Australian Association for Byzantine Studies Byzantina Australiensia 16

BYZANTINE NARRATIVE

Papers in Honour of Roger Scott

Edited by John Burke with Ursula Betka, Penelope Buckley,

Kathleen Hay, Roger Scott & Andrew Stephenson

Melbourne 2006

© 2006 Australian Association for Byzantine Studies C/- Centre for Early Christian Studies Australian Catholic University P.O. Box 456 Virginia, Queensland 4014 Australia ISSN 0725-3079 ISBN-13 978-1-876503-24-6 ISBN-10 1-876503-24-6 Melbourne 2006 Cover design by Stephen Cole of the Graphic Design Unit, The Australian National University Design and layout by John Burke Printed by the University Printing Service, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Published and distributed by the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies Publication of this volume was assisted by a publication grant from the University of Melbourne. All papers in this publication have been refereed anonymously.

Byzantine Narrative. Papers in Honour of Roger Scott. Edited by J. Burke et al. (Melbourne 2006).

John Burke

The Madrid Skylitzes as an Audio-Visual Experiment1

With its 575 surviving miniatures, the twelfth-century illustrated Madrid manuscript2 of John Skylitzes’ Synopsis Historion3 has been much admired, particularly since reproductions became more widely available,4 including a marvellous full-size facsimile edition.5 What puzzles is that none of the other twenty or so surviving Skylitzes manuscripts is illustrated.6 Indeed, no other illustrated manuscript of a Byzantine Greek chronicle has come to light.7 Despite its obvious appeal, the Madrid Skylitzes does not seem to have stimulated imitation.

My concern in this paper is not with the obvious disincentive of cost or problems of physical access, nor with matters of style, iconography, and the occasional mismatches between text, miniature and caption. I also leave aside the question of whether the illustrations and captions in the Madrid Skylitzes were copied from elsewhere or invented ad hoc for this particular manuscript.8 My focus is not on the Madrid Skylitzes as such, but on the illustrative program it implements, for which there is no known precedent. Despite its obvious achievement, I want to suggest here that the experiment may have discouraged

1. The research for this paper forms part of a wider project on the Madrid Skylitzes

involving the Universities of Melbourne and Sussex and Queen’s University Belfast, with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Australian Research Council. I thank my colleagues Assoc. Prof. R.D. Scott and Dr B. Bjornholt, as well as the anonymous referee and the editors of this volume, for their patience and helpful comments, and Professor M.E. Mullett for encouraging remarks on an earlier version of part of this paper.

2. Matritensis Graecus Vitr. 26–2 (formerly Matritensis II), National Library Madrid. 3. Editio princeps: Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum ed. I. Thurn. CFHB 5, Series

Berolinensis (Berlin 1973). 4. S. Cirac Estopañan, Skyllitzes Matritensis, vol. 1, Reproducciones y miniaturas

(Barcelona 1965); A. Grabar & M. Manoussacas, L’Illustration du manuscrit de Skylitzès de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Madrid. Bibliothèque de L’Institut Hellénique D’Études Byzantines et Post-Byzantines de Venise No. 10 (Venice 1979); V. Tsamakda, The Illustrated Chronicle of Ioannes Skylitzes in Madrid (Leiden 2002). Individual miniatures have been reproduced in numerous publications as well as on book covers and museum walls and other media.

5. Joannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum: codex Matritensis graecus Vitr. 26–2, facsimile edition. Scientific consultant A. Tselikas (Athens 2000).

6. For the manuscript tradition see Thurn’s introduction xx–xxviii and Tsamakda, Chronicle 24 n. 4. None of the apographa of the Madrid Skylitzes (Thurn xxv) are illustrated.

7. It is not until the mid-13th century that anything similar appears in the West: see E.N. Boeck, The Art of Being Byzantine: History, Structure and Visual Narrative in the Madrid Skylitzes Manuscript (PhD thesis, Yale 2003) 20–1.

8. For a recent summary of views see Tsamakda, Chronicle 1–5 and 371; for her own conclusions, 260–6.

138 John Burke

imitation because it effectively demonstrated that the idea of an illustrated history book could not fully succeed without a radically different approach.

Certain broad characteristics of the Skylitzes illustration program can be identified more easily through a brief comparison with some earlier illustrated books: 1. The sixth-century Vienna Genesis9 applied a fixed page layout, with the

lower half of each page reserved for the illustration. The text in the upper half of the page was truncated to fit the space — what doesn’t fit just gets left out!

