No More Learning

In 982 he was made Abbot of
Bobbio, the literary treasures of which were no doubt a great attraction
to him : in 991 he became Archbishop of Rheims, in 998 of Ravenna.
In the following year he passed to the Chair of Peter. His political
CH, XX.


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536
Gerbert (Sylvester II)
activities, which were great, we will pass over, and deal only with his
literary interests, as they are revealed in his letters and in other sources.
The letters most instructive from this point of view are mostly written
from Bobbio. To Archbishop Adalbero of Rheims he says (Ep. 8),
“Procure me the history of Julius Caesar from Adso, Abbot of Montièr-
ender, to be copied, if you want me to furnish you with what I have,
viz. the eight books of Boethius on Astrology and some splendid geo-
metrical diagrams. ” To Abbot Gisalbert (Ep. 9): “The philosopher
Demosthenes wrote a book on the diseases and treatment of the eyes,
called Ophthalmicus. I want the beginning of it, if you have it, and also
the end of Cicero pro rege Deiotaro. " Rainard, a monk, is asked for
M. Manlius De astrologia (who is thought by Havet not to be the poet
Manilius, but Boethius) and for some other books. Stephen, a Roman
deacon, is to send Suetonius and Symmachus. “The art of persuasive
oratory (Ep. 44) is of the greatest practical utility. With a view to it
I am hard at work collecting a library, and have spent very large sums
at Rome and in other parts of Italy, and in Germany and the Belgian
country, on scribes and on copies of books. " To a monk of Trèves
(Ep. 134): “I am too busy to send you the sphere you ask for: your
best chance of getting it is to send me a good copy of the Achilleis of
Statius. ” The monk sent the poem, but the sphere was again withheld.
Such extracts shew the catholicity of Gerbert's tastes. Richer tells the
same tale; he runs through the Seven Liberal Arts, and shews what
methods and books Gerbert used in teaching each of them. In Mathe-
matics his chief innovation seems to have been the revival of the use of
the abacus for calculations, and the employment, in connexion with it,
of an early form of the “ Arabic" (really Indian) numerals from 1 to 9,
without the zero. He also wrote on mathematical subjects, though,
perhaps, no signal discovery stands to his credit. Besides all this he was
a practical workman. William of Malmesbury describes in rather vague
terms an organ made by him which was to all appearance actuated by
steam. To the same excellent author and to Walter Map we owe all the
best of the many legends that have gathered about Gerbert; of the
treasure he found at Rome, guided to it by the statue whose forehead
was inscribed “Strike here,” of the fairy whom he met in the forest near
Rheims, and of his death. He, like Henry IV of England, was not to
,
die but in Jerusalem. His Jerusalem was the basilica of Sta Croce in
Gerusalemme at Rome. It may be worth while to end this sketch of
him with a correction. We are commonly told that the sixth or seventh
century uncial manuscript of the Scriptores Gromatici, the Roman writers
on land-measurement, which is now at Wolfenbüttel, and is known as the
Codex Arcerianus, was Gerbert's. This is denied by his latest editor,
Boubnov, though he allows that the book was at Bobbio in the tenth
century.
Our last topic is that of books in vernacular. For practical purposes


## p. 537 (#583) ############################################

Books in vernacular
537
this unscientific expression means the Celtic and Teutonic families of
speech ; our period has nothing to shew for the Romance languages.
Most of what it seemed needful to say about Celtic literature in connexion
with learning has found a place in the chapter preceding this. It must
be borne in mind that the evolution of fresh native literatures independent
of learning transmitted by books is foreign to our subject; the fact that
the really native product is in itself the best worth reading is irrelevant
here. Famous poems such as the Tain Bo Cuailnge and Beowulf, and
the Dream of the Rood, therefore have to be passed over, and such parts
of the old Northern corpus of poetry as critics allow to be anterior to
the year 1000.
Infinitely the largest place in these two centuries is occupied by the
Anglo-Saxon writings. A certain number of poems assigned to the latter
part of the eighth century are on themes derived from books. The
Andreas of the Vercelli manuscript is from a text which is only forth-
coming in scanty fragments of Latin, though we have it in Greek: there
was also once a poem on the adventures of St Thomas in India, but it
has disappeared; it was too fabulous for Aelfric to use as the basis of his
Homily on the Apostle. Other Acts of Saints are drawn upon in the
poems called Elene and Juliana. We have not the original that lies
behind the Dialogue of Salomon and Saturn, but there was one, pre-
sumably in Latin, and a strange book it must have been. The Phoenix
is in part at least a rendering of a poem attributed to Lactantius. One
of the Genesis-poems-that which is called Genesis B, and has been said
to be anglicised from Old Saxon-is held to be under obligations to the
poems of Alcimus Avitus. The ninth century Homilies of the Vercelli
and Blickling manuscripts, as has been said, present versions of and
allusions to the Apocalypse of Thomas. The source oftenest employed
for sermons is not unnaturally the homily-book of Gregory the Great, to
whom Christian England owed so much.
The end of the same century sees King Alfred's work: he puts into
the hands of his clergy and people Gregory, Orosius, Bede, and Boethius,
and infuses into Orosius and Boethius something of his own great spirit.
He did not seek to make his people or his priests erudite, but to fit them
for the common duties of their lives: we find little curious learning in
what he wrote or ordered to be written. And in the work of Aelfric, nearly
a hundred years later, I seem to see an equally sober and practical, yet not
prosaic, mind. His sermons, whether he is paraphrasing Gregory on the
Sunday Gospels, or is telling the story of a saint from his Acts, appear
to be exactly fitted to their purpose of leading simple men in the right
way: skill in narrative, beauty of thought, goodness of soul, are there.
Whatever Aelfric it was who composed the Colloquy for schoolboys,
he, too, was gifted with sympathy and freshness. It gives some pictures
of ordinary life and manners which have long been popular, and with
good reason.
CH. XX.


