Abstract
After waiting for decades to become a mother there can be no doubt that Anne took great pleasure in bringing her daughter Mary up. The literature and iconography of the Byzantine Middle Ages reflect Anne’s happy and harmonious family life. Little Mary brought many joys to her parents and that becomes obvious from listening to the hymns dedicated to her and to them and from looking at the visual scenes in which she is depicted being milk-fed, caressed as well as taught to walk and read.
My chapter is concerned with how Anne’s delight in motherhood is represented in the Byzantine theological, historical, and iconographical sources that considered the act of milk-nursing as pertaining not only to the mundane, but also to the divine realm.
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Notes
- 1.
In the book Nourished by the Word: heavenly sustenance in Early Christian literature and Byzantine iconography, submitted for publication; in its manuscript I have written about this particular characteristic of breastfeeding.
- 2.
In this Middle Byzantine ekphrases Nicholas Mesarites (b. 1163) describes how much he enjoyed the splendours of the Apostoleion during his visit. The description he made has survived on fols. 93 sup.–96 sup. in Cod. Gr. 350, called by August Heisenberg Codex Ambrosianus; see A. Heisenberg, “Nikolaos Mesarites. Die Palastrerevolution des Johannes Komnenos,” Prog., Wűrzburg, Stűrtz, 1907; introduction to Grabeskirche u. Apostelkirche 2, Leipzig, 1908; Glanville Downey (ed. and trans.), “Description of the church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, vol. 47, 1957, 855–924; see also his article “The Builder of the Original Church of the Apostles at Constantinople. A contribution to the criticism of the Vita Constantini attributed to Eusebius,” in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Washington, DC 1951, vol. 6, 51–80; K. Wulzinger, “Die Apostelkirche und ihre die Mehmedije zu Konstantinopel,” Byzantion 7, 1932, 7–10; Marc D. Lauxtermann, “Constantine’s City: Constantine the Rhodian and the Beauty of Constantinople,” Liz James and Antony Eastmond (eds.), Wonderful Things. Byzantium through its Art, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2013, 303–304, and J. Lansdowne, “Echoes of the Fourth-century Apostoleion in Late Antique Italia Annoraria,” in The Byzantinist, the Newsletter of the Oxford Byzantine Society, Issue 1 (Spring) 2011, 4–5, 15.
- 3.
When Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, the Church of the Holy Apostles briefly became the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church. Three years later the edifice was abandoned by the Patriarch, and in 1461 it was pulled down to allow the construction of the Fatih Mosque, which is still on the site today, even though in a reduced size and in an eighteenth-century form; Wolfgang Müller-Wiener, Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls: Byzantion, Konstantinupolis, Istanbul bis zum Beginn d. 17 Jh., Wasmuth Tübingen, 1977, 406. See Procopius of Caesarea, De aed. I, 4, 7–13, J. Houry, Teubner (ed.), Leipzig, 1913, and Buildings, I, 3, 5–11, ed. by H. B. Dewing and G. Downey, William Heinemann, London and Harvard University Press, Harvard, Cambridge, MA, Loeb Classical Edition, vol. 7, 1940, 49. See also, Constantine of Rhodes, “Poème en vers iambiques” published in Émile Legrand, “Apostoleion. Description des oeuvres d’art et de l’église des Saints Apotres de Constantinople,” in Revue des Études Grecques, vol. 9, 1896, 32–65. The latter is based on Cod. A 170, fol. 143v, Lavra [Monastery] of St. Athanasius, Mount Athos . Mehmed II (the Conqueror) was an Ottoman sultan who ruled from August 1444 to September 1446, and later from February 1451 to May 1481.
- 4.
Catastematic pleasure is felt when being in a particular state, and kinetic pleasure is that which manifest itself when a person performs an activity. See Epicurus, On Nature (Περί φύσεωϛ); this book is partially extant. A few of its fragments and some letters were published by the editor Usener in 1887 in Epicurea, reprinted in 2010.
- 5.
Christopher Butler, Pleasure and the Arts: Enjoying Literature, Painting, and Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, xviii.
- 6.
