by Cyril Mango
Monastery church of St Sophia at Trebizond, founded by the emperor Manuel I (1238–63). Exterior from the south. While basically Byzantine both in its architecture and painted decoration, St Sophia shows a curious intrusion of Caucasian, Italian, and even Seljuk elements.
This acceptance of the vernacular must also be a factor behind the other feature shared by all the works mentioned so far, with the exception of Makhairas, and that is that they are written in verse. The metre used is a rhythmic fifteen-syllable line that first appeared in the tenth century, with no clear classical and learned antecedents. The lack of classical models meant that there were no established rules for its use. It would thus have been accessible to writers and audiences used to the patterns of everyday speech to whose rhythms and forms it was well suited. So well suited was the fifteen-syllable line to the rhythms of speech that it became in effect the national metre of modern Greek literature. It was given a subtlety that the earlier examples lacked in the flexible patterns of the Erotokritos (1590–1610), Cornaros’ romantic epic that, as much as Chortatsis’ dramas, epitomizes the social and literary fusions of Venetian Crete. In subsequent centuries the conscious compositions in the fifteen-syllable line of writers as diverse as Solomos (1798–1857), Palamas (1859–1943), Ritsos (1909–90), or even Elytis (1911–96) draw on an epic and ballad tradition of uncertain antiquity but with roots in an oral tradition which received a great impulse in the period of the Franco-Greek societies.
The Palace of the Despots at Mistra, more western than Byzantine in style, is a three-storey rectangular building with a spacious throne room at the top. It is similar in disposition to the palace of Nymphaeum and Tekfur Sarayι at Constantinople.
In many cases the areas which saw the creation of these texts are apparent from the texts themselves: this is so for Cyprus (Makhairas), Crete (Sachlikis, Dellaportas), the Peloponnese (the Chronicle of the Morea). In other cases, like the War of Troy, there are no clear statements in the text so one has to fall back on arguments that a work of such length and so closely connected to a French original must have been due to a patron operating in an area where there was close French and Greek contact, in this instance perhaps the Morea in the fourteenth century under the later Angevins. In other cases again it is very likely that the author was resident in Constantinople itself, since that city was also not immune to the pressures of a multicultural world. For many years there had been substantial communities of Italian traders, most notably the Genoese in Galata, while the imperial house had continued the practice, begun in the twelfth century, of marriages into western families. Theodore Palaiologos, the Marquis of Montferrat, for example, son of Andonikos II, eventually became virtually indistinguishable from any other Italian noble-man, and himself made a Latin version of the treatise on government that he wrote in Constantinople in 1327.
The probable literary activity of a cousin of Theodore’s, Andronikos Palaiologos, highlights a number of the issues raised by the texts from this period. This Andronikos is generally taken to be the author of the romance Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoi, on the basis of a not particularly close paraphrase in which a romance is attributed to him. Kallimachos is on the fringes of the texts we have been considering—it is in verse, it is linguistically at the lower end of an acceptable register of Greek and is full of folk-tale elements, though the Frankish features are minimal. But this is the only romance for which we can even begin to think we can identify the author.
Built in French Gothic style, the cathedral of St Nicholas at Famagusta (first half of the fourteenth century) has served as a mosque since 1571. It was here that the Lusignan kings of Cyprus were crowned kings of Jerusalem.
Facing: The Crucifixion, inscribed in Latin, on a two-sided ‘Crusader icon’ of the thirteenth century in the monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai.
The Byzantine composition of the Deisis in Queen Melisende’s Psalter, executed at Jerusalem probably in the 1130s. One of the four artists who illustrated it has signed his name on Christ’s footstool (Basilius me fecit).
A surprising amount of the Franco-Greek writing is anonymous: in effect all the romances and all the history apart from Machairas, though none of the Cretan personal poetry. Here perhaps the role of the verse medium comes into play again for there are many stereotypical lines whose presence can perhaps be best explained as a reference to a traditional oral style which demanded anonymity, however elevated the writer’s social status.
