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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