The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens. By
ANTHONY KALDELLIS. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
2009. Pp. 252. Cloth, $99.00. ISBN 978–0–521–88228–6.
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CJ Online 2010.04.01
In this impressively ground-breaking and wide-ranging study Anthony
Kaldellis (hereafter K.) presents and corrects the western cultural
narrative about the Parthenon accepted since the Enlightenment, namely that
Byzantium did not embrace this iconic monument in its intellectual,
cultural and spiritual life.
In the Introduction K. cites both modern and late antique proponents of
this prejudicial viewpoint—e.g., the patristic author Tertullian, who
famously asked “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”, and
Cyril Mango, emeritus Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern
Greek Language and Literature at Oxford University, who firmly declared
“The Byzantines in general did not evince the slightest interest in what
we understand by classical Greece.” [[1]] K. sees in such statements a
shared “particular view of history, a view that deals in large
abstractions. Here Athens and the classical all lie on one side of a great
divide with Christianity and all that is medieval or Byzantine on the
other. The two sides may not overlap for they represent incommensurate
world-views. This is a picture familiar from many textbooks and specialist
studies” (p. 3). In contrast, K. investigates how medieval Greeks
interacted with the Parthenon in particular and with classical Athens in
general, exploring the Parthenon’s place in Byzantine cultural life
through what he terms “philological art history” (p. xii). Proceeding
chronologically, K. assembles Byzantine texts, some previously
un-translated, as well as evidence and interpretive tools drawn from
archaeology, art history, psychology and modern critical theory.
Chapter 1, “Conversions of the Parthenon,” summarizes textual and
archeological evidence for the status of the building through the late 5th
century AD. References in Thucydides, Plutarch, Pausanias and Libanius
indicate that they considered the Parthenon only one among many notable
sites in Athens; K. focuses upon its conversion to Christian use as a
process exceptional for its respectful attitude toward the classical past.
He utilizes archaeological reports and the meticulous plans and
reconstruction drawings of Manolis Korres to present a compelling picture
of pagan destruction and Christian resurrection of the building; Korres’
work, mostly published in Modern Greek, is both visually and intellectually
compelling. On the basis of carefully translated texts both obscure (e.g.,
the Tübingen Theosophy) and famous (e.g., Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue, as
quoted by the 5th-century bishop Theodotos of Ankyra), K. argues in support
of a late 5th-century date for the conversion of what was still a
recognizably pagan Parthenon into a church that became famous through
Christendom.
Imaginative and robust interpretation of scanty evidence dominates Chapter
2 “From students to pilgrims in medieval Athens (AD 532–848).” That
various 7th- and 8th-century figures visited Athens and the Parthenon is
suggested by shadowy sources that K. admits may conform to traditional
topoi current in subsequent centuries—i.e., that learned scholars must
have studied in Athens and that devout pilgrims must have visited the
shrine of the Theotokos Atheniotissa. The 10th-century source that
identifies Stephanos of Sougdaia, 8th-century bishop of the Crimea, as such
a pilgrim prompts K. to observe hopefully that “we have no other case
where a visit to the Parthenon was invented out of nothing” (p. 70). Does
such negative evidence belong in the discussion at all?
Chapter 3, “Imperial recognition: Basileios II in Athens (AD 1018),”
concerns an imperial visit that acknowledged the importance of the
Christian Parthenon. A brief 11th-century reference provides the sole
evidence for this event: “after reaching Athens and giving thanks for his
victory to the Mother of God, adorning the temple with magnificent and
expensive dedications, [Basil] returned to Constantinople.” [[2]] K.
reconstructs this visit, placing it in the context of Basil’s illustrious
career, the precedents for imperial pilgrimage and gifts to shrines, and
the nature of an Emperor’s retinue. On the basis of his plausible if
speculative reconstruction, K. concludes that the Parthenon rivaled
Constantinople itself as sacred to the Theometor, the Mother of God (p.
91).
Chapter 4, “Pilgrims of the middle period (AD 900–1100),” assembles
evidence for the Parthenon’s popularity among pilgrims even before Basil
II lent it imperial prestige. K. deftly uses an episode from the Life of
Luke of Steiros (d. 953) to illustrate a trend in pilgrimage by Greeks and
Westerners already well-established in the early 10th century: Luke fled
his home village with Roman monks traveling to Jerusalem, who detoured to
Athens where “they entered the holy church of the Mother of God; and
after praying, they left him in the monastery where they were staying.”
Luke’s 10th-century biographer evidently considered such a pilgrimage not
at all extraordinary, for he neither explains nor justifies it to his
Byzantine readers (pp. 96–7), an attitude that continues in both Greek
and Latin sources of the 11th and 12th centuries.