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538
Destruction of libraries
Of some books and fragments which concern matters not theological,
it is hard to say whether they fall just within or just outside our period.
Such are the medical receipts, the leechdoms and the descriptions of
Eastern marvels already alluded to; such too the dream-books, the
weather prognostics, the version of the story of Apollonius of Tyre.
Byrhtferth of Ramsey, almost the only author of this class whose name
has survived, wrote partly in Latin and partly in the vernacular upon
“computus,” Calendarial science, shortly before the year 1000, when he
anticipates the loosing of Satan.
There was a time when it would have been proper to say that important
remains of Welsh poetry far older than A. D. 1000 were in existence.
That time is past, and it is recognised that the poems of Taliesin and
the rest are not of the first age. Glosses and small fragments of verse
are the oldest things we have in Welsh. Ireland has more, but the
documents—so far as they have not been noticed already—which bear on
learning, a great many can only be dated by the linguistic experts, and
unanimity is no more the rule among the scholars than among the
politicians of the Celts.
There are, it has been said, Irish versions of the Aethiopica of Helio-
dorus, of the Thebaid of Statius and of the Odyssey. To the first no
date is assigned; it is not in print, and for all one can tell it may have
been made from a printed edition: the second appears to be a medieval
abstract in prose: the only published text that represents the third is a
short prose tale. It has some traits (as of the dog of Odysseus recognising
him) which are not derivable from Latin sources, and read like distorted
recollections of the Greek; but the main course of the story is wholly
un-Homeric. Nor is it claimed as falling within our period. I cite this
as a specimen of exaggerations that are current. They are wholly uncalled
for. Nobody doubts the reality of the ancient learning of Ireland. It is
safe to predict that sober and critical research will not lessen but increase
our sense of the debt which the modern world owes, first to Ireland and
after her to Britain, as the preservers and transmitters of the wisdom of
old time.
I end this chapter, as I began it, with these islands; and as I write,
just such a storm hangs over them as that which, breaking, drove Alcuin
from their shores eleven centuries ago; and just such destruction is being
wrought in the old homes of learning, Corbie, and St Riquier, Laon and
Rheims, as the Vikings wrought then. But the destroyers of to-day are
no Vikings. They are, and the more is the pity, men of a race which has
done a vast deal for learning; that has brought to light things new and
old. They are undoing their own work now: they have robbed the world
of beauties and delights that never can be given back. It will be long
before any of the nations can forgive Germany; longer still, I earnestly
hope, before she can forgive herself.
:


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539
CHAPTER XXI.
BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE ARTS.
When Constantine rebuilt the city which we still call Constantinople
as a new Rome in the East, doubtless mixed methods in architecture
were resorted to. The more important buildings of his official architects
must have been in the current Roman manner. Secondary buildings
and ordinary dwellings would, however, have been constructed according
to local customs, and a modified style must soon have resulted here, as
earlier had been the case in Alexandria, and in other Greek and Roman
cities of the East. The later Roman architecture became more and more
changed through these contacts with the East, not only in structure but
in the decorations and the underlying ideals which governed both. It
is this mixed product which formed the Byzantine architecture, and
has been so named by modern students from the old name of the new
capital of the Empire.
As through recent explorations we come to know more of the building
modes practised in Egypt, North Africa, Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopo-
tamia, that is, throughout eastern Christendom, it becomes increasingly
difficult to cover them all with the one narrow word Byzantine. In
Syria, for instance, the builders had much fine stone at command, but
little or no brick or timber, and here, in consequence, everything archi-
tectural tended to be turned to stone. In Constantinople the common
stone was a good, easily cutting, white marble, and this was liberally
used in association with excellent burnt bricks of thin flat shape. In
Egypt there was a little fine limestone and much mud for bricks, which
were frequently, for secondary purposes, used in an unburnt condition.
The term Byzantine properly applies to the style of building
developed in the new imperial capital, but some such word as Byzan-
tesque seems to be required to describe inclusively those many varieties of
building practised in the Christian East, which were yet more or less the
members of a common tradition.
In the fourth century, when the new capital was built, the style was
still Roman and the point of view was mainly pagan. Byzantine archi-
tecture developed step by step as the Empire became Christianised ; and
two hundred years later, during the reign of Justinian, the Byzantine
style was fully established. We may put the emergence of the style
CH. XXI.


