The Emperor's New Images-How to Honour the Emperor in the Christian Roman Empire? The Sacred Emperor and his Images (original) (raw)
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The Emperor's New Images – How to Honour the Emperor in the Christian Empire?
2016
This article discusses the sacredness of Roman emperors during the late Roman Empire, in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. as the Empire was gradually Christianized. I shall argue that the imperial ideology with the sacred emperor, which had developed in the preceding centuries, was adopted with a few modifications. The most important of the modifications was "tidying up" of emperor worship using animal sacrifices. Imperial images for the most part retained the associations and connotations they had earlier had with prestige, authority and divinity. In this article, I discuss the difficulties and ambiguities with the sacredness of emperors in the Christianizing Empire, focusing on imperial images. The analysis of a few fourth-and fifth-century Christian writers (for example, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, the anonymous Consultationes Zacchaei et Apollonii, Philostorgius, Severianus of Gabala and Pseudo-Theophilus of Alexandria) reveals a varied and complex set of attitudes towards traditional emperor worship, depending on the socio-political context of the writings. All these views must be examined as part of the debates in which they participate, as in the case of John Chrysostom's homilies in connection with the Riot of Statues in Antioch in 387, or Philostorgius' statements as connected with the disputes between Homoian and Nicene Christians.
This article discusses the sacredness of Roman emperors during the late Roman Empire, in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. as the Empire was gradually Christianized. I shall argue that the imperial ideology with the sacred emperor, which had developed in the preceding centuries, was adopted with a few modifications. The most important of the modifications was " tidying up " of emperor worship using animal sacrifices. Imperial images for the most part retained the associations and connotations they had earlier had with prestige, authority and divinity. In this article, I discuss the difficulties and ambiguities with the sacredness of emperors in the Christianizing Empire, focusing on imperial images. The analysis of a few fourth-and fifth-century Christian writers (for example, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, the anonymous Consultationes Zacchaei et Apollonii, Philostorgius, Severianus of Gabala and Pseudo-Theophilus of Alexandria) reveals a varied and complex set of attitudes towards traditional emperor worship, depending on the socio-political context of the writings. All these views must be examined as part of the debates in which they participate, as in the case of John Chrysostom's homilies in connection with the Riot of Statues in Antioch in 387, or Philostorgius' statements as connected with the disputes between Homoian and Nicene Christians.
The emperor as living image in Late Antique authors
Present in both public and private spaces, imperial statues reproduced, even if in stylised and simplified manner, the physiognomic traits of the ruling emperor, along with the symbols of his power and charisma. In doing so, imperial portraits substantiated the presence of the ruler everywhere in the Empire.1 The manner in which the emperor was perceived was thus mediated by his statuary representations, along with schematic depictions present on coins, and rare moments of physical presence. Literary descriptions add a complementary perspective on imperial self-presentation, rounding the image we have from visual sources and allowing us to discern the associations sought in official propaganda. We thus focus on accounts of imperial bodies in order to cast light on both the dynamic between physical beauty and divinity in antiquity, as well as on the change of aesthetic canons of sanctity that takes place in late antiquity. Contesting the man-god in the early imperial period Already in the writings of early imperial historians there is mention of the tendency of despotic rulers to identify themselves with their iconic representation: in the Vitae of Suetonius (70-126) Caligula (37-41) demands that his stature is assimilated to that of a colossal statue.2 Seen as deranged by authors of the time, such claims were rooted in the logic of the emerging imperial propaganda which proposed an assimilation between the living emperor, his representations, and statues of the gods.3 Statues of living emperors were presented, and to a certain extent perceived, as perfect reproductions emanating from the very person of the ruler. Produced using iconographic models developed in the capital, they functioned as cult objects in the context of the imperial cult, and place of asylum to which the same reverence due to the emperor was expected: offences brought to these images were crimes of lèse-majesté.4 When describing the equestrian statue of Domitian (81-96) from the Roman forum, Statius (40-96) claimed that it perfectly reproduced the beauty of the original, without artful embellishments.5 This veristic type of representation was slowly abandoned, and real and idealised physiognomic traits were enriched with motifs borrowed from statues of the gods; a synthesis that underlined the liminal ontological status of the emperor, 1 1 On the relationship between imperial statues and their referents, see e.g. Rudolf H.W. Stichel, Die römische Kaiserstatue
Images and Emperors in the Fourth Century AD
In this paper, I will outline the main traits of the research field of Imagology, and raise the question how it could be applied to the study of Roman emperorship, in order to prepare the ground for discussion at the Images and Emperors Conference at Soeterbeeck, Radboud University (17-19 September 2015). Firstly, an example of how different peoples create mutual images of each other will be treated, which will be placed within a research context of Imagology. Then, we will pass to the application of imagological concepts on episodes from Classical Antiquity – especially pertaining to Constantine the Great -, whereafter the theme of emperorship in general will be treated in this context. The paper will end with some considerations about how to use imagological concepts in the study of ancient literature pertaining to emperorship.
Holy icon or sacred body? The image of the emperor in the iconoclastic controversy
BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK STUDIES, 2024
Throughout Iconoclasm the imperial icon was used in iconophile writings as the major argument in support of icon veneration. It included images of the emperor reproduced in various media and even panel portraits. Although the latter have not survived the centuries, they were real objects with a strong power in the Byzantine system of visual communication. This paper will show that that the role of the imperial icon in Byzantine imagery and image theory was closely connected to the perception of the emperor and of the sacred imperial power in Byzantium.