WEITZMANN Kurt - Narration in Early Christendom

Narration in Early Christendom

Kurt Weitzmann

American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 61, No. 1. (Jan., 1957), pp. 83-91.

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19571 NARRATION I N EARLY CHRISTENDOM 83

from their devotion to the actual event in every aspect, and from their lack of interest in translating real life into the language of art. For them art did not require an inherently consistent pattern. It had to be nothing but an immediate and rich illustration of an actuality, and they did not bother with more problematic relations between life and art.

4. Continuous narrative in panels represents the very same element of abstraction as does the com- bination of bird's-eye and "normal" view; one de-

mands the other, they are but two aspects of one element. This element foreshadows late ancient art, and is characteristically un-Greek. The specifically Greek forms of realism and concreteness must have excluded the possibility of the ultimate and extreme stages of continuous narrative. These were not Greek but Roman.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Narration in Early Christendom KURT WEITZMANN

THEdepiction of a story by pictorial means involves the problem of a relationship between literature on the one hand and the representational arts on the other. From the time script was invented and literature came into being down to the period from which we have the earliest extant codices with extensive picture cycles a slow, evolutionary process, in spite of deviations and regressions, can be ob- served with regard to this relationship. At the beginning it is rather vague and general and the artist did not always consult a literary source, but relied at times on an oral tradition whenever he wanted to represent a myth or an episode from history. As time went on, however, the relationship became more precise and more specific to the s&e degree that the literary sources were more often and more intensively consulted by an artist who set out to render a literary content with greater exactitude.

In the archaic and high classical periods of Greek art comparatively few, and in most cases only the most dramatic events were chosen and rendered in individual, self-contained compositions. Almost at the same time Greek artists began to line up a series of narrative representations, based either on a single hero's life or some kind of a literary unit, and taking the form of a row of metopes or of a frieze. This is the beginning of the method of the

1 For a more detailed discussion of the various methods of illustration cf. C. Robert, Bild und Lied, Archaeologische Bei- trage zur Geschichte der Griechischen Heldensage (Philologi-sche Untersuchungen hersg. von A. Kiessling und U. v. Wila-mowitz-Moellendorf, Vol. V, Berlin 1881); Fr. Wickhoff,

P L A T E S 3 3 - 3 6

cyclic narrative which in the classical period was used on a rather limited scale, and in the Hellenis- tic period developed into a continuous narrative whereby the individual scenes are placed in front of a unifying landscape.

At the end of this long drawn-out process of bind- ing the representational arts and literature still closer together, a new method was invented whereby a single episode was divided into several phases, so that the beholder might follow the various changes of action with the chief protagonist being repeated again and again. The result of this development is an enormous increase in the number of scenes and the formation of far more extensive picture cycles than had ever existed before. This innovation took place in the Early Hellenistic period, and the medium in which the vast expansion of narrative representations could unfold most vig- orously, and to a degree not matched by any other medium, is the book which at that time was the papyrus roll. Thus the art of storytelling in pictures became inextricably linked with the history of book- illumination?

There is evidence that within Greek civilization the illustration of the book started in Egypt, i.e. Alexandria. Here the Greeks must have seen illustrated Egyptian rolls and studied their manufac-

Die Wiener Genesir (Vienna 1 8 9 5 ) ; K . Weitzmann, Illustra-tions in Roll and Codex, A Study of the Origin and Method of Text-lllurtration (Studies in Manuscript Illumination, No. 2,

Princeton 1947) henceforth cited as Roll and Codex.

KURT WEITZMANN [ A J A 61

ture. But they learned from them not only the tech- nical process, but even adapted iconographical mo- tifs wherever they could as, e.g., demons in magical texts, figures of Egyptian gods for constellation figures in astronomical texts and the likea2 Because of the perishable nature of papyrus and the very casual remains of papyrus rolls, the importance of this branch of Greek painting has only begun to be recognized by modern scholarship after a few very illuminating fragments of illustrated rolls have fairly recently come to light.