2. In the Joshua Roll, the picture dominates the ‘page’ and carries most of the narrative. The text below is reduced almost to a caption, giving only a brief summary of the biblical text.10

3. The eleventh-century Octateuch Vat.gr.747 retains the text in its entirety as well as adding a marginal commentary (catena) and illustrations. The quantity of Bible text on each page is adjusted to the length of the related commentary. The Bible text is divided into sections with centred titles. The text of each section starts with a large capital letter in the left margin; other such marginal capitals, indicating the start of a subsection, mark the first word of the line in which the subsection starts. The scribe allows for the illustrations by leaving a half-column space within the text area, sometimes extending the space into the margin. The number of miniatures per page varies, and some pages have no miniature.11 The exact point in the text to which the miniature relates is not always clear, although sometimes a colon is used; no such problem arises when, occasionally, the illustration occupies the full width of the page.12

4. The full-width strip or frieze miniature leaves no doubt about where it fits in relation to the text. In an eleventh-century Gospel now in Florence, every verse of the text is followed by a strip illustration. The strips average nearly three scenes each. Each verse starts with a special letter in the margin.13

So what did the Skylitzes team do? For their illustrations they reserved the full width of the text area.14 Illustrations can include several component scenes. There is no mechanical rule of one illustration per page, as in the Vienna

9. Nat. Lib. cod. theol. gr. 31. See, for example, Pict. 31: K. Weitzmann, ‘The Selection

of Texts for Cyclic Illustration in Byzantine Manuscripts’ Byzantine Books and Bookmen (Washington 1975) pl. 2.

10. Vat.palat.gr.431. See, for example, Sheet III: Weitzmann, ‘Selection’ pl. 4. 11. See, for example, Vat.gr.747 folios 167v–8r: J. Lowden, The Octateuchs: A Study of

Byzantine Manuscript Illumination (University Park Pa. 2002) fig. 34. 12. As on folio 223r (Lowden, Octateuchs fig. 87). 13. Laurent. Lib. Cod. Plut. VI.23 fol. 15v, for example: Weitzmann, ‘Selection’ pls. 8a

& 8b. 14. In Weitzmann’s terms, the relationship of the illustration to the text is the classic

‘papyrus style’: K. Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex (2nd ed. Princeton 1970) 73–7. The 11th-century copy of (Pseudo-)Oppian’s Cynegetica, now in Venice, also uses column-width strip illustrations: see I. Spatharakis, The Illustrations of the Cynegetica in Venice Codex Marcianus Graecus 479 (Leiden 2004)

The Madrid Skylitzes as an Audio-Visual Experiment 139

Genesis, or per section or verse of the text, as in the Florence Gospel: most pages have one or two illustrations, some have three and some have none. Unlike the Vienna Genesis and the Joshua Roll, the text is retained in its entirety. All the illustrations are pin-pointed in relation to the text — even if it contains only a single word, the line above the miniature is truncated at the precise point of insertion.

Sometimes the insertion point of an illustration is astutely chosen. Miniature 80ra, for example, has three scenes with four component captions [Fig. 1]: ‘Bardas’ held prostrate at the feet of ‘The Emperor Michael’ by a sword-wielding officer; the same ‘Bardas’ clutching his groin while being hacked by two swordsmen; and a soldier raising ‘Bardas’s genitals’ at the end of a spear. The miniature breaks into the text at the precise point where Bardas has thrown himself at the emperor’s feet, thus adding suspense about the outcome of his supplication. But the viewer also sees the other two scenes in the miniature, which the captions do little to explain, and so reads on with anticipation:

Swords raised, Bardas saw the men coming at him in force. Recognizing death, he threw himself at the feet of the emperor. [Fig. 1] But they drag him from there, and limb by limb cut him into pieces. Then, on a spear dangling his genital organs, they parade them around as a warning.

This clever interplay between text and illustration enhances the drama of the reading experience. Of course, many a reader will look at all the pictures on the page before settling into the text, but such a reader’s curiosity and anticipation would only be heightened by the minimalist captions and the unclear sequence of events (it is not immediately obvious that the scenes should be read from right to left).

But a fixed insertion point can sometimes create layout difficulties. It may occur towards the end of a page, in which case the illustration is forced into the bottom margin or an unsightly gap is left and the illustration deferred until the other side of the page, disassociating it from the relevant text.15 Or it may occur in the first line of a page, after only a word of two of text, which can then get lost among the miniature and its captions.16 These infelicities might have been avoided by the occasional use of parallel columns, as in the Octateuchs. But such flexibility was not part of the program.

The lack of a clear sequence in the scenes of an illustration can also cause difficulty. Tsamakda counted 148 miniatures with more than one scene and identified a variety of ‘reading’ sequences: linear, antithetical, cyclical,

15. See, for example, miniatures 45rb, 219vb (a single miniature on a page is indicated

by the folio number; the letter a, b or c is appended if the page has more than one miniature); and the blank lines at the end of 47r and the miniature at the top of 47v, or 153r and 153v.

16. For example, 31ra, 201v, 206r, 212ra, 211va, 212ra.

140 John Burke

complex.17 In fact, the artists seem to conceive of a whole episode as suspended in a single moment outside of time. This contrasts with the narrative, in which the sequence of events within an episode is critical. Sometimes, too, it is difficult to discern whether a particular figure or building belongs to one scene or another. The end result can be confusion and frustration. The program might work better if scenes were more clearly separated and there were some convention about the sequence in which they should be ‘read’.

