Byzantine Studies Conference Archives

Nineteenth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference
4-7 November 1993
Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey

ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.   Byzantium and Its Eastern Frontier
Chair: Glen Bowersock

II. Byzantine Chapels
Chair: Cecil Striker

III. Papers in Memory of John Meyendorff
Chair: John Erickson

IV. Byzantine Philanthropy and Philanthropic Institutions
Chair: Demetrius Constantelos

V. Byzantium and the West
Chair: Charles Brand

VI. Art and Ceremony in the Liturgy
Chair: Mary-Lyon Dolezal

VII. Everyday Life in Byzantium
Chair: David Evans

VIII. Expressions of Aristocratic and Imperial Status and Continuity in Late Antiquity
Chair: Jacqueline Long

IX. Instrumenta Studiarum: Collections, Projects in Progress, and New Technologies
Chair: Helen Evans

X. The Slavs in the Balkans
Chair: Ihor Sevcenko

XI. Death and Burial in Late Antiquity
Chair: Fred Paxton

XII. Methodology and Historiography
Chair: Henry Maguire

XIII. Constructing Gender in Byzantium (Part 1): Papers
Chair: Judith Herrin

XIV. Paleologan Society and Culture
Chair: George Dennis

XV. Cliche and Genre: The Place of Rhetoric in Byzantine Literature
Chair: Alan Cameron

XVI. Constructing Gender in Byzantium (Part 2): Notices and Discussion
Chair: Annemarie Weyl Carr

XVII. Artist, Artisan and Artifact
Chair: Gary Vikan

XVIII. Byzantine Music
Chair: Milos Velimirovic

XIX.     Papers in Memory of Kurt Weitzmann (Part 1): Monumental Painting and Minor Arts
Chair: Jeffrey Anderson

XX. The Archaeology of Byzantine Palestine
Chair: Lucille Roussin

XXI. Expressions of Ethnicity and Nationalism in Byzantium
Chair: Louis Feldman

XXII. Papers in Memory of Kurt Weitzmann (Part 2): Manuscripts
Chair: Herbert Kessler

XXIII. Constantinople
Chair: Dale Kinney

XXIV.  Syriaca
Chair: Susan Harvey

I. BYZANTIUM AND ITS EASTERN FRONTIER

Chair: Glen Bowersock (Institute for Advanced Study)

Who Really Led the Sassanian Invasion of Egypt?

Todd M. Hickey (University of Chicago)

The Sassanian invasion and occupation of Egypt have hitherto received little intensive study, and even some of the most basic questions have not yet been answered satisfactorily. One such question is, "Who led the invasion force?"-A simple query, but one fraught with difficulty.

The problem is that the literary sources for the invasion do not agree: In Nikephoros and al-Tabari, the general is said to have been Shahin, while Michael the Syrian, Eutychius, Bar Hebraeus, and Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam record Shahrbardz as the commander. Such an alignment in the testimony of the sources is somewhat curious-while one might expect Nikephoros to have divergent testimony since he represents a distinct, Constantinopolitan, pro-Monothelite, historiographical tradition, it is strange that the works of al-Tabari, Michael the Syrian, Bar Hebraeus, and Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, which have links to the same textual tradition, give differing information.

Similarly, modern scholars have been divided on the question. For example, A. J. Butler argued in his Arab Conquest of Egypt that Shahin led the invasion force, basing his belief largely on al-Tabari's reliability as a source. A. N. Stratos, on the other hand, stated in Byzantium in the Seventh Century that it was Shahrbaraz who was the commander, the testimony of Michael the Syrian and other Oriental authors, and a belief that Shahin was occupied at the time in Asia Minor, form the basis for his argument.

Though Stratos' arguments are far from compelling, a reconsideration of the evidence reveals that he was probably correct in identifying Shahrbaraz as the commander of the invasion force. For one, the hitherto ignored testimony of Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam is extremely reliable (and is earlier in date than that of al-Tabari). Furthermore, the titulature of Shahrbaraz and Shahin (as reported in Sebeos, al-Mas 'fidi, and Agapius [Mahbub] of Manbij) seems to indicate that Shahrbaraz was an official whose geographic "zone of responsibility" was more likely to include Egypt. Finally, and most importantly, there is the testimony of a piece of previously overlooked non-literary evidence: a cryptic Pahlavi papyrus letter from Sassanian Egypt, now in the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, describes Shahrbaraz riding on a camel and a shortage of horses.

The Battle of Nineveh

Walter E. Kaegi (University of Chicago)

Even though F. Sarre and E. Herzfeld, Archdologische Reise (Berlin 1920), 11 87-9, clarified many aspects of the topography of Herachus' decisive campaign against the Persians in 627-8, they did not reexamine problems of the Battle of Nineveh (12 December 627).

In the early nineteenth century Claudius Rich, misinterpreting Gibbon, believed that the battle took place virtually at the Nineveh terminus of the Mosul-Nineveh bridge, while for George Rawlinson its location was north of Nineveh. Sebeos was unknown to both of them. Later historians vaguely located it in the vicinity of Nineveh. The topography of the Nineveh region requires study in the light of the two basic sources, Sebeos, (Abgaryan edn. p. 126), who specifies that Heraclius lured the Persians west as far as the Nineveh plain, and Theophanes (Syncellus, De Boor edn., 317-20), who reports that Heraclius forded the Greater Zab three miles north of the pursuing Persians' ford, and sent his baggage ahead, and camped near (lesion) Nineveh and found a suitable plain for battle. The battle very probably took place on the plain immediately west of the Greater Zab River, in the center of which ideal plain, about 23 kilometers east of Nineveh, is the large village of Keramles/ Qaramlays. This is the intensively studied plain that from the late eighteenth (C. Niebuhr) to almost the last decades of the nineteenth century, and then again as a result of a 1942 article by Sir Aurel Stein, was erroneously assumed to have been the site of Alexander the Great's Battle of Gaugamela against Darius. Byzantinists failed to utilize these discarded studies, like those of Sarre and Herzfeld. The principal road from Mosul to Erbil (Arbela) and Kirkuk passes through this plain, which I visited on 11 August 1988.

One cannot ascertain precisely where the battle took place in the plain, but after it the Persians fled, together with their baggage, to the foothills of the lofty Jabal 'Ayn al-SafrT for better security against Byzantine attacks, in conformity to Persian preferences reported in the Maurice Strategikon 11.1. The Persians' watch over the dead was probably a very specific minimalist watch in accordance with Zoroastrian ritual requirements, given that they did not practice inhumation. Heraclius had lured the Persians to attack him in open country that was, according to the Maurice Strategikon, excellent terrain for Byzantine cavalry and infantry to engage in close combat with the Persians, if their archers could be neutralized, which the fog that prevailed that morning enabled Heraclius to do. The Byzantines probably watered their mounts after the battle on the field, two arrow-shots away from the Persians' death-watching honor guard, in one of the streams that exist in that plain, perhaps the one at Qaramlays. The reason for Heraclius' march west of the Zab, in the vicinity of Nineveh, was not only to lure the Persians into trying to attack him on an exposed plain, in a vain effort to try to catch him or pen him against the Tigris, but on his part, to hold onto and draw provisions from the Nineveh region. Nineveh was an essential crossing point of the Tigris or escape option northwest if he were defeated, so that he and his troops might retreat through relatively familiar and well-supplied country, for he had exhausted supplies along the route by which he had reached the Zab. Heraclius' operations assumed the benign non-intervention of the formidable Persian general Shahrbaraz, in Syria, whose loyalties were uncertain. Heraclius probably used conventional tactics: heavy cavalry, a closing of the ranks, and a charge, possibly accompanied by a flank attack, that broke the Persian front. The calculations and conduct of both belligerents in this battle are comprehensible in terms of the Strate ' on 11.1, which describes specific fighting techniques of the Persians and the appropriate standard tactics to use against them. In itself it was not a Persian rout, but this battle created a dynamic that led within two months to the overthrow of Khosro II and peace on Heraclius' terms.

Reassessing Nomadic-Sedentary Relations on the Early Byzantine Frontier in Arabia and Palestine

S. Thomas Parker (North Carolina State University)

There has been much recent scholarly controversy about the nature of this frontier in the Early Byzantine period (ca. 284-636). The traditional historical model emphasizes hostility between nomadic pastoralist Arabs and the sedentary provincial populations. The imperial government is thus seen supporting the sedentary population by providing security that permitted settlements to spread to the desert's edge. The government also had a compelling interest in protecting the lucrative caravan traffic. To fulfill these goals, the imperial authorities developed a system of garrisoned fortifications to protect the frontier against nomadic attack.

Recently a revisionist model has appeared, claiming the lack of much literary evidence on any nomadic Arab threat, emphasizing the stereotypical evidence on ancient nomads seen through the eyes of hostile and ethnocentric sources, and pointing to the ambiguity in interpreting archaeological evidence. The revisionists, such as Benjamin Isaac and David Graf, see a different security situation in Syria, Palestine, and Arabia. Both downplay the external nomadic threat and suggest that the major concern was internal, i.e. a restive sedentary provincial population. Isaac stresses problems of brigandage within provincial borders, episodes of unrest among Palestinian Jews, and the army as occupying force. Graf agrees that the threat was principally internal but argues for a wider rebellion by the sedentary provincial population of the Levant.

These alternate models are not without merit. They have raised valid questions about the evidence marshalled by the traditionalists. But Graf's argument that a rebellion by the sedentary provincial population in the mid- to late third century motivated the now unquestioned Tetrarchic military buildup in the region is supported by little evidence. Isaac has rightly stressed the unique Talmudic evidence for insights into the relations between Jews and imperial authorities. But one may question whether the Jews were typical of the provincial population of the Levant. Further, the Jewish threat to imperial order, real enough in the early Roman period, virtually disappeared after the early second century. This is suggested most notably by the disposition of garrisons in the sources, which show that imperial deployment between the Euphrates and the Red Sea aimed against an external threat from the desert, not an inward threat against a restive provincial population.

This paper defends the traditional model in the following sense. Undoubtedly there were frequent episodes of serious hostilities along the frontier that suggest a hostile relationship between nomads and sedentaries. There were periods of mutually beneficial relations, but generally possible only when a strong government policed the frontier. In contrast, the absence of effective policing inevitably led to a decline in security for the sedentary population and growth in the strength of the nomads. This could result in devastating nomadic raids along the frontier, inter-tribal nomadic warfare spilling into sedentary areas, and occasionally a full-scale nomadic invasion of the settled region. This interpretation is based on analysis of a wide array of evidence, including literary, epigraphic, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence. What changed the balance between nomads and sedentaries was the appearance of camel bedouin late in the second millennium B.C. These nomads migrated long distances, lived for long periods far from the reach of governments, and used their extraordinary mobility for raiding. The threat posed by camel bedouin existed as early as the Iron Age (1200-539 B.C.) and was faced by each successive empire that ruled the Fertile Crescent. These conditions prevailed throughout much of the classical, medieval and modern periods, until the early twentieth century.

The Rebellion of Nikephoros the "Twisted Neck" Phokas and Nikephoros Xiphias: An Attempt to Reconcile the Accounts of Byzantine and Eastern Sources

Stephen H. Rapp, Jr. (University of Michigan)

In the last quarter of the tenth century the Byzantine empire was faced with two major rebellions. In both instances a prominent role was played by Davit' of Tao, the prince of southwestern Georgia. Armenian and Georgian troops provided to Bardas Phokas by Davit' proved to be decisive in quashing the uprising of Bardas Skleros in 979. In 987 Phokas and Skleros together rebelled against imperial authority; many of the rebel troops were provided by Phokas' ally, Davit'. Once the revolt was put down, Davit' was forced to promise that his lands (which included the city of Theodosioupolis) would be surrendered to Byzantium upon his death. But during the fifteen years after the death of Davit' of Tao (ca. 1001), King Giorgi of Ap'xazet'i (Gk. A(3a(TyLa) refused to recognize Byzantium's claim to Davit's possessions and in 1020/1021 Basil launched a campaign against Ap'xazet'i. While Basil was away on this campaign a new rebellion was mounted against him in 1022.

There are several eleventh-century sources which describe the rebellion of 1022. In Georgian we have the short accounts of Sumbat Davit'is-dze and the anonymous Matiane k'art lisay, in Armenian Matthew of Edessa (twelfth century) and Aristakes Lasffvertc'i, in Arabic the history of Yahya ibn Sa'id, and in Greek Synopsis Historiarum of Skylitzes, repeated in Kedrenos' Historiarum Compendium, and the history of Zonaras. As I shall demonstrate the sources offer varied, but I believe reconcilable, accounts.