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540
Early building
about the middle of the fifth century, that is half-way between the reigns
of Constantine and Justinian.
In the East from a very early time ordinary building works were for
the most part done with sun-dried mud bricks. In hot, dry countries this
forms a fairly good material. Besides this use of crude bricks there had
come down a still simpler way of building by aggregations of clay. The
mud, even when subdivided into crude bricks, adhered so thoroughly when
put together in a mass with liquid mud in the joints, that a type of struc-
ture was developed which was homogeneous; the roofs and floors being of
the same materials as the walls, and continuous with them. The chambers,
large or small, were cells in a mass-material. Such a method of building
was common to the valleys of the Nile and the great rivers of Western
Asia. Burnt bricks were in turn developed from mud bricks by an exten-
sion of the method found so successful in making pottery. Such bricks
were often used for special purposes in combination with the crude bricks
from an early time. The building forms made use of in typical Byzan-
tine architecture largely depended on the use of brick, which may be
regarded as the bringing together of small units well cemented so as
to form continuous walls and vaults. Burnt bricks were usually set in
so much mortar, the bricks being thin and the joints thick, that the
whole became a sort of built concrete. The mortar in a wall, in fact,
must frequently have been much more in quantity than the bricks.
Arising doubtless out of primitive ways of forming mud roofs, it
became customary later to construct vaults of mud bricks, and then of burnt
bricks, by leaning the courses against an end wall so that the vault was
gradually drawn forward from the end of a given chamber in inclined
layers. Each layer was thus supported by the part already done and no
centring was required. Domes came to be erected in a somewhat similar
way. A rod or a cord being attached to the centre so as to be readily
turned in any direction, a dome was reared on its circular base, a course
at a time, the curvature being determined by the length of the rod or
cord. About 1670 Dr Covel described this method of procedure, and it
is still practised in the East, although skilled dome builders are now but
few.
If a dome is not set over a circle, but over an octagon or a square, a
troublesome question arises in regard to the angles. Where the chamber
is small, and especially in the case of the octagonal form, the work can
easily be jutted out in the angles so as roughly to conform to the circular
base required for the dome. When, however, a square area is large,
some regular solution becomes necessary. The angles of the square may
be cut off by diagonal arches so as to form an octagon. If such arches
are so built as to continue back into the angles forming little vaults,
on a triangular base, they are called squinches. In such cases as these the
base of the dome is governed by the width across the chamber, but it is
possible to plan a dome on the diagonal dimensions of the area to be
а


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Domes
541
a
а
covered so as to spring out of the angles. In this case it is clear that
the dome as seen from within gradually expands from the four lowest
points and spreads on the walls as it grows upward, forming concave
triangles having curved lines against the four walls. These pieces of the
domical surface running down into the angles are called pendentives.
When the circular basis required for the dome is formed by these pen-
dentives it is possible to set a complete semispherical dome on them,
and there will be a break in the curvature where such a dome springs
from the pendentives; or it is possible to carry on the curvature of
the pendentives, forming in this case a flatter dome with the surface con-
tinuous to the angles. The first would be a dome on pendentives, and the
other we might call a pendentive dome. Again a third variety is
obtained by building a circular ring of wall, a
a circular ring of wall, a “drum," above the
pendentives, and on that the dome at a higher level. This was a later
fashion. It is rather difficult to see the geometry of all this without a
model; but if an apple be cut into halves, and then one half is laid on its
cut surface and four vertical cuts are made in pairs opposite to one
another so as to reduce the circular base to a square, we shall obtain a
model of a dome with continuous pendentives.
The methods of building ordinary vaults with inclined courses as
described above were practised in Egypt in the early dynasties, and also
in Mesopotamia. Evidence is accumulating which suggests that domes,
even domes with pendentives, were used in these countries long before the
Christian era. A dome with pendentives has been found over an Egyptian
tomb which seems to have been built about 1500 years B. C. When Alex-
ander built his new Greek capital in Egypt it must have been a city of brick
buildings covered with vaults, save for a few chief structures which were
built in the usual manner of Greek temples. A Latin author, writing
about the year B. c. 50, says that the houses of Alexandria were put
together without timber, being constructed with vaults covered over
with concrete or stone slabs. The scarcity of timber in Egypt, the
cause behind the development of vaulted structures, is again brought
before us in a letter written by St Gregory to Eulogius, the Patriarch of
Alexandria, in regard to timber which was sent to him all the way from
Italy. It was doubtless from the new Hellenistic capital, and possibly
from Western Asia as well, that the art of building vaulted structures
spread to Pompeii and Rome. Later, it was almost certainly from
Alexandria that Constantinople obtained the more developed traditions
of brick building by which it was possible to erect the great church of
St Sophia. It seems to be equally true that decorative ideas and
processes were largely derived from Alexandria. In addition to the
facts mentioned in the first volume, reference may be made to a painted
catacomb chamber at Palmyra illustrated by Strzygowski, who assigned
it to the third century. Amongst the subjects are Victories carrying
medallions like those on consular ivories of the fifth century.
There are
CH. XXI.


