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A Study of Liturgical and Theatrical Practices in Byzantium

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A Study of Liturgical and Theatrical Practices in Byzantium ABSTRACT Title of Document: THE ARTIFICE OF ETERNITY: A STUDY OF LITURGICAL AND THEATRICAL PRACTICES IN BYZANTIUM Andrew Walker White, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Directed By: Professor Franklin J. Hildy, Theatre and Professor Emeritus George P. Majeska, History This study attempts to fill a substantial gap in our knowledge of theatre history by focusing on the Orthodox ritual aesthetic and its relationship with traditional theatrical practice in the Eastern Roman Empire – also known as Byzantium. Through a review of spatial practices, performance aesthetics and musical practice, and culminating in a case study of the Medieval Office of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate how the Orthodox Church responded to the theatre, and determine whether the theatre influenced the development of its ritual aesthetic. Because of the well-documented rapprochement between church and theatre in the west, this study also tries to determine whether there was a similar reconciliation in the Orthodox east. From the Early Byzantine period onward, conduct of the Orthodox Liturgy was rooted in a ritual aesthetic that avoided direct imitation or representation. This Orthodox ritual aesthetic influenced every aspect of the Liturgy, from iconography to chant to liturgical dance, and involved a rejection of practices that, in the Church’s view, would draw too much attention to the material or artistic aspects of ritual. Theatrical modes of representation were consistently avoided and condemned as anathema. Even in the Middle Ages, when Catholics began to imitate Jesus at the altar and perform representations of biblical episodes using actors, realistic settings and special effects, Orthodox hierarchs continued to reject theatrical modes of performance. One possible exception to this rule is a Late Byzantine rite identified by western scholars as a “liturgical drama” – the Office of the Three Children. But a detailed reconstruction of its performance elements reveals that it was quite different in its aesthetics from Medieval Catholic practice. Some of the Office’s instructions, however, lend themselves to a theatrical interpretation; and the instability of the Office’s manuscript tradition, as seen in five extant versions, reveals strong disagreements about whether and how to include many of its key visual and musical elements. THE ARTIFICE OF ETERNITY: A STUDY OF LITURGICAL AND THEATRICAL PRACTICES IN BYZANTIUM By Andrew Walker White Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2006 Advisory Committee: Professor Franklin J. Hildy, Theatre, Chair Professor Emeritus George P. Majeska, co-Chair Professor John B. Fuegi Professor Denis F. Sullivan Professor Elizabeth A. Fisher © Copyright by Andrew Walker White 2006 Preface In late February 2004, Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ premiered in Athens to mixed reviews. Objections to the film, however, had less to do with its violence (which the Greeks, along with many American critics, found excessive) than with theological objections to the entire premise behind its production. One critic, writing for the popular newspaper Kathimerini, characterized Gibson’s Passion as two hours of unrelenting torture and said: “One wonders why Gibson chose sadistic realism – bordering on the grotesque – to tell a story that is clearly symbolic.”1 Archbishop Christodoulos, the head of the Orthodox Church in Greece, made more explicit the problem many Orthodox viewers had with the film: It is not the goal of the Passion to prompt or stir the imagination and emotions, so as to ignite hostility against people who took part in Jesus’ sufferings. The goal of the Passion is to confront ourselves, and our sins . I think if we limit ourselves to [feeling] the emotions the film incites, we won’t get what we’re looking for.2 Given that realistic, theatrical representations of the sacred have long been accepted in the west, it may be surprising to encounter objections to it, among Christians, at the dawn of the twenty-first century. But both the Kathimerini’s film critic and Archbishop Christodoulos speak to the endurance of Orthodoxy’s anti-theatrical ritual aesthetic. 1 See Kathimerini Greek Edition, 26 February 2004, accessed April 10, 2006, http://www.ekathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_civ_1_26/02/2004_95040. 