Byzantine Credulity as an Impediment to Antiquarianism

Author(s): Robert Grigg

Source: Gesta, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1987), pp. 3-9
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the International Center of Medieval
Art
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Byzantine Credulity as an Impediment to Antiquarianism
ROBERT GRIGG
University of California, Davis
Abstract
Byzantine descriptions of their own art have puz-
zled art historians. Not only have Byzantine writers
described it as realistic, they also appear to have been
oblivious to the distinction in style between Byzantine
and ancient art. Two explanations of these puzzling
features of Byzantine descriptions have been offered.
One appeals to the presumed influence of ancient
descriptions (ekphraseis) of art. The other appeals to
the Byzantine observer's limited acquaintance with
the realism of ancient Greek and Roman art. A third
explanation is advanced here. It is based on the wil-
lingness of the Byzantines to accept claims that many
of their highly venerated images were created in the
time of Christ and the apostles. As a result, the Byzan-
tines came to regard as representative of the art of
antiquity images that in fact mirroredtheir own art.
Art historians have expressed surprise to find that
Byzantine descriptions of their own art seem markedly
inconsistent with our views today.' We find it difficult-if
not impossible-to agree with Byzantine writers who
described the images of their day as breathtakingly lifelike,
with figures that were on the verge of speaking, and capable
of moving the observer to moods of pity or fear. Nor can
we agree with Byzantine writers who seem to have recog-
nized no distinction between ancient and Byzantine art in
respect to style.2 How was it possible for the Byzantines to
have held views so markedly at variance with our own,
which are presumably closer to the truth?
Today a consensus favors one explanation. This
explanation, the first of three that I shall consider in this
paper, is based on the belief that the prestige and literary
merit of ancient descriptions (ekphraseis) of art led Byzan-
tine writers to use them as models when describing Byzan-
tine art. But this encouraged distortion. The conventional
praise of realism that characterized the ancient ekphrasis
was appropriate to a naturalistic art, not to Byzantine art.
Accordingly the descriptions composed by Byzantine
writers tend to misdescribe the qualities of Byzantine art
and to mask its underlying motivations.3 Scholars who
support this view disparage Byzantine descriptions as
nothing more than "conventional literary exercises, couched
in language destined to conceal rather than manifest the
writer's sentiments."4 Nor do they accept the implication
"that a Byzantine could literally not perceive any difference
between the art of his own time and the illusionist art of
Antiquity.''
GESTA XXVI/1 ? The International Center of Medieval Art 1987
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Doubts like these, calling into question the credibility
of Byzantine written comments, may have been part of
what prompted Henry Maguire to undertake a study of
the influence of the ekphrasis. He was chiefly interested in
its effects on the accuracy of Byzantine descriptions. He
also wondered whether those descriptions were genuine
expressions of "Byzantine attitudes to art" or merely the
product of a "dead literary tradition."6 The outcome of
Maguire's study was not altogether unexpected. He found
that, although sometimes the Byzantines made mistakes in
describing works of art, on other occasions their descrip-
tions were reasonably accurate. The degree of accuracy
depended on the writer's skill. In the hands of a capable
writer, the conventions of the ancient ekphrasis could be
used to formulate accurate descriptions. In the hands of a
careless writer, the employment of the same conventions
could lead to inaccuracy. He also accepted as genuine some
Byzantine reactions to the images they were describing.
Maguire concluded that the ekphraseis of Byzantine writers
must be interpreted "with extreme caution," but a cate-
gorical dismissal of their testimony was unjustified.7
The preoccupation with the ekphrasis genre has not
been entirely fortunate. It seems to have encouraged the
assumption that the only written testimony alleging realism
in Byzantine art occurs in the context of a fossilized literary
genre, appreciated exclusively by Byzantine intellectuals
and the elite, classes supposedly most inclined to indulge
in rhetorical distortion. To the contrary, some of the most
telling evidence alleging realism in Byzantine art is found
in popular legends about the lives of saints.8 But this
literary genre has been largely overlooked. Yet the evidence
found there is unambiguous. Nilus of Sinai tells how St.
Plato of Ancyra was recognized by a young man to whom
he made a miraculous appearance. The young man recog-
nized him because he had seen the saint's portrait.9 In
another story, a woman who had fallen ill had a dream in
which two men appeared to her. She was unable to confirm
their identities until she saw a picture of Sts. Cosmas and
Damian.'l Yet another story that concerns the ability to
establish identity by means of a portrait is told in the
Paterikon of the Cave Monastery at Kiev." In the I Ith-
century Life of St. Athanasius of Athos, a monk admires a
portrait of the saint that was "worked out with great care
and exceedingly true to life."'2 In these instances, the
realism of Byzantine religious portraiture was either
assumed or explicitly asserted. Some stories describe with
obvious concern circumstances that explain how the accur-
3
acy of Byzantine religious portraiture could come about.
