Philolog

Fig. 1 Building a Cathedral, Jean Fouquet, 15th. c. ; Fig. 2 Annunciation, Saint-Denis, 12th. c. (reconstructed)

In the new Gothic architecture - originally thought of by outsiders as "barbarian" in contrast to "Roman" - conceived and practiced by Abbé Suger at Saint-Denis, “the stained glass window held pride of place.” (1) Light was both subject and goal, the more light the greater. Medieval theories of light originated in a spiritualized world view and a philosophy whose sources were metaphysical in their history and their application. From biblical scriptures and patristic commentaries sprang a hermeneutic of light, whether allegorical or literal, and it is not surprising that these theories of light had their rationale basis in a tension that makes a certain sense today in physics (optics), however bathed in symbolism. This brief study delineates the source and basis for that rationale as outlined in Abbé Suger’s putative division of typologies of light into lux, lumen and illumination and the subsequent metaphorical application of colored light.

The monk Theophilus in De Diversibus Artibus, Book 3, Preface said, "If the eye of man...marks the abundance of light from the windows, it admires the inestimable beauty of the glass and the variety of the most costly work."

As Michel Camille and Michael Cothren have ably demonstrated elsewhere, the cathedral represented the new Jerusalem first intimated in Ezekiel’s apocalypse from the Old Testament (Ezekiel 40:2-43:27) and culminating in John’s apocalypse from the New Testament, where the cathedral becomes a representative Neoplatonic shadow on earth of the heavenly tabernacle. For Suger, the gates and foundations of Jerusalem were seen in the Book of Revelation 21:2-25 as precious stones:

“the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven…having the glory of God, and her light like a most precious stone, even like a jasper clear as crystal…and the city was pure gold, like clear glass…whose foundations were garnished with all manner of gems: jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, amethyst…”

While colored glass had long been understood as a surrogate for precious stones, it is Suger more than any other who transformed the cathedral into this new vision, in some hope of bringing a foretaste of heaven on earth, perhaps even as a faith incentive for believers who lived in poverty. As Suger wrote, De administratione 23: “the multicolored loveliness of the gems has called me away…transporting me from material to immaterial things…26: the dull mind rises to truth through that which is material and in seeing this light is resurrected from its former submersion...33: Thus, when out of my delight in the House of God, the loveliness of the multi-colored gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has caused me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial... 34: [The Tree of Jesse window] urges us onward from the material to the immaterial...These windows are very valuable on account of their wonderful execution and the profuse expenditure of sapphire and colored glass.” In his dissertations and journals, “Suger …wrote explicitly of color. light and brilliance, all qualities of stained glass, as essential aspects of the purpose of religious architecture. He referred to ‘sapphire glass’ suggesting that the intense blue windows at Saint-Denis is to be understood as having the same importance as gems.” (2)

Fig. 6 Bourges Cathedral, The Life of Joseph Window, 13th c.

The first Gothic collection of glass that Abbé Suger innovated at St. Denis between 1140-1144 was tinged with a Dionysian “academism” (3) however steeped in mysticism. The root of this academic mysticism appeared to have a connection with Saint-Denis himself, as some clerical traditions maintained – however much in ahistorical error - that the martyr Saint Denis whose relics were the treasure of the abbey was somehow the same philosopher-cum-apostle in Athens converted by Paul (Acts of the Apostles 17:34). This belief was further stirred by the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. author of Corpus Areopagiticum, and a Neoplatonist theologian circa 500 CE. Pseduo-Dionysius allegorized God as heavenly “light” and Jesus as earthly image thereof of that “Light” from the Gospel of John 1:4-5 and 9 "In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it...[He] was the true Light which lights every man who comes into the world." a metaphysical explanation of light taken from scripture or commentaries thereof. Much of the theological commentary as source writing about light was also found in Pseudo-Dionysius’ Peri theion onomaton (Greek) or De Divinis Nominibus (Latin) Divine Names, especially chapter 4. (4) Light in all its spiritual and physical manifestations was the very leitmotif of Suger’s Gothic transformation. Suger was familiar with Pseudo-Dionysius through the translation of John Scotus Erigena.

