Christos Merantzas (2018). Sunlit Crypticity: Interpretative Approaches to Indescriptible God, the Utopian City and Death in Byzantine Civilization. Athens: Smili

The book in your hands emerged from an intense effort to understand the heterogeneous condition that touches on the conceptualization of light and darkness within the Byzantine civilization. As such, this book discusses four exemplary cases of which the common element is the revelation of an unverifiable truth. This idea had been constantly agonizing me in recent years, before deciding to tuckle with it on a thorough basis. Strangely, what started as a narrative diary eventually turned into a systematic study that features as the third and last part of a trilogy on Byzantine civilization, in which the two earlier chronologically dated works belong to Inverted Dionysus. A Draft Body-theory of Algaesthetic Selfconstraint (2011) and Α na-chora(-i)tism. Forms of Otherness in Byzantine Culture (2014). Hence, this final part of the trilogy comes as a futher investigation into one of the most complex compounds of the Byzantine identity, such as luminosity and darkness, revelation and crypticity, perishable earthly and divine eternal. My intention, nevertheless, was not to offer an exhaustive account of the conceptualization of light in Byzantine civilization. Instead, I chose to complete this triptych of studies by delving into the core of the Byzantine identity, both religious and secular, that is the narrow boundaries of perishable human existence. 

As for the theme of crypticity, gradually surfaced in an attempt to conceptualize the significant presence of light in Byzantine culture. For Dionysius the Areopagite, God exists in the distinction among two conditions; the condition of absolute light and that of endless darkness. However, neither of these two contrasting conditions owns its independent identity, as they are inherent to one another, and the understanding of God endlessly shifts from one term to the other. Consequently, this very idea responds to the interior composition, the distribution of light and shade, and to the spatial organization of the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (532-537). We could essentially discuss the spatialization of this distinction within the construction of Hagia Sophia. At first, Hagia Sophia seems to stand for a dark matter which the craftsman introduces to light. However, in this context, the light is not a mere function that adds a certain something to pre-existing darkness in order to acquire some kind of form. Instead, it mirrors the sculptor who removes sections from the amorphous matter in order for his work to gain its morphicity in the form of light. By analogy, in our case, light takes away amorphous darkness in order to reveal the spiritual existence of Hagia Sophia. If we consider this edifice in question as entirely subjected to darkness and if light is not visible at first sight, then the very presence of light reflects the order of time. Through light the edifice acquires temporality that is historical discussion. Via light, it’s as if matter is unleashed from the building. In turn, the interior of the building appears to symbolize a sun-drenched absence, as if referring to the infinitelyotherness of darkness. However, light isn’t equivalent to the objective account of a presence, but to the transcendent account of an absence, existing within darkness. At the same time, the edifice is a place of both separation and union, it serves the notion of a wholeness that is inherent in a dualism; on the one hand, a vivid descriptiveness of light, and, on the other, the weak description of darkness. Hagia Sophia activates a description of light that bursts out of itself and leads to a non-definable other, a non-specific otherness. Darkness, then, reaching beyond light.

For Gregory of Nyssa, one of the many functions of light has to do with the assumption that humanity was made to possess visual contact with natural order of things and to actively participate in divine light. Gregory accepts that God’s light-entrenched knowledge brings together the multiple possibilities that render light a feature of human nature itself on its move to reach the divine. Because, rising to the divine is inseparable with rising to light. Through light, an understanding of the divine is made possible, albeit to a certain extent. Meanwhile, great difficulties gradually arise as light alone is insufficient to provide us with a deeper consciousness of the divine existence. Gregory perceives the incarnation of Christ as a means to fight the inconditional darkness of the world’s sin. The coming of Christ to the world plays therefore a decisive role in the restoration of divine light. A Christening, in turn, removes the darkness of sin and instead lays starlight brightness. The bright ones are similar to bright star. Hence, the realm of divine homogeneity corresponds to the moment where light comes to substitute darkness. The dynamics of the analogy between divine and perceived light explains the logic behind a certain equivalence which helps Christian subject to perceive the light-shadow distinction on the pre-modern cultural environment, where the importance of sunlight was of prime importance for the preservation and growth of life.