The main leader, and perhaps initiator, of the rebellion was Nikephoros "the Twisted Neck" Phokas, son of Bardas Phokas. Aristakes Lastivertc'i asserts that the rebellion began when several nobles, finding themselves neglected by Basil, banded together and sought a leader; eventually they chose Nikephoros Phokas who initially refused but was later persuaded to their cause. Other accounts merely relate that the rebellion began when some nobles, including Phokas and Nikephoros Xiphias (who had been appointed strategos of the Anatolikon theme after his successes in Bulgaria) became disgruntled when they were not taken on Basil's Caucasian campaign.

It is possible that King Giorgi himself was involved in instigating the uprising although the sources provide no direct evidence of this. Matthew of Edessa and Skylitzes/Kedrenos do claim that contact was established between the rebels and the Georgian king Giorgi; however, if contact was indeed established, Giorgi's support of the rebels would have been severely limited (probably to moral support) because of Basil's invasion of his realm.

However, some Georgians undoubtedly joined the rebellion-in this regard a certain P'erisi "of the race of Tao" (Georgian nat'esavit' taoeli) is named by the Georgian sources as well as by Skylitzes/Kedrenos and Aristakes.

The demise of the rebellion can be attributed to many factors. Skylitzes/Kedrenos claims that rebel forces were recruited in a highly haphazard fashion. If we are to believe Aristakes, Phokas did not want to lead the rebellion in the first place, and thus we may question his ultimate resolve. Skylitzes/Kedrenos further contends that Basil sent letters secretly to both Phokas and Xiphias in an attempt to drive them apart. This may or not have been the case, but Skylitzes/Kedrenos and Yahya clearly state that Xiphias became extremely envious of Phokas' position as the leader of the rebellion and thus Xiphias murdered (or ordered the murder of) Phokas in an attempt to seize control of the rebel forces. Furthermore, I believe we can discount the claim of Matthew of Edessa and Aristakes that it was an Armenian, and not Xiphias, who was responsible for the murder of Phokas. This claim merely represents the attempt by these historians to attribute evidence of patriotic resistance to Caucasian Armenians whose political structures had deteriorated in the face of increasing Byzantine and Georgian influence.

The sources all concur that after the death of Phokas the rebellion quickly collapsed. This uprising, unlike those of Skleros and Bardas Phokas, never seriously threatened the stability of the empire; indeed, as Aristakes wrote, the revolt of 1022 "was not prolonged, but was rather like a structure built on sand and that quickly falls into ruin from the blows of a flood." Once the rebellion was quashed, Basil was able to again direct his full attention to his campaign against Giorgi.

II. BYZANTINE CHAPELS

Chair: Cecil Striker (University of Pennsylvania)

"Elevated Chapels": The Monastery Tower And Its Meaning

Svetlana Popovic (Princeton University)

The majority of Byzantine monasteries on Mount Athos have towers-pyrgoi-whose presence has essentially come to symbolize the monastic establishments themselves. Current scholarship has virtually exclusively defined these towers as fortifications. However, other monasteries throughout the Byzantine world and its sphere of influence had free-standing towers within their complexes. As early as the fifth century, numerous lavras in Palestine (Laura Chariton, the Great Lavra, etc.) had towers situated on the highest point within the monastery complex. This paper will address the question of the meaning and function of these towers within their respective monastery complexes.

Almost every one of these towers contained a chapel. Virtually without exception these chapels were located at the highest level of the respective towers. The towers contained other functions including, among others, living quarters for the monks. In addition to these towers, monasteries contained other buildings of a similar architectural type, but of different functions. These included monastery entrance towers and bell-towers. Generally, both of these tower types also contained chapels. The meaning and the function of all of these chapels were not the same. I propose to examine their symbolic meaning within the context of the monastic complex as a whole. I believe that the monastery pyrgoi have their origins in the first monastic towers built in fifth-century Palestinian lavras. These towers accommodated cells of the monastic founders and later of monks of some distinction. The first towers in Palestine contained "prayer rooms" which subsequently became full-fledged chapels in the Middle Byzantine period and later. These chapels were often dedicated to the Ascension and to the Transfiguration (cf. Hilandar-Hrusija pyrgos, the pyrgos at Spasova voda).

Monastery entrance towers and their chapels, in contrast to the previously mentioned types, had a prophylactic function. This is confirmed by the dedication of several preserved chapels of this type which were dedicated to the Archangels, the Archangel Michael, Sts. Constantine and Helena, etc. Monastic bell-towers also contained chapels. At times, when their function was combined with that of an entrance tower, they would contain two chapels-one serving the symbolic prophylactic roll while the other was related to the function of the bell-tower. Such was the case at the monastery of Studenica, whose early thirteenth-century entrance tower contained a Transfiguration chapel and another dedicated to the Archangel Michael.

What Was the Real Function of Late Byzantine Katechoumena?

Slobodan Curcic (Princeton University)

A fairly large number of Late Byzantine churches have upper-level chambers, generally situated above their narthexes. Few of these chambers have preserved their original decoration, and even fewer their furnishings. Virtually nothing is known about the function of these chambers. They are generally referred to as katechoumena, a term borrowed from an earlier Byzantine context, and applied uncritically to these chambers.

Scholars who have dealt with these issues (G. Millet, Ch. Delvoye, T. Mathews, among them) have observed that the term katechoumena supersedes an older term hvperoa, referring to the full-fledged open galleries in large Early Christian and Early Byzantine churches. The term katechoumena was apparently introduced as early as the seventh century, and was fully established by the tenth century, though still without a precise meaning. As such, it has been indiscriminately applied to later Byzantine examples by modern scholars. This paper seeks to examine a number of chambers whose architectural and decorative characteristics suggest that they were not earmarked for occasional use by high church and state dignitaries, as is the prevalent current opinion.

The main examples of chambers to be examined include those in Bogorodica Ljeviska at Prizren (1306-7), Gracanica (ca. 1311f.), and in Perivleptos at Mistra (third quarter of the 14th century). These three will be related to two other fourteenth-century examples: the early fourteenth-century church at Omorphoklissia, Epiros (the gallery chamber here may belong to an earlier structure, if the dating of frescoes is correct), and the church of the Chora Monastery in Constantinople, of ca. 1320. The upper-level chambers at Bogorodica Ljeviska, Gracanica, and the Perivleptos at Mistra share certain important characteristics: all are situated directly above entrances into the naos proper; all are relatively difficult of access; all have two-light interior windows overlooking the naos; all of these windows are incorporated into the fresco composition depicting the Dormition of the Virgin.

The particular characteristics of the Perivleptos at Mistra, where the upper-level chamber is, in fact, a cave in the cliff against which the church was built, suggest that this chamber may have been a type of enkleistra, a secluded dwelling place reserved for a monk of some distinction. On the basis of earlier precedents (e.g., the katechoumena of St. Athanasios in the Great Lavra on Mt. Athos, and the hagiasterion of St. Neophitos in his Enkleistra near Paphos on Cyprus), I will argue that such chambers were specially made in churches as eventual retreats for their patrons. The patrons in question, on the other hand, were either high-ranking state or church officials who aspired to a monastic form of retirement and eventual burial within their own foundations.

The Iconographic Program of Side Chapels of the Triple Sanctuary

Svetlana Tomekovic (C.N.R.S. Paris)

One of the first studies on the relations between church decoration and the liturgy, published by J. D. Stefanesku in 1936,¹ contains much precious information but does not present either the various strata of the rite of the prothesis, for instance, or the precise program of the place in which it was said. In the years 1964 and 1965, two articles, by G. Babic² and S. Dufrenne,³ were dedicated in part to those questions. The decoration of the eastern chapels was then studied by G. Babic in her well-known work dealing with the whole of the subsidiary chapels.⁴ According to this author, the programs adopted in churches from the fifth to the twelfth centuries reflect particularly the special services (commemoration of saints, defunct monks, founder of the church). The hagiographical cycles continue to be represented in the chapels near the sanctuary after this date, besides some new representations revealing more links between these annexes and the liturgy. This last aspect attracted also the attention of S. Dufrenne, in her study of the prothesis in the church of the Virgin Peribleptos in Mistra⁵ Since then, Ch. Walter proposed further consideration of this subject, saying that the programs of the chapel of the prothesis merit further study.⁶ I took up this question in another way, through the location of the ascetic saints in Byzantine wall painting. It seemed to me, then, if the northeast chapel program remained often close to that of the votive chapel, the close ties between the Christ Sacrifice and the one of saints who followed his example were accentuated. Moreover, in certain churches, at least starting with the tenth century, the program of this chapel referred still more clearly to the Eucharist with the help of the introduction of several subjects with liturgical significance, as it is the case in the New Church of Tokali in Goreme.⁷

So far as I know, the study of the prothesis and the diaconicon from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, according to the architectural evidence, also remains to be done. Even the known inquiries do not agree about the period of the appearance of these chapels. Did they appear in post-iconoclastic churches,⁸ or starting with the seventh century in Greece?⁹ The church of the Dormition in Nicaea¹⁰ as the churches of the Sea of Marmara are not strictly dated.¹¹ The other studies are brief, limited often to simple mention or to typology.¹² Finally, some studies bear new interpretations on the origin and function of subsidiary chapels in Byzantine architecture.¹³

Our study aims to present first an investigation of the iconographic program of the side chapels of the triple sanctuary, based on a catalogue including the most significant Byzantine wall paintings and those in the area under its influence, from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. This inquiry leads us to the first classification of several variants of prothesis decoration (8th-12th century): a) isolated effigies of saints only (deacons, bishops, martyrs); b) effigy of Christ or the Virgin as a central panel among the saints; c) scenes of the Virgin's or Christ's life; d) theme with Christ or the Virgin and the hagiographical cycle; e) pure hagiographical variant with the portrait of the saint in the apse with, on the walls, either the illustration of the life of the same saint or of another one; f) Old Testament and ascetic subjects with a Eucharistic meaning. Starting with the thirteenth, and particularly in the fourteenth century, some other subjects are a part of the program of the prothesis (Amnos, Vision of Peter of Alexandria, Celestial Liturgy, etc.) and the representations of the Old Testament prefigurations are more numerous.

Several analyses of the Byzantine commentaries of the Divine Liturgy, from the original composition of the Historia Ecclesiastica to the work of Nicholas Cabasilas, offer us certain knowledge about the prothesis ceremony and its evolution as well as about the texts read during this rite which could be compared with this visual evidence. It seems that the rite of the prothesis, well established as far back as the eighth century, is probably already reflected in some decoration at that time. The successive developments of this rite specify its meaning further. Church decoration follows this evolution freely, in different ways, without illustrating it in detail. In the tenth century several examples testify to a real interest in the subjects with liturgical connotation (Hospitality of Abraham, Communion of the Apostles, Communion of Mary the Egyptian, Last Supper). In the eleventh and twelfth centuries this program could consist as well of the simple representation of the celebrants as in the events of Christ's or the Virgin's life. At the same time the hagiographical illustration also develops. The chronology of the preserved paintings seems to reveal, except for the quoted subjects of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, that it is not a question only of an evolution but also of the parallel existence of the different programs for those chapels.

The diaconicon decoration is, very often, comparable to that of the prothesis. In some other cases they are complementary but they can be also distinct. We intend to conclude this inquiry with the comparison of these two programs, and with the study of their relation, in an attempt to learn more about the significance of the diaconicon chapel of which nothing precise is known from the liturgy.

¹ L'Illustration des liturgies clans Part de Byzance et de l'Orient (Brussels 1936), 28-29, 44-55, 132-160.

² "Simbolicno znacenje zivopisa u protezisu Svetih Apostola u Peci," Zbornik za zastitu spomeni       15 (1964),173-182. See also J. Radovanovic, "Ikonografija fresaka protezisa crkve Svetih Apostola u Peci, " Zbornik za likovne umetnosti 4 (1968), 27-63.

³ "L'enrichissement du program iconographique dans les eglises byzantines du XIIIe siecle, " in L'art byzantin du Xllle siecle (Symposium de Sopocani 1965) (Belgrade 1967), 36-38, note 12.

⁴ Les chapelles annexes des eglises byzantines: Fonction liturgique et pro rg amme iconographique (Paris 1969).

⁵ "Images du decor de la prothese," REB 26 (1968), 297-310.