The captions to the illustrations are very helpful — as becomes particularly obvious when they are missing.18 But here too we note a certain hapharzdness. Some clearly identify the event illustrated, as when Leo Tornikios is raised on a shield: ‘The patrician Leo Tornikios is acclaimed emperor’ (230ra); but a similar scene on folio 10v, with two crowned figures on the shield, is without caption and scholars remain baffled as to who and what is represented. In many cases the captions are no more than labels: people and places are identified but not the event (43va, 46rb, 48r, 49rb, 49vb, 119v, 120v, 123rb), or occasionally the event but not the participants (125rb). On the whole, the producers of the illustrated Skylitzes seem to be exploring the possibilities and feeling their way towards a more systematic approach, the need for which is underscored by the explanatory titles that Grabar & Manoussacas and Tsamakda, with the advantage of hindsight, have assigned to each miniature.

Some illustrations brilliantly capture the tension of a particular moment and enhance the drama of the narrative,19 and a few seem to be historically accurate,20 but not all illustrations are equally successful. About seventy occur at the end of a section in the text, more at the end of an episode, and many of these offer only a visual recapitulation. In addition, there are many battle scenes, for example, with nothing in particular to distinguish one from another — they could be swapped around and nobody would be the wiser.21 Sometimes it would make not the slightest difference if the captions ‘Romans’ and ‘Bulgarians’ were reversed. The same can be said of weddings, coronations of emperors, enthronements of patriarchs, and the portrayal of buildings — often the only identifying feature is the caption. These generic, stereotyped miniatures add a visual dimension but little real value to the narrative. It is as though the producers of the illustrated

17. V. Tsamakda, ‘The Miniatures of the Madrid Skylitzes’ Joannis Scylitzae Synopsis

Historiarum: codex Matritensis graecus Vitr. 26–2, facsimile edition (Athens 2000) 130.

18. Captions are missing from the miniatures of quires 19 and 20 (fols 143–56) and from another 11 miniatures; see Grabar-Manoussacas 6, 21–2.

19. See 11rb, for example, and the text that follows it. 20. N. Oikonomides, ‘H stol;hv tou epavrcou kai o Skulivtzh" th" Madrivth"’,

EufrovsunonÚ Afievrwma ston M. Catzidavkh (Athens 1991) 422–32 found that the uniform of the Eparch of Constantinople in 43ra corresponds to descriptions in other sources (but not the uniform portrayed in 219ra or 221r); I. Ševčenko, ‘The Madrid Manuscript of the Chronicle of Skylitzes in the Light of its New Dating’ Byzanz und der Westen ed. I. Hutter (Vienna 1984) 126–7 identified a recently invented siege engine; Tsamakda, Chronicle 289–93 thinks that two of the wedding scenes may be ‘realistic’.

21. Boeck 44 estimates that 80% of the battle scenes are generic.

The Madrid Skylitzes as an Audio-Visual Experiment 141

Skylitzes felt obliged to distribute miniatures fairly evenly, at a rate of roughly three per opening, but were unable to sustain their high standards throughout such a long text.

Another problem shows up in folios 101v–103r. Folio 102r [Fig. 2] is the first of only eight in the manuscript with three miniatures, and this in itself catches our eye. The first miniature, arresting for its size and subject matter, shows a women named Danelis being carried in a sedan chair; the second miniature shows her presenting coronation gifts to the Emperor Basil I, and in the third she presents gifts to his son and successor Leo VI. Except for the quantity of imperial facial hair, miniatures 102rb and 102rc could be interchanged. The related section of the text (BasI.40) opens with the promotion of Danelis’s son to high office and a reminder that, some years earlier in Patras, Basil had entered into a relationship of spiritual brotherhood with him. Danelis had requested this upon learning from a monk that Basil was ordained by God to become emperor. In gratitude, she had given Basil gifts sufficient to make him and his refugee family among the richest landowners in Macedonia.22 Miniature 102ra powerfully conveys the wealth and gumption of Danelis, who by then was too old and frail to ride a horse so she travelled from Patras to Constantinople in a sedan chair with a relay of three hundred of her sturdiest slaves.23 But the son does not appear in this or the next two miniatures. The gifts do look sumptuous but the illustration does not convey other points made in the text: that Basil received Danelis with great honour and hospitality, that good taste prevented enumeration of the gifts, and that Danelis also made Leo her heir (and died shortly thereafter). I take the essential point of the text to be Danelis’s devotion to those whom God appoints to the throne and the honour and respect with which the emperor reciprocates. The miniatures seem to show only the first part of this equation, that is, the emperor on the receiving end. The visual focus on the sedan chair is something of a distraction. The illustration creates an emphasis that is different from that of the text.

But an even greater mismatch between text and illustration follows. As Boeck observed,24 the three miniatures on folio 102r illustrate only thirteen lines of text. Fifty-seven lines on the next two pages tell of Basil’s building or restoration of churches, monasteries and other edifices in Constantinople, but these pages are entirely without illustration. Were the Madrid artists not interested in buildings? Did they feel unequal to the task because of unfamiliarity with the landmarks of Constantinople? Whatever the reason, Basil’s building program is omitted from the visual experience. In selecting what to illustrate and leaving out the rest, the illustrators present a set of values, interests and priorities that can be different from those of the text. They can tell a different story.