In analogous terms, an ossentral interpretive tool which allows us to study light in Byzantine culture involves its visual potential within the Byzantine icon, which refers to its ability to rise to its archetype. For the icon this process works as a mirror reflection. As it ruptures space and time, the icon is now able to connect to its archetype through sunlight. As far as space is concerned, whereas it does not exist within the icon, it is neither fragmented, nor crumbled or classified. There is no spatiotemporal diversity between the icon and its archetype, what does exist is a unifying relationship that is nonetheless alien to time and place. Yet there is still another condition in this relationship: just as homogeneity is necessary to maintain this relationship, so is heterogeneity. In this case, the perceptible image would be identical to the intangible archetype. The icon works contrary to the condition where words are used in language. Words are able to describe with precision following an arduous route of disruptions and mutations and acquire a literal capacity. Viewed in this light, the icon is destined to deny the literal.

The four chapters of the book address the cases of the incarnation of light by the first Byzantine emperor, Constantinople as a utopian city, the heterogeneous nature of death, last but not least, the absence and non-description of the Christian God. To name this visible light is a constraint to the field of embodied experience. In reality, however, the visible acquires a unanimous value because of its timelessness and nongeometricity, that is to say a determinable perennial dimension.

The way in which the Byzantine prime minister and patron of the arts Theodore Metochites presents Constantinople in his writings demonstrates a city cleansed of impurities, as he focuses on its supremacy as the prerequisite for its cohesion. The Byzantine author removes Constantinople from specific historical contexts as well as the circumstantial performances of its protagonists. Indeed, Metochites perceives Polis as a place alien to everyday life, that is a miraculous utopian space. This Polis is depicted as lacking historiography, socio-economic correlations, and competing frictions. Hence, the Byzantine capital becomes the idealizing environment of a distinctiveness that, as it happens with the function of language, encourages a genuine sense of superiority.

In this respect, Metochite’s Constantinople is conceived as a capital that embraces the universe as a whole insofar as it identifies itself to it. The Polis also has the advantage of a long-standing political presence, due to the stability that it is supposed to ensure. It claims this position in the long term precisely due to its dual, Greek and Roman identity.

When Gregory of Nyssa explores the familiarity of death, which in Christian times was equivalent to a vigorous exposure to the traumatic experience of bodily derogation, yet which is necessary to access the authenticity of the truth, death is not merely a biological phenomenon, but also a factor that opposes the historical finitude of man. Hence, death is not just a mere event that goes hand in hand with human nature. On the contrary, death is the necessary precondition for accessing salvation. It is a clear evidence of the most precious participatory act, which assures the cohesion of the Christian community within Orthodox faith.

Gregory of Nyssa presents death in terms of critical self-awareness, so as to reverse the course of bad intentions that sustain the tension towards exaggeration. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that the whole issue is about life management: what could the acknowledgment of the transcendant value of death mean in the quest for the spiritual essence of life? Here death is linked primarily to the everyday life, however not to simply understand the temporality of a transformation, but to estimate the soul’s fate in its posthumous union with transcendant goodness.

The experience of death turns Christianity into an experience of exchanges. The perceptible condition is exchanged for that of a transcending, as darkness is exchanged for light, granted that the abolition of the physical body has already been undertaken. Death, therefore, is not indifferent, as it becomes valuable in the process of moving from the perishable here to the eternal beyond. Both the Divine Eucharist and the sacred relics keep the memory of death alive while occupying the entire spiritual realm of the Christian subject. No sorrow, no despair, no pain should threaten the frailty that lies behind the assumption of death and imparts from the genuine meaning of salvation. The persistence of Gregory of Nyssa on the physical decomposition of the body was meant to accept the temporal dimension of Christ’s martyrdom and subsequent resurrection. Consequently, Christians should not in any case express their despair while facing death.

