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Capitals of Slavia Orthodoxa in the Late Middle Ages: New Jerusalems As New Constantinoples?

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Capitals of Slavia Orthodoxa in the Late Middle Ages: New Jerusalems As New Constantinoples? CHAPTER 6 Capitals of Slavia Orthodoxa in the Late Middle Ages: New Jerusalems as New Constantinoples? Translatio Constantinopoleos After the fall of Constantinople in 1204 and the dissolution of the old world order, the main elements of the capital identity of Constantinople were as- sumed by the capitals of the empire of Nicaea, the despotate of Epirus and the empire of Trebizond, successor states created by the dismemberment of the Byzantine empire. At about the same time, and following a mechanism structurally analogous to that of translatio Hierosolymi, other centres—namely those of the newly formed or restored states within the broader framework of the Byzantine Commonwealth, like the Serbian state of the Nemanides, the restored or Second Bulgarian empire and Muscovite state—liberated of the dominance of the Golden Horde, embarked on a course of construct- ing their particular selves by appropriating and (re)interpreting the crux of Constantinopolitan identity.1 Within the new currents of political history, the appropriated or adopted elements of the identity of Constantinople as New Jerusalem were also utilized to bolster the legitimacy and strengthen the status of the existing royal (i.e. dynastic) and state programmes—those of Louis IX (1226–70) and the Venetian doges—and to transform, fittingly, Paris and Venice into universal centres of power.2 Notwithstanding the tendency to underscore the continuity of authority expressed through numerous aspects of the reigns of Frankish emperors, the Latin Kingdom, the sole state established after 1204 which had literally and geographically incorporated Constantinople, did not, 1 Antony Eastmond, “Byzantine identity and relics of the True Cross in the thirteenth century”, in Vostochnokhristianskie relikvii, ed. Lidov, pp. 205–15; Popović, “Relikvije i politika”. See also Erdeljan, “Appropriation of Constantinopolitan identity”, passim. 2 Flusin, “Les reliques de la Sainte-Chapelle”, passim; Jannic Durand, “Les reliques et reliquaires byzantins acquis par saint Louis”, in Le tresor de la Sainte-Chapelle, eds. Jannic Durand and Marie-Pierre Laffitte (Paris, 2001), pp. 52–4; David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State (Chapel Hill, 2001); Daniel H. Weiss and Lisa Mahoney, eds., France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades (Baltimore, 2004); Henry Maguire and Robert S. Nelson, eds., San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice (Washington D.C., 2010), pas- sim, esp. Fabio Barry, “ ‘Disiecta membra’: Ranieri Zeno, the Imitation of Constantinople, the ‘Spolia’ Style, and Justice at San Marco”, in ibid., pp. 7–62. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004345799_008 Capitals of ‘Slavia Orthodoxa’ in the Late Middle Ages 145 apparently, assign much importance to the historical, symbolic and ideological dimensions of the ancient capital of the Byzantine empire.3 In the broadest sense, this process of constructing New Jerusalems as New Constantinoples may be observed as an element of the process of shifting, redistributing and multiplying the number of centres in the medieval world, being, at the same time, both cause and effect of the particularization of late medieval society— in other words, of the individualization and privatization of sacrality and sym- bols, which had previously been the prerogative of a single centre. An entirely specific issue in its own right is the meaning and implications of appropriation in a given historical context. Bearing in mind the origins of this term in the discourse of colonialism, appropriation as a form of intercul- tural exchange may resound with implicitly negative connotations. However, during the high and late Middle Ages, and particularly in the wake of 1204, it was precisely this reassignment, transmission and rereading of elements of the original or prototype (in this case of Constantinopolitan identity) that con- ferred a higher sense of meaning and a special raison d’etre to Arta, Nicaea and Trebizond, or to Paris and Venice, to name only the most prominent examples of this phenomenon and the most recognizable legatees of Constantinople and the Byzantine empire after the Fourth Crusade. After all, the principles and aesthetics of performative emulation, or mimesis, are deeply imbedded in the fabric of the ancient, sustained system of values of the Byzantines, based as much on Roman attitudes towards decorum as on Christian ideas of the eikon, the image and the archetype. Constantinople itself, as the ultimate spatial icon of an ideal city, was regarded as a prototype to be emulated, translated or, more precisely, imprinted on other spaces, which thus strove to become its iconic likeness—both generally as a God-chosen and God-protected place (i.e. a New Jerusalem, the core of its identity as a universal capital), and/or in individual elements, devotional and visual, upon which such an identity is based. In that sense, and with the purpose of accomplishing such a defined goal, this form of appropriation or reinvestment was realized (in addition to others) by means of the new use or manipulation of the holy objects of Constantinople, notably the relics of the Passion, which lie at the existential core of the Byzantine empire and its capital. Outside Constantinople, in ac- cordance with the medieval principles of attaining likeness to an archetype, they were used to construct identities and assert a place in the family of those states which, for various reasons and in different ways, claimed the right to confirm themselves as legatees of Byzantine statehood and culture. Being well 3 David Jacoby, “The Urban Evolution of Latin Constantinople (1204–1261)”, in Byzantine Constantinople, ed. Necipoğlu, pp. 277–97, esp. p. 297..
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