Perhaps the most important fragment is one found in Oxyrhynchus and now in Oxford (fig. I)

which belongs to the second or third century and is large enough to permit some general deductions with regard to illustrations of papyrus rolls in classical antiquity.' It consists of parts of three writing columns into which three sketchy drawings are intercalated. The content is a Herakles poem in ionic trimeter and our fragment is concerned only with the first deed, the adventure with the Nemean lion. The fight proper is depicted in the usual iconography where Herakles strangles the lion by pressing its head under his armpit. But what is new in the art of the narrative is the subdivision of this one episode into several consecutive phases. One preceding the fight proper depicts what seems to be the pursuit of the lion into a cleft, and the other, following it, shows Herakles with the lion's skin after his victory. It can be taken for granted that as the text went along other deeds were illustrated in the same manner by dividing them into several phases, always repeating the hero in the same brief, sketchy manner. The result of this new method, besides the increase in the number of scenes, is the quickening of the tempo from one action to the next.

From the formal point of view these miniatures in papyrus rolls have some shortcomings. The small figure scale and the rather sketchy technique forced the illustrator to disregard elaborate settings of landscape or architecture like those that had developed in Hellenistic and Roman fresco painting. Moreover he abandoned, to a large extent, carefully balanced compositions as seen in the works of the high classical period which induce the beholder to

2 Roll and Codex 57ff. K. Weitzmann in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. XXII (Ox-

ford 1954)~ p. 85, no. 2331 and pl. xr. 4 St. J. Gasiorowski, Malarstwo Minjaturowe Grecko-Rzymstie

(Cracow 1928) p. 17, p. v and fig. 2: K. Weitzmann, Roll and Codex 51 (here the older bibliography) and fig. 40.

tarry, and also continuous frieze compositions, since it was his endeavor to place each individual scene in the writing column at a varying level exactly where the text required it. On the other hand he developed new formal means in order to stress moving actions, usually from left to right in such a way that the beholder is induced to move from one scene to the next just as his eyes read consecutive lines of writing. It was already the ancient illustrator's aim to establish a sequence of phases as close together as possible so that the beholder may read a picture story without resorting to the text for under- standing the essential features of a plot. Here we see a new principle in its nascent state which in our own days has developed into the motion picture.

Because of the survival of only a few fragments of illustrated papyrus rolls we are as yet in no position to assess accurately the extent to which classical texts were illustrated. Yet the indications are that it took place on a very large scale, not only in the ~oetical texts like the Herakles poem but also in prose texts, like that of a still unidentified romance in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, suppl. gr. 1294 (fig. 2)' where one sees the remnants of three consecutive scenes, placed in the writing columns in exactly the same manner as in the Herakles papyrus. These lively and sketchily treated scenes in which vivid gestures are particularly emphasized have, again like those of the Herakles papyrus, no frame or colored background, and thus, in the best tradition of papyrus illustration, share the surface of the papyrus with the cal- ligraphy. There is reason to believe that in classical antiquity papyrus illustration did not attract re-nowned painters-unlike miniature painting in the Middle Ages-and yet it would be misleading to judge the capacity of classical illustrators on the basis of only these two fragments which obviously were executed hastily and with limited skill.

The State Library in Munich owns a fragmentary papyrus drawing of about the fourth century A.D. pap. gr. 128 (fig. 3)5 which is a rather accom- plished brush drawing, representing the episode from the first book of the Iliad in which two heralds of Agamemnon, Talthybius and Eurybates,

5 A. Hartmann, "Einc Federzeichnung auf einem Miinchcner Papyrus," Festschrift fur Georg Leidinger (Munich 1930) p. 103 and pl. xvrr; K. Weitzmann, Roll and Codex, 54 and fig. 42; idem, "Observations on the Milan Iliad," Neddands Kunst-histotisch Iaurboek V (1954) p. 246 and fig. 2.

19.571 NARRATION I N EARLY CHRISTENDOM 85

take away Briseis from Achilles. This drawing provides the evidence that the Homeric poems were also illustrated in papyrus rolls, and quite ambi- tiously too, as befits the importance of a text which in classical antiquity was almost as widely read as the Bible in the Middle Ages. The mere conception of a set of 24 scrolls, each with a narrative cycle of scenes on the same scale as in the Herakles and the romance papyri almost staggers the imagina- tion. Whereas in pre-Hellenistic art, scenes from the Iliad can be counted by the dozens now they must be numbered by the hundreds.

