Reading with the Evangelists: Portrait, Gesture, and Interpretation in the Byzantine Gospel Book

Justin Willson

The evangelist portraits in Stavronikita MS 43 (late tenth century) hold a central place in Middle Byzantine Gospel book illumination, but their relation to a nearly identical contemporary set of evangelist portraits in Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Palatini greci 220 has been little studied. The present study focuses on the gestures of the four authors, which are identical in the two manuscripts, alongside overlooked marginal scholia and a supplementary commentary in the Vatican Gospel book. I suggest that the miniatures ought to be interpreted as integral to the rhetorical content of the Gospel book rather than as entities appended to a finished text. Exploring what it means to view these images as portraits that were read “with,” this essay shows that reading habits were refracted through author portraits and cast light on questions concerning models and copies, and the ever-evolving relationship between writer and reader.

Studies in Iconography Volume 41 2020 Published under the auspices of the Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University by Medieval Institute Publications Western Michigan University Kalamazoo Copyright 2020 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University Studies in Iconography is supported and administered by the Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University. For further details see <http://ima.princeton.edu>. ISSN 0148-1029 Composed by Kathy Bond Borie Cover photo: Lessines, Veil Rentier, ca. 1275. Brussels, KBR, MS 1175, fol. 116v. (Photo: Royal Library of Belgium.) Table of Contents Articles Margaret Goehring. Signs of the City: Seigniorial Power and Vernacular Visual Culture in Two Northern French Rent-Books 1 Mati Meyer. The Rhetoric of Aphrodite in the Byzantine Illuminated Book 30 Justin Willson. Reading with the Evangelists: Portrait, Gesture, and Interpretation in the Byzantine Gospel Book 67 David M. Freidenreich and Véronique Plesch. “What is That to Us?”: The Eucharistic Liturgy and the Enemies of Christ in the Beam of the Passion 104 Renana Bartal. Text, Textile, Blood: Mary under the Cross in an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 410) 131 Louise Marshall. St. Roch and the Angel in Renaissance Art 165 Reviews Sherry C. M. Lindquist and Asa Simon Mittman. Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders. By Thomas E. A. Dale Diane J. Reilly. The Cistercian Reform and the Art of the Book in Twelfth-Century France. By James D’Emilio Denise Borlée and Laurence Terrier Aliferis, eds. Les modèles dans l’art du Moyen Âge (XIIe–XVe siècles). Actes du colloque. Modèles supposés, modèles repérés: leurs usages dans l’art gothique, Université de Genève (3–5 November 2016) = Models in the Art of the Middle Ages (12th–15th Centuries). Conference Proceedings. Supposed Models, Identified Models: Their Uses in Gothic Art, University of Geneva (3–5 November 2016). By Sonja Drimmer 212 216 219 Philippe Despoix and Jillian Tomm, eds. Raymond Klibansky and the Warburg Library Network: Intellectual Peregrinations from Hamburg to London and Montreal. By Karen Lang 222 Rachel Moss, Felicity O’Mahony and Jane Maxwell, eds. An Insular Odyssey: Manuscript Culture in Early Christian Ireland and Beyond. By Carol Neuman de Vegvar 225 Renana Bartal. Gender, Piety, and Production in Fourteenth-Century English Apocalypse Manuscripts; and Richard K. Emmerson. Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts. By Alexa Sand 229 Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Robert Suckale, and Gude Suckale-Redlefsen, eds. Painting the Page in the Age of Print. By Larry Silver and Debra Cashion 235 Alessia Bauer, Elise Kleivane, and Terje Spurkland, eds. Epigraphy in an Intermedial Context. By Nancy L. Wicker 241 Notes on Contributors 245 Reading with the Evangelists: Portrait, Gesture, and Interpretation in the Byzantine Gospel Book Justin Willson The evangelist portraits in Stavronikita MS 43 (late tenth century) hold a central place in Middle Byzantine Gospel book illumination, but their relation to a nearly identical contemporary set of evangelist portraits in Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Palatini greci 220 has been little studied. The present study focuses on the gestures of the four authors, which are identical in the two manuscripts, alongside overlooked marginal scholia and a supplementary commentary in the Vatican Gospel book. I suggest that the miniatures ought to be interpreted as integral to the rhetorical content of the Gospel book rather than as entities appended to a finished text. Exploring what it means to view these images as portraits that were read “with,” this essay shows that reading habits were refracted through author portraits and that they cast light on questions concerning models and copies, and the ever-evolving relationship between writer and reader. G OSPEL BOOK MINIATURES OF the four evangelists constitute a large corpus in the medieval world. Typically referred to as “author portraits,”1 these images have seldom been studied in relation to the texts alongside which they appear, and are often treated almost as monadic entities free of the lexical environment they inhabit.2 In this essay, I seek to integrate depictions of the evangelists more fully with the text world that they inhabit. My focus will be on an early tenth-century Gospel book, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Palatini greci 220, and a corresponding set of miniatures in the late tenth-century Gospel book Stavronikita MS 43. In the course of my discussion, I will introduce several themes. First, I will draw attention to the marginal scholia and a supplementary commentary in the Vatican manuscript. From the tenth century on, such texts were a common feature of the Greek Gospel book, but they have remained a relatively neglected area of study.3 As I will argue below, it is to these texts that one may look to resolve questions concerning the relation between model and copy, and, at a more theoretical level, the way images performed at the boundary between art history and literary study. Second, I will propose that the figure of the reader is crucial to understanding evangelist portraiture. It is sometimes assumed that medieval readers are irrecoverable, but that may be a misleading characterization of the situation.4 Certainly, it is difficult to re-create an experience as complex and difficult to theorize as the moment of reading. Moreover, one must be cautious about generalizing from any contemporary experience to the experience of a medieval reader. And yet there may be similarities, and medieval readers may at least be partially recoverable through marginal scholia. The reason for this is that marginal commentators can be conceived as what I will term “senior readers,” whose writing positions them as both readers of the text, and interlocutors with both the author and the actual reader of that same text. The readers that they are, and the readers with whom they talk and whose habits of reading they actively inhabit, allow us to glimpse how an interpretive community could have looked at a gesturing author—an evangelist—in the moment of reading.5 68 JUSTIN WILLSON This brings me to my third theme, namely that of gesture, by which I mean an expressive summary of an author as she/he emerges at the moment of understanding discourse.6 Authors here are understood as distinct from the biographical writers who provide just one of the conditions, and not necessarily the most important one, for the dialogue in which the author emerges. Authors are the i products of criticism, which, as Georgio Agamben explains, “is the reduction of works to the sphere of pure gesture,” a way of “resolv[ing] the work’s intention into a gesture (or into a constellation of gestures).”7 As such, critics are that special class of readers who hold the touchstones that transmute literature into an author’s “speechless dwelling in language.”8 Isolating an author’s gestures, a critic sets an initial boundary around the author’s capacity for verbal expression. This definition of gesture stands in contrast to the far weaker (“thinner”) sense of that term, when it is understood as a visual aid performed alongside a verbal sign. In the twentieth century, structuralists like François Garnier, working from a more positivistic tradition of philosophy, argued that gesture could be mapped out as a universal “language.” As such, gesture, for Garnier, simply conveys more information, serving as an epiphenomenon that shadows words in another semiotic rehearsal.9 However, in the “thick” sense introduced above, gesture captures how a speaker, or writer, reveals him- or herself, despite themselves, from behind language. Gesture in this sense allows the reader or interlocutor to gaze upon discourse from behind language, as if she were seeing the tapestry of an expressive capacity from the other side. Gesture then becomes a key for understanding the range of discourse that a writer employs. These three themes enable us to pose a few questions to the Byzantine Gospel book. Did Gospel book commentators isolate the gestural forms of the evangelists in the Gospel text? Did painters, in turn, show those forms in the evangelist portrait? If painters did show these gestures, then what does that suggest for how we should understand the expressive power of this iconography for a reader of the Gospel book? Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Palatini greci 220 (Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark) Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Palatini greci 220 offers some answers to the questions just raised (Figs. 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9).10 This Gospel book, a tetraevangelium, was first published by Kurt Weitzmann in 1933.11 Likely on the account of the volume’s problematic codicology (see below), Weitzmann argued that the miniatures of the four evangelists were later additions to the manuscript, which is known to date to the early tenth century. Enrica Follieri subsequently demonstrated that the script, a minuscola quadrata inclinata, is comparable to that found in a manuscript of Aristotle (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urbinati greci 15) made around 900 for the scholar Arethas.12 Probably, then, the miniatures date to the same time as the text and were original to the manuscript. The codex, which measures 243 mm × 177 mm, is typical of larger-format luxury books produced in the Byzantine capital at this time. In its present arrangement, the Gospel book contains Eusebios’s Letter to Carpian and his canon tables, the kephalia (list of chapters) to each Gospel, marginal scholia which wrap around the text of each Gospel (see Fig. 9), and Eusebios’s Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum, appended to the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Eusebios’s Letter and the canon tables are framed by columns and arches decorated with fish, water birds and flowering bushes. The entire series of tables is introduced by an ornate headpiece. In addition, each Gospel begins with an ornamental header and a READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 69 historiated initial (see Fig. 9). The color palette of the painting is marked by deep maroons, soft greys, dark blues and somber olives. Unfortunately, because of the common problem of flaking in Byzantine manuscripts, the painting is poorly preserved. While the provenance of the codex remains uncertain, its scholarly apparatus may point to an atelier in the capital working for a major monastery. As noted above, the codicology of the manuscript presents some problems, because its folios, especially those toward the beginning, were reshuffled during a rebinding. In their present position, Matthew’s kephalia (fols. 10r–11r) and portrait (fol. 13r) appear before the headpiece (fol. 1r), Eusebios’s letter (fols. 1v–3v), and the canon tables (fols. 3v–7r). It is likely, however, that each of the evangelist portraits was originally bound together with its kephalia in short gatherings before the texts of its Gospels. In the case of Mark’s Gospel, for example, the Gospel text begins on fol. 100r with a quaternion, before which is a short gathering of a bifolio, fols. 97–98, and the singleton fol. 99, preceded by a stub between fols. 96 and 97. Thus, the reader moving through the gathering in sequence would encounter the following elements: blank (97r); kephalia (97v–98r); blank (98v); portrait (99r); blank (99v); Gospel text (100r). Separated by one page from the Gospel text, the evangelist portraits were thus originally probably not part of a single opening including the Gospel text. Nonetheless, because the marginal and supplementary commentators constantly refer to the Gospels’ authors, the evangelists were never far from the reader’s understanding of the Gospel text. Instead, I suggest, the portraits showing them writing their books would have been experienced as very close to the text—perhaps not physically, but almost certainly conceptually. Weitzmann also argued that the Vatican painter copied the evangelist portraits found in the far more famous and better preserved, mid- to late tenth-century Gospel book, Stavronikita MS 43 (Figs. 2, 4, 6, 8).13 More recently, the lone surviving portrait of Matthew in the “Vangelo di Dionisio,” Messina, Biblioteca Regionale Universitaria, F. V. 18, which matches closely the Vatican and Stavronikita Matthew, has been brought into the discussion by Lidia Perria and Antonio Iacobini. Perria and Iacobini have argued, on the evidence of paleography, that the Messina manuscript, which belongs to a group of contemporary “small format” (piccolo formato) codices, dates to the first decades of the tenth century and provided models (modelli) for the Stavronikita manuscript, thus throwing into doubt Weitzmann’s conclusions.14 This essay supports the work of Perria and