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542
Early churches
a
also panels representing geometrical arrangements of marble, and a
cornice imitating modillions in a formal perspective on the flat. This is
practically identical with a “cornice” band made up of flat morsels of
marble of different colours at Salonica. At Ravenna again there are
angels in mosaic which are certainly derived, as Strzygowski himself
pointed out, from such medallion-bearing Victories as those of Palmyra.
Alexandria would be the best common centre for places so far apart as
Salonica, Ravenna and Palmyra, and the painted catacomb at the latter
place may be taken to represent Alexandrian art of the fifth century.
Catacomb burial itself most probably originated in Alexander's city.
Recent explorations in Asia reveal how wide was the saturation of late
Hellenistic and early Christian art in the East. Alexandria was the great
emporium for distributing works of art over the civilised world.
Two early churches, both perhaps of the fifth century, may be taken
as types, one of the circular plan and the other of the basilican. The
former, the church of St George at Salonica, is a domed rotunda having
a very thick wall in which a series of recesses are, as it were, excavated,
while a bema with an apse projects to the eastward. The circular
“nave” thus follows the tradition of many Roman tomb buildings as,
for instance, that of St Helena at Rome; this constitutes indeed the
martyrion type of church. The rotunda of Salonica may be earlier
than the bema attached to it and may have been erected in the fourth
century; the masonry of the wall is of small stones with bonding courses
of brick, a late Roman fashion. The dome, which is about eighty feet
in diameter, was encrusted within with mosaics of which large portions
still remain. Eight great panels contained martyrs standing in front of
architectural façades. These are, it may be supposed, the courts of
,
paradise. The saints are in the attitude of prayer ; and some ivories
.
shew St Menas of Alexandria in a similar way. One of these ivories
has the background filled by an architectural composition which is
remarkably like those of the Salonica mosaics. Here are round pedi-
ments filled with shells, lamps hanging between pairs of columns,
curtains drawn back, and birds. Mr Dalton has spoken of the architectural
façades which derive from the scenes of the theatre as “ in a Pompeian
style,” and has remarked that the free use of jewelled ornament on
columns and arches is an oriental feature. It is not to be doubted that
these mosaics derive from the art of Alexandria. The recesses of the
interior are also covered with mosaic; this church must have been a
wonderfully beautiful work. The dome is covered externally by a low-
pitched roof.
The basilican church mentioned above is St John of the Studion at
Constantinople, which was built about 463 and is now in a terribly
ruined condition. It is rather short and wide and had two storeys of
marble columns on either hand, the lower tier supporting a moulded
marble beam, forming the front of a gallery floor, and the upper tier


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Precursors of St Sophia
543
a
aiding to carry the roof. A really structural gallery of this kind is a
beautiful feature. The most perfect part of this church is now the col-
umnar front of the narthex. The columns and entablature are of marble
elaborately carved. This carving, in accordance with a principle which
afterwards became still more marked, is sharply cut into the general
block-form of the mouldings and capitals, the serrated edges of the leaves
are in sharp triangular forms, and details are accentuated with holes
formed by a drill
. On the white marble and under the bright light this
delicately fretted surface decoration tells like pierced work; indeed a
little later it became customary to undercut much of the surface patterns
so that the capitals were surrounded by a thin layer of pierced pattern
work only attached here and there to the background; the result was
often wonderfully vivid and delightful. Marble door frames were set
between the columns of the narthex, forming a screen; this, like all such
expedients in Byzantine architecture, is done in a perfectly direct and
simple manner. Without pretence and without bungling the builders
did what was required in a free and great way ; but it was done in
noble materials under the guidance of a fine tradition. Byzantine archi-
tecture at its best gives us a romantic feeling of freedom with a classical
sense of order; it followed a law of liberty.
Another typical building is the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus at
Constantinople, built about 526. The plan of the central area is an
octagon with semicircular recesses projecting from the alternate sides ;
there are eight strong piers but the interspaces are set with columns
which bear a marble entablature forming a gallery beam which follows
the tradition just described. The outer walls form a square, from which
to the eastward projects the apse of the bema. The central area is
covered by a dome which is protected by leadwork but not by any inde-
pendent roof. The church of S. Vitale at Ravenna closely resembles
that of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, but it has hemicycles of columns pro-
jecting from every side of the octagon except where the bema opens
to the east.
Both these churches were built before Justinian essayed the colossal
task at St Sophia, which became one of the greatest building triumphs
in the whole history of architecture. The reign of Justinian was a time
of astonishing architectural activity ; nothing of the kind was to be
experienced again, until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries marked, by
the erection of countless cathedrals, another flood-time of art. The
superb plan of St Sophia must have been led up to by a great number
of experiments in smaller churches, many of which have been destroyed
unrecorded. The church of Sergiopolis, the ruins of which still exist,
has great hemicycles of columns on either side of the “nave,” and
Wulff has recorded two fragmentary plans from ruined churches at
Tralles, one of which had some affinity with the church at Sergiopolis,
while the other had a great apse from which five apsidal niches projected.
CH. XXI.


