upon stylistic examination of the lanx, one finds striking similarities to Western ivories of the late fourth and early fifth centuries A.D. A reassessment of the provenance and the date of the Corbridge lanx is required.

The figural style of the lanx, particularly in facial features and bodily proportions, show close relationship to the Nichomachi-Symmachi diptych, the so-called Stilicho and Serena diptych, the Asklepios and Hygieia diptych and especially a diptych in the Museo Cristiano,Brescia which once belonged to Cardinal Querini. Kitzinger calls the figures of the lanx "strangely anaemic" because of their attenuated bodies, large heads, flaccid limbs and disproportionately large hands and feet. "Serena"âs extremely elongated body with high-placed breasts bears close comparison to the Diana or Minerva of the lanx. The long, swaying and somewhat flabby-muscled Apollo of the lanx reminds one of the Endymion on the Querini diptych. A concurrent elongation of figures with large hands and feet can be noted on sarcophagus sculpture of c. 400 from Rome (Brandenburg, RM, 1979). Furthermore the working method, facial features, figural style, costumes and architectural features of the lanx have long been associated with Projects's Casket, the Ulysses flask of the Traprain Law hoard, and the Mildenhall plate, even though all three are Eastern provenance and the date of 363.

The pagan aristocracy which remained active in the late fourth century in Rome provides a reasonable milieu in which the lanx might have been created and understood. The Delian iconography need not be discarded. Prudentius and Macrobius betray a knowledge of the Delian shrine in their writings.

Found in Corbridge, England in 1734 near the find spot of 4 other pieces of late Roman silver, the lanx is believed to be part of a hoard. A Chi-Rho dish was among the other four pieces, giving the hoard a mixed profile and suggesting a late date for the burial of the objects, probably well after 363. The lanx could have been a family showpiece, displaying accumulated wealth and Roman connections. It need not necessarily have been a tool of Julianic propaganda. The date of the lanx's execution should probably be moved to later in the fourth century and the attribution to an Eastern workshop removed.

The fourth century Christian sarcophagus Lateran 174 (Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage I, no. 677) is widely considered a prime example of classical style in fourth century Christian sarcophagus carving. This opinion must depend in part on tile iconographic resemblance of the center scene to the central Christ enthroned above Caelus of the top register of that most renowned monument of fourth century classicism, the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. For in fact, the style of Lateran 174 is problematic. Stylistic differences between Lateran 174 and the Bassus sarcophagus of A.D. 359 have been explained by dating Lateran 174 a generation later, hence into the Theodosian Renaissance, and often by citing Eastern influence as well. At the same time, it has long been recognized that Lateran 174 has been to some undefined extent recut. Most scholars seem to feel that this recutting was not so radical that it spoils the sarcophagus as evidence of sculptural style of the second half of the fourth century. On the other hand, Wessel (Pantheon, 1967), referring to iconographic as well as stylistic peculiarities of the sarcophagus, has made the provocative claim that Lateran 174 is a seventeenth century "copy," perhaps of a sarcophagus found in a fragmentary state.

In treating the sarcophagus as if it remains in something close to its originally intended state, whether of the fourth or (correcting Wessel's documentation) of the sixteenth century, both opinions perhaps relied on Bosioâs Roma Sotterranea of 1632, where a depiction seemingly of the present state of Lateran 174 describes the sarcophagus as "ben conservata dall'antichita." The recent display of Lateran 174 in the exhibition of Treasures from the Vatican has afforded an opportunity to re- examine this assertion. Lateran 174 consists of three pieces which were depicted in a seventeenth century drawing by Menestrier as the front and ends of a single sarcophagus, but given two different discovery dates. On these grounds, the exhibitors chose not to reassemble the parts after they had been dismantled for cleaning. The display of Lateran 174 as a sarcophagus front and an independent pair of "reliefs" makes explicit tile challenge already posed by the replaced heads and broad seams of repair visible even in previously published photographs of the front. For in spite of the notes on Menestrier's drawings, the front of Lateran 174 is now intimately bound to the ends, not only by tile guard of Pilate from the far right niche of the front who has slipped behind the last column onto the right end, but also by numerous kindred head types and drapery treatments. Any theory about the nature and origin of Lateran 174 must account for this integrity as well as for the clear evidence of repairs and alterations. The style of Lateran 174 cannot be understood without an understanding of its state of preservation.

THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

Presiding: Bezalel Narkiss (The Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

The nave cornices of Hagia Sophia represent a complete and unstudied ensemble of Justinianic sculpture and provide a wealth of information on the history of the structure. In 1983 1 was able to study and photograph the two cornices, whose 216 stones encircle the nave at the gallery and springing levels. They comprise a key monument in the evolution of the Byzantine entablature. Each of the nearly one thousand corona soffit panels is richly decorated with vegetal or geometric carved designs which are quite unlike their late antique prototypes. I have collected and organized these designs in a photographic corpus which, it is hoped, will be of use to scholars of sixth-century art and architecture.

Each block once bore one or more masons' marks. While most of those on the lower cornice have been abraded away or smeared with restorers' plaster, a nearly complete series Is still visible on the upper cornice. A number of these marks recur on Proconnesian marble sculpted pieces at Adriatic and mainland Greek sites. While the precise purpose of these marks remains unclear, analysis of them in relation to the carved blocks on which they appear sheds light on contemporary workshop practice.

