The Economic History of Byzantium From

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tions and destinations to which a society commits its precious metals—may well lie at the root of the difference, but economic considerations such as the availability of raw materials play no small part in determining the uses to which gold and silver are put. State regulation, market forces, and artisanal skill were, as always, not independent factors but coefficients involved in the choices that Byzantines made after the iconoclast period.

If “thesaurization”—the process whereby silver moved out of monetary circulation into the hands of craftsmen—is one key to our understanding of fine metalworking before this time,62 the absence of silver already noted in mosaics of the seventh century is surely a part of this process. But another factor, the liquidity of precious metals— always understood63 but newly important in the face of successive governmental financial crises and the rapidly changing fortunes of families and individuals—may help explain why we have relatively few large pieces in gold or silver attributable to Byzantium after the seventh century. This, of course, is not to argue that they were not made. Herakleios’ seizure of ecclesiastical treasures in 62264 was neither the first nor last in a long series of imperial expropriations in Byzantine history. The great gilded organs, the golden plane tree and lions that stood beside the imperial throne of Theophilos, and the Pentapyrgion (a gilded display case that held the imperial regalia)—ornaments that in all took more than 20,000 pounds of gold65—were melted down in the reign of his successor. More scandalous were Alexios I’s alienations of ecclesiastical treasure,66 but the very fact that such skeue were available argues that churches after their despoilment were normally restocked with necessities and luxuries in precious metal. This implies, of course, a new round of fabrication in each instance. Moreover, in the secular realm, it is highly unlikely that Leo, a calligrapher of the ninth or tenth century, identified by inscription as the owner of the one preserved Byzantine silver inkpot, now in

62On this, see above all P. Grierson, “The Role of Silver in the Early Byzantine Economy,” in

Ecclesiastical Silver Plate (as above, note 8), 137–46.

63M. Vickers, “Metrological Reflections: Attic, Hellenistic, Parthian and Sasanian Gold and Silver Plate,” Studia Iranica 24 (1995): 163–85.

64Herakleios: Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople, Short History, ed. C. Mango (Washington, D.C., 1990), 54, lines 1–3; Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1883–85; repr. Hildesheim), 1:302–3. An earlier example of Christian liturgical paraphernalia offered in time of war is the dispatch to Maurice of perirranth´ria´ te kai` ejkpw´ mata kai` a“lla o”sa timalfe´stata skeu´h by the Persian commander of Chlomaron in an attempt to end the Byzantine siege of the city, probably in 578. The future emperor refused them, saying that he had not come to wage war on Christ. See The History of Menander the Guardsman, ed. R. C. Blockley (Liverpool, 1985), 204, line 27–205, line 35.

65Theophanes Continuatus, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1838), 173, lines 6–14; 257, lines 1–9.

66See A. A. Glavinas, HJ ejpi` Alexij´ou Komnhnou'(1081–1118) peri` iJerw'n skeuw'n, keimhli´wn kai` aJgi´wn eijko´nwn e“ri" (1081–1095) (Thessalonike, 1995), and Choniates, Historia, 443, lines 62–64 (Isaac II Angelos). The ubiquity of this practice, which could serve both economic and political ends, is attested by al-Maqrizi, who reports that, after 1169, the Ayyubids removed the silver plaques on which were inscribed the names of the Fatimid caliphs from the mihrabs of the mosques of Cairo. He observes that they weighed 5,000 dirhems of pure silver, clearly implying that the plaques were melted down. See his Histoire d’Egypte, trans. E. Blochet (Paris, 1908), 49.

Padua and decorated with a gorgoneion and ancient divinities,67 was the only individual of his time to commission an object of this sort. In short, we may conclude that, in itself, the rarity of artifacts surviving in this medium today says little about a shortage of silver in the Byzantine era. Rather, we can presume that pieces were, then as now, regularly melted down and reconstituted. Were this true, then even though fresh supplies from ore-bearing and alluvial sources may have declined,68 a sort of overall homeostatic balance would have obtained in the availability of these materials.