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544
St Sophia
Then again the churches of St Irene and of the Holy Apostles, the
latter of which was later than St Sophia, were both experiments in form
and in the equilibrium of domes. The Church of Christ (the Holy Wisdom,
St Sophia) at Constantinople, has from the moment of its erection been
the most famous church in the world. It was only a century old when
Arculf brought an account of it to the West, and from that day to
this its reputation has been unchallenged. It was the supreme effort of
the greatest emperor-builder of the Christian era. It seems to be more
individual and original and less related to other buildings of its kind in
scale, power and splendour than is any other great architectural work.
As M. Choisy has said, “ It is a conception marvellous in its audacity-
the science of effect, the arts of counterpoise, and of noble decoration
can be pushed no further.
” This wonderful structure was begun on
15 January 532; it was completed in six years and dedicated at Christmas
537: an astonishing effort. The dome soon fell, but it was rebuilt and
the church was re-dedicated at Christmas 563.
It is a vast domed hall, surrounded by other halls forming aisles and
having two storeys, while the central area rises to the dome. The more
organic parts of the structure like the columns, door and window frames,
are all of porphyry and of marbles, some white, some coloured. All the
rest is rough brickwork entirely covered over within by a precious
plating of fine marbles and mosaics of pattern-work and figures on
gold backgrounds. There must be whole acres of these encrustations of
marble and mosaic. Procopius says, “The entire vaulting is covered
with gold, but its beauty is even surpassed by the marbles which reflect
back its splendour. ” On the exterior the structure is bare and plain.
It was probably partially sheeted with marble; the great windows are
filled with marble lattices. The domes are covered with lead applied
directly upon the brickwork. The central dome was much flatter as first
built than it is at present. Expanse rather than height was aimed at.
In front of the church was a great square court surrounded by arcades,
and many other enclosures full of trees formed quiet precincts around
the cathedral. From the description of the Court poet, Paul the
Silentiary, recited in 563, at the opening ceremony after the fallen
dome had been rebuilt, we may form some picture of the splendour of
the great building when complete with all its necessary furniture. The
stalls of the priests in the apse were plated with silver. The iconostasis
was also of silver, while the altar was of gold set with precious stones,
and sheltered by a ciborium, or canopy, of silver—“ a silver tower, on
fourfold arches and columns, furnished with an eight-sided pyramid, a
globe and cross above wrought with many a loop of twining acanthus. "
On the central axis in front of the iconostasis was the ambo, having a
flight of steps to the east and another to the west. It rose from the
midst of a circular screen of columns which enclosed also the place for
the singers. On the beam which rested on the columns stood many
a


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Contemporary descriptions
545
a
standards bearing lamps, “ like trees. " The ambo itself had a canopy,
and the whole was formed of precious marbles, silver and ivory. On the
elevated floor of this ambo the Emperors were crowned. It was the
prototype of the “pulpitum ” set up at Westminster where the English
kings were crowned.
“Who shall describe the fields of marble gathered on the pavement
and lofty walls of the church? Fresh green from Carystus, and many-
coloured Phrygian stone of rose and white, or deep red and silver; por-
phyry powdered with bright spots, green of emerald from Sparta, and
Iassian marble with waving veins of blood-red on white; streaked red
stone from Lydia and crocus-coloured marble from the hills of the Moors.
Celtic stone like milk poured out on glittering black; the precious onyx
like as if gold were shining through it, and the fresh green from the
land of Atrax, a mingled harmony of shining surfaces. The mason also
has fitted together thin pieces of marble figuring intertwining curves
bearing fruit and flowers, with here and there a bird sitting on the twigs.
Such adornment surrounds the church above the columns. The capitals
are carved with the barbed points of graceful acanthus; but the vaulted
roof is covered over with many a little square of gold, from which the rays
streaming down strike the eyes so that men can scarcely bear to look. ”
The church was dedicated and re-dedicated at Christmas, and the
axis of the church points exactly to the point of sunrise on Christmas
Day. It must have been at the very moment of sunrise that the doors
of the completed church were thrown open.
The poet says, “At last the holy morn had come, and the great door
of the new-built temple ground on its opening hinges. And when the
first beam of rosy light, driving away the shadows, leapt from arch to
arch, all the princes and people hymned their song of praise and prayer,
and it seemed as if the mighty arches were set in heaven. ”
The architects were two artists from Asia Minor, Anthemius of
Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus. They were the most famous builders of
the age, and Anthemius with a younger Isidorus, nephew of the other,
is said to have built also the Church of the Holy Apostles.
The square area covered by the central dome of St Sophia is more
than one hundred feet in each direction ; it is prolonged, east and west,
by two vast semicircles, making a length of considerably more than two
hundred feet. From the eastern semicircle open three smaller apses,
and to the west open two apses and a central square compartment. All
this is unobstructed area, one colossal chamber. At the sides of the
square central space, and around the four corner apses, stand magnificent
monolithic columns of porphyry, and of marble, green spotted with white.
These columns with their arches support the gallery floor above the
aisles. Over them again rise other columns which bear the lateral walls
supporting the dome. The dome itself is pierced around its base by
forty windows through which a flood of light pours into the vast space.
C. MED, H. VOL. III. CH. XXI.
35