The Byzantine icon eternally functions in a transitory state toward an archetype. While some kind of morphicity is allowed in the icon’s iconography and aesthetics, any fixation to the exact iconography, as well as the need to capture the presence of God within it, could lead to the mistaken identification of the depicted subject to the icon as an object. Hence the elliptic and abstract character of depiction could designate the transcendence of God.

In reality, the figurative function of the icon is organized around the relationship sustained between the divine archetype and its earthly simulacra. This condition does not simply suggest that the icon renders explicit a transcendent truth. What is revealed to the eyes of the Christian believer is the state of crypticity through a sensible object. The icon as a sensible object can certainly preserve the facticity of memory through eternal time, as it lets the form of that which it depicts manifest itself. In this light, the icon cannot be understood as the foundation of the Word. On the contrary, it is the condition in order to seek the Word. In Byzantine culture, the icon retains a powerful function related to an intermediary state where the divine’s epiphany occurs while being constantly on transition. The relationship between the icon and its archetype represents a dualism that pervades the Byzantine icon to its very core.

Christos Merantzas, 2014. Αna-chora(-i)tism. Forms of Otherness in Byzantine Culture. Athens: Smili

The book examines figures of otherness which lie at the heart of Byzantine culture taking the dual concept of chora (χώρα) and ana-chora(-i)te (ανα-χωρα(-η)τής) as its starting point. It is the continuation of an earlier work entitled The Inverted Dionysus. A Draft Body-theory of Algaesthetic Self-constraint, Smili, Athens 2011. The author borrows his methodological tools from mainly cultural history and structural anthropology. The Byzantine chora and the ana-chora(-i)te constantly threaten both reason and the symbolic structure of language which are key components for identity formation. As such, the dual concept of chora and ana-chora(-i)te reinforces the rupture between the motherly body and the consciousness of the individual self, which both are manifestations of a primordial nature. It is thanks to this primary nature that the self’s symbolic integrity is maintained to the degree that it breaks free from the primordial motherly chaos. Opposite to the primordial state which the chora and the ana-chora(-i)te signify is the symbolic order of a paternal law that provides a stable identity to the individual self. The chora and the ana-chora(-i)te are evidence of a non-form incompatible with the rational construction of reality. They exist at a far distance from the weakness that comes with established meanings and thus allude to primordial pre-rational cultural structures. Therefore, the conceptual couple of chora and ana-chora(-i)te marks a shift from the unconscious to the conscious ego. In other words, the human dimension’s imprint shifts from the primordial state of nature to the construction of symbols and rules, in the process of identity formation.

          But what about the quest for God through the process of ana-chora(-i)tism which requires detachment, and where the believer moves away simultaneously from the secular order of permanent housing, enjoyment, recreation and work, and the symbolic order of linguistic communication? The chora secures for the ana-chora(-i)te the establishment of a distance between the sensible and the intelligible in order to make possible the registration of Christian God into secular history. With the purpose of accomplishing this extraordinary shift and viewing God as the embodied Word, the ana-chora(-i)te exists within history as a sensible and intelligible whole. Thanks to the chora, the experience of infinite God is made possible within an absolute otherness which, apart from everything else, fulfills a third gender relationship by compromising the unity of the male-female duality. However, chora as the main figure of absolute otherness inevitably not only breaks through the unity of the male-female duality, but also the sequence of historical time. Therefore, through ana-chora(-i)tism, rather than rejecting any dictated definition of God, the chora puts forth the order of silence instead of that of speech.

