Syncretism in Early Byzantine Marriage Jewelry: The Political and Social Function of Pagan and Christian Motifs
Mason Stempel - March 30, 2024
In the Greco-Roman world, marriage was stratified according to class and wealth, and was often heavily codified with laws and centuries-old practices. Jewelry played a significant role in both Greco-Roman marriage and marriage in Christian Byzantium, since the Byzantine world inherited cultural traits from its Hellenistic predecessors. Due to the amorphous boundary between the two empires, a connection and continuity in their respective material culture is expected. Byzantine marriage jewelry, in imagery, style, and social function, clearly echoes the Greco-Roman past, demonstrating a strong syncretic thread between the two cultures and pagan ideals’ enduring place in early Byzantium’s character and society throughout the systemic and politically-led conversion to Christianity.
The dividing line between what constitutes Greco-Roman art versus Byzantine art is, especially in the early parts of the empire, extremely porous, and the connection between the two cultures is undeniable. As Robin Cormack says in the first chapter in his book Byzantine Art, “Rome with a Christian Face?”, “... antiquity had not yet ended when Byzantine art began,” illustrating the fluidity between the cultures.1 The very beginning of Byzantium is infused with the cultural and political traits of ancient Greece and Rome.2 Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, saw his political endeavors as the continuation of Rome. Though Cormack claims that Byzantium “rejects” classical antiquity, his view is restricted to the public, civic sector, using the important works of statuary that decorated early Constantinople to prove the “theatrical backdrop”3 of Constantinople’s “Greco-Roman past”.4 The symbolism and style present on marriage jewelry, however, a medium that straddles the liminal space between private rituals and public performance, rebuts this idea of a dramatic facade of antiquity, instead proving that early Byzantium retained pagan ideals as an “organic element of life”.5
Starting in the fourth century when the then still-Roman Empire was officially Christianized by Constantine, the religious stratification of early Byzantium followed an interesting pattern that is reflected in the material culture, notably marriage jewelry, of this period. Jewelry helps people perform class, gender, and sexuality, among other things, and in the Greco-Roman and Byzantine world, marriage jewelry telegraphed the economic and political status of the wearer. Notably, for some time after Constantine’s decision to make the capital of his empire Constantinople, the aristocracy retained a “strong pagan character”.6 Therefore, the continuation and perpetuation of pagan motifs and symbolism is, other than the persistence of certain religious beliefs, likely a way to assert political and social supremacy.
Figure 1: Marriage Ring. Byzantine, 6th century, Gold. Image Credit: The Walters Art Museum, https://art.thewalters.org/detail/5973/marriage-ring/.
Since the Byzantine Empire was crafted atop a Greco-Roman foundation, investigating the rituals and sociopolitical constructs of marriage in these ancient societies will help contextualize some of the practices and iconography in later Byzantine marriage practices and art. The earliest sources regarding ancient Greek marriage practices come from black- and red-figure vase paintings, which often depict scenes that corroborate certain rituals or ceremonies discussed in written texts.7 The ancient Greek wedding process, much like the majority of modern cultures, begins with a betrothal, “sealed by a handshake” between the groom and the bride’s father.8 This practice is perhaps the basis for the later Roman motif of the dextrarum iunctio, which continued from late antiquity into the Byzantine period, and appears on many examples of marriage jewelry.
In addition to the Greek handshake, other rituals performed by women have ripples of familiarity in Byzantine art and marriage ceremonies. As Brown states in her essay “Aphrodite and the Pandora Complex,” women’s beauty and sexual function in archaic Greek thought was largely centered around her clothing and jewelry, as they represented a woman’s economic vitality.9 In addition, the concept of layers of fabric, fine metal and jewels invited the idea of removing these objects, enticing male attention.10 Following this societal context, a bride’s marriage adornments and pre-wedding offerings of physical goods connected to her sexuality were incredibly important to the health of her union and her success as a wife. Brides in ancient Greek weddings were veiled, a tradition that continued into the Byzantine Empire, continuing the idea of a woman’s modesty, but these young women also sacrificially offered belts to deities that oversaw the rites of marriage.11
Figure 2: Marriage Belt. Early Byzantine, late 6th century - early 7th century, Gold. Image Credit: Dumbarton Oaks Museum, https://museum.doaks.org/objects-1/info/27445.
