by Cyril Mango
Monasticism
MARLIA MUNDELL MANGO
Monasticism started in Egypt in the late third century when some pious men retired to the wilderness for a life of solitude and prayer. Athanasios, patriarch of Alexandria introduced monasticism to a wider public with his biography of St Antony the Great, born around 250. In the early fifth century Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, recounts in his Religious History the spread of monasticism from Egypt to Palestine, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor. It also spread to points further west, as well as to the East where Christian monasticism was taken as far as China by the seventh century.
Many monasteries were founded by holy men with asceticism the most important element in their regime. The Heavenly Ladder, written in the early seventh century by the monk John Scholastikos who lived a solitary life of forty years in the desert, sets out a programme of salvation through asceticism. Occasionally a holy man attracted attention by his strenuous feats and pilgrims flocked to see him. In the Holy Land, monasteries cared for shrines and provided lodgings for visitors at pilgrimage sites such as Mt. Nebo, where Moses viewed the Promised Land, and Mt. Sinai, where he saw the Burning Bush and received the tablets of the law.
Other monasteries were foundations of elite individuals, like the empress Eudokia retired to Jerusalem, who wished to be buried in their own establishments, with their own clergy praying for their souls. The tradition persisted in the medieval period when the foundation charter, the typikon, often specifies that prayers are to be said for the founder’s soul. Although early monasticism is more often associated with the countryside than the city, some monasteries existed within city walls from an early date. The first monastery at Constantinople, that of Dalmatos, was founded in the late fourth century, and by 536 there were nearly thirty monasteries within the Theodosian walls of the capital. Most of the churches built in medieval Constantinople were monastic.
The monastic rule of Basil the Great, the basis of Byzantine monasticism, advocated a self-sufficient community. Hence most monasteries were land-based and engaged in agriculture much along the lines of the independent Roman villa described by Palladius in the fourth century. In his Lives of the Oriental Saints John of Ephesus recounts how at a monastery north of Amida monks planted 60,000 vines. The profit they generated went to the poor. The Lives of St Hilarion and Peter the Iberian in the fourth and fifth centuries in the area of Gaza, refer to monastic wine production. Egyptian documents of the sixth century attest to monasteries owning land, potteries, oil factories, and mills.
Icon illustrating the Heavenly Ladder leading from earth to heaven by way of renunciation. Its 30 steps correspond to the years of Christ’s hidden as opposed to his public life. In this scheme, for example, the first step is renunciation of life, the third pilgrimage, the 27th solitude, and so forth. Sinners fall from the ladder to demons below. Eleventh century. Mount Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery.
Above: The chrysobull presented by the emperor Alexius I Komnenos to Christodoulos, the founder of the Patmos monastery in 1088. It lists imperial donations of land and tax exemptions accorded to the new foundation. Patmos, monastery of St John the Evangelist, Library.
Right: The sale of the island of Gymnopelagisia by two monks to St Athanasius, the founder of the Lavra monastery for 70 nomismata. The contract, dated September 993, was signed by seven witnesses. Mount Athos, Lavra Monastery.
Extensive landholdings constituted the wealth of large, self-sufficient monasteries in the medieval period. These assets were amassed in a variety of ways, including imperial donation. The typikon of the monastery of the Theotokos Petritziotissa, was given extensive property by its founder Gregory Pakouri-anos, Grand Domestic of the West, in 1083. This included land in four themes which took the form of six kastra, twelve villages, six fields, two estates, two other monasteries, four hesychasteria, one dependent monastery (metochion), one courtyard (aule), other annexes, buildings, fisheries, mills, and inns. He also granted food to his rent-paying peasants and horses, oxen, asses, cows, bulls, sheep, rams, and goats for the farms. In 1152 the sebastokrator Isaac Komnenos provided his new Kosmosoteira monastery in Thrace with facilities for both agriculture and fishing, including twelve ships. Marshy land was improved and produced wheat, barley, pulses, wine, and oil. In addition to the endowments listed in the typika, landholdings are also recorded in documents preserved in monastic archives, the largest collection being those dating from the tenth century onwards in monasteries on Mt. Athos. These reveal a wide range of property transactions.