Protoevangelion; this is the first book to contain the story of Mary’s birth and infancy where St. Anne occurs; it has been used as a source of information especially in Eastern Christianity. Origen speaks about a book “of James” as early as the second century. Michael Neander gave the name Protoevangelion of James to the previously known “Book of James” in 1564 (Lafontaine-Dosogne believed that it was Guillaume Postel who did so; see her Iconographie de l’enfance de la Vierge, vol. 1, 15). Lafontaine-Dosogne dates this book to the second century. However, on the basis of palaeographic criteria, Émile De Strycker affirms that the Protoevangelion was written in the third century, with some parts (Apology of Phileas and Psalms 33–34 –g and h in his classification) belonging to the early fourth century. De Strycker (ed.), “La forme la plus ancienne du Protoévangile de Jacques. Recherché sur le Papyrus Bodmer 5 avec une édition critique du texte grec et une traduction annotée. En appendice: Les version arméniennes traduites en latin par Hans Quecke,” Subsidia hagiographica 33, Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1961, 14, 22. Neander gave this title in Latin when translating the Greek manuscript; the complete title was Protoevangelion sive de natalibus Iesu Christi, et ipsius matris virginis Mariae, somo historicus divi Iacobis minoris, consobrini and fratris Domini Iesu, apostoli primarii, et episcopi christianorum primi Hierosolmys Evangelica historia, quam scripsit beatus Marcus … Vita Ioannis Marci evangelitae, collecta ex probatoribus autoribus, per Theodorum Bibliandrum. Indices … concinnati per eundem. The translation was edited by Theodorus Bibliander and published by Johann Oporinus in 1552, Basel.
- 7.
Pseudo-Matthew, in James Keith Elliot, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006. Pseudo-Matthew is the equivalent in the West of the Protoevangelion . In Lafontaine-Dosogne’s opinion (Iconographie de l’enfance de la Vierge, 15), the latter influenced the creation of Pseudo-Matthew.
- 8.
J. K. Elliott, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives, Mary 1–2, 5.
- 9.
Elliott, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives, Mary 1–2, 5. I have noticed that this translation follows closely that effected by Montagues Rhodes James in The Apocryphal New Testament being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses with other narratives and fragments newly translated by Montagues Rhodes James, Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, Ney York, Toronto etc., 1985 edition (first edition 1924). There is written: “Righteous before God and charitable to men, they lived a chaste married life for about twenty years without producing children. Nevertheless they made a vow that if God gave them a child they would dedicate it to the service of the Lord. For that reason they were in the habit of visiting the Temple of the Lord at every festival in the year.”
- 10.
Romanus Melodus, Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica: cantica genuina, in Paul Maas and Constantine Athanasius Typanis (eds.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, 276. 6–7, 280. 6–7. The book was translated as Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist by Marjorie Carpenter, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1970–1973, vols. 1–2, 1970–1973.
- 11.
Jacob of Serug, On the Mother of God, trans. Mary Hwansbury, Introd. Sebastian Brock, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY, 1998, 46–54.
- 12.
John of Damascus , “In Nativitatem B.V. Mariae,” PG 96. 664A; John of Damascus , Expositio fidei 45, in B. Kotter (ed.), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos 2, 1973, 108. 45 and 109. 46; trans. as “On the Nativity of the Holy Theotokos,” in Cunningham (ed. and trans.), in Wider than Heaven , 54–55.
- 13.
John of Damascus , “In Nativitatem B.V. Mariae,” PG 96. 664A; John of Damascus , Expositio fidei 45, in Kotter (ed.), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos 2, 108. 45; trans. as “On the Nativity of the Holy Theotokos,” in Cunningham (ed. and trans.), in Wider than Heaven , 54. The name Anne/Anne is probably the Greek version of the Hebrew name Hannah. Both come from the common Hebrew verb חנן (hanan), meaning “that who is gracious” or “that who is compassionate.”
- 14.
John of Damascus , “In Nativitatem B.V. Mariae,” PG 96. 664B; John of Damascus , Expositio fidei 45, in B. Kotter (ed.), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos 2, 109. 46, trans. as “On the Nativity of the Holy Theotokos,” in Cunningham (ed. and trans.), in Wider than Heaven , 55.
- 15.
John of Damascus , “In Nativitatem B.V. Mariae,” PG 96. 672B; John of Damascus , Expositio fidei 45, in B. Kotter (ed.), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos 2, 109. 46, trans. as “On the Nativity of the Holy Theotokos,” in Cunningham (ed. and trans.), in Wider than Heaven , 63.
- 16.
Photius, Homily lX. 4, translated and edited by Cyril Mango, The Homilies of Photius. Patriarch of Constantinople, Harvard University Press, Dumbarton Oaks series, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958, 166.
- 17.
Alice-Mary Talbot (ed., trans.), Synaxarion of Constantinople. Byzantine saints’ lives in translation, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, DC, 1998; St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite also made a translation in the late eighteenth century.