In the domain of the visual arts we also find from the twelfth-thirteenth century onwards a fusion of Byzantine and Latin elements. Most visibly, buildings in the western style were put up in Latin principalities and colonies, not only castles, but also churches, abbeys, and mansions. At Constantinople the Italian trading colonies, it seems, started erecting their own churches before 1204, and there was certainly some building activity in the period of the Latin Kingdom. The Genoese colony of Pera, established in 1303 on the opposite shore of the Golden Horn, was built in the Italian style. Mistra, capital of the Despotate of the Morea, was initially a Frankish foundation, and its multistorey Palace of the Despots was more western than Byzantine. In Cyprus the splendid cathedrals of Nicosia and Famagusta, not to mention a great number of other important foundations, were erected by French architects in the Gothic style. Greeks, therefore, came into daily contact with a tradition of architecture to which they had not been previously exposed and which was technologically more advanced than their own. The selective borrowings they made—the belfry, the pointed arch, decorative machicolations, possibly the stained glass window—show their willingness to learn. Figural sculpture, except for rather flat relief icons, had been underdeveloped in the Byzantine tradition and now assumed greater prominence under Frankish influence, e.g. in funerary monuments, although full-scale statues were avoided.
In painting, the foremost medium of Byzantine art and, theologically, the most sensitive, influences appear to have flowed mainly in the opposite direction. When, fifty years ago, Hugo Buchthal was able to reconstruct a school of manuscript illuminators who were active in Jerusalem and Acre in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he found that these French and Italian artists copied or adapted Byzantine iconographic models, while at the same time retaining typically western features such as full-page decorated initials. It seems, therefore, that they recognized the prestige or superiority of Byzantine figure style. More recently a large group of ‘Crusader icons’, also painted by westerners according to the conventions of Byzantine iconography, has been identified in the monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, a pilgrimage centre that had at the time closer links with the West than with Constantinople. Most strikingly, a fragmentary cycle of the life of St Francis of the 1240s or 1250s has come to light in a church of Constantinople that must have been converted to the Latin rite.
The age of the Palaiologoi, in spite of its political and economic decadence, saw a remarkable flowering of religious painting in a distinctive style that came to the attention of European scholars about a hundred years ago. The frescoes of Mistra and the mosaics of the monastery of Chora (Kariye Camii) at Constantinople were seen to bear an uncanny resemblance to the art of the Italian primitives like Pietro Cavallini, Cimabue, and Duccio. What came to be called the ‘Byzantine question’, i.e. who came first, has long been debated without being brought to a complete resolution. We now know that the Palaiologan style crystallized in c.1260: we first meet it in the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Sopoćani in Serbia, and something not unlike it in the church of St Sophia at Trebizond of about the same date. We assume without hard proof that these two monuments, standing as they do at opposite ends of the Byzantine periphery, were decorated by artists from the ‘centre’—but where exactly was the centre in the 1260s? The prevalent view is that the Palaiologan style, in spite of some iconographic borrowings from the West (e.g. the Tree of Jesse), was of Byzantine origin, going back to very old models, in particular illuminated manuscripts of the tenth century. If that is so, one may see it as a
conscious effort to create a school of Orthodox religious painting grounded in ancient precedent, yet satisfying a new taste for a fuller and more picturesque narrative style. It certainly emerged in a context of interaction between eastern and western artistic traditions.
While losing some of its initial freshness, the Palaiologan style remained to the end the dominant form of Byzantine painting. It did not lead to the rapid development we witness in Italy. By the time Giotto painted the Arena Chapel (c.1306)—some ten years before the mosaics of Chora—Italy was well ahead and had nothing further to learn from Byzantium. By the middle of the fourteenth century, in any case, commissions must have been drying up at Constantinople, thus forcing artists to seek their livelihood elsewhere. The most famous of them, Theophanes the Greek, emigrated to Moscow, where he trained many disciples including Andrei Rublev. Others moved to Crete, which became the most active centre of Byzantine painting until its conquest by the Turks. Recent research in Venetian archives has revealed the activity of a large group (over a hundred) of named painters, who produced mostly icons, but occasionally did murals as well. They worked in a quasi-industrial manner both for export and home consumption, using stencils, which were handed down from generation to generation. What is particularly interesting is that they were able to switch from a Byzantine to a late Gothic manner depending on their clientele. In other words, their Orthodox customers eschewed western icons and vice versa. On the plane of individual religiosity the two traditions remained distinct.
Detail of a highly damaged St Francis cycle in the church of the Virgin Kyriotissa (Kalenderhane Camii) at Constantinople. Painted no later than the 1250s, this is one of the earliest known cycles of the life of St Francis of Assisi, canonized in 1228.