          Animal nature as another figure of the threatening “other” undermine the Byzantine man who feels the uncertainty otherness of these cultural norms provoking the secular order, more specifically the urban Byzantine culture, if such norms are not tamed. In fact, the interweaving of the above-mentioned elements allows us to detect the profound distress that grows within the Byzantine man. It is on the basis of this figure of threatening otherness that the fundamental opposition between the primordial natural and the cultural order resides. Consequently, it is not accidental that the title of this book refers to otherness, in terms of chora, ana-chora(-i)tism, in order to unwind the spool, as these terms manifest the fundamental contrast between anarchy and order.

The book is divided into three parts that correspond to an equal number of exemplary cases of otherness. Each case is unique in its essence, while it also refers to the gendered connotations of primordial nature within the Byzantine culture. On the one hand, the Platonic chora represents the female side, while, on the other hand, the ana-chora(-i)te represents the male side of otherness. The ana-chora(-i)te and the foolish saint embody the monstrous ferocity of shapeless matter which is prior to the coherent order of logos and speech. Both possess distinguishing features that refer to the Platonic chora as a form of absolute otherness which threatens the believer’s identity. Furthermore, the ana-chora(-i)te and the foolish saint do not participate in the transition from the continuity of natural order to the discontinuity of cultural order. In order to explicate the momentum of this transient state, that is from the chora to the anchorite, the term anchorite was transcribed as ana-chora(-i)te in what follows. This reinscription of ana-chora(-i)te incorporates many of the components that exist within the Platonic chora as form of otherness. The ana-chora(-i)te takes part in what is unchangeable and ensures for his fellow beings a degree of safety that removes illness or the demonic and, thus, restores health. At the same time, the ana-chora(-i)te’s action does not seem to obey certain measure because he lives in a fluctuating state, between nature and culture.

We chose, as a starting point for our analysis, a series of Byzantine texts, which are mainly biographies of ana-chora(-i)tes and foolish saints and we, first, tried to demonstrate the relationship between nature and culture through them. We applied upon the study of a binary structure which reproduces a reality that essentially stems from an infinite substratum of consciousness. But this account of Byzantine culture and its structural contradictions highlight a number of significant elements or entities that have originated within the mists of time. Such entities are, for instance, climatic phenomena, animals, dietary practices. In his quest for immortality the ana-chora(-i)te converts historical time. This internal shift is characterized by a passive abode in a secluded space and shows the feminine dimension of ana-chora(-i)tism. On the contrary, the ana-chora(-i)te’s escape from the deep darkness of confinement leads to an ascendance onto a pillar which works as a phallic symbol -this ascendance symbolizes his return to historical time- which constantly rises upwardly granted that the ana-chora(-i)te ensures his distance from worshipping crowds who attack him daily. Under these conditions, the ana-chora(-i)te is suspended between the canceled fertility of the pillar-phallus and nature’s noisy ferocity that fights against it. Those who manage to be healed from the ana-chora(i)te by consuming elements that allow direct contact with him, for example his saliva, come to realize that their healing is unattainable until the point where therapy restores their health and makes them overcome death. As a matter of fact, the overcoming of death gives way to a new reality that takes for the believer the form of a new birth, but which the ana-chora(-i)te has denied for himself. The state of ana-chora(-i)tism acquires therefore a twofold sense, one that is theoretical and the other which is practical. This twofold sense, with regard to bodily functions, shapes a regulatory self-compulsive ideal and a transcendent function, which aims at post-mortem salvation.