“The past still present and active in the medieval present” (p. 114)
summarizes the message of Chapter 5, “The apogee of the Atheniotissa in
the twelfth century.” Noting the vibrant coexistence of ancient and
medieval structures in Athens, K. provides a similar sense of the overlap
between classicizing Byzantine literature and contemporary Athenian life.
Although learned authors enjoyed contrasting the glories of classical
Athens with its contemporary state, medieval Athens was economically vital;
“the universal festival (pankosmios panegyris) of the Theometor gathers
peoples from every place to Athens,” comments the 12th-century
ecclesiastic Euthymios Malakes (p. 134). Eustathios of Thessalonike, the
prolific commentator on Homer, testifies to the significance of the
Parthenon for contemporary Athens: “O Attic light, you are enchambered by
the enclosure of masonry [i.e., the Parthenon], but still you illuminate
and throw out your fire … that light, which makes Attica famous…” (p.
128). The Parthenon’s divine light became part of what K. investigates
and terms the “branding” of the Theometor Atheniotissa as a
recognizable and significant figure in Byzantine piety.
Chapter 6, “Michael Choniates and his cathedral (AD 1182–1205),” both
presents the statements of a Christian immersed in the classical past and
creates a striking picture of the 12th-century Parthenon that was his
episcopal seat. Archaeological evidence informs Korres’ reconstruction of
the apse; 19th-century photographs record the traces of frescos that once
adorned the church; and Spirydon Lambros’ childhood memory of finding
“golden stones” at the Parthenon suggests its luminous lost mosaics
(pp. 149–53). Choniates praised the Parthenon cathedral itself and noted
the miraculous divine presence that blessed it. “Let us then pay honor to
this temple,” he exhorted his flock, “exquisitely beautiful, well-lit,
the graceful place of the light-receiving and light-giving Parthenos, the
holy house of the true light that flashes forth from her…” (Inaugural
Address at Athens; translation on pp. 159–60). After Crusaders captured
Constantinople in 1204 and then seized Athens as well, an exiled Choniates
grieved for “the holy Akropolis of Athens, my lot in life, and the most
holy Parthenon of the Mother of God upon it, which has now become a den of
thieves” (p. 164).
The Parthenon symbolized Byzantium’s sometimes uneasy self-identity, at
once classicizing and Christian, an ambivalence K. explores in Chapter 7,
“Why the Parthenon? An attempt at interpretation.” As a Christian
monument, the Parthenon became the object of a fascination the Byzantines
themselves could not articulate. Citing Derrida’s “philosophical
deconstruction,” K. observes, “The ‘true meaning’ of the Parthenon
was trapped between a discursive Christian element and a non-discursive
subliminal supplement that pointed to the monument’s non-Christian
background” (pp. 175–6). At the same time as 11th- and 12th-century
Byzantine “cultural tourists” traveled to Athens to visit intact
monuments of the classical past such as the Parthenon and the imaginatively
identified “Lantern of Demosthenes,” a.k.a. the monument of Lysicrates
(pp. 181–4), popular interest in Greek antiquity motivated the reuse of
classical spolia in Byzantine churches, a phenomenon scholars (including K.
himself, he admits) have generally refused to acknowledge.
In conclusion, K. attempts to explain the genesis and nature of “The
light of the Christian Parthenon” (Chapter 8), noting the ever-burning
lamp reported by Pausanias at the cult statue of Athena Polias and
suggesting that a 10th-century spirit of antiquarianism revived
Pausanias’ light and assigned it to the Christian Akropolis. As a
literary topos the divine light then influenced Byzantine references to
Athens.
In “Postscript: some Byzantine heresies,” K. expands upon the
programmatic theme of his work: that a prejudicial, Euro-centric and
anti-Christian bias has denied the Parthenon its real history. The
classicizing interventions of the 19th and early 20th centuries harmed the
Parthenon’s physical fabric more than any Byzantine alterations to the
building, but, concludes K., “thankfully it is now finally in the hands
of humanists who are also true professional conservators” (p. 210). In
“Appendix: the Little Metropolis,” K. presents recent scholarship that
redates to the 15th century the creation of this architectural pastiche,
familiar to classicists as the site of the Athenian calendar frieze
preserving a representation of the Panathenaic ship. [[3]]
Despite a tendency to overinterpret his sources, K. has produced a
readable, thorough and scholarly study of a subject too long declared
non-existent.
E.A. FISHER
George Washington University, Washington DC
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[[1]] Cited by K., p. 6 and p. 4.
[[2]] P. 82, translating Ioannis Skylitzae Synopsis Historiarum, ed. Thurn
(1973) 43: 364.
[[3]] Cf. Erika Simon, Festivals of Attica: An archaeological commentary
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983/2002) p. 6 and pl. 2.
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