The Affective Byzantine Book: Reflections on Aesthetics of Gospel Lectionaries

Abstract

The aesthetic qualities of Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries in Middle Byzantine times, afforded by their material construction, fostered an intermedial relationship with the architectural interiors of the churches and chapels where they were used in sacred liturgies. In particular, Byzantine book makers employed discreet reflective materials—particularly albumen and gold—that engendered an aesthetic of liquidity. If we center materiality and aesthetic considerations of the Byzantine Gospel Lectionary, building upon art history’s so-called “material turn”, we can come closer to understanding something of the poetry of the Byzantine manuscript as part of an affective experience—one that was shiny, shimmering, and fluid.

1. Introduction

When, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Byzantium, a presbyter (or priest) celebrated the Divine Liturgy of Pascha (or Easter)—regardless of whether it be in a monastic, lay, or imperial church—the Gospel Lectionary (Evangelion) (Figure 1) took part in the rite from its very beginning.1 At the start of mass, during the Little Entrance, this book2 containing the lections (or readings) of the Gospels and instructions for the celebration of mass made its first appearance: carried by the deacon in procession from the outside world through the narthex, across the nave, and into the presbytery, it was placed upon the altar, preceding the chief celebrant. Mid-way through the mass, while the celebrating clerics would chant the Prokeimenon, or a psalm or canticle refrain that introduced the reading of the Gospel passage, the deacon, tasked with the important role of reading the word of God, would raise the Lectionary from the altar, where it would be bestowed with clouds of incense. The deacon, carrying the precious book from the altar, would cross the chancel threshold past the iconostasis and mount an ambo (if present), and after exclaiming “Wisdom!” (Sophia!), he would recite the lections prescribed for that particular mass.

On Easter Sunday, this reading consisted of the opening words of the Gospel of John: “In the Beginning was the Word”.3 The deacon would continue with the lection, as celebrants were dazzled by the multisensory experience surrounding them (Figure 2): the smell of incense wafting from the presbytery, carrying prayers upward to Heaven; sumptuous marbles of shifting light qualities surrounding them; glittering gold mosaics reflecting and refracting light in amorphous patterns; the otherworldly chanting of the Prokeimenon; and the voice of the deacon, who would eventually come to the verse in John 1:5: “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”.4

This verse evoking the light and darkness expressed in the Gospel of John on Easter Sunday has particular relevance when examining the pages of a Lectionary itself, for when we view it, not only can the words rise up off of the page, shimmering in gold (Figure 3), but the paintings are animated by a dense abundance of luminous, layered pigments (Figure 4), mirroring the jewel-like surfaces of the interior of the structure itself.

When the Byzantine poet George of Pisidia described the peacock, he asserted: “How could anyone who sees the peacock not be amazed at the gold interwoven with sapphire, at the porphyry and emerald feathers, at the polymorphous synthesis of the colors, all mingled together but not confused with one another?”5 This interplay of light and material qualities articulated in George of Pisidia’s ekphrasis could very well describe the surfaces of Gospel Lectionaries and the interiors of sacred spaces in Byzantium. The aesthetic qualities of Lectionaries in Middle Byzantine times, afforded by their material construction, aided in fostering an intermedial relationship with the architectural interiors of the churches and chapels where they were used in sacred liturgies. Major trends of twentieth-century scholarship on Byzantine manuscripts, evaluating their iconographic programs and the tracing of a hypothetical prototype, have allowed for little in terms of understanding the affective nature of these books,6 although this trend is beginning to change.7 Roland Betancourt in particular has turned towards a contextualization of the Gospel Lectionary within a liturgical and ritualized space, considering especially the sonic qualities between the recitation of the text, a Lectionary’s illuminations, and the interior of the church or chapel (Betancourt 2021). Rather than articulate the performative relationship between the Gospel Lectionary and its interior, this paper will instead center materiality and aesthetic considerations8 of this Byzantine book type, building upon art history’s so-called “material turn”.9 In this way, I intend to reflect upon something of the poetry of the Byzantine manuscript as part of an affective experience—one that was shiny, shimmering, reflective, and fluid.10 In particular, Byzantine book makers employed discreet materials that emphasized shining or shimmering—especially albumen and gold—that engendered an aesthetic of liquidity, which in turn seem to share an intermedial relationship with ecclesiastical interiors.

