Meaningful mingling: classicizing imagery and Islamicizing script in a Byzantine bowl

The merging of ancient Greek and medieval Islamic cultures to distance people or practices from Byzantine identity also occurs in middle Byzantine literature. Describing contemporary Muslims, Anna Komnene conflates Islamic worship with ancient Greek religion, claiming that Muslims are devoted to Dionysos, Eros, and Aphrodite. (124) In the twelfth-century satire Timarion, the protagonist descends to Hades, where the ancient Greek kings Minos and Aeacus, who serve as judges in the underworld, wear "turbans on their heads like Arab chieftains," and the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates "looked like some Arab with his tall and pointed turban for headgear." (125) In both texts, the authors elide medieval Islamic and ancient Greek identities in order to ridicule both traditions. In this respect, the S. Marco bowl is noteworthy in that it combines classicizing and Islamicizing elements without displaying a notably derisive attitude toward these non-Christian cultures.

Although the S. Marco bowl is unique, aspects of its program parallel features of other middle Byzantine vessels, raising the possibility that these objects also functioned as lecanomantic, hydromantic tools. A fragmentary twelfth-century ceramic dish from Corinth, for example, combines classicizing and exoticizing elements that may have empowered the object to serve magic rituals. The plate depicts a centaur treading on a snake, the pair encircled by a band in pseudo-Arabic (Fig. 24). (126) Observing that certain middle Byzantine vessels represent serpents, animals commonly associated with demons, Henry Maguire proposes that the motif of the snake may invoke chthonic powers. (127) The styles of the figures and the inscription are simpler than those elements of the S. Marco bowl, but the program presumably functions in a comparable manner. The form of the snake attracts demonic forces to the ceramic bowl, much as Greco-Roman gods and heroes associated with divination are drawn to their own images on the S. Marco vessel. The centaur controls the demonic serpent, just as the coins and circles constrain pagan forces. Finally, pseudo-Arabic script enhances the magic efficacy of each vessel.

The delicate material and meticulously rendered decoration of the glass bowl designate it as a luxury object of the elite, while the humble medium and less refined execution of the ceramic dish indicate a less privileged owner. Even the pseudo-Arabic on the pottery vessel appears generic and summary in comparison with the more complex and elegant design of the S. Marco inscription. These differences suggest that belief in the magic power of pseudo-Arabic--and a fascination with lecanomancy--extended throughout Byzantine society. People who engaged in this illicit practice used whatever device was appropriate to their budget or taste.

The Hybrid Image of Byzantine Divination

A modern visitor to the S. Marco treasury who mistakes the glass bowl for a chalice is only partly wrong, for in a sense the vessel may indeed be understood as a liturgical object, but it is one serving occult, rather than Christian, ritual. Based on middle Byzantine familiarity with the mechanics and aims of divinatory devices, combined with the iconographic and inscriptional evidence on the vessel itself, I propose that the bowl facilitated lecanomantic hydromantic practices. For earlier scholars, the object epitomizes a waning of classical culture in medieval Byzantium and a confusion of classicizing and exoticizing sources. Its makers and users are said to have possessed only faint understanding of the iconographic and inscriptional motifs they employed. In contrast, I posit that the object articulates an intentional and meaningful mingling of Greco-Roman and medieval Islamic traditions, one that positions Byzantine users and makers not as imitators or passive conduits of the antique and the foreign but rather as active interpreters.