Yet another factor may have contributed to the recycling of silver. The fineness (purity) of the metal is directly correlated with its softness. Late antique silver objects had contained 1.5–10% copper69 to harden the pieces made from such alloys. If creations of the eighth century and later adhered to these proportions rather than to the much lower fineness of modern objects in this medium, they could have suffered wear to the point where they would be consigned to the melting pot. Yet too little middle and late Byzantine silver has been analyzed to speak with any certainty on this point. The evidence, direct and indirect, for recycling offers a better guide to this culture’s readiness to dispose of and refabricate precious metal objects.

No less than in late antiquity, when motives of piety and vanity converged to promote the melting of gold and silver objects,70 Byzantine sources and (to a much lesser extent)71 artifacts point to old silver as the material from which new creations were fashioned. In the early period, it is clear from Cyril of Scythopolis’ Life of St. Sabas that the founder of the Palestinian Great Lavra was willing to liquidate the monastery’s liturgical goods in times of financial trouble.72 In the middle period, the Book of the

67 C. Mango, “Storia dell’arte,” in La civilta` bizantina dal IX al XI secolo, ed. A. Guillou (Bari, 1978), 282 and fig. 57. A courtier’s letter written to the young Romanos, son of Constantine VII, refers to silver inkwells (in the plural) offered to the future emperor: P. Odorico, “Il calamo d’argento: Un

¨

carme inedito in onore di Romano II,” JOB 37 (1987): 67, lines 17–18, and 68, line 49.

68On this vexed question, see S. Vryonis, “The Question of the Byzantine Mines,” Speculum 37 (1962): 1–7, the comments of A. Kazhdan, VizVrem 25 (1964): 259–61, and K.-P. Matschke, “Mining,” EHB. On Byzantine metallurgy, see M. K. Papathanassiou, “Metallurgy and Metalworking Techniques,” EHB.

69See P. Meyer’s table of elemental compositions in Ecclesiastical Silver Plate (as above, note 8), 184–88. On repairs to probably representative late antique objects, see M. M. Mango and A. Bennett, The Sevso Treasure, Part 1 (Ann Arbor, 1994), 27, and R. Newman, “Technical Examination,” in Ecclesiastical Silver Plate (as above, note 8), 81 and figs. S28.2–4. With the exception of icons, repairs to and the restoration of Byzantine objects are topics little noted in Byzantine texts or by modern art historians. At the Kosmosoteira monastery (L. Petit, “Typikon du monaste`re de la Kosmosoteira pre`s d’Aenos [1152],” IRAIK 13 [1908]: 71), provision was made for the remounting of dilapidated mosaic icons on elm boards. The well-known 6th-century Christ icon at Mount Sinai (no. B1) was repainted

in the Byzantine era: E. J. W. Hawkins, “Byzantine Portraits and the Development of the Representa-

¨

tion of Christ from the 6th to the 14th Century,” JOB 32.5 (1982): 395.

70The evidence is assembled by A. Cutler, “The Right Hand’s Cunning: Craftsmanship and the Demand for Art in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages,” Speculum 72 (1997): 971–94.

71As yet no physical test exists to determine whether a gold or silver object was made from recycled material.

72Kyrillos von Skythopolis, 159, lines 28–30.

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Eparch notes the voluntary sale to jewelers of gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones, placing this record just ahead of an attempt to regulate trade in sacred objects, damaged or intact.73 At least at this time, ajrguropra´ tai were accustomed to making appraisals,74 some of which led to their acquisition of stocks of jewelry, if a copper-alloy jug in London, found to contain gold and silver finger rings, earrings, and pendants,75 is any guide. Finally, the fact that, as late as two decades before the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, liturgical silver was still being melted to be turned into other skeue is apparent from Sylvester Syropoulos’ lament that, instead of being repaired, three decrepit rhipidia from among the treasures of the Great Church were transformed into a candelabrum, thus causing the image of the cherubim to disappear.76

The enduring practice of liquidating precious-metal artifacts presupposes a desire for the objects that would result from ingots produced with these in mind. Consequently, it only makes sense to assume a market for such pieces, no less perennial than the recycling that allowed them to come into being. We have no statistics that would enable us to calculate the relationship between supply and demand and only a few— some are discussed below—that indicate relative prices for objects of gold and silver. Yet it is worth remembering that, in the middle of the so-called Dark Ages, the bishops of the Council in Trullo saw fit to criticize the way candidates for admission to nunneries dressed in fine silks and arrived adorned with gold and jewels.77 Even if this is no more than an echo of patristic hostility to material splendor, it speaks for the diversion of considerable funds in the direction of finery and this, in turn, of a clientele for silk weavers and dyes as well as gem cutters and goldsmiths.