What are our earliest and most important examples of the new and expansive cyclic art that is reflected in the fragmentary papyrus rolls seen so far, all of which already belong to the Christian era? The first group of monuments one would have to discuss in this context are the so-called Megarian bowls, a group of Hellenistic terracotta cups which Carl Robert had introduced into the literature as Homerische Becher? Two such bowls, whose hemi- spherical surface is unrolled in the drawings (figs. 4-5)7 show two episodes of the zznd book of the Odyssey each being subdivided in three phases: one deals with the unfaithful goatherd Melanthius who in the first scene is fettered by Eumaeus and Philoetius and in the second hanged by them, while

bowl depicts the final fate of the wooers, the s tab bing of the seer Leiodes and the pardoning of the minstrel Phemius and the herald Medon (verses 310ff). In our opinion these bowls depend on illustrated papyrus rolls lost today, because, even after the transfer into the medium of terracotta reliefs, the basic quality of miniature painting-the element of transitory motion and the inducement to move quickly from one phase to the next-is still clearly preserved. The copyist even went so far- and this is very unusual in any medium except a manuscript proper-as to write as many verses of Homer's poem as he could on the ground of the cups. Actually the individual scenes are still placed within the limits of writing columns.

It is, therefore, quite an easy matter to make, on the basis of the Herakles and the romance papyri, a reconstruction drawing (Ill. A): and to show how the three scenes of the Melanthius adventure were intercalated in the columns of a papyrus roll. On this scale a single book of the Odyssey, filling one scroll with about 30 writing columns, would require approximately an equal number of scenes. If we multiply 30 by 24 and do the same for the Iliad, we arrive at the staggering number of many hundreds of miniatures for a complete illustrated Homer of the Hellenistic period.

Ill. A. Reconstruction of an Odyssey Roll of the Hellenistic Period

in the third Athena incites Odysseus and Telema- Moreover it must be realized that, besides Homer, chus against the wooers (verses 161ff); the second other epic poems, especially those of the K ~ K X O S

6 C. Robert, Homerische Becher (50. Berliner Winckelmanns- even the early 1st century B.C. has been proposed for a late programm, Berlin 1890). F. Courby, Les vases grecs d relief group. Cf. L. Byvanck-Quarles van Ufford, "Les Bols Homb- (Paris 1922) Ch. XIX, 281A. Both are inclined to date the iques," Bull. Antieke Beschaving 29 (1954) 35ff. earliest of them into the 3rd century B.c., while more recently 7 K. Weitzmann, Roll and Codex, 37ff and figs. 6-7. a 2nd century date has been suggested for most of them and s ib id . 77 and fig. A on p. 78.

86 KURT WEITZMANN [ A J A 61

~ T L K ~ S ,were likewise profusely illustrated, that dramas, especially those of Euripides, most popular in the Hellenistic and Roman period, were adorned with miniature cycles just as extensively, and that also many prose texts, romances like that of the Paris papyrus (fig. 2) had hundreds and hundreds of scenes. The evidence is based first of all on the Megarian bowls and, for the epic poems, on the so-called Iliac tablets, small reliefs in piombino that are packed with small sketchy scenes whose identi- fication is aided by inscriptions including the titles of the books from which the miniatures were cop- ied.g But besides these two major groups, narrative cycles that depend on illustrated books exist on certain sarcophagi, narrow friezes in fresco as they are found in a few instances in Pompeii, and still other media. A careful sifting of the Hellenistic- Roman monuments from this point of view must be the preliminary step towards collecting the ma- terial for a history of ancient book illumination.

The best reflections, e.g., of Euripidean picture cycles are once more to be found on the Megarian bowls of which a typical example exists in the Metropolitan Museum with five consecutive scenes from the "Iphigeneia at Aulis."l0 They illustrate very precisely the beginning of the drama, how Agamemnon sends to Clytaimnestra a messenger (fig. 6), who is intercepted by Menelaus, and how Menelaus reproaches Agamemnon while in the meantime Iphigeneia arrives at Aulis and Agamem- non is most unhappy about this turn of events. At least two more cups were needed, one of which actually exists, in order to illustrate the whole drama in this extensive cyclic fashion,'' and even so we cannot be absolutely sure that the cycle of the three cups with approximately 15 scenes altogether is not abbreviated compared with the postulated manuscript model. By comparing such a sequence of dramatic, fast moving little scenes with the complex and centralized compositions of Apulian arn-phorae of the 4th century B.C. that reflect themes of Euripidean dramas,12 it is self-evident that between these two groups of monuments must be placed