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In the first chapter of the book we study a series of Christian texts and come to the conclusion that what appears through them is a set of embedded perceptions which tend to exclude otherness. As we evaluate these texts we find a plethora of testimonies that provide evidence for a culture closed in upon itself. Even though cultural institutions advocate their own purity, all arguments against the other (e.g. the Muslim) always lean toward dogmatic controversies which, of course, manifest a variety of inherited religious or broadly cultural conflicts (e.g. Judaism vs. Islam, Hellenism vs. Christianity). Such conflicts form an organic part of the Christian tradition. For Byzantine authors only a homogeneous cultural environment, where intercultural relationships attempt to turn the strange into the familiar, can trigger a sense of mutual understanding on the basis, however, of assimilation of the one (the Muslim) by the other (the Christian). Therefore, locked identities are irrevocably bounded to all texts of Christian apologetics that are against Muhammad’s religion. All the arguments in favor of a Muslim mildness consist of negative criteria. In this light, Christian texts reject the possibility of understanding the other. They present Muslim culture as a rigid law-abiding culture, while Orthodox Christianity is placed at a much higher rank on a basis of equality and reciprocity from an eschatological standpoint. The former shape their identity in virtue of obedience to the law of the Prophet, while the latter is built upon regulatory ideas of free will and self-governance.

The second and third chapter of the book elaborate on the vivid aspiration of the chora and the ana-chora(-i)tism to modify history. They deny the pre-determined state of nature and indicate human being’s potential to return to its primordial state, but to one that is not determined by historical finitude. As testified by individual ana-chora(-i)tes, the “ahistorical” ana-chora(-i)tism of the early 4th and 5th century Syrian hermits along with all its exaggerations, is not interested in establishing an integral course of time that aspires to dominate all others. Instead, it aspires to establish death as human beings’ ultimate end. As for the incarcerated ana-chora(-i)tes, they prefer to ignore safety because their secluded presence is founded on the experience of primordial encapsulation, where there is permanent darkness and food deprivation. In the early Syrian ana-chora(-i)tism the denial of the cultural order is perceived as the ultimate return to nature and is set in motion through a series of algaesthetic situations that the ana-chora(-i)te imposes on his own body. The inwardness cultivated by the early Syrian ana-chora(-i)tes, thus, relies on breaking away from all bodily limitations as well as cultural restrictions. View in this light, ascetic inwardness may be interpreted as a state of mental transgression which mainly emerges at the beginning of a culture’s consolidation process.

Moreover, the denial of speech is deeply connected to the creation of a new consciousness that reforms the symbolic relationship with the ana-chora(-i)te by resetting his bodily functions back to their primordial state. This is how the operation of the senses and the significance of the ana-chora(-i)te’s healing practices are explained. The body of the ana-chora(-i)te reveals its presence to all five senses, as opposed to sight only. The only difference is that all five senses are completely free from the order of desire and its challenges, bodily, emotional or other. The denial of speech and the entrance into a state of complete silence is the key accomplishment that defines the ana-chora(-i)te’s daily life. The ana-chora(-i)te, while subject to the hostility of the surrounding nature, exemplifies the purest form of otherness by striving to overcome the coercions the latter imposes upon him.

What is clear from the above is that ana-chora(-i)tism introduced the principle of inwardness into the Byzantine culture and served as a point of reference by endorsing the cultural hegemony of the Byzantine empire. Even if it was Syrian ana-chora(-i)tism which initially introduced the concept of natural primogeniture, Byzantine civilization assimilated it and turned into one of its constituent elements. The early Syrian ana-chora(-i)tism renounced the material world, at least from a pleasure-seeking perspective. Under this light, it is not a coincidence that, in the poems he dedicated to himself, Theodore Metochites declares that to renounce material goods is the only road to salvation, while he sought refuge in an inherent form of wealth which is undisturbed by nature, that is inward life.

Our third exemplary case is that of chora which is not in any way integrated into a whole, because it only evolves in a potential state counter to the state of nature determined by birth and reproduction, consumption of food and, most certainly, biological time, work, shelter and sexual pleasure. This confirms the chora’s separation from nature, while, at the same time, chora and ana-chora(-i)tism triumph upon the reality of death. But here death is not perceived as the end, but as an everlasting life. The ana-chora(-i)te reintroduces the finitude of life as well the declaration of death in the infinite time of immortality. The chora and the ana-chora(-i)tism defeat nature and take over, but then victory is not manifested through the means that culture grants them -shelter, food, clothing, reproduction. The ana-chora(-i)tes insist on living in a reverse situation that allows them to dive into the depths of their inner self. They, thus, attempt at all costs to keep alive the intensity of the stormy seas and winds, the roughness and dryness of the desert, the aggression of wild animals in order to cope with the task of survival. Therefore, culture which once served as the mediating space between the nature and chora, is suspended and thanks to it the reversed reality of the chora becomes clear.

