Everyday Life in Byzantium Page 7
21 Prelate in bishop’s robes presenting a model church to the Almighty
If the Great Palace was the heart of the Empire, containing as it did within its walls the emperor, his family and some of the nation’s most sacred religious relics (such as Moses’s staff), then the cathedral of Haghia Sophia can be described as its arteries and life-blood. If few of the poor could use the cathedral as their regular place of worship, none could penetrate within the palace enclosure. The cathedral was scarcely less effective than the emperor and patriarch in animating the faith which, to the end, was the mainspring of Byzantium’s existence. This was not entirely due to the unparalleled splendour of the building’s interior, though its great dome did create a visual image of heaven, and its rich furnishings and decorations did mirror an almost celestial majesty; nor was it wholly owing to the beauty of the liturgy performed by priests dressed in their sumptuous vestments. More important were the numerous relics which had been assembled there over the years, even though the holiest of all these, the Virgin’s robe and girdle had, at Justinian’s order, been moved from the church of SS Peter and Paul to that of St Mary of the Blachernae. When the Latins occupied Constantinople they did not hesitate to take most of Haghia Sophia’s relics as well as the Virgin’s robe and girdle, even though the latter had come to be regarded as the capital’s palladium or guardian power, serving to protect Constantinople in the same way as the wooden image of Pallas had ensured the safety of ancient Troy. As such both relics were carried round the walls of Constantinople whenever the city was threatened by invaders. The Byzantines never forgave the Latins for these thefts, which included a number of their finest reliquaries. Among the most prized of these were those in the form of tiny churches. The cathedral’s other treasured relics consisted of a number of miracle-working icons; perhaps the most valued of these was the Sacred Mandelion, the ‘Christ not painted by human hands’ of Abgar’s legend, which had been captured by Emperor Romanus Lecapenus in Edessa in 943 and brought back to the capital in triumph. A huge crowd had lined the Mese to watch its ceremonial entry into Constantinople. Many a humble worshipper poured out his heart before the icon when it had been installed in a place of honour in Haghia Sophia. But, as the mother church of Orthodoxy, the cathedral also opened its arms to the saints of younger Orthodox states, in the case of Russia displaying an icon of the saintly brothers Boris and Gleb for her pilgrims to worship.
By the year 612, 80 priests, 150 deacons, 40 deaconesses, 70 sub-deacons, 150 readers, 25 cantors or singers and 65 door keepers were attached to the cathedral of Haghia Sophia in addition to the patriarch and his deputy, the Syneculla, as well as a large number of cleaners. At the time the royal keeper of documents, the Great Chartophylax, still acted as the cathedral’s librarian. Soon, however, the size of the archives made such demands on his time that he was unable to combine both duties. Relinquishing his responsibilities at court he became full-time librarian to the cathedral and secretary-in-chief to the patriarch. His new duties entitled him to stand near the royal doors of the iconostasis at the start of the communion service held during a pontifical mass.
22 A detail of the Pala d’Oro
Justinian installed a very ornate altar in Haghia Sophia and as a result elaborate and costly altars soon became popular. The finest to survive is the twelfth-to-fourteenth-century example known as the Pala D’Oro on account of the mass of jewelled and cloisonné enamel decorations which adorn its gold ground; it was especially made for the cathedral of St Mark in Venice, where it is still to be seen. It was probably also Justinian who evolved the earliest form of the iconostasis, once again for use in Haghia Sophia. His version was very different in appearance from the iconostasis which we have come to associate with Orthodox churches. Prior to Justinian the iconostasis was little more than a barrier of carved marble, stone or wooden panels set between pillars to separate the altar from the body of the church. It is thought that Justinian placed medallions of the Saviour with St John on His left and the Virgin on His right on the cross-piece connecting the central pillars, above the royal doors, as they are called, which open on to the altar. In about the fourteenth century this idea was elaborated, almost certainly in some densely wooded region such as Mount Athos or northern Russia, the partition being transformed into a screen which separated the altar from the rest of the church, and formed a frame for icons which were to be arranged in it according to a carefully prescribed order.