Although the new twelfth-century treatise De Diversis Artibus (On Various Arts) of the monk Theophilus was the practical source for making stained glass and how it could be optimally rendered from metallic oxides for colors in glass ,(5) Neoplatonic and medieval philosophy on etymology and scripture determined the actual choices and subjects of the windows, and Suger was certainly steeped in the latter as he guided the glaziers collected from all over Europe. Even though these glaziers had regional preferences and praxes, Suger unified them by moulding these differences to his vision,(6) "We also had painted, by the hands of many masters sought out in various nations, a splendid variety of new windows." (De administratione 24).

Contrary to curiously popular opinion that rendered stained glass as mere Biblia pauperum, a "Bible of the Poor", (7) Cothren has brilliantly and carefully shown that stained glass was conceived and executed, for example, at Beauvais but applicable in many contexts, as a sublime art with the highest aspirations in depiction of spiritual truths for the sophisticated as well as for the people. Stained glass was intended as a homily of great metaphysical depth far more than simple storytelling, where the color choices and patterns, allusions, heraldric devices and many other linkages also had profound meanings to be plumbed that were unlikely to be known by the illiterate; often windows told sophisticated stories and allegories deliberately using light as revelatory. (8) As agents of mutable light, these windows were far more than windows. This is also evidenced by Raguin and Manhes-Deremble, wherein those who often commissioned windows were not only wealthy patrons but well-educated in the subtleties and hermeneutics of scripture, literature, law and the arts. (9) Cothren has sluethed some of the Beauvais patrons like Bishop Jean de Marigny and his inspiring and yet personal vision for the windows there. (10) Homan also focuses on the theological role of art as religious instruction, far more didactic than Jerome's putative homilies at the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem using wall mosaics as scriptural illustration. (11)

Suger could somehow parse three different Latin words for light: lux. lumen, illumination. He understood lux, external light as physical, coming from the sun and nature, especially light shining outside the cathedral. But once it entered through the window it was transformed into lumen, new metaphysical light because the glass, now both wall and sacred boundary functioned much like the ancient temenos threshold of a classical sanctuary or poemerium. On one external side it was ordinary and profane light that shone on everyone, even the heretic and the wicked (Matthew 5:45: “He makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good”) , but on the other internal side the light was now consecrated and holy. Because “In Suger’s vision, light was the primary source of faith and divine inspiration”, (12) this light was one agency of a powerful benevolent grace that fed the soul. (Isaiah 9:2, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” The light inside the cathedral was mediated by the gemlike windows, and this transformed light took a third route: once it passed through the physical eye of the believer, it was changed once again into illumination, now a spiritual light that elevated the mind and renewed the spirit within as a metaphor for internal life-changing light (Ephesians 5:8, “Now are you light, walk as children of light; I Epistle of John 1:7, “Walk in the light as He is in the light.”). Suger himself poetically described some of his windows, here the Burning Bush panel of the Moses window (Saint-Denis Abbey, North III): "Just as the bush is seen to burn yet is not consumed, So he who is full of the divine fire burns yet is not consumed."