Scars and irregularities on the exposed upper surfaces of the cornices yield further information on the construction and structural history of the church. By comparing this physical evidence from the upper surfaces with the sculpted ornament Of the undersides, the sequence in which these important parts of the fabric were designed, carved, and set in place becomes clear. Series of regularly-spaced holes show the method and pattern of lamp emplacement as well. In my analysis of the structure I am deeply indebted to Robert Van Nice for the precise measurements and unpublished observations he has kindly put at my disposal.

The results gained from this study of the Hagia Sophia nave cornices bear on a number of unsettled issues in sixth-century art and architecture; especially, on the dates of specific pieces and on the organization of the marble trade during Justinian's great building campaign. It is hoped that this will be only the beginning of the detailed examination of Hagia Sophia's rich, but neglected, sculptural decoration.

[Abstract not received in time for publication?]

"The Nave Mosaic of the Justinianic Basilica at Sabratha"

Henry Maguire (The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

The nave mosaic of the basilica built by Justinian at Sabratha is among the finest works of art to survive from his reign. This pavement displays a vine which fills the entire width of the nave and harbors in its scrolling branches an extraordinary variety of birds. One of the many questions posed by this little- studied mosaic is that of its meaning: did the designer of the floor intend the plant and the birds to be read only in their literal sense, as examples of God's handiwork, or did he intend the viewer to read further levels of symbolic meanings into the images?

A review of Early Christian literature shows that while some authors were unwilling to allegorize the birds and other animals of creation, many writers treated them as symbols with wide ranging meanings. The birds which occupy the vine at Sabratha had a rich potential for symbolic interpretation in the Early Byzantine period; the question is, how many, if any, of these potential meanings were actually intended by the designer of the floor?

If we compare the mosaic at Sabratha with similar bird-rinceau mosaics surviving in Asia Minor, in North Africa, and in Palestine, we find a significant detail in the Libyan mosaic which may guide us to the interpretation which its designer had in mind. In the Sabratha floor the branches of the vine are tied together by three jewelled crowns on the central axis, a detail that does not occur in most other vine-rinceaux containing birds. This clue may allow us to associate the Sabratha mosaic, at least, with the numerous texts which link the birds (created from the waters blessed by God) with the righteous, and especially with martyrs (e.g. Tertullian, Origen, Didymus of Alexandria, Ambrose, Severianus of Gabala, Anastasius).

Finally, it may not be an accident that in this church founded by Justinian in newly occupied territory, most of the birds selected for display on the central axis of the floor (eagle, peacock, and phoenix on globe) had strong imperial, as well as Christian, associations. The reference to martyrdom made by the crowns on the central axis may also have had an imperial significance, for the victories of the martyrs were associated by Justinianic writers (e.g. Romanos) with the victories of the emperor over his enemies.

In the last part of chapter 22 in the eighth book of the Bellum Gothicum, Procopius presents an account of the Gothic sack of Corcyra and coastal Epirus in A.D. 550, On the Epirote mainland, the Goths plundered the territories around Dodona, Nicopolis and Anchialus. In the whole of the short account of the Gothic raid, the events and their location are relatively clear; only the location of Anchialus stands as a puzzle. We know of an Anchialus in Epirus solely from this citation in Procopius. Neither classical nor medieval historians or geographers seem to know of its existence, and it is not present in any of the ecclesiastical lists for the fourth to fifteenth centuries.

A brief digression following the reference to Anchialus offers a possibility for answering the question of the town's location. Procopius states that the local population held that the place took its name from Anchises, the father of Aeneas. According to the local story, Anchises passed from the world at this place while he was sailing from Troy; as a result the place was called Anchialus. The local story seems to be a garbled excerpt from books III and VI of Virgil's Aeneid. Following Augustus' establishment of Nicopolis, The Epirotes came under not only Roman political Influence (political domination had been established in the second century B.C.) but also Roman cultural influence. Because of contacts with the Romans who were proud of their Trojan lineage and whose tribal ancestor had led his people through parts of Epirus, some place in Epirus had come to call itself Anchialus, after the father of this Aeneas. Some renderings of the Roman legends passed into the lore of the Epirote population, including the accounts of Aeneas in Epirus as turned into epic poetry by Virgil. In transmission the Epirotes tied Anchises more closely to Epirus than did Virgil by having him the in Epirus rather than in Sicily.

Book III of the Aeneid recounts the brief sojourn of the Trojans in Epirus and the subsequent death of Anchises in Sicily. In book VI, Aeneas organizes games in honor of his father but precedes them with a sacrifice in which Aeneas summons the spirit of Anchises to be released to cross the Acheron to be present to receive gifts from the living. The Acheron, the river of the underworld, was believed to flow forth in Epirus. This brings us once again back to Epirus and connects Anchises a second time with Epirus, especially with the area of the Acheron where I believe we must focus the search for Anchialus.

The only substantial late Roman site on the Acheron is the unfortified town of Gliki which lies at the mouth of the Acheron gorge at the head of river navigation. Gliki whose late Roman name is unconfirmed by any epigraphic evidence was a river port in late antiquity and again in the late middle ages. The site was also on the principal route from the Ionian Sea to interior Epirus being on the sacred way from Nekromanteion to Dodona. Though Gliki is best known for the remains of a magnificent early Christian basilica and a late medieval bridge over the Acheron, the site would appear to have been a thriving town until some time in the sixth century A.D. Insufficient archaeological work has been completed at the town itself to ascertain whether the town was sacked or merely abandoned.

