Παρουσιάζουμε εδώ τα έντεκα (11) μέρη ενός πολιτιστικού ντοκιμαντέρ που αφορά στη μονή Βύλιζας Ματσουκίου Ιωαννίνων (Ήπειρος).
Στο πλαίσιο αυτό, θα ήθελα να ευχαριστήσω τον παλιό μου φοιτητή Οδυσσέα Τσιντσιράκο, τώρα μεταπτυχιακό φοιτητή στο Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων, για τη φροντίδα της τεχνικής επεξεργασίας του υλικού. Χωρίς τη συνδρομή του η προσπάθεια αυτή δεν θα είχε ολοκληρωθεί.
We present here the eleven (11) parts of a cultural documentary film on the Vyliza monastery (see text below), situated near the village of Matsouki in the mountainous area of Tzoumerka, Epirus, Greece.
In this context, I would like to express my gratitude to my former student Odysseas Tsintsirakos, postgraduate student at the University of Ioannina, Greece, for his technical support. Without him, I would not be able to realize this project.
Vyliza Monastery, Epirus, Greece
The building development of the Vyliza Monastery complex and its battery of liturgical vessels and ritual items is probably connected to long-distance trade with urban centres in the West through the Ionian Islands and to links between the mountainous mainland of Epirus with Thessaly, links fostered through the seasonal migration of sheep into the fertile plain. Animal husbandry and trade in raw wool and half- or fully-processed woollen cloths brought the isolated societies of Matsouki, Kalarrytes and Syrrako in Epirus into contact with Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. At the same time, a substantial part of the area’s population relocated to the large urban centres of the West as animal herders became traders and engaged either in the transport, trading and processing of wool cloth or in garment-making, creating guilds of tailors for woollen coats which were much in demand along the Adriatic coast. Part of their profits from trade was inevitably channelled towards the Church; its property expanded, building activity boomed and offerings (both ritual objects – icons, manuscripts – and liturgical vessels) flooded in. Local economic activity promoted social stratification by creating a class of traders with surplus wealth, capable of purchasing luxurious ecclesiastical paraphernalia for monastic establishments in their homeland. Thus, the Mediterranean wool trade aided the flourishing of locus sanctitatis. In the case of Vyliza, the abundance of cultural material was directly connected with the increased demand for woollen cloth in the great urban centres of the West. Behind the accumulated religious material of the Monastery, the wealth of wool traders should firmly be fixed in mind, in its guise of an experienced cultural reality that proved instrumental in the development of a local reality and in its interconnection with trading centres in Europe.
An understanding of the number, quality and stylistic diversity of the fifty-eight (58) post-Byzantine icons and of the wall-paintings by masters from Kalarrytes and Katsanochoria is impossible unless the mobilisation of Epirote traders, especially from Matsouki, Syrrako and Kalarrytes, and their commercial activity in major western cities is taken into account. Trade between Ioannina merchants and Venice since the late 15th century through ports along the coast of Ottoman Epirus and their gradual distribution in the major trading posts of Italy and later central and northern Europe were instrumental in the town’s development. The commercialisation of animal-husbandry products like wool and the creation of a standardised product out of it, the woollen coat, a favourite with fishermen, shepherds and sailors in the West, injected added value into the economy of the mountainous area of Tzoumerka and into the contact between the distant countryside and the town; in time, the life of the peasants in Matsouki, Syrrako and Kalarrytes was linked to the growth of European cities and their manufacturing workshops which operated according to strict guild rules. The expansion of trade in Epirus and the commercialisation of raw wool and processed coats defined the economic and social outlook of three small villages by encouraging economic and social stratification. People from Kalarrytes and Matsouki were successfully engaged in the expansion of trade and a monetary economy, both relying on the increase in wool production, the smooth traffic of raw or processed wool, the engagement of guilds in the manufacture of coats and the promotion of the end product. The channelling of a part of the mountain populations into the economic realities of the Mediterranean Sea brought the reality of the mountain periphery within the realm of long-distance trade. This blooming economic conjuncture is testified in the rebuilding of monasteries and the despatch of religious ritual items towards important pilgrimage sites near the traders’ birth-places, material manifestations of wealth imbued with religious fervour. Therefore, trade links flooded the mountainous mainland with luxury items from the Ionian Islands, Italy and the rest of Europe.
The realities of a life engaged in animal husbandry (seasonal migrations and income generated by selling processed animal produce) eventually promoted both the people experiencing them and the result of their toil to the large commercial centres of the West through trade routes in the Adriatic Sea. The new economic reality transformed the everyday life of people inhabiting mountain villages and enabled them to accumulate in the Epirus mainland a wealth of goods, among which icons, vessels, wood-carvings, ritual manuscripts and printed material purchased in the trade stations of the Ionian Sea or the metropolises of the West.
Aromanian-speaking communities in villages at Tzoumerka (Matsouki, Kalarrytes and Syrrako) already existed in the 15th century; Matsouki was probably founded earlier and was originally an agglomerate of five settlements. Their livelihood depended on tending sheep and this economic reality defined the identity of such an enclosed mountain area. It is there, and especially in Kalarrytes (since Matsouki was in dire financial straits because of debt), that in the 18th century a series of craft and manufacturing activities are organised: wool processing, silver-smithing, wall-painting by itinerant workshops of artists. The three Aromanian-speaking villages controlled mountain passages from Epirus to Thessaly, a destination of flocks from Matsouki and Kalarrytes (the latter being the sole continuators of this traditional migration route into the present day).
