Anne Karahan, Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul

The image of God in Byzantine Cappadocia

2008-2012

The project had two aims. First, explore the relation divine - human in the patristicism of the Eastern Church. Second, based on this knowledge, map out how Byzantine holy images, from the Iconoclasm to the Latin Empire, manifest both God's transcendence (incomprehensible divinity) and God's immanence (comprehensible humanity). How is "God is" (inexplicable ontology) versus "God acts" (God in the world) identified in holy images? To explore presumptive religious evidence for the specificity of Byzantine aesthetics, I started from a study of dogmatic praxis.

My hypothesis was that Patristics, the ideological core of Byzantine culture, had originated the specificity of Byzantine aesthetics. Patristicism and orthodox tradition shaped the aesthetics, so that image didactics answered to "right belief" (orthodoxia). An intermediate hypothesis was that the specificity of Byzantine aesthetics enabled paradoxical manifestation of God's incomprehensible divinity, in line with the Fathers' apophatic theology.

THE PROJECT'S MAJOR RESULTS

Results show that the exegesis of the Fathers formed the basis of orthodox authorization of holy images, but also the specificity of Byzantine aesthetics. Dogmatic causality prevails between ideology, aesthetics, and image. Byzantine aesthetics is a kind of ideologically based patristic semiotics socio-historically interwoven with the idea of Byzantium as the chosen kingdom of God.

Orthodox faith proclaims that holy images prove the Incarnation, the cause of salvation, resurrection, and eternal life. The Trinity, though, is understood as uncircumscribed (aperigraphos), beyond human comprehension. Solely the image of God is comprehensible. All church fathers repudiate materialization of God's incomprehensible is. Yet, from a patristic perspective, "God is" and "God acts" is one single reality. God is monomeros. God's is and God's visibility in the God-Man is one existence. Research results verify that this belief concurs with the specificity of Byzantine aesthetics.

My mapping of the relation divine - human in the image of God in Byzantine Cappadocia is based on a dogmatic hermeneutic analysis of God's tri-unity, Christology, cosmology, and the Virgin as Theotokos (God-bearing) in orthodox tradition and exegetic texts by the fourth-century Cappadocian fathers Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and Gregory of Nyssa. Via an empirical basis of Cappadocian thinking, I have explored how Byzantine mural paintings in the Cappadocian churches at Göreme (Turkey), in particular Karanl?k, Çar?kl?, Elmal?, Tokal?, El Nazar, Aynal?, Haçl? (Güllü dere), manifest interaction between God's incomprehensible divinity and God's comprehensible humanity. My methodological combination of written doctrine and painted didactics has verified that Byzantine aesthetics in dogmatic conformity with orthodoxia "true, right belief, the tradition" recognizes God's twofold reality.

Dogmatically, a holy image identifies both God's comprehensibility and incomprehensibility, as orthodox faith affirms that the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and God in flesh is one and the same unique God. In line with how patristicism identifies the two natures of Christ as being without confusion (asygchytos), without change (atreptos), undividedly (adiairetos), inseparably (achoristos), interaction of human and divine in an image verifies that God exists both within and beyond interval (diastema). A holy image is similar to a cataphatic ladder, where the acts of God interact with didactic meta-images of God's is (see Anne Karahan, "The Image of God in Byzantine Cappadocia and the Issue of Supreme Transcendence", Studia Patristica LIV (2012):1-16 (forthcoming).

Metonymically, meta-images non-explain the divinity, analogous to how the three Cappadocians apophatically non-explain God's is. My notion "meta-image" refers to omnipresent aspects such as light and brilliance, tri-partitions, circles, crosses, and borders that non-manifest the presence of God's is within the narration of the holy drama and the portraits of the saints. The meta-image is a kind of metonym, paradoxical image, or didactic sign for God's incomprehensible essence. In liturgical rites and tectonic space, these apophaticisms interacted with immaterialized "non-temporalized" bodies and forms in the narration of the holy drama and the saints as well as displaced perspectives, in line with the one-God concept creating unanimity. Based on patristicism, the project provides new prerequisites for knowledge of why the belief in the indivisibility of God could not be disregarded in either word or image. Non-explanations and explanations - God's is and Christ the image of God - identify one divine truth.

