New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture

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New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture Series Editors Florin Curta University of Florida FL, USA Leonora Neville University of Wisconsin Madison WI, USA Shaun Tougher Cardiff University Cardiff, UK New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture publishes high-quality scholarship on all aspects of Byzantine culture and society from the fourth to the ffteenth centuries, presenting fresh approaches to key aspects of Byzantine civilization and new studies of unexplored topics to a broad academic audience. The series is a venue for both methodologically innovative work and ground-breaking studies on new topics, seeking to engage medievalists beyond the narrow confnes of Byzantine studies. The core of the series is original scholarly monographs on various aspects of Byzantine culture or society, with a particular focus on books that foster the interdisciplinarity and methodological sophistication of Byzantine studies. The series editors are interested in works that combine textual and material sources, that make exemplary use of advanced meth- ods for the analysis of those sources, and that bring theoretical practices of other felds, such as gender theory, subaltern studies, religious studies theory, anthropology, etc. to the study of Byzantine culture and society. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14755 Francesca Dell’Acqua · Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi Editors Pseudo-Dionysius and Christian Visual Culture, c.500–900 Editors Francesca Dell’Acqua Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi Dipartimento di Scienze del Centro interdipartimentale di Filosofa Patrimonio Culturale tardoantica, medievale e umanistica Università degli studi di Salerno (FiTMU) Fisciano (Salerno), Italy Università degli studi di Salerno Fisciano (Salerno), Italy New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture ISBN 978-3-030-24768-3 ISBN 978-3-030-24769-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24769-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover credit: Ağaç Altı Kilise, Ihlara, Cappadocia. Dome, Ascension. Photo credit: Natalia Teteriatnikov This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland INTRODUCTION The name Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is recurrent in discussions of late antique and medieval art and aesthetics of the eastern and western Mediterranean. Believed for a long time to be a disciple of Saint Paul, but in truth engineered to appear as such in the early sixth century, the author of the Corpus Dionysiacum developed a number of themes which have a predominant visual–spatial dimension and thus expressed a strong tendency towards ‘visual thinking’ or thinking through images. Included in these themes are topics such as the metaphysics of light, angelic hierar- chies, symbolic theology, liturgical rites and their performing space; but there are also visual and artistic metaphors such as ‘luminous darkness’, ‘divine painter’, ‘divine statues’, as well as geometrical metaphors for the movements of angels, souls, and so on. Commentators from different cultural backgrounds and of various Christian traditions, such as the Byzantines and the Latins, the Syrians and the Georgians, the Armenians, and the Arabs, concerned them- selves for more than a millennium with the Corpus Dionysiacum, adopt- ing its vocabulary and applying it to their respective needs. Its language and concepts were immensely infuential over the centuries, not only in the realm of theology and ecclesiastical matters. Scholars posited that visual artists and architects ‘translated’ images suggested by the Corpus Dionysiacum into fgural and spatial representations. As a result, the bearing of Dionysian thought on Byzantine and western art has become a scholarly subject. However, while the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius is demonstrable in the case of textual commentaries by looking at specifc v vi INTRODUCTION concepts and terminology, it is less so in other felds such as visual arts. An example of this, is the well-known and long-standing controversy sur- rounding Erwin Panofsky’s thesis that Pseudo-Dionysius’ metaphysics of light greatly infuenced the birth of Gothic architecture.1 What needs to be acknowledged is a growing interest in Byzantine Studies about the eventual Dionysian inspiration for mosaics, icons, and buildings.2 This volume does not intend to cover fully or systematically the wider question of Pseudo-Dionysius’ impact on Christian visual culture. Rather, it invites readers to consider how profound the interaction of the Corpus Dionysiacum has been with many aspects of Byzantine and west- ern cultures, including ecclesiastical and lay power, politics, religion, and the arts in the period of its development, and how long-lasting its impact has been on the visual thinking and fgural art-making of Mediterranean Christianity. The need to reconsider Pseudo-Dionysius’ infuence during this period arose during conversations between the current editors and other scholars. A workshop convened in April 2014 by Francesca Dell’Acqua at the SISMEL–Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino in Florence under the aegis of its president, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, and its director, Francesco Santi, allowed a group of scholars from different disciplines to discuss the dissemination and reception of Pseudo-Dionysius’ ideas in the East and West between the sixth and the ninth centuries. These scholars were Alexander Alexakis, Marianna Cerno, Réka Forrai, Diego Ianiro, Ernesto S. Mainoldi, Pietro Podolak, and Paravicini Bagliani. The idea for this book emerged in 2015, when some of its future contributors were participating in sessions on Pseudo-Dionysius and the Arts (‘The Visual Rhetoric of Hierarchy’, and ‘Pseudo-Dionysius and the Images’) organised by Francesca Dell’Acqua and Ernesto S. Mainoldi at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds. These sessions were generously sponsored by the ICMA–International Center for Medieval Art, The Cloisters, MET, NYC, directed then by Nancy Patterson Ševčenko. At Leeds, we were approached by Leonora Neville. Intrigued by our presentations, she suggested we should propose a book on Pseudo-Dionysius and the arts to Palgrave–Macmillan for the newly launched series, New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture, edited by herself, Florin Curta, and Shaun Tougher. Now, a few years later, we have coordinated the efforts of scholars from different felds, having in common the desire to explore the signifcance of the Pseudo-Dionysius in the culture of Byzantium and INTRODUCTION vii the western Mediterranean between the sixth and the ninth centuries. We need to thank Katherine Marsengill and Evgenios Iverites for gen- erously helping in the language revision of those chapters authored by non-native English speakers. The original question we posed to our contributors was as follows: Given the vast resonance they immediately gained and enjoyed for long, how did the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius refect and shape the imagina- tion and the perception of the world and of the heavenly orders during its own time and in later centuries? We emphasised that the importance the Corpus had for thinking about the divine in visual and spatial terms should not be overshadowed by Pseudo-Dionysius’ tendency towards apophatism, that is, the belief that God cannot be known and therefore cannot be described, nor by his propensity for logical–philosophical rea- soning. Indeed, Pseudo-Dionysius was also very visual in his evocation of the heavenly and world orders, of their members and their mutual inter- actions. Proof of this lies in the importance Pseudo-Dionysius gained in the discourse of the iconophiles, those supporting the production and cult of sacred images during the Byzantine Iconoclasm or controversy over sacred images (c.726–843).3 However, Pseudo-Dionysius did not advocate for the veneration of images, since he considered them simply functional aids to uplift the mind to the divine.4 Still, as Andrew Louth has noted, ‘his [Dionysius’] works contain not just a metaphysic that relies at every point on the notion of the image, but also evidence (that would have then been taken for evidence of apostolic
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