There is no reason to credit this last class of craftsmen with any innovations that would have achieved greater efficiency in the workshop or price reductions that would appeal to a broader market. Each of the methods—hammering, annealing, raising by repousse´, casting, cold work,78 and so on—used by the Byzantines had formed part of

73Book of the Eparch, 2.4, 2.7 (Koder, Eparchenbuch, 86).

74Book of the Eparch, 2.11 (Koder, Eparchenbuch, 88).

75Sotheby’s Antiquities Sale, 5 July 1982, lots no. 202, 217–27, 231–33. The jug is now in the British Museum, M. & LA. 1982.12–1.1. Since its purchase, other pieces from the same source have been acquired. Neither the jug nor any of the jewelry has been published. I am grateful to Christopher Entwistle for information on this point.

76V. Laurent, Les “me´moires” du Grand Eccle´siarque de l’Eglise de Constantinople Sylvestre Syropoulos sur le Concile de Florence (1438–1439) (Paris, 1971), 188, lines 16–24. Concerning objects in the secular domain, Syropoulos (ibid., 188, line 26–190, line 1) remarks that the emperor (John VIII) had the gold pieces offered by the metropolitan of Russia made into a gold coverlet for his bedroom and trappings for his horses.

77Canon 54 (Rhalles and Potles, Su´ntagma 4:411).

78Represented, for instance, by one of the few pieces of middle Byzantine silver jewelry—a bracelet in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (N. Netzer, Catalogue of Medieval Objects: Metalwork [Boston, 1991], no. 66, with technical analysis by R. Newman)—to have received thorough investigation. The piece, consisting of silver 93.5% fine with an admixture of gold and lead, was worked by hammering, repousse´, chasing, and engraving. The griffons and lions in its intersecting roundels vary sufficiently to suggest execution by freehand. Durand, Byzance, no. 253, suggests that a group of similar bracelets now in the Louvre was made in Bulgaria in the 12th or 13th century. For late antique processes of manufacture, cf. C. E. Snow in Ecclesiastical Silver Plate (as above, note 8), 197–201.

the precious metal worker’s repertoire since the days of the Sumerians. As against work in the precious metals, large-scale bronze casting was evidently not a craft practiced in Constantinople in the ninth century: in 881 bells were sent from Venice for a new church built by Basil I.79 On the other hand, Doge Pietro I Orseolo (976–978) ordered for San Marco from the capital an altar table, “miro opere, ex auro et argento,”80 as in 1105 Ordelafo Falier would commission in Constantinople the Pala d’Oro for the ducal church. This of course survives, as do such items of economic exchange as the series of bronze doors exported between 1060 and 1100 to Amalfi, Montecassino, and Venice, among other sites. Many of these have figures and inscriptions inlaid in silver. Smaller towns required all but the most sophisticated metal products (e.g., for household fittings), a diversity that is in evidence wherever excavation has been undertaken. Thus the sizable sequence of silver and vermeil (gilded silver, bronze, or copper) processional crosses with figures and inscriptions in niello, known from the eleventh and twelfth centuries and now distributed between Cleveland, Geneva, and Matzkhvarichi (Georgia), Paris, and Washington, D.C., could well have been made in Anatolia.81 Every monastery of any pretensions would have possessed one; according to his will, Eustathios Boilas, a reasonably wealthy native of Cappadocia who founded his own monastery, had two.82 Industrially if not aesthetically—from the chased figures on the obverses of surviving specimens to the nielloed inscriptions on their reverses—there is little to distinguish one member of the group from another.

Arguably, technical variations in metalwork were driven by the economic attitude of the consumer, not by the skill of the craftsman or his place of residence and training. If the so-called Cross of Adrianople was made for Sisinnios II, the patriarch of Constantinople (996–998), as has been proposed,83 it may be hard to believe that its fabric of thin sheets of silver wrapped around an iron core was dictated by a need to be

79Between the 4th and 7th century, cast doors were installed at Mount Sinai and at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. But the improvisational nature of the door in the southwest vestibule of the Great Church, set up between 838 and 840, and the reuse of older doors in the Nea Ekklesia (880) and at the Golden Gate (963) in the capital suggests the absence of technical skills. For utilitarian metalwork, much more widely practiced, see A. Harvey, Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire, 900–1200

(Cambridge, 1989), 243.