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546
Decoration
On the pendentives are still four colossal six-winged cherubim of mosaic,
which probably formed part of the first decoration. Similar creatures
are painted in the nearly contemporary MS. of Cosmas the traveller.
The dome probably had a figure of Christ in a circle at the summit and
the rest of its surface sprinkled with stars. Right and left on the vault
of the bema are still two great angels with wings which reach to their
feet. On the vault of the apse itself are also some remains, although
much injured and now obscured by paint, of a large figure of the seated
Virgin holding in her arms the Saviour who gives the benediction.
Probably these are works executed after the Iconoclastic interval.
Anthony, a Russian pilgrim (c. 1200), says that Lazarus the image-
painter first painted in the sanctuary of St Sophia the Virgin with Christ in
her arms and two angels. Now a celebrated artist of this name was one
of those who suffered at the Iconoclastic persecution; he was imprisoned
and tortured but he survived to replace over the great gate of the palace
called Chalce the image of Christ. Bayet, who quotes the story from the
life of Theophilus, speaks of this with some doubt as a monastic legend
(Byz. Art, p. 124). This very figure, however, is mentioned within fifty
years of the time required in an edict of Leo the Wise known as the
Book of the Prefect. In this it is ordained that the perfumers of the
city should have their shops between the Milion and the “Venerated
image of Christ which surmounts the Portico of Chalce, to the end that
the incense should rise toward the image. ” Further Dr Walsh, who was
chaplain to our embassy at the Porte about 1820, writes in a little book
entitled Essuys on Ancient Coins, “ There stood till very late in Con-
stantinople an inscription over the gate of the palace, called Chalce.
Under a large cross sculptured over the entrance to the palace were the
following words, “The Emperor cannot endure that Christ should be
represented (graphes) a mute and lifeless image graven on earthly
materials, but Leo and his young son Constantine have at their gates
engraved the thrice blessed representation of the Cross, the glory of
believing monarchs. " A plain cross had evidently replaced the original
image; later, possibly under Michael II, a crucifix was again placed over
the gateway. Doubtless a similar alteration was made in St Sophia and
other churches, and of one of these we still have ample evidence. The fine
conch over the apse of the church of St Irene in Constantinople has only
a large plain cross, erect on a stepped base set on a gold background.
In St Sophia at Salonica there is a similar plain cross over the apse, and
both these are almost certainly of the Iconoclastic period.
After this short description of the central classical example of Byzan-
tine art, St Sophia, Constantinople, it is impossible to attempt any
account of other individual buildings. At Salonica there is a wonderful
group of churches, including the superb basilica of St Demetrius. In
Asia Minor there are a great number of ruined churches, many of which
must have been built during the reign of Justinian. One important
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Other churches of the period
547
group of ruins comprising a monastery and a palace, ķasr ibn Wardān,
has only recently been discovered. The church in Isauria described by
Dr A. C. Headlam is now famous as a step in development. Later
researches by Sir William Ramsay and Miss Bell, and the German
excavations at Priene, Miletus and Ephesus, have brought to light an
immense body of new material. Syria is crowded with ruined churches,
many of which were built in the great sixth century. A well-equipped
American expedition, which lately worked over the ground, has added
greatly to our knowledge of the period. Still further east in Mesopo-
tamia and Armenia there are many interesting buildings, some of which
are still used for Christian worship. In Egypt and the Sūdān the
Christian ruins are at last receiving attention, and an Austrian expedi-
tion has excavated the convent of St Menas near Alexandria. The
excavations at Bawit and Sakkara have brought to light a wonderful
series of capitals and other sculptured stones. Many of these seem to be
prototypes of forms well known in Constantinople and Ravenna. One
or two second-rate capitals of this kind have recently been added to the
British Museum, but the best have gone to Berlin, where there is a very
fine collection of Christian art, and to Boston. To the
age
of Justinian
belong the monastery and church of St Catherine under Mount Sinai,
where still as when Procopius wrote, “monks dwell whose life is only a
careful study of death. ” It is a compact square fort surrounded by high
walls, within which is a large church half filling up the space, the rest
being occupied by a few narrow lanes of small dwellings. The Egyptian
monasteries are of this type, and that of Sinai was doubtless built by
masters from Egypt. The plan of the church has an Egyptian charac-
teristic in a chapel across the east end outside the apse. The church is
basilican with granite columns and a wooden roof. On the old timbers
were found three inscriptions, which shewed that the monastery was finished
between 548 and 562. In the apse is a much injured mosaic of the
Transfiguration which is probably of the age of the church. Besides
the celebrated enamelled door, which probably dates from the eleventh
century, are some carved wooden doors, which De Beylié thinks belonged
to the original work. The inscriptions spoken of above mention
Justinian, “our defunct empress Theodora," and Ailisios the architect. .
During the last generation an enormous body of evidence for Christian
art in North Africa has been recorded by French scholars. One of the
latest discoveries is a beautiful baptistery at Timgad, which had the floor
and the basin of the font with its curb-wall continuously covered with
mosaic. It may be mentioned here that parts of a mosaic floor, from
what must have been a baptistery at Carthage, are now in the British
Museum. This shews a stag and a hind drinking from the waters of
paradise, recalling the verse : “ As the hart panteth after the water
brooks. "
On the shores of the Adriatic and in Italy are many pure Byzantine
CH. XXI.
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## p. 548 (#594) ############################################

