Unrivalled Influence by Herrin Judith;

Author:Herrin, Judith;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

FROM ROMAN TO CHRISTIAN BYZANTIUM

Pagan Presence

I shall begin with an obvious but often overlooked visual presence: the existence in Byzantium of numerous images of empresses. In the Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, a strange collection of stories about the monuments of medieval Constantinople, there are many references to statues of Helena, the mother of Constantine I. Among the eighty Christian statues redistributed around the city by Justinian, there were three of Helena: “one of porphyry and [other] marbles, another with silver inlay on a bronze column and the other of ivory.”7 Several composite statues of Helena and Constantine together, often holding the True Cross, also adorned the capital city (for example, at the Forum of Constantine; at the Milion; at the Senate House, one in porphyry; at the Forum Bovis; and at the Philadelphion). Helena is the first in a long line of mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives of emperors commemorated in porphyry, bronze, silver, and marble who were understood as powerful women.8

Theodore the Lector’s “Brief Catalogue of Women,” which is only known because it was included in the Parastaseis, records the survival of statues of two near-contemporaries of Helena: Fausta and Anastasia, the unhappy spouses of Constantine I and Julian. The largest number represented women of the ruling dynasties of the fifth to eighth centuries and were often in group sculptures: Eudoxia and her daughters; Pulcheria with her husband, Marcian; Verina, wife of Leo I; Arcadia and Ariadne, wives of Zeno; Euphemia; Eudokia; Sophia and her daughter Arabia and niece Helena; Justinian and Theodora, and their homonyms, Justinian II and his wife Theodora. This last one stood at the Basilika, a place where Theodora’s Khazar relatives and their Bulgarian allies received payment of tribute during Justinian II’s second reign (705–11), and it is identified by this topographical association.9 Although the emperor was remembered as a tyrant, the compilers of the Parastaseis believed that he had commemorated his triumphant return to imperial power in this group statue. Previous commentators, however, had identified it as Byzas and Phidaleia, the mythical founders of Byzantium. So there was much doubt as to the actual rulers depicted. The problem is recognized by the compilers of the Parastaseis, who emphasize that these statues were still visible at the time of writing (heos tes semeron), and could be inspected by those who wished to understand ancient monuments.10

Among the famous statues mentioned in the text, one reveals a distinct exercise of female agency. From a notorious incident that occurred at the end of the fourth century, we know that a silver statue of the empress Eudoxia was set up on a porphyry column in the Augousteion close to the cathedral church, when John Chrysostom was bishop. It commemorated her acclamation as augusta (empress) and was inaugurated “with applause and popular spectacles of dances and mimes, as was then customary on the erection of the statues of the emperors.”11 Sozomen and Socrates report the protests made by the bishop at the openly pagan celebrations that accompanied the statue’s installation.

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