Time will tell

"At the beginning of the 7th century, the Mediterranean world is in crisis. The pax romana is a distant memory. The invasions, epidemics and wars have undermined the economy, discredited the values ​​of yesteryear and generalized the disarray. Everyone withdraws into the safety of their own community, behind their walls, under the aegis of local potentates. This general decline paves the way for millenarianism. (1)"

In times of upheaval I find it good practice to withdraw quietly in a room, reading a history book - far from raging viruses, be they biological or digital.

But while historical distance may put into perspective the issues of the day, it is not a sure recipe for Olympian calm. Because history abundantly shows that humankind is not that good at managing crises.   So one still needs to comfort one self: we do are better equipped now, aren’t we – with our immense progress in science, in technology. And we do have collectively become more rational, haven’t we?

Taking the historical perspective, one also wonders about the future: what collective conclusions will we draw in due time? Which societal weaknesses will have been exposed?  Which regimes will have proven to be better able to cope?   

Will democratic market economies driven by economic self-interest turn out to be better or worse at managing a collective crisis than centrally planned autocracies?  

Time will tell.

A bookish note:

1. Pascal Dayez-Burgeon – “Byzance la Secrète” :  one of the best books on Byzantium I have read – telling its story not only as an allegory on the tragedy & transience of power, but also showing the significance of its history, the enduring meaning of how it had organised and represented itself. Not just a vanquished empire, not just a lost civilisation without heirs, but a  1000 years story we can still engage with. 
2. Original French:

“Au début du VIIième siècle, le monde méditerranéen est en crise. La pax romana n’est plus qu’un souvenir. Les invasions, les épidémies et les guerres ont sapé l’économie, discrédité les valeurs d’antan et généralisé le désarroi. Chacun se calfeutre dans sa communauté, à l’abri de ses murailles, sous l’égide de potentats locaux. Ce repli généralisé est propice au millénarisme.”

 

tantalising books

It’s not the least of the Late Antique & Byzantine attractions – the mosaics, these delicate fragments delivering such powerful visual & tactile illusions.

So praise be to the producer of Averil Cameron’s book “Byzantine matters” - with its rough cloth cover inviting to be touched, with its  pictured mosaic bird offering such a boisterous sight for sore eyes.

However lost the classical tradition may be - the longing for a lost classical past has a long life.

So praise be to the producer of G. W. Bowersock’s book “From Gibbon to Auden – Essays on the Classical Tradition” .  The cover image of Hubert Robert’s "Roman Ruins" is unmatched in its wistful depiction of tiny people amidst decayed grandeur. ( Hubert Robert!  even when imprisoned during the French revolution, faithfully imagining & painting the grandest of ruins.)

Note for b.

You sharp eye may have noticed it, just below the above mentioned books , tantalisingly close to the touch & the camera:  the surviving gods on the cover of Peter Brown’s “Late Antiquity“  

 

Of Ferment & Fragmentation (or: Historical Confusions)

Discovering Late Antiquity in Books

Once upon a time I would read history books with smug complacency, standing safely on the solid shore of peaceful times.   Now I anxiously look for parallels between past turmoil and current discontents, wondering what lessons, if any, we can draw. 

The history of Late Antiquity in the Mediterranean world makes for spellbinding reading - and for ponderous brooding, too.  With hindsight, it was a time of structural and irrevocable change. One can only guess what contemporaries made of it all – caught as they were in the midst of ferment  and fragmentation. 

   

In the West: mass migrations (1) followed by an utter fragmentation of the established order (2).

 “[in this] kind of no man’s land where previous structures had broken down, [the local elites] were caught between trying to maintain a remembered lifestyle (3) while coming to terms with their barbarian neighbours.”    

    

In the Eastern Mediterranean: intense religious ferment & competition. Surprisingly long lasting pagans and neo-platonic philosophers. Resilient Jews. Many new strands of Christians - ascetics in the desert, holy men on pillars, warmongering monks, fierce bishops engaged in violent theological debates.  Equally violent clashes between the (Eastern) Roman empire and Sasanian Persia.  And then, in the 7^th century, with the Islamic conquests yet another new set of rulers.

One shudders at the historical facts of perennial wars & massacres & feuds. 

But one looks enraptured at the art historical remains. Enraptured, and confused, too,  by this multi-faceted world with so many cultural overlaps  – Roman, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic, Arabic, ….   (4).   