⁶ Art and Ritual of the Byzantine Church (London 1982),190-191, 212-214, 232-238, note 253.

⁷ S. Tomekovic, "Place des saints ermites et moines dans le decor de l'eglise byzantine," in Liturgie, conversion et vie monastique (Conferences Saint-Serge, XXXVe Semaine d'etudes liturgiques, 1988), Edizioni Liturgiche (Rome 1989), 318-320.

⁸ T. F. Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople. Architecture and Liturgy (University Park, Pennsylvania 1971), 94,144,161-162,179.

⁹ P. L. Vocotopoulos, "Paratereseis sten legomene basilie tou Hagiou Nikonos," in First Congress of Peloponnesian Studies, II, (Athens 1976), 277-279.

¹⁰ Before 730? See Th. Schmidt, Die Koimesis-Kirche yon Nikaia (Berlin-Leipzig 1927), pl. IV; and C. Mango, Architecture bvzantine (Paris 1981), 165-172.

¹¹ Late eighth or early ninth century? See C. Mango and l. Sevcenko, "Some Churches and Monasteries on the Southern Shore of the Sea of Marmara," DOP 27 (1973), 236-277.

¹² For San Saba in Rome see R. Krautheimer, S. Corbett, and W. Frankl, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae IV The Early Christian Basilicas of Rome (IV-IX Century) (Vatican City 1970), 70-71. For Greece see P. L. Vocotopoulos, He ekkIesiastike architektonike eis ten dutikes steran Hellada kai ten Eperon apo tou telous tou 7ou mechri tou telous tou 10ou aionos (Byzantina mnemeia 2) (Thessaloniki 1975), 52,130,132.

¹³ S. Curcic, "Architectural Significance of Subsidiary Chapels in Middle Byzantine Churches," JSA 36 (1977), 94-110; and T. F. Mathews, "'Private' Liturgy in Byzantine Architecture: Toward a Re-appraisal," CA 30 (1982), 125-138.

Middle Byzantine Narthexes with Adjacent Chapels

Ida Sinkevic (Princeton University)

In Middle Byzantine times many churches exhibited separate chapels adjacent to the narthex in a variety of layouts. The chapels either occupy the place between the arms of the cross, or flank the main chamber of the narthex and expand laterally beyond the body of the church, or flank the main chamber, yet are incorporated in the body of the narthex. In most instances, these chapels are segregated from the main body of the church and communicate freely only with the narthex. Despite their close relationship with the narthex, the chapels have been considered by scholars as separate entities.

This paper maintains that the adjacent chapels are an integral part of the narthex, because they are related to it not only architecturally but also functionally. Both the narthexes and the chapels adjacent to it accommodated, among other functions, baptismal and funerary rites. This is attested by archaeological findings, painted programs, and literary evidence.

Considering archaeological evidence, baptismal fonts and arcosolia are found in a number of western chapels, such as in the church of St. Panteleimon, Nerezi, at Hosios Loukas, and in the church of the Assumption in Yeletsky Monastery. In the churches without western chapels, such as the Pantokrator Monastery and the church of St. Mary of the Admiral, the tombs and baptismal fonts were located in the narthex. As far as painted programs are concerned, the scenes related to the burial and baptism, displayed in the narthexes of the churches without chapels, such as H. Anargyroi, Kastoria, and Daphni, are also found in the western chapels of Hosios Loukas. Above all, preserved Typica clearly indicate that narthexes and adjacent chapels housed related functions. A good example is provided by the church of the Virgin Kosmosoteira, Pherrai. Neither the Typicon of this church, nor its painted program, make any distinction between the narthex proper and the chapels adjacent to it.

The integration of the separate architectural units of the western end of the church, evident in the Middle Byzantine times, is further developed during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This integration was likely necessitated by the development of funerary and baptismal rites in post-Iconoclastic times.

III. PAPERS IN MEMORY OF JOHN MEYENDORFF

Chair: John Erickson (St. Vladimir's Seminary)

John Cassian As A Source On Egyptian "Semi-Pelagianism"

John V. A. Fine (University of Michigan)

Father Meyendorff was interested in distinctions between Eastern and Western Christianity and particularly in those concerning the related issues of the Fall, so-called Original Sin, God's Grace, human merit, and free will. It is often said that Church positions emerge from controversy and that a position relating these issues came only in the early fifth century, growing out of the dispute between Augustine and Pelagius, a dispute which, while receiving peripheral and passing notice in the East, chiefly had impact in the West.

Yet in the course of the fourth century the issue was much discussed (generally without rancor) in the East, and we can find the ingredients of a more or less semi-Pelagian consensus position already existing there before 400. It is very visible in the writings of John Cassian and his summaries of the teachings of various prominent Egyptian holy ascetics whom he visited in the 380s and 390s, in particular in the "conferences" by Abbas Theonas and Chaeremon, but also in those of Paphnutius, Joseph, Moses, Serapion, Serenus, Isaac, and Pinufius.

Since Cassian was writing his Conferences in the 420s and 430s when in the midst of his defense of a semi-Pelagianism against the Augustinians, one might argue that Cassian was placing his own views into the mouths of these holy Egyptians to give these views greater weight or to avoid trouble for himself. Moreover, it might also be more charitably argued that since Cassian was presenting the views of these Egyptians some 25 years after his conversations with them, his memory may have blurred their views, making the positions of those he so admired gibe with those he himself had reached. Thus the reader of Cassian must wonder whether Cassian was later justifying his own semi-Pelagian position by putting his 430 views into the mouths of these holy teachers. However, it also might be reasonable to argue that he was citing them more or less accurately; for after all it is quite conceivable that he may have drawn his own semi-Pelagian views from the instruction he had received in Egypt as a young man. My paper will strongly argue for the second of these two alternatives.

My paper shall briefly lay out the views of these Egyptians as given by Cassian, then turn to other sources on Egypt (materials on Pachomius and other Egyptian saints, including the writings of Athanasius) to confirm to the degree possible what Cassian says about these particular Egyptian abbas and to a greater extent to show that the views he attributes to them can be found for several other prominent Egyptian Christians all the way back to Clement of Alexandria and in the fourth century for such major figures as Pachomius, Antony, Macarius of Egypt and Athanasius. The paper will then conclude by showing that one also should not limit fourth-century semi-Pelagianism to Egypt, for one can find it among Greek ascetics as well-e.g., Gregory of Nyasa and Pseudo-Macarius. For the former, the reader is referred to the beautifully documented recently-published study Grace and Human Freedom According to St Gregory of Nyssa by Verna Harrison.

In fact, it is a pity that the very reasonable and Scripturally sound position that combines God's Grace and human free choice in a partnership to effect human salvation, a position well established in the Orthodox Church before the aberrant views of Augustine emerged and also a position which has remained basic to the Orthodox Church thereafter, should have acquired the negative label (implying some sort of heresy) of "semi-Pelagianism" and have put so many recent Orthodox thinkers and scholars on the defensive. Augustine's influence on Western thinkers is, of course, responsible for this. But had he (or someone else) appeared in the East in the early fifth century with his doctrine of predestination and Original Sin, he would have been anathematized as a heretic. It is time

that Eastern Christians stop trying to explain things away and stop trying to argue that Cassian or Gregory did not mean what they seem to say; they meant every bit of it and had the support of Scripture behind them. We no longer use Athanasius' loaded polemical term of "semi-Arian" as an accurate one to describe the views of Basil of Ancyra. Maybe the negative label "semi-Pelagian" should also be dropped as a summary term to describe the perfectly orthodox views of Cassian and his Eastern colleagues.

Acacius of Melitene and the Presence of Dyophysites in Armenia in the Early Fifth Century

Nina G. Garsoian (Columbia University)

During the quarrels between the Dyophysite or Nestorian party of Antioch and the Monophysite followers of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus in 431, Bishop Acacius of Melitene in Armenia II emerged as one of the most ardent partisans of Cyril of Alexandria. Even after the council, he persisted in his extremist views and reproached Cyril for being too accommodating in accepting a reconciliation with his opponent John of Antioch in 433. Acacius is further known through his correspondence with the Armenian patriarch Sahak I over the presumed appearance of the works of the master of the Antiochene school, Theodore of Mopsuestia, in Armenia. These letters led to Sahak's request for the opinion of the patriarch Proclus of Constantinople, who condemned the Dyophysite doctrine in his Tome to the Armenians, which was to serve as one of the basic texts at the Council of the Three Chapters in 553. Another document presented to Proclus and purporting to document the presence of Dyophysitism in Armenia was a Libellus brought by two Armenian priests named Leontius and Abellius. This treatise laid the blame for the appearance of heresy in their country on a mission come from Cilicia, which attacked Acacius for having acted not through doctrinal zeal, but "from enmity and hatred" of Theodore. Although writers in the VIth century reused its material, their information and consequently the Libellus itself have been attacked as tendentious and distorted.

Two episodes from Acacius's life brought out by Armenian sources and by the episcopal correspondence following the Council of Ephesus increase our knowledge of the bishop's career and support the authenticity of the information in the Libellus. From the Armenian Life of Mastoc' we learn that this inventor of the Armenian alphabet and collaborator of Sahak, had left his pupils in the care of Acacius of Melitene during his journey to Constantinople. Mastoc"s earlier career in the East, however, clearly shows that he was part of the Antiochene milieu found at Edessa, Amida, and Samosata in Mesopotamia. If so, it is curious that he should have entrusted his disciples to Acacius, if the latter held diametrically opposed Christological views.

Secondly, the post-Ephesian correspondence shows that Cilicia remained a focus of Antiochene anti-Alexandrian opposition, even after Cyril and John's reconciliation of 433, and only submitted at last under threats from the imperial authorities. One of the outstanding leaders of this opposition was Bishop Meletius, Theodore's successor in the see of Mopsuestia. Recusant to the last, Meletius was expelled from his see manu militari and exiled to Melitene, where he died after great suffering at the hands of the Bishop Acacius. Given this information, it is hardly surprising that some of his Cilician followers came to Armenia, according to the Libellus and attacked Acacius as an enemy. Consequently it seems possible that Acacius of Melitene, like his colleague Rabbula of Edessa, had originally belonged to the Antiochene school and changed sides at Ephesus, so that his later extremist views may well reflect the excessive zeal of a convert. The evidence of Cilicia's loyalty to Antioch and of Meletius' sad end, under the torments of Acacius of Melitene, support the information of the Libellus, and its focus on Cilicia, as correct, whatever later distortion was brought in for subsequent ends, as well as its warning to Proclus that the doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia had indeed spread to Armenia early in the fifth century.

Anarchy vs. Hierarchy?: Dionysius Areopagita, Saint Symeon the New Theologian, and Nicetas Stethatos on the Hierarchical Vision

Alexander George Golitzin (Marquette University)

Nicetas Stethatos' striking dependence on the works of Dionysius Areopagite, as evidenced for example in his attempt to assimilate the Hymns of Symeon the New Theologian to the theme of sacred eros and the figure of Hierotheos in Chapter IV of the Divine Names has occasioned some curiosity among scholars over the past thirty years. How, they wonder, could Nicetas as the devoted disciple and biographer of a man who spent much of his career battling ecclesiastical authorities in the name of an authority derived from personal experience of the Spirit, and whose whole being breathed potential opposition to the established order of hierarchical command, be at the same time the convinced admirer of the mysterious author whose writings (ca. 500 A.D.) consecrated the very word, "hierarchy," and whose concerns for "good order" in the church explicitly subordinated in the strongest terms-the monastic order to episcopal guidance? Dionysius and Symeon, in this typical reckoning, are taken as polar opposites, with Nicetas' position appearing thus as, at best, paradoxical. In this paper I try to present a reading of both Symeon and Dionysius which sees the former as acutely conscious of, and working with the latter's thought. The impress of the Areopagitica on the New Theologian has been little noted, and that little has been confined chiefly to references to the Mystical Theology and apophaticism. The influence is much more pervasive, and to demonstrate this I shall focus particularly on links between two different textual pairings: Dionysius' Epistle VIII and Symeon's famous (or infamous) Letter on Confession, together with the New Theologian's XIVth Ethical Discourse and Celestial Hierarchy 1,3. Far from an absolute opposition, the two writers will display surprising parallels which, I believe, may at once illumine the particular case of Nicetas himself as his master's pupil and, more generally, the relation between the charismatic in-especially-Byzantine monasticism and the societal dimensions of church and liturgy.