For example, stories were told of the saints making
miraculous appearances to artists, enabling them to render
exact likenesses. The Life of St. Theodora of Thessalonika
(d. 892) contains a typical story that takes for granted the
realism of Byzantine images. The story concerns a certain
painter named John. Even though he had never seen the
saint, he was able to paint her portrait. She had mirac-
ulously appeared to him in a dream. Those who had known
the saint vouched for the accuracy of the portrait.13 Similar
stories appear in the Life of St. Mary the Younger (d. ca.
902) and the Life of St. Nikon (d. 998).14
Like the ekphraseis, these stories conform to conven-
tional patterns. But that in itself is hardly reason to dismiss
them as having nothing to do with the way the Byzantines
thought. Cliches and stereotypes not only govern the way
people express themselves in writing, they also can govern
the way people think. It is a crude philosophy of thought
that sees conventional patterns solely as external imposi-
tions, constraining free expression and thereby masking
real thought.15 Furthermore, it is probably safe to assume
that these legends circulated among a wider audience than
did the ekphraseis. That being so, it would be next to
impossible to argue that the conventional assumptions
embedded in the stories about the saints would have been
regarded by the Byzantines as inconsistent with reality.
The stories were told with the expectation that they would
be believed.
The first explanation, which appeals to the alleged
distorting influence of the ekphrasis, has no demonstrable
bearing on the Byzantine hagiographical evidence cited
above. Therefore the first explanation is manifestly inade-
quate as it now stands. Simply put, it fails to account
for a significant proportion of the relevant evidence.
Furthermore, the concord between the evidence of Byzan-
tine hagiography and the testimony found in many
Byzantine ekphraseis, suggests the obvious explanation
that Byzantine writers may have been content to use ancient
ekphraseis as models because they assumed that the praise
of realism was appropriate to Byzantine art.
There are other problems with the first explanation.
The belief that a Byzantine viewer would certainly have
been able to recognize the distinction between "the art of
his own time and the illusionist art of Antiquity"'6 appears
innocent enough at first, but it contains a crucial ambiguity.
It is one thing to say that the Byzantines would have
recognized that there was a difference between two works
chosen by us to illustrate what we take to be the character-
istic differences between their art and the art of Antiquity.
It is another, however, to assume that they would have
considered these perceived differences to be representative
of a general difference between their art and the art of
Antiquity. The difficulties with this assumption are con-
siderable, as we shall soon see.
There is a further difficulty with the first explanation,
insofar as it has been fueled by the belief that the Byzan-
4
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tines rejected realism as inappropriate to the Christian con-
tent of their art. Nowhere in the corpus of Byzantine
testimony concerning images do we find evidence that the
Byzantines believed that it was necessary to reject "realism"
or "naturalism" in order to express the transcendental
truths of Christianity. Had this belief existed, one might
have expected it to surface during the Iconoclastic Con-
troversy, when questions relating to the nature and admis-
sibility of religious images were widely addressed. But it
has been noted that there is no evidence of such a belief in
the polemics of the time.
Stress, by contrast, is laid on the fact that the image of
any person is only the image of the outward appearance,
the prosopon, which is in turn identified as the depiction
of the material body, of the flesh, and nothing else.
(The "dematerialization," the "spiritualization" of the
icons of this period which strike the modern observer so
powerfully seemingly did not make any impression on
the fathers of 754. .. . )17
There is a second explanation of the disparity between
Byzantine and modern perceptions. Unlike the first, this
one gives credence to Byzantine testimony, insofar as the
perception of realism is concerned. It accepts the testimony
as a genuine expression of Byzantine perceptions. But it
explains the disparity between Byzantine and modern per-
ceptions by invoking two entirely different points of view.
The modern observer, by virtue of an immense body of
accumulated information and experience with images from
many different cultures and historical periods, has a much
fuller conception of realism in art than the Byzantines
could have had. At best they had a severely limited
acquaintance with the realism of ancient Greek and Roman
art."8"The modern critic can compare Byzantine painting
with the greater illusionism of Hellenistic and of Renais-
sance art. But the range of reference of the Byzantine
viewer was more limited."19 Maguire offered this as a pos-
sible explanation, but he neither elaborated it nor clearly
embraced it. However, the idea is not new and it has
considerable merit, as I have argued elsewhere.20 Gombrich
and others have long argued that "realism"and "verisimil-
itude" were elastic yardsticks, the perception of which
depended upon the expectations of the viewer, which could
vary markedly.21As Gombrich writes, "We come to Giotto
on the long road which leads from the impressionists back-
ward via Michelangelo and Masaccio, and what we see
first in him is therefore not lifelikeness [which Boccaccio
praised] but rigid restraint and majestic aloofness."22
A third explanation is needed to complement the
previous one. In offering it, I shall suggest that there is
more involved than merely the absence of reliable informa-
tion about ancient Greek and Roman art. The critical
factor may well have been misinformation. In my opinion,
one reason the Byzantines were unsympathetic to our
assumed contrast between Greco-Roman and Byzantine
art was their credulity. They were unable critically to assess
claims asserting an origin in the time of Christ, made on
behalf of many images. Lacking the skills and background
knowledge that art historians today can take for granted,
the Byzantines were unable to adopt a critical attitude
towards these claims. The consequences for their misunder-
standing of ancient art and our understanding of Byzantine
art are considerable.
