FIVE BYZANTINE SITES IN GREECE

The Greeks are naturally very proud of their Classical past, the world of Periclean Athens with its struggles and triumphs, of the great poets and dramatists, of the penetrating insights of the Ancient philosophers and historians. The Greek legacy to European thought is matchless and its lucid language is hugely admired.

Yet in truth the Modern Greek is emotionally much more engaged by the lure of Byzantium. The Eastern Roman Empire was in its time (476-1453) every bit as powerful and intellectually vibrant as the later ones of Spain, France, Britain and America, to which the Greek feels no inferiority. The Empire too possessed the seat of Christian Orthodoxy, still a strong influence in Greece, and the nostalgic dream of the return of the great city of Constantinople to Hellene control has only faded away since the 1922 military rout of the Greeks in Asia Minor.

It is thus with a lively sense of historic continuity that we examine some of the most important Byzantine sites in Greece. We first go to Salonika (Thessaloniki to the Greeks) which was always the second city of the Empire after Constantinople. The great cities of Classical Greece, Athens itself, Sparta, Corinth and Thebes had declined into antiquarian backwaters, but Salonika thrived as a port and gateway to the Balkans and hub for the fertile plains of Thessaly and Macedonia. As a measure of its historic prominence its population in the 14th century was over 100,000 exceeding that of London at that time.

There is a profusion of Byzantine sites in Salonika but we will concentrate on the largest, The Church of Agios Demetrios, St Demetrios being the revered patron saint of the City. The church was destroyed by the devastating 1917 Great Fire which ravaged much of Salonika but it has been faithfully rebuilt to the 7th century plan.

Agios Demetrios, Salonika

The Church is a 5-aisled Basilica and is said to be the largest church in Greece, although not sizeable by Constantinopolitan or Western European standards. The Iconoclasts in the 8th century destroyed many of the mosaics, the intricate art-form of which the Byzantines were masters, while the Ottomans and frequent fires damaged more. But some fine mosaics survived not least one of St Demetrios himself. The traditional site of his martyrdom, the crypt of the church, is naturally a place of pilgrimage.

Mosaic of St Demetrios

Later Salonika became a very cosmopolitan city. Greeks vied with Ottomans (Kemal Ataturk was born here), Armenians, Slavs and a large Sephardic Ladino-speaking Jewish community (including Sarkozy’s maternal grandparents), refugees from Spanish persecution. In time many Armenians and Jews emigrated to America, the Ottomans were defeated in the Balkans and surrendered the city to the Greek army in 1912 – one day ahead of the arrival of the Bulgarian one. Greeks predominated and the remaining Jews were cruelly exterminated in the Nazi Holocaust. Salonika thus has had much experience of the vagaries of European history.

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Our second Byzantine site is the Monastery of Daphni, now in a scruffy suburb of Athens on the old main road out to Corinth. Daphni, mainly late 11th century, is mercifully tucked away from the nearby tumult and noise, surrounded by its Crusader wall.  A 1999 earthquake caused serious damage to the monastery and Crusader wall and closed it for 10 years, but it has now re-opened.

The Byzantine arrangement of icons (iconography) follows a fairly fixed liturgical pattern, worth briefly describing. The church is set out as a visual image of Heaven, with Christ high in the Dome, the Virgin facing the congregation in the central Apse, archangels, apostles and prophets, often with useful nametags, crowding round the edge of the Dome. Descending to Earth, the walls are covered with portraits of saints, monks and Fathers of the Church. Above the Nave (the Naos) are paintings of The Twelve Feasts (the Dodecaorton), scenes of the major events of the life of Christ and the Virgin. The Sanctuary Screen (the Iconostasis) often has 4 rows of icons of the favoured saints and there are further depictions of episodes from the life of Christ in the Entry Hall (the Narthex). A fully decorated Orthodox church is thus richly embellished. The icons may be paintings, frescoes or mosaics and at Daphni many are damaged. But one of the most famous images in Orthodoxy has survived, The All-Judging Christ (Pantocrator).

