The word “Byzantine” fits uncomfortably within the broad sweep of artistic commissions in Rome between the fourth and the fourteenth centuries. Ultimately the word tells us more about its modern creators and users than it says about medieval viewers. We may see Byzantine features in the art of medieval Rome, but only because we are familiar with the art that was created later, because we know about the Byzantine aesthetic that emerged and defined the later culture. Some of that later aesthetic does appear as an option in the imagery of earlier moments. But those visual documents—the mosaics and frescoes of the time—are not pointing away from Rome towards another culture. Rather they are pointing towards a common Christian civilization. The mosaics and frescoes turn to imagery whose genetics are to be found in works of ancient art and catacombs. These features reappear all through the medieval period as an assertion of the grand, unified Rome—the Rome that Constantine split without splitting. It is appropriate to approach the art of the sixth and seventh centuries with the mindset that artistic ideas were being created and shared throughout this unified Roman empire.

Cultural friction was inevitable during Iconoclasm. The effects appeared in the aftermath, most notably in the establishment of rules and theories about the viewing of art, and in the creation of specific traditions such the canonization of certain iconographies, the insertion of inscriptions, and the increase in the production and presence of icons. It is almost as though the East crafted a new culture, one that would be impervious to the idea of hindering image production, ensuring that there would be no third wave of Iconoclasm. Rome, however, was always a place of creativity and innovation. Peoples of many different traditions found a home in Rome. There is no sense that there was a fear or wariness of groups from afar. Rather, it seems that different Christian communities had full access to spaces in which to articulate or visualize the tenets of Christ and the Church.

Two broad changes determined the shape of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries.

In the years after the conclusion of Iconoclasm, select images were embraced in the East as being critical to the Christian narrative. This selection was part of an effort to define the Church and its position vis-à-vis the relevance and role of images. In essence, the church was protecting itself from a third wave of Iconoclasm, and one way of doing that was to formalize the way things looked and the way they would be interpreted. Certain scenes representing the twelve major feast days—including the Anastasis, the Transfiguration, the Nativity and Baptism, and Pentecost—were determined to be essential to the religious calendar and relevant to the walls of the church. Within the defined parameters of selected iconographies there was room for slight variations, but for the most part these images were showing an accountability to the Church, to the set program that had been vetted by Church authorities. In a sense, then, the religious images being produced were physical evidence of the validity of an image-based system. Art acted as a document or a certificate of proof that the battle about images had been waged and won. The stabilization of iconographies was like the creation of a new language, a visual language that was shared and repeated and, thereby, codified. By canonizing the aesthetics, all that were involved—artists, theologians, politicians—were signing on for and were part of the crafting of a culture.

While the Eastern iconographical lexicon was codified in and after the ninth century, Roman art continued to absorb inspiration from the pan-Mediterranean sphere as well as the imperial courts further West, such as imagery from the Franco-German regions. As ever, newer inspirations were inventively blended with imagery from the past, from the earlier medieval period and antiquity. The combination of the traditional and the inventive is vividly present in the apse mosaic at S. Clemente, dated to the 1120s. The vine scroll, for example, was a familiar motif in Rome and throughout the Mediterranean. Green vine scrolls were used to fill the vaults of S. Costanza (fourth century) and the conch of the chapel dedicated to Saints Cyprianus and Justina in the baptistery at the Lateran (fifth century).

In the medieval period, images were central in the creation of a common culture, of a shared language that could embrace and overcome differences found in actual language, geographical distances, theological incompatibility, and political preferences. The legibility or the ability to identify certain types of images—an Anastasis, a scene of the Seven Sleepers, the healing of the paralytic—would have been part of that commonly held visual literacy.

Although it is possible to interpret stories and scenes—why they were chosen, how they moved, the message they could convey—it is far more difficult to interpret the role or meaning carried by style, by the form of an outline or the stroke of a brush. Style is malleable and, as such, a tricky signifier. It is difficult to assign meaning to a particular or unique detail. How much should we attribute to a “dynamic” fold in drapery, the curly-cue of garment, the size and shape of a hand, the outline of an eye? The benefit of seeing similar patterns or particular styles is that we can identify certain preferences and possibly the movements of certain workshops of artists. But even then, this assumes that all artists working in those groups shared the same training and that they repeated the same habits and preferences throughout their careers. Although we do not know much about the artists of this period, it would seem safe to say that they were capable of responding to their environments, to the demands of their patrons, and to the shifting preferences of their patrons and viewers. They would have had the ability to shift gears stylistically when they needed to. As they moved, as new members joined their workshop or as they interacted with different artists and saw different images, new ideas were introduced, new styles were shared, and their own database of styles expanded.

