Traces of Byzantium

I

Venice in winter, air crisp and cold;

Garbage boats and water hearses

Ply the canals; I lose my way

In the tiny streets, only to emerge

In some secret square, confronted

By a special beauty. (In the Accademia

Sits the last official gift of Byzantium

To the Venetian Republic;

A reliquary containing a fragment

Of the True Cross, presented

By Cardinal Bessarion in 1463.

In Constantinople the Venetians

Had made their fortunes, trading

Salt and slaves for gold and silks,

Russian sables and Indian spices.

In time, they came to see their partners

As rivals, ever greedier for their loot,

And the Byzantines began to fear

These suave piratical merchants

Whose privileges exceeded their own;

And in 1204, Doge Enrico Dandolo

Sent a fleet of Crusaders to storm

And sack the City on the Bosphorus

And bring back the plunder to adorn

His palaces and churches).

Shivering in mist from the lagoon,

I walk to the Fondamenta Nuove

To catch the boat for Torcello;

Through the mist looms the isle

Of the dead, whose unloved bones

Are dug up every twelve years

And thrown into a common pit.

Desolate Torcello: the black pods

Of the jacaranda trees rattle

Along the canal.Inside the cathedral,

The Last Judgment of Greek mosaicists

Glimmers;all marble,mother-of-pearl

And enamel; catching the glow

Of lamps and candles, fabulous beasts

Devouring lost souls, hands and feet

In their beaks, while angels sound

The Horrid Horn and a siren perches

On a rock while the damned swim

In the sea around; angels with poles

Force the damned down into the flames,

Even a Byzantine emperor and empress,

As sport for blue devils, and worms writhe

In the eye sockets of grinning skulls.



Byzantium no more, Atlantis no more...

Realms of the Romaioi,

Preservers of Europe for a thousand years,

Who worshipped God with opulence,

Under the eyes of the saints in icons,

Knowing that Christ by his beauty

Overcame the world, and that man

Must mediate the seen and the unseen....

In Ravenna, fog is swirling in from the sea,

And a biting wind blows it around me,

As I enter San Vitale, the harmony

Of light and shadow all-subsuming;

Out of the walls come Justinian

And Theodora,-made by artisans

Despatched from Constantinople itself-

He, the son of a Macedonian peasant,

She, daughter of a Cypriot bear tamer,

Surrounded by their adoring retinue.

Accompanied by her ladies and eunuchs,

Theodora, once a prostitute, now haloed,

Holds a chalice for the Mass,

In her crown and jewelled cloak

Broidered with the three Magi;

Justinian, God’s viceroy on earth,

In his purple cloak trimmed with gold silk,

Carries the paten, while his prelates

Hold high the cross and jewelled Bible.


II

April in Serbia: white blossom

Of bird cherry and wild pear,

And fierce joy of šlivovica;

Inside the monastery church at Manasija,

Towering among orchards,

The are beautiful Morava frescoes,

Among them a portrait of the founder,

In robes embroidered

With the doubleheaded Byzantine eagle

The Despot Stephen Lazarević Visoki,

Son of Prince Lazar, the martyr of Kosovo,

Where the Serbs lost their lands

To the Turks, and retreated

To the northern mountains.

Subtler than his father, Stephen

Played the diplomat with skill,

And survived to die in his bed;

Here he surrounded himself

With scholars and befriended hermits,

Looking out from his high tower,

As he sought in religion solace

For the doom he saw coming

To his realm, for any moment

The Turks might launch their onslaught;

And, in the end, he was forced

To cede even his beloved Manija

To the enemy, when all hope was gone.



In a beech-covered valley, with snow

On the hills beyond, Kalenić monastery

Offers sweet refuge from the world;

In the fresco of the Wedding at Cana,

The groom pricks his bride’s finger

To drink her blood with his wine

In token of fidelity; and the guests

Dine with forks, a luxury of Constantinople

Almost unknown outside Venice,

For the Serbs had been importing

Byzantine refinements for years,

As the Nemanja kings created a realm

Vast in extent ad grand in ambition;

But when these frescoes were painted

The kingdom was in dire peril

As the Turks advanced ever closer

With each day, not to be denied.