Iacobini with the evidence of the Vatican commentary. Rather than the Vatican painter copying the Stavronikita miniatures, the Stavronikita painter probably looked to a group of early tenth-century miniatures that included the larger-format Vatican manuscript. Indeed, the evangelists’ poses in the Vatican and Stavronikita Gospel books, as well as their accompanying furniture and paraphernalia (although not their backgrounds) compare very closely. In both manuscripts, the painter shows Matthew as middle aged and seated at a desk, his index finger perched on his lips and a vessel at his side. John, the eldest of the four, is seated holding three fingers to his lips with a cylindrical scroll box deposited at his feet. Luke, the youngest of the four, leans forward to dip a pen into an inkwell as he peers at a scroll, cradling a box of loose parchment in his lap. Mark, the second youngest, is shown seated before a codex, the straps of which are draped over the edge of his podium. As previously noted, the Vatican manuscript also includes several extensive commentaries. In the margins of the Gospels is a running commentary that is written in an early tenth-century hand (Fig. 9).15 Compiled by an anonymous scribe, the commentary consists of familiar remarks from the Church Fathers, whose excerpted writings appear in many Middle Byzantine Gospel books.16 Most of the sources derive from the exegetical writings of Origen (184–253), a series of homilies 70 JUSTIN WILLSON by John Chrysostom (349–407), and a commentary on Luke attributed to Titus of Bostra (d. 378). Victor of Antioch, who wrote a catena on Mark in the sixth century, and who commonly appears in Greek Gospel book commentary, does not feature among the scribe’s sources, perhaps because he was not known to him.17 On the whole, the commentary in Mark is the shortest, beginning only at chapter 9 and thinning out rather quickly. In the other three Gospels, the commentary begins at chapter 1—always among the most heavily annotated sections, since it is there that the evangelists deal with Christ’s birth. The commentary runs through the final chapters. These are also heavily annotated, as they discuss Christ’s Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. Unlike some Gospel books, in which the scribe labels the remarks from the Church Fathers under the heading of their name, the Vatican scribe never identifies his sources, preferring to weave the Church Father into his own voice.18 Thus, the commentator emerges as the sole voice mediating the Gospel text. Although most often he spends his time trying to elucidate the gnomic teachings of Christ, occasionally he turns to discuss the evangelists. It is these remarks that are the most important for understanding the author portraiture in the Vatican manuscript. The supplementary commentary appended to Matthew’s Gospel in the Vatican manuscript was copied by the same scribe who wrote the Gospel text.19 Both texts are written in minuscola quadrata ad asse obliquo, according to the classification of Follieri.20 This rare text is only found in this manuscript and is attributed by the scribe to the fourth-century Church Father, Eusebios of Caesarea. In scholarship it is known as the Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum.21 In its present form, the commentary is greatly truncated. It consists solely of a lengthy commentary on Matthew, the first Gospel, which probably explains why it has been positioned after Matthew’s Gospel. In it, Eusebios tries to resolve potential misunderstandings arising from inconsistencies between Matthew and the other three evangelists. Written in a “question and answer” format,22 the commentator poses the reader a question. This is often a variation on the following theme: why does this evangelist say one thing while another evangelist says something else? The commentator then proceeds to answer his own question, hopefully to the reader’s satisfaction. The part played by the evangelist in this giveand-take between reader and commentator can be seen when one turns first to Matthew’s Gospel, and then, in turn, to the other three. For example, at the account of Christ’s Transfiguration in Matthew’s Gospel, the commentator asks why the evangelist says that Christ shone “like the sun” when he should have used some other expression: “Tell me, evangelist, if He shone above the sun, do you then say that He shone like the sun?” “yes,” [replies Matthew], “you should know that I wished to talk about the light [of Christ’s Transfiguration] but that I had neither another star nor another image which rules over the stars. And so I put it like this in order that my words might not be taken cheaply.” [Εἰπέ μοι οὖν, εὐαγγελιστὰ, ὑπὲρ τὸν ἥλιον ἔλαμψε, καὶ σὺ λέγεις ὡς ὁ ἥλιος; Ναί· γνώριμόν σοι θέλω ποιῆσαι τὸ φῶς· οὐκ ἔχω ἄλλο ἄστρον· οὐκ ἔχω ἄλλην εἰκόνα, τὴν ἐν τοῖς ἄστροις βασιλεύουσαν· ταύτην εἶπον ἵνα μὴ τῇ εὐτελείᾳ τῆς λέξεως ἐναπομείνῃς.] (fol. 38r/PG 106, cols. 1129D–1132A).23 Forcing Matthew to clarify his metaphor, the commentator turns a reading of the Gospel into a conversation with the writer Matthew. Compelled to articulate the reasoning behind his choice of words, Matthew must reenter his Gospel. Arriving there, he pleads to be taken fairly given the restrictions READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 71 of language. In the process, the writer–reader relationship becomes a dialogue in which the commentator occupies the character of the evangelist. This is close to the form of rhetorical practice known as “speech in character” or ethopoiea. In ethopoiea a character’s inner thoughts were expressed by a fictional reader. Commonly taught in Byzantine schools, ethopoiea was a familiar tool in the repertoire of scholarly readers.24 In this case, the commentator’s role-play allows him to inhabit the evangelist writing the Gospel; but it also allows him to inhabit the reader of the Gospels. Already the commentator was carrying on a dialogue with the reader, transforming the reader’s engagement with the Gospel text into a conversation with him, the commentator. When the commentator engages Matthew in dialogue, what emerges is a situation where he occupies a transitive identity. Neither writer nor reader is alone in his or her own world, for each is swept up in a discussion with the other through the commentator in his marginal dialogue. Matthew begs to be taken fairly by the reader, while the reader wonders what Matthew could have meant. It is the potential for misunderstanding, then, that opens the door to the commentator. Stepping into the margin, he transforms writerly creativity and readerly wonder into understanding, through the imagining of an author. The commentator’s verbal labor conceives the evangelist, for Matthew only emerges as an individual writer with a particular literary character in the commentary. It is there that he is shaped by a series of readerly interventions in his Gospel text. The price of the understanding that the commentator forges between Matthew and his reader is a partial erasure of each nodal point of individuality. Matthew and his reader are beholden to one another to be what they are, namely, an evangelist who speaks truthfully, and a reader who reads sensitively. Both are inhabited by the commentator, whose own act of writing transgresses the textual fault line between the writer-evangelist, who ostensibly stands at the beginning of the Gospel book as a producer, and the Gospel book reader, who appears to stand at its end as the one for whom it was written and who completes it with his or her understanding of it. And yet, that beginning and end can never be definitively established, for all the while the commentator is addressing the text with an endless barrage of questions, he is recasting it through his interpretive posture. In what appears to be merely a description of what the text is doing (Matthew is obviously using a metaphor when he compares Christ to the sun), the commentator is already interpreting the Gospel text (and yet he must mean something other than what his metaphor seems to be saying). As such, the commentator circumscribes the text. And yet he does so in a dialogical relation, which, paradoxically, means that the text remains forever open, available to further appeals and revisitings and imaginative recastings. Speaking both as the evangelist Matthew, whom he paraphrases and then ventriloquizes, and the reader, whose mind he contours when he asks and fields the questions that he believes the reader wishes to ask and to know the answers to, the commentator alternatively embodies the writer and reader. In so doing, the commentator moves between the past tense of Matthew’s act of writing and the present tense of the reader’s act of reading. In the course of reading, Matthew ceases to be simply a reified historical character. Matthew is not just the writer who wrote down his Gospel and brought it into being as its one-time cause. He is also a character in the drama of the reading of his Gospel. Matthew’s reappearance in the margin is integral to an understanding of his Gospel each time it is read. In this sense, Matthew, the author, is an eminently plastic figure molded by the commentator who is asking the questions. Matthew takes on a voice and a literary bent, based on how the commentator views him in his language. Matthew, then, is a critical tool in the hand of the commentator. This point is crucial, for being a 72 JUSTIN WILLSON malleable heuristic is what makes him an author. What this means for how the painter of Matthew’s author portrait portrays him can be seen by looking at his gesture alongside the particular remarks the commentator makes about him. In his conversation with Matthew at the Transfiguration, the commentator characterizes the evangelist as speaking obscurely. Notably, this is also how the painter portrays the evangelist in his portrait (Figs. 1, 2). Speaking of Matthew’s gesture in Stavronikita MS 43, André Grabar observed that it was adapted from depictions of the Hellenic god Harpocrates.25 Grabar’s label for this gesture is the signum harpocraticum, the “sign of Harpocrates.” Harpocrates, as he notes, was typically shown in Greco-Roman art with his index finger perched at his lips. While in ancient Egypt this gesture translated a hieroglyph for children (Harpocrates was typically shown as a young boy), Greek authors as early as Plutarch (45–125 CE) and as late as the tenth-century compiler of the Souda, interpreted this gesture as a sign of secrecy and silence.26 Nonetheless, while the gesture has a continuous legacy in Eastern Mediterranean art that stretches back to classical Greek and Roman sources,27 its meaning could vary. In some instances the gesture clearly means “affliction,”28 while in others it means that the figure is fortunate to have witnessed a miraculous event.29 In still other cases, it may connote “dismay, doubt, or thought.”30 All this supports Leslie Brubaker’s warning that “the choreography of gesture did not necessarily assign a single meaning to a particular move,” for “the same gesture could have different implications.”31 And yet, in the Vatican Gospel book silence and secrecy are exactly what the commentator indicates that this gesture means. Admittedly, this is not an obvious conclusion to draw for an evangelist, who is supposed to proclaim the good news of salvation and to be anything but reticent. However, this simply shows how mutable the evangelists were as authors. The marginal commentator broaches Matthew’s secrecy by drawing attention to the evangelist’s choice of names for his “book” (biblos). Matthew, he says, took care when naming his work: The book [biblos] is called an euangelion because it reveals the banishment of [eternal] punishment and proclaims the kingdom of heaven. Why does he call this a book of birth [i.e., genealogy] that contains many other things and not simply the birth of Christ? Because this is the chapter that deals with the [entire divine] economy. [Εὐαγγέλιον καλεῖται ἡ βίβλος, ὅτι κολάσεως δεικνύει ἀναὶρεσιν, καὶ οὐρανῶν βασιλείαν επαγγέλλεται· βίβλον γενέσεως ταύτην καλεῖ καί παρέχουσαν ἄλλα πολλὰ καὶ οὐ τὴν Χριστοῦ μόνον γένησιν· διότι τὸ κεφάλαιον τῆς οἰκονομίας τοῦτό ἐστιν.] (fol. 13r/PG 106, col. 1077A).32 This remark is what German biblical scholarship called the “definition” (Definition) of the Gospel, since it declares that Matthew’s “book” is “good news.”33 While scribes sometimes placed the definition over the beginning of Matthew’s first chapter, as a sort of heading for the entire Gospel book, the marginal commentator weaves it into his commentary. This suggests its particular relevance for Matthew’s genealogy of Christ. The definition invites readers to reflect on the type of book Matthew is writing. This is important, because the illuminator also invites the reader to reflect on the nature of Matthew’s book; hence he draws attention to the word “biblos” twice. The reader first encounters this word in Matthew’s portrait, at the top of the parchment page that he drafts on his desk (Fig. 1). Here, in its first appearance, the word “biblos” is linked to the evangelist Matthew who sets the Gospel on its course. Second, the reader encounters this word in the depiction of the Gospel text itself. READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 73 The opening word of Matthew’s Gospel is seen to be “Biblos.” The illuminator sets off this word with a historiated letter “B” (see Fig. 9). The repetition of the word “biblos” effectively erodes the diegetic line between the respective textual spaces of the writer and reader. Their worlds are no longer mutually exclusive. Writer and reader are brought together through the commentator, who trespasses into both of their worlds. In giving pause to the reader, the commentator nudges the reader to question the very same sentence that gave the evangelist pause. In essence, the commentator invites the reader to adopt Matthew’s own writerly disposition, to mimic his silent readerly understanding. Matthew could slip into the reader’s