The Monastery of the Annunciation of the Virgin in Vyliza at Matsouki, as befits the Albanian-origin place name ‘Vileza’, stands on a fortified and elevated position, 973 metres above sea level [39◦34΄01.42΄΄N / 21◦08΄42.68΄΄E] on the slopes of the Kritharia Mountain and at the junction of three rivulets joining the Arachthos River. The remains of ancient buildings (probably a fortification wall) can be seen to the north-east of the Monastery. Surviving buildings, possibly replacing earlier ones (traces of which have not been found) could be dated between the last quarter of the 17th century and the year 1783, when the katholikon church was renovated, as we learn from the incised dedicatory inscription within the central shallow niche below a sculpted arch on the outside of the bema niche. Wall-paintings date from different periods during the 18th century: the narthex from the early 18th century, the katholikon from 1793 and the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist from 1737. Judging by surviving ritual objects in the Monastery of Vyliza (icons, manuscripts, screen at the Chapel of the Baptist from the mid-17th century, 1695 lectern), the majority of material dates from the 17th and 18th centuries. This can be explained by the economic development of Matsouki in the 17th and early 18th centuries and, after Matsouki’s gradual decline during the 18th century, by the slow rise of Kalarrytes in the 18th century. In any case, existing architecture and paintings in the Vyliza Monastery are directly connected with the economic development of the area and, especially for the period in question (mid-18th century), with Kalarrytes and the shift of its inhabitants from animal husbandry to trade, since Matsouki was in decline. The life of the Monastery was linked with the mountain life of its surrounding area, in ever-increasing contact and interaction through flock migration routes to Thessaly and through processing and trading activity with Europe. There could be no other way to explain, for example, the wealth (in both quality and number) of icons despite the inevitable ruinations and losses that were inflicted upon the Monastery.
a. Wall-paintings
The katholikon of the Vyliza Monastery, dedicated to the Annunciation of the Virgin, betrays all the main characteristics of the artistic production of a family workshop from the Katsanochoria near Ioannina, specifically Koritiani. The output of painters from Katsanochoria (Katsanoi) active in 18th and 19th century Epirus, Thessaly and western Macedonia, is valuable for deepening our knowledge on painter workshops from the Epirus mainland villages, on the degree in which the Byzantine painting tradition was preserved into the 19th century and on the adoption of morphological elements that modify and enrich traditional aesthetic categories of Byzantine painting. Judging from signed works, we assume that the painters from Katsanochoria derive from the villages of Lozetsi, Phortosi, Koritiani and Plaisia. Their earliest dated by inscription work goes back to 1730 and their latest dates from 1865. The churches they decorate cover an area corresponding to the following modern prefectures: Larisa, Grevena, Kozani, Ioannina, Preveza and Arta. Painters from Lozetsi are active between 1730 and 1768 and present the greatest degree of mobility, covering a wider geographic area. Painters from Phortosi cover the period from 1734 and 1843 and mostly move near their place of origin, in the Katsanochoria and Tzoumerka village clusters. Work by painters from Koritiani appears in churches at the Ioannina and Preveza prefectures from between 1788 and 1865. Finally, Plaisia painters are mostly engaged in icon painting and remain active in Tzoumerka for a decade (1842-1852).
The painting of Katsanoi artists is especially interesting because during the 18th and 19th centuries it incorporated elements and lessons of modern European culture through an osmosis process between the area, its surroundings and the new socio-economic realities of the period. These elements are aesthetically important and served to widen not only the choice of subject matter and style but also the decorative repertoire. The parameters and rules of this new way of seeing reflect the experience of a historical transition and the awareness of cross-cultural contact. Thanks to the teachings of western art, the organisation of the painted space lost its purely spiritual dimension and turned towards an aesthetic experience. Gradually, components of a secularised reality were incorporated into art and subjectified its experiences. The close trade contacts of the Epirote mainland with commercial and industrial centres in Italy and the Balkans facilitated this spread of new fashions. The morphological elements that, from the 18th century onwards, changed gradually the character of post-Byzantine art betray a complex social reality and are interwoven with a different sort of connection to the world. Therefore, these elements contribute to the promotion of a dialogue between art and life and to the understanding of cultural processes contemporary to the painters.
The now-plastered inscription of the Vyliza Monastery katholikon over the western entrance to the church records that the cost of the wall-paintings, which were finished in November 1793, was covered by abbot Ioannikios and monks Arsenios, Kallinikos and Klemes. According to the same inscription, the priests Konstantinos and Stergios worked at the katholikon. They appear for the first time in 1788 in the Church of Saint Vlasios at Kotortsi near Ioannina and were assisted in their task by Konstantinos’ children, Christodoulos and Ioannis. A few years later, the same workshop contributes to the wall-painting of the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Lelovo at Preveza (1797) and of the Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Varlaam at Ioannina (1798).
