Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-82395-1 - Tales from Another Byzantium: Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha Jane Baun Excerpt More information Introduction: Tales from another Byzantium The motto “think globally, act locally” has long been popular among social and environmental activists. It stands for a cluster of ideas which take as their starting point the interdependence of all life on earth, and asserts that global problems such as poverty and environmental degradation affect everyone, and should be everyone’s concern, but are best tackled through small-scale, local initiatives, and personal conversion towards a more mind- ful lifestyle. A strikingly similar moral ecology underlies the two medieval Greek “apocalypses” which form the subject of this book: the Apocalypse of the Theotokos and the Apocalypse of Anastasia. Their anonymous medieval authors were moral activists, who sought to raise consciousness and change behavior. They conceived their project in the broadest possible terms: at stake was the well-being, not just of the created world, but of the entire universe. Convinced that earthly and heavenly well-being were intimately bound together, the apocryphal authors were animated by a fervent desire to rectify and fortify the moral environment of their own communities. They thought “cosmically,” but worked locally. The literal meaning of apocalypse is “revelation,” and both medieval texts claim to be revelations of the Other World. Composed in Greek sometime between the ninth and eleventh centuries, they narrate visionary journeys through the otherworldly places of blessed reward and terrible punishment. One otherworld traveller was the Virgin Mary, venerated as the Theotokos (“God-Bearer”) by Eastern Christians. The second visionary was a fictional, typological character called Anastasia. Led through the Other World by the Archangel Michael, both women were shown the throne of judgment, the angelic host, sinners undergoing gruesome, fiery punishments, and diverse other wonders. Such is the outward form of the tales, which preserve early stages in the development of ideas about death, judgment, and the afterlife in medieval Greek Orthodox thought. They also bear witness to realities of this world, since the visionary compilers constructed their Other Worlds in the image of the world they knew best. Thus, both visions offer historians glimpses, not only of an Other World, but also of an Other Byzantium. This book is about an “Other Byzantium” in several related senses. It con- cerns the relatively understudied Middle Byzantine period, rather than Late © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-82395-1 - Tales from Another Byzantium: Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha Jane Baun Excerpt More information 2 Tales from another Byzantium Antiquity or the late Byzantine (Palaiologan) period. It focusses broadly on the earlier part of the Middle period – the Macedonian era (867–1056) – rather than on the later Komnenian and Angelos dynasties (1081–1204), which typically attract greater scholarly attention. It examines mostly life in theprovinces,notthecapital,andeverydayvillagematters,ratherthanaffairs of empire. It contemplates humble spiritual visions associated with women, compiled by unpretentious, anonymous authors, rather than elevated theo- logical discourses, composed by learned, renowned men. It investigates the world of ordinary souls on the receiving end of imperial and ecclesiastical governance, rather than the world of the elites who administered church and state. Most fundamentally, the study introduces an “other” type of evidence for the study of Eastern Christian society and culture, so far little used by historians: the corpus of medieval Greek apocryphal religious literature. This corpus comprises what may be called “paracanonical” works, those texts that developed and circulated alongside the standard, approved canon of Orthodox writings – and not always perfectly in step with it. Medieval Greek apocrypha come in many forms, of which three in particular will be discussed in this study: the apocalypse, the celestial epistle, and fantastic hagiography. Finally, the apocalypses that form the book’s evidential base are an “other” type of apocalyptic from that which is normally studied. They are concerned more with moral behavior than with political prophecies or messiahs, and with the eschatology of the individual soul rather than that of earth and its kingdoms. The medieval apocalypses open up these various “other Byzantiums,” especially the everyday and the local, to an extent that few other kinds of source can match. When searching for some awareness of how life was lived by the broad mass of Byzantine society, away from the imperial and episcopal palaces,scholarshavetypicallyturnedtobiographiesofsaintswritteninlow- level Greek, to the material culture of domestic life, and to the archaeology of popularcultandpilgrimage.Theapocryphalvisionaryliteratureis,however, qualitatively different from these more commonly used types of source. The visionary genre is notable above all for the imaginative freedom it affords for working particular concerns into the texts, and its high moral purpose compelled the medieval authors to grapple seriously with their local moral ecology. The tales were often reworked, and each new version freezes a particular moment in the moral, social, and ritual life of the community within which it was written. The apocalypses thus put the study of small- community life in the Byzantine Empire on a new level, offering access to the mentalit´es of non-elite, provincial society from a novel direction. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-82395-1 - Tales from Another Byzantium: Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha Jane Baun Excerpt More information Introduction: Tales from another Byzantium 3 Part of the story of the apocalypses is also the story of how they have been bypassedinthewritingofByzantinehistory.Immenselypopularintheirown times – copied, recopied, frequently reworked – they provide a vital historical witness. Yet they hardly figure in standard secondary accounts of Byzantine society, religion and culture. Why? Past generations of scholars commonly regarded apocrypha more as trivial curiosities than as serious source mate- rial. They were typically scorned by historians as banal and derivative; by theologians, as adding nothing useful to the history of Orthodoxy; by philo- logists, as execrable in style and degenerate in language. In recent decades, even as scholarly attitudes have changed to embrace many types of source previously thought marginal, apocrypha are still largely invisible to his- torians. The problem is now one of access rather than attitude. Popular apocrypha such as the Letter that Fell from the Sky and the Apocalypse of the Theotokos are victims of their own success. For example, the Theotokos apocalypse survives in hundreds of manuscripts, each presenting its own version of the tale. Such fecundity renders the creation of a conventional critical edition virtually impossible – and the lack of an easily accessible, standard edition renders a text virtually invisible. The irony of the medieval apocrypha is thus that some of the best-known texts of their time – to judge from the large numbers of surviving manuscripts – are among the least used by modern historians. The protean nature of most apocrypha, which ren- ders them liable to mistaken identities, has also complicated their scholarly reception. Historians have simply not known where to place such texts – chronologically, culturally, regionally, or theologically. This study is the first to propose a coherent historical context for the Apocalypse of the Theotokos and the Apocalypse of Anastasia. It is a context that takes us far away from the imperial intrigue, self- conscious literary elites, and high culture of Constantinople – the more typical venue of Byzantine history writing – and into the empire’s bedrock of hundreds of small village communities. We see the Byzantine masses, not as a faceless crowd, but differentiated as individual sinners, whose failings weigh heavily on their local networks of kin, village and parish. We see the resurgent empire of the Macedonian era, imposing its financial and ecclesiastical regime with new vigor on all citizens, through the eyes of those upon whom it imposed itself. The apocalypses project the viewpoint of people who lived on the margins of imperial power, and take us into the center of their reality, not that of Constantinople. The vices they deplore (such as ploughing or reaping out of one’s furrow) and the virtues they promote (such as respect for the local priest) are those of interest to local communities. The apocalypses were written to serve such communities, to © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-82395-1 - Tales from Another Byzantium: Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha Jane Baun Excerpt More information 4 Tales from another Byzantium reinforce local values. Utilitarian in nature, straightforward in form, style, and content, written in simple Greek, they were meant to be read aloud, and taken directly to heart. They reveal a face-to-face society going about its daily negotiations of power, status, and survival – with each other, and with God. This is indeed an “other” Byzantium from that