The offering of the bride’s belt, in particular, is of importance when investigating the connection between Greco-Roman and Byzantine marriage iconography. The sacrifice of a belt may be connected to the “‘loosening of the bride’s belt’ on her wedding night,”12 another connection to the performance of womanhood and clothing (or lack thereof). The early Byzantine “Marriage Belt” (Fig. 2), a late sixth to early seventh-century find from Antioch from the Dumbarton Oaks collection, covered in Dionysian motifs and decorations, but centering Christ uniting a married couple on the main medallion, is a prime example of pagan and Christian syncretism within Byzantine marriage jewelry. Not only does this belt display both pagan Greek and Christian symbols, but the stance in which the wedded couple is situated, as well as the motif of Christ uniting the two in marriage, both date back to Greco-Roman marriage practices and artistic iconography. The religious significance is seen through the Christian ceremonial lens, while the pagan aspects act as decorative embellishments, calling back to Greco-Roman celebrations and aesthetics. Further, as both Walker and Kantorowicz suggest, the Roman-inspired Christian pose with Christ between the bride and groom may have imperial implications,13 adding a layer of class performance to this question of cultural syncretism.14
Additionally, wreaths or garlands worn on the heads of brides and grooms appeared as common motifs in Greek weddings and continued in the marriage jewelry imagery of the Byzantine Empire. In many Greek sources on wedding practices, wreaths were mainly associated with grooms, but on occasion, brides were described as wearing crowns of flowers, “asparagus,” or metal fashioned to look like foliage.15 In the ancient Greek tradition, drawing from epic and traditional oral poetry, the bride’s coronal adornment also plays into the performance of womanhood as associated with physical beauty. In the Hesiodic rendition of the tale of Pandora, the world’s first woman, a trap sent by the gods to punish mankind, is crowned with a stephane16 in order to be more alluring to mortal men.17 Sometimes, it is a deity, such as Eros (Cupid to the Romans) crowning the bride, groom, or both. This motif of a married couple being crowned later became an important aspect of the Orthodox marriage ceremony,18 and came to represent “the eternal crown of life”.19
Ancient Roman marriage customs, unsurprisingly, share a number of similarities with those of ancient Greece, a culture that inspired and informed much of the Roman Empire’s social conventions. Most notable in the Roman marriage tradition, however, was the dextrarum iunctio, the act of sealing a marriage union with a handshake. While in the ancient Greek tradition, this gesture was shared between a groom and a bride’s father or guardian, the Romans used this handclasp as a mark of union and concord between a groom and the bride herself20 (though the marriage agreement was still between the father and groom). This motif was wildly popular in Roman art, and especially rings (figure 4), which, like the Byzantine “Marriage Belt,” also carry an aspect of gender and class performance. The dextrarum iunctio, a heavily Roman theme, can be found on Byzantine-era rings, like the sixth-century “Marriage Ring” (Fig. 1) from the Walters Art Museum. This ring, made of gold, displays the handclasp gesture on its bezel, venting Roman, and notably non-Christian, iconography, strikingly demonstrating the extent to which the early Byzantines synthesized earlier Greco-Roman motifs. Notably, many Roman rings were stylized with Greek writing, an idea the Byzantines recycled. These Roman marriage rings “from every century … were ornamented … with clasped hands,” the dextrarum iunctio, thought by scholars to represent “marital harmony”.21 This idea of harmony coincides with inscriptions of the Greek word ὁμόνοια, meaning “concord” or “harmony,”22 found on other rings from the period (Fig. 4). This motif was recycled by the Byzantines, as ὁμόνοια, which can be found on many examples of Byzantine marriage rings. The idea of marital harmony or concord was less of a pagan religious ideal than a political and social one. This continuation occurs into later, seventh-century Byzantine marriage rings, like “Octagonal Marriage Ring with Holy Site Scenes,” which exhibits entirely Christian iconography, showing how Byzantine artists were able to transform notions from Greco-Roman culture and adapt them in a new religious context.
Figure 3: Belt Ornament. Roman or Byzantine, 4th century, Copper alloy and gilt. Image Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/466253.