80Ioannes Diaconus, Chronicon venetum, in Cronache veneziane antichissime, ed. G. Monticolo, vol. 1 (Rome, 1890), 126, lines 13–16; 143, lines 1–2.

81Both the crosses in Geneva and Paris are said to have been found at Eskis¸ehir. The group is in large part discussed by C. Mango, “La croix dite de Michel le Ce´rulaire et la croix de Saint-Michel de Syke´on,” CahArch 36 (1988): 41–49.

82P. Lemerle, Cinq ´etudes sur le XIe sie`cle byzantin (Paris, 1977), 24, lines 119–21.

83L. Bouras, The Cross of Adrianople, a Silver Processional Cross of the Middle Byzantine Period (Athens, 1979). See also K. Sandin, “Aspects of the Artisanship and Possible Liturgical Use of the Cross of Adrianople,” Byzantinorossica 1 (1995): 58–74. That economy, if observed in this instance, was addressed to the materials employed and not the labor involved is evident from the fact that the central medallions that cover the junctures of the four individual sheets on each face of the cross are separate disks. The diffusion of crosses sheathed in gold or silver is indicated by references in such documents as the typikon of Gregory Pakourianos (before 1086) and the diataxis of Michael Attaleiates (1077), where they are described as hjmfiesme´noi or ejndedume´noi. See P. Gautier, “Le typikon du se´baste Gre´- goire Pakourianos,” REB 42 (1984): 121, line 1682; and idem, “La Diataxis,” 127, line 1759.

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frugal. But there can be little doubt that considerations of this order led to the practice of gilding silver. Vermeil of this sort is already apparent on two icons of St. Michael of the tenth and eleventh centuries in Venice, both otherwise lavished with precious stone and enamels.84 In this respect, documents of this period can supplement our examination of the objects themselves when they record, for example in Attaleiates’ Diataxis, the method of manufacture and weight of diskopoteria (chalice and paten sets), here described as ajrgurou'n dia´ cruson, and silver icons with gilded silver or copper frames (meta` periferi´wn ajrgurw'n diacru´swn sarou´t).85 In the same inventory the value of two hanging lamps, complete with chains and made in the same technique, may be estimated at ca. 301⁄2 and 312⁄3 nomismata, respectively. These figures take on significance when compared to the 8 nomismata per annum that Attaleiates left to the church of St. George Kyparissiotes in Constantinople for the upkeep of his tomb and the 10 nomismata offered for the performance of prayers for himself and his family. We have no way of estimating the added value of the vermeil applied to two diskopoteria that are described in the Typikon of the Kecharitomene nunnery (1118) as weighing between 85.8 hyperpyra and 88.4 hyperpyra. What is clear is that even gilding was used sparingly.86

It would be a mistake to see such economies as acts of individual parsimony. Rather, the use of vermeil describes a cultural phenomenon, sanctioned by imperial practice87 and identified even in epigrams the purpose of which was to praise the aristocratic taste of an object’s commissioner.88 Lower on the social scale were tinned copper patens, chalices, polykandela, and other lamps. Reproducing earlier and contemporary types in silver,89 these lightweight imitations evidently met with the same broad acceptance as the coatings of gold just noted on a variety of liturgical paraphernalia in more exalted circumstances. So, too, processional crosses consisting of thin sheets of brass90

84Grabar, Reveˆtements, nos. 1, 2.

85Gautier, “Diataxis,” 91, line 1204; 127, line 1773.

86P. Gautier, “Le typikon de la Theotokos Ke´charitoˆme´ne`,” REB 43 (1985): 155. These figures are based on calculations kindly supplied by Ce´cile Morrisson. For the restricted use of vermeil, see the color photos of the Cleveland cross on the front and back covers of J. A. Cotsonis, Byzantine Figural Processional Crosses (Washington, D.C., 1994). However, the imperial commission—the cross that Nikephoros Phokas gave to the Lavra on Mount Athos—is much more richly gilded. Cf. A. Cutler and J.-M. Spieser, Byzance me´die´vale (Paris, 1996), fig. 123.