Thus far I have identified several apparently contradictory characteristics of the illustration program: respect for the letter of the text but not always for its emphasis; clever interplay between miniature and text but miniatures that depend 22. BasI.6, folios 84r.2–85r.7 (Thurn 121.46–123.2). 23. BasI.40 (Thurn 160.83–161.3). Tsamakda, ‘Miniatures’ 133 reads the Greek text to

mean that the slaves were not her own but sent by the emperor. 24. Boeck 46.

142 John Burke

on the text and the captions for their explanation, and many that seem perfunctory; flexibility to choose specific insertion points but rigid adherence to full-width illustrations and lines of text; and a rather mechanical approach to the frequency of illustration. The producers of the illustrated Skylitzes showed what could be achieved but also revealed the limitations of their approach. Some of the problems may be ascribed simply to a failure of imagination or to communication difficulties inherent in a long project involving a scribe and many artists. What I want to suggest, however, is that much of the success and failure may be due largely to a single, underlying cause: that the producers’ apprehension of the text was primarily aural, and their respect for the text so great that they could not make changes necessary for its successful adaptation to the visual medium.

In looking for specifically oral/aural features of the text, we should not forget the overwhelming predominance of the spoken word in Byzantium, or the functions of the anagnostes, the sermon and the public oration, and in general how scarce and expensive books were.25 When chroniclers talk about their ‘listeners’, it may not be a mere figure of speech. In his introduction, Skylitzes asserts that, by contradicting each other, previous historians ‘entangled their listeners in giddy confusion’.26 Elsewhere he avoids listing all the things that Michael Stratiotikos did lest he become boring to his ‘listeners’.27 George Synkellos criticises another author for confusing the ‘listener’.28 Michael Glykas keeps his chronicle short to spare his son’s ‘ears’.29 It is a real possibility that these chroniclers may have anticipated that their works would be read aloud.

Then there is the script. Cyril Mango wrote: ‘I take it that the minuscule script was introduced for the purpose of library books, i.e., for cabinet study as opposed to reading out loud…’30 The text of the Madrid Skylitzes is not in minuscule. Its script is semi-uncial, which stands in contrast to the minuscule and cursive script of some captions, where the letters can be less than half as high and require very close scrutiny (in my case, a magnifying glass). It is also more open and immediately readable than the denser, business-like hand of its twin manuscript in Naples,31 which employs more than ten times as many

25. Although the written word was regarded as authoritative, books were brought in only

as a last resort in the public debates held by the emperor Theophilos on the question of icons (Theoph.10, Thurn 61.45ff). The Russians were converted not by reading the Gospel but by seeing a single copy of it miraculously survive a fire (BasI.43, Thurn 165ff).

26. Pro.1.34 (Thurn 4.39): ijlivggou kai; tarach'" tou;" ajkroata;" ejmpeplhvkasin. 27. MichVI.2.14 (Thurn 483.92): proskorh;" genhvsomai toi'" ajkroatai'". 28. Georgii Syncelli Ecloga chronographica ed. A.A. Mosshammer (Leipzig 1984)

32.19: sugcevai to;n ajkroath;n. 29. Michaelis Glycae annales ed. I. Bekker (Bonn 1836) 4.1–2: pavnu katabaruvnei ta;"

ajkoav", ei[per oJ lovgo" eij" mh'ko" ejpektaqeivh. 30. C. Mango, ‘The Availability of Books in the Byzantine Empire, AD 750–850’

Byzantine Books and Bookmen (Washington 1975) 29–45. 31. Neapolitanus III. B. 24; see the opening reproduced in Thurn’s introduction lix.

The Madrid Skylitzes as an Audio-Visual Experiment 143

abbreviations.32 The Madrid manuscript has been described as clear, legible, calligraphic.33 The script thus lends support to the possibility that it was designed to be read aloud.

On the other hand, the scribe of the Madrid Skylitzes does seem to care about which accent to write. He makes a number of corrections.34 Some of these bring the accent into conformity with the rule about replacing a final grave with an acute before a colon or period, so he seems to know the rule.35 He is less certain about the circumflex, however. In a survey of four quires (about fourteen percent of the surviving text), I found thirty-eight circumflexes where a grave or acute is required and thirty-five instances of a different accent where a circumflex is required. Similarly, more than forty breathings were wrong. These errors, whether corrected or uncorrected, constitute only a tiny fraction of the total, of course. But my point is that they make no difference to the way the text sounds when read aloud.

Similarly, prefixes can be written as prepositions (187v.12: pro;" mevnein for prosmevnein) and prepositions written as prefixes (83v.18: kaquvpnou" for kaq∆ u{pnou"); sometimes a breathing underlines the uncertainty (89r.17: kat∆ aujtou' is written kataujtou', while ejp∆ ajndreiva/ appears both as 83v.9 ejpandreiva/ and 91.10 ejpajndreiva/). Some 107 such instances occur in the four quires surveyed. Again, they would not have affected how the text sounded.