Between Roman and early Byzantine cultures, marriage customs “underwent few changes,” beside, of course, a shift in religious iconography,23 a phenomenon seen through the material culture of the transitional centuries. While pagan superstition and religious motifs are clearly drawn into early Byzantine marriage jewelry as Alicia Walker suggests in “Myth and Magic,” the social and political conventions of the Greco-Roman world are also prevalent in the machine of imperial Byzantium. In “Numismatic and Metrological Parallels for the Iconography of Early Byzantine Marriage Jewelry,” Walker delves deep into the practice of Byzantine imperial gift-giving and compares the iconography of Byzantine marriage rings, often worn by men,24 with imperial solidi. Some rings that depict married couples, Walker asserts, were given to “favored citizens”25 from emperors to “assert and promote confidence in the stability and authority of imperial rule”.26 But even these assertions of Byzantine imperial power have roots in its Greco-Roman heritage. According to Kantorowicz, “in the late [Roman] Empire … marriage contracts … were signed before the emperor’s image,”27 with the imperial figure acting as a sort of affirming legal and ceremonial character. The transition from an emperor (or a deity, as sometimes seen in Greek art) between the bride and groom to Christ or a cross between the bridge and groom can be tracked through sixth- and seventh-century Byzantine marriage rings, but the most interesting example of the Christianization of this motif is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Belt Ornament” (Fig. 3).
The “Belt Ornament,” fashioned with gold, features a design on either side. One side (b., in the figures index) features the common Roman marriage stance from which the dextrarum iunctio derives. Above the couple, acting as a unifying and legitimizing presence, is the Chi-Rho, a Christian symbol that stands for the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek. This first side is a classic example of the syncretism between Greco-Roman pagan motifs and Christianity, utilizing the posture and composition as an allusion to Roman social and political ideals. On the other side (a.), however, is a fully pagan scene of Bellerophon, hero from Greek mythology. Here, “Bellerophon is viewed as an image of Christ, who conquers death, symbolized by the Chimera,”28 the monster Bellerophon is famous for vanquishing. The most valuable characteristic of this belt ornament, however, is its early fourth-century date, demonstrating that this combination and syncretism of Christian and pagan iconography lasted for centuries, constituting an important part of Byzantine art.
Figure 4: Ring with Cameo of Clasped Hands. Roman, 3rd century CE, Gold and sardonyx. Image Credit: Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Material culture is an endlessly valuable resource for uncovering the influences, inspirations, and ideals that come together to create a culture. Likewise, marriage as a convention plays an interesting role in uniting the public and private spheres of a society. Political and social values are often prevalent in a culture’s art, both public and private, so an investigation of early Byzantium’s marriage jewelry and the instances of syncretism between pagan motifs and Christian ritual themes reveals the relationship between the empire’s former religion and its new social, political, and spiritual institutions.
Notes
1. Robin Cormack, “Rome With a Christian Face?” in Byzantine Art, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 18
2. Cormack, “Rome With a Christian Face?”, 3
3. Cormack, “Rome With a Christian Face?”, 9
4. Cormack, “Rome With a Christian Face?”, 11
5. Cormack, “Rome With a Christian Face?”, 9
6. Helen Saradi-Mendelovici, “Christian Attitudes Toward Pagan Monuments in Late Antiquity and Their Legacy in Later Byzantine Centuries,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990), 48
7. John H. Oakley and Rebecca H. Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens, (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 7
8. Oakley and Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens, 9
9. A.S. Brown, “Aphrodite and the Pandora Complex,” in The Classical Quarterly, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 29
10. Brown, “Aphrodite and the Pandora Complex,” 31
11. Oakley and Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens, 14
12. Ibid.
13. Kantorowiscz, On the Golden Marriage Belt and the Marriage Rings of Dumbarton Oaks Collection, 4
14. Alicia Walker, “Numismatic and Metrological Parallels for the Iconography of Early Byzantine Marriage Jewelry. The Question of the Crowned Bride,” Travaux et Mémoires, (2010), 858
15. Oakley and Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens, 16
16. Oakley and Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens, 18
17. Oakley and Sinos, The Wedding in Ancient Athens, 19
18. John Meyendorff, “Christian Marriage in Byzantium: The Canonical and Liturgical Tradition,” in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990), 99
19. Kantorowicz, “On the Golden Marriage Belt,” 8
20. Karen K. Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 208
21. Ibid.
22. Walker, “Numismatic and Metrological Parallels,” 853
23. Kantorowicz, “On the Golden Marriage Belt,” 4
24. Walker, “Numismatic and Metrological Parallels,” 856
25. Walker, “Numismatic and Metrological Parallels,” 850
26. Walker, “Numismatic and Metrological Parallels,” 856
27. Kantorowicz, “On the Golden Marriage Belt,” 7
28. Walker, “Myth and Magic,” 67
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