The strong linearity of drawing and sculptural quality of the corpulent faces of full-length saints along the lower register of wall-paintings at the narthex of the Monastery of Saint George in Voulgareli near Arta share common aesthetic principles with the possibly-early-18th-century work of anonymous painters at the narthex of the Monastery of the Annunciation of the Virgin at Vyliza. The building inscription at the Church of Saint George records that the decoration, dated 27 September 1714, was painted by the lay reader Apostolos, his son, priest Chrestos, and the painter Nikolaos from Kalarrytes. The similarities between the two wall-painting cycles in the way the faces of full-length saints are depicted (strong outlines, twin curves above the eyebrows, wide foreheads, large almond-shaped eyes, fleshy cheeks, small lips and pointed ear lobes) establish the stylistic and chronological affinity of the two monuments and probably betray the participation of the same painter in both projects, an artist active in the Tzoumerka region. Placing both works in the same decade (the 1710s) is not an improbable conclusion, as well as attributing them to Nikolaos from Kalarrytes. Nikolaos from Kalarrytes and Eustathios from Grammoustiani must have been the painters of the slightly earlier (1700) wall-paintings at the Monastery of Evangelistria in Kypseli (old Chosepsi) near Arta. In this signed work, rigid and frozen figures defined by strong outlines are softened by the tones of a colourful inquietude.
Developments in the art of church painters from Kalarrytes, who remain active for more than a century in southern Epirus and Thessaly and follow the nomadic herders of neighbouring villages (Matsouki, Kalarrytes) down to the Thessalic plain, are directly linked to the economic growth of Kalarrytes in the 18th century. This growth was the result of a flourishing animal husbandry economy and of manufacturing activities, inspired by a fashion for woollen coats, which introduced the locals to long-distance and Mediterranean trade; at the same time, products and people migrated to the West. Beyond church painting, Kalarrytes witnessed the development of silver-smithing, which was destined to mark the area’s historical date after the mid-17th century.
The small single-aisle Chapel of Saint John the Baptist was painted in winter 1737 (completed on the 4th of February) by the painters Georgios and Stergios from Kalarrytes. The same artists completed the painting of the Monastery of the Dormition of the Virgin in Chrysinos near Kalambaka, again in mid-winter (2nd of February) in 1740. Certain elements in the iconographic cycle at the Chapel of Saint John seem to indicate its function as an ossuary and therefore stress its funerary character. Painting draws up the boundaries of a situatedness that enables a relationship between the closed space of painting and the exterior. This is the way in which codes for creating a unified iconographic programme are created, various iconographic and stylistic elements are joined into a meaningful sequence and the spiritual and ideological operation of faith is shaped into a unified whole.
For example, the choice of a series of martyrdom scenes (Beheading of Saint George, Martyrdom of Saint Demetrios, Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, Martyrdom of Saints Eustathios and Theopiste and of their children Theopistos and Agapios, Martyrdom of Saints Victor and Vicentius, Martyrdom of Saint Theodore Stratelates, Martyrdom of the Forty Saints, Stoning of Saint Stephen, Martyrdoms of the Evangelists Mark and Matthew, Martyrdom of Apostle Andrew, Martyrdom of Saint Ignatius), no matter how limited in comparison with 16th century monuments (due to limitations in space), represents a substantial percentage of the modest chapel’s size; furthermore, martyrdom scenes are even depicted on the bema walls. This predominance of martyrdom, a mechanism for registering the psychogenic or sociogenic differentiation of Christian community members, acts as a special polemic device for a religion in self-defence against its enemies. Therefore, it becomes clear that the urgency to depict martyrdom extends beyond the dictates of an iconographic system and constitutes a symbolic nucleus at the centre of the practice of Christian resistance against enemies of the faith. At the same time, this deployment of suffering describes the affinity between the presence of pain (in the guise of self-consciousness, self-identification and closeness between the believer and the depicted suffering martyr) and the metaphysics of violence (in the guise of conviction for the ontological certainty of a meaning in pain). The spiritual recognition of bodily pain reflected, in this instance, specific cultural views (for example, the belief in the absolute, the cultivation of inwardness, the prospect of an afterlife, the hope for salvation) but also specific cultural practices (for example, self-incarceration and self-compulsion). It should be borne in mind that, within the cultural context of monasticism, pain was primarily a material testimony of the soul’s suffering for the human fall; the monk had to stolidly bear with it in order to achieve forgiveness. As the cultural constitution of pain within Christianity remained for centuries closely linked with the challenge for the soul’s salvation, pain was also viewed as a means to be liberated from all the pressures of a transient life; at the same time, it was a stable cultural component, performing a vital role against the sad worldly reality. The funerary character of the place and its focus on the vanity of secular time (underlined in the representation of Merciless Death) joined the painterly idiom of martyrdom in an effort to transsubstantiate the violence of martyric suffering (aimed at salvation after death) into a cathartic, joyous act with therapeutic and educational value. By operating as a microcosm symbolising the body of the Church in general and by contributing to the objectification of a shared Christian memory, the representational space of the church becomes the place par excellence in which salvation attains meaning. The living community of believers is organised around the oxymoronic spectacle of the martyr’s dismembered and blood-stained body; this body is ‘ritualised’ and promotes the sociogenesis of the Christian community while laying the foundations for the collective identity of the Church.