Thanks to Cyril Mango's classic study of the survival
of ancient statuary in Constantinople, we know of many
examples of ancient statues that were accessible to the
Byzantines, but few comparable instances are known of
the survival of ancient paintings.23Although this strikes us
as an interesting subject for research in its own right, from
the Byzantine point of view the contrast simply did not
exist. The Byzantines believed they possessed important
examples of ancient painting. As far as they were con-
cerned, their own religious art had its roots in the ancient
world. It originated, according to the Patriarch Nicephorus
and others, in the Apostolic Church.24It was their belief
that even before the Gospels were written, the apostles had
"adorned the holy Church with painted pictures and
mosaics representing the likeness of Christ.""25 The Life of
St. Pancratius gives an elaborate account of the origin of
in
Christian images the time of the apostles:
... the blessed apostle Peter sent for the painter Joseph
and said to him: 'Make me the image of Our Lord Jesus
Christ...' And the apostle said: 'Paint, O child, also
mine and that of my brother Pancratius. . . . ' So the
young painter made these also and wrote on each image
its own name. This is what the apostles did in all the
cities and villages from Jerusalem as far as Antioch.
And having taken thought, Peter made the entire
picture-story (historia) of the incarnation of Our Lord
Jesus Christ, . . . , and he commanded that churches
should be decorated with this story. From this time
onward these things were given earnest attention by
everyone and they were depicted on panels and parch-
ment (chartia), and were given to bishops who, upon
completing the construction of a church, depicted them
both beautifully and decorously....
[Among the things Pancratius and Marcian took
with them to the West as aids in spreading the Gospel
were] . . . two volumes (tomoi) of the divine picture-
stories (historiai) containing the decoration of the
church, i.e., the pictorial story (eikonik&historia) of the
Old and New Testaments, which volumes were made at
the command of the holy apostles .... 26
Today we can clearly see that the Byzantines, who lacked
our sensitivity to anachronism, were projecting their own
practice back into the era of the apostles. As the quotation
reveals, some Byzantines not only believed that the images
they used to decorate their churches went back to the time
of the apostles, but they also believed that the apostles
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themselves were personally involved in the creation of
the images, either as patrons or, surprisingly, as artists.
In the 8th century the story was also told that St. Peter
had illustrated his own account of the Transfiguration.27
According to a Vita of St. Andrew the Apostle (written by
Epiphanios, perhaps during the later stage of the icono-
clastic controversy), the saint had the Old and New Testa-
ments painted on the walls of the church at Patras.28St.
Thomas the Apostle was believed to have decorated
churches in Ethiopia.29 Most of us are familiar with the
legend that attributes to St. Luke the portrait of Mary and
the infant Christ; in later Byzantine history, the famous
icon of the Virgin and Child called the Hodegetria was
attributed to St. Luke.30 But some Byzantines also believed
that St. Luke illustrated his own gospel with an elaborate
cycle of narrative scenes.31
These claims disturbed Byzantine iconoclasts in the 8th
and 9th centuries. In assessing the attitude of the early
Church toward images, they preferred to rely only on
"canonical, ecclesiastically approved sources."32 In a letter
dated 824 to Louis the Pious, the iconoclastic Emperor
Michael II accused the iconophiles of deviating from apos-
tolic tradition.33 Michael the Syrian, a late-12th-century
author, preserved a story about an attempted fraud,
designed to create an ancient precedent for images. The
iconophile Patriarch of Constantinople had small painted
panels "discovered" atop a column that no one had
mounted since it was erected under Caesar Augustus. The
iconoclastic emperor, however, devised a way of proving
that the images were not authentic. When he sprinkled
water on them, the paint instantly washed off, proving
that they could not have survived, exposed on top of the
column.34 This story may have been intended to discredit
stories cherished by iconophiles concerning the miraculous
discovery of long hidden or forgotten icons, some of which
were regarded as ancient.35But the author's appeal to such
a crude test of authenticity hardly squares with the notion
that the Byzantines must have been aware how different
their art was from the art of Antiquity.