Christ Pantocrator, Daphni

This is a depiction of the austere, implacable side of Orthodoxy, a Judge very ready to send sinners to their Doom. He is a world away from the milksop humanism of Italian art and light years away from the notions of Christ purveyed by clappy-happy Anglican bishops with their moral relativism and tolerant views on gay marriage. For this image alone, Daphni merits a journey.

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A peaceful and relaxing site, more complete artistically, is to be found at the Monastery of Hosios Loukas (Blessed Luke) on the main road from Levadia to incomparable Delphi in Boeotia, overlooked by famed Mount Parnassus and Helicon. It also dates from the 11th century and is beautifully situated among the almond orchards, with the air sweet with broom, lemon blossom and honeysuckle in Spring and the cicadas chirruping in the Summer. Once a thriving monastery, the community is now old and small but the place is welcoming and tourists enliven the site.

Blessed Luke himself flourished in the 10th century (an icon survives of him looking somewhat liverish), his shrine became a place of pilgrimage and a monastery was founded by Theophano, feisty wife of three Emperors, supported by her son Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, as remote monasteries often received imperial patronage in the early 11th century.

Monastery of Hosios Loukas

Resurrection Mosaic, Hosios Loukas

Although the Pantocrator mosaic has been lost, the rest of the Church has a great richness of icons from a Golden Age of Byzantine Art. Gazing at the evocatively mellow walls, you can indulge in the pleasure of sipping a cold drink on the terrace while looking over the delectable Greek scenery in the balmy warmth.

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The Greek Islands host some important sites like Delos and Tinos but none rivals the imposing Monastery of St John the Divine at Patmos. Patmos must have been a very remote place in about 100AD when St John experienced a prophetic vision and dictated a description to his scribe, which after many years became the canonical Book of Revelation. The Apocalypse (as it is often described) is a very odd production conjuring up the Seven Seals, the Four Horsemen and the Seven-headed Beast amongst other ravings; some have suggested the influence of mescaline or psilocybin mushrooms in John’s vision, not unlike the visions of Old Testament Ezekiel. Others see divine inspiration and I guess nobody will know the truth.

In all events Patmos is extremely impressive, a monastery enclosed within massive fortifications to protect the monks and their treasures from the pirates then infesting the Aegean.

Monastery of St John the Divine, Patmos

Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos

Built in the 11th century, the monastery has chapels, a bell tower, church plate treasures, an important library and rich Byzantine iconography. Outside the monastery itself, is the exceedingly uncomfortable Cave of the Apocalypse where St John supposedly had his vision. There is a powerful mystical element in Orthodoxy which revered hermits, stylites, solitaries and all kinds of ascetics. So St John with his visions was one of a type and as we know, it takes all kinds……

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Our final visit is to a late Byzantine site, not much visited in the remote Southern Peloponnese but full of interest, namely Mistra.

Monastery of the Pantanassa, Mistra

 

Frescoes at the Peribleptos, Mistra

Mistra is situated near Sparta on the steep slopes of Mount Taygetus. Built first as a fortress, it witnessed the last flowering of Byzantine art flourishing from the time it was regained from its Frankish founder William de Villehardouin in 1261 to its fall to the Ottomans in 1459. Eventually the Byzantine Emperor came to appoint normally his eldest son as Despot of Mistra and a sophisticated court was established attracting the finest artists and intellectuals of the Empire. As Byzantine and Italian influences were exchanged, a less formal and rigid painting style emerged to be seen in the many churches of Mistra.

The town of Mistra is completely ruined – it was abandoned in the 1830s – and uninhabited now apart from a handful of nuns, cheerfully maintaining the Pantanassa. High up on the hill is the shell of the large Palace of the Despots, a rare secular survivor of the Byzantine period. There are a score of churches, the most important being the Aphendiko, with its spectacular external cupolas and buttresses, and the Pantanassa, with its playful arched architectural complexity and fine frescoes. Finally the 14th century Peribleptos has a fine Dodecaorton, whose frescoes have been judged among the finest masterpieces of Byzantine art.

Mistra is both inspirational and melancholy. Inspirational in that it provides an insight into a sophisticated and brilliant civilisation, melancholy in that this civilisation has left only a ghost town behind and it has been succeeded by those more dynamic but maybe less noble.


SMD
01.05.12


Text Copyright: Sidney Donald 2012