A subtle example is the crux gemmata motif at Tokal? kilise. Light and brilliance of gems, yellow-golden color, and pearls interact with not only rays of light and white and yellow-golden circular forms (God is), but also a small black cross (the Cross Death) in the centre of the gemmed cross. Hereby, the holy drama is identified within the divine sphere. Ideological interpenetration (perichoresis) of Incarnation and God's is recognizes the mystery of Grace. The gemmed cross (Christ's Resurrection/eternal life) reflects as well the idea of double significance; the Cross Death grants everyone eternal life in the Light/God's kingdom. As a paradox, meta-images such as light and brilliance non-categorize that Christ/Logos is God's is. Intercommunion of figurative concretion (narration/saint portraits/props) and apophatic abstractions reflects orthodox faith in the joint action (synergeia) of God's affirmative reality in the economy of salvation and God's non-categorizable is.

Borders and patterns are yet another kind of characteristic Byzantine meta-image for God's inexplicable and uncircumscribed is. Like circular forms, they have either beginning or end. Further apophatic aspects are rescinded gravitation, inverted and displaced perspectives.

My research results verify that if we analyze Byzantine aesthetics from a religious point of view, prerequisites for lifelike perspectives and corporeality change. Gregory of Nyssa emphasized that the image of God within every human being extricates her from the corruptibility of created nature, that which separates her from God, while Basil of Caesarea underscored that everything created is corruptible; beauty refers that which direct us to God (see Anne Karahan, "Beauty in the Eyes of God. Byzantine Aesthetics and Basil of Caesarea", Byzantion. Revue Internationale des Études Byzantines 82 (2012):165-212). Beauty is spiritual, not physical. The intelligible has value as far as it serves spiritual progress. Temporal corporeality implies corruption, while dissociation from it accords with the belief in communion of Logos and eikon in one orthodox eternal existence. According to he orthodoxia, God's triune is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is eternal, while the God-Man is eternal in divinity, yet circumscribed in flesh. However, God is unity, not multiplicity. The non-temporal pictorial language exposes belief in God's twofold existence and the transcended reality of the holy drama. To achieve eternal life, orthodox faith insists on imitation of the saints' lives. In this mimetic sense, corruptible beauty is also inadequate. Instructive proofs are the stylites and the dendrites, saints who reach God by ignoring their corporeal needs. Dogma and function underlie the non-temporal corporeality of Byzantine aesthetics, which discerns from not only the idealization during Greek and Roman Antiquity of mortal youths (Diskobolos, Antinous), goddesses (Aphrodite) and gods (Apollo), but also realistic Roman portraits, and the worldly Virgin Mary during the Renaissance. Orthodox didactics and purposes of holy images could neither concur with Michelangelo's herculean Sibyls or Botticelli's enchanting Venus.

In contrast to fascination for youthful beauty and physical strength, velvet-like skin, stunning locks of hair and complicated kinetics in images from the Antiquity, Byzantine holy images reveal an immaterialized two-dimensional world that connects the intelligible world to that beyond. Beautiful corporeality relate to that which is worth contemplating, worshipping, and imitating. The image of God in Byzantine Cappadocia identifies didactics on God and holy acts that lead to eternal life.

NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONS GENERATED BY THE PROJECT

Violence in Byzantine images: narration, creation of characters, and function? Angel, human/woman: dogma and creation of characters? Cupola, cross, and space in Byzantine churches on the basis of Basil of Caesarea's On the Holy Spirit? Patterns: idea and function in Byzantine monumental images (Eastern orthodoxy) versus the mosaics by Antoni Gaudí (Catholic modernism)?

Publications:

“Byzantine Iconoclasm and the Belief in Eikon Theou: An Issue of Christology or a Quest for Political Power”, in Iconoclasms (International conference organized by Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, 2009), abstract 6.

“Bildning och uppfostran: Interaktion mellan ord och bild i bysantinsk bildvärld”, in Svein Rise (ed.), Danningsperspektiver. Teologiske og filosofiske syn på danning i antikken og i moderne tid (Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag (accredited scientific publisher, level 1), 2010), 91-109.

“The Issue of περιχώρησις in Byzantine Holy Images”, in Jane Baun, Averil Cameron, Michael Edwards, and Markus Vinzent (eds.), Papers presented at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2007, Studia Patristica XLIV-XLIX (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 27-34.