Most Byzantines were sufficiently credulous to believe
that images painted by St. Luke and the apostles survived
in their own day. From the 4th century on, there were
reports of Christian images dating from the time of Christ
and the apostles. It is of course well-known that Eusebius
of Caesarea reported a statue of the Savior and the woman
with the issue of blood at Paneas, on the outskirts of
Caesarea.36He adds the important observation that,
[i]t is not at all surprising that Gentiles who long ago
received such benefits from our Saviour should have
expressed their gratitude thus, for the features of His
apostles Paul and Peter, and indeed of Christ Himself,
have been preserved in coloured portraits which I have
examined. How could it be otherwise, when the ancients
habitually followed their own Gentile custom of honour-
ing them as saviours in this uninhibited way?37
5
Eusebius did not approve of the practice. But at this early
date the claim to possess authentic images of Christ and
the apostles was given credence, even by a historian who
knew at least some of the rudiments of historical criticism.
No wonder Byzantine writers would have little basis to
challenge claims to possess "authentic"images of Christ.
Eusebius's report about the existence of portraits of
Christ and the apostles was far from exceptional. An
anonymous 6th-century pilgrim to the Holy Land saw an
image of Christ in what was then identified as the Prae-
torium of Pilate, rebuilt as a martyrium of Christ's trial
and dedicated to Hagia Sophia. The image was allegedly
produced during Christ's lifetime and deposited in the
Praetorium.38Not all such reportedly authentic images of
Christ qualified as works of art. Some were reputed to be
acheiropoietai, that is, images not made by human hand,
like the image of Christ worshipped by an anonymous
pilgrim at Memphis in the 6th century; the image was said
to have been produced simply by being brought into con-
tact with Christ's face.39 Two of the most important
acheiropoietai of Christ were brought to Constantinople,
though in different periods of Byzantine history. The
Camuliana was translated to Constantinople in 574, and in
944 the same thing happened to the Mandylion, the image
associated with Edessa and the Abgar legend.40
The Byzantines were familiar with other images that
reportedly went back to the time of Christ. One of them
was a portrait of the apostle Andrew, reportedly painted
in his lifetime, which was said to be capable of effecting
cures and protecting itself against efforts to destroy it.41
Other of the "ancient" images they were familiar with
represented the Theotokos. There were reports of images
of Mary that were, like the Camuliana and the Mandylion,
divinely created without the intervention of human hands.42
Although Mary was never credited with as many images
as St. Luke, she was alleged to have been the artist of an
image. According to the reminiscences of Arculf, a pilgrim
from Gaul who was compelled to take refuge at Iona on
his return journey, there was an ornamented cloth in the
Holy Land, reportedly woven by Mary herself, that was
adorned with the images of Christ and the apostles.43
Probably the best known of these supposedly ancient
images today is the Hodegetria image, reportedly painted
by St. Luke and, according to Byzantine legend, sent to
Constantinople by Eudokia in the 5th century.44 By the
end of the Middle Ages, St. Luke was credited with an
amazing number of paintings: "there still exist numerous
other paintings--sometimes said to number as many as
600... which are thought to be the original portrait of the
Virgin by St. Luke, but for which no claim is made to be
the Hodegetria itself."45 This prodigious output has led
one skeptical writer to refer to St. Luke as a "Methu-
salemaler."46No one knows in absolute terms how many
Christian images were claimed to have originated either in
the time of Christ or the apostles. But apparently the
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number was large. More serious is our inability to judge the
number in relative terms. For example, did a substantial
proportion of the major Christian centers in the Byzantine
world measure community prestige at least in part by the
possession of such supposedly authentic images?47
Some stories directly addressed the issue of survival.
The Byzantines knew tales about Christians hiding images
in times of persecution. The Camuliana icon of Christ was
concealed in a veil worn by the woman who found it in
her garden well.48 According to a legend recorded well
after the lapse of iconoclasm, the apsidal mosaic of the
church of the monastery t6n Latom6n in Thessalonika
was divinely created in a bath that had been surreptitiously
transformed into a church by a young woman named
Theodora during the Great Persecution, 303-311; the
image was covered up with brick and mortar to protect it
and prevent Theodora's Christian sympathies from being
discovered. The image reportedly came to light in the reign
of Leo V (the Armenian), who had reinstated a policy of
iconoclasm.49 The author, who was patently confused in
his chronology (the mosaic is certainly much later), was
perhaps preserving the dimly transmitted memory of an
attempt to preserve the mosaic during the period of Icono-
clasm.50 Something similar to the attempted preservation
of icons from hostile iconoclasts may underlie the reported
discovery by Romanus III in 1031 of an icon of the Virgin
in the church of the Blachernae. According to Cedranus,
it was thought to have been concealed "since the times of
Copronymus [Constantine V]..., i.e., over a lapse of
three hundred years."51
Some images did not need to be protected by human
agency; they were divinely protected. In the Life of St.