The Eschatological Vision as a Source for Byzantine Popular Religion

Jane Bann (Princeton University)

Eschatological and apocalyptic speculation flourished throughout the entire Byzantine millennium, in every corner of the Empire; texts survive in numerous recensions and translations, in hundreds of manuscripts. The genre's fecundity testifies to its enduring popularity and usefulness. Apocalyptic texts were seldom copied word-for-word, but rather credulously adapted by each redactor, who modified the vision or prophecy according to each new set of temporal, spiritual, or territorial circumstances. Works such as the revelations within the Lives of Andrew the Fool and Basil the Younger, and the Apocalypses of the Theotokos and of Anastasia, witness to the apprehension felt by Byzantine men and women over issues of salvation and morality, both personal and corporate. They also provide insight into the spiritual formation and level of religious knowledge of their authors and audiences, in many cases suggesting that official church doctrines were poorly or only partially understood.

This paper will examine one such text, the circa eleventh-century Apocalypse of Anastasia, as a case study in the methodological, interpretative, and typological challenges of the genre. Its form, content, and text tradition will be analyzed, and its usefulness as a source for popular belief and morality assessed. The nature of its relationship to other named apocalypses will also be considered. Known manuscripts of Anastasia number three in Greek and five in Slavic languages. True to the nature of the genre, the manuscripts preserve multiple text traditions.

Whether the pious nun Anastasia, whom the Greek texts place in a nameless monastery at the beginning of the sixth century, was an actual historical person is doubtful. Most likely she was created as an allegorical, typological figure of resurrection. Three days after her death, Anastasia awakes, and is taken by the Archangel Michael on a tour of the heavenly places. These encompass not only heaven, but also something suspiciously akin to purgatory. The purpose? She is to return to earth, to warn all men concerning the fearsome judgement to come. In particular, she is begged by sinners being tormented in various fiery pools, rivers, and ovens to carry messages of repentance and almsgiving back to their loved ones. The sins named, mostly economic and sexual, constitute a vice catalogue of popular morality. They include excessive interest, price speculation, counterfeiting, corruption, sorcery, going to church inebriated, adultery, prostitution, and abortion. Anastasia also sees the angelic intelligence-gathering operation in action, and the heavenly records office. Most importantly, she supplies inside information on the all-important process of intercession for sinners: who stands closest to the throne? Whose voice carries the most weight? All these were pressing questions for the middle Byzantine believer, and are therefore urgent as well for the historian of Byzantine religion and culture.

Notes on Popular Religion in Thirteenth-Century Constantinople

George P. Majeska (University of Maryland)

Anthony of Novgorod's "Pilgrim Book" description of Constantinople, circa A.D. 1200, is an excellent source not only for the topography of the city and for its inventory of sacred shrines and relics before the sack of the city by the Latins in 1204, but also, it turns out, for elements of popular religion as practiced in the Byzantine capital in the early thirteenth century. Leaving aside Anthony's often studied notes on churches, monasteries, icons and relics (the stories connected with which would certainly form the basis of any broad study of popular religion at this time), his data falls easily into broad categories: miracles, emotional response to religious ceremonies, and private rites and cures.

Anthony describes, for example, two contemporary miracles witnessed by large numbers of people, at least one of which he saw himself, namely the miraculous ascent of a cross-shaped candelabrum behind the high altar at St. Sophia on May 21, 1200. He also signals the appearance of a cheese-colored flower on an image in a suburban church on Cheesefare Sunday. In both cases he goes on to record what he felt was the response of the faithful to these manifestations of divine power.

Similarly, he attributes very specific thoughts and feelings to the people present at the liturgy in St. Sophia when the Patriarch is present and suggests similar emotions prevailed among the multitudes that joined with the Eparch of the city in carrying the head of St. Stephen the Younger around the city in an all-night procession on his annual feast. Perhaps most interesting to modern scholars, however, is his routine descriptions of what people did to heal their ills. Eye maladies, for example, were treated by binding the eyes with the cord from the lamp before St. Stephen's image in St. Sophia. Poison and serpent venom were drawn out of the victim by the brass bolt of the doors of the Great Church. In the same church, people rubbed their chests and shoulders on the column of Gregory the Theologian seeking cures. Other people who were ill were healed by drinking from the marble chalice that St. Theodore Seciote once used. But there were also mass healing services available in the city. For example, the bodies of St. Theodosia and of St. Mary the Patrician were carried in procession and during the circuit the relics were laid on people in the hope of curing them.

Anthony's notes on popular religious customs are particularly useful because he himself was apparently well educated as well as devout. (He was raised to the second see of the Russian Church within a decade of his return from Constantinople and later assigned to a diocese recently retrieved from the Latin Church.) He was, moreover, the ideal reporter, a stranger who recorded what was new to him (although possibly quite standard in Byzantium) and who could understand what he saw because he shared much of the cultural background through his Eastern Orthodox background.

The Logos of Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos on the Miracles at the Shrine of the Zoodochos Pege in Constantinople

Alice-Mary Talbot (Dumbarton Oaks)

The shrine of the Zoodochos Pege, located just outside the walls of Constantinople, was founded, according to tradition, by the emperor Leo I (457-474) and functioned until the end of the empire; its spring waters, famed for their miraculous healing power, attracted numerous pilgrims, including emperors and members of the royal family who gave lavish gifts in thanksgiving, and restored or embellished the buildings of the complex. In the mid-10th century an anonymous hagiographer recounted 47 miracles which had occurred at Pege, dating from the 5th century to the reign of Constantine VII.

In the early 14th century, at a time of revival of the cult of the Virgin of the Source (which had lapsed during the Latin occupation of Constantinople, from 1204-1261, and during the reign of Michael VIII), the ecclesiastical historian Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos wrote a greatly expanded and reworked version (the Logos) of the Miracula anonyma. The text of the LOCOS, which is available only in an unsatisfactory and extremely rare publication of 1802, deserves more attention than it has received up to this point, for the light it sheds both on a miracle-working shrine and on the reworking of hagiographical texts by later Byzantine authors. Not only did Xanthopoulos develop the accounts of the original 47 miracles, but he added substantial new material, including ekphraseis of Constantinople, Hagia Sophia, and the original church built by Leo I, and 16 new miracles, one dating to the reign of Isaac II Angelos, the others to the reign of Andronikos II. The focus of this paper will be an analysis of Xanthopoulos' rewriting of the old miracles and his account of the miracles which occurred in his time.

Xanthopoulos' Logos is written in a much higher stylistic level than the Miracula anonyma (which was deliberately aimed at the masses), suggesting a learned audience. In retelling the earlier miracles he adds many vivid details invented out of whole cloth, and reveals a proclivity for developing the description of the illnesses which afflicted the pilgrims to Pege. Not only does he relate in detail their symptoms, but frequently attempts to explain the causes of their illness, and, most striking, to provide a rational explanation of how and why the waters of Pege were efficacious in producing a cure. He alludes to discussions with medical specialists, for example, Joseph the Philosopher, and clearly reveals himself as a member of the intellectual and humanist circle of Andronikos II, although at the same time he was a priest at Hagia Sophia.

The contemporary miracles recounted by Xanthopoulos are again marked by the length of the account and the vivid medical case histories provided, in several instances documenting the progress of a disease over a period of months or years. Xanthopoulos often had heard the stories of miraculous healing from the patients themselves or had seen the pilgrims at the church, or saw the paintings depicting their cure which they presented as exvotos. The precise figures which he provides (the circumference of the waist or thigh of a victim of dropsy, the height of a column that fell) give one confidence in his account.

Demetrios Kydones and the Early Italian Renaissance

Frances Kianka (Reston, Virginia)

The attraction of Italy as an intellectual center, as the seat of papal power, and as the source of a crucial alliance for Byzantium was very strong for Demetrios Kydones and others of his circle in the generations preceding the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453. In the 1360s, in his first Apology Kydones mentions the "armies of philosophers" in the "papal forces" and what he considered the thriving life of Old Rome. But although he once had plans to live in Venice, he never settled permanently in Italy, and did not even fulfill his intention of returning after 1371 to continue his Latin studies. Instead, Kydones' few visits there were brief and seem to have been mainly for diplomatic purposes. He pursued his political and intellectual goals in Constantinople, remaining throughout his life a mediator of Latin culture for a younger generation of Byzantine intellectuals who, unlike himself, took up residence in Italy in the late 1390s and early 1400s.

Kydones also maintained some contacts with Italians who traveled to Constantinople. In 1386 he wrote to the higoumenos of a monastery there to introduce a young Milanese named Paul who wanted to study Greek in the capital. Paul had some knowledge of Plato and Aristotle, preferred Greek literature to Latin, and was aware that Latin literature and learning had their source in Greek philosophers and writers such as Plato and Demosthenes. He was also conversant with some of the Greek church fathers. Apart from Barlaam the Calabrian, Paul is perhaps the earliest Italian known to have traveled to Constantinople to learn Greek literature at the source.

Kydones traveled to Italy again in 1389-90, on a diplomatic mission with Manuel Chrysoloras, who was the first Byzantine to teach Greek in Florence. In 1391, not long after returning from this trip, Kydones wrote to Maximos Chrysoberges, a Greek Dominican in Pera who studied in Venice and Padua. In his letter Kydones explains why he did not venture to go to Rome and why he returned to Constantinople. Both Kydones and Chrysoloras continued to look toward western Europe for military aid against the Turks. In 1406 Chrysoloras went to Venice and Padua on further diplomatic missions. The political needs of the dwindling empire were greater than its intellectual curiosity in the decades before the fall.

Was Kydones "born too early"? His intellectual interests might well have appealed to later generations of Italian humanists such as Leonardo Bruni and Marsilio Ficino, who were so fascinated with Plato that they studied and translated his work. With the empire nearly a thing of the past, Kydones might well have emigrated to Italy, as some of his younger followers did. Instead he remained in Constantinople until he was an old man, and when he left he was reproached by Emperor Manuel II for his lack of patriotism in deserting a city under siege. He settled in Venetian-controlled Crete in 1398 and died there, leaving behind among his books and papers a copy of the Greek Bible and a copy of the works of Plato. Bessarion, in the fifteenth century, would have appreciated the symbolism of these Possessions: his goal and that of many Italian humanists was to reconcile the great pagan Philosopher of fifth-century Athens with Christianity and the new learning of the Renaissance.

IV. BYZANTINE PHILANTHROPY AND PHILANTHROPIC INSTITUTIONS

Chair: Demetrius Constantelos (Stockton State College)

Social Responsibility and the Stewardship of Wealth

Ronald J. Weber (University of Texas at El Paso)

According to the scriptures there was little room for compromise between the possession of wealth and the path to holiness: "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter he kingdom of heaven." With that in mind, writings on Christian virtue like the topos-laden Vitae Sanctorum emphasize the total dispersal of all personal wealth as an obvious demonstration of holiness. But in the uncertain days of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., the finality of total denial neither met the standards of Roman practicality nor the needs of the emerging social order. This paper will discuss how the practice of Christian stewardship, by advocating the maintenance of accounts for charitable work, overcame the contradiction between the pious disregard for wealth and the need in Roman society for financial responsibility.

In direct contravention of the gospel's invocations to poverty, the Church rapidly became one of the wealthiest institutions in the Empire. Moreover, among the very wealthy the private dispersal of money for charity was not the simple act which Christian literature idealized. For example, the charity of the younger Melania instigated a number of riots, in part because of the economic disruption of the liquidation of her assets. In response to the difficulties, Paulinus, the wealthy Bishop of Nola, fostered the image of Joseph of Arimethea, the rich man who employed his wealth to aid Christ and achieve holiness. The image of Joseph, the steward, offered a rational adaptation to the practices praised in the written saints' lives and the instructions of clerical sermons.

In keeping with this image, Paulinus managed his assets to facilitate his charities. He was not alone, and by the sixth century such activity was institutionalized. The laws of Justinian dictate a framework for the administration of charitable work. A. H. M. Jones, among others, has shown the outlines of his work. But little has been done to investigate the process whereby the practical handling of investment and dispersals became preferable to the conversion handouts. As a start this paper looks at how the legal development of charitable administration and the moral justification of the use of wealth came to support both the holy life and the practical operation of the social order. Primary attention will center on the writings of Ambrose of Milan, the poetry of Paulinus, and the laws of the Codex Theodosianus. Ambrose's instructions to his brother, plus his guidance for the deacons of the church in the De Officiis outline a plan of Christian stewardship. In turn, Paulinus discussed the social obligations of stewardship. Proof that such ideas were being applied comes from the directive assigned to stewards and foundation directors in the Codex Theodosianus.