Suger’s programmatic typology of windows also followed another allegory with its dominant use of two primary colors, not coincidentally the first two gems of the New Jerusalem, jasper (normally red) and sapphire (blue) in Revelation 21:19. Judging by extant window fragments, Suger certainly preferred blue (sapphire). Although allegories of color were not fixed then any more than now (and in fact were sometimes reversed), red often represented earthly passion, sanguinity of blood, and the corporeal body while blue, "the color of heaven" (13) was identified with spiritual aspiration, celestial sky and the promise of eternity. Naturally the two colors could be easily seen in the dualistic tensions of life as embattled humans have always been torn between two natures: body and soul, material and immaterial, earth and heaven. Humans vacillate between voluptuary desire and bodily asceticism in a tension mediated between the two extremes. (Romans 7:19 & ff: “For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do…I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind…”). These are the very kinds of typologies Suger loved to make programmatic at Saint-Denis, (14) especially since he supervised and was the guiding mind behind the windows and the new construction to bring in as much light as possible. (15), although the dominance of red and blue glass is best seen in High Gothic. Only a short time later, Sainte-Chapelle culminates “the apotheosis of stained glass as a major formative element in the architecture.” (16) Who would have thought in the third millennium BCE when glass was first manufactured (17) that a building could have "glass walls" as at Saint-Chapelle? Although starting with Saint-Denis at the outset (1140-44), the great high Gothic windows of Chartres (twelfth to thirteenth century), Sainte-Chapelle, Bourges and Reims (the latter three from the thirteenth century) are the best examples of the medieval perception of tension of dominant red and blue glass that produce such visual and spiritual ecstasy in their viewers. Again at Chartres recently, applying fractal spatial analysis, I calculated in just a few windows how careful planning distributed and juxtaposed color patterns for maximum effect; accidental or casual color placement could hardly have resulted in such spectral color variability.

Fig. 3 Reims, Rose Window; Fig. 4 Chartres, Nativity: Joseph's Dream

Perhaps it is too much to strain Suger’s understanding of this perceived tension into an allegorical aesthetic of a battle between the colors of red and blue in his windows even though they dominate all other colors. On the other hand, what might have been perceived as spiritual tension was actually a physical tension as physics has shown through optics: the retina cannot actually focus simultaneously on both ends of the visual spectrum. Although red and blue can be gazed at together at first without much trouble, ultimately the cone cells must polarize and choose either red and blue at either spectral end because of optical tension.

In 1907 physicist Gustav Mie, applying James Clerk Maxwell's equations on electromagnetic phenomena, including light, deduced and calculated glass color differences by light scattering through the various metal oxide nanoclusters dispersed in the glass: "how light in a medium gets scattered by particles on the size scale of the wavelength ("Mie scattering")" (18).

Fig. 5 Optics Color Spectrum

What Suger and his immediate successors, especially in France, understood intuitively as a mysterious allegory of red and blue hues and their metaphorical tensions, physics now presents as optical reality: the tension is sublime.

Notes:

(1) Alain Erlande-Brandenburg. Musée nationale du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny. Guide to the Collections. Paris: Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 1993, 17.

(2) Virginia C. Raguin. Stained Glass: from its Origins to the Present. New York: Harry Abrams, 2003, 14.

(3) Louis Grodecki. The Stained Glass of French Churches. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1948, 14-6; Louis Grodecki. Les Vitraux de Saint-Denis I. Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi. Paris: Centre Nationale Recherche Scientifique, 1976. France Etudes I, esp. "Le Texte de Suger. La date et les circonstances de al creation", esp. 27, where Grodecki discusses and analyzes "relatif aux vitraux" the importance of Suger's own words: "Nous avons...par les mains tres expertes de nombreux maitres de diverse nations, une tres belle variete de nouvelles verrieres" ["We have..by the hands of numerous masters from different nations, a very beautiful variety of new glassmakers"], continuing discussion with the seminal Jesse Tree window.

(4) Paul Rorem. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1993; Paul Rorem. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works. New York: Paulist Press 1987.

(5) George Seddon in Lawrence Lee, George Seddon and Francis Stephens. Stained Glass. London: Mitchell Beazley Publishers, 1976, 10, 68-9, 177-82. Theophilus and Life of Suger. Theophilus, De Diversis Artibus (On Various Arts); J, Hayward and W. Cahn, et al. Radiance and Reflection: Medieval Art from the Raymond Pitcairn Collection, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982. On Theophilus’ treatise portion on stained glass, 12th c, , 39.

(6) Madeline Caviness. "Suger's Glass at Saint-Denis: The State of Research," in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium, ed. Paula Lieber Gerson (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986), 257-72.

(7) although not necessarily a proponent thereof but in a more balanced critique: Madeline Caviness, "Biblical Stories in Windows: Were They Bibles for the Poor?" in B. S.. Levy, ed. The Bible in the Middle Ages: Its Influence on Literature and Art, Binghamton, NY, 1992, 103-47; and "Constructing and Construing Stories in Glass." Abstracts and Program Statements, College Art Association, 79th Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., 1991), 70.