Symeon the Younger, repeated attempts by iconoclasts to
remove an image set up at Antioch were miraculously
foiled.52 Arculf told of an icon of Mary in Constantinople
that survived an attempted desecration; although thrown
into a latrine by a Jew, it was retrieved and afterwards
exuded a marvelous oil.53Again the portrait of the apostle
Andrew painted on marble, mentioned above, reportedly
resisted efforts to destroy it. Other images exacted ven-
geance on those who defaced them. The story was told
about an image of St. Theodore that was "wounded" by a
group of Saracens (the icon bled). Shortly thereafter they
were found dead.54 Theophanes reported that a soldier
named Constantine stoned an image of Mary during the
Arab siege of Nicaea in 727. He was reproached by Mary
in a vision and the next day his skull was crushed by a
stone catapulted from an Arab siege engine.55Clearly this
was a warning to those who might harm the sacred images.
We do not know that all of these images were thought to
be ancient, but the point here is that such stories would
support the expectation of survival.
The favorable attention lavished on those images that
the Byzantines regarded as ancient or miraculous in origin
was understandable: they preserved the faces of Christ, the
Theotokos, the apostles, and other saints. To the Byzan-
tines they were authentic portraits. Today that seems hard
to believe. But, as we have seen, popular legends about the
lives of the saints make it clear that the Byzantines regarded
their icons of the saints as authentic portrait likenesses.56
Byzantine credulity about the ancient status of these images
helps to explain why they were carried in processions,
adored, and copied." No certifiably ancient work of art
(by today's standards) received from the Byzantines any-
thing approaching the favorable attention these images
received.
Our knowledge of these allegedly ancient Christian
images is poor. But few historians would accept their
reported antiquity at face value. For one thing, the stories
that tell us of them do not seem to have been in circulation
until centuries after the reported date of the image. For
example, the earliest reports of the image of Christ at
Edessa date from the 6th century."8This is likewise true of
many of the images pilgrims found in the Holy Land.59
Although they may have existed earlier, the legends imput-
ing to the apostles and St. Luke direct involvement in
the production of images make their first appearance at
an even later date, during the Iconoclastic Controversy.60
For this reason, it is widely assumed by scholars today
that the images were created in the early Byzantine period,
some perhaps later.61Some, indeed, may have been delib-
erate frauds dating from the period of the Iconoclastic
Controversy.62
In spite of all the evidence leading us to be skeptical of
the reports concerning such supposedly authentic images,
the Byzantines received and endorsed them. Scholars today
have been struck by evidence that the Byzantines frequently
copied images that had acquired a reputation for holiness
either as authentic relics, preserving the faces of Christ,
Mary, the apostles, and the saints, or as the loci of
miraculous power, effecting cures or prophecies.63And the
surviving copies-assuming that we have correctly identi-
fied them-are indistinguishable as regards style from
Byzantine art. This is an important point to appreciate. As
examples of Byzantine art, they would have featured styles
that today we can recognize were current in Byzantine art,
but were not characteristic of the styles current in ancient
Greek and Roman art. Of course the Byzantines did not
even recognize the acheiropoietai as works of art at all,
totally disallowing questions of style. But many of the
miraculous images created by artists represented, as far as
the Byzantines were concerned, the art of the ancients.
Today we know better. The Byzantines regarded as repre-
sentative of the art of antiquity images that in fact mir-
rored their own art. At one stroke this makes it impossible
to accept the idea of a deliberate rejection of the standards
of ancient art. No direct evidence of such a conspiracy
theory against ancient art is found in the written sources
and this review of the evidence shows why. Such a policy
would have struck the Byzantines as utterly incoherent,
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for their most hallowed images were those dating (in their
minds) from the time of Christ and the apostles.
Clearly the problem with Byzantine information about
ancient art was far more serious than a simple absence of
correct information. Just as important was the fact that
the Byzantines were positively confused about the nature
of ancient art. It is little wonder that they were deceived
into thinking that there was no difference between ancient
and Byzantine art. The examples of ancient art most
important to them we today recognize not to have been
ancient at all. They were in fact examples of their own art.
NOTES
C. Mango, "Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder," DOP,
I.
XVII (1963), 65; idem, ed. and tr., The Art of the Byzantine Empire,
312-1453 (Englewood Cliffs, 1972), xiv-xv; and H. Maguire, "Truth
and Convention in Byzantine Descriptions of Works of Art," DOP,
XXVIII (1974), 113.
2. Mango, "Statuary," 65. In Robin Cormack's recently published
Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and Its Icons (London, 1985),
154, 251, however, I sense an increasing reluctance to describe
Byzantine art as "unnatural"and "abstract."
3. For the ekphrasis genre, see G. Downey, "Ekphrasis,"in Reallexikon
ffir Antike und Christentum, IV (1959), cols. 921-44; A. Hohlweg,
"Ekphrasis," Reallexikon zur Bvzantinischen Kunst, II (1971), cols.