87Thus Michael VII Doukas is recorded as conveying to the private church of a relative icons with gilded adornments (dia` crusw'n peta´ lwn): MM 5:5–6. The inventory of this church begins with three bronze crosses and, following the gilt icons, includes a bronze diskopoterion, eleven enameled (? cuta` ) polykandela, eleven iron crowns, and two pairs of iron candelabra.

88S. G. Mercati, “Epigrammi sul cratero argenteo di Costantio Dalasseno,” RendPontAcc 3 (1925): 313–16. One of the six epigrams on this bowl tells us that it had “the appearance of inlaid gold”

(crusokollh´tv qe´a).

89M. M. Mango, “Significance of Medieval Tinned Copper Objects” BSCAbstr 16 (1990): 165–66. It is worth remarking that even the emperor’s household furnishings while on campaign included tinned bronze bowls. These were for the use of archontes and “well-born refugees,” while the emperor himself was provided with specimens of cast silver. See the “appendix” to De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae, ed. J. J. Reiske, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1829), 1:465–66, and the new edition of this text, Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, ed. J. Haldon 28 (Vienna, 1990), 108, lines 211–14.

90Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections, ed. D. Buckton (London, 1994), nos. 161, 175 (M. M. Mango).

regularly reproduced the form of the doubtlessly more expensive versions sheathed in precious metal.

Yet it is cast objects that most clearly reveal the relationship between lower cost and broad distribution. By no means limited to the base metals, this technique was used for silver pectoral crosses inscribed with the generic (because anonymous) invocation “Lord, help the wearer.”91 Whatever the metal employed, casts are made from a wax model that is destroyed by the action of pouring in the molten material. The matrix itself,92 however, remains fit for reuse and ready to prompt the longer and uniform series of enkolpia and reliquary crosses that have turned up in excavations as far afield as Bulgaria,93 throughout the Balkans, in Alexandria, and on Cyprus. Even when silvered, gilded, or customized by inscriptions incised after casting, these bronze, brass, or lead crosses represent metalwork at the “grass roots” level. Locally manufactured groups have been established by both chemical analysis and the observation of shared defects deriving from the mold that was their common origin. While openwork brass polykandela may have been cast in Constantinople and Serbia as late as the fourteenth century,94 the cast figures of Christ and the Mother of God that constitute the majority of pectoral crosses found throughout the Balkans, Anatolia, and the eastern Mediterranean would remain undatable were it not for other evidence yielded by the context from which they have emerged.

Enameling

In a narrow functional sense, the role of enamels in the East Christian world was no more than a surrogate for the brilliance and variety of hues of the precious and semiprecious stones that continued to appear on jewelry and, more rarely, book covers and crowns. Yet in Byzantine (and Georgian) hands this cheaper substitute became not only a form of high art applied to a greater variety of objects than any other substance, but also one that was understood as the very emblem of luxury95 and sanctity.96 This reputation must at least in part have been founded on the expensive materials and labor-intensive means involved in the manufacture of enamels, no matter which of the several techniques known to the Byzantines (see below) was employed. Each required the delicacy of a goldsmith to prepare the ground and the filigree that would house the initially liquid glass, the skill of a fine glassworker to pour and fire this material,

91E.g., a gilded specimen at Dumbarton Oaks: DOCat 2: no. 99.

92See, e.g., a schist mold for eulogiai in the Louvre, dated to the 11th or 12th century by Durand, Byzance, no. 247. The image of the stylite St. Symeon Thaumatourgos shows how long-lived were such pre-iconoclastic motifs on popular artifacts.

93L. Doncheva-Petkova, “Problemi pri proizvodstvoto na kru˘stovete-enkolpioni (materiali, tekhnologii, atelieta),” Arkheologiia 34.4 (1992): 1–12; for a broader survey that appeared after the present essay was written, see B. Pitarakis, “Un groupe de croix-reliquaires pectorales en bronze . . . ,” CahArch 46 (1999): 81–102.

94See Byzantium, no. 216 (M. M. Mango).

95Thus the De cer., 1:99, lines 14–15, records that enamel, gold, and precious stones adorned the harness of the emperor’s horse. The same role is described in the Digenes epic (Digenes Akrites MS G, ed. J. Mavrogordato [Oxford, 1963], 80, 122, 128), where enameled icons of St. Theodore are also noted.