9 0.Jahn, Griedische Bilderchroniken (Bonn 1873) . 10 K. Weitzmann, Roll and Codex, 4 4 f f and figs. ga-e. 11 K. Weitzmann, "Euripides Scenes in Byzantine Art," Hes-

peria 18 ( 1 9 4 9 ) 177f f and pls. 27-29. 12 L. SCchan, Eftudes sur la tragkdie grecque dans ses rapports

auec la cCramique (Paris 1926) 23113 passim; K . Weitzmann, Roll and Codex, 16 and fig. 5 .

l 3 i b i d . 6 g f f , 8 1 f f . For the most up-to-date discussion of the origin of the codex cf. C. H. Roberts, "The Codex" ProcBritAc

the origin of the new vastly extended picture cycles which stand out as the most decisive innovation in the long history of the narrative in representational art.

Another important change took place within the history of bookmaking when, at the end of the 1st century A.D. the parchment codex began to de- velop into its present-day form and to replace the papyrus roll, a process which deeply affected the system of book-illustrati~n.~~ the earliest One of sets of illustrations that come from a parchment codex are the fifth century fragments of an Iliad in the Ambrosian Library in Milan, F. 205 inf.14 They are remnants of a codex that in its original state comprised all 24 books of the Iliad in one volume, as compared with 24 separate papyrus rolls-an ob-viously great advantage since several hundred miniatures could now be collected in a single physical unit between two covers. One of the miniatures, e.g. fig. 7, depicts the leading away of Briseis by Aga- memnon's heralds Talthybius and Eurybates, while the mourning, angry Achilles, surrounded by the Myrmidons, sits in his tent. The group at the right is so much like the one in the Munich drawing (fig. 3) that there can be no doubt that both belong to the same recension and that, therefore, the archetype of the Milan codex must have consisted of a set of illustrated papyrus rolls.

The leading away of Briseis is preceded by a miniature in which the same two heralds are demand- ing from Achilles the handing over of Briseis,16 while in the following one (fig. 7) Thetis is seen comforting her angry son. Here we have once more a typical case of an extended cyclic narrative where one single episode is subdivided into several phases. Motion is handled with subtlety: none of the scenes is centered, the figures move from left to right, and while in the first and third scene where Achilles is approached he sits at the right in what one might

.call an "ascending rhythm," his place in the second scene where Briseis leaves him is at the left in a "descending rhythm."

In the codex the writing columns are isolated on

40 ( 1 9 5 5 ) 169ff. l4The most recent facsimile: A. Caldcrini, A. M. Ceriani

and A. Mai, Ilias Ambrosiana (Bern 1953) . A detailed and circumspect discussion of the miniatures and a complete bibliography up to date: R. Bianchi-Bandinelli, Hellenistic-Byzan-tine Miniatures o f the Iliad (Ilias Ambrosiana) (Olten 1955) . Cf. also RON and Codex, 4 2 f f , 5 4 f f and passim.

l5Facz. op.cit, pict, v.

NARRATION I N EARLY CHRISTENDOM

individual pages and this, gradually, leads to a greater isolation of the individual miniatures. Now they begin to be framed where they had been frame- less in the papyrus model, thus resembling panel painting. There can be little doubt that this change took place under the influence of actual panel painting and frescoes. Whereas in papyrus illustration the architectural and landscape elements had been confined to what iconographically was absolutely necessary, now we see a richer spatial setting fitted into a frame, such as the seashore with the ships in the miniature with the arrival of the heralds. The illustrators, working now in the more durable ma- terial of parchment and the refined technique of gouache grew more ambitious by belatedly intro- ducing some earlier principles of narrative art, as we know them for instance from Pompeian frescoes, that centered on an isolated and at the same time more elaborate rendering of the most important moment of an episode. At this stage of the development book illumination becomes a much more complex art.

This broadening of artistic endeavors in book illumination coincides with the time in which Christian artists seized upon the illustrated book as one of the main vehicles for the narration of Biblical stories in extensive picture cycles. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that in illustrating the Bible the Christians did not invent a new branch of art, but continued a then firmly estab- lished tradition of Hellenistic-Roman book produc- tion which, therefore, had first to be outlined and the method of its reconstruction to be explained in order to see the beginnings of Christian book illumination in the right perspective. Book art is a conservative art and the Christians adapted the main principles of narrative picture cycles as they had developed in Homer and Euripides rolls quite thoroughly, but raised it gradually to the higher level of a luxurious art whereby the text of the Bible was, at times, written in gold or silverscript on purple-stained parchment.