33-75; H. Maguire, "Truth and Convention," 113-40; idem, Art
and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton, 1981), 22-23, and idem,
"The Classical Tradition in the Byzantine Ekphrasis," Byzantium
and the Classical Tradition, ed. M. Mullett and R. Scott (Birming-
ham, 1981), 94-102.
4. C. Walter, "Expression and Hellenism," Revue des Etudes B yzan-
tines, XLII (1984), 266-67. Cf. Mango, "Statuary," 65-67, and
J. Beckwith, Early' Christian and Byzantine Art (Harmondsworth,
1970), 345.
5. R. Cormack, "Painting after Iconoclasm," Iconoclasm, ed. A. Bryer
and J. Herrin (Birmingham, 1977), 157.
6. Maguire, "Truth and Convention," 114, 127.
7. Ibid., 138-40.
8. Argued briefly by R. Grigg, "Relativism and Pictorial Realism,"
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XLII (1984), 401-2.
9. St. Nilus of Sinai, Letter to Heliodorus Silentiarius (tr. Mango,
Art, 40).
10. Miracula SS. Cosmae et Damiani, miracle 13 (tr. Mango, Art,
138-39).
11. Ibid., 121-22.
12. Vita S. Athanasii Athonitae, 254 (tr. I. Sevienko, "On Pantoleon
the Painter," Jahrbuch der Osterreichischen Byzantinistik, [Vienna,
1972], 245; another translation is available in Mango, Art, 213-14).
13. Vita S. Theodorae Thessalonicensis, 52-54 (tr. Mango, Art, 210-11).
14. Also in ibid., 211-12.
15. S. Hampshire, Thought and Action (New York, 1959), 183 89.
16. Cormack, "Painting after Iconoclasm," 157.
17. S. Gero, Byzantine Iconoclasm During the Reign of Constantine V
(Louvain, 1977), 101.
18. Maguire, "Truth and Convention," 130, and Grigg, "Relativism and
Pictorial Realism," 402-4.
19. Maguire, "Truth and Convention," 130.
20. Grigg, "Relativism and Pictorial Realism," 402-4.
21. "The illusion given by paintings and works of sculpture, after all, is
always a relative judgment"-E. H. Gombrich, "The Leaven of
Criticism in Renaissance Art," The Heritage of Apelles (Ithaca,
1976), 112. N. Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a
Theory of Symbols, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, 1976), 34-39, also
embraces relativism in respect to pictorial realism.
22. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1961), 62.
23. For reports of ancient paintings known to the Byzantines, see
Mango, "Antique Statuary," 70, n. 89, and idem, Art, 133-34. See
note I above.
24. Nicephorus, Apologeticus atque Antirrhetici, III, 3 (tr. Mango, Art,
175).
25. Epistola synodica patriarcharum orientalium, 6 (tr. Mango, Art,
176-77). See Cormack, Writing in Gold, 121-31, who provides an
extended discussion of this important document, which dates from
the end of the period of iconoclasm.
26. Mango, Art, 137-38. Cf. E. von Dobschiitz, Christusbilder: Unter-
suchungen zur christlichen Legende (Leipzig, 1899), 109*.
27. This is recorded in an iconophile work entitled Nouthesia gerontos
peri t6n hagi6n eikon6n (Admonition of the Old Man Concerning
the Holy Images), written during the first phase of Iconoclasm,
726-87. It records a disputation between an iconoclast named
Cosmas and an iconophile named Georgius. See Gero, Constantine
V, 25-36, but 33, n. 51, for the particular passage referred to above,
and P. J. Alexander, The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople
(Oxford, 1958), 12, n. 2, who thinks that it may have been excerpted
from the Vita Pancratii, the source for other passages in the
Admonition.
28. I. Sevienko, "Hagiography of the Iconoclast Period," Iconoclasm,
ed. A. Bryer and J. Herrin (Birmingham, 1977), 113, n. 2.
29. Also reported in the Admonition: Gero, Constantine V, 33.
30. Dobschuitz, Christusbilder, 28 and 267**-280**; R. L. Wolf, "Foot-
note to an Incident of the Latin Occupation of Constantinople: The
Church and Icon of the Hodegetria," Traditio, VI (1948), 320-28,
who points out that the earliest confirmable source for this legend is
Andreas of Crete. Also E. Kitzinger, "The Cult of Images in the
Age Before Iconoclasm," The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval
West: Selected Studies, ed. W. Eugene Kleinbauer (Bloomington,
1976), 115, n. 129; idem, "On Some Icons of the Seventh Century,"
Late Classical and Mediaeval Studies in Honor of Albert Mathias
Friend, Jr., ed. K. Weitzmann (Princeton, 1955), 149-50. More
generally for the legend of St. Luke as a painter, see D. Klein, St.
Lukas als Maler der Maria (Berlin, 1933).