Concern for the Peasantry in the Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents

John Philip Thomas (Walnut Creek, California)

The Marxist division of the Byzantine monastic foundation documents into "Aristocratic" and "Non-Aristocratic"     ika first proposed by Galatariotou (1987) and accepted by Thiermeyer (1992) unfortunately is of only marginal utility for analysis of these texts because most of their authors, regardless of their social class, shared a deep-felt belief in the principle of monastic equality, isonomia. This, however, is not the only reason to question the relevance of class-based analysis to the philosophical and ideological content of these documents.

An increased interest in institutional philanthropy among the founders of Byzantine monasteries beginning in the late tenth century preceded their emerging interest in the well-being of the peasants, tenants, and other dependents of their foundations. The imperial agrarian legislation, generally thought to have been ignored or at least of diminished importance after the death of Basil II in 1025, may also have had a surprisingly enduring impact. The Testament of Nikon Metanoeite (early 11th century) orders that villagers on the foundation's lands were to be left "untouched and undisturbed." The Testament of Michael Attaleiates (1077) guarantees the dependents of the foundation for which it was written freedom from increases in payments and services. The Testament of Lazarus of Mount Galesios (1053) provides that peasants should not be oppressed in the event that the foundation's estates failed to yield a surplus. In his            ikon of 1083, Gregory Pakourianos asserts that he erected the various components of his monastic foundation with his own money, not as "the result of any wrong doing or even forced labor, additional impositions, or the service of peasants, with them being forced to suffer for the building of holy churches or for the building of the monastery around them."

Nikon the Metanoeite was the son of a provincial landowner. Attaleiates was a man of modest origins who became a senator and a judge. Pakourianos was a senior general descended from an aristocratic Georgian or Armenian family. Only Lazarus of Galesios was of peasant stock. Therefore, in the eleventh century, concern for the peasantry among Byzantine Philanthropists appears to have cut across class lines.

In the twelfth century, three documents that serve as exhibits of imperial or (Norman) royal patronage, the ikon of Luke for the Monastery of Christ Savior in Messina (1131 / 32), the   ikon of Empress Irene Doukaina for the convent of Kecharitomene (early 12th century), and the      ikon of her son the sebastokrator Isaak Komnenos for the monastery of the Mother of God Kosmosoteira (1152), all show solicitude for the well-being of the peasant dependents of their foundations. Such concerns are absent, however, from four other twelfth-century documents authored by four non-imperial (though still high-born) authors, including a bishop.

In Palaiologan times, the typikon of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos for the monastery of St. Michael on Mount Auxentios asks "how can they [the monks] enrich themselves while others in the world are poor and worn out by the deprivation of necessities?" Therefore, it appears that aristocratic or even imperial status was no automatic bar to sympathy with the lower classes in middle and late Byzantium.

Another Perspective on Byzantine Philanthropy

Timothy S. Miller (Salisbury State University)

Studies of Byzantine philanthropic institutions-medical hospitals xenones), old-age homes, alms houses-have emphasized the highly developed, almost "modern system" of welfare institutions East Roman society maintained in Constantinople and other important cities of the Empire. These studies have universally praised Byzantium for maintaining well-organized and well-financed social services for poor and even middle-class people. Is it possible, however, that there were some negative effects of the Byzantine welfare system? Did it produce individuals who could not break away from these philanthropic institutions and in effect became wards of society?

There are two possible examples of such people. The first is an obscure youth named Stephen Hexapterygos, a young man who had been an orphan student at the Orphanotropheion in Constantinople during the late twelfth century. One of Stephen's teachers at the orphanage, Constantine Stilbes, preserved Stephen's story in a short elegiac poem. After praising his former student's intelligence, Stilbes described the youth's sad death at a philanthropic foundation located in the provincial town of Patras. Stephen died a stranger, an orphan, a man without a city, but he did receive care from the Christ-loving hands of those who served the needy, i.e., the monks or laymen who staffed this charitable foundation.¹ Did his death in a xenon or gerokomeion in Patras have anything to do with his having been educated in the Orphanotropheion?

The second example is the life of the most famous twelfth-century poet and master of prose, Theodore Prodromos. As Alexander Kazhdan has stressed, very little is clear concerning the life of this renowned writer.² In one of his poems Prodromos reveals that his father had advised him to become a scholar when Prodromos was very young. In another poem, however, Prodromos states that he had been raised by his relatives³ In other works of his, he addresses Stephen Skylitzes, one of the leading teachers at the Orphanotropheion, as his father and his teacher.⁴ In none of his works does he refer to his mother. One possible interpretation from these scattered statements would be that Prodromos' father had died when the poet was still a young boy. His relatives then raised him, but at some point they sent him to the Orphanotropheion to continue his education. Other sources indicate that Prodromos spent much of his adult life as a teacher at this same orphanage⁵ When he fell seriously ill, he was treated in one of Constantinople's xenones. perhaps the one attached to the Orphanotropheion ⁶ When he became chronically sick, he was cared for at a gerokomeion of the capital where he presumably died.⁷ Despite his fame as a poet, orator, and commentator of religious hymns, he seems never to have left the shadow of Constantinople's philanthropic agencies. Was this by choice, or was it difficult for a man who had spent some time in the orphanotropheion to leave the ambit of these institutions?

¹ Stilbes' poem is available in a typescript edition, ed. J. Diethart, Der Rhetor and Didaskalos Konstan tinos Stilbes (Vienna Dissertation, 1971).

² Alexander Kazhdan, Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 87-114.

3 Theodoros Prodromos: Historische Gedichte ed. Wolfram Horandner (Vienna: Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften,1974), introduction, pp. 21-32.

⁴ Epistola metropolitae Trapezuntis, PG, 133, cal. 1255.

⁵ Robert Browning, "Unpublished Correspondence between Michael Italicus, Archbishop of Philippopolis, and Theodore Prodromos," Byzantinobul arica 1 (1962), 284, 287 and 290 (commentary).

6 Prodromos, ed. Horandner, poem 46, pp. 431-33.

⁷ "Monodie de Nicetas Eugenianos sur Theodore Prodrome," ed. Louis Petit, Vizantiiskii Vremennik 9 (1902),459-60.

Text and Context: The Pantolcrator Hospital in its Middle Byzantine Setting

Peregrine Harden (All Souls College, Oxford)

The hospital of the Pantokrator Monastery, founded in 1136 by John II Komnenos and his wife Irene, has usually been interpreted in one of two ways: either the hospital has been seen as the culminating point of a long evolution in the history of Byzantine hospitals that can be traced back to the time of Justinian, or it has been treated as a strange aberration from the run of smaller, much less elaborately provided, and less 'medicalized' hospices. In either case, the monastery's extensive typikon our only detailed source for the hospital's intended facilities, is likely to be seen as an unproblematic, clear window onto the care and healing actually available.

The purpose of this paper is thus, first, to set the hospital in an immediate, twelfth-century, context that neither leaves it isolated and inexplicable, nor yet finds it an unsurprising product of centuries of steady development. Precedents, both Byzantine and Islamic, for such an elaborate foundation will be considered. Evidence for its continued functioning will also be rehearsed.

The second task of the paper is a review of the problems that a contextual approach leaves unsolved, by means of a close analysis of the typikon. This will involve 'problematization' of a text commonly read at face value, and also an enquiry into the means by which the typikon's character may be explained by reference to other texts, both medical and non-medical. Issues examined will include: the prominence of the medical profession, possible institutional models for the hierarchy envisaged, and the extent to which the style and organization of the text suggest that the imperial couple had a clear idea of what they wanted.

As a result, the Pantokrator will be seen against a perhaps more realistic scale. While its typikon cannot be taken as evidence for the 'birth of the clinic' in Byzantium, nor is it wholly inexplicable. The explanation required is, however, a local, precise, twelfth-century explanation, not an appeal to a distant past. Finally, it must be an explanation that steps outside the usual bounds of medical and philanthropic history.

V. BYZANTIUM AND THE WEST

Chair: Charles Brand (Bryn Mawr University)

A Western Adjustment to the Anastasian Currency Reform

F. M. Clover (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

A recent coin find, presently in the hands of a private collector, may enhance the modern understanding of the nature and limits of Anastasian Currency Reform. In A.D. 498 (according to the chronicler Count Marcellinus) Emperor Anastasius I began issuing large bronze coins, commonly called foles in response to economic pressures within the Eastern Roman Empire. Numismatists associate a series of bronzes, valued at 40 and 20 nummi and smaller in size than the big bronzes common to the age of Justinian, with Anastasius' orders of 498. Many of these early folles are countermarked-that is, revalued; the purpose of this extensive counter-stamping is uncertain.

The same numismatists who study the early currency reform of Anastasius are quick to point out that the Eastern Emperor's economic advisors derived inspiration from slightly earlier experiments in large bronze coinage in the West-specifically, in Italy (Rome and Ravenna) and Africa (Carthage). The new find comes from Vandal Carthage, which (according to arguments which I have presented in the Revue numismatique [Paris, 1991]) began issuing folles and half-folles valued at 42 and 21 nummi soon after A.D. 476. The coin in question, a 21-nummi piece, bears on obverse and reverse the name and badges (for these see my discussion in DOP 1986) of Carthage. The original valuation on the reverse, however, has been obscured by a counterstamp which resembles a Maltese Cross. There is no other known issue from the mint of Vandal Carthage with a countermark. On the other hand, the Maltese Cross is a common countermark superimposed on the first folles emissions of Anastasius.

How can the modern critic interpret this new find? I will offer a guess, based on two assumptions: 1) that the Anastasian counterstamps are nearly contemporary with the first eastern emissions; and 2) that the Carthage countermark soon followed the eastern practice of counterstamping. I will argue that the Carthage countermark betrays an effort to adjust to the more widespread and successful Anastasian Currency Reform. In effect, the new find tells what we know from other sources-that at the beginning of the Age of Justinian, East Rome wielded considerable economic influence in the West.

Four Embassies of Emperor Theophilus

Leonora A. Neville (Princeton University)

The last three years of Emperor Theophilus' reign (829-842) saw a striking increase in Byzantine diplomatic activity in the Mediterranean. Theophilus dispatched embassies to Emperor Louis the Pious at Ingelheim in 839, to the Umayyad caliph ar-Rahman II at Cordova in 840, to Doge Pietro Tradonico at Venice in 840 and to Emperor Lothar I at Trier in 842.

These embassies are generally considered to have been sent in response to the sack of Amorium by the caliph Mu'tasim in 838. This view needs to be reconsidered. It is supported only by the testimony of Genesius and Theophanes Continuatus that Theophilus sent the embassies to round up help for an attack on Mu'tasim to avenge Amorium. But we know from the history of al-Tabari as well as Genesius and Theophanes Continuatus that Mu'tasim returned to Bagdad immediately after taking Amorium to suppress a rebellion in favor of his nephew. Theophflus did not need to attack Mu'tasim to restore the empire's borders and Theophilus' reforms of the western defence systems can more logically be seen as his response to the sack of Amorium.

The western sources indicate that Theophilus, far from recruiting armies for a fight in Asia Minor, was concerned to increase the Byzantine political presence in the Mediterranean. These sources, which include the eye-witness account of Prudentius in the Annals of St-Bertin, a letter probably from Theophilus to Louis the Pious known as the papyrus of St. Denis, and the text of ar-Rahman's letter to Theophilus in response to his embassy allow us to glimpse the mechanics of Byzantine diplomacy in action and to speculate as to Theophilus' aspirations in the west. Combined with studies in Byzantine prosopography, these sources partially reveal the identity, family background and skills of the Byzantine ambassadors.

This paper attempts to re-evaluate the military significance of the fall of Amorium on Theophilus' policy and assess his possible ambitions in the west as well as discover what can be known about the identity and training of Theophilus' ambassadors.

Patzinaks and Normans: The Development of Alexius' Tactical Doctrine

John W. Birkenmeier (Catholic University of America)

The attacks of the Normans, Patzinaks and several usurpers all forced Alexius I Comnenus into defensive wars. These were fought almost entirely within the empire, where failure threatened both the Byzantine state and personal political survival. The army the emperor inherited when he came to power had the same weaknesses of the army defeated 25

at Manzikert a decade before, with the added liability of being unable to draw manpower from most of Anatolia. Nevertheless, Alexius managed to win all his wars, if not all of his battles, and the army which emerges from the latter pages of The Alexiad is a very different one from that of Botaniates.