(8) Michael Cothren. Picturing the Celestial City: The Medieval Stained Glass of Beauvais Cathedral. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, esp. 71-96 with the Theophilus Window at Beauvais (and elsewhere in sculpture). This lavish book is probably the best-written tome on stained glass in the English language for demonstrating the often complex theology and philosophy behind this medium.

(9) Colette Manhes-Deremble. Les vitraux narratifs de la cathédrale de Chartres: Etude iconographique. Corpus Vitrearum France, Etudes II. Paris: CNRS, 1993, 5, 28, 72 & ff ; See a review of this thesis by Virginia Raguin. "Stained Glass in England During the Middle Ages: Book Reviews".Art Bulletin 77.2 (June, 1995) 321-24 and another by Alyce Jordan. "Review of Les vitraux narratifs de la cathédrale de Chartres: Etude iconographique by Colette Manhes-Deremble; Jean-Paul Deremble." Speculum 72.2 (April, 1997) 524-26.

(10) Cothren, 155-160 ff.

(11) Roger Homan. The Art of the Sublime: Principles of Christian Art and Architecture. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006, 52: "Aquinas affirms the didactic function of religious art and gives the seal of his influential approval to the intricate symbolism..."

(12) Norman F. Cantor, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. New York: Viking / Penguin, 398.

(13) Peter and Linda Murray. Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 edition, 62.

(14) Wolfgang Kemp. The Narratives of Gothic Stained Glass. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 48. Kemp analyzes Suger’s typology in the stained glass programmatic display.

(15) Elisabeth von Witzleben. French Stained Glass. London: Thames and Hudson, 1968. “Saint-Denis windows before 1146 CE supervised – and themes decided – by Suger”, 20.

(16) Robert Sowers. The Language of Stained Glass. Portland: Timber Press, 1981, esp. 35-36 on Suger and glass history; E. H. Gombrich. “Eastern Inventions and Western Responses” , Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter, 1998, 193-205 on enameling and lapidary invention. Glass as a borrowed pyrotechnology was a byproduct of Orientalizing metallurgy. The great architect and art historian Viollet-le-Duc postulated a controversial light irradiation in red and blue hues in the Gothic revival of the 19th c. as he experimented with color theory.

(17) Although the earliest known truly Christian stained glass windows - acknowledging San Vitale's sixth century fragments in Ravenna - may be at the Anglo-Saxon church of Jarrow circa 680 CE, glass manufacture in the ancient Near East and Egypt dates to the 3rd millennium BCE. John Harris and Carola Hicks. Discovering Stained Glass. Princes Risborough, Bucks: Shire Books, 1996 repr., 7.

(18) Phil Schewe and Ben Stein. "Beam Photography". Inside Science Research - Physics News Update Number 517.3. American Institute of Physics. 12/21/2000 (http://www.aip.org/pnu/2000/split/517-3.html); Chris McLinden, "Mie Scattering" 7/22/1999 (www.ess.uci.edu/~cmclinden/link/xx/node19.html).

Images courtesy of Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (Fig. 1); Abbaye de Saint-Denis (Fig. 2) via http://vrcoll.fa.pitt.edu/medart/image/France/sdenis/windows/TwelfthcWindows.html; Diocese of Chartres (Fig. 3) via http://perso.wanadoo.fr/.diocese.chartres/cathedrale; Wikipedia (Fig. 5); Bourges Cathedral (Fig 6) Boston College, http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/arch/bourges_glass.html. Translations of Suger by David Burr.