The best known representative of such an Early Christian luxury codex is the 6th Century Genesis fragment in Vienna, cod. theol. gr. 31." Each of its 48 pages left to us is evenly divided between text and picture, an arrangement which resulted in the

leFr. Wickhoff, Die Wiener Genesis (Vienna 1895); H. Gerstinger, Die Wiener Genesis (Vienna 1g31), here the older Bibliography; K. Weitzmann, Roll and Codex, 8gff and passim.

l7 K. Weitzmann, "Die Illustration der Septuaginta," Mlb

shortening of the Bible text. On one of these pages (fig. 8) we see three scenes immediately following the sacrifice of Isaac which was on the preceding page, now lost. In the first the angel promises pos- terity to Abraham, in the second he returns to the waiting servants, and in the third Abraham re-ceives news about his brother Nabor. These events in themselves are not of primary importance, and one would expect them to be included only as parts of a very extensive cycle in which scenes of lesser importance alternate with important ones for the sake of keeping the picture story moving-just as we have seen it in the Iliad illustrations.

The Vienna codex, when complete, must have contained between four and five hundred indi-vidual scenes of which an average of three are grouped together on one page. On the basis of this calculation two conclusions can be drawn: (I) that our earliest Bible manuscripts were illustrated just as profusely, or perhaps even more so, than the illustrated texts of classical antiquity; and (2) that these early Biblical cycles were so vast that on this scale neither a full Bible nor even a full Septuagint could ever be illustrated in their entirety.'' Obviously the illustration of the Bible started out with individual or smaller groups of books within the Law, the his- torical, the poetical, and the prophetical groups. Of the Vienna manuscript we can be sure that it never contained more than just the Book of Genesis.

From the formal point of view the scenes still reflect the papyrus tradition in their close agree- ment with the underlying text, the limitation to what iconographically is absolutely necessary, the emphasis on vivid action and gestures and the lack of frame and background. Where landscape does occur in this instance in the lower right hand cor- ner, it obviously is an intrusion, occupying an oth- erwise empty space since obviously only three scenes were available where the surface area easily could have accommodated four. In a sketch (Ill. B)18 an attempt has been made to reconstruct the model of the Vienna Genesis according to the principles of papyrus illustration, by placing the scenes within the comparatively narrow writing columns -as we know them to have existed in early Bible manuscripts--of an unabbreviated Septuagint text.

3-4 (1952-53) 96ff. 18 K. Weitzmann, RON and Codex, go and fig. D; idem M]b

102 and fig. A.

88 KURT WEITZMANN [AJA 61

Ill. B. Reconstruction of the Model of the Vienna Genesis

A second important Bible fragment, likewise of the 6th century, is a Genesis codex in London, the so-called Cotton Genesis, Cotton Otho B.VI, which, unfortunately, was burnt in 1731. But a sufficient number of charred and singed fragments have sur- vived to permit a reconstruction of the codex which originally had about 330 miniatures." On the one hand, its illustrations followed the papyrus tradition by placing the scenes within the writing columns, and on the other they introduced frames and background elements as was done similarly in the Milan Iliad. But in spite of these elaborations, the illustrators maintained in the best story telling tradition an extraordinarily dense sequence of phases of one and the same episode. The story of the Deluge, for example, shows the ark repeated five times, beginning with God's command to Noah to bring the animals and his family into the ark, followed by the execution of this command (fig. g) and up to the scene in which Noah lets the dove out for the third time."

In the 13th century, when the mosaicists of San Marco in Venice set out to decorate the narthex with a cycle of Old Testament scenes, they used the very Cotton Genesis as model,21 and thus the mosaics become the primary source for the reconstruction of the fragmentary miniature cycle. Over

19 The latest writing on the Cotton Genesis: K. Weitzmann, "Observations on the Cotton Genesis Fragments," Late Classical and Mediaeval Studies in honor of Albert Mathias Friend, Ir. (Princeton 1955) I rzff. (Here the older bibliography).

20 idem Mlb 97 and figs. ra-d. 21 J. J. Tikkanen, "Die Genesismosaiken von S. Marco in

Venedig und ihr Verhaltnis zu den Miniaruren der Cottonbibcl," Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae 17 (Helsingfors I 889)

both sides of an arch, the episode of the Deluge is depicted by repeating the ark no less than eight times:'* on the one side, one sees its construction and the bringing in of the fowl, the quadrupeds and the family; on the other side the flood proper, the sending forth of a raven and a dove, and finally the resting of the ark on Mount Ararat. Of some of these scenes no trace is left among the London fragments, and yet we have evidence that the Noah cycle of the Cotton Genesis before its damage by fire was still bigger than that of the mosaics and had as many as eleven scenes with the ark as the main feature.