world through the commentator and become like the reader when he made a cameo appearance in the margin and interpreted his own words as the reader was doing. In turn, the reader could depart from the text with the commentator’s whisper in his ear and become like the evangelist when he parodied his literary persona. Writer and reader thus emerge as alike to one another through the act of interpretation. Exactly what the reader comes to understand can be gleaned from further passages in the commentary. At verse three, the commentator asks why Matthew included the illicit (and victimizing) intercourse of Judah with his daughter-in-law Tamar in Christ’s genealogy: Why has he included the illicit intercourse of Judah and Tamar? Because the evangelist is marveling [thaumazôn] and showing God’s benevolence, because He did not deem it unworthy to have such as His own. [Διὰ τί μέμνηται τῆς παρανόμου μίξεως τοῦ Ἰούδα καὶ τῆς Θάμαρ; Θαυμάζων ὁ εὐαγγελιστὴς καὶ τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ δεικνὺς φιλανθρωπίαν, ὅτι οὐκ ἀπηξίωσε τοιούτους ἔχειν συγγενεῖς.] (fol. 13r/PG 106, col. 1077A). A slightly later commentator will ask, “What are you doing, man, reminding us of a story which has illicit intercourse!” (τί ποίεις ἀνθρωπέ ἱστορίας ῆμας ἀναμιμνήσκων παρανόμον μίξιν ἐχούσης).34 As the Vatican commentator explains, Matthew intends for this passage to be read as an allegory of salvation. Eusebios draws a similar conclusion in his supplementary commentary Ad Stephanos. Reminding readers that Matthew is full of wonder (thaumasios), he says that the evangelist filled his Gospel with veiled meanings (ta ainigmata). Consequently, the reader ought not to jump to conclusions. Matthew, he ventures to assert, wishes to prefigure with Tamar how the Old Dispensation becomes the New (fol. 74r/Ad Stephanos, 7, 2). Elsewhere, Eusebios says that Matthew might seem to provide Christ’s genealogy “in vain” (matên), since he traces his lineage through Joseph (fol. 61r/ Ad Stephanos, 1, 1). Matthew does this, Eusebios explains, because Christ was “silent” (siôpasthai) about certain teachings. Only his disciples were initiated (emustagôgei) into these truths, and they were instructed to tell no one (mêdeni legein). [T]he miracle of His birth was only one such thing about which He (Christ) decided to keep especially silent [malista … sesigêsthai]. With few exceptions, no one at the time of His birth knew anything about it. [Ἓν δὴ οὖν μάλιστα τῶν σεσιγῆσθαι δεδογμένων, τὸ κατὰ τὴν γένεσιν αὐτοῦ θαῦμα ἦν· οὐδενὸς τῶν καθ’ ὃν ἐνηνθρώπασε χρόνον, ὀλίγων ἐκτός, τοῦτου γνῶσιν κεκτημένου.] (fol. 61r/Ad Stephanos, 1, 2). 74 JUSTIN WILLSON The commentators suggest that Matthew was keeping Christ’s birth a secret. Matthew’s secrecy makes sense within his historical context. Matthew was an apostle. Consequently, he was among the first witnesses to Christ’s life. As the marginal commentator observes, Matthew wrote down his Gospel before the other three evangelists; I shall return to this point below. Aware that he was telling a truly remarkable story, Matthew wrote down his Gospel with premeditated caution. In his genealogy, he meant simply to provide an ancestry for Christ that Christ’s contemporaries would accept, given their custom of tracing descent through the father. In turn, it is necessary for readers to approach Matthew’s Gospel cautiously, because the evangelist is not giving them the whole story. Christ’s Incarnation will only be fully set forth by later witnesses. Opening the Gospel book and seeing Matthew’s portrait, the reader encounters an author whose gesture says that he hides truths that the reader will only discover upon reading further. Matthew’s gesture thus does two things. At an initial level, it provides readers with an interpretive framework within which to understand Matthew. It tells them that they are dealing with a writer who conceals a mystery behind a public front: they must read on to get the full story. Second, it gently initiates readers into a way of understanding Christ that leaves language behind. When the commentator invites the reader to reflect on the conceptual and social limitations of words, Matthew’s gesture becomes the reader’s own. The reader comes to occupy the evangelist and apostle’s own speechless way of dwelling in language. A related interpretive dynamic informs John’s portrait (Figs. 3, 4). According to the commentator, John, by contrast with Matthew, is the articulate evangelist, the example par excellence of a speaker who is forthright. At the beginning of John’s Gospel, the commentator asks: Why does he begin with theology? So that by coming after the other evangelists’ description of His birth according to the flesh, men might not think that Christ was a mere man. So, this one [John] did not overlook the [divine] economy [i.e., Christ’s birth according to the flesh], nor did those [the other evangelists], when they speak of the flesh, overlook [His] divine generation. [Διὰ τί ἀπὸ θεολογίας ἤρξατο; Ἵνα μὴ τῇ τῶν ἄλλων εὐαγγελιστῶν κατὰ σάρκα γεννήσει ἀκολουθῶν, νομίσωσι τὸν Χριστὸν οἱ ἄνθρωποι ψιλὸν ἄνθρωπον· ἀλλ᾿ οὖν οὐδὲ οὗτος τῆς οἰκονομίας ἠμέλησεν· ἀλλ᾿ οὐδὲ ἐκεῖνοι τὰ κατὰ σάρκα λέγοντες, τῆς θείας γεννήσεως ἠμέλησαν.] (fol. 186r/PG 106, col. 1217C). The commentator here alludes to Matthew and Luke’s birth narratives (Mark does not offer a birth narrative). He returns to the language of the “divine economy” of Chrysostom’s definition. In the process, he casts John as a corrective to an overly anthropomorphic reading of Christ. Luke and Matthew did not overlook Christ’s divine birth in dealing with his human ancestry, because they knew that John would deal with Christ’s relation to the godhead. Consequently, the commentator calls attention to John’s way of introducing this crucial information. John opens his Gospel, writing, “In the beginning was the Word [Logos]” (John 1:1). Explaining what John means by “Logos,” the commentator says: READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 75 He calls Him (Christ) the “Logos,” so that we do not think about a human birth liable to suffering, and on account of mentioning [the things] relating to the Father. [Λόγον δὲ αὐτὸν καλεῖ, ἵνα μὴ παθητὴν τὴν γέννησιν ὑπολάβωμεν, καὶ διὰ τὸ ἀπαγγεῖλαι τὰ τοῦ Πατρός.] (fol. 186r/PG 106, col. 1217C). Inquiring into John’s grammar in the opening verse of his Gospel, the commentator then asks: Why does he say “Logos” after the addition of the article [meta tês tou arthrou prosthêkês]? So that it might be separated from the other logoi. For He is impassive by nature and is God. Saying that God is God (for “The Logos,” he says, “was God”), he manifests that He is not half a god, since the Son is not a lesser god. [Διὰ τί Λόγον εἶπεν μετὰ τῆς τοῦ ἄρθρου προσθήκης; Ὅπως τῶν λοιπῶν λόγων χωρίσῃ· οὐσίᾳ γὰρ ἀπαθὴς οὗτος καὶ Θεός. Ὅτι Θεὸν καὶ Θεὸν εἰπὼν (καὶ γὰρ, Θεὸς, φησὶν, ἦν ὁ Λόγος), οὐκ ἐμφαίνει τι μέσον τὴς θεότητος· ἐπειδὴ οὐχ ἧττον Θεὸς ὁ Υἱός.] (fol. 186r/PG 106, col. 1217D). The commentator here draws the reader’s attention to John’s way of placing “Logos” at the end of his opening sentence. He implies that the position of this word conveys the absolute divinity of the Son of God. Repeating the language of the “divine economy” that he first introduces by way of Chrysostom’s definition, the commentator makes it clear that John guards against a misguided interpretation of Matthew’s genealogy even at the level of his carefully worded grammar. In his supplementary commentary Ad Marinum, Eusebios similarly characterizes John as the evangelist who clarifies Matthew’s Gospel. At the Resurrection, when the three Marys visit Christ’s tomb, Eusebios asks why John says that the Magdalene visited the sepulcher “on the first day of the week,” while Matthew says that she visited it “late” on the Sabbath (i.e., early Saturday evening) (John 20:1; Matt. 28:1). Clearly, this hour was called the Sabbath “evening” by the one who translated the text, because Matthew transmitted his Gospel in Hebrew, and the one who translated it into the language of the Greeks called the hour when the light of dawn was near the Lord’s day “the Sabbath evening.” Hence, it is almost the same time expression, or it is very close to [the same time] that is noted by the evangelists under different forms. Therefore, there is no difference between Matthew, who says, “On the evening of the Sabbath, when the light of dawn was near the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb,” and John who says, “Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.” One and the same time is indicated by different words; for while Matthew has “the evening” in order to indicate a rather late hour, in advance of the night, since he says that it was in the morning, the one who came along [i.e., John] and interpreted [diermêneuôn] him, adds “when it was still dark,” so that no one should suppose he meant dawn. 76 JUSTIN WILLSON [Λέλεκται δὲ ὀψὲ τοῦ σαββάτου παρὰ τοῦ ἑρμηνεύσαντος τὴν γραφήν· ὁ μὲν γὰρ εὐαγγελιστὴς Ματθαῖος ἑβραίδι γλώττῃ παρέδωκε τὸ εὐαγγέλιον· ὁ δὲ ἐπὶ τὴν ἑλλήνων φωνὴν μεταβαλὼν αὐτὸ, τὴν ἐπιφωσκοῦσαν ὥραν εἰς τὴν κυριακὴν ἡμέραν, ὀψὲ σαββάτων προσεῖπεν· ὥστε τὸν αὐτὸν σχεδὸν νοεῖσθαι καιρόν, ἢ τὸν σφόδρα ἐγγὺς παρὰ τοῖς εὐαγγελισταῖς διαφόροις ὀνόμασι τετηρημένον· μηδέν τε διαφέρειν Ματθαῖον εἰρηκότα· Ὀψὲ δὲ σαββάτων τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ εἰς μίαν σαββάτων ἦλθε Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ καὶ ἡ ἄλλη Μαρία θεωρῆσαι τὸν τάφον, Ἰωάννου φήσαντος· τῇ δὲ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων ἔρχεται Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ πρωὶ εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον, ἔτι οὔσης σκοτίας· πλατυκῶς γὰρ ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν δηλοῦσι χρόνον διαφόροις ῥήμασι· ὁ μὲν Ματθαῖος ὀψὲ, ἀντὶ τοῦ βράδιον καὶ ὀψὲ τῆς νυκτὸς· ὀνομάσας πρωὶ ὁ διερμηνεύων ἐπήγαγε τὸ σκοτίας οὔσης, ἵνα μή τις τὸν ὄρθρον λέγειν αὐτὸν ὑπολάβοι.] (fol. 89v/Ad Marinum 2, 1). Eusebios was of the opinion that John wrote down his Gospel after Matthew and that he did so with an eye toward avoiding any misunderstanding that might arise from the translation of Matthew’s Gospel into Greek. John knew that readers could be tripped up by poor turns of phrase, and he kept in mind the various troublesome passages in Matthew’s Gospel. John’s willingness and ability to clarify textual matters were completely in character. As Eusebios says elsewhere in his writings, it was only after many years of preaching that John set down in writing everything that he had witnessed.35 John was a teacher of the crowds. He was the apostle who knew how to present the Gospel clearly so as to strengthen faith. Only after the other evangelists had written down their Gospels did he set down his own Gospel text. Tellingly, this is the very same apostle whom the painter shows in his author portrait of John (see Figs. 3, 4). The painter depicts John as an older man, with grey hair and a weathered face. John resembles a seasoned orator with three fingers gently draped across his beard and lips. As the Roman teacher of rhetoric, Quintilian (ca. 35–96), says, jokingly, Greek orators make “all sorts of movements of fingers and lips when preparing to speak.”36 And yet John is not quite the classical orator that his Roman garb might initially suggest. While classical orators were taught to wrap their arms in their sleeves, to hamper needless gesticulations, John does not restrain his arms. Rather, John is an orator for the masses. He has travelled far from the thoroughfares of an elite, urban center to spread his message. He is shown having just removed a scroll from the open scroll box below him. Scrolls were a common way that Byzantine painters displayed discourse that was oral rather than written. John’s gesture says that he is an itinerant preacher accustomed to spreading the Gospel by word of mouth. The evangelist’s hand and scroll tell readers that his Gospel can be read for clarity, as written for the public. In short, if Matthew is the mystical, secretive evangelist who couches teachings about salvation in obscure language and, more generally, arouses wonder except among the initiated, John is the demonstrative evangelist. John manifests the truth about Christ openly and brings about clarity of understanding with regard to the earlier Gospel witnesses.37 With Luke’s Gospel the commentator’s interest shifts to the world of scholarly practice and verbal flair. Luke is the evangelist who delivers an accurate, clean Gospel text. At the opening of his Gospel, the marginal commentator says: READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 77 Since many have attempted to give an account [of these events] in spite of coming to the writing of the Gospel without grace, [who cares] what the Gospel according to the Egyptians says, or the Gospel of the Twelve? They attempted to write a gospel, but [they did so] falsely under another’s name. But the evangelists did not attempt [to do this], and they discarded them [these spurious Gospels?] as unworthy because they wrote badly [mê kalôs]. For [the evangelists] wrote truthfully [alêthôs]. [Ἐπειδὴ πολλοὶ ἐπεχείρησαν ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησιν ἀντὶ τοῦ, ὅτι χωρὶς χαρίσματος ἧλθον εἰς τὴν ἀναγραφὴν τοῦ Εὐαγγελίου· τί οὖν ἐστιν ὃ λέγει; Τὸ ἐπιγεγραμμένον κατὰ Αἰγυπτίους Εὐαγγέλιον, καὶ τὸ ἐπιγεγραμμένον τῶν Δώδεκα Εὐαγγελίον ἀναγράψαντες ἐπεχείρησαν, ἀλλὰ ψευδῶς εἰς ἄλλων ὄνομα. Οἱ δὲ εὐαγγελισταὶ οὐκ ἐπεχείρησαν καὶ ἀτέλεστα κατέλιπον, διὰ τὸ μὴ καλῶς γράψαι· ἔγραψαν γὰρ ἀληθῶς.] (fol. 133r/PG 106, cols. 1177D–1180A). According to the commentator, the scriptural tradition had fallen prey to heretics by the time that Luke came along. Characterizing Luke as the graceful evangelist, he says that his pen would lead Paul to exclaim that he was praised (epainos) among the apostles. Luke’s transparency is illustrative of how he set the Gospel record straight so that it would not succumb to heretical tampering (fol. 133r/PG 