From the second century B.C. to the early fourth century A.D., pagan Romans frequented this river port on their way to the oracle at Dodona, bringing with them the stories of Anchises and his association with Epirus and the Acheron. Consequently, this paper suggests that Gliki had the name Anchialus in the time of Frocopius due to its situation on the Acheron where the river broke forth from the mountains as from the underworld itself. Further, a Roman could hardly have missed the parallel between Gliki (Anchialus) as the point of disembarkation and embarkation in route to and from the oracle at Dodona and the role of the river and its boatman Charon in the stories of the underworld. The whole impression was intensified due to the familiarity with the famous literary passage regarding Aeneas, calling forth of the spirit of Anchises.

While it is impossible to state conclusively that the Anchialus of Procopius is the site at Gliki unless or until we have epigraphic evidence, it does seem logical to conclude that the two can tentatively be identified as the same place.

MANUSCRIPTS

Presiding: Kenneth Snipes (The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

[Abstract not received in time for publication.]

In 1956, Linos Politis, as a result of a learned study, affirmed that the assumption that a copyist Joasaph was identical with John Kantakouzenos, was erroneous¹. So far, Donald M. Nicol is right to resume: "There is no evidence that John ever copied manuscripts himself"², and we seem to be justified in denying any survival of a sample with the emperor's handwriting, except for his signatures under imperial records³. But these are of just as little value for an efficient palaeographical comparison as some marginal notes of the hand of Kantakouzenos (and their copies) recently discovered by J. Featherstone⁴.

Nevertheless, there exists an autograph of the ex-emperor, which was first mentioned in the dissertation of Edmond Voordekkers, submitted in 1967/8 in Gent/Belgium and written in Dutch⁵. The thesis remained unpublished, and so its results remain unknown to the learned world. According to Voordeckers, there exists in the manuscript Par.gr.1247 an autograph draft of Kantakouzenos' polemical treatise(Antirrhetik‡), part one, against the anti-palamist monk Frochoros Xydones. Voordeckers did not give any reasons for his assertion, but he announced a study of the question to be published later , which nevertheless never came out, the author having been prevented from any palaeographical work by a serious eye-complaint.

As a result of my occupation with the Kydones letters, I became acquainted with Mr.Voordeckers and agreed with him upon a collaborative project of a critical edition of the Antirrhetik‡. In October, 1983 I travelled to Paris for a codicological examination of the gr.1247 in the Biblioth?que nationale. The result of the examination and the preliminary study of the manuscript film is that the Par.gr. 1247 on pages 68-146^v indeed does contain an autograph of the ex-emperor: on ff.68-86^v a copy of Prochoros' treatise De essentia et operatione, book VI; on ff.87-146^v a draft of the first part of Kantakouzenos' own refutations. The fact that the character of a draft of the latter section is irrefutable in particular gives us the authorization to assume that the ex-emperor himself was the writer of the whole text, written in an otherwise unknown handwriting.

That we have to do with a draft can be proved especially by the numerous marginal additions, often affixed after erasures (better to be seen in the original manuscript than on the film). It is very unlikely that the emperor had a secretary who did for him the troublesome work of writing the copy, the draft and all the later corrections according to the dictation of his master. On the other hand there is no reason to doubt that Kantakouzenos did the work himself. We can agree with Politis that he did not generally work as a copyist, but the short copy of the Prochoros text was essential to his own refutations, and it is very unlikely even in general that the emperor did not write the drafts of his numerous works with his own hand.

The date of composition of the draft is to be placed between April, 1368(date of the ecclesiastical trial against Prochoros) and September, 1369 (first dated copy of the whole Antirrhetik‡, written by Tzykandeles at Mistra). Because it is likely that Kantakouzenos left Constantinople for Mistra in summer 1369, the autograph may yet have been written in Constantinople.

¹ L. Politis, Jean-Joasaph, "Cantacuzne fut-il copiste?" Rev.Et. Byz. 14(1956)195-199. ² D.M. Nicol, The Byzantine Family of Kantakouzenos (Cantacuzenus) ca.1100-1460, Dumbarton Oaks/Washington 1968, 101. ³ Survey of his signatures in: F. Dšlger, Byzantinische Diplomatik, Ettal 1956, 249, n.7. ⁴ J. Featherstone, "An Iconoclastic Episode in the Hesychast Controversy", Jahrb.…sterr.Byz. 33(1983)179-198. ⁵ E. Voordeckers, Johannes VI Kantakuzenos, keizer (1347-1354) en monnik (1354-1383), Diss., Gent 1967/8, 449-450.

Housed today in the University Library in Messina is a puzzling manuscript of the Metaphrastian Menologium (S. Salvatore 27). It contains the Lives of the Saints from February 1 to June 29 -- a slightly expanded version of the standard Volume IX of the Menologium, which usually goes only as far as the end of April. Another manuscript now in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin (Gr. fol 17) turns out to be the next volume (Volume X) of the same edition of the Menologium; this manuscript starts exceptionally with the saints of July (instead of May) and goes through the end of August in the usual way.

The text of these volumes is written In a purely Byzantine hand of the late 11th century, and their illuminated initials are undistinguishable from those found in any number of contemporary Constantinopolitan Menologia. But the remarkable portraits of the saints which accompany the texts are painted in a hybrid style which is not as easy to place, and which warrants further investigation.

A closer look at the manuscripts themselves reveals a clear discrepancy between what the scribe was assuming his artist colleague would be painting namely the small- scale portrait of a saint followed by a strip of ornament -- and what the artist actually painted -- namely a large portrait filling all the available space, with no ornament at a. This discrepancy leads us to suggest that text and miniatures, although roughly contemporary, were not executed in the same place.