As the phonological system of Greek changed, the retention of traditional spelling meant that the sounds represented phonetically as /i/, /o/, /e/ could be spelled in several ways; a double consonant was pronounced as if single, and gg the same as gk. In my survey I found some 130 non-standard spellings, all of them with no effect on pronunciation. Yet it cannot be said the scribe was indifferent to spelling. At 83r.18, for example, an original iota has been changed to eta in Diomhvdou" (but not in Diomivdh" three lines below); at 88v.14, to;n ajrchgo;n has been corrected to tw'n ajrchgw'n; at 28v.1, a correcting iota is written over the eta in ajoivdhmo". These amendments, in the scribal hand, were perhaps made during proof-reading. Again, neither the mistakes nor the corrections change the sound. What the copyist preserves, first and last, is the aural text.

Was the text transmitted orally? While Mioni found no evidence that Byzantine texts were copied via dictation, he acknowledged the aural factor in talking about ‘internal dictation’, that is, the scribe ‘hears’ the text rather than

32. This observation is based on quires 10 (hand 1) and 11 (hand 2) of the Madrid

manuscript and comparison with the corresponding part of the Naples manuscript. 33. J.M. Fernández Pomar, ‘El Scylitzes de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid’ Gladius 3

(1964) 18–19. 34. 10 examples in 6 randomly-chosen pages: thnikau'ta ajmermoumnh'" (81r.22), tovn

(81v.28), eJautw'n (82v.4), fwnh; (83r.1), ajpostrofhv (83r.3), mhvt∆ (93v.6), feuvgwn (93v.12), wjdav" (95r.10) a[ra" (95r.23).

35. Unlike the modern editor, the scribe does not apply this rule before a comma: see for example eujqu;" (83r.30), proseoiko;" (83v.18), path;r (85r.21), strato;n (93r.13), ejsti; (93v.6), basileu;" (94r.24), mhcana;" (94v.15).

144 John Burke

‘seeing’ it as he is writing it down.36 This would explain the errors noted above in accents, breathings and spelling — the scribe follows his own orthographic tendencies when writing down what he holds aurally in his short-term memory.

In the Madrid Skylitzes I think we can see another factor: the scribe’s understanding. In its context, the accusative singular to;n ajrchgo;n rather than the genitive plural tw'n ajrchgw'n makes good sense up until the very last word of the phrase: to;n ajrchgo;n th'" ajponoiva" fugh'/ th;n swthrivan pragmateusamevnwn (88v.14, Thurn 130.75). The reading o{lw" (‘totally’) instead of o{lo" (‘all’) seems at least plausible in o{lo" th'" touvtou filiva" ejgevneto (81v.8, Thurn 113.73). Similarly, it does not become clear until several lines later that we should read toi'" rather than th'" before peri; aujto;n uJponoiva" ajformh;n didovnto" (‘giving cause for suspicion to the people around him’ rather than ‘giving cause for the suspicion about him’) (87v.11, Thurn 127.29). The scribe’s initial interpretation is based not on the spelling or the visual text but on its sound.

That the scribe interprets what he ‘hears’ is not unique to the Madrid manuscript. In the fields at harvest time, Basil I’s parents placed him in a makeshift tent ‘… so that he could sleep without interruption’:

to; de; paidivon, i{na mh; uJpo; tou' qavlpou" kataflevgoito tou' hJlivou, skhnhvn tina scediavsante" ejk tou' sundevsmou tw'n ajstacuvwn ejn tauvth/ tou'to koimhqhsovmenon e[qento, a{ma me;n th'" tou' hJlivou qevrmh" to;n kauvswna ajblabw'" dielqei'n mhcanwvmenoi, a{ma de; kai; wJ" ajperikovpw" uJpnwvttoi, mh; uJpov tino" e[xwqen ejnoclouvmenon (BasI.3, Thurn 118.54–58)

The manuscript tradition offers four variants of the word for ‘sleep’: optative uJpnwvttoi ACE, infinitive uJpnwvttein BMF, present indicative uJpnwvttei NH, and subjunctive uJpnwvtth/ V. All are defensible readings, none makes any real difference to the meaning, and all would have sounded the same. Except for the infinitive, of course, with its final nu; but scribes would not hesitate for long if they felt that a nu was needed to make written sense of what they had heard and understood.37 The four variant readings reinforce the filtration model of the copying process: the exemplar passes through the scribe’s eye to his mind and aural memory before being written down according to his personal linguistic sensibilities. Once again, the visual dimension plays second or even third fiddle.