(I look at an image, trying to fit it into the illustrated (western) art historical timeline in my head, and fail.  What looks like antique roman might be  6^th century, or 10^th century... it might have been found in Syria, or in Constantinople, or ….  ) 

Discovering Late Antiquity at the Brussels Cinquantenaire museum

Even on a black& white picture in a second hand book , there was no escaping from his gaze.  A marble head with worried creases, and with large eyes. His eyes were watching … what? Horror, or Eternity?  When I could at last unlock myself from his staring eyes, I read the legend in small print: Proto-Byzantine head, 5^th century, Turkey , now at the Brussels Cinquantenaire museum. 

So, sleeting rain or not, lazy Saturday morning or not – outside I hurried, catching the first tram that came along, then briskly walking to the museum which was just opening its doors. 

On my way to my proto-byzantine head, I met Greek Gods, Roman senators, a mysterious oriental god and  ….  catching my breath…. stopping in my tracks , I stared at a huge classical mosaic floor with vivacious hunting scenes. Rome? Pompei?   No, Apamea  (5) – Syria, 5^th century - by an artist who may have worked on the Great Palace mosaics in Constantinople.

On the next floor, I found my Proto-Byzantine head.  Behind him, on the wall: mosaics with dazzling geometrical patterns (from the Apamea synagogue, tells the notice).   

On the floor behind him,  mosaics with mythological scenes, dancing girls, and, lo and behold: there is Odysseus finding his Penelope (floor from the Neo Platonic school in Apamea, according to the notice).

Apamea, so I read in the guide, is one of Northern Syria’s mysterious “dead cities” with however a rich archeologic heritage which lives on – having survived wars & earthquakes & fires. 

And what does the web tell about Apamea's current fate ? Satellite photos showing hundreds of recent pit-holes pointing to intense illegal excavations & looting. 

Commentators lamenting that Apamea’s  rich late antique footprint, having survived for millennia, is now at risk of being wiped out for ever.

Discovering new Memorials in the Brussels streets 

Still under the impression of these dazzling late antique images and pondering the fate of Apamea, I decided to walk all the way back home.  Through streets with the usual, familiar Belgian history markers – there, on the corner, one of the many  1^st world war memorials with allegorical heroics and fading names – not a village,  not a city borough In Belgium without its monument to commemorate the fallen of ”1914-1918”. 

But over there, what is that?   I’m confused by a shiny black new monument, planted firmly in the middle of a small square – it’s a strange mixture of both vaguely familiar and exotic forms. I cross over to read the gilded inscriptions , and gasp at “genocide”.  

It’s a “1915” memorial, commemorating the syriac genocide by the ottoman empire. Later I look it up on the web, this particular memorial has been inaugurated in 2015, by the local mayor and by the visiting patriarch of the Syrian-Orthodox church of Antioch. The web also tells me there are about 20.000 Syriacs in Belgium.  And once you know these things - signs multiply.  On yet another walk, in another Brussels neighbourhood – I spot another “1915” memorial, this one erected by the Armenian community in Belgium (6) 

So clearly, these are diaspora communities determined not to forget, not to be wiped out for ever without leaving a trace.     

   

More confusion and melancholy in the notes

(1)    Every arrow indicates a people on the move  ... so many arrows swarming over the map of the western Roman empire  - and yet the paradox remains that these newly arrived peoples in fact admired the Roman empire and swiftly converted to Christianity.  Depending on the historian’s own affiliation, these migrations are seen in history books either as hostile invasions or as ill managed natural flows of people. In any case, amongst the range of historical tactics to deal with migrations, the startled contemporary reader recognizes present policies: defence of outside borders, diplomacy & subsidies to keep people from moving across borders, resettlement agreements.


(2)    “Massive barbarian settlements which so fragmented the western empire” […]  The question may indeed be asked why these groups, once settled, did not integrate fully and simply became absorbed. But they had by then begun to develop their own identity, and the answer may be that it was simply too late” (Averil Cameron in  “The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity”  


(3)    Ah, the exquisite melancholy of that phrase, “trying to maintain a remembered lifestyle”.