- 18.
Synaxarion , vol. 1, 60.
- 19.
Tradigo, Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church . He considers the Homily on the Nativity of Mary (“In Nativitatem B.V. Mariae”) discussed above, PG 96; John of Damascus , Expositio fidei 45, in Kotter (ed.), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos 2, trans. as “On the Nativity of the Holy Theotokos,” in Cunningham (ed. and trans.), in Wider than Heaven.
- 20.
Photius, Homilies , translated and edited by C. Mango, The Homilies of Photius.
- 21.
Balaban Bara, The Political and Artistic Program of Prince Petru Rareş, Annex 1, xxii.
- 22.
Elliott, A Synopsis, 13.
- 23.
According to the sources quoted here Reuben was the rabbi in the temple where Anne and Joachim worshipped.
- 24.
Elliott, A Synopsis, Protev. 5: 2 F, p. 13; emphasis added.
- 25.
Elliott, A Synopsis, Ps-Matthew, 4, 5, p. 12.
- 26.
For information regarding the rituals of purification after child-birth see Elizabeth L’Estrange, Holy Motherhood: Gender, Dynasty and Visual Culture in the Later Middle Ages, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008, especially chapter 3, 76–111. The author refers to medieval practices, but one can notice that these are similar to those current during Anne’s life in the rendering of apocryphal literature.
- 27.
Idem, Protev. 5: 2 D, p. 12; emphasis added.
- 28.
Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971, the latest reprint 2000; e-book 2009.
- 29.
Judith Herrin, “Changing Functions of Monasteries for Women during Byzantine Iconoclasm,” in Lynda Garland (ed.), Byzantine Women: Varieties of Experience. 800–1200, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, 11. There are other publications concerned with women patronage, and among them one can mention Lioba Theis, Margaret Mullett, and Michael Grünbart (eds.), with Galina Fingarova and Matthew Savage, Female Founders in Byzantium and Beyond, Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 2011/2012, Band LX/LXI; J. Herrin, Unrivalled Influence: Women and Empire in Byzantium, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2013, and Margaret Mullett, “Aristocracy and Patronage in the Literary Circles of Comnenian Constantinople,” in M. Angold (ed.), The Byzantine Aristocracy from IX to XIII Centuries, BAR Int. Ser., 221, Oxford, 1984, 173–201.
- 30.
Michael Alan Anderson, St. Anne in Renaissance Music: Devotion and Politics, New York, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 61.
- 31.
M. A. Anderson, St. Anne in Renaissance Music, 63.
- 32.
James, Protoevangelion , 40; emphases added.
- 33.
James, Protoevangelion , 40; emphases added.
- 34.
The Protoevengelion and the Synaxarion describe this episode; they continue the story concerning Mary’s life by narrating the blessings received by her from the priests at the age of one.
- 35.
St. Maximus the Confessor, “Four Hundred Texts on Love. Second Century,” Philokalia, ed. by Gerald Palmer, Eustace Howell; Sherrard, Philip; St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite; St. Makarios of Corinth, and Kallistos Ware, London, Boston: Faber and Faber, 1981, reprinted 1990, 73.
- 36.
Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979, 67. I have discussed in some details the concept of epektasis in the Nyssan’s view in my article “How would Gregory of Nyssa have understood evolutionism?” in Studia Patristica, 151–169.
- 37.
On this subject, see for instance, Matthew Dal Santo, Debating the Saints’ Cult in the Age of Gregory the Great, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
- 38.
Origen, De Principiis/On first principles. See also Scott, Journey back to God, 65–67.
- 39.
Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, ed. by Henry Wallace and Philip Schaff, A Selected Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1893), vol. 5.
- 40.
Gregory Palamas, “De oratione et puritate cordis,” PG 150. 1117–1121; “Capita CL: psysica, theologica, moralia et practica,” PG 150, 1121–1225, and “Confessio fidei,” PG 151, 763–767. The actual title of the text, given by St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain, is On Passions and Virtues and the Fruits of the Spiritual Ascent. See also Georgios I. Mantzarides, “Tradition and Renewal in the Theology of Saint Gregory Palamas,” in G. I. Mantzaridis (ed.), The Deification of Man: St. Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition, 1997, trans. L. Sherrard, Foreword Kallistos of Diokleia, 3; John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1964, 183–184; Jacques Lison, L’Esprit répandu. La pneumatologie de Grégoire Palamas , Paris, Cerf, 1993; Kallistos Ware, Act out of Stillness: The Influence of Fourteenth-Century Hesychasm on Byzantine and Slav Civilization, ed. by Daniel J. Sahas, The Hellenic Canadian Association of Constantinople and the Thessalonikean Society of Metro Toronto, Toronto, 1995, 4–7, and Christos Yannaras, “The Distinction Between Essence and Energies and Its Importance for Theology,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 19, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press (summer 1975): 232–245.
