Library News
Byzantine Art and History Display
[14 May 2010]
Currently St Mark's Library has mounted a display of books and other resources which were donated to the library by Ian Brooker. The display is in the main cataloguing area near the Loans Desk.
Ian tells the story of a trip to Istanbul and describes the Byzantine art and history he discovered there.
Byzantium—A Pilgrim’s Progress by Ian Brooker
In 1961 I travelled by road from England to Istanbul. After some weeks of conventional touring, Paris, Vienna, Rome, I drove from Belgrade to Sofia. In those days Bulgaria was in the tight grip of communism and I wondered how I should be received. There was no problem. On a Saturday night I spoke to a local man and he suggested that I go to the Orthodox Church of St Alexander Nevsky on the Sunday. I had never heard of Alexander Nevsky, a 13th century Russian warrior saint. Orthodoxy was a complete mystery to me.
On a perfect morning across a cobbled square, I approached the church with its golden domes shining against an intense blue sky. The church was full. I went in and a lady attendant sensing my hesitation motioned me to stand at the back. All the worshippers stood according to the custom in Orthodoxy. So I stood for two hours, rapt. I can never forget the colour, the superbly robed priests, the iconostasis, the incense rising to the dome above, the deep sense of piety, and most of all the singing. Behind me on a balcony was the choir. The liturgy seemed to be a dialogue between the priests and the choir. I was ‘converted’ and had to know more.
Next day I drove on to Turkey and approached the largely intact walls of the City, Constantinople as I prefer to call it. I entered by the Golden Gate. The monuments of Byzantium were my goal, most of all Hagia Sophia. This must be the most important church in the world, museum though it now is. Built in 532 to 537, it predates by hundreds of years the great cathedrals of western Europe. In recent years the ancient mosaics in the church have been uncovered. They are sublime and appear in every book on Christian art. Another unforgettable artistic and historical experience was my visit to the church of St Saviour in Chora (‘in the fields’) for its frescos. The depiction of Theodore Metochites, the Grand Logothete, with his peculiar headpiece is unique.
From these experiences, I knew I had to find out about Byzantium and Orthodoxy. And it became a passion that has never left me.
In 1967 I stayed on the Greek island of Paros in the middle of the Aegean Sea. One day I went for a walk into the nearby hills. I came across a monastery, Longovarda. I entered by an open gate where there was a sign welcoming visitors. Within minutes, it was my good fortune to be greeted by a monk who spoke English. He was an Anglican priest who had converted to Orthodoxy. He showed me around explaining the formal layout, with the church as always in the middle. He invited me for luncheon. I sat alone and was served by a monk while the other monks ate in the next room in silence, apart from one who read continuously from the scriptures. After lunch we walked in the garden where we were joined by a very old monk. We three sat under a trellis and discussed with necessary translations Christianity in the east and the west.
My interests were enhanced in 1968 when Sir Steven Runciman, the greatest English Byzantine scholar of the time, came to Canberra and gave four lectures on ‘The Fall of Constantinople’. I then had to buy all his books. One of these is the history of Mistra, which is a pure Byzantine town now partly in ruins, set on the hills above the modern city of Sparta in the Peloponnesus. In 1967 I went to Mistra which is largely preserved. As I walked around the narrow streets I could look over tumble-down walls at the gardens around the ruins of the houses. I could not help musing on what the place must have been like hundreds of years ago. The town was uninhabited apart from a nunnery.
It was in Roumania that I visited another nunnery. This was in the Carpathian Mountains in the north of the country. The church was stark and virtually undecorated inside, but the outside walls are covered with religious and historical paintings. This was one of the famous painted churches of the Carpathian region.
My travels since then have been to Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia, but I cannot exclude Venice for its pure Byzantine church of St Mark. It is amusing to report that in 1975 I went to Leningrad for a conference. On the Sunday, I wanted to go to a local church. I asked the hotel receptionist where I should go. She suggested the monastery of Alexander Nevsky (that name again) and its church. I was enjoined to keep my intentions to myself as the authorities would frown upon the idea that a visitor from the West might wish see something as decadent as a Christian church service in a dedicated atheistic State. I took the bus and found the monastery. I entered the church for the liturgy and the whole Orthodox liturgical experience came back to me.
On another visit during communist times to eastern Europe I went to Kiev on official work. To my intense disappointment the main church (Saint Sophia) was decommissioned and appeared to be used as a storehouse. In some recompense I went on a tour to a nearby monastery that overlooked the mighty Dnieper River. My main memory of that day was to be taken to the catacombs where deep down I was ‘privileged’ to see the mummified body of a long dead saint lying in a cavity besides the spiral staircase.
I have visited Orthodox churches where-ever I have travelled. I have marvelled at the piety of some local people who bend over and kiss the figures depicted in images. One such occasion was when I took a ferry from Thessaloniki in northern Greece for a day’s trip down the west coast of Mt Athos, famous for its monasteries of all forms of Orthodoxy dotted over the hills. We stopped opposite a monastery not far from the water’s edge where there was a jetty. Two monks came out in a small boat to meet us. They carried on board a precious looking wooden case which they laid on a table. They opened it and exposed the arm bone of a locally revered saint. We lined up and proceeded past the relic. All but myself kissed it, but not to disappoint the monks, I bent over in some sort of obeisance. I have forgotten who it was supposed to be.
I have twice been to Patmos, an island in the eastern Aegean Sea very close to Turkey. Here St John was exiled. Monks showed me the grotto where he lived and the split in the roof through which God spoke and revealed the Apocalypse, The Revelation of St John (“I heard behind me a loud voice…..write what you see in a book….”).
Icons are transportable but mosaics and frescos not so. This means I had to visit many churches to see examples of the latter two. Apart from those in Haghia Sophia, the most unforgettable mosaics are those in San Vitale in Ravenna in northern Italy. Ravenna was an early western capital of Byzantium and the mosaics date from the 6th century. Almost as memorable are the mosaics of Daphne a small church just outside Athens and those of Hosias Lukas some distance away from the city.
Once on a visit to London I went to a small commercial Art Gallery that specialised in icons. I have a vivid memory of walking in and straightway seeing an image at the end of the small display room. The eyes of St John the Baptist or The Prodromus transfixed me. They were hypnotic. This 400-year old treasure is now on permanent display in the Church of St John the Baptist at Reid.
I have bought many books on Byzantium and Orthodoxy. My favourite is the one I bought a few years ago at the Australian National University whose bookshop advertised that John Julius Norwich would be there in person to sign his latest book. He had published a history of Venice and several on Byzantium, from the days of the Emperor Constantine to Tuesday 29th May 1453 when the city fell to the Turks. I approached John Julius who sat at a desk with a pile of books. By way of introduction, I said that I was a ‘Byzantine freak’. In the third and last volume of the series, he wrote ‘from one Byzantine freak to another’, signed John Julius Norwich. I am keeping this one book.