106, col. 1180A after 2 Cor. 8:18). Telling of Luke’s transparency is his way of handling omissions in the earlier Gospels of Matthew and Mark. At the Crucifixion in Luke, the commentator says: Speaking up to the point where the thieves insult Him, Matthew and Mark pass over the rest of the story of the Cross. But, Luke, leaving out the previous events, which they have covered, relates what they left out, namely, the recognition of the first thief, beginning with the word that the Lord spoke to them, when he says, “Father, forgive them.” [Luke 23:34] [Ὅτι ὁ μὲν Ματθαῖς καὶ Μάρκος ἐπειγόμενοι πρὸς ἕτερα εἰπόντες ἕως οὗ ὠνείδιζον αὐτὸν οἱ λῃσταὶ, τὰ λοιπὰ τῆς ἱστορίας τῆς περὶ τὸν σταυρὸν παρέλιπον, Λουκᾶς δὲ ἀφέμενος τῶν προτέρων, ὡς παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις εἰρημένων, τὰ παραλειφθέντα ἐκείνοις, τουτέστι τὴν τοῦ ἑνὸς λῃστοῦ ἐπίγνωσιν ἱστορεῖ, ἀπὸ τῆς φωνῆς ἁρξάμενος ἤν ὁ Κύριος εἶπεν· Πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς.] (fol. 180r/PG 106, col. 1216C). As another commentator in a contemporary Gospel book explains, in even clearer terms: Luke alone of the evangelists makes an accurate text of the Gospel, and many things about which the others [i.e. the other evangelists] were silent [sesiôpêmenôn], he notes and brings out clearly; hence the prologue to his book promises precision. [Μόνος δὲ τῶν ἄλλων εὐαγγελιστῶν ἀκριβῶς ἐποιήσατο τὴν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου γραφὴν, καὶ πολλὰ τῶν τοῖς ἄλλοις σεσιωπημένων, οὗτος ἀπεμνημόνευσέ τε καὶ διεξῆλθεν ἀκριβῶς, διὸ καὶ τὸ προοίμιον τῆς εὐαγγελικῆς γραφῆς ἀκρίβειαν ἐπαγγέλλεται.] (Catenae, 2:6 lls. 14–17).38 78 JUSTIN WILLSON Luke, according to these commentators, fills in what the other evangelists left out. He notices where they are silent – an especially telling adjective in the case of Matthew – and provides the information that was omitted. In the order of composition, Luke comes after Matthew and Mark, and perhaps even after John, although his exact position is unclear.39 Luke’s authorial role is to put the Gospels on a scholarly footing capable of supporting study and withstanding scrutiny. It is this graceful, worthy evangelist that the reader discovers in Luke’s portrait (Figs. 5, 6). The painter portrays Luke leaning forward to dip his pen into an inkwell. The last word on the page shown in the codex nestled in his lap is the very word that the commentator elaborates at the opening of his Gospel—diêgêsis. This word, which comes at the end of the first clause in Luke’s prologue—“In as much as many have set out to compile a diêgêsis” (1:1)—can be translated as “narrative.”40 Given attention by the commentator, Luke’s prologue was understood as betraying his awareness of the complicated textual tradition besetting the Gospel book genre. Luke was seen as offering a narrative in the sense of a Gospel that brings coherence to the other Gospels. Thus, his Gospel offers an interpretive path through the Gospel book genre as a whole. Tellingly, Luke begins neither with Christ’s metaphysical origin in divinity (as does John), nor with his ancient origin in Israelite history (as does Matthew), but rather with the Annunciation to the Mother of God. It is this eminently punctual beginning, which locates the Incarnation in a particular historical moment, in a mother’s womb, that distinguishes his way of framing Christ’s life. The verbal testimonies that he consults and sifts in order to strike the right balance in his Gospel explain the scroll that he is given in his portrait. Its mellifluous curves echo his mellifluous pen, but they also bespeak his character as a redactor of the Gospel book genre. Showing Luke turned intently to these flowing texts, the painter conveys that he is deliberating about what to include in his Gospel. It is as the editor of the Gospel book genre that Luke is shown in his portrait. In sum, Luke’s gesture says that he comes after his predecessors in the synoptic Gospels. It also says that he is the eloquent evangelist who will smooth their rough edges, track down loose ends, and ensure that the Gospel book genre reads as a consistent, integrated literary story.41 Unfortunately, much less can be said with any certainty about Mark’s portrait (Figs. 7, 8). The lack of annotations in Mark’s Gospel may suggest a lack of readerly engagement with his Gospel. This apparent lack of involvement may in turn be suggested by the superior preservation of the leaves of both his book and his portrait, which are less damaged than those in the other three Gospels. Potential readerly indifference, indeed, seems to inflect the way the painter constructs his image. The painter simply shows Mark writing his book, employing none of the telltale gestures that characterize the other three evangelists. In short, Mark’s appearance lacks any definite understanding of him as a writer, because the interpretive community did not use his words to fashion a thick understanding of him as an author. Reading with the Evangelist Throughout the Vatican Gospel book, the reader catches glimpses of these four authors. John continues to keep an eye out for Matthew’s troubling silence, and Luke continues to clarify difficulties in Matthew and Mark. At John 4:46, for instance, the commentator asks: READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 79 Why does he [John] call him [i.e., a man who is petitioning Christ for a miracle] royal? Because he was descended from a royal line, which is to say, an office which is called royal. Some people think that he is the one mentioned in Matthew; but the other is shown to be [royal] [in a sense] beyond that one, not only because of the office, but also on account of faith. [Διὰ τί καλεῖ βασιλικόν; Ἤτοι ἀπὸ βασιλικῆς καταγόμενον σειρᾶς, εἴτε ἀξίωμά ἐστιν ἀρχῆς οὕτω καλούμενον. Τινὲς μὲν οὖν αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον νομίζουσι τὸν παρὰ τῷ Ματθαίῳ· δεικνυται δὲ ἕτερος ὢν παρ᾿ ἐκεῖνον, οὐκ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀξιώματος μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς πιστεως.] (fol. 192v/PG 106, col. 1236C). At the Crucifixion in Matthew 26:74, the commentator asks: How does Matthew say that Christ says to Peter, “Before the cock crows once, you will deny me” [Matt. 26:34], while Mark says that only when he denies Him, then the cock will crow for the first time [Mark 14:30]? What about the second or third time? How can both of these things be true? Because everyone knows that the cock would crow three or even four times. Mark is making it clear that the sounds themselves [of the crow] are not obligating him to make mention of them. And he says that Peter was so about to die on account of fear, that he did not remember what Christ said to him. Clarifying this, Luke says, “And Christ looked upon Peter [and Peter remembered the word of the Lord].” [Luke 22:61] [Πῶς ὁ μὲν Ματθαῖος φησὶν, ὅτι εἶπεν ὁ Χριστὸς τῷ Πέτρῳ, Πρὶν ἀλέκτορα φωνῆσαι, τρὶς ἀπαρνήσῃ με, ὁ δὲ Μάρκος λέγει ὅτι ὅτε μὲν ἅπαξ ἠρνήσατο, τότε πρῶτον ἐφώνησεν ὁ ἀλεκτρυὼν· ὅτε δὲ τρίτον, τό δεύτερον; πῶς οὖν εὑρεθήσονται ἀληθῆ ἀμφότερα. Ἐπειδή καθ’ ἑκάστην ἀγωγὴν καὶ τρίτον καὶ τέταρτον φωνεῖν εἴωθεν ὁ ἀλεκτρυών, δηλῶν ὁ Μάρκος ὅτι οὐδὲ ἡ φωνὴ αὐτὸν ἐπέσχεν, καὶ εἰς μνήμην ἤγαγε, τοῦτο φησὶν· τοσοῦτον δὲ ἦν ἀποτεθνηκὼς τῷ δέει, ὅτι οὐδὲ ἐμνήσθη τοῦ λεχθέντος· καὶ τοῦτο ὁ Λουκᾶς δηλῶν, ὅτι Ἐνέβλεψεν εἰς αὐτὸν ὁ Χριστὸς, εἶπεν.] (fol. 56v/PG 106, col. 1168CD).42 Keeping one eye on the evangelist and the other on the Gospel text, the commentator relies throughout the Gospels on an understanding of the respective historical writers. Constantly, the reader must bear in mind the particular writerly disposition of each evangelist. In turn, the painter presents that literary disposition in each evangelist portrait through a luminous individualizing gesture. Looking up from the page of the Gospel, the reader could follow the eyes of the commentator back to the evangelist who put the Gospel text into discourse. Such a way of reading “with” the author through the author portrait was ancient. The romanticizing, first-century BCE Roman author Vitruvius colorfully describes the pleasure of having the author at hand in the guise of his portrait (simulacrum) when he sits down to read.43 When passing a day with the poetry of Accius, Vitruvius says, he playfully converses with the author’s present image (figuram praesentem), and when, in the case of a weightier author like Cicero, or an obscurantist like Lucretius, he ponders over their words, he holds “secret conversation with them face to face (deliberantes secretos … coram).”44 All of these authors, although they are absent in body, come to “our 80 JUSTIN WILLSON counsels and disputations in their writings” and have more authority than if they were present.45 As Vitruvius understands author portraiture, it is like literature in that it is an absence that supplements a missing speaker. An author portrait is a makeshift proxy for a speaker who is not able to speak with his readers. Visual media like portraiture allow a writer to dwell with his words alongside his reader. A similar way of reading with authors was later adopted by Christians. In the fourth century, the bishop Synesios speaks of “lifting his eyes” from the book and “wrestling” with the sacred author. Such language effects a seamless transition from a reading of Scripture into a dialogue with a writer who is constructed imaginatively through vision.46 Synesios doesn’t say whether he is looking at an author portrait, but later writers, such as the iconophile John of Damascus (ca. 675–749), would say precisely that. Quoting a vita of John Chrysostom, John of Damascus says that the Church Father owned a likeness of the Apostle Paul, which he always kept beside his books: “Whenever he read through his epistles, he would gaze intently at it as if it were alive and bless it and direct all his thoughts towards it, imagining that he was there with him and was able to address him through his contemplation.”47 In a spirit very much like that of Vitruvius, John of Damascus describes Chrysostom as reading with the apostle’s image. Chrysostom gazes upon Paul’s image as he reads in order to engage the apostle as an imaginary interlocutor.48 When the Vatican commentator calls Matthew back into his book to explain his metaphor, he is thus conforming to a classical tradition of reading. The reader similarly would have been conforming to a classical tradition if he understood the evangelist, who was actively being invoked, to be the same author who was shown in the portrait. When the commentator posits, and fabricates, an author in order to provide interpretation with its required agent, he places the finished book under the category of a historical production in the continual present tense of reading and interpretation. In turn, the painter provides readers with an image of that author-agent.49 Evangelist portraiture, when it is seen this way, is a product of interpretation as much as a sedimentation of iconography resulting from the practice of painters copying models. Evangelist portraits are correlates of the Gospel texts in a very intimate sense. They point the way to how the sequence of words that follows may be read. As the reader’s companion, the author portrait travels with the reader into unanticipated territory. This is a feature of the reader’s relationship with the author, which is forged in the language of the Gospel book, language which is itself always unfolding in the mediation of commentary. The verbal bond that unites writer and reader is a shared enterprise. As a way of furnishing readers with a glimpse of who and what came before the page in front of them, evangelist portraiture provides readers with a context and pretext—an author and an act of writing— for the bond that they will form through the Gospels. In so doing, author portraiture allows the painter to reach around the transmission of Scripture. Painters escort readers to their authors’ sides, and vice versa—and not just once, at the beginning of the Gospels, but all along the way. An ongoing give-and-take links each page to the author portrait. At first nothing more than words lying wet on the drafts in the miniatures of the evangelists, every page of the actual manuscript transpires and evaporates from the medium of painting. Scripture thus perches like a lingering phrase on the tips of the writers’ pens, disappearing only moments before readers arrive at each page of actual text. Seen this way, the Gospel text itself seems more painterly, mute, and less dialogical than the words which readers are offered in the author portrait.50 When evangelist portraiture is approached through this lens, an altogether new conception of what it constitutes as a practice of book illumination emerges. Considering the commentators’ way READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 81 of characterizing each of the authors, the gestures and paraphernalia of the evangelists—their iconography—becomes far more interesting because it proves to be far more consequential than might be assumed.51 Evangelist portraiture has sometimes been described as nothing more than a stamp of authority or a reflection of contemporary scriptoria; or again, as a way of saying visually that the four authors comprise a multiplicity within a unity; or as a string of anecdotal asides about how Matthew was aged when he penned his work, John old and wise, Luke young and fastidious, and Mark middle-aged and quick to pick up the pen.52 However, in the case of the Vatican manuscript, evangelist portraiture does quite a bit more than any of these characterizations would suggest. It is not an incidental feature of the verbal substance of the Gospel book, but an integral moment of its rhetorical content. Byzantine readers, like earlier readers, may have encountered the Gospels as a fluid collection of notes, or hypomnmata, linked to the liturgy, but the portrait served as a moment in the book of their reconstitution.53 Such evangelist portraiture invites readers to read with