What was the "divine art of asceticism and piety" in the Byzantine Empire

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Byzantine Empire, also known as Byzantium, was a cultural and political center during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Its ideology and culture have been heavily imbued with a religiosity-oriented Christianity. Consequently, all this and much more had a huge impact on art, which absorbed asceticism and piety.

1. Expansion and beginning of the empire

In 306 AD, Emperor Constantine Augustus assumed the reign of the Roman Empire, which would later be known as Constantine Magnus, or Constantine the Great (273-337 AD). A great warrior and commander of his armies, he expanded and united the vast geographic regions of the Empire. One of his first imperial decrees and an effective tool for uniting the empire was his decree that all people are free to practice their own religion. This secularism put an end to the persecution of Christians.

2. The great city of Constantinople

To ensure effective geographical control over the empire, Constantine moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, located at the main crossroads of Europe and Asia, a strong and important trading point. In 330, he converted to Christianity and renamed the city Constantinople - now known as Istanbul.

The Roman Empire changed under his rule. AD 330 marks the beginning of the Byzantine era, which lasted until AD 1453, when the Ottomans conquered the last remnants of the empire and the only remaining Byzantine city, Constantinople.

The city was built as the City of God-on-Earth. All of his art and architecture was centered around religious elements. As the new capital of the empire, it was also called the "New Rome", but retained Greek as its official language and the language of the Church. Moreover, his administration was purely theocratic.

Apart from the Sacred Palace, which was built as an imperial residence, and the hippodrome, which was also used for civic gatherings, most of the city's attractions are churches. The most magnificent architectural feat and the center of the newfound religion was the Cathedral of Divine Wisdom, the Church of Hagia Sophia.

Hagia Sophia remains a symbol of the Byzantine Empire, the spiritual center of the Orthodox Church, which has experienced a turbulent history. Under Ottoman rule, it was turned into a mosque until 1937, when the secular reformer Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum. As a museum, the monument has been constructively restored, and the original wall paintings are uncovered and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site of historic Istanbul. Only the recently revived Islamic identity of Turkey has declared it a place of Muslim worship. As of 24 July 2020, Hagia Sophia is a mosque.

3. Byzantine art: icons

The word icon comes from the Greek word eikon, which means image, and in this case it is the divine image of Christ, the Virgin Mary or other saints. This is not a painting or the work of an artist. She has divine properties and is an object of ritual worship. In accordance with the Council of Nicea in 787 AD, the Church decreed that worshipers can freely worship icons, since the honor given to the image passes to that which represents the image, and the one who worships the image worships the person depicted on it.

The Byzantines revered icons excessively. They decorated special, shrine-like corners of their homes, were in churches, and were even endowed with miraculous powers to answer prayers, heal the sick and provide protection. Icons were carried into battle and in solemn processions through the streets on special holidays. Icon worship remains a strong expression of the Eastern Orthodox faith and is still actively practiced today.

In the period from 726 to 843 A. D. inclusively, at the legislative level it was forbidden to reproduce and somehow demonstrate human figures on canvases. This phenomenon has come to be known as the "iconoclastic controversy." In turn, such paintings were considered objects bordering on idolatry, and the main symbol (the cross) was used directly as propaganda and decoration for churches throughout the country. The data obtained from archaeological groups who carried out excavations not only in Constantinople, but also in Nicaea, led to the conclusion that the icons painted at that time were carefully glued or destroyed, and therefore very few of them survived, being scattered throughout the kingdom.

Unfortunately, not many images managed to get through this period of struggle with them. Most of the icons were preserved directly thanks to one of the monasteries located in Egypt, on Mount Sinai. Soon there were found woven images and miniatures that were minted directly on coins of the early period.

The above image shows the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the end of the period of struggle with icons and their actual restoration "in rights" towards the end of 843. The central upper part is occupied by the Mother of God Odigitria, written, as it is believed, by the Evangelist Lucas, and kept until that moment in the Odigon monastery in the capital of Byzantium.

The icons were depicted on different materials, but most were painted on wood, egg tempera and gold leaf covered with gesso (a mixture of white paint, consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment) and linen. The backrest was mostly bare wood, with two horizontal panels. Their sizes ranged from miniatures to large wooden panels covering the walls of churches. The import of Byzantine icons created a demand in the West for alla greca and stimulated a revival of panels in Europe.

The wooden panel-shaped prototype of the Hodegetria (pointing the way), which is attributed to the evangelist Saint Lucas, is considered symbolic, one of the most popular Byzantine religious images in the whole world. This image was widely copied throughout the country, and had a significant impact on all subsequent images of the Virgin with the Child, which appeared a little later, during the Renaissance in Western culture.

4. Religious books and parchments

Constantine the Great founded the first imperial library in Constantinople, and over the centuries many libraries were established throughout the empire, mostly in monasteries, where works were copied and stored for millennia.