2. The Byzantine Gospel Lectionary

The medieval codex is a complex, expensive object, requiring careful planning by its makers and patrons before and during its design and execution.11 Profoundly different in cost and means of production from a mass-produced paperback, the value of these medieval objects is difficult for modern users of books to grasp. Preserving and transmitting knowledge through texts and, sometimes, also images, a manuscript’s materials and the great effort of its multi-step production demonstrate that it is both valuable and requiring of careful planning.12 Although many other supports were used (including papyrus, wax, wood, ceramic, and paper), the great majority of medieval manuscripts were made from parchment, or animal skin. The number of animals required for a manuscript project, and the long process of cleaning, depilating, stretching, and drying the parchment is an indication that a manuscript’s value was intimately tied to its materials.13

The Gospel Lectionary (Evangelion) (Figure 5) is the book used during an Orthodox liturgy to read scripture.14

Differently from a manuscript containing the complete Bible (which was much rarer in Byzantium), or one of the New Testament, the Evangelion contains lections (or pericopes, a “cutting-out”),15 extracted readings of sacred scripture from the larger comprehensive set of the Four Gospels (the Tetraevangelion). As such, a Lectionary manuscript does not contain the entire text of the Four Gospels. Instead of following either the ordering of books in the New Testament, or the narrative arrangement of stories from the New Testament’s Synoptic Gospels, the organizing logic of the Lectionary aligns with the two overlapping calendars that constitute the Orthodox liturgical year. These calendars are each made up of either fixed or moveable feast days over twelve months. Due to the multiple overlapping calendars represented in the Orthodox liturgical year, while there is some chronology, a Gospel Lectionary is not necessarily read in order from the first folio to the last. Instead, the lector would turn to the correct section required for a particular liturgy.

While the Gospel Lectionary has a central role in a liturgical rite, the majority of this type of extant Byzantine book contains text only without illumination. The text itself can be annotated with ekphonetic notation, usually written in a red kermes ink, to aid the lector in tonal shifts during the Gospel recitation and aid as a mnemonic device. Additionally, indexical texts or abbreviations can frequently be found in the margins or before and after the main text.16 The format of the manuscript page can vary, especially in terms of ruling patterns. A select few are presented in more elaborate cruciform text blocks.17

A much smaller number of deluxe, precious Lectionaries were illuminated with images. While the format of illustrated Lectionaries is individualized across manuscripts—no two Lectionaries are exactly alike—they can share similar iconographies and illumination schemes (See Nelson 1980). The most common elements are author portraits of the four Evangelists, which frequently take the form of full-page gold-ground illuminations with individual authors sitting composing their Gospel (Figure 6).

Such images usually precede the incipit of each of the four main sections of the Synaxarion. Occasionally a Gospel portrait is rendered as a smaller historiated initial or incorporated into a decorative text border (Figure 7), but the figure always appears at the beginning of one of the four sections of the moveable calendar. In some cases, the facing page of an incipit opening contains an elaborate border. This can frame an introductory title, a miniature portrait, or both. The format of such pages varies widely, although many of the Middle-Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries have a preference either for a Cruciform design or a quatrefoil framing device. Just as common are elaborate kephalon (chapter) headings, which nearly always take the form of the Greek letter pi (Π) and have an abstract resemblance to a gate (πυλή), which these decorative motifs are often called in modern literature (Figure 8). Additional painted and gilded bands separating subsections throughout the entire manuscript may be included (Figure 9). In addition, historiated initials, denoting the beginning of a new passage, may appear throughout the text (Figure 10). Like the rest of a codex, they vary widely from manuscript to manuscript, and can take the shape of figures in the form of letters, painted floriated initials, or simple pen flourishes that help a reader find the beginning of a passage.

With its complex organizational system, the Gospel Lectionary is intricately tied to Christian systems of time and the performance of the liturgical rite. Although its pericopes derive from the New Testament, a Lectionary’s organization of texts and images have little meaning outside of the liturgy.18 While the history of the liturgy is not entirely clear before the Middle Byzantine period, the appearance of the Evangelion as a distinct manuscript type circa the eighth or ninth century CE suggests that the codification of readings throughout the liturgical year had more-or-less been established by that date. Historically, the selection and ordering of liturgical readings have not been consistent across different eras, adding to the complex challenge of understanding this type of book.

