Everyday Life in Byzantium Read online

  This attitude was not a wholly new one. It was the logical result of the inability, following upon the legalising of Christianity, to secure salvation by dying the death of a Christian martyr. Asceticism provided the only possible alternative to martyrdom, self-inflicted pain testing the spirit no less efficiently than imposed tortures. The concept of monasticism was already widespread in the Buddhist communities of Central Asia at the time when the Christian doctrine was first preached in the Holy Land; numerous Buddhist monasteries by that time numbered thousands of inmates. Their reputation had been carried westward by the traders engaged in transporting the precious bales of highly coveted silks along the caravan routes linking China to Europe, but the early Christians added a new element of stark asceticism to the discipline evolved by the Buddhist monks.

  The conception of a Christian ascetic’s way of life is essentially eastern, having originated in Egypt, probably some time in the third century. The fashion spread thence to Syria; ardent Christians retreated to the Egyptian desert in ever-growing numbers to live there as hermits, mortifying their bodies and curbing their natural appetites in an effort to emulate the saints in order, like them, to save their souls from perdition. They found encouragement in such pronouncements as St Simeon’s, that ‘saints shine on earth and become saints in heaven’ or John of Enchaita’s, who taught that ‘saints have the power of supplying what is lacking in life’. Anchorites withdrawing from the world of their fellow-men to live in caves or, as dendrites, in trees, fed off berries and grasses and spent their waking hours in prayer. Many tortured their bodies by self-inflicted wounds till the hallucinations they induced put their souls to tests as severe as those which they inflicted upon their flesh. Then, in about the year 384, a fervent Christian who had already tried his spirit by spending three years living the life of a solitary, devised an even more taxing penance for himself. He decided to spend the rest of his life standing on a column which he set up on the borders of Syria and Cilicia. Simeon thus became the first of the ‘Stylites’, as the dwellers on columns came to be known. Many men of unquenchable faith followed his example, but the stylite Daniel became the best known, for he ascended a column in Constantinople, mounting it at the age of 33 and remaining on it till his death in 493 at the age of 83. He was a follower of Simeon, and had his own disciples, interrupting his devotions twice a day to counsel and comfort them.

  Stylites spent their lives standing on columns some 40 cubits high and enclosed at the top by a rail to preserve them from falling when asleep. Never sitting or kneeling, they remained there never attending to their bodies, never indeed eating till a breeze, a passing bird, a traveller or disciple brought them a few berries or nuts, never cooked food. They endured the extremities of heat and cold, sometimes blinded by the sun, at other times covered by a coating of ice; in an age when cleanliness made no claim to godliness, such men as these lived in evil-smelling filth. At his death Daniel’s feet were worn away by the inflammation resulting from constant standing and by the microbes which fed on his wounds; his matted hair was alive with lice which he refrained from killing in order that they might serve as food for the passing birds. In contrast to solitaries, who made no effort to clothe themselves (St Onouphrios achieved holiness by growing a beard reaching to his ankles to cover his nakedness) some stylites wore a leather jerkin to conceal the upper part of their bodies. Daniel’s column was set into a platform which was reached by three steps; according to custom a ladder was put there to enable his senior disciple to hand him each evening his only meal of the day.

  26 Stylite with disciple

  In early Christian times lives spent in solitude, prayer and mortification were not exceptional. The acts of piety which ascetics performed became bywords in Byzantium and, in an effort to distinguish the true from the fabled, Emperor Justinian sent an observer called Palladius to Egypt, Palestine and Syria to examine the veracity of such accounts. Palladius conducted his inquiries with the meticulous care of a modem investigator, painstakingly reporting all he could learn about the experiences of solitaries, describing the hallucinations, temptations and sufferings which these half-starved, tormented creatures had endured, in each case noting whether the information had come to him at second hand or from the lips of a hermit whom he had himself interviewed.

  The hermits and solitaries who survived their self-imposed ordeals for any length of time attracted the attention of others who, in their longing to become eligible for entry into paradise, gradually settled beside them as their disciples, little by little forming monastic communities. St Anthony, if not the first, was assuredly the most influential of the early monks. However, the foundation of the first Christian monastery is attributed to a soldier called Pachomius, who became converted to Christianity and founded a monastery at Dendereh on the Nile during the opening years of the fourth century. By the end of his life, when monks were accepted as ‘the friends of God, whose lives and prayers carry special graces’, his foundation consisted of 11 houses, two of which were reserved for women. He was later sanctified. Nevertheless it was the monastery which Basil of Caesarea founded in the fourth century that came to serve as the model for such famous later foundations as the Studite monastery in Constantinople, St Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai, others in Cappadocia and many more on Mount Athos and elsewhere throughout the Orthodox world. (At Saccoudion on Mount Olympus a particularly severe penitential code was drawn up, which—as on Mount Athos—forbade females to enter the monastery.)