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and the dexterity of a jeweler to grind and polish the resulting composite surface after the flux had cooled and hardened.

Perhaps because of this multiplicity of aptitudes, we do not know whether enamels were produced by goldsmiths, glassworkers, or jewelers, or, indeed, if these distinctions had the categorical force in Byzantium that they had in later societies. What is sure is that the craft presupposed a relatively plentiful supply of gold, which in the light of the coinage needs no demonstration, and of colored glass, the constraints on which I have already noted with respect to early Byzantine mosaics. Moreover, precisely because enamel was used as an adjunct to a wide range of objects (book covers, items of jewelry, etc.) defined by their function in medieval inventories, we have no way of assigning an economic value to individual pieces in this medium. Suffice it to say that while the ownership of enamels certainly extended below the imperial level,97 such possessions were always regarded as precious, conveyed together with other valuables in wills,98 and, like jewels and other hardstones, put to secondary use.99 Unlike gems, however, the losses to wear that result from the use of enamels are considerable: being essentially pieces of glass, they fractured easily, exposing their (usually) gold substrate to recycling in the manner noted above.

Despite or perhaps because of such losses, enamels continued in demand throughout the Byzantine era. Specimens have been assigned by art historians to every century but the eighth and the fifteenth. Nonetheless, unlike other crafts, production in this medium underwent a series of pronounced changes in technique. Until roughly the end of Iconoclasm, enamel was produced in a manner known since the Hellenistic era—a filigree technique in which molten glass is poured between gold wires or strips soldered on their edges to the surface of an object; inscriptions are composed of strips and not enameled.100 By contrast, from the middle of the ninth through at least the middle of the next century, true cloisons (compartments) were employed, formed by gold strips set on their edges in seas of fused glass. This enamel—typically translucent green, as in the case of the Beresford Hope cross in the Victoria and Albert Mu- seum101—entirely covers the surface of the metal on which it is laid, a thoroughness

96The Vita Basilii (Theophanes Continuatus, 330, line 23–331, line 1) reports that enamel images of Christ appeared “several times” on the architrave of the chapel that the emperor dedicated to St. Clement in the Great Palace.

97P. Hetherington, “Enamels in the Byzantine World: Ownership and Distribution,” BZ 81 (1988): 29–33.

98E.g., that of Kale-Maria Pakouriane in 1098 (Actes d’Iviron, ed. J. Lefort et al., Archives de l’Athos, 2 vols. [Paris, 1990], no. 47, 179, line 23).

99As most notably on the Pala d’Oro in Venice.

100Among the few genuine surviving examples of this technique is a pendant depicting a longlegged bird now in the British Museum: Byzantium, no. 98 (D. Buckton).

101Ibid., no. 99 (D. Buckton). This piece was formerly regarded as a Roman work. Although the technique may have been imported from the West (see D. Buckton, “Byzantine Enamel and the West,” ByzF 13 [1988]: 235–44), the knee-length kolobion that Christ wears on the cross, as he does in the Paris Gregory ms. gr. 510 of 880–883, makes a date in the second half of the 9th century much more likely. This chronology is confirmed by the votive crown of Leo VI (886–912) in the treasury of San Marco, Venice, where the same technique is employed.

that has earned it the name of Vollschmelz. While technically this makes perfect sense, since gold is the element to which melted glass best adheres, the economic historian will note the prodigality of using it as a basis that is completely concealed by the overlay. So spendthrift an attitude is only marginally counterbalanced by the thinness of the cloisons inserted into the enamel and, in any case, was succeeded by a method that displays the gold ground much more openly. Senkschmelz, as this tenthand eleventhcentury procedure has been called, was the technique used in the famous reliquary of the True Cross at Limburg an-der-Lahn,102 where the melted glass is let into the exposed gold (Fig. 4). Cloisons are again used, not to contain cells of glass but as decorative accents, gilding the lily, so to speak, that is the ostentatious expanse of bare precious metal. Such conspicuous consumption served also as an instrument of foreign policy, for this was the technique employed in such elaborate gifts as the enamels that made up the Holy Crown of Hungary.103