In many ways, the Byzantines cared intensely about their manuscripts, and placed a high value on the materials required for their construction. This appreciation is visible in the manuscripts themselves; even the unobservant user would have been aware of the codex as a rare and vulnerable object, materially embodying tremendous labor. Additionally, something of the great worth placed on a Byzantine manuscript, and its elevation in a Byzantine scriptorium as a prized object, is evident in tantalizing textual references. One such reference is the ninth-century Epithimia attributed to Theodore the Studite. In a list of penances for transgressions of monastic duties, Theodore writes on librarians, users of books, and manuscript scribes. For the librarians—caretakers of the Monastery of Stoudios’ precious library—and borrowers, he indicates:

47. If anyone takes out a book and does not take good care of it; or if he touches the book of another without the permission of him who has taken it out; or if, grumbling, he seeks a book other than that which he has already taken, let him touch no book whatsoever the whole day.

48. If the Librarian does not show proper solicitude (for the books), shaking and re-stacking and dusting each one, let him eat no cooked food.

49. If anyone is found hiding a book in his cell which, without good excuse, he does not give back the moment the Librarian strikes (the gong), let him stand in the refectory.

Likewise, the great cost of materials, the importance of staying true in the copying of a text, and the respect of other scribes is revealed in Theodore’s rules for those working in the scriptorium:

53. If anyone makes more glue than is necessary, and wastes it by letting it sit too long, fifty genuflections.19

54. If anyone does not take good care of the quire [in which he is writing], as well as the book out of which he is copying, putting both away at the proper time, and does not retain the spelling, accentuation and punctuation [of the original], one hundred and thirty genuflections.

56. If anyone reads more than is written in the book out of which he is copying, let him eat no cooked food.

57. If anyone breaks his pen out of anger, thirty genuflections.

60. If the Chief Scribe distributes the work with partiality towards anyone; or if he does not carefully maintain the pieces of parchment and the tools for binding, lest any of the things used in this work be ruined, let him do one hundred and fifty genuflections and not attend Church.20

Theodore’s Epithimia begin to nuance for modern audiences how profoundly the Byzantines held their manuscripts dear. When it comes to the extraordinarily high cost of producing a Gospel Lectionary (Oikonomides 2002, vol. II, pp. 589–92),21 the default assumption may be that the expensive materials and the great effort of its making are a display of conspicuous consumption on the part of patrons and book owners.22 While this is certainly true—and explicit dedicatory inscriptions and colophons do survive which ensure that a patron, monastic institution, or collection was recognized or associated with a manuscript—nuancing this position are the aesthetic qualities of a Gospel Lectionary, which tied it to a broader affective experience within a sacred interior.

3. The Sensuous Byzantine Book

Investigations of materiality in art history have drawn attention to historical constructions of the senses and experiential sensual interactions with art; this is certainly the case with Byzantine visual experience.23 As the hypothetical liturgical procession at the outset of this essay suggests, it is important to underscore that the Gospel Lectionary was not a passive object, or a simple receptacle for text and image, but rather was an active participant in the liturgy. This is emphasized through its use in the Byzantine rite, which has continued and evolved into modern Orthodox liturgical practice.

The Lectionary, in this ritual, related to the physical envelope around it: the architecture of the Byzantine church or chapel.24 The moving, multi-sensory liturgy had, at its center, the priest or deacon and his codex. The architectural setting of the church or chapel, where the Gospel Lectionary was used, has long been understood to be a meeting place between Heaven and Earth, articulated as such in textual sources, art, architecture, and through the sensory experiences that the interior provides.25 While the deacon was reciting the lection from the Gospel Lectionary, witnesses of the mass would not observe his words in a vacuum, but rather would be awed by the multisensory experience surrounding them.