2 Ἐλευθεροτυπία, 26 February 2004, accessed May 23, 2006, http://www.enet.gr/online/online_text/ c=113,dt=26.02.2004,id=4069276. For a partial English translation see The Orthodox Christian News Service, 28 February, 2004, accessed May 23, 2006, http://www.orthodoxnews.netfirms.com/109/ GREEK%20ARCHBISHOP.htm. The Orthodox Christian News Service article characterizes Christodoulos as an arch-conservative and a nationalist, but the reaction among Orthodox clergy in the United States was essentially the same. See Greek Orthodox Diocese of America, February 27, 2004, accessed October 28, 2004, http://www.goarch.org/en/news/NewsDetail. asp?printit=yes&id=1084. ii This anti-theatrical aesthetic, largely ignored or misunderstood in the West, calls into question past assumptions about the origins of sacred drama in the Eastern Roman Empire, otherwise known as Byzantium – the Empire where Orthodox Christianity first took shape. Perhaps in part because of Byzantium’s vital role in preserving the dramatic literature of Antiquity, generations of western scholars have maintained (despite a lack of evidence) that the Orthodox Church shared the Catholic’s taste for sacred plays. Western assumptions about the universality of their own theatrical impulses have led to the creation of what Walter Puchner calls a “ghost chapter” on the sacred drama in the Eastern Roman Empire.3 This “ghost chapter” has persisted in some circles, in spite of Orthodoxy’s consistent rejection of realism as an obstacle to prayerful devotion, and its emphasis on symbolic and spiritual discursive practice. This privileging of symbolic discourse, in turn, can be traced back to the Eastern Church’s earliest period of development in Byzantium. The chief purpose of the present study will be to lay out a detailed response to a question that has nagged theatre historians for generations: did Byzantium – and more specifically, the Orthodox Church – ever develop a sacred drama of its own? Because the answer is complex, founded as it is in a unique aesthetic of ritual performance, the emphasis here will be on the subtle, multi-layered symbolic interpretations of scripture and ritual which came to predominate in the Eastern Empire. 3 See Walter Puchner, “Acting in the Byzantine theatre: Evidence and Problems,” in Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession, Pat Easterling and Edith Hall, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 306. For an example of this “ghost chapter” see especially Margot Berthold, The History of the World Theater: From the Beginnings to the Baroque (New York: Continuum, 1999), 210-227. For a more sober approach see Oscar G. Brockett and Franklin J. Hildy, History of the Theatre, 9th ed. (New York: Allyn and Bacon, 2003), 65-68. iii The differences between eastern and western Christianity are evident from the moment you step into a typical Orthodox church: Jesus looks down from his lofty perch in the central dome fully clothed, serene, and (by virtue of his placement at the highest point in the nave’s interior) in charge. This spiritual vision of Christ, in his aspect as Pantocrator, “All-powerful,” contrasts sharply with the western emphasis on the physical, ‘all-suffering’ Christ, which was reinforced throughout the Middle Ages in vividly-staged versions of the Passion. Christ’s suffering, while understood as an important part of salvation history, is largely absent from the Orthodox iconographical scheme.4 The area above the sanctuary, where western churches usually place a three-dimensional, sculpted Christ on the cross, features a serene Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus in her lap instead; the overall impression is one of spiritual presence and transcendence, not suffering or guilt.5 When viewed at ground-level, however, the traditional Orthodox sanctuary appears to tell a different and more earthly story. Modern Greek churches feature a templon screen, a one-story high wall of icons set between columns and punctuated by three sets of doors. This screen’s superficial resemblance to an ancient stage-front has led some popular writers to over-interpret the Orthodox sanctuary as a theatre, 4 One possible exception is the epitaphion, an embroidered cloth featuring the image of a dead Christ and placed in a symbolic tomb or sepulcher during modern Orthodox Easter-week services. But available evidence indicates the cloth was an innovation that did not reach its fullest development until the sixteenth century, i.e., after Byzantium’s fall. The most common theory is that the epitaphion was of monastic origin (see Robert A. Taft, The Great Entrance: A History of the Transfor of Gifts and other Pre-anaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, 2nd ed. (Rome: Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, 1978), 216-219). The sepulcher, on the other hand, is so recent that it is not even mentioned in the Greek instructions for Easter Week; it is only included in the English translation (see the services for Holy Friday in Greek Orthodox Holy Week & Easter Services: A New English Translation, trans. Fr. George L. Papadeas (South Daytona, FL: 1999), 358-409). 5 Orthodox sanctuaries include an apse, or semi-cylindrical architectural space, which juts out of the eastern side of the nave; the Virgin and child occupy the half-dome at the top of the apse. iv and the Divine Liturgy as a drama.6 In his recent book, “The Theatre in Byzantium,” Marios Ploritis juxtaposed images of a Hellenistic theatre and an Orthodox templon screen as evidence that the latter derives its spatial practices from the former.7 As we shall see, this populist approach to church architecture masks a more complex history, and one that ultimately makes Ploritis’ theory untenable.
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