Where, then, can these striking miniatures have been painted? Their captions betray a non-Greek-speaking artist, and we naturally think first of Sicily, given the provenance of the Messina manuscript The Greek monastery of S. Salvatore, to which it formerly belonged, was founded near Messina by Count Roger after his conquest of Sicily, then refounded by Roger II in the 1130s. Abbot Luke, who was given special privileges by Roger II at this time, informs us that he has been collecting books(among which he specifically mentions volumes of Metaphrastes), and has established a scriptorium in the monastery. It is possible that our manuscripts came from Constantinople to Sicily soon after they were written, and that they were illustrated locally and acquired by Luke for S. Salvatore. While we have no proof, there is a piece of evidence to suggest that our Berlin manuscript was in S. Salvatore before 1141.

Yet the high quality of our miniatures is rare in a Sicilian milieu of this time, most 11th and 12th century Greek Sicilian or South Italian miniatures -- with the obvious exception of the Madrid Skylitzes -- appear rude by comparison. Perhaps we are dealing rather with a Latin artist active in Sicily and already more thoroughly trained in the Byzantine style than any of his South Italian contemporaries.

Of the eleventh and twelfth century gospel lectionaries known to us, Dionysiou codex 587 is the most lavishly illustrated. Work to date has centered on a description of both text and miniatures in addition to hypothesizing a date and intended destination for this manuscript. Liturgical influences upon this codex have also been noted by referring to the concentration of scenes connected with the Great Feasts and special readings. Changes made to various narrative scenes were attributed to a reflection of ceremony while other miniatures have been considered invented specifically for the needs of the lectionary. However, within this manuscript, there exist miniatures which have not been fully studied in previous investigations. The relationship between several images and their accompanying texts can be properly understood only when considered in conjunction with illustrations found in marginal psalters and the rubrics of various typika. This method reveals a greater complexity of liturgical influences upon this lectionary than has heretofore been assumed.

A framed miniature of Church Fathers and Monastics heads the lection for the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ. Typika call for the commemoration of the Old Testament patriarchs and the reading of Matthew's genealogy in the liturgy. A discrepancy has been noted previously between image and text since no representation of the ancestors of Christ appears. In light of the specifications outlined in the typika, it becomes clear that the illustrator did not misinterpret the commemoration but rather reflected a more subtle understanding in choosing the miniature. The psalm verses prescribed for the liturgical celebration in the Theodore Psalter also received similar images of Church Fathers. In addition, readings of patristic homilies dealing with Christ's genealogy are indicated for this day. The appropriateness of the image of Church Fathers and Monastics therefore becomes more intelligible.

This method can contribute to a fuller understanding of other images in the lectionary which appear to present ambiguities. Liturgical specifications offer insight into the relationships of images intended for the lections of the First Sunday of Lent and for the commemoration of the Constantinopolitan earthquake of 740. Even when image and text appear to be in a direct correspondence, an investigation into the miniatures of marginal psalters and into the rubrics of the typika reveals a refined message intended by the choice of illustration.

Any attempt to interpret the miniatures of Dionysiou cod. 587 solely in terms of their location within the manuscript proves to be insufficient. The subtle theological complexities of the images can properly be understood only within the complete liturgical context for which the manuscript was intended.

The narrative cycles of these thirteenth-century, Byzantine Gospelbooks have long been linked in the literature, but an exhaustive comparative study has not yet appeared.¹ Scholars have stressed the intimate relationship of the manuscripts' Evangelist portraits, but too often it has been assumed that this degree of interdependence holds equally true for their narrative cycles.² The purpose of this presentation is two-fold: first, the iconographical relationship of the two cycles will be probed through a detailed study of common miniatures and, second, the relationship between text and image in the two manuscripts will be examined.

Paris 54 is a bilingual (Greek and Latin) text in a two-column format.³ If completed, its narrative cycle would have comprised some fifty miniatures. However, less than half of these were fully executed, and another five were begun, but remain unfinished.⁴ Iviron 5 is a single-column, Greek manuscript with a narrative cycle of twenty-nine miniatures.⁵ These twenty-nine scenes were also illustrated or intended for illustration in Paris 54. There are, however, only seventeen miniatures common to both manuscripts due to the extensive number of unexecuted miniatures in Paris 54.

An analysis of the eleven miniatures in Matthew and Mark common to the two manuscripts demonstrates Paris 54's dependence upon Iviron 5. Most of the iconographical modifications introduced by the artist(s) of Paris 54 in these eleven miniatures can be attributed to the physical change in miniature format dictated by its enlarged, bilingual format. The average height of Paris 54's text miniatures is slightly less than that of Iviron 5. However, because Paris 54's miniatures extend across both text columns they average 5.1 cm greater width.⁶

A comparison of the next five scenes common to both manuscripts (from the Gospel of Luke) reveals significant differences between the two cycles and a new iconographical independence on the part of Paris 54. These differences indicate that Paris 54 incorporated a second model, more recent in date, which included many Palaiologan characteristics.

Results of an examination of the physical relationship between miniature and its textual passage in both manuscripts present a noteworthy contrast to the iconographical conclusions above. Twenty- seven of the twenty-nine miniatures of Iviron 5 illustrate the text of the same Gospel illustrated (or intended for illustration) in Paris 54.⁷ Twenty-four of these twenty-seven scenes interrupt the text at the same juncture in both manuscripts (i.e., these miniatures are located after the same Greek word in both cases). This is remarkable in view of the fact that the texts themselves assume very different formats and they are not of the same textual recension.