The artists worked as one in pairs,

Applying a base of white lime and straw,

Then three coats of plaster, incised

With a cartoon, and the third coat

They painted while still wet,

So the plaster absorbed the pigments

Of cobalt, ochre, haematite, terre-verte,

Carbon, chalk, lapis lazuli and gold.



Through the Ibar valley, its barren rocks

Towering over the swift twisting river,

The high road winds through

A narrow pine valley and alpine pastures,

To Studenica monastery, founded

In a wilderness of wolves and bears

By Stephen Nemanja, to be his mausoleum,

For he wish his bones to have a holy rest,

And here he was brought home from Mt Athos

After his death there as an anchorite,

“My child,” he had begged his son Sava,

“Do this please for me. Dress me in that habit

Which is to be my shroud, and prepare me,

For laying gin my grave, as is the custom.

Strew rushes on the earth for me to lie upon.

Then place a stone beneath my head

So that I may lie there until the Lord

Comes to take me hence.”

Above his simple tomb stands

A fresco, showing the sainted king,

In monk’s habit, offering up a model

Of his church to Christ and the Virgin.

His relics are said to fill the church

With the odour of violets,

And in the evening it hums like a beehive

With the chanting of vespers...



Sopoćani monastery, high

In the mountains, was built

As a Nemanja mausoleum

By King Uroš the First,

Who deposed his own brother

To steal the throne, and, in time,

Was himself deposed by his son.

These frescoes were commissioned

By Uroš from Byzantine artists of the exiled

Imperial Court at Nicaea.-

Superb frescoes, of wondrous grace,

Faces majestic and serene,

Whether joyful or sad, imbued

With mystical devotion, fashioned

With delicate and subdued palette.

On the north wall of the narthex,

A fresco depicts the interment

Of King Uroš’s mother, lying

On a bier, while an angel clasps a baby

That represents her soul,

While Christ and the Virgin approach;

Uroš himself leans over his mother,

His two sons beside him,

And a courtier, looking on, holds

A precious handkerchief to his eyes,

A luxury which the painter

Must have spied at the court in Nicaea.


Blackbirds brought the evil tidings

To the ears of Lazar’s widow,

That the Prince, whose nobility

And skill had united and preserved

His doomed nation for a time

And raised a great army

To repel Sultan Murad’s invasion,

Had fallen to the enemy,

Beheaded as vile infidels,

And thereafter for centuries

The Serbs would be enslaved,

Enfeoffed as serfs, their sons

Abducted as Janissaries to the Ottomans,

Taxed and persecuted, massacred

And impaled, without pity.


I imagine myself as Bishop Liudprand,

Tenth-century diplomat from Cremona,

At his audience with Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus

At the Great Palace in Constantinople;

“I was led into the Emperor’s presence

By two eunuchs and prostrated myself.

Before the Emperor’s throne

Stood a tree made of gilded bronze,

Its branches filled with birds

All mad of gilded bronze,

Each singing according to its species;

So marvellously fashioned was this throne

That one moment it was on the ground

And the next had risen high into the air;

Suddenly the Emperor had changed

His robes, and was sitting somewhere

Up near the ceiling, looking down at me;

How this was done I cannot imagine;

Huge, it was guarded by gold lions

Beating the ground with their tails

And roaring horribly, with quivering tongues”.


The monastery of Visoki Dečani,

Its white marble walls gleam

Amid primrose-covered banks

And chestnut woods full of violets and hellebores;

Founded by King Stephen Uroš III Dečanski

And his treacherous son Dušan

Who one day would murder him;

In 1214 Stephen was goaded into revolt

Against his own father, King Milutin,

By his stepmother, and was easily defeated;

His father had him blinded and banished

To Constantinple; in fact, the blinding

Had been bungled, but for seven years

Wily Stephen pretended to be blind,

Until his father’s death, when he ascended

The throne and, before his people,

Suddenly, miraculously regained his sight;

As king, he was ferocious and ruthless,

But fell under the influence of his wife,

The Byzantine princess, Maria Palaeologina,

Who made him so excessively Greek

In his tastes and style, that the nobility

Turned against him, and his son Dušan

Usurped him and, in a castle dungeon

Strangled his father to death with his own hands.