The styles of artistic periods are not uniform. Just as we should not attach artists to a single style, we should not assume that a certain time period, patron, or even a church has one particular look. The churches from the early medieval period, from the seventh to ninth centuries—Sant’Agnese fuori le mura, Santa Maria in Via Lata, San Saba, Santa Maria Secundicerii, the lower church of San Clemente, and S. Maria Antiqua—all show a wide range of styles with fully compatible visual imagery.

Important Icons

• • Lateran acheiropoieta icon, Chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum, Lateran Palace, fifth–sixth centuries

• • S. Maria Nova icon, S. Maria Nova, sixth–seventh centuries

• • S. Sisto Icon, S. Sisto Vecchio, Monte Mario, sixth–eighth Centuries

• • Salus Populi Romani, S. Maria Maggiore, late sixth–early seventh centuries

• • Madonna della Clemenza, S. Maria in Trastevere, 705–707

• • Madonna of the Pantheon, seventh century

• • S. Alessio icon, SS. Bonifacio e Alessio, twelfth–thirteenth Century

• • S. Maria in Aracoeli icon, S. Maria in Aracoeli, twelfth century

• • Man of Sorrows, S. Croce in Gerusalemme, fourteenth century

Sites in Ravenna

• • S. Vitale, 547

• • Sant’Apollinare Nuovo

• - Theodoric the Great, first quarter of sixth century

• - Justinian, 561

• • Archbishop's Chapel, 495

As the focus for much of the greatest cultural, theological, and political activity of the medieval period, the city of Rome offers opportunities to look for the kinds of answers to which Umberto Eco alludes—the aesthetic solutions that define a culture. One of those major questions is about the nature of the relationship between Rome and the Eastern Empire, the Byzantine Empire. Was it one of antagonism? Dependence? Influence? Deference? Artistic evidence provides a lens into the terms of this relationship as they shifted between the fourth and the fourteenth centuries. But it is important to recognize that the very posing of this particular question implies an assumption of difference, even of cultural incompatibility. In fact, although the East and the West did not consistently share political or theological views, the veritable outpouring of paintings, mosaics, reliquaries, and architecture in Rome during the medieval period tells a story that is characterized by sharing and exchange, not by a cultural differentiation.

The church of Santa Maria Antiqua is an example of the ways in which assumptions about a separated East and West obfuscate the truer, and, frankly, more interesting cultural dynamics at the core of this pan-Mediterranean medieval period.

In 2016, an exhibition opened within the walls of S. Maria Antiqua, a church in the Roman Forum that had been partially destroyed by an earthquake in 847, forgotten and then lost until the nineteenth century, sought for a year, rediscovered in 1900, and then closed for 116 years for conservation. Frescoes, ranging from the sixth to ninth centuries, line the church—along the side aisles and the low-lying walls of the space preceding the choir, all along the walls of the choir and in the two side chapels on either side of the apse.

It seems natural that, as the Christian visual lexicon was expanding, being shared throughout the Mediterranean, and becoming a definitive part of Christian traditions, questions would start to circulate about the role and nature of images, how they were read and what they might convey. In and of itself this would not have been of great note. An image-based culture would necessitate or at least generate image-based theories and practices. However, during much of the seventh century, the East was experiencing a great deal of turmoil, losing territories, losing battles. Instability in these Eastern territories appears to have inspired a proliferation and a greater dependence on sacred or miracle working images, a phenomenon that worried the theologians, who saw a growing need for the regulation of the veneration of these sacred images. Confrontation with the growing military power of Arab forces likely inspired further questioning about the role of images in the church. Although scholars refute the idea that Islamic approaches to images were relevant to Iconoclasm, it is certainly conceivable that Islamic opposition to figural images had at least some influence on changing attitudes in Constantinople. At any rate, what would otherwise have been under the jurisdiction of the church received imperial consideration, ultimately leading to a prohibition of representations of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints—the period called Iconoclasm. The first wave lasted from 726 to 787. After a brief pause, Iconoclasm was yet again announced, and the ban on images resumed from 814 to 842.

