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The Chora and the Great Church: Intervisuality in Fourteenth-Century Constantinople

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Robert S. Nelson
Robert S. Nelson*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Abstract

In Gregoras’ history, the most important building project during the second decade of the fourteenth century is not Theodore Metochites’ redecoration of the Chora monastery, but Andronikos II’s restoration of II. Sophia and the nearby column of Justinian. Two mosaics at the Chora, the Deesis in the inner narthex and the adjacent lunette of Metochites and Christ, make visual reference to the Great Church. The nature of such relationships is explored through reference to Mikhail Bakhtin and his analysis of dialogic language.

Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 23 , 1999 , pp. 67 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1999

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References

1. Bakhtin, M.M., ‘The Problem of Speech Genres’, in Speech Genres and other Late Essays, trans. McGee, Vern W. (Austin 1986) 91 Google Scholar.

2. Underwood, Paul A., The Kariye Djami, 3 vols. (New York 1966)Google Scholar, hereafter KD. A book of interpretative essays followed: vol. 4 (Princeton 1975).

3. Gregoras, Nicephorus, Byzantina Historia (Bonn 1829) I, 303 Google Scholar, 309; van Dieten, Jan Louis, Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte (Stuttgart 1979) vol. II, pt. 1, 32 Google Scholar, 35. Gregoras has a bit more to say about the history of the complex: Gregoras, I, 459; Van Dieten, vol. II, pt. 2, 239-240.

4. The subject is surveyed in Alice-Mary, Talbot, ‘The Restoration of Constantinople under Michael VIII’, DOP 47 (1993) 243-261Google Scholar; and Kidonopoulos, Vassilios, Bauten in Konstantinopel 1204-1328 (Wiesbaden, 1994)Google Scholar. I have compared the situation in the capital with that in Thessaloniki, where there was new construction, in a forthcoming essay, ‘Tales of Two Cities: The Patronage of Early Palaeologan Art and Architecture in Constantinople and Thessaloniki’, Manuel Panselinos and his Age, Proceedings of the International Symposium organized in Athens (November 1997), Mavrommatis, L. ed. (Athens 1999)Google Scholar.

5. Pachymeres, Georgius, De Michaele et Andronico Palaeologis II (Bonn 1835) 234 Google Scholar; Gregoras, I, 202; Van Dieten, I, 168.

6. Talbot, 258-260.

7. Downey, Glanville, ‘Earthquakes at Constantinople and Vicinity, A.D. 342-1454’, Speculum 30 (1955) 598-600CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Macrides, R.J., ‘From the Komnenoi to the Palaiologoi: Imperial Models in Decline and Exile’, New Constantines, the Rhythm of Imperial Renewal in Byzantium, 4th-13th Centuries (Aldershot 1994) 270–272 Google Scholar.

9. Van Dieten, I, 1.

10. Gregoras, I, 273; van Dieten, I, 206. It must be noted that Mainstone, Rowland J. (Hagia Sophia, Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian’s Great Church [London 1988] 103)Google Scholar mistranslates this passage. He thinks that it refers to the east and south sides of the church.

11. Mango, Cyril, ‘Byzantine Writers on the Fabric of Hagia Sophia’, in Mark, Robert and Çakmak, Ahmet Ş., Hagia Sophia from the Age of Justinian to the Present (Cambridge 1992) 54 Google Scholar.

12. One estimate of the cost of the restoring of a monastery is provided by the experience of another grand logothete, George Akropolites. In the 1270s, he paid 1000 nomismata to remove rubble from the church of the Anastasis in Constantinople. Renovations amounted to 16,000 nomismata in one year and continued. See Ševčenko, Ihor, ‘Society and Intellectual Life in the Fourteenth Century’, reprinted in his Society and Intellectual Life in Late Byzantium (London 1981), I, 90 Google Scholar.

13. Ousterhout, Robert G., The Architecture of the Kariye Camii in Istanbul (Washington, D.C. 1987) 108 Google Scholar. The belfry, long since removed, has also been attributed to the Latin period.

14. Gregoras, I, 275-276; van Dieten, I, 207-208.

15. Bibliography is assembled in Müller-Wiener, Wolfgang, Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls (Tübingen 1977) 248–249 Google Scholar.

16. Mentioned in Cyril Mango, Art Bulletin 41 (1959) 351; text in Gregoras, II, 1217-1220.

17. See the discussion in Vickers, Michael, ‘Mantegna and Constantinople’, The Burlington Magazine 118 (1976) 683–687 Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Prof. Klaus Kreiser.

18. Mango, Art Bulletin, 354. On the monument more recently, Majeska, George P., Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington, D.C. 1984) 239–240 Google Scholar; Vryonis, Speros Jr., ‘Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul: Evolution in a Millenial Imperial Iconography’, in Bierman, Irene A., et al., eds., The Ottoman City and its Parts: Urban Structure and Social Order (New Rochelle, NY 1991) 34–35 Google Scholar.

19. See Ševčenko, Ihor, ‘The Decline of Byzantium Seen Through the Eyes of its Intellectuals’, in his Society and Intellectual Life, II, 169–186 Google Scholar.