- 41.
Exodus 3. 8: “So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusi”; Deuteronomy 26:9, “And thou shalt write upon them all the words of this law, when thou art passed over, that thou mayest go in unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, a land that floweth with milk and honey; as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee.”
- 42.
“ἐμβλέψατε εἰς τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ὅτι οὐ σπείρουσιν οὐδὲ θερίζουσιν οὐδὲ συνάγουσιν εἰς ἀποθήκας, καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος τρέφει αὐτά”; “οὐχ ὑμεῖς μᾶλλον διαφέρετε αὐτῶν; τότε ἀποκριθήσονται αὐτῷοἱ δίκαιοι λέγοντες• κύριε, πότε σε εἴδομεν πεινῶντα καὶ ἐθρέψαμεν; ἢ διψῶντα καὶ ἐποτίσαμεν.”
- 43.
Galatians 4.19: “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.”
- 44.
1 Corinthians 4.14: “I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you.”
- 45.
Ephesians 5.29: “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.”
- 46.
1 Thessalonians 2.7: “[W]e might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children.”
- 47.
Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, fig. 16, black and white. The caption says: “Fountain of the Virtues in Nűrnberg; all seven allegorical figures lactate as a symbol of the fertility of virtue. Several of the figures also provide nurture in other way, by offering fruit, a chalice, or a jug.”
- 48.
Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs, trans., Introduction, and notes by Richard A. Norris Jr., in J. T. Fitzgerald, gen. ed., Writings from the Greco-Roman World, (Atlanta, GA: The Society of Biblical Literature, American Council of Learned Societies, 2012), vol. 13.
- 49.
Song of Songs [of Solomon] 4. 11: “Your lips, O my spouse, drop like the honeycomb: honey and milk are under your tongue; and the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon.”
- 50.
Paul, Hebrews 5.11–14 (“About this we have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become dull in understanding. For when for the time you ought to be teachers, you have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that uses milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongs to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil”).
- 51.
Clement of Alexandria, “Paedagogus,” PG 8, 300–301; Marrou (ed. and trans.), Paedagogus , vol. I. 6, 182–183.
- 52.
Zuzana Skalova, “The Icon of the Virgin Galaktotrophousa in the Coptic Monastery of St. Antony the Great at the Red Sea, Egypt: A Preliminary Note,” in Krijnie N. Ciggaar and H. Teule (eds.), East and West in the Crusader States. Context, Contacts, Confrontations III, Acta of the Congress Held at Hernen Castle in September 2000, Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 75, Leuven: Peeters, 2003, 244 [235–264]. On the same ideas, see also Elizabeth S. Boltman, Milk and Salvation: The Nursing Mother of God in the Eastern Mediterranean, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming within the series Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion; and Sebastian P. Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey (eds. and trans.), Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998.
- 53.
Kimber Buell, Making Christians, 159–161.
- 54.
Bynum, Jesus as Mother, p. 8.
- 55.
Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Plate 16, black and white. The caption says: “Fountain of the Virtues in Nűrenberg; all seven allegorical figures lactate as a symbol of the fertility of virtue. Several of the figures also provide nurture in other way, by offering fruit, a chalice, or a jug.”
- 56.
Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra “Saints Joachim and Anne,” in Synaxarion , vol. 1, 60. See also Passarelli, Icônes des grandes fêtes byzantines, 32.
- 57.
Anderson, St. Anne in Renaissance Music, especially chapter 2, “Heritage and Progeny in an Office for St. Anne,” 26–66.
- 58.
John of Damascus , “In Nativitatem B.V. Mariae,” PG 96. 664B; John of Damascus , Expositio fidei 45, in B. Kotter (ed.), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos 2, 108. 46, trans. as “On the Nativity of the Holy Theotokos,” in Cunningham (ed. and trans.), in Wider than Heaven, 55.
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Ene D-Vasilescu, E. (2018). The Pleasure of Child Nursing: St. Anne and the Infant Mary in Texts and Byzantine Art. In: Ene D-Vasilescu, E. (eds) Devotion to St. Anne in Texts and Images. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89399-0_2
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