It goes without saying that the visual image of the text inevitably plays an important role in the copying process, and doubtless it helps avoid many errors. But there are other indications that scribes were not photocopy machines. With little or no effect on the meaning, changes in word order show that the scribe has understood the phrase, remembered the words, and is able to reconstruct the phrase with the same words; but he does not necessarily remember the visual 36. E. Mioni, Introduzione alla paleografia greca 2nd ed., tr. N.M. Panagiotakes

Eijsagwgh; sth;n eJllhnikh; palaiografiva (Athens 1979) 96–9. 37. Instances of mistaken inclusion or omission of final nu in the Madrid Skylitzes

include Thurn 114.46 uJpotivqhsivn tini, 118.40 cersi;, 128.36 posivn, 130.70 ejtuvgcanen, 131.5 i[scusen, 131.95 ejpevballen, 144.41 mevga, 337.18 a[neisin, 355.16 uJpecwvrhse, 356.38 ejxevpemyen, 363.46 kavteisi.

The Madrid Skylitzes as an Audio-Visual Experiment 145

imprint of their physical sequence on the page.38 The same applies a fortiori where a synonym is substituted: dravsein becomes pravssein…39 oJrw'n40 and euJrw;n41 become ijdw;n but ijdovnte" becomes euJrovnte"…42 ejkei'no" becomes oJ Sklhro;"43, Sklhro;n becomes ajpostavthn…44 and ajrciepiskovpou becomes a[rconto" ejpiskovpou.45 As these are unique in the manuscript tradition, we may reasonably assume that the Madrid scribe did not see them in his exemplar. Though they express the same meaning, they are his own words.

Punctuation started as an attempt to clarify meaning on the written page by representing the phrasing and intonation of speech. The scribe of the Madrid Skylitzes seems to have taken particular care with his punctuation.46 On many pages there is evidence that it may have been completed in two passes: the colour and pressure of most commas and colons seem identical with that of the words around them, but periods seem bolder and thicker. Photoshop colour analysis suggests that red ink may have been used for the periods on certain pages, such as 201v–202r, but the edges of the dots seem to have the same colour as the text. One cannot be confident of analysis based on scans of a facsimile, of course. Pending pigment analysis, my best hypothesis is that the scribe wrote the periods while copying the text but went over them later with a fresh pen. As red ink similar to that of the marginal capitals is used on folio 87r to amend word order (line 9) and for the name Damiano;n (line 19), which is written over an erasure, the second punctuation pass may sometimes have taken place when the marginal capitals were being added and the text proof-read.

It is my contention that punctuation in the Madrid Skylitzes is essentially an oral/aural device. Let us look again at the passage following miniature 80ra. Thurn uses three periods and two commas to make the sentence structure clear. The Madrid punctuation breaks it into twelve segments. In the transcription below, extra space between lines indicates Thurn’s five segments, while each of the Madrid segments is on a separate line (diacritics, word division and punctuation follow the Madrid manuscript):

38. In my survey of four quires I counted 46 cases of word order different from Thurn’s;

in only 3 of these has the scribe inserted numerals above the line to amend the word order (81v.30, 87r.9, 182v.16).

39. 181v.25 (Thurn 335.62). 40. 181v.26 (Thurn 335.63). 41. 92v.1 (Thurn 136.34). 42. 84r.13 (Thurn 122.59). 43. 183r.16 (Thurn 338.57). 44. 179r.2 (Thurn 327.38). 45. 190v.6 (Thurn 354.69). 46. Careful punctuation is not unique to the Madrid manuscript, and variations in

punctuation between the Naples and Madrid manuscripts are few and far between. Among the caption writer’s errors, Grabar-Manoussacas, Skylitzes (20–1) included miniature 130v, where the name of the king of Provence, Hugo, is erroneously transferred to his daughter. Manoussacas cites Thurn’s punctuation; in the text of both the Madrid and Naples manuscripts, however, the comma occurs before rather than after the name, thus associating it with the daughter. We may infer that both scribes and the caption writer were faithful to their exemplar.

146 John Burke

ajll∆ ajpospw'si tou'ton ejkei'qen,

kai; melhdo;n kata; tevmnousin.

ei\ta:

kontw'/ ta; paidogovna aujtou' ajpaiwrhvsante" movria:

paradeigmativzousin.

h[rqh de; qovrubo" poluv":

kai; tw'/ basilei' kivndunon ejpiseivwn:

o}n oJ th'" bivgla" drouggavrio" Kwnstanti'no",

meta; pollw'n eij" mevson ajqrovw" ejpifanei;",

dievlusen:

eujfhmivai" te; bavllwn to;n basileva:

kai; dikaivw" ajpoqanei'n to;n Bavrdan dia; bebaiouvmeno".47 It is far easier to follow the text with the manuscript’s punctuation, which articulates the passage into easily-digestible semantic units that are co-extensive with speech phrases. My suggestion, in other words, is that the predominance of the oral/aural dimension is not restricted to the copying process. Rather, it is built into the very fabric of the expression. Skylitzes’ prose is structured and punctuated as though he intended it to be listened to.