  With the establishment of monasteries the number of hermits rapidly declined, for abbots permitted only the most holy of their monks to live the life of solitaries. Instead, from as early as the fourth century, the system of laurae, meaning small groups of cells attached to a larger monastery, was developed in Palestine, and spread later to the rest of the Orthodox world. The earlier monasteries had been cenobitic foundations. In these an abbot ruled over monks who were not allowed any possessions; everything within the monastery was communally owned, and clean clothes were issued to all once a week from the monastery’s store. Food was communally cooked and eaten together in silence whilst one of the brethren read the Gospels aloud. A prayer was said at the start of the meal and another at the end. The senior monks were seated at the top end of the hall or trapeza, which was often rounded in shape to resemble the apse of a church, the others placing themselves at long tables, often built into the ground and made of stone or marble. The monks were divided into groups, according to their sanctity, the holiest fasting more stringently than the others, consuming only one meal a day, the evening one; this consisted of nothing cooked, but bread soaked for a week in water (not even oil), was their customary fare (though beans were allowed on the Church’s great festivals). Cenobitic monks were permitted only three baths a year unless their health made it necessary for them to have more. Their abbots could, dependent upon the monastery’s foundation charter, be appointed either by the founder of the institution, its bishop or its patriarch, or be elected by the brethren, in each case holding the appointment for life. Gradually, however, monasteries of a slightly different type came into existence, partly, it is thought, as a result of a monastery’s poverty, partly too because the monks came to feel that the communal tasks allotted to them in a cenobitic foundation interfered with their devotions. These houses came to be known as ‘idiorhythmic’ or self-governing ones. Their inmates did not lead a communal life and were ruled by an elected committee in place of an abbot. The monks were permitted to retain some private possessions. They lived in small communities headed by a superior. As in the cenobitic foundations a junior monk was attached to a senior, the connexion lasting till severed by death. Each was allowed two cells, one to serve as a bedroom and the other as a living-room; a senior monk’s attendant, whether a novice or junior monk, cooked his master’s food in the outer cell. The food consisted of vegetables and oil issued from the monastery’s store two or three times a week. Each monk ate his meals in solitude, except on Christmas Day, Easter Sunda
y or the anniversary of the monastery’s saint’s day when the monks assembled in the dining hall; on these feast days they also celebrated mass together, but on all other days they performed their devotions in private.

  All those who wished to enter a monastery, whether they were men or women, had to undergo severe vocational tests before being admitted. Special regulations governed the acceptance of slaves, who could not be enticed away from their masters. Furthermore, runaway slaves had to be restored to their owners if traced within three years of their escape. Nor could anyone who had become engaged to marry contract out of the engagement in order to enter a religious order. Girls could enter a convent at the age of 10, but they were not allowed finally to renounce the world till they were 16 years old. Monks required only six months’ novitiate before taking their final vows, yet it was almost impossible for them to transfer from one monastery to another. Until the sixth century they could be employed as civil servants on condition that they returned to their respective monasteries at the end of each day. Monasteries had only one gate, the sole key being entrusted to an elder who acted as porter.

  27 Abbess and nuns of the Convent of the Virgin in the Protovestiary, Constantinople

  Those living in monasteries had certain specific duties allotted to them either within the monastery’s buildings or its grounds. Nevertheless, their time was largely devoted to prayer and meditation, with a minimum of sleep or food. Their lives were regulated by lengthy services which all the monks were obliged to attend. These were held in the monastery’s cathedral church. The first started at midnight to mark the approach of a new day, and ended at dawn, when the celebration which followed coincided with the unlocking of the entrance gate, to enable the local population to attend. A meal, often the only one, followed. Sometimes services were also held at prime, tierce and nones, but it was more usual to dispense with these in favour of an afternoon one starting at four o’clock and lasting till seven, while on the eve of a festival prayers began at dusk and continued until midday. The discipline or rule which came to be accepted as the basis of monastic life had been imposed verbally in the fourth century by St Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea. Though he prescribed poverty and the dispensing of charity, the rapid spread of monasticism and the acquisition by many monasteries of vast estates brought great wealth to many foundations. From the seventh century imperial and private gifts of land were often of immense value; by the eighth century, half the population of Byzantium is believed to have taken vows—a development which served in its turn to increase the size of the Church’s landed and monetary holdings.

  Though some monasteries were founded by emperors and many more by patriarchal decree, private individuals could establish monasteries with the consent of their local bishop. Many in fact did so, withdrawing late in life to the monastery they had founded in order to end their days in it as monks. Though monks were buried at death their bodies were exhumed after three years; by then, except in the case of saints, their bones would be bare of flesh. Wine was poured over the clean bones and a funeral service held after which all the bones with the exception of the skull were reburied in the monastery’s communal grave. The dead man’s name, together with the dates of his birth and death, would be inscribed on the skull which would then be placed on a shelf in the monastery’s mortuary, to remain there for all time beside the skulls of his brethren.