Besides, the chora is not simply a state of exceeding ones’ limits as it goes beyond it. The chora is completely devoid of any material substance, and escapes any attempt at classification. Also chora, as absolute otherness, leads to escaping historical present. Chora cannot be reflected through oral and writing speech, but only in the experience of the immediate contact with God, who, because of the chora, may be presented as absent and appear as non-present. So, in the monastery of Chora (Kariye Cami) in Istanbul, there is a recurrent need to explain the uniqueness of God’s “spacialization.”

The chora’s shift into a space that features a specific visual and architectural language i.e. that of the monastery of Chora, incorporates two basic parameters that refer respectively to the beginning and to the end of historical time. In other words, it incorporates a starting point, related to a primary physical state, and a destination. However, the chora bears the entire burden of violating a “dialectic bipolarity” (e.g. sensible/intelligible; same/other), which essentially equals exceeding all distinctions between the signifier and the signified. With regard to the monastery of Chora, the writing that appears in its space represents the history of mural sacred images depicting events which must bear the entire burden of bridging the two orders of time. Within the chora we cannot steer away from the contrast between the sensible and the intelligible. The chora’s “heterotopia” compels us both to entry into an interconnected system and to question prevailing domination of linguistic communication. Besides, the chora goes beyond a philosophical discourse that is based on conceptual bipolarity (e.g. presence/absence). As evidenced by the iconographic material of the monastery of Chora, the presence of the chora comes to restore the presence of God.

The chora is shaped in an intermediate space. The chora finally emerges as the greatest premise in history and discourse, uncovers the truth and the meaning of life. As such, the chora is placed between two abyssal situations. First, a formative space, which is based upon a precedent, is required in order to reach God, to create an expectation for salvation and at the same time to access human consciousness. Second, the latter is not only dependent on pre-historic primogeniture, but also on an eschatological essence that lies beyond historical time. In this context, if we consider the chora’s “de-spacialization” the abyss and the ana-chora(-i)tism as desert hide their origin and meaning in the replication of God that presents himself through a structured context of language, whereas his access to death is an act whereby mortality is recognized.

In reality, ana-chora(-i)tism ends when the human being takes on a decisive position within the natural order and rids his consciousness of historical time. The return to inwardness offers the possibility of transcendence through a state of extreme pain and humility, thus, ensuring the possibility of a transcendent relationship to the chora. In Byzantine civilization ana-chora(-i)tism eventually accomplishes a reintegration of the human being. This is how the ana-chora(-i)te succeeded in steering his life away from natural order, which inevitably has all characteristics of a disorderly state, intertwined with animal violence and conflict. Even in the case of the foolish saint, whose life at first sight seems to return to the animal state, his real aim is to show the hypocrisy and superfluousness of Byzantine urban civilization.

Considering the fact that the mosaic iconography of the monastery of Chora in Istanbul reproduces the prayers and acts that correspond to the six week period before Christmas, it also makes reference to the period prior to the Incarnation of the Word, an event in history that only the Virgin Mary could comprehend. In the monastery of Chora Theodore Metochites built a funerary chapel. The iconography of the chapel strongly emphasizes the confrontation of the chora with the absolute otherness which is no other than death itself. In this context, the encounter with death introduces a reverse potential, where the prospect of achieving salvation exists. Therefore, the monastery of Chora, as iconographical evidence reflecting a philosophical anthropology, is full of depictions of the pre-historical and the post-historical order, which through the Incarnation of the Word, is destined to guide the spiritual life of the believer.