31. This particular claim was apparently highly regarded by the icono-
philes: "Perhaps significantly this argument is the last one in the
dispute itself, and Cosmas makes no reply. In the monologue after
the dispute the claim that Luke was a painter again makes an
appearance." (Gero, Constantine V, 33, n. 50.) In the later Middle
Ages, pilgrims visiting Rome saw what was reputed to be St. Luke's
self-portrait, for which see Dobschitz, Christusbilder,277**, n. 3.
32. This also emerges from the dispute recorded in the Admonition:
Gero, Constantine V, 33; cp. idem, "The Libri Carolini and the
Image Controversy," The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 18
(1973), 15, concerning the rejection of the legend of Abgar and the
miraculous image of Christ that came to be associated with it by the
author of the Libri Carolini.
33. Mango, Art, 157.
8
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34. S. Gero, "The Resurgence of Byzantine Iconoclasm in the Ninth
Century, According to a Syriac Source," Speculum, LI (1976), 2-3.
35. Gero (ibid., 4-5) cites the story of the discovery of the Camuliana
icon in a well.
36. Historia Ecclesiastica, VII, 18: H. Koch, Die altchristliche Bilder-
frage nach den literarischen Quellen, Forschungen zur Religion und
Literatur des alten und neuen Testaments, 10 (Gb5ttingen, 1917),
41-42.
37. Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, VII, 18 (tr. G. A. Williamson, The
History of the Church [Baltimore, 1965], 302, and Mango, Art, 16).
Cp. Dobschiitz, Christusbilder,252*.
38. Ibid., 2, 27, 99*; and W. C. Loerke, "The Miniatures of the Trial in
the Rossano Gospels," AB, XLIII (1961), 190, n. 99. Conceivably
the image was believed to have been commissioned by Pilate, for
both Irenaeus and Epiphanius, in their treatises against the heresies,
record the existence of a belief among the followers of the Gnostic
Carpocrates that Pilate had an official portrait of Christ painted; for
this see Dobschuitz, Christusbilder,98*.
39. For acheiropoietai, see Dobschuitz,Christusbilder,61-196; A. Grabar,
La Sainte Face de Laon, Le Mandvlion dans P'art orthodoxe
(Prague, 1931); E. Kitzinger, "Cult of Images," 112-15; and
K. Wessel, "Achiropoietos," Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst,
I (1963), cols. 23-24, and IV (1964), cols. 631-32. The image of Christ
at Memphis is reported by an anonymous pilgrim: Itinera Hiero-
soliymitana, I, 116, and Kitzinger, "Cult of Images," 113.
40. Cedrenus, Historiarum Compendium (ed. Bekker, I, 685); Kitzinger,
"Cult of Images," I14; Mango, Art, I15, n. 294. For the Mandvlion
see Grabar, La Sainte Face de Laon, and K. Weitzmann, "The
Mandylion and Constantine Porphyrogennetos," Cahiers Arche'ol-
ogiques, XI (1960), 163-84, reprinted in Studies in Classical and
Byzantine Manuscript Illumination, ed. H. Kessler (Chicago, 1971),
224-46.
41. Epiphanius Monachus (1st half of 9th century), Vita S. Andreae,
col. 220 (tr. Mango, Art, 153).
42. Dobschuitz, Christusbilder,79-89, 147*-153*.
43. Ibid., 99*",109*.
44. See note 30 above as well as N. Likhacev, "Sceaux de l'empereur
Leon III l'Isaurien," Bvzantion, XI (1939), 474-76, and S. Der
Nersessian, "Two Images of the Virgin in the Dumbarton Oaks
Collection," DOP, XIV (1960), 74.
45. Wolf, "Footnote to an Incident," 327. According to Dobschuitz,
Christusbilder, 268**, n. 5, this is the estimate of C. de Plancy,
Dict. des reliques et des images miraculeuses, II, 234.
46. Another opinion of an earlier scholar reported by Dobschiitz,
Christusbilder,268**, n. 5.
47. Speculation along these lines would make an interesting complement
to the thesis sketched out by P. Brown, "A Dark-Age Crisis: Aspects
of the Iconoclastic Controversy," The English Historical Review,
346 (1973), 1-34, especially 17-18.
48. Historia Ecclesiastica, XII, 4, ascribed to Zacharias Rhetor (tr.
Mango, Art, 114-15).
49. Ignatius Monachus (abbot of the monastery tou Akapniou), Narratio
de imagine Christi in monasterio Latomi (tr. Mango, Art, 155-56).
See Cormack, Writingin Gold, 132.
50. Mango, Art, 155. Of course no one today maintains that the church
and its mosaic date before the Great Persecution. Scholars today
disagree about the date of the mosaic, their estimates ranging from
the 5th through the 7th centuries: E. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the
Making (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 141, n. 41. Cormack, Writing in
Gold, 132, e.g., would date the mosaic in the 6th century.