20. Gregoras, I, 275; van Dieten, I, 206-207. On the new troops, Gregoras, I, 317-318; Van Dieten, II, pt. 1, 40.

21. Mango, Cyril, Materials for the Study of the Mosaics of St. Sophia at Istanbul (Washington, D.C. 1962) 47–48 Google Scholar, figs. 49, 55.

22. Grabar, André, ‘La décoration des coupoles à Karye Camii et les peintures, italiennes du Dugento’, JÖBG 6 (1957) 111–124 Google Scholar; Otto Demus in KD IV, 138.

23. Mango, Materials, 48.

24. What is visible of the central medallion of the Hagia Sophia appears to be the end of a cross of some sort. It may be compared with a medallion at the Chora: KD II, pls. 15, 332a.

25. Gregoras, I, 303; van Dieten, II, pt. 1, 32.

26. Gregoras, I, 459; van Dieten, II, pt. 2, 239. Ousterhout tentatively confirms the existence of sixth-century masonry beneath the present church: Kariye Camii, 14. The sixth-century marble doors, now placed in the door of the inner narthex, are another sign of the church’s relationship to an early Byzantine past and possibly to Hagia Sophia itself, where similar doors are found in the south gallery. See Hjort, Øystein, ‘The Sculpture of Kariye Camii’, DOP 33 (1979) 202–223 Google Scholar. I thank Robert Ousterhout for drawing my attention to this spolia.

27. Ousterhout, Kariye Camii, 15-20.

28. Ševčenko, KD IV, 27, n. 61.

29. I have emphasized the political messages of the outer narthex mosaics in ‘Taxation with Representation. Visual Narrative and the Political Field of the Kariye Camii’, Art History 22 (1999) 56-82.

30. Underwood, KD I, 45-47.

31. As in note 26.

32. Ousterhout, Kariye Camii, 21.

33. ‘Ο υίὀς τoῦ ύψηλοτάτου βασιλέως Άλεξίου τοῦ Κομνηνοῦ ‘Ισαάκιος ó πορϕυρογέννητoς.

34. Macrides, ‘From the Komnenoi’, 272.

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36. [… Ά]νδ[ρον]ίκου τοῦ Παλοιολόγου ή κυρά τῶν Μουγουλίων Μελάνη ή μοναχή.

37. KD I, 46-47.

38. Ševčenko, in KD IV, 27, n. 61.

39. Teteriatnikov, Natalia, ‘The Place of the Nun Melania (the Lady of the Mongols) in the Deesis Program of the Inner Narthex of Chora, Constantinople’, CahArch 43 (1995) 163–184 Google Scholar. My analysis and description of the mosaic does not correspond to hers in all places. She continues her discussion of the church in ‘The Dedication of the Chora Monastery in the Time of Andronikos II Palaiologos’, Byzantion 66 (1996) 188-207.

40. Teteriatnikov, ‘The Place of the Nun Melania’, 171.

41. As in note 26.

42. Underwood, KD I, 44, 47.

43. Underwood, KD II, pls. 10, 11, 14.

44. Ousterhout, Kariye Camii, 70-78.

45. Those relationships can and could be seen in bay 7. Over the south door, there is a lunette of the Flight to Egypt, and over the opposite north door that leads into the bay with the Deesis, there most likely was once the Adoration of the Magi. See Lafontaine-Dosogne, Jacqueline, ‘Iconography of the Cycle of the Infancy of Christ’, KD IV, 220–223 Google Scholar. The Flight to Egypt depicts a passage to a walled city, as worshippers leave the church. Given the iconographic tradition and the space available (cf. Underwood, KD II, pl. 180a), the now effaced Adoration most likely would have been composed with the Magi at the left and Mary and the child at the right or the east. After walking beneath this mosaic, its beholders would have turned to the right or the east and processed toward the Virgin and child in the naos, the subject of one of the templon icons there (ibid. II, pl. 329).

46. Whittemore, Thomas, The Mosaics of Haghia Sophia at Istanbul, four preliminary report, The Deesis Panel of the South Gallery (Washington, D.C. 1952)Google Scholar.

47. Cormack, Robin, ‘Interpreting the Mosaics of S. Sophia at Istanbul’, Art History 4 (1981) 145–146 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. Hagia Sophia: .77 m (Whittemore, 38). Chora: .75 m (Underwood, KD I, 47).

49. Hagia Sophia: 5.95 m (Mango, Materials, 29 n. 34). Chora: 4.81 m (Underwood, KD I, 47). Cormack (‘Interpreting the Mosaics’, 145) commented on the unsatisfactory nature of Whittemore’s study. The latter, for example, recorded the height of the panel as ‘about 4.68 m’: Whittemore, 12.

50. Whittemore 17.

51. Mango, Cyril, The Brazen House, A Study of the Vestibule of the Imperial Palace of Constantinople (Copenhagen 1959), 135–142 Google Scholar; Underwood, KD I, 45-46; Ševčenko, Nancy Patterson in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford 1991) 440 Google Scholar; Teteriatnikov, ‘Place of the Nun Melania’, 170.

