Sacred Images and Sacred Power in Byzantium (review)

Beginning in the late 1970's, Gary Vikan began to publish a series of articles that fundamentally altered the way many of us understand the relationship of the sacred and its physical manifestation in objects and images. The present volume brings together fifteen papers, which appeared between 1979 and 1995 in a variety of venues, many of which scholars of the Late Antique and Byzantine periods will already know. Vikan has spent most of his career in the museum world—he is currently the director of the Walters Art Museum—and the studies have in common the author's perceptive observations of material culture as a reflection of spiritual concerns in the Late Antique and Byzantine world. Eschewing the hermeneutical approach that has dominated much of the writing on Byzantine religious art, Vikan's method is both common-sensical and appealing, best represented in his Study V, "Byzantine Pilgrimage Art" (1998), an updating of a booklet he prepared to accompany an exhibit at Dumbarton Oaks in 1982 (and now available on-line through Dumbarton Oaks' web site). Indeed, many of the studies included here are devoted to pilgrimage art, and to the souvenirs pilgrims took with them from holy sites. As the author notes, "Ultimately each pilgrim was driven by the same basic conviction: namely, that the sanctity of holy people, holy objects, and holy places was somehow transferable through physical contact" (Study IX, p. 66), and many of the studies examine the role of visual imagery in the process of transfer.

The approach to the Byzantine icon is similar, and in Vikan's formulation, "Relics have helped to give birth to icons" (Study I, p. 10), and they are similarly capable of creating a sacred presence. In several studies, the Lives of St. Symeon the Elder and his namesake Symeon the Younger are brought into the discussion. Pilgrims' souvenirs were imprinted with the image of the saint and the differences between icon and token are elided: "Therefore take this eulogia of my dust, depart," the younger Symeon instructs a clinging pilgrim, "and when you look at the imprint of our image, it is us that you will see" (Studies I, p. 7; V, p. 247; VI, p. 381; IX, p. 73). In a tour-de-force article, "Ruminations on Edible Icons" (Study III, 1989), Vikan moves with ease between the reproduced Byzantine image and ads from the National Enquirer for linen copies of the Shroud of Turin. "The ad itself bears a replica of a replica, a copy of a copy," he notes, adding that the devout Byzantine "would have been satisfied with the newspaper clipping." And from modern consumer culture, he turns to Byzantine consumption and edible icons. Again, the Symeon tokens take center stage: the faithful are instructed to break them up into water, to drink it or bathe with it, "and you will see the glory of God" (p. 8).

The author's fascination with the similarities between contemporary popular religious culture and Early Christian devotional practices lies behind the least well-know of Vikan's oeuvre, "Graceland as Locus Sanctus" (Study IV), which originally appeared in Elvis + Marilyn: 2 x Immortal (New York, 1994). Here he traces the development of the cult of "Saint" Elvis, the sanctification of Graceland as a Holy Land, and similarities between modern tourism and Early Christian pilgrimage.

The collection also includes studies of Byzantine marriage rings, the iconography of a peculiar ivory plaque, and Coptic funerary sculpture. All are thought-provoking and to the point, and many should be standard features on undergraduate reading lists. These are the sorts of writings that can spark the interest of undergraduates, graduates, and mature scholars alike.