(4)    “the variety of Christian and pagan practices in Edessa, where a Middle platonic intellectual culture was mixed with a Christian scholastic culture and active pagan cults.”[…]” Syriac culture […] with a distinctive position between the Roman and Persian worlds, […] on the fringes of empire, with a unique relationship to local Judaisms and paganisms”.  Philip Wood in chapter 6 of The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity


(5)    A flash-timeline of Apamea  : Roman conquest (Pompey the Great) in 63 BC, devastating earthquake in 115 AD, rebuilt in 2nd C , seat of neo-platonic school in 4th C, capital city of Syria Secunda in the Byzantine empire, new earthquakes in 528, rebuilt by Justinius, sacked by Persians in 573 & 613, conquered by the Arabs in 638, again earthquakes in 12th C , since then mostly deserted,  western archeologic excavations in the 1930s . Following “agreements then in place” (why? On what basis? What role did Belgium ever play in the Middle East?  ) Belgian archaeologists moved some excavated mosaics to the Brussels museum, where parts were ruined by two fires in 1944 & 1946 (what kind of fires? War? Accident? )


(6)    a superficial web search yields an extract from a local Brussels council hotly debating whether or not the Armenian 1915 monument, erected in 2004 , should be destroyed . According to its opponents it commemorates  “ an imperialist invention” .   
But back to older massacres and displacements : Late Antiquity historians dilignetly ift through evidence and documentation, trying to gauge the partisanship of the sources. To what extent did Christians persecute pagans and Jews (and vice versa, of course) ? What was official policy, what was popular violence? 
 “bands of monks […] destroying synagogues and ambushing Jews […] [versus] the laws of 423 that prevented Jewish, Samaritan , and pagan places of worship from being attacked […] . “ 
 What caused the demise of the Northern Syrian cities? Epidemics or Earthquakes? The new Islamic rule? Changing trade routes?    Or droughts & c climate change?  (7)


(7)    The climate scientist Trouet has shown how droughts got the Huns moving and were thus behind  ‘barbarian invasions ’ into Roman territory, and ultimately behind the  fall of the (western) Roman empire . In a recent interview she also linked climate change with the present Syrian refugee crisis - droughts and failed harvests accelerated migration from the countryside to the Syrian cities, further increasing social tensions – and thus acting as an additional catalyst for the civil war.  

"if to be gentle in an age of violence denotes decadence".....

 It’s 3.30 in the morning  – on my way back to bed with a glass of water, I glance out of the window and am startled by “the mute, melancholy spectacle out there”(1)  :  the foggy stillness, the haunted haloes of the streetlamps, and, ach, another lonely lit window up there.

It could be a good time to read Walser – some delicate little piece of writing, devoid of pretence. Vulnerable gentleness relieved by magical wit. His writing a “delicate, prowling, sibilant fog” (1) in which all “was soft and seemed lost” (1).

Gazing at a 1000 years

Or I could leaf again through “Art of the Byzantine Era” (2) – gazing at pictures gleaned from a thousand years’ history.  An illusion of permanence,  until that passed away, too.  At first sight a remarkable stasis, looking closer – subtle transformations: from classical elegance over hieratic magnificence to humanist delicacy. 

It’s a rather dry and scholarly book. The reproductions too small for devout contemplation, the erudite commentary lacking aesthetic subtlety (with gradations going from ‘lovely’ over ‘very lovely’ to  'exceedingly lovely').

" But art is not always a true mirror of its time"

 

Then all of a sudden the analytical scholar gives way to a melancholy connoisseur – and writes a beautifully pensive passage to ponder:  

“The last phase of Serbian art was a distinctive one. [….] there was developed a new style of painting, intimate, delicate, tender, […]  It is curious that this delicate style should have come into being in Serbia at this time, when one considers that the Serbian kings were fighting for their very existence.

But art is not always a true mirror of its time, and the art of the nation which went under fighting like a lion had all the characteristics of a lamb. It has been called decadent, the art of this last phase, and if to be gentle in an age of violence denotes decadence, then the designation is correct.  […]

Gentleness was not, perhaps, a universal facet of all Byzantine art, but it characterized all the great works of the last phase, Nerezi, Kariye Camii, and Mistra, so that the art of the Morova Valley does not stand alone. It brings our story of wall-painting in Serbia to a close on a note of beauty, elegance, and delight, and it is to be regarded as not one of the least of the Byzantine contributions to the story of the world’s art.” 

In troubled times, 'the violent bear it away'.     

So indeed:  how about gentleness & art & delicacy  “in an era when delicate persons have the most indelicate heaps of cares piled upon their shoulders (1)”.   

nocturnal notes

1.    From “A Painter” by Robert Walser  (transl. Susan Bernofsky)
2.   p213, p216  “Art of the Byzantine Era” , by David Talbot Rice