In conclusion, it is important to recognize that regardless of the close relationship between these manuscripts' Evangelist portraits, the original narrative intentions of their text cycles differed significantly in overall scope. Paris 54, had it been completed, would have contained some twenty-one more miniatures in its narrative cycle than Iviron 5. However, the illuminator(s) of Paris 54 appear to have followed closely the example of Iviron 5 regarding miniature location in the text in spite of the fact that they adopted a different format and text recension and, that in the miniatures of Luke, a different iconographical model was consulted.

¹ The author is preparing a dissertation on Paris 54 under the direction of Prof. Robert Nelson of The University of Chicago. ² For example, K. Weitzmann, "Constantinopolitan Book Illumination in the Period of the Latin Conquest," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 25 (1944): 193-214. ³ The overall dimensions of Paris 54 are 31.6 x 25.2 cm. ⁴ Matthew's text includes 12 completed miniatures. Mark has a total of 9 minia- tures, 4 of which were executed and 5 which were not initiated. Luke has a total 18 miniatures; 5 were completed, another 5 remain unfinished and 8 were not begun. For the 11 miniatures of John, only 1 was completed and the others were never initiated. The uninitiated state of a miniature can be gauged from space reserved in the text or from the presence of empty frames. ⁵ Iviron 5 measures 22.5 x 17 cm. The text of Matthew includes nine miniatures, Mark and Luke both contain six miniatures and eight are found in John. The minia- tures on fols. 214v, 456v, 457r and 457v do not illustrate the Gospel text proper. ⁶ Paris 54's average miniature size is 8.2 x 17.2 cm and Iviron 5's is 8.6 x 12.1cm. ⁷ Two other scenes accompany parallel texts in different Gospels.

The work described in this abstract is a continuation of the project initiated and supervised by Professor Thomas F. Mathews of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. The project is essentially one which seeks to come to a better knowledge of the palette used by Armenian and Byzantine manuscript illuminators by analysis of samples taken from representative manuscripts using physical and chemical methods. The earlier stages of the project involved the sampling and analysis of pigments taken from the Glajor Gospel Book of the University of California at Los Angeles and a variety of Armenian manuscripts from both Greater Armenia and Cilicia which are housed in the collections of the Armenian Patriarchiate of St. James in Jerusalem, the Walters Art Gallery, the Freer Gallery of Art, the J. Pierpont Morgan Library, etc. This work has been reported in a number of journals and monographs by Professors Mathews and Orna and Dr. Diane E. Cabelli.

The present phase of the project marks the beginning of the team's examination of Byzantine manuscripts. Ten manuscripts from the University of Chicago*s Special Collections were sampled. The most notable of these were Ms. 131, the Chrysanthus Gospels, second half of the 12th century, Ms. 972, the "Archaic mark," of uncertain date, thought to be from the late 12th century, but possibly post-Byzantine, Ms. 1054, the Elfleda Bond Goodspeed Gospels, which has been linked by Dr. Susan Madigan with a group of 10th century manuscripts in the Paris and Rome collections, and Ms. 965, the Rockefeller McCormick New Testament, second half of the 12th century and perhaps done in Cyprus or Palestine according to the researches of Professor Annemarie Weyl Carr.

Over seventy samples covering the entire range of hues were taken from these manuscripts and analyzed using standard methods of X-ray diffraction crystallography, polarized light microscopy, chemical microscopy and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy where sample size allowed. The chemical composition of the Byzantine palette was then compared with that of the Armenian palette determined from the earlier studies.

EGYPT, SYRIA, AND PALESTINE

Presiding: Robert Gregg (Duke University)

A. Tuilier's upholding of the traditional attribution of the Christus Patiens cento to Gregory Nazianzen has not found favor with critics of his Sources chrŽtiennes edition (1969). The dating and localization of this work are still to be sought. Of interest to the historian are, not so much the Euripidean borrowed lines, as the originally-composed 'connective tissue' of some 1100 lines, that stitches them together into a Christian dramatic narrative. Analysis of these portions of the text reveals many features shared with Egyptian poetry of the fifth and sixth centuries, from Nonnus and Pamprepius to Dioscorus of Aphrodito. Echoes of the Protevangelium of James, an Egyptian work, have already been noticed by earlier scholars. Further Egyptian features may be discerned, such as the frequent use of technical terminology as found in the bureaucratic language of the documentary papyri. The epithet diphyēs (1. 1795) points to Cyril of Alexandria and the Egyptian liturgies; while the formulation of 1. 2164, kakou gar hypostasis ouk enesti tis, has a long history in Alexandrian Neoplatonism (especially, of course, Proclus). The closing prayer to the Virgin has many elements in common with Coptic Theotokias (and with the Empress Sophia's prayer in Corippus). I should like to suggest that, along the lines of Golega's attribution (1960) of the pseudo-Apollinarian hexameter Psalter to a fifth-century Egyptian poet, the Christus Patiens should be credited to an Egyptian writer of the late fifth to early sixth century. It may be thought of as an Egyptian product of the 'age of the cento'.

Being records of the thoughts of one who viewed Julian's corpse before the walls of Nisibis, Ephraem the Syrian's hymns "Against Julian" are well known to historians as the earliest of all the extant Christian invectives against the "apostate" emperor. As such, biographers of Julian have not been slow to cite the witness of Ephraem's hymns in their efforts to piece together the story of the emperor's life and early death. In a recent book review, for example, G. W. Bowersock refers to the current scholarly attention to the hymns as "one of the most fruitful developments in the study of Julian" (Numen 28 (1981), p. 91). But so far none of this attention has been concerned with the hymns themselves for the sake of studying them as literary documents with their own story to tell. Therefore, in an effort to redress the imbalance, the purpose of the present communication is to explicate Ephraem's hymns "Against Julian" from their own point of view.