From the Roman perspective, the first wave of Iconoclasm coincided with the paintings in the Theodotus Chapel at S. Maria Antiqua (742–752), the paintings at S. Saba, the frescoes in Santa Susanna, and the Oratory in SS. Giovanni e Paolo. The second wave started with the mosaics of Leo III, continued during the papacy of Paschal I, and concluded two years before the pontificate of Gregory IV ended. The significant monuments of the period included SS. Nereo ed Achilleo, S. Maria in Domnica, S. Cecilia in Trastevere, and S. Prassede.

Taken in these terms, the contrast between the East and West would seem to be obvious—the West was artistically productive and the East was artistically inactive.

When Constantine selected Byzantion as the capital of the Roman Empire in 324, the city was relatively unknown and certainly not as influential as city-states like Athens or Corinth. Perhaps Constantine wanted a site that was more easily defendable than Rome, perhaps he wanted to highlight the site of his victory over his rival Licinius I, or perhaps he wanted a clean slate upon which his new streets, new forum, enlarged stadium, and three new churches could stand out in a way they might not in the already chockablock city of Rome. What is certain is that the move was not inspired by an attempt to create a rift between the East and the West. Ironically, the name of the city upon which Constantine settled the new capital ultimately did become the source of a distinction between two completely separate cultures made by later sixteenth-century historians—Byzantion became Byzantine. But in the fourth century, the name Byzantion was essentially forgotten, only used by antiquarians. The rest of the community quickly adopted the name Constantinople. Constantine may not have had difficulty with the new name, despite the fact that there was no official decree about the name change. Officially the name was New Rome. It was to act as a balance to the western Rome, as a means of providing stability to the expansive Roman Empire. The new capital had the advantage of being on the sea route from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and the land route that connected the Persian and Danube frontiers. New Rome would thus be better able to unite the expanse of the empire than the landlocked Rome. Constantinople was a complementary site. It was not supposed to make Rome into a different, discrete, separate, or subsidiary entity.

If later authorities argued about the primacy, one cannot assume that this was a widespread conversation during the fourth century, or one that would have affected the artists of each capital. Documentary evidence does not point to a contentious reception to the founding of Constantinople. Nor does cultural evidence. Visual evidence, the great building programs that Constantine endorsed in both great centres, indicates that the earliest years of this newly Christianized empire were not coloured by a sense of opposition or antagonism.

This concluding chapter explores the construction of Greekness through Egyptian religion in Roman Greece. Using a scene from Apuleius’ Met. XI as a central theme, the questions of intersectional ethnicity, deterritorialization of Egypt, materiality, difference, and colonial experience are discussed. Isiac Greekness is then contrasted with well-defined Second Sophistic forms of Greekness, revealing that Isiac identity is defined according to different time-scales and geographical referents from, but through similar methods to, traditional forms of Greek ethnicity.

This chapter explores the idea of a cohesive Isiac identity in Roman Greece. Using R. Brubaker’s paradigm of groupness, it examines epigraphic and literary evidence that suggests the cults’ structures encouraged active devotees to identify with the cults. It also explores the geographic and spatial distribution of this evidence, which indicates that devotee communities at different sites sought to build religious and social ties across the region.

This chapter sets the practice of Egyptian religion in Greece in an imperial and global context. The rise of Isis and Sarapis as popular gods is considered alongside the development of Greek identities found in Second Sophistic literature and Roman provincial archaeology. Proposing a more intersectional and process-based approach, this chapter suggests a new framework for considering minority forms of ethnicity in the Roman Empire.

By focusing on built and natural landscapes in Isiac sanctuaries, this chapter explores the ways in which devotees used the cult for self-location: situating individuals and groups in relation to one another through geographic metaphors or thought. Using the sanctuaries of Marathon, Dion, and Gortyna as case studies, it explores the ways that devotees built references to the Nile into sanctuaries in order to create a Nilotic landscape appropriate to their conceptions of Isis, and Egypt more generally.

Focusing on Isiac hymns called aretalogies that appear across Achaia, Macedonia, the Greek islands, and Asia Minor, this chapter explores the ways in which Greek devotees conceptualized Isis. It first discusses prevailing Greek stereotypes of Egypt, which emphasize timelessness, experimentation, and wonder. Then, it explores the aretalogies themselves and how they universalize Isis and embed her and her companions in Greek myth and geography.

This chapter considers the role that ideal sculptures in sanctuary settings play in the process of self-understanding: the beliefs and ideologies that give shape to a group and also inform how outsiders perceive the group. Using the Sarapeum of Thessaloniki as a case study, this chapter defines the Greek sculptural types and materials used most commonly to depict Isis and Sarapis in Greece, and explores their relationships with Greek sculptures that were often displayed alongside these images.