the authors, to cleave to their sides as they travel the arc of the book with them, and, guided by their hands, to arrive at the truth. It is impossible to know exactly how the painter of the Vatican manuscript collaborated with the scribe of the commentaries over an understanding of the evangelists. Artistic choice was nonetheless still real. Considering that evangelist “types” were various, the painter actively chose, in each case, an apt version of the evangelist from an existing visual tradition.54 The painter’s care is affirmed when it is noticed that this manuscript and Stavronikita MS 43 are the only two known Gospel books displaying a full set of the evangelists in these poses. Clearly, the painter was delivering on the wishes of the interpretive community to whom this book belonged. The gestures he chose demarcated a preference for how the evangelists should be presented in their books. Such portraiture was a reflex of the question marks that drifted through the minds of the community of readers that owned the Gospel book. When these question marks settled at the end of a sentence and the readers looked up from the page, they could choose to enter the world of the evangelist through the commentator, or, in turn, to pull the evangelist into their world for confirmation of what they understood him to be saying. Author portraiture allowed for these possibilities. At a fundamental level, it answered a desire for a concrete encounter with the writer of Scripture. This conception of evangelist portraiture requires a revision of what may be a common way of organizing this rather large body of images in the medieval world. At the end of his study of the portraiture of intellectuals in Antiquity, Paul Zanker turns to the famous miniature of Mark from the Rossano Gospels. Most scholars agree that this leaf was added sometime during the tenth or eleventh century to this fragmentary sixth-century manuscript (Fig. 10).55 Zanker takes the inspiring figure of Sophia (Wisdom) to indicate how “authoritative production and gesture” (autoritative Inszenierungen und Gesten) came to “dominate imagery of the transmission of knowledge.”56 Taking note of the open scroll in Mark’s lap, Zanker asserts that “there is a corresponding change in the representation of the book. Instead of a simple attribute (Attribut) that the learned man holds or ponders, it becomes a charismatically charged cult object whose effect (Wirkung) is aimed directly at the viewer.”57 For Zanker, production and gesture came to dominate medieval author portraiture. And that is surely right. Only, it does not follow that this was a suppression of interpretation (a very thin reading of gesture, to be sure). Quite the contrary. Zanker wishes to say that medieval representations of books are couched in author images that “speak directly to the viewer,” and that it “makes no difference whether the codex is open or only the richly ornamented binding displayed.”58 The point is not to 82 JUSTIN WILLSON engage a reader constructing knowledge for him- or herself, but to relay, through apparently selfevident gestures, that knowledge is an occult revelation. Zanker’s conclusions must be questioned, however, upon further consideration of the evidence. Writing evangelist portraiture, such as that found in the Vatican manuscript, takes up the “attribute” to tell the story of its coming to be. The painter uses each portrait to highlight a word that points forwards to more words—biblos, logos, diêgêsis, and arkhê (the first of which was also, notably, the last word of the Gospel book; see John 21:25).59 Each verse can be seen as pulled forward into the present by a reader who interprets the written word through the writing author. Literature materializes from portraiture in dialogue with a commentator who makes the author necessary for interpretation; and not only with a commentator but also potentially with an ordinary reader as well. Readers could take the author to their side, and, in the course of the book, become fellow creators of the page in front of them. Zanker’s charismatically charged cult object of the Writ is then a screen for a gesturing author who could be seen in his portrait still turning the text over in his mind, the ink still wet on the page. Author portraiture introduced writers whose words had to remain intimately connected to their person and psychology, if they were going to be understood correctly. In the author portrait, the painter draws a phenomenological “frame” around the language of the Gospel book. Trailing off on the pages in front of them, the first verse signals that every page to follow can be read through the evangelists’ acts of writing, events that are contemporaneous with reading, ongoing, and unfinished without the labor of the reader. As Walter J. Ong has pointed out, this way of reading is peculiarly germane to the world of manuscripts, “with their glosses or marginal comments … [which bring manuscripts into] dialogue with the world outside their own borders”—that is, with readers. Consequently, manuscripts, Ong further explains, “remained closer to the give-and-take of oral expression.” Readers were “less closed off from the author, less absent, than are the readers of those writing for print.”60 Far from speaking “directly” to readers, the words of the Gospel presented in the miniature were to be seen as given through a writer, and the portrait was to be seen as signaling the beginning of a conversation. That conversation would be picked up by the commentator, or, indeed, by bold readers who could themselves call the writer back into their book, voice other questions, and imagine their companion’s responses. Evangelist portraiture was thus part of the way literature and criticism happened. It was not appended to the end of a finished literary work but was an integral moment of its way of being. Evangelist portraiture shows how words meet readers halfway through an author. The evangelist has not so much put into motion a causal chain that ends with the reader’s act of understanding, as created an imaginative world where writer and reader, the apparent giver and receiver, grow familiar with each other in interpretation. Crucially, in the Eastern tradition, this act of interpretation, as it was framed by commentators and reinforced through the Eusebian canon tables, was grounded in an anthropological view of the Gospel book. In the second century, the Church Father Ammonios constructed a “through-four” Gospel, or diatesseron, where parallel passages from each evangelist were quoted alongside Matthew’s text. In Ammonios’s version of the Gospels, readers found themselves confronted with a wall of text, a stereophonic Gospel enabling them to read the four evangelists all at one go. Because Ammonios presumed that a demonstration of consistency was the entire point of the Gospel book genre, he considered it justifiable to suppress the different perspectives of the four authors. Accordingly, Ammonios camouflaged the particular author in a message concocted of shared features of the Gospel story. READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 83 Playing up these commonalities, Ammonios sacrificed literary difference and authorial voice at the altar of a united narrative face. But, as Eusebios implies in his Letter to Carpian, to debar the writer from the literary work is to fail to understand that work (fols. 1v–3r/PG 22, cols. 1276C–1277B). Difference is essential for interpretation. Or, to put the point categorically, reading presupposes biography: it presupposes a particular writer who is never a universal or an enduring substance but is rather a radically historical truth. Rather than stating the fact of the revealed word, commentary articulates an etiological relation between the writer and literature, and back again, when a reader constructs the biographical writer as an author in the moment of reading. On the Eusebian model of reading, the evangelists are kept in play as individuals apt to disagree, who may express intent in anticipation of and commentary on one another. While the tables themselves provide a way of reading towards consistency, readers must always begin from the assumption that they are reading an individual writer.61 This assumption of biblical criticism was constantly being reaffirmed for medieval readers by the evangelist portraiture. Excursus on the Historiography of Middle Byzantine Evangelist Portraiture It is not surprising that writing evangelist portraiture should have proliferated in the tenth century in Byzantium, when an interest in the classical world increasingly inflected Byzantine art.62 But while this may account for the widespread presence of such illumination in the Greek Gospel book, this fact alone does not account for the particular form that evangelist portraiture took. As scholars have frequently noted, there was a marked shift away from what was, by all accounts, an earlier tradition of “standing” evangelist portraiture, which showed the authors standing, holding finished books in their hands. Around the turn of the tenth century, painters increasingly began showing the evangelists writing their Gospels in a form of portraiture known as “writing” (or “seated”) evangelist portraiture.63 In their increasing preference for writing evangelist portraiture, tenth-century painters were allowed to spell out what was previously a more aloof connection between the writer and the literary work. Exactly why this should have been the case, however, has never been adequately addressed. Changes in scholarly habits in Byzantium provide one answer. In their studies of Gospel book portraiture, George Galavaris and Robert Nelson call attention to an intense phase of re-editing of Gospel books beginning in the early ninth century, when minuscule script becomes a feature of the genre.64 According to both scholars, supplementary texts influenced later developments in illumination, among them evangelist symbols and inspired author portraiture, which they link to prefatory material added to the Gospels. However, the shift from standing to writing evangelist portraiture in the Greek Gospel book goes unaddressed. Seated evangelist portraiture was already present in other media in the Greek East as well as in Western medieval art. However, it is not witnessed in the Byzantine Gospel book until the early tenth century. Notably, this shift from standing to writing evangelist portraiture transpires roughly contemporaneously with the entrance of commentary into the Greek Gospel book around the early tenth century. When considered alongside commentary, this shift may become intelligible, for portrait and commentary alike can be seen as declaring an author who was increasingly taken for granted as the pivot on which correct interpretation turns. When a commentator articulated who the evangelists were and how and when they wrote, painters could describe those evangelists in their portraits. The mutual investment of commentator and painter in 84 JUSTIN WILLSON describing the evangelists as writers may help to explain the proliferation of writing evangelist portraiture. Such iconography, as it has been described above, requires a conception of the painter that is one step removed from that of the artist as a theologian. In this type of image the painter does not portray concepts or stories that the Church has distilled into dogma, but rather the very conditions of those concepts and stories. Showing the various authors who laid the literary groundwork for theological discourse, the painter shines a light onto the Church’s epistemological framework. What is of foremost concern to this iconography is not the fruits of theological conceptualization, but the range of possibilities of theological discourse itself—in a word, discursivity. Seen this way, the evangelists are writers who can be made to fit a range of scholarly dispositions. When the painter portrays the evangelists in one or another gestural posture, he makes them available as certain types of authors to the discipline of theology. Gesture, in other words, serves as a way of classifying a writer’s verbal contribution under a certain heading and taxonomy. This use of gesture is symptomatic of the growing scholarly organization of knowledge in the Byzantine Gospel book in the tenth century. If this could be called the scholarly explanation of the proliferation of writing evangelist portraiture, the second could be called the iconophile explanation. When it is noted that this iconography offered painters the opportunity to spell out the evangelists’ physical act of producing Scripture, it also should be acknowledged that this practice would have appealed to iconophiles. During Iconoclasm, arguments had been brought forward by iconoclasts to demonstrate that, whereas the icon was manufactured and so was illegitimately venerated, the Gospels were not and so were legitimately venerated.65 Unfortunately, the arguments as they survive in the writings of iconophiles are not clear as to the details of their opponents’ thinking on the point. But at the very least, iconoclasts seem to have thought that words were more ancient, reliable, clear, and authoritative than images.66 Writing evangelist portraiture allowed painters, in concert with scribes, to reach around the Gospel text—the written tradition par excellence in Byzantium—to assume an air of authority as they described how holy words originated with all too historical writers. Painters could dispose readers in a certain way towards these words by couching them in the author that an interpretive community sought out in the Gospels. In so doing, the silent choreography of gesture traced a visual outline that morphed into the dialogue and conceptual mimicry that wed writer to reader, and reader to writer. Such a way of painting laid out a pictorial parameter for reading, like a stage set in which the various actors of the written text performed their parts. Finally, the approach to evangelist portraiture sketched above can help answer traditional questions concerning