The narthex of San Marco is by no means an isolated case where illustrated manuscripts served as models for Early Christian and mediaeval fresco painters and mosaicists and, therefore, monumental art will have to be investigated more systematically as to its possible dependence on narrative miniature cycles. But San Marco is unique in that the manuscript model is still in existence, and this permits us to establish a few general principles with regard to the relationship between miniature models and their copies in monumental art.

The main changes result from the necessity to use the surface area of the wall more economically, since the enlargement of the figure-scale could only be compensated by abbreviations of the miniature model. There are three ways of abbreviation most commonly used: first, the "omission" of entire scenes which we already discussed in connection with the Noah scenes.

The second is that of "condensation." In the miniature of Abraham speaking with the Lord, seen in a water color copy which was made from the miniature before it burned (fig. 10):~ a huge hand of God is issuing from an enormous segment of the sky, while Abraham moves freely on a spa- cious strip of ground in a slightly swaying pose, in order to indicate the impact of the radiating divine power. In one of the narthex cupolae of San Marco (fig. 11) the corresponding figure of Abraham is squeezed between two neighbouring scenes and the shrunken segment of sky with a smaller hand of

ggff; Weitzmann in Friend Studies, op.cit. I ~ g f f . 22 F. Ongania, La Barilica di Sun Marco in Venezia (Venice

1880-189~)PI. XVII;S. Bettini, Mosaici antichi di Sun Marco a Venezia (Bergarno 1944) pi. L~I -LVI I I and LX-LXI.

23 H. Omont, Miniatures des plus anciens Manusflits Grecs de la BibliothPque Nationale du V l e au XlVe siPcle, 2nd ed. (Paris 1929) Introduction, rff and plate.

19571 NARRATION I N EAR .LY CHRISTENDOM 89

God is placed on top of the preceding scene as a space saving device.

The desire to save space leads to still a third principle, that of "conflation," so well known to textual critics. Another section of the same San Marco cupola (fig. 11 at the right) depicts the Journey of Abraham and Lot to Egypt. At the left a servant helps Sarah into the saddle, and at the right a group of soldiers marches ahead of Lot, while Abraham rides between them. It can be demonstrated that this composition is a conflation of two, originally separated, scenes, the left group with Sarah being still preserved on the recto side of a fragmentary page (fig. 12), while the Lot group is on its verso side (fig. 13).~' In the conflated mosaic Abraham on horseback is placed in the center of a more complex scene which the monumental artist tried to turn into a balanced composition, whereby he aims at an effect comparabl; to the isolated pictures of the high classical period.

By lining up the Abraham scenes around the rim of the cupola the mosaicist achieved the effect of a continuous frieze-an effect which became only possible after the connection of the pictures with the text proper, where they stand in the writing columns at different levels, was dissolved. Basically this is the same process involved in the transfer of scenes from our reconstructed Iliad scroll (Ill. A) into the hemispheric surface of the Megarian bowls (figs. 4-5). At the same time the mosaicists retained from the manuscript tradition the iconographical preciseness and, in many instances, the dense sequence of phases within one episode. Thus we see in the complex mosaic decoration of San Marco an attempt to combine the principles of narrative art that come from miniature painting with those of the monumental tradition which tends to focus on more elaborate and comparatively more isolated scenes.

From the same point of view other monumental cycles in mosaic or-fresco should be analyzed where- ever an extended cycle of Biblical scenes suggests the use of illustrated manuscripts as models as, e.g., in the fifth century Old Testament scenes in Old St. Peter's and S. Paolo fuori le Mura, both being known only from later drawings," or in the

24 Weitzmann in Friend Studies, op.cif. 121 and figs. 9-11. 25 J . Garber, Wirkungen dcr fruhchristlichcn Gemiildczyklen

der altcn Peters- und Pauls-Basiliken in Rom (Berlin-Vienna 1918).