It is also evident that the whole text is divided into chapters and then into sections; in Thurn’s edition, the sections have become numbered paragraphs. The Madrid Skylitzes provides chapter titles (for all but the first few emperors). It also uses section titles and rubricated capital letters to mark section/paragraph breaks. But it falls short of the Octateuchs, for example, in its employment of these devices. Only about forty of some 400 sections are marked with a title. Of these, a mere handful break into the text. Most occur in the top or bottom margin, many are written in the zone reserved for a miniature and it is impossible to decide if they are titles or captions (or perhaps both at the same time); the

47. 80r.1–4 (Thurn 112.13–18). I offer the following odd-sounding and very literal

translation in an attempt to convey in English some sense of the tenor and rhythm of the Greek:

But they drag him from there, and limb by limb cut him into pieces. Then; on a spear dangling his genital organs; they parade them around as an example. There arose a great uproar; to the emperor danger threatening; which the droungarios of the watch Constantine, with many troops in the middle suddenly appearing, dispersed; with praises acclaiming the emperor; and that justly did Bardas die confirming.

The Madrid Skylitzes as an Audio-Visual Experiment 147

precise insertion point is unclear, and these titles seem to have been added almost as an afterthought. In the side margins, thirty-three Greek numerals in a broken series ranging from 54 (folio 55v) to 239 (folio 126v) indicate that a need was felt to identify section breaks, but this method was not implemented systematically. And while use is sometimes made of large red letters in the left margin to mark the start of a new section, in the Madrid Skylitzes they also appear mechanically after each miniature.48 In many cases, the ornamental letter after a miniature does double duty, also marking the start of a new section. Even more confusing is that, as a section marker, the letter highlighted is not the first letter of the new section but the first letter of the line in which the new section starts. Thus, in the first line of fol. 62r a big red E following a miniature (on the previous page) is also meant to indicate that the tenth word in the line, ejpei;, is the start of a new section. But how is the reader expected to guess? In sum: it would not be unfair to describe section division in the Madrid Skylitzes as something of a dog’s breakfast. The presence of the same section titles and Greek marginal numerals in the twin manuscript (Naples) suggests strongly that, in this respect, the producers of the Madrid manuscript stuck quite closely to the layout and mark-up of their exemplar. It may be that they were simply following instructions. Or it could be that they (or whoever issued the instructions) felt that the division of the text into sections would be self-evident when it was read aloud. Unfortunately, it is anything but self-evident on the written page. There was precedent, such as the Octateuchs, but lot more work needed to be done before the section structure of Skylitzes’ narrative could be represented adequately in the visual medium. This may have been another factor that discouraged imitation.

Illustrative cycles seem to work best when the illustrations have responsibility for carrying the narrative and the text is either reduced (as in the Vienna Genesis and the Joshua Roll) or all but completely eliminated (as on the walls of many churches). I imagine that their success is due in part to the artist knowing that he has to carry the story and rising to the challenge, and in part also to the familiarity of the narrative, such as the life or the passion of Christ, which were recounted year after year in the annual liturgical cycle. Neither factor applies in the case of the Synopsis Historion.49 A fundamental weakness of the illustrative program is its inability to adapt even the layout of the text to the visual medium. Furthermore, while the text does not need the illustrations, the miniatures cannot 48. A rule to which exceptions multiply from quire 20. 49. I do not discount the possibility that some parts of the text may be based on earlier

works, such as the twelve episodes of what Grabar-Manoussacas, Skylitzes (57) refer to as an ‘Histoire, en douze épisodes, de la jeunesse de Basile I’, which may have been illustrated (153–4); also, T. Papamastorakes & E. Anagnostakes, ‘H Qeodwvra hvtan Qeovfilo"…’ H KaqhmerinhÚ Eptav Hmevre"Ú Eikovne" apov to BuzavntioÚ To Cronikov tou Iwavnnh Skulivtzh (28 October 2001) 29–32. Proponents of this line of thought posit the existence of earlier models as an explanation for mismatches between text and image. But this implies that the artist assumed even less responsibility for matching his illustration to the text he was illustrating when he could ‘borrow’ a model.

148 John Burke

stand alone — they carry only a small fraction of the narrative, and sometimes distort it; in many cases they would be unintelligible without the text (or, indeed, the captions).

Trans-media adaptations are fraught with difficulty — we can all think of novels, plays and musicals turned into films and the different demands of radio and television. The successful integration of text and image in a book required two further conceptual shifts: the text needs to be thought of as something seen rather than heard, and the images need to be conceived of as essential parts of the narrative. The comic book achieves this very well. In history books, illustrations work best when they form part of the documentation and part of the text is devoted to bringing out their significance.50 To adapt Skylitzes fully to the visual medium, the text would have had to be re-written and a different type of illustration would have been needed.

Yet I have suggested that perhaps the Madrid Skylitzes may have been intended more as an illustrated reading (though I cannot quite imagine how someone could have listened to the text while looking at the illustrations). It may not have attained the goals it aspired to because of the restrictions its producers accepted. But just as the concept of densely illustrating a non-religious, non-classical historical narrative may be regarded as an early or even pre-humanist innovation — the Madrid Skylitzes may very well be Europe’s first illustrated ‘modern’ history book — perhaps we should also regard the enterprise as an inspired audio-visual narrative experiment that was centuries ahead of its time.