b. Manuscripts
Theological, ecclesiastical and secular manuscripts from the rich library that must have existed in the Monastery of Vyliza survive to this day; they include fourteen codices that Spyridon Lambros moved to the National Library of Greece (accession numbers 1902-1925), a late-14th century theological codex now kept at Matsouki, ten further manuscripts referred to by Lambros in his 1886 list but now lost and some incunabula surviving in country chapels around Matsouki. This sample is indicative of a rich reserve of a manuscript tradition that found its way into the Monastery through different routes. When this reserve is correlated with the rich icon collection and the liturgical utensils and vessels, an old and deeply-rooted cultural tradition is revealed; in this tradition, profits from long-distance trade and industrial production in commercial, manufacturing towns are invested in the locus sanctitatis as supplications for the good health and safety of donors or even the salvation of their souls and the souls of their family members after death.
Recollections surviving in manuscripts (studied with determination by D. Kalousios) describe repeatedly how the considerable numbers of traders from Matsouki and Kalarrytes kept communication channels open between the Epirote mainland and power and trade centres within the Ottoman Empire but also in the West, the Balkans and Russia despite the mostly harsh conditions of everyday life and the economic difficulties of local populations: progress in production was slow, the antiquated agriculture methods, an impediment to the historical continuity of the area, barely covered the basic needs of malnourished producers and their families, road networks were inadequate, banditry and extreme weather conditions promoted feelings of insecurity, endemic diseases flourished and taxation was crippling; furthermore, the Christian calendar impinged on the flow of everyday life and set limitations by monopolising the free time and the spiritual constitution of individuals while the Church, the place of security par excellence, tried to safeguard the religious and spiritual substance of its members. The iconography of Hosios Sisoes in mourning over a gaping sarcophagus and of Merciless Death with a scythe, western subject matters copied from copper-plate prints and projecting a worldview on God and salvation, appear in the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist, dedicated to a saint widely venerated in Ottoman times, probably because of carrying connotations of general insecurity and resistance against the Ottoman conqueror; such iconography refers to the repetitive view of ruthless time, dependent on the biological rhythm of humans and nature and ridden with dangers, and to the general feeling of uncertainty for livelihood and its connection with the environment; in this context, locus sanctitatis is the ideal place of privileged security and spiritual salvation. Thus, on a psychological level, a certainty for the soul’s salvation in the afterlife is founded against the economic, political and natural insecurity; this certainty is the fundamental distinctiveness of locus sanctitatis, in that it constitutes for the suffering human a constant of historicity and belonging.
c. Museum icons
The fifty-eight (58) post-Byzantine icons of the Vyliza Monastery cover the period between the 15th and early 20th centuries and include works by great Cretan School painters or their workshops active in the Ionian Islands and Italy, for example Damaskenos and Emmanuel Tzannes.
A Dodekaorton (twelve icons of the main feasts during the liturgical year) with western iconographic and stylistic characteristics invites some questions on the contacts between different artistic traditions. While recognising this idiosyncrasy, we should not be limited to aesthetic judgement but should see in it normalities and values that constitute elements of historical meaning with specific cultural determination. The icon of Lamentation is a close iconographic and stylistic copy (with only minor differences) of a copper-plate print, Three Marys Lamenting Dead Christ, by Marcantonio Raimondi (circa 1480-circa 1534) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The very existence of the icon verifies the circulation and appropriation of the print’s subject, which operates as a point of reference. Four of the Dodekaorton icons from the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist (Christ at Prayer on the Mount of Olives, The Judas Kiss, Ecce Hommo and Resurrection of Jesus) copy more or less faithfully corresponding scenes from prints by Albrecht Dürer produced in 1508 and 1512. This faithful transcription to the last detail of Dürer’s iconographical formulae in the icons of the Vyliza collection represents both a departure by breaking from the core of Byzantine tradition (which the remaining icons in the collection follow) and a new way of thinking which reflects a different cultural framework of production that uses the possibilities offered by an alien artistic tradition. Because of this adoption of forms representing a tradition other than the Byzantine, it must be assumed that the icons in question were imported into the Monastery as offerings from some western urban centre, in the Ionian Islands, Italy or Austria.
Interestingly, eleven out of the twelve icons of the Dodekaorton are defined by the artistic language of 16th century Renaissance painting and reproduce some of its structural elements. What is even more impressive in this aesthetic diversity is the acceptance within the locus sanctitatis of an aesthetic that breaks the homogeneity and continuity of the Byzantine ‘canon,’ the transportation of an artistic habitus and its corresponding dogmatics which brings with it a new aesthetic frame of reference.
Therefore, the locus sanctitatis absorbs fragments of artistic traditions alien to the Byzantine. These elements increase the number of possible choices, thus creating a new organicity that both breaks links with earlier tradition (as a result of developments in trade and contacts with the Ionian Islands and Italian cities) and makes manifest that the commissioners of these works (probably intending them to be offered to Vyliza) had appropriated a new artistic domain connected with a new regulatory framework. These new operational elements of locus sanctitatis constitute, through artistic junctures, a new geography within the locus itself, a geography that multiplies the spatial appropriations of alien cultural contexts while endangering the monosemic rigidity of the Byzantine artistic ‘canon.’