Apparently ever restless, Byzantine enamelers resorted in the twelfth century to a new sort of Vollschmelz, without abandoning, however, the dramatic impact of the Limburg reliquary. The new technique retained the effect whereby figures appeared to rise from the background, but accomplished this by silhouetting them against an overall, opaque base of enamel.104 Although the gold is consequently once again concealed, some saving of labor could be achieved by firing the figure, the ground, and the inscriptions all at the same time. This move probably had little effect on the ultimate cost of the artifact, a step achieved, however, in the final evolution of this medium in Byzantium. In the twelfth or thirteenth century, copper began to replace the gold on which the enamel had traditionally been laid; the cheaper metal, cut from prefabricated strips, was likewise employed for the cloisons. This was already a standard technique in the West. In Byzantium it may well have been provoked by the increase in the number of enamel icons, objects six or more times the size of the medallions on which this technique is first encountered: their greater surface area would demand economy in the metal used. An example in the Hermitage Museum105 is indubitably coarser to the modern eye than enamels of the “second golden age.” We have no way of knowing if our response was shared by Byzantines of the Palaiologan era;106 what is clear is that as late as 1200 the monk who drew up the inventory of St. John Theologos on Patmos looked very closely at an enameled icon of his monastery’s patron and could

102A. Frolow, La relique de la Vraie Croix (Paris, 1961), no. 135.

103E. Kovacs and Z. Lovag, The Hungarian Crown and Other Regalia (Budapest, 1980).

104Thus on a reliquary pendant of St. Demetrios in the British Museum (Byzantium, no. 200 [D. Buckton]) and another at Dumbarton Oaks (DOCat 2: no. 160). This is an instance in which we have two enamels apparently from the same shop. R. Cormack, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and Its Icons (London, 1985), 64, suggested that they were made in Thessalonike.

105A St. Theodore icon (19.6 16.5 cm), set into a larger panel with silver-gilt revetment (Iskusstvo Vizantii v sobraniiakh SSSR [Moscow, 1977], 3: no. 544), here assigned to the 13th century.

106But cf. the famous observation by Nikephoros Gregoras (Byzantina historia, ed. L. Schopen and I. Bekker, 3 vols. [Bonn, 1829–55], 2:788) that (by 1347) leather and ceramic vessels used at the imperial table were made to look like precious metal.

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describe the fine Senkschmelz technique whereby the saint’s halo and book stood out against the gold in which they had been laid.107

Ivory Carving

In almost every respect the history of Byzantine ivory carving differs from that of the craft that we have just looked at. First, while the heyday of enameling did not occur until the tenth century, medieval Greeks could, and almost certainly did, look back at a glorious past—the fifth and sixth centuries—when ivory had been much more readily available, when it was probably considerably cheaper and used for artifacts notably larger and much more diverse in function than the typical middle Byzantine production. Second, as opposed to an extended chronology in which examples of enamel are known from almost every century following the Triumph of Orthodoxy, at least the major pieces of carved ivory seem to have originated in a span of time no broader than the Macedonian dynasty,108 and indeed, to be clustered for the most part in the middle and second half of the tenth century. Finally, unlike the series of technical mutations that characterized the production of enamel, Byzantine craftsmen did not arrive at any significant innovations in their manner of carving: three or four basic techniques109 appear to have been practiced simultaneously, often within the confines of a single object.

Although these criteria do not add up to proof that ivory working was limited to Constantinople—where without doubt a series of important objects with imperial representations or close imperial associations originated—no basis, textual or archaeological, exists for the belief that any provincial site was a major center of ivory carving. Moreover, the very concentration of chronological and technical evidence suggests that the main body of work in this medium was the product of a sizable but close-knit community of craftsmen who, across one and a half centuries, had access to an exotic and surely expensive material. With the possible exception of Thessalonike, no center other than the capital would seem to offer the conditions necessary to create the body of often high-quality artifacts that is Byzantine ivory carving.

107Eijkw` n aJgi´a mega´ lh oJ Qeolo´go" . . . kai` stefa´ nou kai` eujaggeli´ou tw'n ajmfote´rwn crusoceimeutw'n

(Astruc, “Inventaire,” 20, line 4).

