>In a message dated 10-1-1999 9:47:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
>> A lot of people thought Ireland was worth going to for education and
>> medieval Irish trade and communication with the Mediterranean tends to be
>> underestimated. What makes you think Byzantine monks in particular went
>> there, beyond the similarity in artistic style and when exactly would they
>> have gone there?
>>
>Well, it isn't my idea, and I think I saw it mentioned in a study of the book
>of kells. It seems plausible, because manuscript illuminators were often
>monks, and it's in Irish manuscripts, rather than the metal work, that one
>sees a byzantine influence. When would a momk have left the Byzantine
>enpire? at just about any time the Byzantine empire was subject to incursions
>from its neighbors, which means most of the time during the middle ages. But
>since the locus of discussion is seventh century manuscript illuminations, it
>would have to be the seventh century or earlier.
>
Francine, Pat, and other disputants:
It would seem less the incursions of external enemies to the
Byzantine Empire, than the ever-changing topography of the interior
iconphile/iconclast debates within not only inperial court circles, but
within their ideological think tanks, the monastic centers in both
Constantinople, and the N.and W. Asia Minor provinces, that did prompt
flights from Byzantine monastic circles. It would seem that the final
iconophile victory was not a benign return to the sacred image, as much as
a wholesale assault on (and expulsion of) iconoslasts (while whose range of
commitment to the definition and limitation of 'image' was greatly varied,
were nonetheless anathematised ). Such fleeing monastics, both iconpohile
and iconoclast, might well have responded to a familiar topos in Byzantine
"urbanized" ascetic literature.( especially prominent duriong the last
stage of the icnoclast/phile struggles).. that of the 'Northern Thebaid';
some imagined refuge on the Northern edges of the world ( like the Egyptian
deserts, were once also imagined). While we have records of Byz. monks
fleeing across the Black Sea into the S. Slavic hegemonies, and into E.
Central ( Moravian) Europe,and even into Aquilea,the Byz. monks in Ireland
may be a creation of 'dotted line' art historians, who have not fully
considered the possibilities of parallel contours within two different
expressions of a non-representational tradition, whose origins may be quite
different. It seem much like the trap the historians of dualism fall into
when trying to explain its eventual resurfacing in a wide variety of
locales without any evidential link.
Josef Gulka
Josef Gulka
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215- 732-8420
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