Amongst Greeks the word icon means image in the sense of a portrait, but it has come to be used throughout the world to describe any form of pictorial rendering of either a scene or personages associated with the story of the Gospels, though more especially to describe the wooden panel paintings of a religious character made for the use of members of the Orthodox Church. These panel paintings were first produced in very early Christian times. When the faith was made legal their popularity grew and churches soon became filled with them; icons of especially venerated personages were placed in chapels dedicated to them or else set up on a sort of lectern which had first been covered by a richly embroidered textile or precious fabric. Icons of the month were always displayed in that manner, the lectern bearing them being placed close to the altar. Icons were also widely used in private houses, being set up in the corner of a room, above a bed or in a private chapel. The faithful prayed to the saint whose figure was represented on the panel—often his patron saint—in the hope that he would intercede on his behalf in heaven with the Almighty. The icon acted as a go-between, and certain icons came to be credited with miraculous powers. Like many another emperor, Romanus III (1028-34) carried a miraculous icon of the Virgin with him when campaigning, in the hope that Christ’s mother would guide and protect his troops.
Though the Church had always striven to emphasise that icons were nothing more than pictorial representations of holy personages, the illiterate members of the congregation often came to confuse the painted figures with the real characters. The veneration with which they treated the pictures gave rise to fears of a revival of idolatry. No doubt influenced to some extent by both the Jewish and Muslim disapproval of all forms of figural representations in religious art, those who most feared the revival of idolatry urged the abolition of icons and the use of Christian symbols in their place. These people were known as iconoclasts. By the year 726 they formed so strong a party as to arouse fierce opposition. The country became divided on the issue—the emperor supporting the iconoclasts, many leading clerics opposing them. The ban which the emperor succeeded in imposing on all forms of figural representations in religious art was especially resented by St John of Damascus, a leading cleric of the day who lived in Muslim-occupied territory. His views were shared somewhat later by St Theodore, abbot of the Studite monastery in Constantinople. Both continued to uphold the use of icons. In the long run the iconodules, as the supporters of icons were called, proved the stronger party and in 843 Manuel III (nicknamed the Drunkard) was obliged to legalise religious figural art. Icons could once again be used on condition that ‘the distinction between the worship due to God and the veneration due to created things were carefully observed’. The lifting of the ban represented a distinct victory for the Church, adding considerably to its influence and prestige.
Regardless of the fears of those who supported the iconoclasts, belief in the value of relics and in miracles remained as strong in late Byzantine times as it had been during earlier periods, when these sentiments could have been attributed to the influence of pagan practices. From its foundation to its fall relics were passionately venerated in Constantinople. In many cases a church’s relics were kept in a separate structure called a martyrion. It often adjoined the church and special services were held in it on the relevant saint’s day. From the fifth century onwards it also became customary to dedicate a church to a particular martyr or group of martyrs; Justinian set the example when he built perhaps the loveliest of all Constantinople’s early churches and dedicated it to the two martyred saints, Sergius and Bacc
hus. At much the same time Justinian introduced at Haghia Sophia the practice, which came to be widely followed, of building a baptistery as an annexe to a church.
23 Interior of the cathedral of Hagia Sophia (532-7) Front a photograph taken when it was tried as a mosque
24 The monastery of St Dionysiou on Mount Athos seen from the sea
Most of the laws which the Church had evolved were collected in a work entitled the Nomocanon, in 14 sections. It dealt with problems ranging from questions of a purely religious character to those concerning the administration of Church property; 85 supplementary clauses dealt with matter of dogma and a final section contained the secular laws applied by the Church. The entire code was based on a collection of laws which had been assembled in book form in the sixth century by John Scollasticus of Antioch, but which had been revised and augmented soon after by a patriarch of Constantinople.
