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Dumbarton Oaks Papers DUMBARTON OAKS PAPERS NUMBER SEVENTY-THREE 2019 Published by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Trustees for Harvard University © 2019 Dumbarton Oaks The annual journalDumbarton Oaks Papers was founded Trustees for Harvard University in 1941 for the publication of articles relating to Byzantine Washington, DC civilization—society and culture from roughly the fourth through the fifteenth century in the Roman Empire and in Printed in the United States of America. successor and neighboring states. Articles are written normally in English. Preference is given to articles of substantial length— Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 42-6499 at least 10,000 words, notes inclusive—but shorter pieces ISSN 0070-7546 will be considered, particularly if they relate to objects in the Dumbarton Oaks collections. Articles should be prepared Editor according to the submission guide, style guide, and list of Joel Kalvesmaki abbreviations, which are available, along with more information about the journal and the submission process, at www.doaks.org Editorial Board /research/publications/series/dumbarton-oaks-papers. Dimiter Angelov John Duffy Current and previous issues may be ordered at www.hup Ioli Kalavrezou .harvard.edu/. Standing orders may be placed by contacting customer service at 800-405-1619 or [email protected]. Managing Editor Previous volumes of Dumbarton Oaks Papers are available in Kathleen Sparkes digital form through JSTOR; volumes 53–57 are also available at http://www.doaks.org/. Copyeditors Peri Bearman Distributed by Harvard University Press Alice Falk Susan Higman Larsen Lisa Shea Lain Wilson Shannon Wearing Design and Production Kathleen Sparkes Composition Melissa Tandysh Contents Dumbarton Oaks Papers Volume 73, 2019 Walter E. Kaegi Irfan Shahîd (1926–2016) 1 Daniel Galadza Robert F. Taft, S.J. (1932–2018) 5 Sylvain Destephen From Mobile Center to Constantinople: The Birth of Byzantine Imperial Government 9 Dina Boero Making a Manuscript, Making a Cult: Scribal Production of the Syriac Life of Symeon the Stylite in Late Antiquity 25 Alexandre M. Roberts Framing a Middle Byzantine Alchemical Codex 69 Lilia Campana Sailing into Union: The Byzantine Naval Convoy for the Council of Ferrara–Florence (1438–1439) 103 Hugh G. Jeffery New Lead Seals from Aphrodisias 127 • LIMINAL FABRIC: Byzantine and Early Islamic Furnishing Textiles 2015 Dumbarton Oaks Museum Conference Gudrun Bühl and Elizabeth Dospěl Williams Introduction 143 Maria G. Parani Curtains in the Middle and Late Byzantine House 145 Kostis Kourelis Wool and Rubble Walls: Domestic Archaeology in the Medieval Peloponnese 165 Kathrin Colburn Loops, Tabs, and Reinforced Edges: Evidence for Textiles as Architectural Elements 187 Eunice Dauterman Maguire Curtains at the Threshold: How They Hung and How They Performed 217 Sabine Schrenk The Background of the Enthroned: Spatial Analysis of the Hanging with Hestia Polyolbos in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection 245 Jennifer L. Ball Rich Interiors: The Remnant of a Hanging from Late Antique Egypt in the Collection of Dumbarton Oaks 261 Maria Evangelatou Textile Mediation in Late Byzantine Visual Culture: Unveiling Layers of Meaning through the Fabrics of the Chora Monastery 299 Thelma K. Thomas The Honorific Mantle as Furnishing for the Household Memory Theater in Late Antiquity: A Case Study from the Monastery of Apa Apollo at Bawit 355 Avinoam Shalem “The Nation Has Put On Garments of Blood”: An Early Islamic Red Silken Tapestry in Split 389 Elizabeth Dospěl Williams A Taste for Textiles: Designing Umayyad and Early ʿAbbāsid Interiors 409 • The Diagram Paradigm Byzantium, the Islamic World, and the Latin West Dumbarton Oaks Symposium, 20–21 April 2018 433 Abbreviations 435 iv Framing a Middle Byzantine Alchemical Codex Alexandre M. Roberts he study of Byzantine science is at a relatively early sources of ancient science, thus obviating the need for Tstage, in part due to a prevailing narrative about Arab (or Byzantine) intermediaries. This direct contact the history of premodern science that discourages led (eventually) to the Scientific Revolution. The contri- looking for scientific activity among medieval scholars bution of Byzantium, when it appears in this narrative writing in Greek. This narrative, developed in the nine- at all, was to preserve Greek texts so that “Westerners” teenth and twentieth centuries and to a certain extent could discover them.2 still persisting,1 recounts that the ancient Greeks, draw- There are numerous problems with this narra- ing on Babylonian and other Near Eastern traditions, tive and it has rightly been challenged on a number of developed a systematic approach to interpreting empiri- fronts.3 As far as Byzantium is concerned it has per- cal observations, which we may call “ancient