“Transition and Mediation of Ideas between Syria and Byzantium. John Damascene’s Polemics against the Iconoclasts and his Epistemic Impact on Byzantine Aesthetics”, in Andreas Speer and Philipp Steinkrüger (eds.), 37. Kölner Mediaevistentagung (“Knotenpunkt Byzanz. Wissenformen und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen”) (Köln: Thomas-Institut der Universität zu Köln, 2010), abstracts, 51-54.

“Bysantinsk estetik. Ett socioteologiskt kulturarv”, in Symposium om forskning kring det kyrkliga kulturarvet (Uppsala University, 2011), Presentationer, 9-10.

“The Crux Gemmata versus the Crucifixion Cross in Byzantine Cappadocia: Patristic Thought (Dogmata) and Theological Significance”, in Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Sofia, Bulgaria, 2011), vol. III (Abstracts of Free Communications), 197.

“Comprehension Equates with Circumscription. Threefold and Twofold, but One: Incarnation and Cappadocian Apophatic Thinking in Ravennatic Byzantine Aesthetics”, in Neoplatonism and Early Christianity (International conference at Center for Late Antique Studies, Stockholm University, 2011), Abstracts, 5.

“The Image of God in Byzantine Cappadocia and the Issue of God’s Supreme Transcendence”, Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies at the University of Oxford, 8-13 August, 2011, www.patristics.org.uk/2011abstracts/2011K, Karahan.

“Beauty in the Eyes of God. Byzantine Aesthetics and Basil of Caesarea”, in Byzantion. Revue Internationale des Études Byzantines 82 (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 165-212 (also available on Peeters online journals).

“The Image of God in Byzantine Cappadocia: An Investigation of Its Relation to Divine and Human in Fourth-Century Cappadocian Thinking”, final report at www.srii.org/Research/Byzantine Cappadocia (forthcoming 2012).

“Byzantine Iconoclasm: Ideology and Quest for Power”, in Kristine Kolrud and Marina Prusac (eds.), Iconoclasm from Antiquity to the Present Day (Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.) (ca 40 pages) (forthcoming 2013).

“Skönhet, tillbedjan, och bildning i bysantinskt trosperspektiv”, in Svein Rise (ed.), Skjønnhet og tilbedelse (Trondheim: Akademika forlag (accredited scientific publisher, level 1) (ca 23 pages) (forthcoming January/February 2013).

“The Image of God in Byzantine Cappadocia and the Issue of Supreme Transcendence”, in Papers presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2011, Studia Patristica LIV (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 1-16 (forthcoming 2013).

“Bysantinsk estetik. Ett socioteologiskt kulturarv”, in Emilie Karlsmo, Jakob Lindblad, och Henrik Widmark (eds.), Det kyrkliga kulturarvet: aktuell forskning och pedagogik i utveckling. Symposium vid Konstvetenskapliga institutionen vid Uppsala universitet 2011) (Uppsala universitet: Konstvetenskapliga institutionen, 2012) (ca 9 pages) (forthcoming spring 2013).

“Johannes Damaskenos”. Chapter in Ståle Johannes Kristiansen and Peder Solberg (eds.), Kirkefedernes teologiske språk (Oslo: Novus forlag (accredited scientific publisher, level 1) (ca 15 pages) (forthcoming February 2013).

“Cappadocian Theology and Byzantine Aesthetics. Gregory Nazianzen on the Unity and Singularity of Christ”, in Nicu Dumitrascu (ed.), The Spiritual heritage of the Cappadocians for the multi-confessional and multi-ethnical Christianity today (Berlin: Versita Publishing/Walter de Gruyter) (ca 30 pages) (forthcoming June 2013).

“In Quest of Dogmatic Understanding of Byzantine Aesthetics: Cappadocian Thinking and the Holy Images of Byzantine Cappadocia”, in Vladimir Cvetkovic (ed.), Icons. Theology in Colors (Oxford or Cambridge University Press) (ca 40 pages) (forthcoming).

“Transition and Mediation of Ideas between Syria and Byzantium. John Damascene’s Polemics against the Iconoclasts and the Impact of Orthodox