In the elite space of the Byzantine church or chapel, mosaics with tesserae intentionally set at varying angles caught flickering light in destabilizing ways. Likewise, textiles were present that transformed hard architecture into soft, swaying surfaces. Light and shadow moved hypnotically thanks to the presence of oil lamps, and the strong scent of incense, swung from censers, enriched the interior while creating a cloudy atmosphere conducive to this heavenly setting on earth. The voice of the deacon reciting the lections, as well as any chanting in the Byzantine tonal mode, would reverberate around the architectural interior, creating a sense of sonic destabilization.26

It is within this metamorphic space that the Byzantine lectionary existed. The colors of the miniatures, showing elaborate jeweled borders framing Gospel authors, both create and simultaneously reference the shimmering and gleaming of a great variety of sumptuous materials in its environment (Figure 11). The material colors in the pages—themselves painted skins—extend and engage with the skin of the architecture itself, when opened in the heightened moment of the reading of the Gospel during the liturgy. While the phrase “Jeweled Style” refers to a polychromatic, multi-media aesthetic of the Early Byzantine period,27 this visual system did not disappear during the Middle Byzantine Period. Instead, it transformed into a mode that continued to energize surfaces, but did so in a different way, through denser, tighter patterns with more precise lines and edges.28

Evidence that the Byzantines thought of their Gospel Lectionaries and church interiors in similar aesthetic and sensory ways is found in historic texts that describe manuscripts and architecture analogously. In the colophon of a twelfth-century manuscript containing the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus at the Monastery of St. Katherine at Sinai, for instance, the abbot and scribe Joseph Hagioglykerites wrote

The monk Joseph, leader of the Monastery of the Pantocrator-Logos, who made the book glittering with silver-white, dappled with wrought gold, which Gregory, the highest of the chief shepherds, being the mouthpiece of God, composed, gives [it] to the Monastery of the Pantanassa as a gift for the redemption and cleansing of [his] sins”.29

In this epigram at the end of the codex, the author has drawn attention to the aesthetic and material qualities of his donation: descriptions of glittering silver-white (possibly referring to the parchment) and dappled with wrought gold (doubtless a reference to gilded text or image). This brief yet powerful description of this manuscript recalls ones that articulate architectural interiors, such as the well-known sixth-century ekphrasis by Paul the Silentiary describing the interior of the newly-constructed Justinianic church of Hagia Sophia:

Yet who, even in the thundering strains of Homer, shall sing the marble meadows gathered upon the mighty walls and spreading pavement of the lofty church? Mining [tools of] toothed steel have cut these from the green flanks of Carystus and have cleft the speckled Phrygian stone, sometimes rosy mixed with white, sometimes gleaming with purple and silver flowers. There is a wealth of porphyry stone, too, besprinkled with little bright stars that had laden the river boat on the broad Nile. You may see the bright green stone of Laconia and the glittering marble with wavy veins found in the deep gullies of the Iasian peaks, exhibiting slanting streaks of blood-red and livid white; the pale yellow with swirling red from the Lydian headland; the glittering crocus-like golden stone which the Libyan sun, warming it with its golden light, has produced on the steep flanks of the Moorish hills; that of glittering black upon which the Celtic crags, deep in ice, have poured here and there an abundance of milk; the pale onyx with glint of precious metal; and that which the land of Atrax yields, not from some upland glen, but from the level plain: in parts vivid green not unlike emerald, in others of a darker green, almost blue. It has spots resembling snow next to flashes of black so that in one stone various beauties mingle.30

While several centuries separate these two texts, they contain similar rhetorical strategies of material description. The well-studied ekphrastic dedication of Paul the Silentiary comprises descriptions of variegated colored marbles with adjectives such as “rosy mixed with white”, “glittering crocus-like golden”, and “glittering black … [with] an abundance of milk” that emphasize the surface quality and texture of the individual types of stones installed as interior revetments and their engagement with light.31 Similar descriptive strategies characterize Hagioglykerites’ colophon, in which he terms his codex as “glittering with silver-white” and “dappled with wrought gold”. What both these descriptions evoke in the mind of the reader are the suggestive descriptions of luminous color. We may quite literally as well as figuratively think of them, and the codex and monument they describe, as shifting, glittering, and glowing skins.32 Additional Byzantine authors—including Chorikios and Photios, to name some—also continuously and consistently highlighted the importance of variety in describing color.33