science”; sisted in practice: many modern scholars, especially such scientific activities continued into the Hellenistic non-Byzantinists, still do not expect to find Byzantines and Roman imperial periods but then in late antiq- of the medieval period studying or practicing science4 uity began to decline in the face of a Christian obses- sion with orthodoxy. At this point, just in time, the Muslim conquests of the seventh century established a new civilization that eagerly translated ancient Greek 2 For the articulation of this narrative I am indebted to Maria books of science and philosophy into Arabic; then, just Mavroudi, who has summarized it most recently in ibid., 33–34; see as Islamic civilization was itself stagnating after the tri- also her “Science, Byzantine,” in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, umph of Sunni orthodoxy over philosophy and science ed. R. S. Bagnall et al. (2013), 6063–65; and “Occult Sciences and in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Western Europe Society in Byzantium: Considerations for Future Research,” in The Occult Sciences in Byzantium, ed. P. Magdalino and M. Mavroudi discovered Arabo-Islamic science and translated the (Geneva, 2006), 39–95, at 44–50. relevant texts into Latin. Latin civilization’s status as 3 E.g., G. Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European standard-bearer was confirmed around the time of the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, 2007), points to intellectual links Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, when between the Islamic world and Europe (such as the dependence of Western Europeans learned Greek, acquired Greek Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus on a theorem that Naṣīr al-Dīn manuscripts, and engaged directly with the original al-Ṭūsī proved in 1260/1) in order to make a compelling argument for the continuing importance of Muslim scientists writing in Arabic after the twelfth century for scientific developments typically nar- 1 M. Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic rated as taking place exclusively in Western Europe. during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition,” 4 Even using an unrestrictive definition of premodern science, Speculum 90.1 (2015): 28–59, at 30–38. which does not insist on nineteenth- or twentieth-century paradigms. dumbarton oaks papers | 73 69 70 Alexandre M. Roberts with any seriousness5—despite the fact that this pre- on purple cloth,11 but this expertise, unlike astronomy, vailing narrative and its corollary (or premise) of an was not classified as philosophy. Meanwhile, the legiti- unscientific Byzantium has been challenged and can macy of alchemy’s theoretical or natural-philosophical no longer be sustained.6 Medieval Arabic authors were side seems to have been seriously questioned, at least clearly impressed by Byzantine technical expertise; as much as other occult sciences. It is no wonder that the very few texts of Byzantine science that have been despite indirect evidence for the study and copying of studied indicate a serious Byzantine engagement with Greek alchemical texts throughout Byzantine history,12 ancient Greek and contemporary Arabic science, which so little manuscript evidence for middle Byzantine also had an impact on the rest of Byzantine culture.7 interest in alchemy survives.13 Byzantine alchemy is one field of science that has While Byzantine alchemy has been little stud- been particularly neglected, perhaps in part because ied, there has been considerable work (relatively speak- Byzantines themselves rarely professed to practice ing) on the Greek alchemical corpus, the earliest and it, at least in the extant sources.8 The craft aspect of arguably most valuable witness to which is the tenth- alchemy—metallurgy, dyeing, and tinting—was the or eleventh-century Byzantine manuscript Marcianus domain not of the literary elite but of artisans.9 There graecus 299 (hereafter,M ), the focus of the present was certainly imperial interest in such expertise, which article. Nevertheless, work on the corpus has proceeded would have been desirable in anyone overseeing the almost entirely with the aim of recovering texts written operation of the mint10 or the government monopoly before and up to the fourth century ce—and, to a lesser extent, up to the seventh—rather than understanding the Byzantine engagement with the alchemical tradi- 5 See Mavroudi, “Classical Tradition,” 37–38. tion to which M and other manuscripts bear witness.14 6 See, e.g., M. Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpreta­ Greek alchemical texts and illustrations contained in M tion: TheOneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources (Leiden, 2002); P. Magdalino, “The Byzantine Reception of Classical have been published over the past century and a half.15 Astrology,” in Literacy,
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