Inside the church here at Visoki Dečani,

Where Stephens’s body lies entombed,

Is covered from roof to floor with frescoes

Commissioned by Dušan, praying

By such offerings to God to expiate

His great sin and atone for his guilt;

Again and again, appears the figure

Of Onuphrius, wild old hermit

Of the Egyptian desert, white beard

And hair down to his feet,

Who subsisted for seventy years

On palm leaves and roots.

On the southern wall, father and son

Hold a model of the church between them,

And all around members of their dynasty

Are painted, amid archangels clad

In Byzantine arms and armour, some

With long Western swords, but others

Equipped with Turkish lances and bows.

Dušan made himself mightiest of his line,-

A handsome giant, in whose black eyes

Burned terrifying rages and wild laughter-

And dreamed of claiming the Byzantine crown,

But in 1355, while preparing his campaign

To seize Constantinople, he was stricken

With fever and died, having built dozens of churches

To atone for his father’s murder,

And kept the most splendid Byzantine court

At Skopje, as if he were already Emperor.


Built by King Milutin, the church of Gračanica,

Is subtly composed of grey and ochre stone,

In the frescoes Milutin is shown

With long white beard, in Imperial regalia,

And, with him, hs fourth wife, young Simonida,

Encrusted with emeralds, rubies and pearls,

A great gold halo behind her head.

Milutin was a conqueror, murderer and lecher,

Who byzantine his subjects still more,

Ordering his court with byzantine etiquette

And Imperial titles, and phrasing his decrees

In the manner of chrysobuls.

He lusted hotly after women, yet treated them ill,

Ice-cold in discarding them or using them

As political instruments to suit shis needs.

He wed Simonida when she was but five

And he an old man of fifty, and rendered her barren

By cruelly forcing himself upon her

When she was still a child. So jealous was he

Of his young bride that he had a secret staircase

Built inside one of the columns in the church

So Simonida could hear the liturgy,

Hidden from courtiers’ ogling eyes.

She came to hate her tyrannical husband

Ad stirred up trouble between him and his son

So that Prince Stephen rebelled against him.


III

Green hills of oak and walnut trees

And mountains lit with yellow sage;

Golden orioles fly agasinst the sea’s blue;

Sitting at a taverna table, I see

A thin scabby mongrel amble up

And sit beside me, begging for food.

In a dim church in the Peloponnese,

Women light candles, and place them

Before icons which they adorn with roses;

Through the open Holy Door, silhouetted

Against a sunbeam from the window,

The priest in green stands consecrating

The bread and wine at an altar, his voice

Deep and resonant with devotion;

He raises the ripidion and fans the elements

As the Holy Ghost descends, wings beating,

And the air is heavy with incense,

Candlesmoke and rose-scent,

The priest pierces the loaf with a knife,

As the centurion pierced Christ’s side

With his lance, as he hung on the Cross,

Cutting pieces for the saints and apostles

And the dead, then mixes the wine

With cold water, as the water flowed

Out with the blood from Christ’s side;

Then he covers the whole with a veil.


High against the snowy mountain peaks,

Amid dark cypresses, Mistra sits on its hill,

A nest of silkworms in heaven’s height;

Surrounded by valerian, purple vetch,

Pink hawksbeard, convolvulus, Tears of the Virgin,

And, clinging to the palaces and churches

The blue trumpets of campanula,

In the steep narrow wynds,

Where mansions, monasteries and citadels

Lie deserted,(Even as the rest of the Empire collapsed

And was lost to foreign powers,

Here, the last brilliant Palaeologi stood fast,

And reversed decline, conquering new lands,

Ruling as Despots over a splendid state,

Drawing scholars, architects and artists from afar).

Gemistos Plethon, would stroll to and fro

With his students in the square

Outside the Despot’s palace, lecturing on Plato;

Continually he would send memoranda

To the Emperor, arguing that, ony by reforming

According to the ideas in Plato’s Republic

Could the Eastern Empire save itself.

In the pavement of the Metropolis

Is a stone slab carve with the double eagle,

Where Constantine XI Palaeologus was crowned

And proclaimed King and Emperor of the Romans,

Though he ruled but the tiniest remnant

Of the magnificent empire of old;

And when he sailed away to Constantinople,

The Thirteenth Apostle knew in his heart

That he would be the last ruler of the East;

Four years later he died fighting to the last

On the walls of his sacked capital,

His mutilated body only recognised later

By the royal red buskins on his feet.