Cross-cultural interpretations of imagery in the Middle Ages

There can be little doubt that the meeting between medieval Western Europe and Byzantium is an issue of great complexity. In art-historical writing this engagement between East and West in the Middle Ages has conventionally been explained in confines of the "influence" of Byzantine art upon the art of the medieval West.(1) The collision however, can be considered in a great deal of broader terms as the interaction of sum of two units related, yet very different agricultures From the perspective of the visual arts, this clash can be analyzed in terminuss of one culture perceiving the visual imagery of the other.

The work of Ernst Gombrich, in particular his Art and Illusion, has made an important contribution to our understanding of in what way viewers perceive images, pertaining the pair to their own and to other cultures(2) The cross-cultural perception of imagery in the Middle Ages, however, is still largely uncharted territory.(3) by what means did viewers familiar with the visual agriculture of medieval Western Europe interpret imagery associated with Orthodox Christianity? by conversion how did Byzantine and other Orthodox viewers engage with the imagery of the Christian West?

A comprehensive analysis of in what way the cultures of Western Europe and the Orthodox East understood each other should include visual as well as verbal evidence. Here, I want to consider three instances which document engagements with the arts of another tillage In one example the perception of Western art by dint of an Orthodox viewer will be examined. The other sum of two units will be used to investigate interpretations of Orthodox art through Western viewers. My main focus will be upon texts describing images. Texts documenting cross-cultural interpretations of imagery are unfortunately rare--too many times such texts refer to images which no longer survive, as indeed is the case with sum of two units of the three examples discussed below. Despite this difficulty the cases single outed will, it is hoped, enable us to gain more [i]or[/i] less insight into the cross-cultural reception of imagery in the Middle Ages.

A striking example of an Orthodox viewer's reaction to Western imagery can be lay the foundation of in a passage from the Memoirs of Sylvester Syropoulo which records a statement made by means of Gregory Melissenos during the temple council at Florence in 1438-39:

When I pierce a Latin church, I do not reverence any of the [images of] saints that are there because I do not recognize any of them. At the greatest in quantity I may recognize Christ, on the contrary I do not revere Him either, since I do not know in what bourns He is inscribed. So I make the sign of the cros and I reverence this sign that I have made myself, and not anything I diocese there.(4)

This is an intriguing statement not alone for what it reveals about Orthodox attitudes toward Western European art, on the contrary also because it indicates that the imagery of the Latin house of god looked alien to Orthodox viewers and may in a certain number of cases even have been unintelligible to them. Gregory's characterization of this imagery, however, is embedded in a specific historical situation, the Council of Florence, and present itselfs in a text which embodies a particular view of the council that may not have been shared by means of his fellow participants. The possibility of a certain bias in the body suggests that both Gregory's remarks and the body in which they occur require further investigation.

The Council of Florence was convok by the agency of Pope Eugenius IV at a time when the ailing Byzantine empire was suffering from a continuous onslaught by means of the Ottoman Turks. The council's aim was to bring about the union of the Latin and Orthodox churches. Emperor John VIII Palaiologos and Joseph the patriarch of Constantinople, l a Byzantine delegation consisting of the two secular and ecclesiastic dignitaries. Gregory Melissenos, the emperor's confessor, was part of that delegation.(5)

The Memoirs of Sylvester Syropoulo a deacon and official of the Great house of god of Constantinople, focus in particular upon the meetings between the Latin and Orthodox delegations and dwell at longitudinal dimensions on the discussions among members of the Byzantine delegation of ancient points of contention between the sum of two units churches, such as the Latin doctrine of Purgatory and the Filioque clause. The Memoirs have been described as containing "a wealth of circumstantial detail as to bring a prima facie impression of truth"(6) Syropoulos's Memoirs, however, are written from a of greece anti-unionist point of view and not absent a highly selective account of the circumstances at Florence. Syropoulos was among those hellenics who signed the treaty of house of god union in Florence in July 1439 on the contrary repudiated it upon their get back to Constantinople. Joseph Gill has remind ofed that Syropoulos wrote the Memoirs in order to rehabilitate himself among the grecian clergy. This purpose helps to explain the persistence with which the attitudes of a certain number of of the Greek delegates have been distorted in the Memoirs.(7) For example, according to Syropoulo Gregory Melissenos was individual of the most vociferous anti-unionists in the Byzantine delegation. Gill, however, has shown that Gregory actually had athletic pro-unionist tendencies.(8) Because of the particular slant of Syropoulos's account, Gregory's remarks about Western imagery ne to be approached with caution. They are unlikely to have been entireed by Gregory in this form. Rather, they are the partisan view of an Orthodox believer, greatest in quantity likely Sylvester Syropoulos, hostile to Latin belief and the imagery associated with it.