Στο πλαίσιο αυτό, θα ήθελα να ευχαριστήσω τον παλιό μου φοιτητή Οδυσσέα Τσιντσιράκο, τώρα μεταπτυχιακό φοιτητή στο Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων, για τη φροντίδα της τεχνικής επεξεργασίας του υλικού. Χωρίς τη συνδρομή του η προσπάθεια αυτή δεν θα είχε ολοκληρωθεί.
We present here the eleven (11) parts of a cultural documentary film on the Vyliza monastery (see text below), situated near the village of Matsouki in the mountainous area of Tzoumerka, Epirus, Greece.
In this context, I would like to express my gratitude to my former student Odysseas Tsintsirakos, postgraduate student at the University of Ioannina, Greece, for his technical support. Without him, I would not be able to realize this project.
Vyliza Monastery, Epirus, Greece
The building development of the Vyliza Monastery complex and its battery of liturgical vessels and ritual items is probably connected to long-distance trade with urban centres in the West through the Ionian Islands and to links between the mountainous mainland of Epirus with Thessaly, links fostered through the seasonal migration of sheep into the fertile plain. Animal husbandry and trade in raw wool and half- or fully-processed woollen cloths brought the isolated societies of Matsouki, Kalarrytes and Syrrako in Epirus into contact with Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. At the same time, a substantial part of the area’s population relocated to the large urban centres of the West as animal herders became traders and engaged either in the transport, trading and processing of wool cloth or in garment-making, creating guilds of tailors for woollen coats which were much in demand along the Adriatic coast. Part of their profits from trade was inevitably channelled towards the Church; its property expanded, building activity boomed and offerings (both ritual objects – icons, manuscripts – and liturgical vessels) flooded in. Local economic activity promoted social stratification by creating a class of traders with surplus wealth, capable of purchasing luxurious ecclesiastical paraphernalia for monastic establishments in their homeland. Thus, the Mediterranean wool trade aided the flourishing of locus sanctitatis. In the case of Vyliza, the abundance of cultural material was directly connected with the increased demand for woollen cloth in the great urban centres of the West. Behind the accumulated religious material of the Monastery, the wealth of wool traders should firmly be fixed in mind, in its guise of an experienced cultural reality that proved instrumental in the development of a local reality and in its interconnection with trading centres in Europe.
An understanding of the number, quality and stylistic diversity of the fifty-eight (58) post-Byzantine icons and of the wall-paintings by masters from Kalarrytes and Katsanochoria is impossible unless the mobilisation of Epirote traders, especially from Matsouki, Syrrako and Kalarrytes, and their commercial activity in major western cities is taken into account. Trade between Ioannina merchants and Venice since the late 15th century through ports along the coast of Ottoman Epirus and their gradual distribution in the major trading posts of Italy and later central and northern Europe were instrumental in the town’s development. The commercialisation of animal-husbandry products like wool and the creation of a standardised product out of it, the woollen coat, a favourite with fishermen, shepherds and sailors in the West, injected added value into the economy of the mountainous area of Tzoumerka and into the contact between the distant countryside and the town; in time, the life of the peasants in Matsouki, Syrrako and Kalarrytes was linked to the growth of European cities and their manufacturing workshops which operated according to strict guild rules. The expansion of trade in Epirus and the commercialisation of raw wool and processed coats defined the economic and social outlook of three small villages by encouraging economic and social stratification. People from Kalarrytes and Matsouki were successfully engaged in the expansion of trade and a monetary economy, both relying on the increase in wool production, the smooth traffic of raw or processed wool, the engagement of guilds in the manufacture of coats and the promotion of the end product. The channelling of a part of the mountain populations into the economic realities of the Mediterranean Sea brought the reality of the mountain periphery within the realm of long-distance trade. This blooming economic conjuncture is testified in the rebuilding of monasteries and the despatch of religious ritual items towards important pilgrimage sites near the traders’ birth-places, material manifestations of wealth imbued with religious fervour. Therefore, trade links flooded the mountainous mainland with luxury items from the Ionian Islands, Italy and the rest of Europe.
The realities of a life engaged in animal husbandry (seasonal migrations and income generated by selling processed animal produce) eventually promoted both the people experiencing them and the result of their toil to the large commercial centres of the West through trade routes in the Adriatic Sea. The new economic reality transformed the everyday life of people inhabiting mountain villages and enabled them to accumulate in the Epirus mainland a wealth of goods, among which icons, vessels, wood-carvings, ritual manuscripts and printed material purchased in the trade stations of the Ionian Sea or the metropolises of the West.
Aromanian-speaking communities in villages at Tzoumerka (Matsouki, Kalarrytes and Syrrako) already existed in the 15th century; Matsouki was probably founded earlier and was originally an agglomerate of five settlements. Their livelihood depended on tending sheep and this economic reality defined the identity of such an enclosed mountain area. It is there, and especially in Kalarrytes (since Matsouki was in dire financial straits because of debt), that in the 18th century a series of craft and manufacturing activities are organised: wool processing, silver-smithing, wall-painting by itinerant workshops of artists. The three Aromanian-speaking villages controlled mountain passages from Epirus to Thessaly, a destination of flocks from Matsouki and Kalarrytes (the latter being the sole continuators of this traditional migration route into the present day).