Stanford University

Copyright © 2006 Patrick Hunt

phunt@stanford.edu
http://www.patrickhunt.net

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Fig 1 Mosaic of Justinian and Retinue at Apse Entry, San Vitale, Ravenna, c. 546 CE

Power on earth was once - and sometimes even now - perceived as a result of power in heaven. The great double mosaic of Justinian and Theodora at San Vitale in Ravenna is a forceful exercise in demonstrating power through art as propaganda, fusing political and religious imagery for a double statement of authority. In the 6th century, many intellectual Christians, not necessarily an oxymoron despite the possibility thereof, would have found these mosaics hubristic. Even the cynical could have found these mosaics troubling. Yet there are at least three possible reasons why this propaganda was justifiable for a Byzantine ruler. The mosaics here are perhaps the greatest of early Byzantine if not all post-Roman mosaics; they do serve as embellishment to reinforce the grandeur of Justinian, perhaps simultaneously last Roman emperor and first Byzantine emperor.

But first, it is necessary to argue that this double procession is Byzantine and not either Roman or Palaeo-Christian. Although Justinian is often considered the last truly Roman ruler in the East and this art is in the West far outside of Constantinople as well as chronologically outside what is easily Byzantine a few centuries later, it is nonetheless Byzantine. No less than David Talbot Rice places Justinian and his world within a new Byzantine framework "But more vital for art...was the reign of Justinian...for then the new Byzantine Empire was set on a sure foundation and an art and architecture which were both wholly Christian and also wholly new." (1) This is also acceptable if one likewise agrees with the thesis of John Julius Norwich that the rule of Justinian (and Theodora) helped create a political atmosphere that would prevail for centuries in Byzantium: "More than any other monarch in the history of Byzantium, he [Justinian] stamped the Empire with his own character; centuries were to pass before it emerged form his shadow." (2)." It is these premises followed here. The authority of the emperor to convene Ecumenical Councils of the Church (553 CE) and effectively hold the western Pope Vigilius between 545-553 mostly hostage against his will in or around Constantinople (although Rome was in hostile Goth hands anyway) are but two evidences of this fusion of political and religious power.

Justifications for the propagandizing elements in these mosaics are not difficult, particularly if one is Christian emperor, however that word Christian was understood at the time given abundant heresies and a politically-charged orthodoxy that often depended on more subtle factors like a ruler's belief rather than a mere majority of members purportedly led by the Holy Spirit. First, since Constantine, the Roman Christian emperor is the temporal shadowy image of the heavenly Christ just as Christ is the eternal blazing sun the earthly emperor reflects, a favorite Neoplatonic principle (Epistle to the Hebrews 8:5, 9:25 & ff., 10:1) . Second, Justinian would have held that the scriptures themselves established his secular authority. No doubt, if he knew them (and he must have endorsed the basic ideas if not the actual scriptures) Justinian would have relished New Testament passages where believers were admonished to respect earthly authority as if divine (Epistle to Titus 3:1; First Epistle to Timothy 2:2; Epistle to the Hebrews 13:17), and to accept the premise that God raised and established all earthly rulers, kingdoms, nations and like powers (Isaiah 14:9). How much more so if the ruler saw himself as Christian! Third, however human, a Christian emperor would have some religious oversight of his people just as a pastor and ecclesiast would have oversight of his flock. This would later evolve into a fundamental of Absolutism in Europe even when the secular power was more subject to ecclesiastic office. In Justinian's day, the role of emperor was after all still far more authoritative than any archbishop or patriarch, partly because the weight of the Roman Empire was still at least not so dim a memory and the title of emperor was more or less a thunderous even if vestigial idea. Fourth, Christ himself was seen as a victorious Lord of Hosts over myriad angels, mighty in battle and apocalyptically wielding a sword in the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse 1:16, 2:16, 19:15). Perhaps some would see the highly visible halo around Justinian as blasphemous - a Christlike posturing - but he certainly wished credit for trying to unify the Church in East and West, ultimately unsuccessful.