Liz James has brilliantly demonstrated that the Byzantines conceptualized color in ways completely foreign to post-Newtonian viewers, one primarily experienced through an appreciation of value. Through a careful study of the terminology used for color by the Byzantines, James has effectively demonstrated that color words do not align precisely with modern terms of hues, instead corresponding to value (light and dark); in other words, there is an imprecision in respect to hue as to what color the Byzantines themselves were describing (James 1996).34 As a result, it is essential to recognize that asking questions about color systems based on hue presuppose an awareness of it as a category. Modern viewers know color in a post-Newtonian way; the systematization of our color system is based on a three-pronged model, according, first and foremost, to hue and then to value (light and dark) and intensity (or saturation), which we consider to be the constituent elements of any color. Differently from the modern system of color, James along with John Gage (James 1996; 2003, pp. 223–33; Gage 1999a, 1999b)35 have established that value (or amounts of light and dark)36 is the principal organizing element of color systems for the Byzantines. Such an assertion might be inferred by the words of the Patriarch Photios, in a well-known ninth-century Homily delivered on the Feast of the Annunciation in the Great Church:

But wherefore, O God’s people and most Christ-loving of emperors, have you assembled thus eagerly and splendidly, and have adorned this holy and august temple, which one might well call, without missing the mark, the eye of the universe, and especially so today when, mixing the white with the black, out of which colors the natural constitution of the eye is wrought, you have filled with your bodies the voids of this wondrous place, forming as it were the socket of the eye?37

Definitions of color words are historically no more stable than other ideas about color. Terms such as “purple”, which a twenty-first-century reader of English understands in relation to a specific hue range, in other contexts might have entailed reference to additional hues and to other qualities, such as brightness, or morality. For the Byzantines, the word πορφυροῦς referred to hues which we identify as red and blue in addition to purple, and also connoted saturation and lustrousness.38 The issue, then, is one of translation. This lack of fixity with respect to hue boundaries in Greek might be unsettling to an audience primarily accustomed to modern color systems and words that correspond to hue, and should be kept in mind as one of the basic differences between Byzantine and modern ideas about color.

4. Material Aesthetics of Byzantine Lectionaries: Albumen and Gold

In attaching material specificity to the aesthetic qualities of Byzantine books, several discreet materials contribute to their appearance—in particular, the reflective qualities of albumen (or egg white) and gold.39 The majority of Greek-language manuscripts before the Late Byzantine period surviving to modern times were made from parchment, or the depilated skin of an animal, which was transformed into a suitable receptor for writing and illuminating via a complex, multi-stage process.40 These skins were treated and prepared for the reception of inks and pigments; they would be specially measured for the assembly into quires and eventual binding with a cover as a codex.41 Although many other supports were used (including papyrus, wax, wood, ceramic, and paper), the great majority of deluxe, illuminated medieval manuscripts were made from parchment.42 The number of animals required for a manuscript project, and the long process of cleaning, depilating, stretching, and drying the parchment, discussed below, is an indication that a manuscript’s expense and materiality were intimately tied to the intangible value of the project.

An additional step in the preparation of a codex that is particular to some—but not all—Byzantine manuscripts is the application of albumen (egg white) and/or linseed oil on both sides, which creates a shiny, luminous surface.43 In a letter by Maximos Planoudes from 1295 CE ordering parchment for the School of the Chora Monastery,44 this author importantly mentions that the batch should not be coated with egg albumen:

Now you should never encrust these [leaves] with egg [albumen], because when they have suffered this treatment they receive the letters onto the egg, and not onto [the leaves] themselves. For if they should somehow see water, the writing is washed away and shaken away along with the egg, and the work of the scribe turns out into thin air, clean gone. For the egg lies in the middle space between the writing and the parchment leaf, and when it is wet, it washes away the writing with it.45

The fact that Planoudes makes this request suggests that coating parchment with albumen was a regular and perhaps even widespread practice in earlier Byzantine parchment manufacture. Planoudes is quite clear why this should not happen: the albumen, a thin layer between the surface of the parchment and any applied text, often leads to the corruption of the text; any moisture or exposure to water will cause the writing to disappear. By the time of Planoudes, the Byzantine habit of preparing a shiny parchment surface was recognized as seriously problematic due to the loss of text and image, and seems to disappear as standard practice.