The Monastery of the Annunciation of the Virgin in Vyliza at Matsouki, as befits the Albanian-origin place name ‘Vileza’, stands on a fortified and elevated position, 973 metres above sea level [39◦34΄01.42΄΄N / 21◦08΄42.68΄΄E] on the slopes of the Kritharia Mountain and at the junction of three rivulets joining the Arachthos River. The remains of ancient buildings (probably a fortification wall) can be seen to the north-east of the Monastery. Surviving buildings, possibly replacing earlier ones (traces of which have not been found) could be dated between the last quarter of the 17th century and the year 1783, when the katholikon church was renovated, as we learn from the incised dedicatory inscription within the central shallow niche below a sculpted arch on the outside of the bema niche. Wall-paintings date from different periods during the 18th century: the narthex from the early 18th century, the katholikon from 1793 and the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist from 1737. Judging by surviving ritual objects in the Monastery of Vyliza (icons, manuscripts, screen at the Chapel of the Baptist from the mid-17th century, 1695 lectern), the majority of material dates from the 17th and 18th centuries. This can be explained by the economic development of Matsouki in the 17th and early 18th centuries and, after Matsouki’s gradual decline during the 18th century, by the slow rise of Kalarrytes in the 18th century. In any case, existing architecture and paintings in the Vyliza Monastery are directly connected with the economic development of the area and, especially for the period in question (mid-18th century), with Kalarrytes and the shift of its inhabitants from animal husbandry to trade, since Matsouki was in decline. The life of the Monastery was linked with the mountain life of its surrounding area, in ever-increasing contact and interaction through flock migration routes to Thessaly and through processing and trading activity with Europe. There could be no other way to explain, for example, the wealth (in both quality and number) of icons despite the inevitable ruinations and losses that were inflicted upon the Monastery.
a. Wall-paintings
The katholikon of the Vyliza Monastery, dedicated to the Annunciation of the Virgin, betrays all the main characteristics of the artistic production of a family workshop from the Katsanochoria near Ioannina, specifically Koritiani. The output of painters from Katsanochoria (Katsanoi) active in 18th and 19th century Epirus, Thessaly and western Macedonia, is valuable for deepening our knowledge on painter workshops from the Epirus mainland villages, on the degree in which the Byzantine painting tradition was preserved into the 19th century and on the adoption of morphological elements that modify and enrich traditional aesthetic categories of Byzantine painting. Judging from signed works, we assume that the painters from Katsanochoria derive from the villages of Lozetsi, Phortosi, Koritiani and Plaisia. Their earliest dated by inscription work goes back to 1730 and their latest dates from 1865. The churches they decorate cover an area corresponding to the following modern prefectures: Larisa, Grevena, Kozani, Ioannina, Preveza and Arta. Painters from Lozetsi are active between 1730 and 1768 and present the greatest degree of mobility, covering a wider geographic area. Painters from Phortosi cover the period from 1734 and 1843 and mostly move near their place of origin, in the Katsanochoria and Tzoumerka village clusters. Work by painters from Koritiani appears in churches at the Ioannina and Preveza prefectures from between 1788 and 1865. Finally, Plaisia painters are mostly engaged in icon painting and remain active in Tzoumerka for a decade (1842-1852).
The painting of Katsanoi artists is especially interesting because during the 18th and 19th centuries it incorporated elements and lessons of modern European culture through an osmosis process between the area, its surroundings and the new socio-economic realities of the period. These elements are aesthetically important and served to widen not only the choice of subject matter and style but also the decorative repertoire. The parameters and rules of this new way of seeing reflect the experience of a historical transition and the awareness of cross-cultural contact. Thanks to the teachings of western art, the organisation of the painted space lost its purely spiritual dimension and turned towards an aesthetic experience. Gradually, components of a secularised reality were incorporated into art and subjectified its experiences. The close trade contacts of the Epirote mainland with commercial and industrial centres in Italy and the Balkans facilitated this spread of new fashions. The morphological elements that, from the 18th century onwards, changed gradually the character of post-Byzantine art betray a complex social reality and are interwoven with a different sort of connection to the world. Therefore, these elements contribute to the promotion of a dialogue between art and life and to the understanding of cultural processes contemporary to the painters.
The now-plastered inscription of the Vyliza Monastery katholikon over the western entrance to the church records that the cost of the wall-paintings, which were finished in November 1793, was covered by abbot Ioannikios and monks Arsenios, Kallinikos and Klemes. According to the same inscription, the priests Konstantinos and Stergios worked at the katholikon. They appear for the first time in 1788 in the Church of Saint Vlasios at Kotortsi near Ioannina and were assisted in their task by Konstantinos’ children, Christodoulos and Ioannis. A few years later, the same workshop contributes to the wall-painting of the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Lelovo at Preveza (1797) and of the Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Varlaam at Ioannina (1798).