"An exhaustive study by Carl H. Kraeling is expected to ap-

frescoes of the Synagogue of Dura that date in the middle of the 3rd ~entury.~ ' The synagogue frescoes are particularly suitable for a study of their relationship- to a postulated miniature model, since all three principles deduced from the San Marco mosaics, i.e. omission, condensation and conflation, show up again in this fresco cycle, which on account of its early date leads us considerably closer to the origin of Bible illustrations than any other cycle, manuscript or fresco.

In the comparatively small interior of the synagogue only a limited number of scenes from various books of the Old Testament could, of course, be accommodated, and the fresco painters made a careful selection of episodes of which they depicted normally two or three successive phases. Obviously omissions play a much greater role than in San Marco, where a far more extended wall space was reserved for scenes from the Book of Genesis alone. However, in a few cases-the clearest being the panel with the Vision of Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones (fig. 14)-the Dura painter lined up a greater number of phases from one episode and at the same time in such a dense sequence that within this section apparently nothing was left out from the manuscript model. No less than six times is Ezekiel depicted in the Dura panel that illustrates but the first half of the 37th chapter, and the cine- matographic element of moving quickly from one figure of the prophet to the next, changing the poses only slightly, is very effective indeed. At the same time the fresco painter condensed the scenes to such an extent, especially at the beginning, that one Ezekiel figure almost touches the next one. One may recall in this connection the miniature of the Cotton Genesis with the freely moving Abra- ham (fig. 10) and the corresponding San Marco mosaic with the spatially confined figure of Abra- ham (fig. 11) in order to visualize a similar process of condensation from the postulated miniature model into the Dura fresco.

Among the Dura frescoes we also find several cases of conflation of two scenes into one, like the one discussed in San Marco representing the Jour- ney of Abraham, Sarah and Lot to Egypt (figs. 11-13). A striking example is the one that illustrates

pear soon. For the time being cf. his preliminary report The Excavations at Dura Europos, Preliminary Report o f the Sixth Srason 1932-1933 (New Haven 1936) 337ff and pl. XLVII-LIII. Cf. also a m t e Du Mesnil du Buisson, Les Peinturcs de la Synagogue dc Doura-Europos (Rome 1939).

90 KURT WEITZMANN [AJA 61

the episode of the ark of the covenant in the Temple of Dagon, the god of the Philistines (fig. 15). At the right the cult statue of Dagon is depicted twice, lying broken on the ground, since, according to the story (1.Reg.V-VI) it had miraculously fallen twice from the pedestal as a result of the presence of the ark, which the Philistines had forcibly taken and placed there. Thereafter the ark was returned to the Jews and carried away on an ox-cart, and this phase is depicted in the left half of the panel. The ark is represented only once in the center of a spatially unified composition while being simul- taneously related to two consecutive phases of the same episode. In order to visualize the miniature model one would have to disentangle the fresco panel and to assume two miniatures, each with its own ark of the covenant. Actually, such miniatures do exist in the 11th century Greek Book of Kings in the Vatican Library, cod. gr. 333." What the manuscripts were which served as models for the Dura painters is not easily determined. They could hardly have been the various books of the Hebrew Bible proper as we know them from the Septuagint translation, since in some fresco panels there occur legendary elements that cannot be explained by the Bible, but only by haggadic and similar legendary texts. So it seems perhaps more probable that texts of the latter kind were the illustrated ones.

The establishment of a relationship between the Dura frescoes and their miniature models is more than a mere hypothesis. We actually possess illustrated Biblical manuscripts that, although considerably later, belong pictorially to the same re-cension so that a common archetype must be assumed. This, in our opinion, can only have been a manuscript since in a manuscript only do we find the original state of extended narrative picture cycles before omissions, condensations and confla- tions took place. The central panel over the Thora niche contains, on its second layer of paint, two consecutive scenes from the end of the Book of Genesis, illustrating the impending death of Jacob. One represents the calling of his twelve sons and the other the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh (fig. 16). The peculiarities of the latter scene are the half erect position of Jacob on the couch, the

27 J. Lassus, "Les Miniatures byzantines du Livre des Rois," Mklanges d'archkologie et d'histoire 45 (1928) 38ff.

28 T. Ouspensky, L'Octateuque de la Biblio~hbque du Serail 2 Constanzinople (Sofia 1907) p. 140,No. 163.

2@The author is preparing a special study on the problem of

pose of the two grandsons facing the spectator instead of Jacob, and Joseph's approach from the right with outstretched hands. All three features occur, very much alike, in the corresponding scene of a 12th century Greek Octateuch in the Seraglio in I~tanbul. '~

