BYZANTINE ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS: ÉPOQUES REFLECTED IN IMAGES AND BOOK DESIGN

Abstract

In the article five illuminated manuscripts created in various periods of Byzantine history are analyzed as evidences of the attitude of the society and primarily its intellectual elite towards images and book culture, as it was reflected in the subjects and style of the miniatures and generally in the design of the codices. The Vienna Dioscorides manuscript, created in 512–513 for the imperial princess Juliana Anicia in order to express the gratitude of the inhabitants of the suburb of Honoratae for the construction of the church, was endowed with miniatures painted mainly in classical artistic manner apparently harking back to ancient herbaria. The codex is a testimony of preservation of many elements of the ancient culture in the Byzantine life of that time. In the miniatures of the marginal psalters written about the mid-9th century there are a few images related to the just finished iconoclasm, e.g. those of the Patriarch Nicephorus and his opponent iconoclast John the Grammarian. At the same time, we do not find there images of Theod ore the Studite, abbot of the Studious monastery in Constantinople, active defender of sacred images. His depictions appear in the marginal psalters and liturgical roll soon after the mid-11th century when the memory of the famous abbot was re-evoked owing to the discussions of studious monks with western theologians in the time of the Great Schism. The Tetraevangelion in the Russian National Library (gr. 801) represents a real masterpiece of the book culture typical of the second half of the 11th — early 12th century. In that time a book was probably considered not only as a source of knowledge but as a work of art and a sign of prestige of its owner. The Tetraevangelion of Karahissar written and illustrated soon after the mid-12th century reflects a different situation: the purpose of its creation seems purely utilitarian — transmission of the text and its decoration mostly with concise and artistically simple images. Miniatures of the Sinai Psalter (Saint Catherine’s monastery, cod. 38), a fragment of which is preserved in the Russian National library in Saint Petersburg (gr. 269), copied in the late 13th century from those of the famous Paris manuscript (BnF, gr. 139) of the mid-10th century demonstrate an interest to the art of Antiquity refracted through the prism of another conception of an image that is conceived as ideal and absolutely immaterial. Significant interest to the classical art always marks a cultural efflorescence, and copying of the miniatures of the Paris Psalter and of some other codices of the mid-10th century in the late 13th — early 14th century characterizes such a moment in the history of Byzantine society.