548
Italian Byzantesque
works of the sixth century. One is the splendid basilica of Parenzo
with its atrium and baptistery complete. It has a great number of beau-
tiful carved capitals which were certainly imported from Constantinople.
There are also some fine mosaics. The most remarkable of these is one
covering the external surface of the west wall above the atrium roof.
It shewed the Majesty enthroned amidst the seven candlesticks. This
may remind us that Justinian encrusted the west external wall of the
basilica of the Holy Nativity at Bethlehem with a great mosaic of the
birth of Christ. Such external mosaics were quite common on Byzantine
churches. At Parenzo, as also at Ravenna, and in St Sophia itself,
there is much ornamental plastering of the sixth century.
At Ravenna is a large group of buildings, some of the age of Jus-
tinian, others both earlier and later. S. Vitale has already been mentioned.
The delightful small cruciform tomb-chapel of Galla Placidia has some
fifth century mosaics. There are also two large baptisteries and two
magnificent basilican churches with their splendid mosaics. Here also
is the very curious tomb of Theodoric with its monolithic covering
shaped like a low dome.
One of the chief treasures preserved in this city is a superb ivory
throne, a work of the fifth century, with panels carved with subjects
from the Old and New Testaments. This is almost certainly an Alex-
andrian work. Somewhat similar panels, preserved at Cambridge and
in other museums, suggest that more than one of such thrones had been
made.
In Rome there are several remnants from the age of Justinian, chief
amongst which are the choir enclosures of S. Clemente. At Milan, on
the north side of S. Lorenzo, is a beautiful chapel with mosaics in
apsidal recesses. One is of Christ and the Apostles, which is executed
in a very grey scheme of colour, largely black and white, with some
blue and green; the nimbus of Christ is white. Although so simple
these mosaics are most beautiful. At Naples there is a baptistery with
very fine but fragmentary mosaics, which date perhaps from the end of
the fifth century.
Byzantine mosaic decoration was one of the noblest art-forms ever
developed. Enormous areas were covered by perfectly coherent and
co-ordinated schemes of pictorial teaching, and a solemn majesty was
unerringly attained; while the splendour of the gold backgrounds
suffused the whole with a glowing atmosphere.
The types of Christian imagery which are found in the Byzantine
mosaics of the fifth and sixth centuries were probably drawn from Egyptian
Christian sources. It has been suggested that these types may have
originated in Palestine, and that the paintings and mosaics of the great
churches built there by Constantine largely influenced the schemes of
imagery in the rest of Christendom may not be doubted. It is improbable,
however, that Palestine was a school of iconographical invention; whereas
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## p. 549 (#595) ############################################