The sheen of the surface of many Byzantine folios is largely due to the presence of albumen in an egg binder, and these substances account for the great conservation problems in earlier and also modern times of flaking pigments.46 Although the conservation issues associated with albumen may not have been immediately apparent upon the creation of these deluxe manuscripts, the question remains why it would be used at all. Nearly all modern commentators note that the surface of Byzantine manuscripts treated with egg-white albumen has a lustrous, even sheen. This quality is clearly seen when examining an open quire in raking light (Figure 12).

As such, it seems reasonable to assume that the aesthetic qualities of shimmering pages were desirable, especially for liturgical texts intended for use in the interior of a sacred space. The even luster provided by the albumen coating contrasts with the reflective qualities provided by the sharp points of light in gold-ground illuminations, the mosaic-like glittering of powdered gold adhering to text written with kermes ink, and the relatively matte appearance of painted pigments contained in Middle Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries. These various qualities of light are suggestive of an aesthetic dialogue with the architectural interior of the monastic church or chapel.47 The aesthetics of luster afforded by albumen, with an even sheen covering the entire parchment surface, seem especially to relate to interior marble floors and revetments.48 Similar aesthetic qualities might also be appropriate to describe the albumen-prepared parchment surface, especially with the understanding that the manuscript pages would be illuminated by soft light from flickering oil lamps.

The experience of light in Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries is likewise aided, as it is in other media in Byzantine visual culture, by gold.49 When gold appears in manuscripts, either flat or three dimensionally, its surface generates reflectivity, especially apparent when seen in raking light (Figure 13).

These reflective aesthetics, however, are not the same as those of glass, as in mosaics, with sharp starbursts of light, but rather gold that creates a matte, consistent light that bounces off the surface of the metal in hypnotic but steady ways. Gold also captures light (for example in a church at dawn) more quickly than a painted surface does, thus making the gold radiate around still darkly silhouetted figures.50

The primary aesthetic property of gold in manuscripts—whether it is gilding for the background of a miniature scene or a halo, burnished to create sensuous patterns, or powdered and applied together with gum arabic over letters constituting text—is one of shimmering and gleaming. Likewise, gold in Byzantium is associated with liquid or fluid properties—not only in its melted state for the minting of coins, but also seen through the regular ways in which it shines and shimmers in its applied state on the manuscript, as if in movement. It is, therefore, the medium of gold on the surface of a manuscript page that helps to engender an aesthetic experience of liquidity or movement. Since the manuscript is a three-dimensional object designed to be manipulated through the turning of its pages, and one that was regularly processed throughout monastic chapels, we should imagine them in motion, with the gold present in these codices when the manuscripts were open flickering with different qualities of light as they moved through space.

Thus, in many ways, it its gold that makes Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries luminous objects. And yet it is used in manuscripts sparingly; it appears typically only on a few leaves of a deluxe codex, as background for author portraits, in select spots for initials, or denoting text considered worth highlighting. Furthermore, close observation has shown that gold itself is not always used, but sometimes also aurum musicum (“mosaic gold”), a synthesized tin with gold-like aesthetic properties, or Zwishgold, a combination of gold and silver.51

The preciousness and value of gold in Byzantine times must be characterized and qualified, both aesthetically and financially. Pliny defined the value of gold in ancient Rome, writing that its “highest rank” was not achieved due to its color, but rather to its steadfastness when heated with fire, and its purity in relation to other metals. Pliny continued on this theme, stating that, unlike other metals, it does not need to be purified from ore, but rather is found already perfect; and, when used in art and textiles, it does not change character, since gold does not oxidize, nor react to salt or vinegar, and therefore no rust, tarnishing, or corrosion appears.52

Despite its role as an economic standard, the aesthetic qualities of gold were described as merely one texture among many in Byzantium, as demonstrated in literature, including ekphrases, beginning in Late Antiquity. While manuscripts themselves tend not to be the subject of ekphrastic works in Byzantium, other media, including icons and especially architecture, are described using the aesthetics of gold. When used as a color, gold was often described as pallid and glowing, and seems to denote preciousness when used adjectivally. Such is the case in a dedicatory poem in Greek by Eugenios of Palermo to an icon of St. John Chrysostom:

• All blessed one, both your color and your voice are golden.
• For the one [your voice], pouring out to us golden words,
• took its name from your deeds,
• while pallor delineates the holiness of your color.
• For consuming your flesh by the fire of fasting,
• you have tinged it with the pallor of gold.53

John Chrysostom’s honorific name itself, “golden-mouthed”, is likewise referenced here—for Eugenios, Chrysostom’s flesh, pallid from asceticism, is associated with gold. At the same time, in describing the “pouring out” of “golden words”, Eugenios’ dedication demonstrates another defining aesthetic quality of gold recognized by the Byzantines: one of fluidity, perhaps reflected also in gold’s physical property of having a comparatively low melting point. Such liquidity as an aesthetic quality is widely discussed in ekphrases, especially those of architectural interiors. This is the case in Michael Psellos’ dedication of the Church of St. George in Mangana:

Everything was made more artful, the ceiling was covered with gold […] And gold flowed in a torrential stream from the public treasury as from an inexhaustible source. […] Indeed, the church was like the sky adorned on all sides with golden stars; to be more exact, the heavens are gilded only at intervals, while here the gold, flowing as it were, from the center in a copious stream, has covered the entire surface without interruption.54

Psellos’ reference here at St. George in Mangana to gold flowing “in a torrential stream” and “in a copious stream” is found also in another of his writings about the reign of Alexios I Doukas, in which “fountains and streams of gold gushed forth” at the beginning of the new emperor’s reign (Kaldellis 2017). Thus, the liquidity of gold takes on not only an aesthetic value, but a panegyric one. Likewise, the twelfth-century Michael, protekdikos of the church in Thessaloniki and later deacon of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, wrote an ekphrasis for the annual celebration of the Church of Holy Wisdom’s inauguration, similarly using liquid qualities for describing the gilded interior:

[…] and the brightness of the gold almost makes the gold appear to drip down; for by its refulgence making waves to arise, as it were, in eyes that are moist, it causes their moisture to appear in the gold which is seen, and it seems to be flowing in a molten stream. But what manner of stonework is this that fastened around the building, striving with its variegated coloring and smoothness against gold, shining because of its smoothness and, because of its diversified bloom having something that surpasses even the gold, which is of one color?55

The ekphrases of Psellos and Michael Protecdicus that call upon golden qualities (just two examples of a much greater number) reveal another tendency of Byzantine authors when describing this material. In many Byzantine ekphrases addressing architecture, gold itself is not modified by adjectives such as “gleaming” or “shining”, but other materials—including marbles and silver—are. Likewise, as Magdalena Garnczarska has recently noted, gold is merely one constituent part of a multi-media whole, in which fine marbles, colored glass mosaics, and other materials create the overwhelming aesthetic experience.56 In this way, me might understand that gold in Byzantium—whether adorning a manuscript folio or an architectural interior—was prized for its steadfastness as a material and its consistent qualities of a matte-like shining and fluidity.

5. Gospel Lectionaries and Visual Experience

In its emphasis on reflectivity and texture, facilitated by materials such as albumen and gold, the aesthetics of the Gospel Lectionary seem to mirror that of architectural interiors of Byzantine sacred space: an intentionally shiny parchment surface prepared with albumen, illuminated with gilded imagery, that privileges a variety of texture rather than flat hue. In trying to explore this aesthetic, it is important to underscore the notion that Byzantine visual experience was different from that of modern viewers.

As an example of this difference in pre-modern visuality, let us evaluate the lighting conditions of a professionally photographed manuscript at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Jaharis Gospel Lectionary (Figure 14). Here, we lose something of the complex chromatic and three-dimensional nature of this object. The image, when professionally photographed with studio lighting––oftentimes to make the work useful and usable to scholars studying the text––flattens the manuscript object into single leaves, reducing any notion of flexibility in the inherently three-dimensional parchment, and flattening any color. As described above, Gospel Lectionaries were objects that bent and swayed as the deacon turned the parchment pages, and the codex itself was carried through space with shifting light qualities (Figure 15). This is all to say that the image seen of many digitized manuscripts is a far cry from the Byzantine visual experience of a Gospel Lectionary in its spatial context.