The hymns "Against Julian" are preserved in the earliest of all Ephraem manuscripts, BM Or. add. MS 14571, which was written in the year 519 A.D. The Syriac text has been available in a modern printed edition since 1865, in J. J. Overbeck's publication of selections from early Syriac writers. In 1878, G. Bickell published a German translation of the hymns, which S. Euringer adapted and annotated in 1919 for inclusion in the series, Bibliothek der KirchenvŠter. In 1957 Edmund Beck again published the Syriac text, with a new German translation, in the series, CorpusChristianorum Orientalium, vols. 174 and 175. To date no other translation into a western language has appeared, nor has there been any further scholarly study or commentary on the hymns.

The present explication of Ephraem's four hymns "Against Julian" highlights their principal themes, which include the following topics: the protective role of the Roman emperor in the Christian imperium, the unlawfulness of paganism, the inadequacy of human intellectual inquiry, the divine plan for human history as revealed in the Bible, the eclipse of Judaism, and the Persian victory in 363, seen as a divine punishment for sin and as a call to future repentance. While none of these themes are particularly remarkable when considered from the perspective of later Byzantine religious history, what is notable is the fact that they were already clearly voiced in the Syriac, just after the mid-fourth century, in the territory of the oriental patriarchates. These ideas took root and eventually came to provide a model for consolation in later trials, when the Roman imperium was but a memory and an eschatological dream in the east. Ephraem's meditations on these themes, composed in view of Julian's corpse, provided a classic expression of ideas whose later deployment in such popular works as the apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius became the staples of hope for beleaguered Christians in desperate situations.

"The Juncture of Martyrdom and Asceticism in Egypt and the Syrian Orient"

Susan Ashbrook Harvey (The University of Rochester)

Christian asceticism has traditionally been understood through the model of St. Antony of Egypt (d. 356), a model itself traditionally interpreted as solving the dilemma posed for Christian witness by Christianity's triumph in the fourth century. Despite the recognition that asceticism emerged autonomously and indigenously as a central aspect of Syrian Christianity from its earliest times, scholars have tried to account for the severity of Syrian asceticism by applying this understanding of Antony's model (living martyrdom), intensified by strong influences from external extremist religious sects.

But how helpful is this Egyptian model for understanding Syrian asceticism, and what correlation can be found between martyrdom and asceticism? The divergent Egyptian and Syrian ascetic traditions can be explored most clearly at the point of Juncture for martyr and ascetic: the early fourth century. What do contemporary writings indicate about this point?

As portrayed in his Vita, Antony transformed Christian devotional life into a rigorous life of discipline and training through which humanity could fight the demonic. Antony's unsuccessful brush with martyrdom provided a metaphor for understanding his practice:. his life was a living, daily martyrdom. But the motif is brief in a hagiography otherwise explicit in its purposes: discipline, training, and the defeat of demons. The martyrs celebrated by Eusebius of Caesarea, in an analogous situation in Palestine, share certain features with Antony. Eusebius highlights those martyrs prepared for their ordeals by the Îphilosophic lifeâ, leading disciplined lives of renunciation and religious training. Thus prepared, they, too, fight the demonic -- but in human form.

In both situations, the body provides the greatest temptation, by demons both human and non-human. Discipline enables a disregard for the body, what Antony calls the 'enslaving of the body' to humanity's higher aspect, the soul. Thus, too, is Satan defeated.

In a different vein, Syrian Christianity was perceived to be an inherently ascetic religion on the basis of biblical models. At root was the believer's utter devotion to the divine, giving body and soul alike wholly to God. Key scriptural images crystalized that devotion: Jesus' call to renunciation, the promised eschatological paradise, the ideal of ihidaya (singleness), and above all Christ the Heavenly Bridegroom to whom all believers were betrothed.

Aphrahat and Ephrem substantiate the Syrian tendency towards literalizing symbols; religious symbols were to be lived physically as well as pursued with one's understanding. Their view is illuminated further by contemporary Syrian martyr accounts. Accused by their torturers of hating their bodies because of what they were willing to endure, Christians replied that they lose their worldly lives to find their 'true' lives, echoing the resurrection motif. The shared model here is that of giving one's whole being, body and soul, unto God. The body is as necessary for God's work as the soul; indeed, through Christ, body and soul are reconciled as they were before the Fall.

Spirituality produces the content and intent of asceticism. The polarities of religious perception for Egypt and Syria resulted in practical differences for their ascetic traditions.

The recent analytic studies of John Wilkinson and E.D. Hunt, as well as the works of Kštting and Turner, while recording the pilgrimages of such widely diverse people as the Bordeaux Pilgrim from Gaul, Eucharius of Lyon, the Piacenza Pilgrim, and the nun Hugeburc, have taken little notice of Syriac speaking pilgrims. This omission is partially due to the paucity of readily available sources, in either critical editions or translations. An analysis of the Syriac and Arabic sources is a necessity if we are to have a fuller and more accurate understanding of the phenomenon of pilgrimage in the world under the political and intellectual influence of the Byzantine Empire.

The two-fold purpose of this communication is to highlight the presently available sources and to indicate some of the spiritual, social, and political aspects of the practice of pilgrimage in Syriac-Speaking society so closely allied with the Byzantine Empire and yet so different culturally, religiously and linguistically. The Syriac sources under consideration fall into various categories: personal narratives, liturgical and mystical texts, hagiographical along with exhortatory stories, and canonical material. Sources, such as The Book of Governors of Thomas Bishop of Marga, record not only the facts and routes of the various pilgrimage journeys but also set out various motives of the pilgrims themselves as well as the encouragement and cautious offered by the ecclesiastical authorities.