Fig. 2 Justinian mosaic detail

The octagonal Church of San Vitale was apparently paid for by the banker Julianus Argentarius. The Ravenna mosaic of Justinian, although it is not necessarily a portrait of a 64 year old man with graying hair born in 482 CE whereas the mosaic must be around 546 CE, shows a face used to authority. A more likely portrait is at Santa Sophia from 532 CE where Justinian donates the church to Christ. But it is more the setting here at Ravenna that is impressive than the man himself, an apple of silver in a frame of gold, to reverse the Proverb. With Justinian in the center it is easy to see the symbolism of twelve men flanking him as if he is Christ and they are his twelve disciples. There is still some debate if this mosaic duple is meant to represent a procession as is often argued, as if moving into the apse of San Vitale, which I would also maintain. On our right, mostly clerical power is assembled at his left arm whereas this is balanced by secular political power on our left but at his right. If it is possible to reconstruct some understanding of significance, the leaders of the procession would be clerical not only because it is a sacred place they are about to enter vicariously but also because Justinian needs to emphasize from where his earthly power derives and where it proceeds. But to make it certain his imperial power is very much backed up by military strength, the retinue of six soldiers (count six heads) is armed and ready. Again emphasizing religious continuity, the Chi-Rho shield reminds of Constantine's legendary dream and victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 CE as well as where earthly authority rests on a militant Christ.

Fig. 3 Platoon of Six Soldiers
Holding Chi-Rho Shield

One of the political statements in this church may be the reassertion of "Constantinopolitan orthodoxy" against the Arian Goths who controlled Ravenna off and on but who were expelled for awhile in 540 about the time the San Vitale decorations including mosaics were planned and soon executed in finished state for the dedication in 548. Thus, "a political message is added to the theological, liturgical and dedicational messages of the sanctuary," (3) whose octagonal form is best seen from above.

Fig. 4 San Vitale view, apse nearest viewer

The officials cannot be easily named, although much has been written about the brilliant general Belisarius as one of them, most likely the bearded man on the left wearing the purple tablinum (?) and with a lozengy insignia on his right shoulder - possibly a general's epaulette? - although the old eunuch Narses with the title of Magister militum who usually received credit for Belisariius' victories could also be a candidate. Responsible for helping put down the Nika Revolt against Justinian in 532, Belisarius was then only twenty-eight, whereas in 546 he would have been fourteen years older at a mature forty-two years. The bearded man standing next to Justinian wears a officer's or court epaulette [?] on his right shoulder. In and out of favor due to Theodora's jealousy and fear of usurpation, Belisarius had been promoted only to Comes stabuli (Count of the Stable) rather than Magister militum in 544. If the rival general Narses, however, was indeed old and certainly a eunuch as well, one would expect him to be beardless and perhaps a better good candidate for the official on Justinian's left. Yet again another, probably more likely, suggestion has the official on Justinian's left as the patron banker Julianus. I would maintain, as most others have, that a reconciled Belisarius - who also captured and restored Ravenna to Justinian in 539-40 - is on Justinian's right with the general's shoulder epaulette insignia [?] and that the patron banker Julianus Argentarius is on Justinian's left and that Narses is not present; the other official is not likely known. Julianus was also apparently of Greek origin and possibly acquired part of his wealth through enterprises in overseeing silversmithing. Some evidence exists to suggest he was the banker who donated 26,000 gold solidi for building San Vitale. (4) These are difficult identifications to make with any compelling certainty.

Fig. 5 Officials: Belisarius?, Justinian, Julianus?

At least one of the clerics is easier to identify only because the archbishop Maximian's name is written over his balding head as he carries the crucifix, accompanied by other priests carrying the incense and holding the jeweled Scriptures respectively. Alongside a likely deacon here, Maximian was archbishop of Ravenna from 545-553 so the San Vitale mosaics are possibly his raison d'etre and means of establishing himself alongside Justinian. There are two schools of thought on what Justinian is carrying. The first is that Justinian seems to be carrying the host bread of the Eucharist. The second sugestions is that Justinian carries an empty paten for offering something like the Host (in which ritual technically only a priest should minister). It makes some sense for this to be connected to the Eucharistic ritual for symmetry if Theodora carries the sacramental wine or at least the chalice. associating Justinian even more with Christ as the redemptive Bread of Life (or sacrificiant High Priest). Justinian also serves just as easily here as the imperial provider and Redeemer of his people, especially considering his frustrated mediatorial role between East and West. Although neither Justinian or Theodora were ever present in Ravenna is immaterial; their imperial presence is maintained through these statements of authority for eternity rather than for a brief dedicatory moment. The builders and planners thereby also obtain vicarious authority and orthodoxy by invoking the glory of the emperor and empress.