As well as prayer and agricultural or industrial production, monastic activities centred on social services. In addition to looking after pilgrimage shrines, monasteries also provided other public facilities such as inns for travellers, hospices for the poor or elderly, and hospitals. In the early period, the monasteries of St Jerome at Bethlehem (386–9) and an abbot Symeon (c.500) at Kalesh in Mesopotamia had schools. In the eleventh century Pakourianos set up a school for novices for his monastery in Thrace where he also provided three charitable institutions. In 1139 a large, well-equipped hospital was built in the centre of Constantinople in the Pantokrator monastery by its founder. A hospice, a hospital, and a bath for public use were built at the Kosmosoteira monastery in 1152. Some monasteries were also associated with the intellectual life of the early church, participating in theological debate and book production. The Studius monastery in Constantinople played an important iconophile role during Iconoclasm.
Above: At the lavra monastery of Kellia in Egypt, each walled unit was composed of separate rooms for two monks, an oratory, a reception room, and a kitchen, all grouped round a courtyard and often with a well, garden, and watchtower. Sixth–eighth centuries.
Below: The coenobitic monastery of St Martyrius, founded in c.474, consisted of an enclosure with refectory, kitchen, cells, church, tombs, service areas, bath, and lavatory. These were all arranged round a central courtyard at one corner of which stood an external inn with stables.
In the early period rural monastic buildings took two forms. One was that of the lavra where monks lived separately in cells scattered around the church and service buildings. In the other form, the coenobium, monks had communal quarters and a refectory. In Egypt, where monasticism originated, the monastery of Kellia, built in the sixth to eighth century in the Nile Delta, had about 1,600 walled units. The larger complexes at Kellia serving as community centres also have towers, refectories, and several churches. In the Judaean desert, out of sixty monastic sites studied archaeologically, about twenty were lavra establishments and the others coenobitic, such as that founded in c.474 by Martyrius, future patriarch of Jerusalem.
Left: The monastery of St Meletios on Mt. Kithairon, built in the eleventh century, has a quadrilateral enclosure ringed by cells, a refectory, kitchen, storerooms, and other buildings, with the church placed within the courtyard.
Above: Spectacularly perched on rocky outcrops, the group of monasteries known as the Meteora (‘suspended in air’) in Thessaly go back to the fourteenth century, but most of the standing buildings date to the Ottoman period.
Left: The Lavra monastery on Mt. Athos was founded in 963 by St Athanasios with the support of the emperor Nikephoros II Phokas. It was the most important of the 46 monasteries founded on the Holy Mountain by 1001. Some of these were foreign foundations by Georgians (Iveron), Armenians (Esphigmenou), Amalfitans, Serbs (Hilandar), Russians (Panteleemon), and Bulgarians (Zographou). Annual assemblies were held in the Protaton at Karyes.
Many features of the early monastic layout recur in the medieval period as at St Meletios on Mt. Kithairon. Although the setting of some medieval monasteries such as those of the Meteora recall the wilderness of the early Egyptian monasteries, others present a more worldly aspect. Surviving medieval monastic buildings impress us by their scale and the richness of their adornment, which is in apparent conflict with the presumed monastic ideals of asceticism, but reflects an abundant endowment. Outstanding examples are the monastery of H
osios Loukas of Stiris (see colour plate facing p. 239) and the Nea Moni on Chios, as well as that at Daphni near Athens. In Constantinople, the monasteries of Constantine Lips (907), the Pantokrator (of 1136, p. 205), the Chora, and the Pammakaristos still retain some of their original splendour.