51. Cedrenus, II, 497 (tr. Mango, Art, 154-55). This incident reminds
one of the recent discovery in Istanbul of a preiconoclastic wall
mosaic representing the Virgin presenting the Christ Child to
Simeon. See C. L. Striker and Y. D. Kuban, "Work at Kalenderhane
Camii in Istanbul: Third and Fourth Preliminary Reports," DOP,
XXV (1971), 251-56.
52. Mango, Art, 135. For the date and authorship of the text, see H.
Delehaye, Les Saints stylites, Subsidia Hagiographica, XIV (Brus-
sels and Paris, 1923), LIX-LX. One image was reported (in the
Epistola s'ynodica patriarcharum orientalium) to have escaped the
Iconoclasts by a miraculous sea-borne migration to Rome (see
Cormack, Writingin Gold, 129).
53. Relatio de locis sanctis, III, 4 (T. Tobler and A. Molinier, Itinera
Hierosolymitana et Descriptiones Terrae Sanctae [Geneva, 1885]
I, 195).
54. John of Damascus (Migne, PG 94, col. 1393) quotes the writings of
Anastasius Sinaita (A.D. 640-700) for this story; see Kitzinger, "Cult
of Images," 101.
55. Theophanes, Chronographia A.M. 6218 (tr. Mango, Art, 152).
Cormack, relying on the Epistola synodica patriarcharum oriental-
ium, provides references to other images whose "wounds" were
divinely avenged, Writingin Gold, 126-29.
56. Support for this position is also given by the Byzantine attitude
towards portraiture in general. See I. Spatharakis, "Portrait Falsifi-
cations in Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts," in Actes du XVe
congres international d 'tudes byizantines, Athenes--Septembre
1976 (Athens, 1979), II, 721-32. This also explains why the Byzan-
tines attempted to ensure that their religious portraiture conform to
what we would call "traditionaltypes." "The Byzantines were curious
about the physical appearances of their saints, so that descriptions
often figure in their Lives. For artists themselves there existed
manuals, of which the earliest known is that by Ulpius the Roman,
written between 850 and 950" (C. Walter, Art and Ritual of the
Byzantine Church [London, 1982], 106).
57. For the processions and honors accorded icons, there is much
valuable material to be found in E. Kitzinger, "A Virgin's Face:
Antiquarianism in Twelfth-Century Art," AB, LXII (1980), 6-19.
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58. Kitzinger, "Cult of Images," 103-4.
59. Ibid., 101, noted this about the images in the Holy Land.
60. See notes 30 and 44 above for the legend of St. Luke.
61. Some of the most direct discussions of the topic are found in
Kitzinger, "On Some Icons," 138, and D. and T. Talbot Rice, Icons
and Their History (London, 1974), 9. Both sources agree that none
of the extant images reportedly painted by St. Luke is earlier than
the 6th century; in fact it is more likely that the earliest ones date
from the 7th or early 8th centuries.
62. The story told by Michael the Syrian above may not be far from the
truth. Interestingly Eutychius, Patriarch of Alexandria, tells how
the iconoclastic Emperor Theophilus discredited an icon of Mary,
rigged to produce drops of milk from her breast: S. H. Griffith,
"Eutychius of Alexandria on the Emperor Theophilus and Icono-
clasm in Byzantium: A Tenth Century Moment in Christian Apolo-
getics in Arabic," Byzantion, LII (1982), 166.
63. G. Schlumberger, "La Vierge, le Christ, les saints, sur le sceaux
byzantins de Xe, XIe, XIIe siecles," Memoires de la Societe des
Antiquaires de France, 5th series, IV (1883), 19-26; N. P. Kondakov,
Ikonografia Bogomateri (St. Petersburg, 1914-15), II, and N. P.
Lichachev, Istoricheskoe znachenie italo-grecheskoj ikonopisi. Izo-
brazhenija Bogomateri (St. Petersburg, 1915). Also see G. P.
Galavaris, "The Mother of God, 'Stabbed with a Knife'," DOP,
XIII (1959), 180; idem, "The Mother of God of the Kanikleion,"
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, I (1958), 179-82; and
Weitzmann, "Byzantine Miniature and Icon Painting," Studies in
Classical and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination, ed. H. L. Kessler
(Chicago, 1971), 301. According to K. Weitzmann, "Various Aspects
of Byzantine Influence on the Latin Countries from the Sixth to the
Twelfth Century," DOP, XX (1966), 6-7, both the Pantheon
Madonna and Child and the apse mosaic of the Panagia Angelo-
kistos at Kiti are copies of the Hodegetria. In his view their simi-
larities presuppose a common model. On another occasion, he wrote
that the "best copies [of the Hodegetria] we have are a series of
tenth-century ivories,... ." (idem, The Icon [New York, 1978],
commentary for pl. 12).