Fig. 6 Theodora's Procession with Retinue

On the opposite mosaic, Theodora's image is perhaps more a portrait, probably giving a glimpse of her ruthless ambition. Drenched in pearls and under a shell alcove evoking Venus whom she bodily served more than the Theotokos, Mother of God, yet she is also haloed and the center of focus as perhaps some like Procopius thought only a Mary ought to be as Blessed among Women. Her retinue also consists of several officials processing in front - one an unidentified general? - as she carries the chalice of Holy Wine (or at least the empty chalice) likely to represent Christ's sacrificial blood. But this is again problematic because only a priest should be so consecrated to minister herein. Her officials even open the curtain, perhaps symbolic of the Temple Veil, for her imminent entry into a Holy of Holies. That these propagandizing ideas of Theodora's sanctified purity - perhaps an ironic compensation for her notorious background - were a travesty for Procopius, who raked her more severely in his writing than any other person, seems less remarkable through history now than up close at the time, however transformational a conversion she might have had. This is somehow despite her swift executions eliminating rivals and her strident position of Empress with a throne alongside Justinian leading her biographers to have often suggested that she was the real power behind the Imperial Christian ruler Justinian claimed to be, greatly influencing her husband beyond the norm.(5) Theodora, according to Procopius, was a former young whore who took on all comers by the dozen when she had worked as a circus performer. Eventually she rose to the slightly less onerous role of courtesan - although the boldest and most infamous in Constantinople - and eventual mistress to an administrator before possibly setting her sights on Justinian whom she married in 525, having herself crowned empress in 527 with Justinian as emperor. Theodora was unstoppable in the 6th century; we can only imagine her in the Twentieth or Twenty-first!

Fig. 7 Detail of Theodora Image

Here is part of Procopius' anything but hagiography of Theodora:

"Never was a woman so completely abandoned to pleasure. Many times Theodora [before her "gentrification"] would banquet with ten young men who had a passion for fornication...after exhausting them she would go to their attendants (by now more than thirty) and copulate with them as well in an futile effort to satisfy her
unquenchable lust...Although she made ample use of the three apertures Nature
gave her body, she complained her nipples needed openings to attempt intercourse
there as well...In the theater she would lie naked and spread herself out, having
trained hungry geese to pick off grain sprinkled by slaves over her private parts..." (6)

Now we probably see Procopius' demonizing and niggling account as most unfair and possibly inspired or at least influenced by prior accounts of Messalina in Rome. That geese were a symbol of Aphrodite, the divine patroness of courtesans, was not lost on Procopius. But in a patriarchal world, Theodora was first a savvy entertainer and then a political power in her own right. She was unflinching as empress and the backbone for Justinian in the Nika revolt when he would have fled and she refused to budge. Facing the threat of death, which she would prefer to abdication or flight, Theodora said "Imperial purple makes a very fine shroud." (7) As Bustacchini and others have long pointed out, Theodora's dress also shows a procession of the Persian Magi with Phrygian caps bringing gifts as she does - very similar to that nearby mosaic scene at Sant' Apollinare Nuovo - equating her with wisdom (sophia) and possibly a further propagandizing effort to forge an identity with the Hagia Sophia itself as her shell alcove behind her testifies to her near-divine importance.

One of Theodora's retainers pictured here below, possibly closest to her immediate left, was likely to have been the far more royal Princess Julia Anicia, herself daughter of a previous emperor, Anicius Olybrius (before Justin) and ultimately descended from Constantine, the patroness of greater basilicas in Constantinople than anything other than Santa Sophia and possible its equal, although Justinian also built 25 churches in Constantinople alone. These three ladies immediately behind Theodora (on her left, our right) are the most eminent, one of them (middle) possibly Antonina, the wife of Belisarius (perhaps shown by the insignia on her dress hem that matches his general's shoulder epaulette [?]) and also a close friend of Theodora. One other possibility is that it is Joannina, daughter of Belisarius and Antonina, who was married to the imperial grandson Anastasius. The mosaicist's mastery of shading shows best on the priceless white silk garments of the royal lady on the far left closest to Theodora.