I plan to discuss one aspect of that transformation, the development of Alexius' tactical doctrine as exemplified by four battles. The first, against Nicephorus Bryennius, was at the beginning of Alexius' career, when he was Grand Domestic. Alexius attempted to ambush Bryennius' left flank, failed, and was routed. The future emperor only obtained victory through a good bit of luck and a gross lack of discipline in Bryennius' pursuit. In 1082 Alexius, as emperor, fought Robert Guiscard in a battle which highlighted the weaknesses of the Byzantine army. Deployed in a shield wall in front of his left flank, Alexius' Varangians were soon routed by a combined Norman cavalry and infantry assault, carrying the 'Immortals' and the rest of the army with them. In contrast, when Alexius fought Bohemond during the last Norman Invasion, he avoided pitched battles and followed a policy of harassment and skirmishing. This restricted the Norman ability to forage, and the invading army soon deteriorated. In the years between these two battles Alexius fought the Patzinaks and Cumans, and learned the tactics he used so effectively against Bohemond. Against these highly mobile armies the emperor's problem was to bring them to battle while his own army was mustered and ready to campaign. At Anchialos his position with flanks anchored on hills and the sea enabled him to force the Cumans to melee, rather than maneuver and skirmish, while at Aenos he used superior numbers and initiative to surround and annihilate a Patzinak horde.

Alexius gradually developed successful methods of fighting both the Normans and the steppe peoples. This is all the more impressive because the emperor was forced to employ such different tactics against each opponent, while the types of troops he had available remained relatively constant. Alexius' increasingly intelligent use of combined cavalry and infantry formations, his use of Patzinak style skirmishing against Bohemond, and his choice of terrain in the Patzinak-Cuman wars all show a mind which had become well aware of the capabilities and limitations of his forces, and which continually sought better methods of defeating Byzantium's enemies.

Hellenistic and Byzantine Elements of the Twelfth-Century French Romance

Leon D. Stratikis (University of Tennessee at Knoxville)

This paper summarizes my research treating the question of possible influence of the Hellenistic and Byzantine romance on the Old French romance of the twelfth century. Adopting a traditional historical approach, along with a consideration of symbols and motifs, it hopes to trace the coherent development of a genre from the Hellenistic world of the beginning of our era to the religious milieu of early Christianity and ultimately to the translation centers of monasteries and ports and the courts of Western Europe at the time of the Crusades. I conclude that, far from composing their works in a vacuum, inspired only by half-forgotten, obscure Celtic tales, the twelfth-century authors were part of a tradition which helps to account for some puzzling motifs in their works.

VI. ART AND CEREMONY IN THE LITURGY

Chair: Mary-Lyon Dolezal (University of Oregon)

Mandylion and Eucharist

Sharon E. Gerstel (University of Missouri at Columbia)

The entrance of the Mandylion, the miraculously-made image of Christ, into the mainstream of Byzantine iconography most likely accompanied the relic's translation to Constantinople in 944. A single icon from Mount Sinai, dated by Kurt Weitzmann to the middle of the tenth century, constitutes the earliest known extant image of the Mandylion. In the mid-eleventh century, the image also appeared for the first time in monumental painting in three Cappadocian churches. In Karanlik Kilise, and in Chapel 21 and the Church of St. John (Sakli Kilise) in Goreme, the image is situated in the diakonikon or over a prothesis niche in the central sanctuary.

In the period following these initial eleventh century representations, the Mandylion is normally positioned in one of two locations in the church: between the two eastern pendentives of the dome, or on the "triumphal arch" above the opening of the sanctuary. This paper will examine the second placement of the Mandylion, and its position within the sanctuary program. While Andre Grabar in his book, La Sainte Face de Laon, has suggested that the absence of a dome forces the displacement of the image to the east wall of single-aisled or basilican churches, this paper will demonstrate that the placement of the relic in such a conspicuous position within the church program was intentional and corresponds to the new direction of the graphic depiction of the liturgy in sanctuary decoration following the end of the eleventh century.

While the Mandylion has often been interpreted as an image concerned with the Incarnation, written and painted sources suggest that the relic had another meaning within the sanctuary program directly related to its position over the altar. As with other scenes in the sanctuary following the eleventh century, the Mandylion is an image of the sacrifice of Christ.

Metochites' "Place in the Land of the Living" in His Monastery Chora, Constantinople

N. Teteriatnikov (Dumbarton Oaks)

This paper aims to identify and interpret the context and arrangement of the mosaic program in the monastery church Chora commissioned by its ktetor Theodore Metochites.

There are two groups of mosaic panels in the church which have unusual inscriptions, and I would like to suggest that they are the key for understanding the entire program. The first group includes a bust of Christ above the main door (outer narthex), Christ enthroned with a ktetor above the main door and Christ Emmanuel in the lunette of the vault above the tomb in the north wall (both in the inner narthex), as well as a figure of Christ to the north of the apse in the naos; all have the same inscription "Jesus Christ the land of the living." The second group includes the Virgin above the western door (outer narthex) and the figure of the Virgin with Christ Child to the south of the apse (naos); these images are inscribed as "The Mother of God the place of the uncontainable." Although Underwood published and partially identified these images, the context of these inscriptions in the panels and why they were repeated in the panels throughout the church was overlooked together with the understanding of the entire context of the mosaic program.

Our examinations of the inscriptions in the panels of the first group shows that they came from the two psalms, Ps. 142.5 and Ps. 116.9. Significantly, these psalms were chanted ' during the funeral service for the layman; Ps. 142.5 was read in the deceased's house. The second inscription is an ending of the 15 stroph of the akathistos hymn which was also used for the funeral service. Thus, the funeral service for the dead appears as a source for these panels. Through these texts Metochites identifies his "place in the land of the living," the eternal Paradise.

This paper will further illustrate the funeral context of the mosaic program, and, especially, the scenes, their choice and arrangement in the entrance bays of the outer and inner narthexes (the Marriage at Canna and Presentation of the Virgin into the Temple). Both scenes were a part of the funeral service as well. Moreover, both scenes visually correspond to the actual tradition which is found in the Orthodox church to this day: after the liturgy the wine and bread were distributed to people at the door of the church to remember the dead. Thus the mosaic program which is also derived from the context of the funeral service directed the viewer through the ktetor's place "in the land of the living." The arrangement of the scenes from the Life of Christ and the Virgin further emphasize this message.

Finally, this paper will discuss social, political and cultural significance of the Chora-a place where new theological ideas about direct communication with God developed. It is these ideas which can be seen behind the personal creation of Metochites who lost everything he worked for in his life, but who indeed succeeded in creating his place for eternal living.

More on this subject will appear in a forthcoming publication. Liturgy, Symbols, and Byzantine Religion

Tia M. Kolbaba (Colgate University)

The division of modem scholarly disciplines has greatly influenced our study of relations between Byzantine East and Latin West in the Middle Ages. Such a division is necessary, of course. It is unlikely that the same person could master both the social history of relations between Greeks and Latins in the Peloponnese and the theological history of the Filio ue debate.

Nevertheless, some lines have been drawn which have hindered, rather than helped, our understanding of the history of Byzantine religion. Among these is the distinction between theological issues and liturgical or disciplinary issues in the churches. Scholars have frequently suggested that these are two distinct sets. On the one hand, there are theological disputes between the two churches; on the other hand, there are complaints about liturgy. Moreover, the latter are often seen as petty. They are called "mere differences of custom," in contrast to the theological complaints, which have some religious substance.

Such a distinction between theology and liturgy is too rigidly conceived. A study of various authors who write about heresy, especially if they explicitly address the issue of distinctions between heresy and "mere custom," forces a more nuanced view of the theological symbols of the liturgy. One such author is Peter of Antioch. In a letter to Michael Cerularius in 1054, the patriarch of Antioch reprimands Cerularius for dividing the church over trivial matters: e.g., dietary habits or bearded priests. Nevertheless, Peters own distinction between essential and unessential matters of the faith is far from clear, since he has previously strongly opposed the use of unleavened bread in the eucharist. This lack of clarity in Peter's discussion of differences between eastern and western churches stems from Peters profound sense that some objects and actions are very important-the eucharistic bread included.

This paper discusses Peters letter to Cerularius and its implications for our understanding of relations between symbol and referent in the Byzantine liturgy. A fuller understanding of such symbolism also leads to the understanding that liturgical complaints were not mere trivialities, the results of the political and economic hegemony of the Latins or of the fevered imagination of fanatical monks. Rather, such symbolic concerns were both deeply religious and deeply cultural in ways which make them worthy of serious attention.

Easter, St. Mark and the Doge: The Deposition Mosaic in S. Marco

Thomas E. A. Dale (Columbia University)

The mosaic program of San Marco in Venice displays a complex hybrid of Byzantine and Western ideas, shaped by the multiplicity of the basilica's functions as ducal chapel, martyrium and state church. This paper explores the particular Venetian circumstances that dictated the unusual placement of a (now fragmentary) feast image, the Deposition of Christ.

Discovered in 1954 beneath the marble revetment on the righthand pier of the choir, the Deposition is distinguished by its small scale and its curious isolation from the Passion cycle on the vaults of the crossing. Measuring the Venetian mosaic by Middle Byzantine standards, Renato Polacco has recently sought to explain its "anomalies" by connecting it with the tenth-century decoration of the previous, smaller church erected at a lower level on the

same site. The mosaic fragment would thus represent a chance survival of a feast cycle, that was later truncated to form the new eleventh-century pier.

However, both the style of the mosaic and the conformity of its borders to the existing pier contradict a dating prior to the construction of the present church. Indeed, the very "anomalies" that Polacco sought to explain-the mosaic's small scale and close proximity to the viewer-suggest that the Deposition was designed from the outset as a special devotional image. This paper, drawing on the sixteenth-century Ritum ecclesiasthicorum cerimoniale of San Marco, contends that the Deposition mosaic served as the backdrop for the Easter "sepulcrum" wherein the consecrated Host was deposited under ducal supervision on Good Friday. It is also proposed that the Deposition of Christ was designed to highlight the site that the Venetians associated with the deposition of Mark by Doge Justianian Partecipacius in 828/29. The typological association of Mark's relics with those of Christ is confirmed pictorially by the depiction of the Reception of the Relics in the vault of the Cappella S. Clemente immediately above the Deposition mosaic. Mark's tomb and the Sepulchre of Christ would also have been assimilated liturgically in San Marco by the commemoration of the Evangelist's martyrdom during the Easter season itself. To Venetian eyes, the Doge's role as custodian of both tombs and leading participant in both liturgical feasts confirmed the sacrosanct nature of his office.

The Schism and Byzantine Church Decoration

Alexei Lidov (Center for Eastern Christian Culture, Moscow)

As pointed out in the scholarly literature of the last several decades, the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw major changes in Byzantine iconographic programs as new purely liturgical themes were introduced in Church decoration. The first to draw attention was the appearance in altar murals of those centuries of the scenes "The Communion of the Apostles" and "Officiating Bishops." Both directly portrayed liturgies-the service in the Heavenly Temple officiated by Christ as High Priest with the Apostles and the bestrevered holy bishops participating. The author of the present project singled out several more subjects which receive explanation in the same context-the rare iconographic type of "Christ Archiereus Consecrating the Church" and "Christ as the Priest"-both appeared in mid-eleventh-century iconographic programs. We can also regard other rare themes in this connection.

The new liturgical theme came down to us in non-contemporaneous documents of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Hence different expert datings for the emergence of individual subjects. However, it is possible to prove that the emergence or final consolidation of the majority of these themes took place in the mid-eleventh century as a result of a well-considered "liturgical version." Such a version would seem somewhat unexpected in an era when the liturgy had stayed without considerable change for a long time. In my opinion, the explanation can be found in the history of the 1054 schism.

As we know, the theological polemic started immediately, and centered around the azyme controversy-the use of leavened or unleavened communion bread. This issue never acquired such tremendous importance before or after. Its extreme topicality and necessity for new arguments made Latin and Byzantine theologians reappraise the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper and the numerous texts of patristic interpretation. The Orthodox polemicists saw the Latin communion in unleavened bread as condemnably following the Jewish rite, and based their defense of leavened bread on the essential premise that the special New Testament priesthood of Christ was above the Old Testament priesthood, and negated it. In this, they proceeded from Chapter 7 of the Pauline Epistle to the Hebrews as their fundamental text.

