Saint George
Madonna and Child
Pendant
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Byzantium and Its Influence on Neighboring
Peoples
The citizens of Byzantium considered
themselves to be the center of the civilized world, with good reason. Their
civilization had far-reaching political and cultural influences in all
directions during the Middle Byzantine period.
Kievan Rus'
Although Grand
Prince Volodymyr of Kiev became an Orthodox Christian in 988, Byzantium
never politically dominated his confederation of principalities, called
Kievan Rus', which was a composite society of Vikings and eastern Slavs.
Artists of the Rus' assimilated the style and iconography
of Byzantine art and produced powerful works of their own. After the Mongol
invaders of 123740 captured Kiev, the rest of the region suffered
further attacks by the Mongols from the east and by the Teutonic knights
from the west.
Bulgaria
Before the
Orthodox Christian Bulgarian kingdom lost its independence to Byzantium
for a hundred and seventy years (10181188), it enjoyed a cultural
boom under Tsar Symeon (r. 893927), who had been educated as a monk
at Constantinople. Cities such as Preslav (Bulgaria) and Ohrid (former
Yugoslavia) became centers of learning and for the creation of art, such
as emamel, ceramics, and book illustration. After gaining independence
from Byzantium, Bulgaria, still influenced by Byzantine models, had a resurgence
in its production of architecture and painting.
Georgia
Converted to
Christianity in the fourth century, Georgia stayed within the Byzantine
Orthodox world, despite being under Islamic domination for centuries. Its
quarrelsome noble factions united under a dynasty in the early eleventh
century, and the nation began to extend its control beyond its boundaries.
The ensuing booty, tribute, and revenue from tariffs that flowed into unified
Georgia enabled its arts to prosper. Byzantine influence continued to be
important in Georgia's production of metalwork, embroidery, and ceramics.
Ambitious building projects moved forward, decorated with Byzantine-derived
iconographic programs. In music, Byzantine church melody blended with the
Georgian. Monastic communities dotted Mount Athos (Greece) and the Black
Mountain near Antioch (now in Turkey); using models from Constantinople,
the Georgians revised their religious books. Influential citizens received
their education in Constantinople. Rivalry for the Georgian throne and
Mongol domination in the thirteenth century ended this cultural blossoming.
Armenia
The Armenians
established a Christian state in the early fourth century. By the end of
the century, the Sassanian Empire of Persia
controlled most of the country. In the fifth century the church translated
the Bible and its liturgy into the Armenian
language. Due to the Sassanian occupation, the Armenians were unable to
attend the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon
in 451. Because the Armenian church eventually rejected the decisions of
this council, a theological gulf opened between it and the Byzantine faith.
Nevertheless, those who were assimilated into Byzantine culture often rose
to high position within the empire. A potent and popular symbol for this
state's Christians was the translation of the Gospels, which often opened
with magnificent canon tables, an introductory
index system for these texts. The finest decorated Armenian manuscripts
revealed the influence of Byzantine style and iconography,
though the models were sometimes centuries old Armenian artists, however,
were never slavish in their borrowing, feeling free to modify standard
Byzantine subject matter to reflect their culture's specific concerns.
In 1071, after the Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Mantzikert, the Muslim
Seljuk Turks captured Greater Armenia. Many Armenians fled and formed expatriate
communities elsewhere, the greatest being the new independent Armenian
state, the Kingdom of Cilicia (10991375).
Christians in
Former Imperial Territories
The sizable
Orthodox Christian communities of Syria, Egypt, and Nubia were under Muslim
control by the seventh century; Ethiopia fell to Islamic forces in the
thirteenth century. Orthodox monasteries, such as that of Saint Catherine
on Mount Sinai, still operated in the conquered areas. Although Syrian
Christians and the Coptic Church in Egypt did not recognize the authority
of the church in Constantinople, both were still influenced by its artistic
traditions.
Crusader States
With their
churches and monasteries still operating in the Muslim-held Syria-Palestine
region and with their claim to that area still outstanding, the Byzantines
were ambivalent about the First Crusade
(109699). The reconquest of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth by
the crusaders, and the many overseas visitors who came to visit the holy
places there, gave special status to the Crusader states. After about 1130
the second generation of settlers borrowed significantly from Byzantine
art, both in style and subject matter. Striking examples are found in the
paintings and ivory covers of the Psalter of Queen Melisende, dating to
about 1135, but based on earlier eleventh- century Byzantine sources. After
a series of catastrophic defeats of their forces at the hands of the Muslims,
including the loss of Jerusalem in 1187, crusaders turned their energy
to creating the Latin Empire out of Byzantine lands, conquering Cyprus
in 1191, brutally sacking Constantinople itself in 1204, and taking control
of central and southern Greece later.
Islamic States
Although the
Arabs conquered the Byzantine land of Mesopotamia--much of Armenia, Syria,
Palestine, and Egypt--during the first half of the seventh century, at
first they merely harnessed the area's economy and tax system for their
own benefit. Soon they were influenced by the surviving Byzantine societal
institutions, especially when the first Muslim-Arab empire, the Umayyad
dynasty (661750), established its capital in the former Byzantine
city of Damascus. This influence lessened as the new 'Abbasid
dynasty shifted the center of the Islamic caliphate to Mesopotamia
in 751 (ultimately to Baghdad) and the conquered Byzantine regions gradually
became Arabized and Islamized. The exchange of rich diplomatic gifts and
the desire for an opulent court and impressive state resulted in both the
Byzantine and Islamic empires borrowing elements from each other's cultures,
including art and architecture.
Byzantium's
classical literary and scientific heritage became known to the Islamic
Empire when Islamic authorities, particularly caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 81333),
began translating ancient Greek texts into Arabic. The writings that the
Arabs were keen to understand were those that they found useful for ruling
their far-flung domain: works on medicine, geometry, mathematics, music,
astronomy, geography, science, and philosophy. Greek poetry and writings
on Christianity were all but ignored.
The Latin West
The Christian religion was the common
denominator between Byzantium and the Latin states of Europe, and dynastic
marriages, or plans for them, helped tie the East and West together . Over
time the cultures grew further apart due to such differences as their languages
(the language of high culture in the West was Latin; in Byzantium it was
Greek) and the worsening relations between the Latin and Greek branches
of Christianity, leading to their mutual excommunication in 1054.
From the ninth
to the eleventh century Byzantine works of art, such as patterned silks
(ultimately used for shrouds or for wrapping relics),
ivories, enamels, and bronze doors, flowed into the Latin West as diplomatic
gifts, purchases and commissions from Constantinople, and trade goods.
These imports, regardless of their original functions, were admired and
valued in the West for their artistry. Perhaps the greatest proof of this
came during the twelfth century, when the rulers of Norman Sicily, competing
with Byzantium for regional power, invited Greek mosaicists to decorate
their churches and imported Byzantine silk weavers to create fabrics. A
further infusion of Byzantine artistic influence came to the West with
the works carried away from Constantinople after its sack by crusader forces
in 1204.
When Western
art borrowed from the Byzantine, it took much from its style but more from
its iconography. Even so, the appropriation
consisted of single Byzantine compositions, usually inserted into a cycle
of images already created in the West. (The so-called maniera greca [the
Greek manner] found in thirteenth-century Italian painted panels was a
term used by the famous critic and biographer Giorgio Vasari in the sixteenth
century to condescendingly describe a painting style argued to have been
influenced by Byzantine art.)
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