the model/copy stemma and formation of iconography. Additionally, it can suggest new ways of thinking about author portraiture as a performance of interpretation. In an important study of Byzantine book illumination, Kurt Weitzmann argues that the Vatican miniatures have been copied “point for point” (Zug um Zug) after those in Stavronikita MS 43.67 Putting the dating of the two manuscripts by paleography aside for the moment, considering the remarkably intimate bond between the images and commentary in the Vatican Gospel book, in hindsight Weitzmann’s proposal seems unlikely. It is difficult to imagine that the painter and scribe of the Vatican manuscript did not collaborate to some degree over an understanding, and therefore over the presentation, of the evangelists. Moreover, in view of the fact that Stavronikita MS 43 does not have any commentary, it would be truly odd if its visual conception of the authors were to correspond perfectly to the Vatican commentary unless the latter Gospel book miniatures were their model. Thus, the Vatican miniatures ought to be considered as the models of the Stavronikita MS 43 portraits, barring the discovery of READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 85 any definitive stylistic or codicological evidence suggesting otherwise. Weitzmann offers no such evidence, and assumes that the more classically inflected Stavronikita miniatures are the models, while he detects Armenian influences in the more austere Vatican manuscript.68 Second, questions concerning iconography become clearer alongside commentary. In his early but still influential study of evangelist portraiture, Albert Matthias Friend classified several “groups” of portraits from various language traditions across nearly a millennium of medieval book illumination.69 In this study, I have not sought to test against Friend’s groups the theory that evangelist portraits are images that were read “with.” In future studies it would be worth revisiting Friend’s groups with an eye to the possibility that they may represent the calcified patterns of Gospel book criticism. What this study has illustrated is another way that text and image can be conceived as having been cast in relation to one another as two sides of one intelligible whole. It would be surprising if this close correspondence between verbal and visual expression were a unique occurrence in one Gospel book, or even a phenomenon restricted to the Byzantine Gospel book, considering that commentary appears in many Gospel book traditions, and in a variety of forms.70 Commentary has seldom been understood in the way that this study suggests it might with respect to Gospel book portraiture. What this study proposes is that we should understand the sprawling web of recensions of commentary that literary scholars have constructed as a phenomenon that, in certain instances, may run parallel to trends in the visual arts. These webs may in turn map onto the stylistic and iconographical stemma that older art historical scholarship presented as periodchanges but which might reflect other, more readerly interests. As Averil Cameron has recently pointed out, not only question-and-answer literature but also a variety of critical literary genres are far more dialogic than scholars have typically assumed.71 In this regard, it may turn out that relationships within various language traditions in a variety of literary genres intersecting the visual arts underwrite developments in other groups of evangelist portraiture. It may even be the case that a Vitruvian style of reading inflects portraiture ensembles in other visual genres, in contexts, for instance, such as libraries.72 Such questions will only be answered if scholarship begins asking under what conditions of interpretation any particular detail of such portraiture could have mattered for a reader. Beyond recensions and iconography lies performativity. Commentary is the way that a book speaks with a forked tongue. In doing so, it pushes understanding beyond words. When a commentator voices a writer’s words, he takes them for his own and relays them to a reader. Sometimes, though, he pretends not to be taking them, as, for instance, when he invites the writer to be his interlocutor in the margin. He also speaks with the voice of the reader as if he were not taking that reader’s voice away, either. Continually questioning the text, the commentator naturalizes his questions, addressing the work as if these were the normative concerns of any reader. In the process of conscripting the voices of writer and reader, the commentator crafts a phenomenological silhouette in interpretive space. This silhouette is that of the author whom he concocts. The commentator brokers a deal between writer and reader. The reader needs the writer to understand what the book is saying, and the commentator can provide that. By the same token, the writer must understand his audience and so needs to speak with the reader to be correctly read, and the commentator can provide that as well. Reader and writer thus become like one another, in so far as they both come to be furnished by the commentary. This happens when the commentator raises a question that only can be answered upon reflection, requiring the reader to embody the gesture of the writer, the maker of the words. It happens also when he raises another question that forces the writer to reenter his 86 JUSTIN WILLSON book, in the margin, where he himself becomes a reflective reader, or consumer. In this way, writer and reader become a unitary mode of understanding in the book, a mode made visible in its pages in the image of an author portrait. When the commentator creates the author-persona, he traces the possibility of a form of understanding that goes beyond words. This form of understanding is embodied in the author’s gesture, which is the point of contact between reader and writer. It is the painter who provides that point of contact. Commentary thus opens up the possibility for cohabitation. Commentators, far from putting a hedge around words, may sometimes work with artists to present an author who is never quite done writing, since he is always being reinterpreted. The story of these continual reinterpretations has yet to be told. Fig. 1. Matthew, early tenth century; Bibl. Vat., Pal. Gr. 220, fol. 10r. (Photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with all rights reserved.) READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK Fig. 2. Matthew, late tenth century; Athos, Stavronikita MS 43, fol. 10v. (Photo: Courtesy of the Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University.) 87 88 JUSTIN WILLSON Fig. 3. John, early tenth century; Bibl. Vat., Pal. Gr. 220, fol. 184r. (Photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with all rights reserved.) READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK Fig. 4. John, late tenth century; Athos, Stavronikita MS 43, fol. 13r. (Photo: Courtesy of the Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University.) 89 90 JUSTIN WILLSON Fig. 5. Luke, early tenth century; Bibl. Vat., Pal. Gr. 220, fol. 129v. (Photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with all rights reserved.) READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK Fig. 6. Luke, late tenth century; Athos, Stavronikita MS 43, fol. 12v. (Photo: Courtesy of the Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University.) 91 92 JUSTIN WILLSON Fig. 7. Mark, early tenth century; Bibl. Vat., Pal. Gr. 220, fol. 99r. (Photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with all rights reserved.) READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK Fig. 8. Mark, late tenth century; Athos, Stavronikita MS 43, fol. 11r. (Photo: Courtesy of the Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University.) 93 94 JUSTIN WILLSON Fig. 9. Opening to the Gospel of Matthew with scholia and definition, early tenth century; Bibl. Vat., Pal. Gr. 220, fol. 13r. (Photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with all rights reserved.) READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK Fig. 10. Mark with Sophia, tenth/eleventh century; Museo Diocesano e del Codex Arcidiocesi di Rossano-Cariati, Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, fol. 121r. (Photo: Art Resource, New York.) 95 96 JUSTIN WILLSON NOTES For Beatrice Kitzinger. Charles Barber, Beatrice Kitzinger, Meseret Oldjira, Kathryn A. Smith, and the reviewers offered helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. David Jenkins kindly proofread the Greek translations. 1 The widely accepted label “author portrait” deserves study from the point of view of historiography. It dates back to the early study of manuscript illumination in the eighteenth century. The bibliophile Bernard de Montfaucon adopted Pliny’s term imagine (also imago and figura) when writing about miniatures of the evangelists; see D. Bernard de Montfaucon, Bibliotheca Coisliniana, olim Segueriana; sive Manuscriptorum omnium græcorum … (Paris: Guerin, 1715), 63–65. 2 The fundamental studies remain Albert Matthias Friend, “The Portraits of the Evangelists in Greek and Latin Manuscripts, Part I,” Art Studies 5 (1927): 113–47; and Friend, “Portraits of the Evangelists in the Greek and Latin Manuscripts, Part II,” Art Studies 7 (1929): 3–32. A summary of Friend’s eight “groups” (originally ten) with classified illustrations can be found in Robert P. Bergman, “Portraits of the Evangelists in Greek Manuscripts,” in Illuminated Greek Manuscripts from American Collections, ed. Gary Vikan, exh. cat. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 44–49. Kurt Weitzmann, Die armenische Buchmalerei des 10. und Beginnenden 11. Jahrhunderts (Bamberg: J. M. Reindl, 1933); Weitzmann, Die byzantinische Buchmalerei des IX. und X. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996); and Herbert Hunger and Klauss Wessel, “Evangelisten,” Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Wessel and Restle (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1963–), 2, cols. 452–507, continue Friend’s iconographical mode of study of evangelist portraiture. See similarly in the Slavic context E. S. Smirnova, Iskusstvo knigi v srednevekovoi Rusi: Litsevye rukopisi Velikogo Novgoroda XV vek (Moscow: Severnyi palomnik, 2011). A good discussion of evangelist portraiture that challenges this mode of study through a focus on authorship is Derek Krueger, Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 33–62. 3 An introductory survey with classified tables of Greek New Testament scholia can be found in William Lamb, “Conservation and Conversation: New Testament Catenae in Byzantium,” in The New Testament in Byzantium, ed. Derek Krueger and Robert S. Nelson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016), 277–99. For further bibliography, see note 15 below. 4 A few general remarks about what might constitute a “reader” are offered in Mary Hammond, “Book History in the Reading Experience,” in The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Leslie Howsam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 237–52. A closer look at medieval readers is eloquently set out in the classic study by Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). See for the Byzantine reader the recent collection of essays, with extensive bibliography, in Reading in the Byzantine Empire and Beyond, ed. Teresa Shawcross and Ida Toth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Especially relevant for the present essay, although it deals with an earlier period in Greek literature, is the study of the ancient reader in René Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and the recent and sensitive essay on Byzantine Homeric scholia by Aglae Pizzone, “Audiences and Emotions in Eustathios of Thessalonike’s Commentaries on Homer,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 70 (2016): 225–44. See also the exploratory essay by François Bovon and Nancy P. Sevčenko, “Byzantine Art and Gospel Commentary: The Case of Luke 13:6–9, 10–17,” Harvard Theological Review 109, no. 2 (2016): 257–77. 5 Here I borrow the language of “interpretive” and especially “textual communities,” in Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 88–240. 6 Throughout this essay, I shall refer to the author as “constructed,” a point made famously by Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New york: Pantheon Books, 1984), 101–20. See a nice rejoinder to Foucault in Alexander Nehamas, “Writer, Text, Work, Author,” in Literature and the Question of Philosophy, ed. A. J. Cascardi (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 267–91. READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 97 Georgio Agamben, “Kommerell, or On Gesture,” in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, ed. and i trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 77–78. Agamben’s views of gesture come from the Continental tradition of philosophy. Arthur Schopenhauer argued that gesture is a “natural language” (Natursprache) and that it betrays not the “material” (Materialle) but the “form of speech” (Formelle der Rede). For Schopenhauer, gesture reveals a “form,” that is, an entire way of life that the speaker expresses, whether she wishes to or not. At a very literal level, gesture expresses what a person is, and there is no getting around its continual self-disclosure. Schopenhauer says that, were he ever to see from the window of his apartment, two persons standing on a street corner, carrying on a lively conversation, without catching a word of what they were saying, he could understand the general nature of the conversation perfectly well. See Arthur Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke. Band V. Parerga und Paralipomena. II, ed. Wolfgang Freiherr von Löhneysen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989), 718. A rich discussion of gesture, which takes as its starting point a remark in Nietzsche, who describes the experience of seeing the gestures of priests as he reads the Gospels, is Hans Blumenberg, Care Crosses the River, trans. Paul Fleming (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 33–39. The Nietzsche passage can be found in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, ed. Aaron Ridley and ed. and trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 41–42. 