In addition to disseminating the true faith, combating false doctrines with unflagging energy, administering its property and, on certain specific occasions, administering the Christian idea of justice, the Church’s main duty, at any rate in so far as laymen were concerned, lay in its ability to justify the promise which it held out of a better way of life for all the faithful both in this world and in the next. It was this promise which entitled the Church to share in every aspect of daily life, and it was the extent to which it succeeded in improving the lot of the underprivileged, whether they were women, the old and ailing or the poor, which gave support to its assurance of celestial bliss. It was also this promise which led the Byzantines to attach more importance throughout their history to the salvation of their souls than to physical or material well-being, an outlook which coloured their attitude to life and dictated their behaviour, making them look to the Church in all things. The Church took advantage of this to participate fully in their lives, baptising them in a baptistery or a church, confirming them, often in a special hall adjoining a baptistery, marrying them in a great cathedral, parish church or private chapel, administering extreme unction to them as they lay dying and burying the departed in a public cemetery or private mausoleum. In addition, the Church blessed the houses in which the faithful lived as well as their cattle and fields; it held harvest festivals for farmers, it blessed the fishing fleets as they set sail, and performed similar ceremonies at the river heads where supplies of food and water were taken. In this way, the Church ruled over the people’s thoughts and imaginations, and served throughout the centuries as the pivot of their lives.
Because of the abject poverty in the towns the dispensing of charity quickly became one of the Church’s chief functions. Even so, poverty remained so acute that when, in the seventh century, Patriarch John of Alexandria was persuaded by a rich landowner to accept the gift of an expensive quilt the prelate spent a sleepless night asking himself as he lay cosily wrapped in it, ‘How many are there at this minute who are grinding their teeth because of the cold?’ As soon as dawn broke he rose and went to the market to sell his quilt. He had little difficulty in doing so; with the money he bought 144 blankets which he had distributed by nightfall among the city’s numerous down-and-outs.
The Church founded, staffed and ran orphanages, poor houses, homes for the aged, dispensaries and hospitals. Its example was followed by the emperors, members of their family and their courtiers. Michael IV (1034-41) was not content with establishing a hospice for beggars but he also built a large, admirably appointed and furnished home for prostitutes. When it was ready, in an attempt to save their souls, he made it known that all those who wished to give up prostitution but dreaded poverty and discomfort could, by becoming nuns, reside in luxury and never suffer want in the house he had built for them. A surprisingly large number availed themselves of the offer. Early in the twelfth century—perhaps modelling himself to some extent on the example set by the Seljukid conquerors of Anatolia—John II Comnenus (1118-43) founded in Constantinople an institution which embodied all the most up-to-date ideas on state aid and medicine. It consisted of two hospitals, one reserved for men and the other for women; each contained 10 wards, each of 50 beds. In either case one ward was reserved for surgical cases and one for those in need of long-term nursing. The staff consisted of 12 male doctors and one fully qualified woman as well as a woman surgeon. Each of the male doctors was given 12 qualified assistants and eight helpers, but the woman doctors were entitled to only four qualified assistants and two helpers. Two pathologists were also attached to the medical staff and a dispensary treated out-patients. Vegetarian meals were available for those of the inmates who desired them and a school was attached to the hospital in which the sons of all members of its medical staff were trained as doctors. In addition the foundation included a home for old men, another for epileptics and one for illegitimate and orphaned children. Two churches built in its grounds cared for the spiritual welfare of staff and residents alike.