A further illumination of this problem is found when comparing photographs of a Byzantine manuscript leaf with St. John and Prochoros in the collection of Dumbarton Oaks in Washington (Figure 16 and Figure 17). John the Evangelist, dictating to scribe Prochoros, is wearing what we might describe as a vibrantly-hued purple tunic. Yet, the experience of color is quite different when the manuscript leaf is seen under lighting conditions similar to those in a monastic chapel, where the moment of viewership of the original manuscript would have taken place. Looking at this image, without artificial lighting, raises questions about what colors are indeed present. The entire folio in this case becomes a silhouette in which the gold-ground background distinguishes everything, de-saturating the color of the modern photograph.

One further example of this difference with pre-modern visuality merits consideration: the full-page framing device of the beginning of the lection from the Gospel of John in the so-called Dumbarton Oaks Lectionary (DO MS 1).57 Although somewhat damaged, likely due to the constant rubbing with the facing cover board, folio 1r still presents a brilliant illumination that elevates the lection recited on the Sunday of Pascha (Figure 18). A large rectangular frame, mirroring the shape of the parchment, encloses a vertically elongated quatrefoil design. The quatrefoil contains a heading announcing the reading for Pascha from the Gospel of John, continuing with the text of John 1:1–4. An inscription identifies the figure in a historiated initial of a seated St. John, forming the Epsilon of Ἐν (Figure 19). John, seated on a red cushion, with gilded robes, book, and halo, reaches out to the beginning of his text, his right arm forming the horizontal stipes of the epsilon. A small, grayish epsilon between the historiated initial and the beginning of the text has been left by the scribe; this visual cue was certainly intended as instruction to the illuminator of the miniature (whether they be the same as the scribe or a different artist) as to which letter should be represented by the saint’s body. This visual clue underscores the fact that the writing of the text happened first, before any illumination was made.

Much of the visual excitement of this folio, however, derives from the elaborate border framing the quatrefoil text (Figure 20, Figure 21, Figure 22 and Figure 23). Richly saturated, the complex interplay of painted and gilded textures interacts with each other in the geometric and vegetal designs. A thick gilded frame surrounds the entire shape of the central quatrefoil, marked by a painted blue border, into which alternating circles, diamonds, and cross shapes define spaces. In the interstices, the illuminator has painted vegetal and floral motifs using bright blue, green, dark red, and bright red highlights to describe leaves and petals. The space between this quatrefoil border and the outer edge of the framing rectangle are gilded, with accompanying vine scrolls ornamented by continuing vegetal and floral motifs in the same color palette. At the base of the rectangle, two lions prowl behind Cypress trees, while two additional lions, surrounding another tree, face off at the top of the frame, gazing towards the acroteria at the corners. Internal evidence within the manuscript itself—including drips of wax from candles (Figure 24) and stains of spilled wine (Figure 25)—demonstrate it was a Lectionary actively used in a liturgy before entering its current museum collection.

In a visual experiment conducted in 2021 at Dumbarton Oaks with Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, we attempted to recreate something of the pre-modern visual experience of this Byzantine Gospel Lectionary by turning off overhead fluorescent lights and using a flashlight to illuminate the surface (Figure 26). In this viewing circumstance, it really is quite difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint precise hues of any color. What this experiment seems to suggest is that the Lectionary surface in a metamorphic interior, lit by oil lamp, would not be recognized in the same chromatic terms that modern viewers enjoy; instead, textures would be foregrounded.

In this vein, the aesthetic qualities of Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries, afforded by their material construction through albumen and gold, among other materials, aided in fostering an aesthetic relationship with their architectural interiors. These heavy volumes of astonishing cost and spiritual value, made from a flock of animals and requiring inconceivable labor and material resources, may well have been understood almost as if it were a miniature version of the church held in the deacon’s hands, mirroring the larger space where the holy liturgy transpired. When we foreground the material and aesthetic qualities of the Byzantine manuscript—those that were shiny, shimmering, reflective, and liquid—we understand that they participated in an affective intermedial experience.