8
The Revival of Learning
CYRIL MANGO
At the beginning of the eighth century, we are told, liberal education at Constantinople collapsed as a result of the instability of imperial rule. Whatever exactly may be meant by that statement, the fact remains that literary production in the capital ground practically to a halt. That had nothing to do with Iconoclasm as such, although it is true to say that the chronological span of the First Iconoclasm (730–80) corresponds to the most uncultivated phase of Byzantine history.
Paradoxically, the tradition of Greek letters was meanwhile kept alive in Arab-dominated Syria and Palestine. The greatest scholar and liturgical poet of this period, John Damascene, whose surname was Mansūr, was a Christian Arab (d. c.749). Another notable poet, Cosmas, bishop of Maiuma (the port of Gaza), is said to have been his contemporary. Slightly older was Andrew of Crete (so named because he ended his career as metropolitan of that island), a native of Damascus, also a liturgical poet and author of many homilies. These were followed a little later by the historian George Syncellus (d. c.811), the theologian Theodore Abu Qurra, a native of Edessa (Urfa), the ‘tattooed’ brothers Theophanes and Theodore, who hailed from the Moab, and the grammarian and hagiographer Michael Syncellus, an Arab from Jerusalem. We do not know the background of this literary activity, but it may be surmised that the rapid conquest of Syria and Palestine by the Arabs had caused little disruption to local intellectual life and that Umayyad rule had proved relatively tolerant towards the Christian elite. That situation was not to last very long: in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries the use of Greek virtually died out in the caliphate.
Some of the Near-Eastern intellectuals we have mentioned made their way to Constantinople and contributed to the revival of letters whose beginnings may be traced to about 780. It is surely no coincidence that the Byzantine revival was contemporaneous with a similar movement in the West, which we call the Carolingian Renaissance, as well as an upsurge of cultural activity at the Abbasid court of Baghdad under the caliphs Harūn al-Rashid (786–809) and al-Mamūn (813–33). If we confine ourselves to the two European revivals, we find a close parallelism: both were animated by a vision of the renovation of the Roman state, meaning not the pagan, but the Christian empire of Constantine and his successors; both promoted the cultivation of a correct, i.e. ancient, linguistic idiom, which entailed, on the one hand, the assemblage of the relics of ‘classical’ literature for purposes of imitation and, on the other, the compilation of manuals, compendia, and other aids to learning; both were accompanied by the introduction of a more compact script, the minuscule, for book production; both saw the establishment of a palace school; both extended into the visual arts, more particularly the precious arts. There were differences, too. The Carolingian Renaissance laid particular emphasis on the reform and education of the clergy, which does not appear to have been a major concern in Byzantium. Even so, the similarities were so pronounced that some kind of mutual influence naturally suggests itself. That is not a subject, however, to which much scholarly attention has been directed.
When we look more closely at the trickle of book learning that may be discerned at Constantinople in the course of the eighth century, we discover to our surprise that it was due not to ecclesiastical or monastic schools—in fact, we know nothing about schools at the time—but to the imperial civil service, especially the chancery. Among the figures prominent in the revival many originated in that milieu even if they ended up as bishops or monks. Tarasius, described as a highly cultivated man, proficient in the ancient poetic metres, served as First Secretary (chief of the chancery) before being ordained at the age of about 50 patriarch of Constantinople (784–806). Nikephoros, son of a Secretary, whom he succeeded in the same office, was patriarch from 806 until 815. While still a young man he attempted to revive the tradition of historiography in ancient Greek that had been broken since the early seventh century. Photios, the greatest scholar of his age, was related to Tarasius and served as First Secretary before being named patriarch in 858. Theodore the Studite (759–826) was the son of a rich treasury official and his learning was not acquired in a monastery. His uncle, St Plato (c.735–814), belonged to the same social class: he was trained as a notary for imperial service and was active as a scribe after he had become a monk. In no case do we see anything resembling an episcopal school.