  Many abuses inevitably accompanied the rapid growth of monasticism. Though far from universal these were sufficiently serious in the ninth century to arouse the concern of St Theodore of Studion. This energetic cleric and ardent reformer attempted to end the laxity which reigned in certain monasteries by reviving St Basil’s rule and adding to it new regulations of his own. Under his direction the monastery of Studios in Constantinople became a leading centre of learning and reform, and young monks were trained there in a school of high academic standards run on strict religious lines. Nevertheless, monasteries continued to acquire ever more land and to attract so many inmates as to endanger the existence of the state. In an attempt to check their growth Emperor Nicephorus Phocas passed a law in 961 limiting the size of monastic land-holdings and forbidding the acceptance of further monetary gifts and the creation of new monasteries. This law proved impossible to enforce, more especially since the government itself encouraged monks to settle along the Empire’s frontiers, to act there as outposts both of Christianity and of defence. As a result the old abuses persisted uncurbed. Yet even when at their worst the monasteries proved to be valuable centres of enlightenment; at best they became strongholds of the Christian virtues and centres of learning and the arts.

  The overthrow of the iconoclasts greatly stimulated the literary and artistic creativeness of the monks. A revived interest in Plato, though strongly disapproved of by the senior clergy, encouraged the development of a mystical philosophy which may well have had an effect upon the thought of such twelfth-century western mystics and reformers as Bernard of Clairvaux. The most far-reaching influence on Orthodox thought, learning and monasticism was, however, established by the cleric Alexius when, in the year 963, he founded the first monastery on Mount Athos, the Lavra. Alexius was a friend of Emperor Nicephorus Phocas and took this step with his full approval. The founding of the Lavra was to bring prosperity and undying fame to the peninsula. Furthermore, because of the friendship of Alexius and the emperor the entire peninsula was placed under imperial patronage, and the appointment of the protos or head of Mount Athos rested with the emperor till the year 1312, when, by means of a chrysobull, Andronicus II transferred the peninsula from the Crown’s jurisdiction to that of the patriarchate. Although its earlier link with the Crown had given Athos’s religious community autonomy, its transfer to the Church was probably responsible for ensuring its independence under the Turks, enabling the monks to continue to live, as they do today, according to the exact rule imposed upon them by the founder of the Lavra 1,000 years ago. The close relationship which existed between the monks of Mount Athos and the Constantinopolitan court during the first 400 years of the community’s existence was not at all unusual at the time. Another notable example is afforded by the monastery of St John on the island of Patmos. It too was founded under royal patronage in the twelfth century by the monk Christodoulos, its first abbot and a close friend of Emperor Alexius Comnenus. The charters which confirmed the privileges to which an imperial foundation was entitled took the form of chrysobulls. Written on a large sheet of parchment by a skilled calligrapher, they were generally embellished with illuminated headings and capital letters and carried the seal as well as the signature of the monastery’s imperial founder.

  28 The dish of Paternus AD 518 81

  Mount Athos was at the height of its prosperity from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Inspired by the example set by the Lavra, by the beauty of the peninsula and by their faith in the monastic way of life, the monks had by then built there complexes of astonishing loveliness. These were perched on 123 of the mountain’s precarious ledges. In addition to these monastic enclaves groups of hermits, living under a superior in lavras and hermitages established on its wooden slopes, raised the population to some 8,000. Under the direction of its abbot each monastery flourished as an independent, highly complex community with its individual economy; thus each was responsible for its own finances, each cultivated its own land, each provided all the food and drink needed by its inmates even to the extent of furnishing travellers, pilgrims or those taking a retreat on the Holy Mountain with at least three days’ free hospitality. In addition, each monastery had its own library and librarians; its treasury and scriptorium, where the liturgical books it needed were written, illuminated and bound; its artistic workshops and studios; craftsmen, builders, herdsmen, gardeners and farmers. Each monastery ran its own dispensary and orphanage together with its school, and also provided its own choir. Clothing was communally owned, a weekly change of garments being issued to each man. But, from the twelfth century, the religious community as a whole was govern
ed by an assembly, a Holy Synod; later a community or kinotis evolved, with an epistasia forming the smallest, inner governing body.

  The Holy Mountain was dedicated by its monastic inhabitants to the Virgin. In her honour, the Lavra’s founder decided to forbid any female creature, whether human or animal, from setting foot on the peninsula. Since that day time has stood still on Athos; life there has continued to evolve along the lines prescribed by the Lavra’s founder and although the number of monks has fallen today to a mere handful they continue closely to adhere to the routine prescribed by Alexius. The Holy Trinity are still worshipped and the Virgin venerated there exactly as they were over 1,000 years ago.

  Until the Fourth Crusade inflicted an irreparable blow to the greatness of the Empire the Byzantine Church was not intolerant in its attitude to people of different faiths. Jews were able to practise their religion and, though obliged to reside in a special district of Constantinople, they enjoyed full civil rights. Muslims were permitted similar freedom. The first mosque to be built in Constantinople was completed in 717. The second was constructed by Constantine Monomachus (1042-55) to mark his affiance with Mesud, sultan of Seljukid Anatolia. At Saladin’s request another mosque was built for the Sunnite Muslims in 1189 by Emperor Isaac Comnenus, at the very time when Byzantine missionaries in Islamic territories were trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.