PSICOLÓGICAS O PSICOSOCIALES

Memory and consciousness, both before and after resurrection, were hotly debated topics in Medieval Byzantium, or at least in mid-Byzantine Constantinople and the Constantinopolitan diaspora from whom our sources originate. To simplify the matter, the debate is split along the lines of a dominant psychological escahotology which argues for the awareness of the soul ater death and a more materialist position where the soul was not conscious between death and the Day of

Judgement because it was closely linked to the state of the body. The psychological position on eschatology developed from a neoplatonic paradigm and argued for a psychological and mnemonic afterlife, where the body and soul are separate, but only to the extent that although the body is dead, the soul remembers the imprint of the living body after death and when resurrection comes, it includes a spiritual body. Medieval Byzantine authors who were proponents of this model include Niketas Stethatos (ca1005-90), Michael Glykas (fl. 1150), and John the Deacon (eleventh century), although the position was developed from its Hellenic antecedents much earlier, notably by the Church Fathers Clement of Alexandria and Origen (Constas 2001:110).

The alternate position is more materialist and describes a positionwhereby the body and soul are so closely entwined that the death of the body causes the death or dormition of the soul, is viewed by the modern theologian Jean Gouillard as the survival of patristic thnetopsychism (this was the eschatological position of Gregory of Nyssa) (Gouillard 1981 cited in Constas 2001:110). The materialist position is more closely linked to the Old Testament and Jewish apocalyptic literature, and causes significant theological problems for the cult of the saints. The issue is one of

consciousness; if the souls of the saints were not conscious after death, they could not intercede on behalf of the faithful. This debate has been fully summarised by Nicholas Constas and further detailed analysis of elite theology is beyond the scope of this thesis. However, an awareness that there was never an official doctrinal pronouncement on the state of the soul after death, and that there is variation even on the theme of the resurrection of the body, is paramount to a nuanced understanding of the archaeological material. Orthodoxy was not entirely the proscriptive, unified front that is occasionally projected on to the past. Visions of the other world and resurrection

The majority of textual sources on theology which remain to us relate to the urban milieu. Beyond the sphere of Constantinopolitan and highly educated heterodox theology are the popular texts, hagiographies and apocalypses. These texts were for a significantly different audience to the discussions of the Constantinopolitan diaspora and are arguably closer to popular religion for the interred individuals discussed in this thesis In Jane Baun’s recent study of two medieval apocalypses, she applied a relational approach to the apocalypse of Anastasia and the apocalypse of the

Theotokos, both of which can be securely dated to the Medieval Byzantine period, and both of which are probably eleventh century texts (Baun 2007: chapter 2).

Apocalyptic literature (and in many cases, hagiographical literature) relies on a nuanced

understanding of allegory. Attempts to access the reality of individual eschatological beliefs through these texts are misguided: allegory and parable were both common medieval literary tropes and allow an understanding which is not literal, but is no less rich for that. The goal must be rather to use the texts to build a current understanding of an affective field, out of which we can tease out

entanglements, emergent properties, focal points, which seemingly occur in both the textual and the archaeological record.

An alternative view of truth than the literal and one that is more relevant to at least Early Byzantium than our current paradigm is that of John Cassian (d.435) for whom meaning can be split into literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical (or eschatological) meaning. For example, Cassian understands Jerusalem at these four levels as the city of the Jews, the church of Christ, the human soul (this is the moral meaning of Jerusalem for Cassian) and as the heavenly city of God (John Casian cited in Baun 2007:138). Allegory was a pervasive technique in both literary and theological spheres throughout the medieval period, used as an interpretive tool and as a means of conveying a reality larger than comprehension. Medieval examples of allegorical readings of texts include the eleventh century commentary on the Hexemeron by pseudo-Anastasios of Sinai which revisits Genesis as allegory intended to reveal Christ and the church, and the twelfth century reading of Homer by Tzetzes which pulls apart three separate forms of allegory within the text, physical, psychological and historic (Uthermann 1991:68). Dealing with text where allegorical meaning is acknowledged does not diminish the ‘truth’ of visions and texts, it only warns us not to deal simplistically with imagery as visionary literature was not always intended to be taken at face value ( Baun 2007:137).

Baun states that:

“the narrators of the visions wanted the hearer to believe that the vision itself did take place and was worthy of attention as a message from the divine, but did not expect hearers to receive every detail as literal fact. Medieval narrators and hearers partook of a common allegorical culture of

interpretation, which understood that visions, like dreams, are revelations, which come couched in signs symbols and parables”. (Baun 2007:137).

If we take the physical realities of these texts as allegorical, the ideas which come through as ready- to-hand, are largely united with the psychological position on eschatology outlined above: in the apocalypse of Anastasia, souls which bear the imprint of the physical bodies they once inhabited (they remember and are atoning for their sins and appear as human bodies) are waiting for the Day of Judgement on which they will be physically resurrected. Intercession is possible as the souls are conscious and remember. Depending on salvation during life, the souls wait in different levels of punishment or comfort. Even if the texts are not intended to describe a physical reality (although it is likely that some people will have read them that way) allegory is used to describe a spiritual reality which aligns with the core principles of psychologically active eschatology. In other words, the dominant eschatological narrative of Constantinople is played out in the allegorical texts of the Anatolian heartland.

Within this section of my thesis I have not aimed to categorise specific eschatological ‘heresies’ relating to resurrection and assign them to a specific archaeological signature, that task is both beyond the scope of this thesis, and probably not a particularly useful thing to do. Rather I have aimed to examine shared anxieties on a broad scale. With that in mind, I will move on to discussing what the texts and artistic sources can tell us about Medieval Byzantine mortuary practice and eschatological belief, dividing the next section of the text into beliefs I see as ready-to-hand

conceptual elements of eschatology and the metaphors by which they were understood, followed by more physical ready-to-hand practices, funerals, deposition and burial clubs.

3.2.4 What do we know? Ready-to-hand belief