8 Agamben, “Kommerell,” 78. 9 François Garnier, Le langage de l’image au moyen âge, 2 vols. (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1982). In a volume devoted to gesture in Western medieval manuscript illumination ca. 1000–1500, Garnier proposes to establish that each and every hand motion and bodily posture has a linguistic parallel. Garnier seeks the certainty of hard science and lays out a system of gesture across these five centuries. He argues that this system emerged through models. When copying models painters enabled gesture to calcify and proliferate culturally. A gesture came to have a univocal, stable, and nearly universally recognized meaning, says Garnier. Although Garnier allows that gestures may, on principle, be nuanced, he maintains that there were “correct” interpretations. I kindly thank Sabine Utz for this reference. 10 Francesco D’Aiuto, Giovanni Morello, and Ambrodgio M. Piazzoni, I vangeli dei popoli: la parola e l’immagine del Cristo nelle culture e nella storia (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2000), 195–99. 11 Weitzmann, Die armenische Buchmalerei, 11–14; Weitzmann, Die byzantinische Buchmalerei, 43–44, 57, 62. 12 Enrica Follieri, “La minuscola libraria dei secoli IX e X,” La paléographie grecque et byzantine: Actes du Colloque international organisé dans le cadre des Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique à Paris du 21 au 25 octobre 1974, ed. Jean Glénisson, Jacques Bompaire, and Jean Irigoin (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977), 139–65, esp. 146. 13 See on these portraits Joyce Kubiski, “The Medieval ‘Home Office’: Evangelist Portraits in the Mount Athos Gospel Book, Stavronikita Monastery, MS 43,” Studies in Iconography 22 (2001): 21–53; and Kathleen Maxwell, “Illustrated Byzantine Gospel Books,” in A Companion to Byzantine Illustrated Manuscripts, ed. Vasiliki Tsamakda (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 270–83, esp. 276. Also, see George Galavaris and Chrysanthi Mavropoulou-Tsioumi, Hiera Monê Stauronikêta: Eikonographêmena cheirographa apo ton 10o heôs 17o aiôna, 2 vols. (Mount Athos: Stavronikita Monastery, 2008), 1:34–37, 2: figs. 21–22, 24, 27; William Loerke, “Incipits and Author Portraits in Greek Gospel Books: Some Observations,” in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 377–81; and Maurizio Bonicatti, “Per una introduzione alla cultura mediobizantina di Costantinopoli,” Rivista dell‘Istituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte 9 (1960): 207–65, esp. 208–11. 14 Lidia Perria and Antonio Iacobini, “Il Vangelo di Dionisio: Il codice F.V. 18 di Messina, l’Athous Stavronikita 43 e la produzione libraria costantinopolitana del primo periodo macedone,” Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici 31 (1994): 81–164, esp. 100–103. 7 98 JUSTIN WILLSON See D’Aiuto, Morello, and Piazzoni, I Vangeli, 195–96. See for the scholia Angelo Mai, Classicorum auctorum e Vaticanis codicibus editorum tomus, 10 vols. (Rome: Vatican, 1831–1833), 6:379–500; 9:431–512, reprinted in J. P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca (Paris: Migne, 1857–1880)=PG 106, cols. 1077–1290. The scholia were re-edited in the rare two-volume study by Louis Thomas, Les collections anonymes de scolies grecques aux évangiles, Thèse présentée à la Pontificia Commissione Biblica (lithographed), 2 vols. (Rome, 1912). Thomas provides patristic sources for the scholia, and readers interested in the various authors cited should refer to his volumes. See also Joseph Reuss, Matthäus-, Markus-, und Johannes-Katenen: Nach den handschriften Quellen, Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen 18.4–5 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1941), 31–41, 141–42, 160; and Robert Devreesse, “Chaînes exégétiques grecques,” Dictionnaire de la Bible: Contenant tous les noms de personnes etc. Tome 1, ed. Louis Pirot (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1928), cols. 1174–75, 1178, 1196. 16 Compare the scholia in Catenae graecorum patrum in novum testamentum, ed. John Anthony Cramer, 8 vols. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1843; repr. 1967), vols. 1–2. 17 See The Catena in Marcum: A Byzantine Anthology of Early Commentary on Mark, ed. and trans. William R. S. Lamb (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 18 See, for instance, the eleventh-century scholia edited in Cramer, Catenae, vols. 1–2. Since the reader of the Gospel book was not given the sources, I shall not cite them in my notes. See note 15 for studies of the sources. 19 Eusèbe de Césarée: Questions évangéliques, SC 528, ed. and trans. Claudio Zamagni (Paris: Cerf, 2008) (=PG 22, cols. 880A–1016B) and Eusebius of Caesarea: Gospel Problems and Solutions. Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum (CPG 3470), ed. Roger Pearse, trans. David J. D. Miller, Adam C. McCollum, Carol Downer and others (Ipswich: Chieftain, 2010). 20 See D’Aiuto, Morello, and Piazzoni, I vangeli, 196. 21 Questions évangéliques, ed. Zamagni. 22 For an overview of this literature and a methodological introduction, see André-Louis Rey, “Les erotapokriseis dans le monde byzantin: tradition manuscrite des textes anciens et production de nouveaux textes,” and Claudio Zamagni, “Une introduction méthodologique à la littérature patristique des questions et réponses: le cas d’Eusèbe de Césarée,” in Eratopokriseis: Early Christian Question-and-Answer Literature in Context, ed. Annelie Volgers and Claudio Zamagni (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 165–80, 81–98. 23 I shall follow the text of the marginal scholia as printed in Migne (PG 106, cols. 1077–1290); Migne’s edition is close to the manuscript. 24 See the essays on ethopoiea in ἨΘΟΠΟΙΙΑ: La représentation de caractères entre fiction scolaire et réalité vivante à l’époque impériale et tardive, ed. Eugenio Amato and Jacques Schamp (Salerno: Helios, 2005); and also Derek Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 29–66. 25 André Grabar, “Une fresque visigothique et l’iconographie du silence,” Cahiers Archēologiques 1 (1945): 124–28, esp. 126–27. Also, see André Chastel, “Signum harpocraticum,” in Studi in onore di Giulio Carlo Argan, ed. S. Macchioni and B. Tavassi La Greca (Rome: Multigrafica, 1984), 1:147–53, esp. 148–49; and Karla Langedijk, “Silentium,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 15 (1964): 1–18, esp. 4–5. I am grateful to Dale Kinney for bringing the latter two articles to my attention. The study of Harpocrates dates back at least to the seventeenth century; see Gisbert Cuper, Harpocrates, sive Explicatio imaguncluae argenteae perantiquae: Qua in figuram Harpocratis formata representat solem (Utrecht: F. Halma, 1687). 26 Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, ed. J. Gwyn Griffiths (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1970), 224–25 [378C]; and Suidae lexicon, ed. A. Adler, 4 vols., Lexicographi Graeci (Leipzig: Teubner, 1928–1935), s.v. Διαγνώμων· διακρίνων, διαγινώσκων [delta, entry 522] and also Adler, s.v. Ἡραΐσκος [eta, entry 450]. Compare a remark in the later Greek Anthology, edited by Maximos Planudes, which may refer to Harpocrates’s gesture: Πᾶς τις ἀπαίδευτος φρονιμώτατός ἐστι σιωπῶν, / τὸν λόγον ἐγκρύπτων ὡς πάθος αἰσχρότατον (The profoundest thinker is without learning, and silent,/ and he hides his speech like a deformed mark); Anthologia Graeca. Buch IX–XI, ed. Hermann Beckby (Munich: Ernst Heimeran Verlag, 1958), 526–27 [10:98]. 15 READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 99 Philippe Matthey, “‘Chut!’ Le signe d’Harpocrate et l’invitation au silence,” in Dans le laboratoire de l’historien des religions: Mélanges offerts à Philippe Borgeaud, ed. F. Prescendi and y. Volokhine (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2011), 546–47 records a similar remark in Patriarch Photios. See Photius: Bibliothèque, ed. René Henry, 8 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1959–1977), 242 [Bekker page 343AB]. A discussion of this pose in Latin art can be found in Dale Kinney, “Spolia from the Baths of Carcalla in Sta. Maria in Trastevere,” Art Bulletin 68, no. 3 (1986): 379–97, esp. 390–93; and in Islamic art in Persis Berlekamp, Wonder, Image, and Cosmos in Medieval Islam (New Haven: yale University Press, 2011), 99–100, who observes that in Islamic cultures, to say a person was amazed was expressed by saying, “he bit his finger in astonishment” or “she held up the finger of astonishment.” As Berlekamp observes, painters showed characters experiencing amazement exactly in this way. 27 See a survey of closely related poses, in Western medieval and Byzantine art, beginning with classical sources in J. J. Tikkanen, Studien über den Ausdruck in der Kunst I: Zwei Gebärden mit dem Zeigefinger, Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae, XLIII (Helsinki: Druckerei der Finnischen Literaturgesellschaft, 1913), 1–31. Kathryn Smith kindly directed me to this study. See also Thomas F. Mathews and Norman E. Muller, The Dawn of Christian Art in Panel Paintings and Icons (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2016), 85–96. 28 See the Chludov Psalter, Moscow, State History Museum, Khlud. 129. On fol. 100r, at Ps. 102:1–2, the solitary figure making this gesture is labeled “ὁ πτωχός” (the afflicted); this portrayal accords with its second instance at Ps. 137:1–3 (fol. 135r), where Israel is weeping by the river of Babylon. See facsimile and commentary in Salterio griego Jlúdov (ms. gr. 129), Museo Histórico del Estado, Moscú, preface Tamara Igumnova; text M. M. Pankova, Miguel Cortés Arrese, and Pedro Bádenas de la Penã (Madrid: AyN Ediciones, 2006–2007), 2:57–58 and 104, 108. 29 See the silver plates dated to the reign of Heraclios ca. 628/29 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New york (Inv. 17.190.398), where one of David’s brothers is posed with his finger at his lips. 30 Kathryn A. Smith, “Inventing Marital Chastity: The Iconography of Susanna and the Elders in Early Christian Art,” Oxford Art Journal 16, no. 1 (1993): 3–24, at 19 and n. 92; citing Tikkanen, Zwei Gebärden mit dem Zeigefinger, 10–19. For examples in Middle Byzantine art, see Hugo Buchthal, The Miniatures of the Paris Psalter (London: The Warburg Institute, 1938), pl. 3, fig. 3 (finger on chin); pl. 4, fig. 4 (on chin); pl. 6, fig. 6 (on lips); pl. 8, fig. 8 (just off chin); pl. 10, fig. 10 (just off chin); pl. 17, fig. 27 (on lips); pl. 20, fig. 42 (on chin); pl. 24, fig. 65 (on chin and on lips); Kurt Weitzmann, The Fresco Cycle of S. Maria di Castelseprio (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 36, 44–46, fig. A, pl. 1, figs. 1, 12, figs. 43–44; and. JosuaRolle: Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat des Codex Vaticanus Palatinus Graecus 431 der Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, ed. Otto Mazal (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1984), scenes 8, 9, and 22, and commentary, 47, 48, and 50; and an allegorical figure of Truth pointing to (or touching?) her lip in the “Crown of Constantine IX Monomachos,” Magyar Nemzeri Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary, ca. 1042–1050 (Inv. 99/1860). See also an eighth-century fragment of a fresco of Saint Anne in Faras: Die Wandbilder in den Sammlungen des Nationalmuseums zu Warschau, ed. K. Michalowski (Dresden: Kunst, VEB, 1974), 84–86, recently discussed in Eirini Panou, “The Signum Harpocraticum in the 8th-Century Christian Art of Nubia,” Klassicheskoe nasledie v iskusstve vizantiiskoi oikumeny i za ee predelami 5 (2015): 246–62. Clearly many of these must be interpreted within their contexts, e.g., at fol. 422v in the Paris Psalter Moses points to his mouth with his left hand and to the earth with his right. His gesture can only be explained through the opening words of the psalm, “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak and hear, O earth, the word of my mouth.” Obviously here the painter intends this gesture to be associated not with silence but with astonishment that leads to speaking, and so it is probably a different type of gesture from the Harpocrates pose. 31 Leslie Brubaker, “Gesture in Byzantium,” in The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives, ed. Michael J. Braddick, Past & Present Supplement 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 36–56, esp. 55. Although Brubaker does not discuss Garnier, her brief essay is a nice reply to his project. As Brubaker observes, most typically “we need the combined evidence of image and text to interpret Byzantine gesture” (41). “Context is critical,” because “the acts themselves are not always consistent in either textual or visual records” (46–47). 100 JUSTIN WILLSON Brubaker focuses particular attention on kissing and proskynesis, the major study of which remains Anthony Cutler, Transfigurations: Studies in the Dynamics of Byzantine Iconography (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975), chap. 3. Brubaker’s essay is one of the few treatments of gesture in Byzantine art outside of the courtly or liturgical context. 32 Compare other forms of the “definition” in Hermann Freiherr von Soden, Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments in ihrer ältesten erreichbaren Textgestalt, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1911–1913), 1:568 (Munich, Univ.-Bibl., MS 30, ca. ninth–tenth century) and 1:301–2 [nos. 80–81] for Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 1.4 (=PG 57, col. 15). 33 On the “definition,” see von Soden, Schriften, 2:301–2 [nos. 76, 80, 81]. Cf. Paris, BnF, Coislin gr. 23 in Catenae, ed. Cramer 1:5. 34 Von Soden, Schriften, 1:569 (Oxford, Bodl. Lib., Misc. 182). Cf. Catenae, ed. Cramer 1:5 (line 25)–1:6 (line2). 