The somewhat irregular advancement of three successive chancery officials, who were laymen, to the patriarchal throne certainly reveals on the part of the government an awareness of the need of having an educated primate of a calibre that could not be found in the ranks of the clergy. That said, however, several decades elapsed before the state took a lead in furthering education as a matter of policy. The first measure, which is shrouded in legend, takes us to about the year 830 and concerns Leo the Mathematician. This singular man, we are implausibly told, acquired his multifarious learning on the island of Andros by studying old books in monastic libraries. He then set up a school in his modest house at Constantinople and taught philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and music to private pupils whose number multiplied. One of his students was captured by the Arabs and brought before the caliph al-Mamu- n, whom he impressed by his superior knowledge of geometry. Mamun invited Leo to his court, promising him vast amounts of money, but the emperor Theophilos (829–42) refused to let him go and established him as a paid public teacher at the church of the Forty Martyrs on the main street. Assuming that this romantic story is not a fabrication, all we can conclude from it is that a single public chair of secular learning was set up shortly before the end of Iconoclasm.
The next move was made by the Caesar Bardas, who acted as regent between 855 and 866 and was, incidentally, Photios’ patron and kinsman. Distressed by the decline of secular science, which had allegedly sunk to almost zero through the boorishness of previous emperors (a dig at the Iconoclasts), Bardas established a palace school in a hall called Magnaura. Its head was the same Leo, who taught philosophy, and there were three other chairs, of geometry, astronomy, and grammar respectively. Of the four professors who are named only Leo and the grammarian Kometas are otherwise attested and, although we are told that the seeds sown by the school were to bear fruit for the next hundred years, we know nothing about its activity or even how long it continued functioning. Silence descends until the reign of Constantine VII, who, once again, discovered that the sciences had been neglected, and so revived the school with the same four chairs. Of the professors he named three were court officials (otherwise unknown) and one a bishop, Alexander of Nicaea, who taught rhetoric and is recorded as a scholiast of Lucian—not the most suitable author to have engaged the attention of a clergyman. Alexander does not seem to have held his post for a long time: he was exiled under circumstances that remain obscure. However that may be, we are told that the emperor took a keen interest in the students, among whom he recruited judges, administrators, and metropolitans.
That is about as much as we learn from narrative sources about imperial involvement in the reform of education. If the ‘Bardas University’ (as it has been rather grandly called) really functioned for a century and more, how is it that we know next to nothing about its activity, its professors, its graduates, and its impact on the world of learning? It can certainly be said that the level of literary Greek rose or rather became more recherché in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries. Genres that had been extinct for about two centuries were revived. That happened, as we have said, in the case of historiography, although it must be added that the rather mediocre attempt made by Nikephoros (in the 780s?) was not followed up until about 950. Epistolography in its late antique form reappeared in the 820s and was assiduously cultivate
d. The verse epigram was revived, as we shall see presently. Even hagiography, traditionally expressed in ordinary language so as to reach a wide audience, was cast in an archaically elegant mould, and the same can be said of sermons. Yet all this started happening before the ‘Bardas University’ had been set up and without much encouragement from the government.
The most important achievement of the Byzantine revival lay, however, not in the ‘improvement’ of contemporary literature, but in the preservation of a sizeable portion of the ancient Greek classics and, incidentally, of early Christian writings. From the point of view of western culture it may even be said that this act of salvage constitutes our greatest debt to Byzantium. Setting aside the bits and pieces that have been found on the rubbish tips of Egypt (precious as they sometimes are), the Greek classics as we know them have come down to us in Byzantine manuscripts. Were it not for certain obscure men who laboured anonymously in the ninth and tenth centuries, we would have neither Plato nor Aristotle (except in translation), neither Herodotus nor Thucydides, neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles, not to mention a host of other famous and less famous authors. To go one step further, all the literature in question survived because it was recopied at the time in minuscule script. What was not recopied has been lost. But here we must explain.