The overwhelming interest in the theme of Christ officiating and the rite of the Eucharist was reflected in mid-eleventh-century murals, of which the iconographic program of St. Sophia at Ochrid provides the most graphic example. Characteristically, Leo, Archbishop of Ochrid (1037-1056), was the most probable author of this program. He is known as an immediate initiator and active participant of the schism. In his first epistle to John of Trani, which opened the polemic, he gave detailed substantiation to the theme of the special and supreme priesthood of Christ as connected with the azyme issue. None other than the murals of St. Sophia at Ochrid pioneer the new liturgical themes, including 'The Communion of the Apostles,' 'The Liturgy of St. Basil the Great;' "Christ Archiereus Consecrating the Church," and "Christ as the Priest." The special concept also determined the choice of the holy bishops portrayed in the diaconicon of the church, who included a unique row of six Popes. The unusual interpretation of the central scene, "The Communion of the Apostles," portraying Christ behind the altar as he demonstrated the communion bread, was pointed out earlier. On the whole, the iconographic program of St. Sophia at Ochrid can be interpreted as yet another treatise by Archbishop Leo on the schism topic.

The influence of the theological polemic can be traced to many other Byzantine murals of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Among the most significant of these, we ought to name the mosaics and frescoes of St. Sophia at Kiev, whose program has a clearly discernable Constantinopolitan source. Of major interest among twelfth-century monuments are the paintings of Nerezi (1164), Kurbinovo (1191), Lagoudera (1192), and Nereditsa (1199), whose iconographic programs could have been directly linked with the decisions of the Constantinopolitan Church Synod of the second half of the twelfth century, which finished the elaboration of the special Orthodox concept of Christ's priesthood and gave it a new emphasis.

Patronage and Church Decoration in Kievan Rus': A Study of the Church of St. Cyril in Kiev

Olenka Pevny (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)

The Church of St. Cyril, a princely foundation, preserves the most complete specimen of twelfth century frescoes from Kievan Rus', including the unprecedented life cycle of St. Cyril of Alexandria. The presence of this cycle in the Kievan church discloses the intricacy

of Byzantino-Rus' cultural relations. However, available publications concerning this important monument are introductory, repetitive and sparsely, if at all, illustrated. They rationalize the depiction of the life cycle of St. Cyril of Alexandria solely in terms of princely patronage. While the princely patronage of the monument cannot be denied, it should not be used as an a priori explanation for the dedication of the church. Such an approach masks the compositional nuances of the scenes. It also fails to take into account other local concerns that may have influenced the inclusion of the cycle in the church decoration.

Distributed in the five registers of the south apse are twelve scenes from the Life of St. Cyril. Although Cyril was an important church father no other depictions of his life survive in Byzantine art. The limited number of literary sources for the saint's life, and the scarcity of long hagiographical cycles in the illustration of texts casts doubt on the possibility that the scenes in the Kievan church were modeled on a preexisting manuscript cycle. There occurs a similar lack of evidence when it comes to historiated icons and monumental painting. In the case of St. Cyril, we have no knowledge of a sanctuary dedicated to him or containing his shrine where monumental representations of episodes from his life would have been appropriate. The singularity of the life cycle of St. Cyril in the Kievan church indicates that it was not part of a widespread iconographic tradition, and signifies a local reverence of the saint.

Although no direct model for the fresco cycle is known, compositional counterparts for each of the specific scenes can be found in a variety of Byzantine sources. The individual images indicate that creativity took the form of selective copying, remixing and reworking of appropriated models. It is not the compositional vocabulary of the frescoes, so much as the indication of local devotion to St. Cyril of Alexandria that is exceptional in the Kievan monument.

The selection of St. Cyril of Alexandria as the titular saint for the monument is usually associated with prince Vsevolod Ol'hovych's succession to the Kievan throne. It is assumed that St. Cyril's was built by prince Vsevolod on the site and in honor of his victory for the throne of Kiev, and that it was dedicated to his patron saint-Cyril of Alexandria. However, the location of the church cannot be identified with the victory site and there exists no documentation corroborating that Cyril was prince Vsevolod's patron saint. Moreover, the Hypatian Chronicle credits Maria Mstyslavivna, the wife of prince Vsevolod Ol'hovych, with the foundation of the church.

The attribution of the distinctive dedication of the Kievan monument to the patronage of Vsevolod Ol'hovych reveals little about the surviving fresco images and their immediate architectural context. The location of the cycle in the south apse associates it with an enigmatic compartment which opens onto the face of the south pillar of the south wall of the apse and is accessible through a passageway in the thickness of the apse wall. It is my hypothesis that the function of this compartment should be related to the use of the south apse as a chapel dedicated to the saint. In this case the compartment could have been used for the display of a relic associated with St. Cyril. Although no documentation for the existence of relics in the church survives, such a solution offers a possible explanation for the distinctive dedication and the appearance of such features in the monument as the fresco life cycle and the mysterious compartment of the south apse.

VII. EVERYDAY LIFE IN BYZANTIUM

Chair: David Evans (St. Johns University)

Marriage and Urban Social Structure in Late Antiquity as Evidenced by John Chrysostom

Douglas A. O'Roark (Ohio State University)

This paper examines the institution of marriage in the late antique period based on the evidence from the sermons and essays of Saint John Chrysostom. Scholarship on Roman marriage has focused on the west (Rome) in the period of the republic and early empire, and has used primarily non-Christian sources. The period of late antiquity (4th-7th century) marks a transition between the ancient and medieval world and scholars generally agree that an important aspect of this transition was the transformation of cities; a phenomenon that must have had a significant impact on the family.

An examination of the works of Chrysostom reveals evidence for the continuation of an essentially secular and public marriage ceremony in this early Christian period. A central aspect of this ceremony included a parade through the streets and markets of the city. The public celebration of marriage, which is most essentially the creation of a new family, is symbolic of the close relationship between city and family; a characteristic shared with classical antiquity. Chrysostom was vehement in his condemnation of this, proposing instead a Christianization of wedding ceremonies. In the Byzantine period this is, of course, exactly what occurred and the Christianization of the marriage ceremony is representative of the changing relationship between the family and the city. What had once been a public spectacle became more of a private affair between church and family.

Another issue that is examined is the possible reversal of marriage terms in late antiquity. David Herlihy has conjectured that in the late antique period, due to changing demographics and societal attitudes, women became more independent and the terms of marriage were reversed. Bridegrooms were forced to pay increasingly expensive "reverse dowries" as more women delayed or put off marriage entirely. The evidence of Chrysostom contradicts this hypothesis and possibly reveals a fundamental difference between the east and west in the late antique period. This issue is significant in regard to late antique demographics and societal attitudes such as sexual renunciation, as well as the methodology of using Roman law codes as evidence for social phenomenon.

The extensive works of John Chrysostom present a unique perspective on late antique society. This paper offers a possible model for the use of Christian rhetoric as evidence for late antique social history.

Patterns of Disease and Death Among Women and Children in Early Byzantine Times

George Contis (Medical Service Corporation International, Arlington, Virginia)

The patterns of disease and death among women and children in early Byzantine times reflect the dynamic relationship between health, socioeconomic, political, religious and environmental forces.

The sources for this study, the classical literature, the arts, and the findings of paleopathologists, were reviewed in light of current medical knowledge and disease epidemiology. The writings of Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, Oribasius, and Aristotle of Tralles include clinical descriptions of many diseases and conditions. Infections such as pneumonia, mumps, tuberculosis, puerperal sepsis, septicemia, empyema, gangrene, and gastroenteric diseases, were well known.

In addition to the written descriptions of these conditions, and occasional illustrations on pottery or mosaics, we have paleopathologic evidence of some of these disorders. Diseases such as leprosy, syphilis, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis affect bones or can be detected in tissues from mummies.

From a public health perspective we have little indication of how prevalent these diseases may have been during this time. Nor can we be certain about the etiologic agents involved in epidemics, such as cholera and typhoid fever, from the clinical descriptions that have come down to us.

From the majority of excavated grave sites of the period, however, it is clear that the average life expectancy of adults was considerably shorter than that of adults in the developed world today. In addition, women died at a younger age than men. It is also well documented that there was a high infant and child mortality, especially in the first two years of life. Today, we would characterize this life expectancy pattern as one associated with a developing country which has a high level of poverty, illiteracy, economic instability and malnutrition.

Malnutrition was common. It occurred disproportionately in women and children, especially girls. Common findings in skeletons from this period are enamel hypoplasias in teeth and Harris lines in the long bones. These have been associated with stress such as malnutrition and infection during childhood when the teeth and bones are growing and developing.

The high infant mortality rate was caused, in large part, by malnutrition that occurred during the weaning period. This problem was exacerbated by contaminated water and the enteric diseases that are associated with it. As is unfortunately still common in the developing world today, infant boys probably received better care and more food when they were being weaned or when they were ill, than did infant girls. This resulted in a disproportionately lower survival of girls.

Anemia was quite common. It was more prevalent in women and children, and was usually the result of poor nutrition. Some hereditary anemias probably existed, notably thalassemia, although clearcut evidence is not available at this time. There were other causes of anemia also, such as malaria and the widespread medical practice of bleeding patients for therapeutic purposes.

The cycle of malnutrition, anemia, a high infant death rate, and the shortened life span of women is still common today in many less developed parts of the world. The etiology of this pattern then, as it is today, was related to socioeconomic, political, and environmental conditions.

John Moschus in Alexandria

Christopher Haas (Villanova University)

The Leimonarion of John Moschus has been utilized frequently to shed light on the evolution of the monastic ideal in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. It has also provided a mine of information on the grand game of ascetic one-upmanship between

Chalcedonians and Monophysites in their bid to win over the populations of the eastern Mediterranean. Moschus displays the enthusiasm of a Herodotus in collecting wondrous tales designed to charm the reader. Yet like Herodotus, Moschus has a keen eye for local detail. This attention to detail gives the Leimonarion a richly textured quality which allows this tapestry of ascetic stories to be used profitably as a historical source for the period just prior to the Arab conquests.

Moschus and his disciple/friend Sophronius sojourned in Alexandria twice, the first in the period 578-581 and the second during the patriarchate of John the Almsgiver (609-619). Hence, Moschus' offhand observations concerning Alexandria are of far greater historical

value than many of the second- or third-hand tales which tend to fill his work. The Alexandrian anecdotes in the Leimonarion provide vivid details of the city's social structure and economic life. His reminiscences of the episcopates of Apollinarius and Eulogius help reveal the contours of patriarchal patronage in the late sixth century. Moschus's stories also help to fill in some important gaps in our knowledge of the city's topography. Moreover, the Leimonarion proves to be an invaluable source for understanding the communal consciousness of the Chalcedonian party in Alexandria, especially when it is set against Monophysite sources for the same period. In addition, various aspects of Moschus' depic­tion of urban life in Byzantine Alexandria have found surprising confirmation in the city's material remains, due in large part to excavations undertaken during the last thirty years at Kom el-Dikka, near the city's center. Like Herodotus, the charm of the storyteller does not obviate the historical worth of certain details contained in the text.

Psellos on Life in Eleventh-Century Sykeon

Elizabeth A. Fisher (The George Washington University)

This paper will exploit Michael Psellos' "Oration on the Miracles of the Archangel Michael" (Kurtz/Drexll, 120-141) as a source of evidence for everyday experience during the mid-eleventh century in the region of Sykeon (cf. C. Mango, Cahiers archeologigues [1988147-48). The oration describes various miracles performed by the Archangel in his church and addresses an audience evidently familiar with the church, its monastery, and its surroundings. In the course of his exposition, Psellos reveals the areas of daily life which his audience considered so dangerous and uncontrollable as to require divine intervention. He also discusses various features of life particular to the region of Sykeon but incidental to his account of the Archangel's miracles.

Illness was, of course, the area of experience most frequently referred to the Archangel for his intervention when human measures had failed. Natural disasters were also occasions for his attention, however; a flood so powerful it threatened to destroy the stone bridge across the River Siberis (K/D 127,18ff.), a very local infestation of locusts (128, 26ff ), and a lightning storm which resulted in the paralysis of a traveller (133, 17ff.) were all natural events bringing consequences beyond the competence of human agency to ameliorate. In fact, the rigors of the climate were a recurring concern in the area of Sykeon; Psellos credits the Archangel with protecting his people from heat, plague, and disease (141, 4-11).

