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In the margins of Byzantium? Some icons in Michael Psellos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Anthony Cutler  and
Robert Browning
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Extract

In the face of a supposed dearth of recorded responses to icons, historians of Byzantine art commonly infer these either from characteristics that they suppose to inhere in works of art themselves, or transfer to the personal and practical realm such theoretical attitudes as are proclaimed in the proceedings of church councils and similar documents. These methods of argumentation give rise to assumptions that (i) aesthetic reactions to images were unimportant or at least subordinate to attitudes born of piety, and (ii) artists used older works as models and the value of their artefacts was understood to be directly proportional to the fidelity of their copies to the ‘prototype’. Views of this sort can indeed be supported by texts that set out a variety of orthodox positions ranging from bodies of legal opinion to anecdotal accounts of devotion to icons. But to suppose that such readings represent immutable standards is to take part of the picture for the whole. The study of what seem at first sight to be aberrant attitudes can lend a new perspective on behaviour that is often treated as normative. Artists’ ‘deviations’, and highly emotive and even criminal reactions to their work, are still marginal to our perceptions of Byzantium formed by texts that present one or another official position, even while we are aware that styles of painting (as of writing) varied from one individual to another and that private passions and crimes flourished in this society as in any other.

Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 16 , 1992 , pp. 21 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1992

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References

1. For an orthodox statement of this position by Psellos, see Gautier, P., ‘Quelques lettres de Psellos inédités où déjà editées’, REB 44 (1986) 160.58 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article was written before the appearance of Gautier’s ‘Un discours inédit de Michel Psellos sur la Crucifixion’, REB 49 (1991) 5-66, which discourse, Gautier suggested, was based upon an actual picture, even while it was written in his study.

2. Psellos, , Scripta minora, ed. Kurtz, E. and Drexl, F., II (Milan 1941), Ep. 211, 247.10–248.12.Google Scholar

3. ibid., I (Milan 1936), 126.14-127.1.

4. ibid., I, 128.23-27.

5. Ep. 124, ibid., II, 148.6-23.

6. More often called the monastery of the Abramites, it stood near the Golden Gate. See Janin, R., La géographie ecclésiastique de l’Empire byzantin. 3. Les églises et les monastères (Paris 1969) 165 no.8 Google Scholar, who was apparently unaware of this reference in Psellos.

7. Kurtz-Drexl, Ep. 194, II, 220.19-27.

8. ibid., II, no. 129. For another translation and the social circumstances, see Oikonomidès, N., ‘The Holy Icon as Asset’, DOP 45 (1991) 36.Google Scholar

9. Cf. a case of 1365 in which a priest was condemned for stealing a silver phengeion (halo) from an icon of the Theotokos (F. Miklosich and Müller, J., Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana I [Vienna 1860] 475.9–10)Google Scholar. Psellos’ passage suggests that icons exposed in churches were by no means always decorated with the precious-metal frames so often itemized in lists of church furnishings; for major examples of the genre, see Cutler, A., in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (New York 1991)Google Scholar (hereinafter cited as OBD) II, 1005, s.v. Inventory. That the unadorned pictures taken by Psellos were small follows from the way in which he concealed them.

10. Sathas, K.N., Mesaionike bibliotheke V (Paris 1876, reprint Athens 1972) 282 no.51 Google Scholar. On this letter, see Ljubarskij, Ja., Michail Psell. Ličnosti i tvorčestvo (Moscow 1978) 105.Google Scholar

11. Mid-11th-century judges by this name include Basil Xeros, on whom see E. Follieri in ZRVI 8/2, 142; and John Xeros mentioned in the Actes de Saint-Pantéléèmon, edd. P. Lemerle, G. Dagron and S. Ćirković (Paris 1982) no.5 (of 1057), with commentary on p.53. Our thanks to A. Kazhdan for these and other references; cf. his entry in ODB III, 2210, s.v. Xeros.

12. Vitae duae antiquae Sancti Athanasii Athonitae, ed. J. Noret (Turnhout 1982) A par. 254.3-36, B par. 78.24-33.

13. Mango, C., The art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453. Sources and documents (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1972, reprint Toronto 1986) xv.Google Scholar

14. ‘On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art’, reprinted in Schapiro, M., Romanesque Art (New York 1977) 1–27.Google Scholar

15. Aléxiade, 2, ed. B. Leib (Paris 1967) 34.8-10. Anna here attributes Psellos’ advancement to the prayers and tears of his mother before an icon of the Theotokos.

16. Stephanou, P., ‘La doctrine de Léon de Chalcédoine et de ses adversaires sur les images’, OCP 12 (1946) 177–99.Google Scholar