Education and literacy were highly prized in the Byzantine state. The aristocratic elite, secular and spiritual, were great patrons and supporters of book art. The development of a codex, the earliest type of manuscript in the form of a modern book (that is, a collection of written pages stitched together along one side), was a major innovation of the early Byzantine era.

The above codex of the four Gospels contains passages that were read in church on Sundays, Saturdays, and weekdays. It consists of 325 parchment sheets and is cut. The text is expanded into two columns, with notation written in upright, rounded, meticulous small print, which echoes the style of the second half of the 11th and early 12th centuries. This codex is one of the most densely decorated Byzantine four-gangelian codes. It is illustrated with full-page portraits of the evangelists Matthew, Mark and Lucas (image of John was removed), depicting them as Christian scribes and philosophers on the throne.

Libraries of Byzantine and post-Byzantine books and manuscripts have survived to this day on Mount Athos, the Monastic Community on the Athos Peninsula in Greece, an Orthodox landmark of theology, where women and children are still not allowed to come and gather in this region. The entire community is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as protected.

Athos and its twenty monasteries to this day are under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Their depositories and churches have preserved rich collections of artifacts, rare books, ancient documents and works of art of great artistic and historical value.

A large collection of manuscripts is also kept in the famous Eastern Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, one of the earliest surviving monasteries built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I.

Psalms, collections of hymns, were popular books and part of liturgical rituals in churches. The semantics of illustration is important, since in all types of iconography, objects are depicted according to strict rules established by the church.

In the illustration above, Christ in the center, as the universal leader (Pantokrator), represents God. The pairs of birds over the headdress and in the ornate initial letter of the text signify the dual nature of Christ, equally man and God.

5. Byzantine gold

Gold and gems were abundant in the Byzantine Empire due to its strategic location and the power it exercised in the region.

Jewelry, like all forms of art, had to adhere to strict religious rules and standards. The cross was the main jewel that people wore to practice their faith. Gold and silver coins were minted in memory of the reign of each emperor. Gold and precious stones were used to decorate the clothes of the emperor, the elite of the imperial court and echelons of the church hierarchy.

The official liturgical vestment (sakkos in Greek) was worn by Bishop Melenikon, a representative of the church vestment worn in the Byzantine era and is still used by the Orthodox Church. The robe depicts a double-headed eagle, the emblem of the Church and the Empire, the apostles and the Virgin Mary sitting on the throne and holding the baby Christ in their arms.

When Constantine became emperor of the Roman Empire, he abolished the punishment by crucifixion in order to appease the feelings of Christian citizens. When he converted to Christianity and claimed to have unearthed the original crucifixion of Christ in Jerusalem, he accepted it as a symbol of his empire.

Since then, the symbol of the Holy Cross has entered deeply into Byzantine art and adorns architectural structures in abundance. It was also a revered item that every Christian should own; in the Orthodox tradition, the first cross was presented to a person on the day of his baptism in order to remain in his possession for the rest of his life.

Byzantine coins were widely used for commercial transactions, but also served as the main instrument of imperial propaganda. The images imprinted on them - the emperor, members of his family, Christ, angels, saints and the cross - promoted the idea that the Byzantine state exists by divine right and under the auspices of God. Coins made of gold, silver and copper were minted under the strict control of the imperial power.

This gold belt, probably worn as an insignia, consists of gold coins and medallions. Emperor Maurice Tiberius (582-602) appears on medallions, probably minted at his accession to the throne in 583. All coins are minted by KONOB (pure gold of Constantinople), which indicates that they were minted in the capital.

6. Fall of Byzantium

In 1453, the Byzantine Empire ceased to exist. The Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, the last and most emblematic stronghold of the empire.

The fall of Constantinople came at a time when various Italian city-states were undergoing a cultural renaissance, later called the Renaissance. In 1453, the capital of Byzantium fell under the onslaught of the Ottoman army, and this was the actual end of the Byzantine Empire, which had existed for almost a thousand years. Greek scholars and artists fled to Italy, where they influenced the direction and course of the Renaissance. Greek education, the spread of the ancient Greek language and the revival of classical and Hellenistic cultures positively contributed to the revival of the arts, literature and sciences.

The fall of Constantinople and the subsequent Ottoman presence in European lands also changed the geopolitics of the Mediterranean region and the continent as a whole.

The Byzantine heritage still reminds us that the Byzantine Empire was a powerful mixture of Ancient Greek, Roman and Christian culture that flourished for ten centuries in Eastern Europe. It covered various lands and peoples, vast areas of Russia: from Armenia to Persia and from Coptic Egypt to the entire Islamic world. So the legacy of the Divine Art, which the Byzantine Empire endowed the world with, can be seen at the respective exhibitions.

About, who the Etruscans were, how they lived and how they became famous - can be read in the next article. This amazing and rather ancient community still attracts the attention of many historians and scientists, and their culture and art, even today, is of great value and interest for modern people.