From this and similar examples from Genesis, Kings, and ProphetsZ9 far-reaching conclusions can be drawn: ( I ) that the Hellenized Jews before the middle of the third century-but how much earlier remains for the time being a matter of conjecture- had illustrated books which, to judge from the dense sequence of phases in the Ezekiel and a few other panels, must have existed with cycles just as extensive or perhaps even more so than the illustrated Homer and Euripides rolls of classical antiquity; (2) that these Jewish books were used by the Christians when they started to illustrate Holy Scripture with enormous cycles; and (3) that, once an extensive miniature cycle was created, it served as model not only for later miniaturists over a span of time of about a millennium, but for monumental painters as well.

Having thus demonstrated the profound influence of Greco-Jewish illustrations upon the Chris- tian, there still remains to be discussed the problem of a direct dependence of Christian upon Greco- Roman book illustration. The Cotton Genesis, as we know from later copies in miniatures and the San Marco mosaics, contained the representation of the Creation of Adam in typical narrative fashion in three phases: ( I ) the "Shaping of Man" by the Creator seated on a throne; (2) "Man's Enlive-ment'' through the touch of the head whereby the Creator bends over Adam's head from behind; and (3) his "Animation" by the induction of a winged Psyche as the symbol of the immortal soul which the Creator holds by the wings while facing Adam in a standing pose.30 This detailed pictorial account of Adam's creation is not fully explained by the Biblical text, and therefore these three scenes could not have been invented for it. At the same time, one cannot consider it fortuitous that these three identical phases occur in ancient art in connection with the Creation of Man by Prometheus. Thus it seems quite self-evident that the Bible illustrator

an iconographical relationship between thc Dura frescoes and later Christian miniatures.

80 Weitzrnann, Roll and Codex, 176ff and figs. 177-182;idem MI6 p. 115 and figs. 18-23.

19571 NARRATION I N EARLY CHRISTENDOM 91

must not only have known illustrations of the Prometheus myth, but used them with full aware- ness of their original meaning. The common archetype, most likely, was some kind of an illustrated mythological handbook like the Bibliotheke of Apollodorus.

These remarks can give only a few hints as to the nature and characteristics of Hellenistic-Roman, Jewish, and Early Christian book illustration, and to those principal features by which the illustrated books of these three cultural spheres are connected. From the wider point of view of the art of the narrative in picture language-to repeat this once more-book art stands at the end of a long evolutionary process which in archaic art started out with a rather vague relationship between picture and text, in the high classical period became more precise, and in the Hellenistic period reached a final solution in the manuscript where writing and picture were physically connected, and where the illustrator was placed in a position to check carefully each iconographic feature against the text, constantly before his eyes.

Another essential element in book art is its extreme conservatism. Once an archetype has been created, a process of constant and more or less faithful copying began, extending often over many centuries. This traditionalism is the prerequisite of a methodical study of what we call iconography. Moreover, this conservatism and traditionalism should not be explained as a lack of inventive capacity, but rather as an act of reverence towards a picture once a satisfactory artistic solution had been found for its composition. Miniature cycles

originated in the Hellenistic period at the same time that Alexandrian scholars made the first E Y K ~ O U L S of great works of literature, epic and dramatic, no longer permitting a minstrel or a choro- didaskalos to make changes at will. The codification of both text and picture cycle, at about the same time, must be considered as an expression of the same mentality which believed in the unchange- ability of a truth once it had been clearly defined in word and picture. This attitude, of course, finds its clearest expression in connection with Holy Scripture.

One may well ask whether this way of treating text and pictures from the point of view of a fixed tradition averse to any alterations and so contrary to the thinking of the Greeks of the high classical period, is not the result of a reassertion of the Oriental mind in the Hellenistic civilization of Alexandria. This may well explain why in the long history of narrative art there is an apparent gulf between the isolating, monoscenic method of narra-tion that was preferred in the high classical period, and the expanded cyclic method of narration in Hellenistic-Roman art, to which on the one hand forerunners exist in the so-called Phoenician silver bowls, while on the other, after its reappearance in Hellenistic art, it continued in Greco-Jewish book art, as reflected in the Dura frescoes, and culmi- nated in Early Christian and medieval luxury codices like the Vienna and Cotton Genesis.

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WEITZMANN Kurt - Narration in Early Christendom