The strong linearity of drawing and sculptural quality of the corpulent faces of full-length saints along the lower register of wall-paintings at the narthex of the Monastery of Saint George in Voulgareli near Arta share common aesthetic principles with the possibly-early-18th-century work of anonymous painters at the narthex of the Monastery of the Annunciation of the Virgin at Vyliza. The building inscription at the Church of Saint George records that the decoration, dated 27 September 1714, was painted by the lay reader Apostolos, his son, priest Chrestos, and the painter Nikolaos from Kalarrytes. The similarities between the two wall-painting cycles in the way the faces of full-length saints are depicted (strong outlines, twin curves above the eyebrows, wide foreheads, large almond-shaped eyes, fleshy cheeks, small lips and pointed ear lobes) establish the stylistic and chronological affinity of the two monuments and probably betray the participation of the same painter in both projects, an artist active in the Tzoumerka region. Placing both works in the same decade (the 1710s) is not an improbable conclusion, as well as attributing them to Nikolaos from Kalarrytes. Nikolaos from Kalarrytes and Eustathios from Grammoustiani must have been the painters of the slightly earlier (1700) wall-paintings at the Monastery of Evangelistria in Kypseli (old Chosepsi) near Arta. In this signed work, rigid and frozen figures defined by strong outlines are softened by the tones of a colourful inquietude.
Developments in the art of church painters from Kalarrytes, who remain active for more than a century in southern Epirus and Thessaly and follow the nomadic herders of neighbouring villages (Matsouki, Kalarrytes) down to the Thessalic plain, are directly linked to the economic growth of Kalarrytes in the 18th century. This growth was the result of a flourishing animal husbandry economy and of manufacturing activities, inspired by a fashion for woollen coats, which introduced the locals to long-distance and Mediterranean trade; at the same time, products and people migrated to the West. Beyond church painting, Kalarrytes witnessed the development of silver-smithing, which was destined to mark the area’s historical date after the mid-17th century.
The small single-aisle Chapel of Saint John the Baptist was painted in winter 1737 (completed on the 4th of February) by the painters Georgios and Stergios from Kalarrytes. The same artists completed the painting of the Monastery of the Dormition of the Virgin in Chrysinos near Kalambaka, again in mid-winter (2nd of February) in 1740. Certain elements in the iconographic cycle at the Chapel of Saint John seem to indicate its function as an ossuary and therefore stress its funerary character. Painting draws up the boundaries of a situatedness that enables a relationship between the closed space of painting and the exterior. This is the way in which codes for creating a unified iconographic programme are created, various iconographic and stylistic elements are joined into a meaningful sequence and the spiritual and ideological operation of faith is shaped into a unified whole.
For example, the choice of a series of martyrdom scenes (Beheading of Saint George, Martyrdom of Saint Demetrios, Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, Martyrdom of Saints Eustathios and Theopiste and of their children Theopistos and Agapios, Martyrdom of Saints Victor and Vicentius, Martyrdom of Saint Theodore Stratelates, Martyrdom of the Forty Saints, Stoning of Saint Stephen, Martyrdoms of the Evangelists Mark and Matthew, Martyrdom of Apostle Andrew, Martyrdom of Saint Ignatius), no matter how limited in comparison with 16th century monuments (due to limitations in space), represents a substantial percentage of the modest chapel’s size; furthermore, martyrdom scenes are even depicted on the bema walls. This predominance of martyrdom, a mechanism for registering the psychogenic or sociogenic differentiation of Christian community members, acts as a special polemic device for a religion in self-defence against its enemies. Therefore, it becomes clear that the urgency to depict martyrdom extends beyond the dictates of an iconographic system and constitutes a symbolic nucleus at the centre of the practice of Christian resistance against enemies of the faith. At the same time, this deployment of suffering describes the affinity between the presence of pain (in the guise of self-consciousness, self-identification and closeness between the believer and the depicted suffering martyr) and the metaphysics of violence (in the guise of conviction for the ontological certainty of a meaning in pain). The spiritual recognition of bodily pain reflected, in this instance, specific cultural views (for example, the belief in the absolute, the cultivation of inwardness, the prospect of an afterlife, the hope for salvation) but also specific cultural practices (for example, self-incarceration and self-compulsion). It should be borne in mind that, within the cultural context of monasticism, pain was primarily a material testimony of the soul’s suffering for the human fall; the monk had to stolidly bear with it in order to achieve forgiveness. As the cultural constitution of pain within Christianity remained for centuries closely linked with the challenge for the soul’s salvation, pain was also viewed as a means to be liberated from all the pressures of a transient life; at the same time, it was a stable cultural component, performing a vital role against the sad worldly reality. The funerary character of the place and its focus on the vanity of secular time (underlined in the representation of Merciless Death) joined the painterly idiom of martyrdom in an effort to transsubstantiate the violence of martyric suffering (aimed at salvation after death) into a cathartic, joyous act with therapeutic and educational value. By operating as a microcosm symbolising the body of the Church in general and by contributing to the objectification of a shared Christian memory, the representational space of the church becomes the place par excellence in which salvation attains meaning. The living community of believers is organised around the oxymoronic spectacle of the martyr’s dismembered and blood-stained body; this body is ‘ritualised’ and promotes the sociogenesis of the Christian community while laying the foundations for the collective identity of the Church.