50. O. Figes, Natasha’s Dance (London 2002) is a good example.

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Fig. 1. Bardas is slain. Matritensis Graecus Vitr. 26-2, miniature 80ra.

Fig. 2. Danelis. Matritensis Graecus Vitr. 26-2, fol. 102r.

536

Fig. 3. San Celso Sarcophagus. Milan workshop (?) 350–80. Marble.Milan. Santa Maria dei Miracoli presso San Celso.

Fig. 4. Junius Bassus Sarcophagus. Rome c.359. Marble. Vatican City, MuseoStorico Artistico Tesoro, S. Pietro in Vaticano [from A. Bosio, Roma sotterranea

(Rome c.1632) 45].

Fig. 5. Borgo Vecchio Sarcophagus. Lost. Previously: Palazzo del Duca di Ceriin Borgo Vecchio [from Bosio, Roma sotterranea 79].

537

Fig. 12. Resurrected Christ appearing toTwo Women.

Fig. 8. Maskell casket panels. Rome c. 420-430. Ivory. 7.5 x 9.8 cm.London. British Museum, Maskell Collection: P&E 56, 6-23, 4-7[from R. Garrucci, Storia della arte vol. 6 (1880) tav. 446, 1-4].

Fig. 10. Pilate Washing his Hands; Jesusgoing to Calvary.

Figs 9–12. Santa Sabina Doors. Rome (?), 432–40. Cypress wood. 5.30 x 3.12 m.Rome. Church of Santa Sabina, Aventine Hill [from Garrucci, Storia della arte

vol. 6, tav. 499].

Fig. 9. Prediction of Peter’s denial.

Fig. 11. The Crucifixion.

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Fig. 6. Domitilla Sarcophagus. Rome, Cemetery of Domitilla. Vatican City, MuseiVaticani, Museo Pio Cristiano, inv. nr. 31525 (ex. Lateran 171) [from R. Garrucci,

Storia della arte vol. 5 (1879) tav. 350.1].

Fig. 7. Brescia Lipsanothek, detail: Lid. Milan (?), 4th century. Ivory. Height 21.2cm, width 31.6, depth 22. Height with lid 24.7. Brescia. Civici Musei d’Arte e

Storia. Inv. Avori n.1 [from R. Garrucci Storia della arte vol. 6 (1880) tav. 445].

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Fig. 13. The Bagawat Necropolis.

Fig. 14. Typical mudbrick funerary chapels.

Fig. 15. Typical tetrapyle chapel.

Fig. 16.The

ExodusChapel.

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Fig. 18. Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis. Plan of Dome Paintings.

Fig. 19. Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis. The Exodus.

Fig. 20. Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis. The Jerusalem Temple.

Fig. 21. Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis. Jonah.

Fig. 22. Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis.The aqedah, flanked by Jeremiah and Seven Virgins.

Fig. 23. Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis. The Three Hebrews.

Fig. 24. Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis. Jeremiah.

Fig. 25. Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis. Seven Virgins.

Fig. 26. Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis. The Egyptian Army.

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Fig. 28. Church of the VirginLjeviska, Prizren, as amosque, end of 19th century.

Fig. 27. Church of theVirgin Ljeviska, Prizren.

South-east view.

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Fig. 29. Church of the Virgin Ljeviska, Prizren.Inscription in the exonarthex with the names of the

master craftsmen Nikola and Astrapa.

Fig. 30. Church of the VirginLjeviska, Prizren. Philosophers

and Sibyl.

Fig. 31. Church of the Virgin Ljeviska, Prizren.South-west view, 2004.

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Fig. 35. Temptation of Christ, King Gagik Gospels, 11th century.Jerusalem, Armenian Patriarchate manuscript J2556.

Fig. 36. Temptation of Christ 2, King Gagik Gospels, 11th century.

548549550551

Fig. 44. Jonah Cast Overboard,Lectionary of Het‘um II, 1286.

Fig. 43. Jonah RestsUnder the Gourd,Aghtamar, Church of theHoly Cross, 11th century.

Fig. 42. Jonah CastOverboard, Aghtamar,Church of the Holy Cross,11th century.

Fig. 45. Jonah ejected by the Whale,Lectionary of Het‘um II, 1286.

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Fig. 48. The Holy Spirit hovering over the waters, the creation of lightand the creation of the firmament. Palermo, Cappella Palatina, south navewall, c.1143–66 [Photo: Alinari].

Fig. 49. Adam in Paradise and the Creation of Eve. Palermo, CappellaPalatina, south nave wall, c.1143–66 [Photo: Alinari].

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Fig. 50. The beginning of Creation, and the Creation of Day and Night (Creationof the Angels?). Monreale, south nave wall, c.1176–85 [Photo: Alinari].

Fig. 51. Creation of the quadrupeds and Adam and God resting. Monreale,south nave wall, c.1176–85 [Photo: Alinari].

Fig. 52. Creation Cupola, Venice, San Marco, narthex c.1200–25[Photo: Alinari].

555