Fig. 8 Theodora's retinue of Ladies, one of whom is likely Princess Julia Anicia

When Justinian stood inside the newly finished Santa Sophia in 537, it may have been symbolically to Theodora his famous anecdotal whisper: "Solomon, I have surpassed you." Justinian is discredited with losing as much of Byzantium as gaining and was infamous even in his day for his extravagances as an importer of luxury goods, monumental builder and art patron. Perhaps it was Theodora who persuaded him how immensely valuable silk was for him to eventually send a few monks to China to steal silkworms in hopes of starting a rich Byzantine silk industry and thereby become independent of Persia's wealthy middlemen monopoly, which he did on a grand scale once the bamboo with purloined silkworms arrived intact having survived the long and arduous journey from China. (8)

Power in politics and religion is perhaps rarely better expressed, as Bustacchini, Pegues and many others also note, establishing the intended connection in both subtle nuance and clear symbol.(9) That these Ravenna mosaics also help set an artistic precedent for subsequent Byzantine monumental portrayal in mosaic, while following tradition, is also maintained strongly here, a formal symmetry that Rice calls "rhythmical composition". That these mosaics are fascinating gauges of power in the early Byzantine world is a given. Perhaps they are best measure of Byzantine imperial ambition as well. "[N]o other work of art . . . conveys the spirit of Byzantium with so much eloquence as do these two mosaics." (10) The flatness of frontal pose, dominant for a static millennium in Byzantine art, makes it difficult to gauge movement or anything beyond monumental eternity. Yet, according to Rice, "No greater or more enlightened patron of art than Justinian has ever lived". (11) The best authority on early Byzantine military matters would be Treadgold, who also addresses the San Vitale contexts in careful scholarship. (12) As Cameron notes on how complicated it is to understand Justinian, "Contemporary sources have left us a deeply contradictory set of impressions of the emperor." (13) Extravagant and self-serving patron with grandiose religio-political and military ambitions may also be added to Justinian's complex incentives for his rule and his propagandizing motives, although he often seems overshadowed by Theodora, making him appear weaker than he could otherwise be perceived. If Christ never intended to rule over the Romans in this world, Justinian (and most likely Theodora) certainly did.

Notes:

(1) David Talbot Rice. Art of the Byzantine Era. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997 repr., 9.

(2) John Julius Norwich. Byzantium: The Early Centuries. London: 1988; A Short History of Byzantium. New York: Knopf, 1997, 82.

(3) Lyn Rodley. Byzantine Art and Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 84-5

(4) Gianfranco Bustacchini. Ravenna: Capital of Mosaic. Ravenna: Cartolibreria Salbaroli, 1988, 26.

(5) Owen Chadwick. A History of Christianity. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995, 169.

(6) Procopius. Works. 7 vols. H. Dewing, tr./ed, London, 1940.

(7) Peter and Linda Murray. Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 284, quoting Procopius and others.

(8) Patrick Hunt. "563 CE: How the Byzantines Acquired Silk." Great Events in History: The Ancient World vol. 1, Salem Press, 2004,

(9) Emily Pegues, "The Mosaics of St Vitale, Ravenna", Sweet Briar College Art History Senior Seminar, 2000, http://www2.students.sbc.edu/pegues00/seniorseminar/vitalemosaics.html.

(10) Otto von Simson. Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948, 27. Also quoted in Pegues and elsewhere.

(11) Rice, 47

(12) Warren Treadgold. "Procopius and the Imperial Panels of San Vitale," Art Bulletin 79 (1997): 708-23. (Co-author). Also see his Byzantium and Its Army . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

(13) Averil Cameron. "An accompaniment to Justinian and his age." Journal of Roman Archaeology 19 (2006) 721. This statement is found in her review of M. Maas, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, 2005.

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