One of the primary sources for Syriac speaking pilgrims is the thirteenth century Jacobite maphrien, Gregory Bar Hebraeus, whom Wright calls, "one of the most learned and versatile men that Syria ever produced." Bar Hebraeus in his Ethicon sketches out the rules which must be followed in preparing for the journey, the conditions which must be met en route, and correct behavior at the pilgrimage sites. In addition to listing the laws and customs which should be observed Bar Hebraeus delineates the attitudes which should accompany these external acts.

Perhaps of more significance for the contemporary scholar than the pilgrimage practices themselves are the attitudes of various ecclesiastical authorities in respect to these customs. On the one hand, the liturgical and mystical texts, such as the Book of the Cave of Treasures and the Exposition of the Offices of the Church, provide a theological legitimization and justification for pilgrimage, especially pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The canons of the various synods of the Nestorian Church, especially those of the sixth century, on the other hand, view pilgrimage as a practice which stems from self-satisfying motives and leads to an infantile spiritual life. In addition to the harm that it causes the individual believer, pilgrimage also empties local churches and monasteries of worshippers and contributions. Therefore, for both spiritual and economic reasons it is to be at least discouraged, if not condemned.

People of various cultures and religions have found pilgrimages to deepen their faith and enrich their lives. Christians who spoke Syriac had a special attraction towards, yet a certain wariness of this religious custom. It is with that attraction as well as hesitation that we are concerned as we try to enrich our knowledge of the past.

TYPIKA AND MONASTERIES

Presiding: Michael McCormick (Dumbarton Oaks)

Typika survive, in whole or in part, for six Byzantine nunneries, ranging in date from the 12th to the 15th c. In general, the rules of these typika resemble closely those for male monasteries. One finds the same admonitions on the cenobitic life, enclosure, church offices and dietary regime, and the same twofold division of the monastic community into those responsible for chanting the offices, and those entrusted with housekeeping duties.

There were substantial differences, however, in the monastic experience of men and women. In view of the prevailing attitude that women were the weaker sex, it is not surprising that several typika for nunneries emphasize that the ideal for nuns is to become like men, and that nuns need male supervision and protection. Because women were not admitted to the priesthood, priests and confessors had to come from outside to attend to the liturgies and the spiritual needs of the nuns. The question of male ephors and oikonomoi for nunneries will be briefly summarized, since it was already addressed at a previous session of the BSC devoted to women and monasticism (November 1981).

Nuns performed the same housekeeping duties as monks; some even worked in the fields and vineyards. Less attention was paid to intellectual life in convents; In general, their libraries were smaller, female scribes were few, and female artists non-existent. it cannot be proved that Byzantine nuns did embroidery like their female counterparts in the West, but it is possible that this should be the interpretation of the term ergocheiron, which also seems to mean spinning and other cloth-making activities.

It is significant that five of the six typika for nunneries were for foundations in Constantinople. This proves not to be an accident of survival; unlike male monasteries, female convents were primarily an urban phenomenon, and were concentrated in the major cities of Constantinople and Thessaloniki. Evidently the founders of aristocratic and imperial nunneries preferred to settle in the capital near their families. Furthermore, an isolated location In the countryside may have been considered unsafe for nuns.

A phenomenon perhaps related to the concentration of nunneries in an urban environment is the absence of female hermits in the late Byzantine period. Unlike their male contemporaries, who often sought out solitary retreats on the holy mountain of Athos or in Paroria, nuns almost always lived in a cenobitic community. The early Christian period offers several examples of hermitesses, such as St. Pelagia the Harlot and St. Mary the Harlot, but I have not found any in the sources for the Comnenian and Palaiologan periods. The series of invasions that threatened the empire from the 11th c. on may have made it too dangerous for women to contemplate living in isolated areas.

At the same time the monastic ideal for women had changed; the nun was supposed to remain in a cloistered community. The typika contain strict provisions with regard to the rule of enclosure for both monks and nuns, but in reality both men and women found numerous opportunities to leave the monastery. It will be argued, however, that nuns did confine themselves to the cloister more rigorously than monks, who travelled a great deal on pilgrimage, or in search of a spiritual master. Men were also much more likely to move from one monastery to another. Nuns tended to spend their entire lives in the same institution where they took the habit.

The Byzantine monastic typika span a period of about six hundred years, from shortly after 800 to about 1400. Midway through this period, there was an important change in the form of organization of Byzantine monasteries, thanks to the ecclesiastical reform movement of the late eleventh century which convinced many lay benefactors that it was improper for them to insist on the financial perquisites that traditionally had been seen as their just dues. A new category of monasteries arose which were neither private in the traditional sense nor constituent parts of the public church system. These now "independent and self-governing" monasteries, as they were called, dominated the ecclesiastical landscape of the empire in its last three hundred years of existence, and in fact managed to outlive it in many cases.

The surviving typika illustrate the transformation in forms of organization especially well. Michael Attaliates' typikon of 1077 for the ptochotropheion or "almshouse" at Rhaedestus provides the most specific picture of the traditional private ecclesiastical foundation available in the sources of this era. The author viewed his foundation was an integral part of his personal estate which he intended to bequeath to his son. The proprietary nature of the institution is emphasized by the provision of the typikon which awards Attaliates' heirs with two- thirds of the surplus revenues of the foundation.