35 Eusebius: The Ecclesiastical History. Volume I, trans. Kirsopp Lake, Loeb 153 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926), 250–251 [Hist. eccl. 3, 24, 5, 7]. 36 Quintilian. The Orator’s Education, trans. Donald A. Russell (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 168–69 [Inst. 11.3 (60)]. 37 This pairing may not be surprising. The fifth-century theologian, Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite, says in one of his letters to his student Titus, “One must remember that the tradition of the theologians is twofold, the first secretive and mystical, the second manifest and better known; again, the first is symbolical and like initiation, and the other philosophical and demonstrative, and the unspoken [aporrêtê] is intertwined [sumpeplektai] with the spoken [rêtê]” (PG 3, col. 1105D [Ep. 9.1]). Considering that Matthew is presented as a secretive author, he can perhaps be understood as the mystical tradition of theological writing, while John, who is represented as a speaker, can perhaps be understood as the demonstrative tradition of theological writing. 38 See n. 16. 39 For instance, in the Letter of the Three Patriarchs, the author writes, “In fact, the Gospel according to Matthew was written eight years after the Ascension of Christ, composed in Jerusalem and dictated by James, the brother of Christ. That is why it also traces the ancestry of the holy Virgin who sprang from the tribe of Abraham and Judah and from the royal descent of David, and sets forth in precise detail the ancestry of Joseph as springing from the same tribe. The Gospel according to Mark was written in Alexandria ten years after [the Ascension], dictated to him by Peter, the chief of the Apostles, in order to recount how he was chosen by the Master for the apostolic preaching. The Gospel according to Luke was written in Rome fifteen years after [the Ascension], dictated by the divine apostle Paul for Theophilos, beloved of God, who had confessed his belief in the apostolic preaching, and for whom the Acts of the Apostles were also written. The Gospel according to John was written sixty-two years after [the Ascension] at the time of the Caesar Domitian, on the island of Patmos, on which he beheld the divine Revelation”; J. A. Munitiz et al., The Letter of the Three Patriarchs to Emperor Theophilos and Related Texts (Camberley: Porphyrogenitus, 1997), 25–27. 40 On the various valences of this term, see especially the study by Claudia Rapp, “Storytelling as Spiritual Communication in Early Greek Hagiography: The Use of ‘Diegesis,’” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 3 (1998): 431–48. 41 Reading toward consistency was, of course, a skill taught in Byzantine schools. In a course on Aristotle’s Categories, the sixth-century scholar Elias enjoins his students to read the entirety of Aristotle in order to prove that he is “consistent” with himself. See Nigel Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 47–48. This practice was upheld in the Gospels by cross-referencing the four evangelists with each other—a practice made relatively easy by the Eusebian canon tables. In the tables readers could find parallel passages marked by letters and numbers which were written by a scribe often (but not always) in rubrication (red lettering) throughout the pages of the Gospels. This essentially allowed readers to read “across” the authors to gain a sense of their consistency. READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 101 Compare also fol. 58v/PG 106, col. 1172AB [verse 44], “How can Luke say that one of the robbers castigated the other as a blasphemer, while Matthew says that both [of the robbers] abused and insulted Him [Christ]? It can be both ways, for at first both of them insulted Him, but not later.” 43 Especially good on Vitruvius’s romanticizing is Jaś Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 49–87. 44 Vitruvius. On Architecture, ed. and trans. Frank Granger, Loeb 280 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 2:210 [9, praefatio, 17]. 45 Ibid., 2:210 [9, praefatio, 17]. 46 Quoted in David Konstan, “The Active Reader and the Ancient Novel,” in Readers and Writers in the Ancient Novel, ed. Michael Paschalis, Stelios Panayotakis, and Gareth Schmeling (Groningen: Groningen University Library, 2009), 1–17, at 5. 47 Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos: Contra imaginum calumniatores orationes tres, ed. P. Bonifatius Kotter, Patristische Texte und Studien 17 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975), 162 (Or. 1.61). Compare a similar comment citing Augustine, De Trinitate, 15, 8.4.7, quoted in Thomas F. X. Noble, Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 36. 48 See for iconography of Chrysostom and Paul, Margaret M. Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 497–98. Tellingly, Mitchell finds in some images of the pair “a vision of textual encounter between two reading partners” rather than an “authoritarian” Paul “instructing Chrysostom.” 49 It would be worth exploring in future studies the question of whether style might also play into this appropriation of ancient values of authorship and reading “with.” 50 Compare Robin Cormack, Icons (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 23–25, who says provocatively that calligraphy might be the first Christian “art.” See on the “image” of handwriting Malcolm Beckwith Parkes, Their Hands Before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes, The Lyell Lectures, 1999 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 127–46. 51 Compare Glenn Peers, Sacred Shock: Framing Visual Experience in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2004), 64, who counters the assumption that the iconography of author portraiture is a “banal and repetitive” “commonplace” by drawing attention to “subtle changes” and “shifts in emphasis” that viewers would have noticed. 52 See John Rupert Martin, The Illustration of the Heavenly Ladder of John Climacus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), 21; Jean Ebersolt, La miniature byzantine, ouvrage accompagné de la reproduction de 140 miniatures (Paris: G. Vanoest, 1926), 7–8, speaks of the “image d’auteur.” On self-reflexivity, see the classic essay by Beat Brenk, “Schriftlichkeit und Bildlichkeit in der Hofschule Karls des Grossen,” in Testo e immagine nell’alto medioevo: 15–21 Aprile 1993, Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1994), 2:631–91. Surprisingly, even structuralists have struggled to say more than that the “tradition of providing a portrait of the author dates back to Antiquity”; Christopher Walter, Art and Ritual of the Byzantine Church (London: Variorum, 1982), 37. 53 Matthew D. C. Larsen, Gospels before the Book (New york: Oxford University Press, 2018). 54 See a thorough classification of evangelist types in Ioannis Spatharakis, Corpus of Dated Illuminated Greek Manuscripts to the Year 1453, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1981). 55 The dating of this leaf has caused much contention and one hopes that scientific analysis will soon offer a narrower window of dates. Mark’s is the only evangelist portrait in this manuscript. Otto Kresten and G. Prato, “Die Miniatur des Evangelisten Markus im Codex Purpureus Rossanensis: Eine spätere Einfügung,” Römische Historische Mitteilungen 27 (1985): 381–403, date it to the tenth century or later, while Loerke, “Incipits and Author Portraits,” 380–81, maintains that it is of a sixth-century date. See more recently (arguing for a later date), Lois Drewer, “Recent Approaches to Early Christian and Byzantine Iconography,” Studies in Iconography 17 (1996), 41 n. 24; John Lowden, “The Beginnings of Biblical Illustration,” in Imaging the Early Medieval 42 102 JUSTIN WILLSON Bible, ed. John Williams (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 21 n. 29; and Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 220 n. 67. Also arguing for an earlier date, see the little-noted article by H. Froschauer and H. Harrauer, “Ein ikonographisches Detail im Codex Rossanensis,” in L’image et la parole / Εἰκόνα και λόγος: Recueil à l’occasion du 60e anniversaire du Prof. Axinia Džurova (Sofia: St. Clément d’Ohrid, 2004), 455–61; and more recently Karin Krause, “Heilige Schrift im Bild: Spätantike Portraits der inspirierten Evangelisten als Spiegel eines neuen Medienbewusstseins,” in Bild und Text im Mittelalter, ed. Krause and Barbara Schellewald (Cologne: Böhlau, 2011), 41–83, esp. 41 n. 2. 56 Paul Zanker, Die Maske des Sokrates: Das Bild des Intellektuellen in der antiken Kunst (Munich: Beck, 1995), 309 (my emphasis). Zanker is translated (rather freely) in Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, trans. Alan Shapiro (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 330 (who omits the word “Gesten”). 57 Zanker, Die Maske des Sokrates, 309; and The Mask of Socrates, trans. Shapiro, 330. 58 Zanker, Die Maske des Sokrates, 309; and The Mask of Socrates, trans. Shapiro, 330–31. 59 The observation about the word “biblos” is made in Lowden, “Beginnings of Biblical Illustration,” 9. 60 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New york: Routledge, 1982), 132–33. On this point in Ong, see Peers, Sacred Shock, 6. 61 In this squaring of the four authors, gesture quite literally becomes the “cheironomia,” or “codes of the hand” of the Gospel book, allowing readers to bring the book into harmony—or “symphonia,” as the canon tables were called in Greek. A discussion of “cheironomia” as they appear in images of choir masters can be found in Neil K. Moran, Singers in Late Byzantine and Slavonic Paintings (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 38–47. 62 As most famously argued by Kurt Weitzmann, The Joshua Roll: A Work of the Macedonian Renaissance, Studies in Manuscript Illumination III (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948). 63 See various examples of “standing” evangelist portraiture in Hunger and Wessel, “Evangelisten,” Reallexikon 2, cols. 452–507. See also one of the most famous ninth-century examples of this type of portraiture in Sofia Kotzabassi and Nancy Patterson Ševčenko with Don C. Skemer, Greek Manuscripts at Princeton, Sixth to Nineteenth Century: A Descriptive Catalogue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 37–38 (with bibliography), pls. 53, 55–56. 64 Robert S. Nelson, The Iconography of Preface and Miniature in the Byzantine Gospel Book (New york: New york University Press, 1980); and George Galavaris, The Illustrations of the Prefaces in Byzantine Gospels (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1979), 74–132. 65 See Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth-Century Iconoclasm (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 106 (translation of Mansi 13, col. 280BD) for an argument anticipated by the Νουθεσία γέροντος περὶ τῶν ἁγίων εἰκόνων composed ca. 770 by Theosebes. Theosebes suggests that at least some iconoclasts were of the mind that Scripture was exempt from conditions of production. When the fictional iconoclast, Cosmas, says that icons are accursed because they have been manufactured, his opponent, the iconophile Gregorios, replies that the Cross must also then be accursed, and the Gospel book, holy spear, and other utensils as well, since all of them were made by human hands. That this argument needed to be stated at all and, no less, stated at the sixth session of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, may be telling for the proliferation of writing evangelist portraiture. For it made a theme of the authors’ acts of manufacturing their Gospel books. See Georgii Kiprianin i Ioann Ierusalimlianin, dva maloizvestnykh bortsa za pravoslavie v VIII veke, ed. M. Melioranskii (St. Petersburg: I. N. Skorokhodova, 1901), 26–27 [151a]. 66 Charles Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 125–37; and Ken Parry, Depicting the Word: Byzantine Iconophile Thought in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 156–65. 67 Weitzmann, Die byzantinische Buchmalerei, 57; and Weitzmann, Die armenische Buchmalerei, 13. 68 Weitzmann, Die byzantinische Buchmalerei, 57; and Weitzmann, Die armenische Buchmalerei, 13. READING WITH THE EVANGELISTS: PORTRAIT, GESTURE, AND INTERPRETATION IN THE BYZANTINE GOSPEL BOOK 103 Friend, “Portraits, Part I,” 113–47; and Friend, “Portraits, Part II,” 3–32. Although the commentary is not always written in the margin such as in the Slavic tradition. Also, there are a range of other commentaries which characterize the evangelists as authors and which could perhaps be brought to bear on their representations, e.g., in his commentary Pseudo-Sophronios (seventh century) describes each evangelist’s writerly disposition in constructing his Gospel (PG 87, col. 4000AB). 71 Averil Cameron, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2014), 59. 72 It may be telling that Vitruvius ends the remark quoted above with portraiture decoration in halls or “museological spaces.” Gospel book portraiture may be fruitfully conceived as analogous with portrait busts that readers also read “with.” See for library decoration especially David Petrain, “Visual Supplementation and Metonymy in the Roman Public Library,” in Ancient Libraries, ed. Jason König, Katerina Oikonomopoulou, and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 332–47; Richard Neudecker, Der Skulpturenausstattung römischer Villen in Italien (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1988), 64–74; George Houston, Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and their Management in Antiquity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), esp. 209–16; Salvatore Settis, “Severo Alessandro e i suoi lari (S. H. A., S.A. 29, 2–3),” Athenaeum 50 (1972): 237–51; and Thuri Lorenz, Galerien von griechischen Philosophen- und Dichterbildnissen bei den Römern (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1965). 69 70

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