Italian painting was, however, bound to prevail in the end. In the sixteenth century western infiltration, mostly through the medium of engravings, was still sporadic. The painter Theophanes the Cretan, who executed several large cycles on the Meteora and Mount Athos in the years 1527–46, followed in the main Byzantine tradition, but copied the Massacre of the Innocents from an engraving, after Raphael, by Marcantonio Raimondi. Also on Mount Athos the Apocalypse cycles in the monasteries of Lavra and Dionysiou were inspired by Dürer’s woodcuts. By 1600 the Byzantine style was in terminal decline. The most famous Greek painter hailing from Crete, Domenico Theotokopoulos (El Greco), started his career with some rather Italianate icons, but was then completely won over by contemporary Mannerism. Despite claims to the contrary, the only Byzantine element of his famous paintings was his signature in Greek lettering.
Facing: The Journey to Bethlehem in the monastery of Chora invites comparison with Giotto’s nearly contemporary Flight into Egypt in the Arena Chapel, Padua. While the composition and rocky landscape are broadly similar, the Italian painting has figures that are more statuesque and step on real ground instead of tiptoeing on a stage set.
Chronology
Constantine I (306–37)
312
Constantine defeats Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge
313
Edict of religious Toleration; death of Maximinus
324
Constantine defeats Licinius at Chrysopolis; foundation of Constantinople
325
First General Council (Nicaea I)
330
Inauguration of Constantinople
337
Constantine’s baptism
Constantius II (337–61)
340
Constans defeats Constantine II
350
Revolt of Magnentius and murder of Constans
355
Julian made Caesar
Julian (361–3)
363
Julian invades Persia
Jovian (363–4)
363
Retreat from Persia; surrender of Nisibis
Valens (364–78)
365–6
Revolt of Procopius
378
Goths defeat Romans at Adrianople
Theodosius I (378–95)
381
Second General Council (Constantinople)
388
Usurper Maximus defeated
391
Edicts against paganism
394
Usurper Eugenius defeated
Arcadius (405–8)
408
Alaric invades Italy
Theodosius II (408–50)
410
Alaric sacks Rome
431
Third General Council (Ephesus)
439
Vandals capture Carthage
441–7
Victories of Attila in the Balkans
Marcian (450–7)
451
Fourth General Council (Chalcedon)
453
Death of Pulcheria and Attila
Leo I (457–74)
471
Overthrow of Aspar
Zeno (474–91)
475–6
Usurpation of Basiliscus
476
Deposition of Romulus Augustulus
484
Rebellion of Illus
Anastasius (491–518)
492–7
Isaurian revolt
502
Persians besiege Amida
505
Construction of Dara
513–15
Revolt of Vitalian
Justin I (518–27)
525
Destruction of Antioch by earthquake
Justinian I (527–65)
532
Nika riot; ‘everlasting’ peace with Persia
532–7
Construction of St Sophia
533–4
Belisarius reconquers North Africa
535–40
Belisarius in Italy
540
Sack of Antioch by Persians
542
Plague at Constantinople
544–9
Belisarius’ second expedition to Italy
548
Death of Theodora
552
Narses defeats Totila in Italy
553–4
Fifth General Council (Constantinople)
559
Kutrigurs invade Thrace
562
Peace with Persia
Justin II (565–78)
568
Lombard invasion of Italy
572
War with Persia
574
Tiberius named Caesar
577
Balkans invaded by Slavs and Avars
Tiberius II (578–82)
578
War with Persia resumed
582
Avars take Sirmium
Maurice (582–602)
587
Slav penetration into Peloponnese
590–1
Khusro II flees to Romans and is restored
602
Revolt of Balkan army
Phokas (602–10)
603
Persian war
608
Revolt of Heraclius in Carthage
Heraclius (610–41)
614
Persians capture Jerusalem
616
Persian invasion of Egypt
622
Hijra (flight of Muhammad to Medina)
623
Heraclius ambushed by Avars
626
Siege of Constantinople by Avars and Persians
627
Heraclius defeats Persians at Nineveh
628
Peace concluded with Persia
630
True Cross returned to Jerusalem
632
Death of Muhammad
636
Battle of Yarmuk
638
Arabs take Jerusalem
640
Arab conquest of Egypt
Constantine III, Heraclius III, and Heraklonas (641)
641
Ascendancy of Valentinus
Constans II (641–68)
647
Arab invasion of Asia Minor
655
Naval defeat
Constantine IV Pogonatus (668–85)
671–8
Constantinople blockaded by Arabs
c.680
Bulgarian state created
680–1
Sixth General Council (Constantinople)