In 1083, hardly six years later, another Byzantine philanthropist Gregory Pacurianus drew up another typikon according to the new independent and self-governing form of organization. In so doing, Pacurianus was assuming a much greater financial sacrifice for himself and his heirs than was customary. The typikon explicitly bars all relatives of the founder from exercising any financial rights in the institution. The hegoumenos, the director of the institution, had security of tenure, and was entrusted with the administration of the monastery's endowment. For himself Pacurianus retained only a few traditional perquisites such as preferential consideration for his relatives for admission as postulants.

So popular did this form of organization become that even members of the ruling Comnenian dynasty such as Irene Comnena, wife of Alexius Comnenus, and John II Comnenus, his son, adopted independent constitutions for their foundations in typika which are still extant. The independent and self-governing foundations soon came to eclipse the traditional foundations in popularity, and thanks to the documentation provided by the Dumbarton Oaks/NEII project to translate the corpus of Byzantine monastic typika will soon be better known to a broader audience of contemporary scholars.

This paper will deal with four monastic biographies which describe local conditions in the countryside of Anatolia between circa 550 and 640. J.B. Bury and E. Stein and, most recently, A.H.M. Jones (The Later Roman Empire 284-602, A Social Economic and Administrative Survey, 1964) generally ignore these texts, despite the significant data furnished in them about widespread building of monasteries, village economic life, the survival of paganism, rural topography, the smaller cities, working relations between the monasteries and the imperial administration, and the rich endowments in the form of cash allotments, precious metal vessels, relics, and so forth.

The principal text in question is the life of Theodore of Sykeon (ob. 613), which offers detailed evidence about Galatia. Not one article exists on this material, despite the Baynes-Dawes translation/summary (1948) and a new, complete edition of the text with extensive notes and a French translation by Festugire (two volumes, 1970). There are three other monastic lives, none of them translated from Greek, which offer important supplementary data: Nicholas of Hagia Sion (Lycia, ob.565), Eutychius of Amasea (Helenopontus, inter 565-577), and Alypius the Stylite (Helenopontus, ob. inter 610-641).

The monastery at Sykeon will be taken as the primary example, because the evidence here is the fullest. The discussion will include the economic background of Theodore's family and his advancement through the ecclesiastical ranks; expansion of the monastery of St. George from an isolated martyrion to a large establishment with 50 monks, a three-apsed basilica, an imperial subsidy of 600 modii of grain per annum, and the right of asylum; its significance for the local economy (quarrying, hiring of artisans, mining of unslaked lime, mobilization and use of rural transport) and culture (proliferation of icon veneration, elimination of pagan cult sites, eradication of popular fears associated with the chthonic deities believed to reside in ancient structures, the protection of tilled field with Christian symbola). The relations of the monastery with the civil government will also be examined (its position on the public post road, visits and endowments by emperors and high civil officials like Domnitziolus, its role in harboring fugitives from extortion by public officials), as well as its role in settling legal disputes between persons and villages without recourse to litigation. The geographical position of the monastery at Sykeon and its relations with other churches (Germia and Pessinus) are noted in the life of Theodore, as are the names and locations of various other monasteries and the abodes of ascetic monks. This picture is supplemented by the other monastic biographies mentioned previously. Details are omitted here.

The author of the life of Theodore makes two separate references to his methods of gathering information. The paper will conclude with an analysis of the historical plausibility of the texts considered here, based on the remarks of Theodore's hagiographer, other historical data, archeological evidence, and topographical detail.

The prefecture of Evritania is located in the northwestern region of central Greece. It is a mountainous and fairly impassable area with many churches, monasteries and remote chapels widely dispersed among the many villages of the area and hidden in the mountains of the region. With only few exceptions, we may accurately state that the christian monuments of Evritania have not been studied systematically nor has the area seen much archaeological activity. The monastery of Tatarna is located in the mountains of Agrafa west of the village of Tripotamo and west of the city of Karpenisi of the prefecture of Evritania. Detailed investigation of the monastery of Tatarna was carried out in July 1982 as part of a research project surveying the post-Byzantine churches and antiquities of Evritania under the supervision of the author of this abstract and Mr. Lazaros Deriziotis, epimelitis, of Byzantine antiquities of Thessaly and Evritania, and grants from Dumbarton Oaks and the Hellenic Studies Fund of Ball State University. The field work of the 1982 season carried out at Tatarna helped clarify the history of the monastery.

The monastery comes under the ecclesiastical authority of the metropolitan bishop of Karpenisi. Founded in the year 1555 by the monks David and Methodios the monastery of Tatarna, which was originally dedicated to the "Panaghia e Phaneromeni", is considered as being, historically and architecturally, second in importance to the late twelfth century monastery of Proussos also in Evritania. It is also believed that the foundations of a thirteenth century church are situated below the foundations of the sixteenth century Katholikon of the monastery. Further field research in the area should help clear the mystery. Construction of the Katholikon, cross-in-square plan, was completed in 1580 and its decoration twenty years later in 1600. The monastery seriously damaged by the Turks during the years of the Greek struggle of liberation (1821-29), was in time destroyed, but on orders of king Othon, first king of liberated Greece, it was rebuilt during the years 1841-1844. Fortunately, architectural plans of the 1555 structure survive and are located in the archives of the present monastery of Tatarna. A landslip in 1963 completely destroyed the monastery. Construction of the present foundations started in 1977. Items rescued by abbot Dositheos are now housed in the archives and library of the present monastery whose community consists of the abbot and three young monks. Only few monasteries in Evritania have a richer and more distinguished history than the monastery of Tatarna. Also few spots anywhere in Evritania are more pleasant than this tree- shaded area of Evritania.

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