Early art in books
549
Egypt seems to have been a glowing hearth of pictorial activity from
the Hellenistic age onwards.
Early Christian iconography must have been developed at an active
Hellenistic centre. Jerusalem was hardly this, and Palestinian art
for the most part must have been an offshoot of that of Alexandria,
It is probable that painted rolls and books were the chief sources,
from which the types to become familiar in paintings and mosaics were
spread abroad.
The codex form of book, which seems at an early time to have
become specially associated with Christian literature, was almost
certainly an Egyptian innovation. According to Sir Maunde Thompson,
codices of vellum, of the third century and earlier, have been found in
Egypt, and this form of MS. “ was gradually thrusting its way into use
in the first centuries of our era. . . . The book form was favoured by the
early Christians. In the fourth century the struggle between the roll
and the codex was finished. ” Some fine book-bindings, which may even
be as early as the sixth century, have lately been found in Egypt. The
noble Codex Alexandrinus of the fifth century, now in the British
Museum, is an Egyptian book. So also, almost certainly, is the once
beautiful, but now almost destroyed, pictured book of Genesis called the
Cotton Bible. The writing of this volume is very like that of the
Codex Alexandrinus and of a great number of papyrus fragments. It
also seems to date from the fifth century, and furthermore its pictures
have some affinities with others in an Alexandrian chronicle of the
world on papyrus, which has been published by Strzygowski, while they
have a closer likeness to other painted books which have been judged to
have been produced in Alexandria, such as illuminated volumes of
Dioscorides and of Cosmas the traveller, and a roll of Joshua. Many
points in the miniatures with which the Cotton Genesis was crowded
bear out this view of its origin. Thus, two of those relating to Joseph
in Egypt shew a group of pyramids in the background; a third had
well-drawn camels ; and another the burial of a body wrapped like a
mummy. It has been proved by Dr Tikkanen of Helsingfors that this
MS. or a duplicate of it, was used by the mosaic workers at St Mark's,
Venice, at the end of the twelfth century, for the designs from early
Bible history which fill the domes of the narthex. Twenty-six of those
relating to the Creation were accurately enlarged copies of as many
miniatures from the now terribly injured book, and these subjects,
designs of great dignity and grace, can consequently be restored. Other
pictures in the volume which relate to Lot, Abraham and Joshua, were
again very similar to the series of mosaics executed in Sta Maria
Maggiore in Rome about A. D. 440, and, indeed, the types found in the
Cotton Genesis seem to have had an almost canonical importance.
Their influence can be traced far down in the Middle Ages, and even the
Biblical pictures of Raphael still retained some reminiscence of them. One
CH. XXI.


## p. 550 (#596) ############################################

550
Mosaics and paintings
characteristic of the Cottonian MS. is the appearance in the miniatures
of impersonations of such ideas as the Seven Days of Creation, and the
Four Rivers of the Garden; the former being represented as seven
angels, and the latter as four reclining figures with urns. The Soul
breathed into man is depicted in the form of a winged Psyche. The
Creator is shewn as Christ, “by Whom all things were made. "
Another famous book of Genesis at Vienna, having pictures painted
below the text on pages of purple vellum, is almost certainly later than
the Cottonian book, and although there are obviously some links
between them, the Vienna designs seem to stand outside the Alexandrian
circle. Two other books on purple, which have much in common with
the Vienna book, are the codices of Rossano and Sinope. All three
may probably be dated about A. D. 500, and may have been painted at
Constantinople. The magnificent Dioscorides, which is dated c. 512, is
almost certainly an Alexandrian book. Its fine, clear drawings of
plants may be copied from a more classical original. The Joshua Roll
of the Vatican is probably sixth century and of Alexandrian origin.
Several of the mosaics at Ravenna have characteristics similar to the
miniatures in these Egyptian books, and it may be regarded as certain
that it was not only at St Mark's, Venice, that the designs for mosaics
were taken from such sources. Indeed, it must be more and more
recognised that such compositions were very often drawn out of authori-
ties almost as fixed as the texts which they illustrated. All religious
art, and Byzantine art especially, has in a large degree been the handing
on of a tradition. The outlines of these iconographical schemes must
have been suggested by theologians'. They were certainly not the result
of a free play of artistic fancy.
A number of figured textiles which have been found in Egypt are
also very interesting in regard to the treatment of their subjects. Some
are merely painted or dyed and others are woven and embroidered.
Three pieces of the dyed work in the Victoria and Albert Museum have
designs of the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Miracles of Christ.
These, again, are interesting as giving us versions of well-known types of
the subjects, and suggest that these designs also had their character
impressed upon them in Egypt. For instance, they closely resemble
others found on the ivory throne at Ravenna, and this similarity rein-
forces the argument in favour of that famous work having been made in
Alexandria, which was the great mart for objects in carved ivory? .
A favourite scheme of ornamentation on the Christian textiles found
in Egypt is the imitation of jewelling. Especially is this the case with
the Cross ; and the jewelled cross, which appears again and again in the
mosaics of Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople, would also seem to have
been an Egyptian invention. Recently many wall-paintings have been
1 As in some later Italian works, such as in the Spanish Chapel at Florence. See
Wood Green, J. , Sta Maria Novella, pp. 150 ff. 2 See Vol. 1. Chapter xxi.
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## p. 551 (#597) ############################################

The East, Rome and art
551
a
are.
exposed by excavation in Egypt and here, also, well-known types, like
the Majesty and the Ascension, have been found.
It has not been possible to speak of the quality of Byzantine art but
only of certain leading facts in its history. As a whole it was
wonderful movement of return to first principles in regard to structures
and to the free expression of feeling in what we call decoration. Roman
art was very largely official, grandiose, and a matter of formulas. The
Roman artist was as closely imprisoned in conventions as we ourselves
Then came a time and an influence which led the people to build
what they wanted only by the rules of common sense, and to draw for
decorative art fresh draughts from the springs of poetry.