Psellos mentions in passing various features of life more particular to Sykeon than disease and natural disaster. Because Sykeon is located upon a major military road, travel figures in the narrative. The church acquired its miracle-working cross when Herachus and his army stopped on their return from the Persian front to resupply themselves at Sykeon (126,14ff.). In the eleventh century local businessmen travelled in large groups to Nicomedia for purposes of trade (133,17), and solitary travellers passed through the town as well (137, loff.). Particular residents of the area are also mentioned, for powerful individuals sometimes tried to ignore the restraints of the law and the Church for their own imagined advantage. Psellos describes a landowner punished only by the Archangel for murder (134, 20ff.), and a thieving supporter of a rebel whose activities the Archangel overlooked (135, 20ff.).

Aspects of everyday experience centered in the monastery itself also figure in Psellos' narrative. Details of its personnel emerge: children pledged to the monastery as infants or youths (131,14;129, 24), a layman serving as porter (137,15), a monk with a clairvoyant servant (138,13), and a monk-steward who embezzled monastery resources (138,13ff.). Aside from the regular liturgy, other religious observances are mentioned as well. Several officials in the monastery advised pilgrims on various procedures for healing, and a yearly feast commemorated the return of the Prodigal Son (132,24-8).

Restoration of Taxes on Abandoned Peasant Land: Law and Practice

Danuta Gorecki (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

The Taxation Treatise informs that a peasant who abandoned his land retained its ownership for the next thirty years, while taxes due from that land were paid by other members of his community. In case of their extreme poverty, the abandoned property was exempted from taxes by an imperial inspector. After the thirty years, any abandoned land became state property. Thus, there were in a rural community two kinds of unproductive land: the abandoned and tax exempted property of a peasant (sympatheia) and the abandoned land escheated after extinction of its owner's proprietary rights (klasma).

The Zavorda Treatise shows fiscal practices of restoring revenues from these lands by means that deviated either from regulations of state agencies or from positive law. Yet, because the legal status of sympatheia and klasma did vary, these means had to vary as well. Klasma, being property of the state, could be sold by the fisc, who was bound only by procedural restrictions of preemption law. Sympatheia, being property of its absent owner, could not be sold because norms of property law a priori excluded any transaction that would change the subject of its ownership. Hence, in order to justify sale of klasma to outside buyers, state officials had only to bend procedural provisions of preemption, while in case of transactions involving sympatheia, the officials had to circumvent substantive law. These practices might be dictated by vital interests of the state as well as by greed of the wealthy. The state, for instance, strove to revitalize enormous supplies of poor quality klasma in areas devastated and depopulated by wars. Prof. N. Oikonomides reconstructed a system by which the state made acquisition of this land attractive to big investors by dramatically lowering its official price and tax, and offering easy payments.' Certainly, there was no problem of preemption in such cases. Yet, in sale of klasma in a rural community, the preemption rights of its members were notoriously violated by corrupted officials for the sake of the interests of the wealthy.

The Zavorda Treatise indicates that revenues from sympatheia could be restored either by its sale as klasma, i.e., by mere violation of property law, or by the practice of opisthoteleia, i.e. by circumvention of the law. What was the opisthoteleia? When peasants, whose poverty was conducive to exempting from taxes the land abandoned by their neighbor, became economically stronger, the inspector could reinstate the tax on this land "in their name." When the peasants refused, he could do it "in name of another person." Whoever accepted the restoration had to pay back taxes due from this land for three years, i.e., 1/8 of its official price, and acquired ownership of the land after extinction of its absent owner's proprietary rights. In case of the owner's return, the land passed immediately to his possession. As far as the buyer's rights were concerned, the Zavorda Treatise mentions only indirectly his title to recover the price that he paid to imperial treasury.

The lack of provisions concerning the legal solution of a conflict between a rightful possessor of someone else's abandoned land and the returning owner of this land cannot be explained by a primitive character of the Zavorda Treatise. I do believe that this solution was offered by norms of positive law of that era and expounded in Art. 21 of the Nomos Geor ikon. This article entitled the buyer to offer another piece of equal quality land antito ia) to the returning owner. However, if the owner refused, the conditional buyer had no legal means to recover any of his investments on the owner's property. Hence, it is clear that only the rightful owner enjoyed full protection against any legal and economic consequences of the transaction of opisthoteleia.

TN . Oikonomides, "Das Verfalland in 10:11. Jahrhundert: Verkauf and Besteuerung" in Fontes Minores 7(1986),161-168.

A Byzantine Commercial Premises in Roman North Africa

L. L. Neuru (University of Waterloo)

The Roman villa at Sidi Ghrib is located some 35 km southwest of Carthage, the capital of the Roman province of Africa and well situated for transport and communications of goods and persons. The site is a true rural villa complex, composed of a villa urbana with a colonnaded peristyle, a large paved courtyard linking the villa urbana, and an adjacent bath building and associated outbuildings, olive oil presses, vats, tanks, and a grinding pit. The site is an excellent example of the monumentale complexe a juxtaposition of the villa aulique type as classified in J. G. Gorges' masterful study of some 1200 villa and possible villa sites on the Iberian peninsula, where the closest parallels may be found; other examples exist in Italy and southwest Gaul. The residents were thought to have been imperial officials, and although many of these structures have earlier phases, the principal and most elegant phase is generally the fourth century or later, probably related to the increase in government officials associated with the reigns and reforms of Diocletian and Constantine.

This luxurious late Roman villa complex was destroyed by a fire which occurred at about the end of the first quarter of the sixth century, which is temptingly close to the reconquest of Africa by the Byzantine Roman Army under Justinian's general Belisarius. Whether or not the Byzantines were actually responsible for the destruction of this villa will probably remain forever an unprovable, but alluring possibility.

The elegant villa building, once destroyed, was reused as a commercial premise perhaps in response to the reimposition of taxes by Justinian mentioned by Procopius. The ash from the fire was raked out over the interior of the villa now an elegant shell, and the rooms were subdivided, with dirt-and-ash floors. The apse at the end of the peristyle, previously with a polychrome mosaic of an onager hunt, became a set of small and dingy storerooms, with an upright from an olive press reused as part of the foundation of one of the dividing walls.

At least one set of rooms excavated to the east of the peristyle had been transformed from the elegant, columned entryway to the arcaded corridor running around the peristyle, into a shop with mixing vat hearths cut into the floors and a counter-top with cutting marks, at which patrons standing in the peristyle corridor could order whatever was for sale, perhaps Byzantine 'fast-food' items. At the back of a room adjoining this establishment was a downturned Corinthian capital and a short plinth reused as makeshift table and chair.

There is a series of shallow limestone vats in the peristyle which have yet to be investigated but certainly were for commercial use perhaps counter-top bins. They are in any case not associated with the domestic phase of the luxurious villa but with the period of Byzantine reuse of the building.

In 1993 the entrance, courtyard, and several adjacent rooms of the villa urbana were investigated, yielding mosaic floors, a cistern and drain complex, and a series of small rural huts reusing the standing walls of the villa, plus added dividing walls and dirt floors. Some of these date to antiquity and some to the twentieth century. The reuse of late Roman villas for a variety of other purposes, such as cemeteries, monasteries, churches, and rural or urban settlement and associated needs is attested widely throughout the area of the Roman Ernpire in the post-Roman period.

The elegant level of the villa below the Byzantine commercial premises corresponds to the fifth-century level in the adjacent bath house. The bath building had one burial in it and had been sealed off and apparently not used after the fire. This building had been completely redecorated by the owner in the late fourth to early fifth century. The redecoration included a splendid set of figural mosaics which were excavated and published by A. Ennabli, "Les Thermes du Thiase Marin de Sidi Ghrib," Monuments Piot 68 (1986),1-59. A paper on this site given to the Association internationale pour l'Etude de Mosaiques anciennes,16-17 October 1992 at the University of Virginia, focused on the mosaics and general plan of the villa complex, and suggested that the last decorated phase was completed in the bath house but not in the villa urbana.

VIII. EXPRESSIONS OF ARISTOCRATIC AND IMPERIAL STATUS AND CONTINUITY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

Chair: Jacqueline Long (University of Texas, Austin)

The Senate of Constantinople and the Foundation of Byzantium

John Vanderspoel (University of Calgary)

Though the city of Constantinople was (re)founded on the site of Byzantium during the reign of Constantine and many writers have suggested or implied that the Byzantine Empire began at that time, the true foundation of Byzantium as an administrative entity occurred somewhat later. Arguably, the change in status of the senators of Constantinople in the late 350s represents an important break between West and East in the administration of the Roman Empire. Before this, the senators who met at Constantinople are to be regarded as senators of Rome who happened to meet in the East. In the late 350s, Constantins changed this arrangement. Senators whose origins lay in the East now gathered in a senate of a different nature in the East. In a rescript from 357 (CTh 6.4.11), Constantins proclaims that a search for senators to produce praetorian games was to be conducted in Achaea, Illyricum and Macedonia. Areas to the East are excluded, indicating that these senators were no longer responsible to Rome. In the same year, Themistius was given the task of finding new members for the Senate at Constantinople, to bring the number up to two thousand, and embarked on at least one journey through Asia Minor to find (or perhaps, convince) possible candidates. The process was complete or sufficiently complete by 359: Constantinople was given a praefectus urbi like Rome to replace the proconsular government it had hitherto experienced. The Senate at Constantinople now became a separate entity instead of an appendix of the Roman Senate. These changes in the status of the senators of the East and the civic government of Constantinople are the key factors which transformed the city from an important imperial residence into the capital of the East. One

question remains: were Rome and Constantinople capitals of a single empire or of two? In this paper, I shall argue that the changes outlined above were of sufficient importance to permit, or even require, the view that, administratively at any rate, two empires existed from 359, even when the same emperor ruled both entities.

Religion and Politics at the Court of Valens

Lawrence A. Tritle (Loyola Marymount University)

It was first asserted by Ammianus Marcellinus that the emperor Valens was little more than a cipher for his brother and patron Valentinian I (Amm. Marc. 26.4.3). This view continues to be argued in recent scholarship, as J. Matthews claims that "none doubted his submissiveness to the superior authority of Valentinian" Q. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus [Baltimore, 19891, p. 190). It is a perception, however, that should be viewed skeptically as it reflects Ammianus' anti-Valenian bias. Yet more striking-hence again the need to be critical of Ammianus-is the well-known fact that the brother emperors took divergent paths in matters of religion: Valens is, after all, the "ardent Arian" emperor. Analysis of Valens' staff suggests that the ready assumption of Valens' subordination to his brother is mistaken. A significant number of his staff officers, particularly the influential magistri militum, as well as others in the bureaucracy, date their commissions to the reign of Constantius, that other great Arian emperor of the fourth century. In other words Arianism provides a heretofore neglected key to interpreting Valens' reign. While an investigation of these officers and others demonstrates that Arians served alongside Catholics, the link to Constantius, his court and its politics, remains clear. This paper will suggest then that Ammianus was wrong about the relationship between these imperial brothers; this conclusion would also raise the question perhaps of a need to reappraise Valens' reign and policies.

Among Valens' commanders were officers such as Sebastianus and Traianus, both of whom began their military careers under Constantius and continued under his successors, including Valens. Both served as magistri militum under Valens and both fought and died with him at Adrianople. Yet their religious views and actions were radically different. While serving in Egypt in Constantius' reign, Sebastianus arrested adherents of Athanasius; in other contexts he was described as a Manichean, meaning perhaps simply "heretic" or Arian. Sebastianus then would appear to be an excellent example of the continuing influence of Arian officers and ideas into the court of Valens.

The career of Sebastianus' contemporary Traianus, however, cautions against any simple generalizations about Valens' reign and Arianism. Not only was Traianus also a longtime serving officer, he was also Catholic. In the campaigning season before Adrianople, Traianus did not have much success and for this was bitterly attacked by Valens. His retort? Valens' persecution of Catholics was to blame and not his incompetence. To his support came two other magistri-Fl. Arinthaeus and Victor-both of whom had also started out under Constantius. Traianus was dismissed but shortly afterwards recalled, in time to die at Adrianople.

The reign of the Emperor Valens since Ammianus has been largely dismissed as but an _appendage to that of Valentinian. A review of those men close to Valens suggests that this may not necessarily be the case. While the continued service of former officers of Constantius might reflect bureaucratic and institutional influence, it might just as well point to conscious decisions of Valens. If the latter were correct, then an explanation for his