Art and Architecture in Byzantium and Armenia: Liturgical and Exegetical Approaches by Thomas F. Mathews (review)

756book reviews Roman law, "(so caUed in contrast to customary law and municipal statutory law, which were not typicaUy subjects of formal study in university law faculties )" and the meaning of the tus commune are particularly well analyzed. The next chapter demonstrates the extent to which canon law affected the private Ufe of individuals. "Church courts exercised jurisdiction, for example, over marriage and the termination of marriage, the legitimacy of chUdren, aU types of sexual conduct, commercial and financial behaviour, the legitimate times and conditions of labour, poor reUef, wiUs and testaments and burial of the dead" (p. 71).The chapter on public Ufe explains how"out ofthe elaboration of canonical corporation theory, emerged some novel poUtical ideas that have subsequently become basic to modern Western notions about constitutional government" (p. 104).Two chapters deal with church courts and procedure and with canonical jurisprudence. A final chapter explores the widespread ramifications of canon law in Western societies. In conclusion, "the speculations and insights of medieval canonists remain enshrined both within the common law tradition of the EngUsh-speaking world and within the civil law heritage of Continental Europeans. This is most obviously true in famUy law and testamentary law, but canonical tradition is also evident in many other branches of the law—contracts, torts, property law, and corporation law among them. . . . Medieval canon law, in short, constituted a fundamental formative force in the creation of some of the elemental ideas and institutions that continue to this day to characterizeWestern societies" (p. 189). Brundage, a past president of the American Catholic Historical Association and the author of numerous books and articles, offers here a briUiant appreciation of medieval canon law. John E. Lynch The Catholic University ofAmerica Art and Architecture in Byzantium and Armenia: Liturgical and Exegetical Approaches. By Thomas E Mathews. [Variorum Collected Studies Series CS510.] (Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Company. 1995.Pp.xii, 295. $124.95.) This is another in theVariorum series of coUected studies containing, like the others, reprints of the author's articles culled from disparate and often hard-tofind sources.These span the period from 1962 to 1994 and demonstrate Mathews ' continued interest in the interrelated areas of Uturgy, architecture, and church decoration. The author's brief introduction acknowledges that additional debate on some of these topics has taken place in print, and that at least one of his studies "requires modification" in the Ught of later archaeological work. Unfortunately, even though only three of the included studies postdate 1986, the introduction refers to fewer than a dozen additional titles (two by Mathews himseU) that update the research here.The book is extensively Ulus- book reviews757 trated with black-and-white prints of varying quality, and there is a brief index. Numerous typographical errors in the original articles have not been corrected. Studies I-III deal with architecture and liturgy: "An early Roman chancel arrangement and its liturgical uses," "Architecture and Uturgy in the earliest palace churches of Constantinople" (translated from its original publication in French), and "'Private' Uturgy in Byzantine architecture: toward a re-appraisal." The latter study in particular remains fundamental, but aU of them demonstrate the author's familiarity with Greek and Latin texts as weU as with archaeological material. Studies IV-VI are largely descriptive reports on Armenian and Byzantine churches, from the very brief "Observations on St Hfipsimë" to the longer "Notes on the Atik Mustafa Pa§a Camii in Istanbul and its frescoes" and "Observations on the church of Panagia Kamariotissa on Heybeliada (Chalke), Istanbul ." More recent research on the Atik has confirmed Mathews' observations about a porch, or flanking chapels, surrounding this Middle Byzantine church (and all the others in Constantinople), and uncovered traces of Byzantine decoration unknown to him. The iconography ofArmenian and Byzantine manuscripts and frescoes is the focus of Studies VII-X: "The early Armenian iconographie program of the Ëjmiacin Gospel (Erevan, Matenadaran Ms 2374, olim 229)," "The epigrams of Leo SaceUarios and an exegetical approach to the miniatures ofVat. Reg. Gr. 1," "The annunciation at the weU: a metaphor of Armenian monophysitism," and "The Genesis frescoes of Alt'amar." These are wide-ranging inquiries, and the close text-and-image exegesis of the Leo...