The emperors, their families, their courtiers and the people as a whole expressed their devotion to the Church by showering gifts upon it. These often took the form of icons, precious vessels, fine copies of the Gospels, church furnishings and vestments, but they were often gifts or bequests of money or land. As a result the Church soon became very rich, acquiring vast estates and objects of great value as well as of real beauty. The Church generally found it most rewarding to entrust much of the land to the care of stewards or bailiffs, but occasionally an emperor would intervene and allot a church property to a layman to farm. The latter then became entitled to retain for himself, as a reward for administering the estate, part of the income it produced. From the eleventh century the Church made it a rule for all those who cultivated land belonging to the Church to pay their bishops a special tax known as the canonicum, furnishing part of it in kind and part in money. Although the tax helped to increase the Church’s already considerable wealth, the bulk of the country clergy failed to benefit from it; whether they were parish priests or chaplains to rich landlords, the majority remained abjectly poor; many were obliged to work in the fields beside the poorest of their parishioners for a living. Those serving rich absentee landlords in the capacity of chaplains were even worse off than the village priests, for their master, or (as was more often the case) group of masters, regarded them as tied to the chapels in which they officiated and therefore expected them, not unlike serfs, to continue in office even when the chapel had become the property of a new owner following upon the sale of the estate to which it was attached.
Till the sixth century the difference between a rich and a poor parish church was clearly reflected in the clothes of the officiating priests, for there was nothing until that date to distinguish the clothes worn by laymen and clerics; every individual dressed according to his station and his means. However, in the sixth century, civilian dress started to evolve, the Roman toga ceding its place to garments of a different style. The clergy refused to follow the newest trends and as a result the clothes they wore altered very slowly, only gradually developing into the robes which came to be accepted as ecclesiastic. The evolution took several decades. Thus, in the sixth-century mosaics at Ravenna, the priests shown standing close to the Emperor Justinian are represented dressed in plain white garments not so very different from a toga. After that date the rather severe clerical robes were adorned by certain distinctive features. The omophorion, a sort of scarf embroidered with crosses became part of a bishop’s costume. It was soon combined with a silk sticharion or main tunic, comparable to the albe of the western world, and a stole as well as with a rectangular shaped piece of stuff, originally a handkerchief, called an epigonation, worn at knee height. A bishop also carried a crozier and wore a round mitre. Suspended round his neck he displayed a reliquary, known as an encolpion, which reached to his chest. Deacons wore a distinctive type of scarf; called an orarion, it took the form of a single panel falling along the wearer’s left side. Bishops wore the epitrakilion which is best described as a stole held in at the waist by a belt, as well as long embroidered cuffs—e
pimanikia—and a chasuble. To begin with, only patriarchs were entitled to substitute the sakkos—a short tunic slit up the side and remarkable for its ornate sleeves—for a chasuble, but gradually metropolitans, and later still priests, were permitted to do likewise.
25 Priest wearing an omophorion
The splendour of Church vestments reached their height in the tenth century. Then the silk brocade or velvet robes worn by the officiating clergy were enhanced by trimmings often consisting of inset jewels and cloisonné enamels, as well as of embroidery executed in gold and silver thread, and shimmering many-coloured silks. Equally magnificent altar cloths, icon adornments and Gospel covers glowed in the light of innumerable candles, set in gold, silver, copper or bronze candlesticks. Some of these stood on altars; others, often of vast sizes, with their bases shaped like great balls or lion claws, were placed in the body of the church, whilst bronze rings of varying sizes were suspended from the ceilings by chains to serve as candelabra. Yet the altar remained the focus of all eyes for it glistened with an array of crosses, chalices, patens and spoons, all exquisitely fashioned. Metal fans used for brushing flies off the relics and for fanning the incense, and censers in a variety of shapes and sizes also contributed to the splendour of the church interiors.
But in spite of all this magnificence, and the numerous duties and tasks allotted to the clergy, the most ardent amongst them failed to find ultimate satisfaction in serving their Church as priests. In a society where both laymen and priests based their existence wholly on Christianity every action came to be judged from a religious standpoint. Every individual strove to avoid committing a heresy in order to qualify for admission to paradise, while more and more people tended to concentrate their thoughts on the fate in store for their souls in the world beyond the grave. In their eyes it became more important to ensure the salvation of their own souls, and, by their example, that of others than to improve the earthly existence of their fellow-men. People who thought along these lines often came to believe that their prime duty did not consist so much in exerting themselves on behalf of others as in ridding themselves of evil by mortifying their flesh.