b. Manuscripts
Theological, ecclesiastical and secular manuscripts from the rich library that must have existed in the Monastery of Vyliza survive to this day; they include fourteen codices that Spyridon Lambros moved to the National Library of Greece (accession numbers 1902-1925), a late-14th century theological codex now kept at Matsouki, ten further manuscripts referred to by Lambros in his 1886 list but now lost and some incunabula surviving in country chapels around Matsouki. This sample is indicative of a rich reserve of a manuscript tradition that found its way into the Monastery through different routes. When this reserve is correlated with the rich icon collection and the liturgical utensils and vessels, an old and deeply-rooted cultural tradition is revealed; in this tradition, profits from long-distance trade and industrial production in commercial, manufacturing towns are invested in the locus sanctitatis as supplications for the good health and safety of donors or even the salvation of their souls and the souls of their family members after death.
Recollections surviving in manuscripts (studied with determination by D. Kalousios) describe repeatedly how the considerable numbers of traders from Matsouki and Kalarrytes kept communication channels open between the Epirote mainland and power and trade centres within the Ottoman Empire but also in the West, the Balkans and Russia despite the mostly harsh conditions of everyday life and the economic difficulties of local populations: progress in production was slow, the antiquated agriculture methods, an impediment to the historical continuity of the area, barely covered the basic needs of malnourished producers and their families, road networks were inadequate, banditry and extreme weather conditions promoted feelings of insecurity, endemic diseases flourished and taxation was crippling; furthermore, the Christian calendar impinged on the flow of everyday life and set limitations by monopolising the free time and the spiritual constitution of individuals while the Church, the place of security par excellence, tried to safeguard the religious and spiritual substance of its members. The iconography of Hosios Sisoes in mourning over a gaping sarcophagus and of Merciless Death with a scythe, western subject matters copied from copper-plate prints and projecting a worldview on God and salvation, appear in the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist, dedicated to a saint widely venerated in Ottoman times, probably because of carrying connotations of general insecurity and resistance against the Ottoman conqueror; such iconography refers to the repetitive view of ruthless time, dependent on the biological rhythm of humans and nature and ridden with dangers, and to the general feeling of uncertainty for livelihood and its connection with the environment; in this context, locus sanctitatis is the ideal place of privileged security and spiritual salvation. Thus, on a psychological level, a certainty for the soul’s salvation in the afterlife is founded against the economic, political and natural insecurity; this certainty is the fundamental distinctiveness of locus sanctitatis, in that it constitutes for the suffering human a constant of historicity and belonging.
c. Museum icons
The fifty-eight (58) post-Byzantine icons of the Vyliza Monastery cover the period between the 15th and early 20th centuries and include works by great Cretan School painters or their workshops active in the Ionian Islands and Italy, for example Damaskenos and Emmanuel Tzannes.
A Dodekaorton (twelve icons of the main feasts during the liturgical year) with western iconographic and stylistic characteristics invites some questions on the contacts between different artistic traditions. While recognising this idiosyncrasy, we should not be limited to aesthetic judgement but should see in it normalities and values that constitute elements of historical meaning with specific cultural determination. The icon of Lamentation is a close iconographic and stylistic copy (with only minor differences) of a copper-plate print, Three Marys Lamenting Dead Christ, by Marcantonio Raimondi (circa 1480-circa 1534) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The very existence of the icon verifies the circulation and appropriation of the print’s subject, which operates as a point of reference. Four of the Dodekaorton icons from the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist (Christ at Prayer on the Mount of Olives, The Judas Kiss, Ecce Hommo and Resurrection of Jesus) copy more or less faithfully corresponding scenes from prints by Albrecht Dürer produced in 1508 and 1512. This faithful transcription to the last detail of Dürer’s iconographical formulae in the icons of the Vyliza collection represents both a departure by breaking from the core of Byzantine tradition (which the remaining icons in the collection follow) and a new way of thinking which reflects a different cultural framework of production that uses the possibilities offered by an alien artistic tradition. Because of this adoption of forms representing a tradition other than the Byzantine, it must be assumed that the icons in question were imported into the Monastery as offerings from some western urban centre, in the Ionian Islands, Italy or Austria.
Interestingly, eleven out of the twelve icons of the Dodekaorton are defined by the artistic language of 16th century Renaissance painting and reproduce some of its structural elements. What is even more impressive in this aesthetic diversity is the acceptance within the locus sanctitatis of an aesthetic that breaks the homogeneity and continuity of the Byzantine ‘canon,’ the transportation of an artistic habitus and its corresponding dogmatics which brings with it a new aesthetic frame of reference.
Therefore, the locus sanctitatis absorbs fragments of artistic traditions alien to the Byzantine. These elements increase the number of possible choices, thus creating a new organicity that both breaks links with earlier tradition (as a result of developments in trade and contacts with the Ionian Islands and Italian cities) and makes manifest that the commissioners of these works (probably intending them to be offered to Vyliza) had appropriated a new artistic domain connected with a new regulatory framework. These new operational elements of locus sanctitatis constitute, through artistic junctures, a new geography within the locus itself, a geography that multiplies the spatial appropriations of alien cultural contexts while endangering the monosemic rigidity of the Byzantine artistic ‘canon.’