52. Majeska, Russian Travelers, 210-212.

53. Vogt, Albert, Le Livre des cérémonies, vol. 1 (Paris 1967) 10–11 Google Scholar.

54. Majeska, Russian Travelers, 206-209.

55. Ibid. 202.

56. Wendel, Carl, ‘Planudea’, BZ 40 (1940) 427 Google Scholar.

57. Mango, Brazen House, 142.

58. Haldon, John, ‘“Jargon” vs. “the Facts”? Byzantine History-Writing and Contemporary Debates’, BMGS 9 (1984/85) 95–132 Google Scholar, especially 125.

59. I am, however, inclined to agree with those who assign the text to Bakhtin: Clark, Katerina and Holquist, Michael, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, Mass. 1984) 166 Google Scholar. For different views, see Ladislav Metejka and I.R. Titunik, introduction to their translation of Vološinov, V.N., Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (New York, 1973) ix–xi Google Scholar; Todorov, Tzvetan, Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis 1984) 6–11 Google Scholar.

60. Haynes, Deborah J., Bakhtin and the Visual Arts (Cambridge 1995)Google Scholar deals primarily with aesthetics and creativity and works with other parts of the oeuvre of Bakhtin.

61. Philosophy of Language, 86.

62. Ibid. 21.

63. Ibid. 79-80. On Bakhtin’s expanded notion of utterance and its social consequences, see Clark and Holquist, 203-211.

64. Philosophy of Language, 80.

65. Speech Genres, 91.

66. Philosophy of Language, 95.

67. Clark and Holquist, 14.

68. Michael Holquist, ed. (Austin 1981).

69. The important study of Mihailovic, Alexander, Corporeal Words: Mikhail Bakhtin’s Theology of Discourse (Evanston 1997)Google Scholar extends observations of Clark and Holquist (pp. 120-145) about Bakhtin’s theology. Bakhtin uses the term word in the sense of the logos in John’s Gospel and considers it, according to Mihailovic, as a bridge ‘between the unbodied content of an act and its performative or material manifestation.’ In this respect, word or utterance functions like an icon. See Ibid. 39.

70. Σημειωτική, Recherches pour une sémanalyse (Paris 1969) 145-146; translated in Moi, Toril, ed., The Kristeva Reader (New York 1986) 36–37 Google Scholar, with a useful introduction.

71. Clark and Holquist, 152.

72. Moi, Kristeva Reader, 3.

73. La Revolution de langage poétique (Paris 1974) 22-30; Waller, Margaret, trans., Revolution in Poetic Language (New York 1984) 25–30.Google Scholar She borrows the term from Plato’s concept of the chora as receptacle and makes it into a primary stage of pre-consciousness. There are interesting coincidences between this Freudian abstraction and the Byzantine mysticism that underlies the visualization of the chora at the Chora, but the modern and medieval world views differ profoundly in their accounting of human subjectivity and, of course, the deity. Plato’s theory and the general philosophical treatment of place/space is explored in Casey, Edward S., The Fate of Place, A Philosophical History (Berkeley 1997)Google Scholar. He does not consider Kristeva, however.

74. See the useful discussion of a neighbouring literary tradition: Hinds, Stephen, Allusion and Intertext, Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge 1998)Google Scholar. I learned of this book from the review of Christopher Nappa in the on-line journal, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, September 1998.

75. See my essay, ‘The Discourse of Icons, Then and Now’, Art History (1989) 12 (1989) 144-157.

76. Ševčenko, N.P., ‘Christ Antiphonetes’, in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium 439 Google Scholar.

77. Krautheimer, Richard, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Medieval Architecture”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942) 1–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in his Studies in Early Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art (New York 1969) 115-150; Marcus Rautman, L., ‘Patrons and Buildings in Late Byzantine Thessaloniki’, JÖB 39 (1989) 313–315 Google Scholar.

78. Hugo Buchthal and Hans Belting, Patronage in Thirteenth-Century Constantinople, An Atelier of Late Byzantine Book Illumination and Calligraphy (Washington, D.C. 1978) 17-34.

79. Cutler, Anthony, ‘The Marginal Psalter in the Walters Art Gallery, A Reconsideration’, The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 35 (1977) 37–61 Google Scholar.

80. Belting, Hans, ‘Zum Palatina-Psalter des 13. Jahrhunderts’, JÖB 21 (1972) 17–38 Google Scholar.

81. Majeska, Travelers, 289, 291.

82. Underwood, KD II, pl. 17.

83. Ousterhout, Robert, ‘The Virgin of the Chora: An Image and its Contexts’, in Ousterhout, Robert and Brubaker, Leslie, The Sacred Image East and West (Urbana 1995) 91–109 Google Scholar.

84. Baxandall, Michael, ‘Art, Society, and the Bouguer Principle’, Representations 12 (1985) 32–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bryson, Norman, ‘Art in Context’, in Studies in Historical Change, Cohen, Ralph, ed. (Charlottesville 1992) 18–42 Google Scholar. The issue is discussed again in Bal, Mieke and Bryson, Norman, ‘Semiotics and Art History’, Art Bulletin 73 (1991) 174–188 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.