108Differences of scholarly opinion have centered on the celebrated plaque depicting an emperor by the name of Romanos and his spouse Eudokia. The view that the emperor is Romanos II (959–

963)was propounded by A. Goldschmidt and K. Weitzmann in their still-standard corpus, Die byzantinischen Elfenbeinskulpturen des X.–XIII. Jahrhunderts, vol. 2, Reliefs (Berlin, 1934), no. 34. The older opinion that the plaque represents Romanos IV Diogenes (1068–71) was revived, with new arguments, by I. Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, “Eudokia Makrembolitissa and the Romanos Ivory,” DOP 31 (1977): 307–25. More recently the present author has returned to the opinion that Romanos II is represented and the plaque made sometime between his coronation as co-emperor at Easter 945 and Bertha-Eudokia’s death in 949: A. Cutler, “The Date and Significance of the Romanos Ivory,” in Byzantine East, Latin West (as above, note 44), 605–10. For our present purposes the import of the debates lies in whether this famous object is a work of the 10th or the 11th century, i.e., whether significant pieces of Byzantine ivory continued to be produced in the third quarter of the 11th century and, as some would believe, also in the 12th.

109For these, see Cutler, Hand of the Master, 110–19.

We have no absolute figures to document the cost of ivory either as a raw, imported110 substance or in its finished state. Its rarity and the value that this rarity implies can, however, be inferred from the evidence, primarily the artifacts themselves and, to a lesser degree, the all-but-total silence of the written sources concerning the availability or the uses made of the material in question. The fact remains that there are more than three hundred surviving examples of this craft,111 a number that, given the incidence of losses in other media, demands some accounting.

The majority of extant pieces are icons or fragments of icons (single plaques, diptychs, or triptychs), objects of that Christian devotion which in itself offers some explanation for their preservation. In the secular realm, at least from the end of the ninth century, ivory was the material of choice for diptychs, possibly holding parchment codicils, presented by the emperor to his appointees.112 Yet this use is insufficient to justify the frequently asserted existence of a “court workshop.” The very diversity in styles of carving, not to speak of variations in such mechanical aspects of production as hinges and closing devices, even on objects with aulic associations, suggests rather that ivory was handled by artisans in the city, much as we have seen in the case of imperial commissions for painted icons.113 Moreover, this same diversity argues not for large, organized workshops but for many individual craftsmen working with at most one or two apprentices.114 Unlike monumental painting and metalworking, the carving of ivory does not require a team of assistants to prepare the raw material, nor does it involve tasks that had to be performed in quick succession by separate pairs of hands: there were no ladders to move, no lime base to be kept wet, no melt to be maintained at a proper temperature. Both the rational organization of the means of production and the maximization of profits from a process designed to create unica militate against the notion of ateliers which, in Gothic Paris for example, turned out long series of virtually identical pieces.

This is not to deny a general resemblance among Byzantine products in this medium. The same normative forces exerted by a largely homogeneous clientele on the

110On the basis of tusk measurements, I have argued that late antique and Byzantine plaques wider than 11–12 cm derived from elephants of African origin: see A. Cutler, The Craft of Ivory: Sources, Techniques, and Uses in the Mediterranean World, A.D. 200–1400 (Washington, D.C., 1985), 20–24. This has been disputed by F. von Bargen, “Zur Materialkunde und Form spa¨tantiker Elfenbeinpyxiden,” JbAC 37 (1994): 56–57, on the grounds that sporting record books list Indian elephants shot in the 20th century as yielding tusks up to 21 cm in diameter.

111This number differs from the total contained in the two volumes of Goldschmidt and Weitzmann, Elfenbeinskulpturen. It is arrived at by subtracting objects that are not demonstrably Byzantine and adding pieces of which they were unaware.

112For these pla´ ke" ejlefa´ ntinai kekosmhme´nai, see N. Oikonomides, Les listes de pre´se´ance byzantines des IXe et Xe sie`cles (Paris, 1972), 92, line 23; 95, line 23. The uses described in the Kletorologion of Philotheos seem to be confirmed by De cerimoniis, 249, line 22; 251, lines 3–4; and 260, line 15 (this last with reference to the patriarch of Constantinople). For a possible surviving example, see Cutler,

Hand of the Master, figs. 24–25.

113See note 57 above.

114By this means, too, craft techniques would have been transmitted from one generation to the next. Large “groups” of ivories, and implicitly craftsmen, is the premise of Goldschmidt and Weitzmann, Elfenbeinskulpturen. For the arguments against this thesis, see Cutler, Hand of the Master, 66–73.