Byzantium: The Lost Empire (1997) s01e02 Episode Script

Pictures of Mary Jesus and the saints images from the long lost Empire of Byzantium.
This is a journey of discovery the search for the origins of western faith the tale of ancient battles that changed the world forever.
Born of the Bible and the pagan Roman Empire Byzantium still stands at the heart of the modern world its ideas of heroes and of villains and of government both good and bad and the right of law.
All of the cities of Byzantium held holy images within them.
Sacred pictures It was said that came from heaven.
They were carried into battle.
People died to save them from destruction.
This is their story This is the heart of the ancient palace of the popes of Rome.
It's centuries older than the Vatican and filled with holy wonders.
Believers say that Jesus Christ once walked upon these steps that they were taken from Pontius Pilate's palace in Jerusalem.
The steps were brought to Rome in the first centuries of Christianity and are reverenced still by millions of people every year who pass up them on their knees deep in penitential prayer.
Inside the ancient chapel at their top Rome's most holy picture an image made so it was said not by human hands at all.
A portrait so powerful that when deep in the Dark Ages the barbarians stood at the gates of ancient Rome the awe inspiring image crippled the tribes with its paralyzing gaze and sent them running back to Germany.
The painting's entirely encased in silver.
The nearest you can get to it is that little face on the top which is actualla painted on linen and lays right on the ancient panel.
And that type of face a round one with dark hair is probably the nearest you can get to an authentic portrait of Jesus.
The original was said to have been painted on the walls of Pontius Pilate's palace by the first Christians.
The real painting underneath has been entirely washed away a thousand years ago.
That doesn't matter really.
This is more than a picture.
It is literally a window into heaven a link between divinity and the earth.
The Romans called their painting the Achuropeta an eastern word that means a picture made in heaven.
It was actually made in the seventh century in the Empire of Byzantium part of a standard set of pictures of the people of the Bible.
All those images come from the East.
They're our most basic images of kings and gods and governments and heroes and mothers and villains.
All those types we take for granted and their story of how they got from the East to the modern West is an astonishing tale.
They're come from fire It's a story of blindings and hatreds and the light of faith.
It's our story and it's a part of the story of Byzantium too.
The story starts in the year 360 just a few years after the Roman Empire had accepted Christianity when a pagan pilgrim came here to the Greek sanctuary of Delphi to ask the god Apollo if the ancient pagan images would ever again be honored and worshipped in the ancient ways.
Deep down under Apollo's vast temple an old lady sat filled with the fumes from a volcanic crack underneath and drugged with cyanide.
She babbled a reply and a priest took down her words in classic verse.
"Tell the world the glorious temple has fallen.
Apollo's springs are dry.
The world no longer has a prophet.
Using the signs and symbols of the ancient gods Apollo's priest had just announced the ending of the pagan world.
Of the pagan world the gods controlled everything the movements of the stars in the sky to the fishes in the sea.
And their signs and symbols were everywhere.
They protected crops and trees.
They were in every stone.
When the thunder came down you understood it because it belonged to a god and every god had its sign.
It was a complete universe and everybody felt secure in it.
When Christianity took over the Roman Empire it attacked and swept away all these signs.
Now these signs were as old as man himself and Christianity was pretty poorly supplied with alternatives.
After all it was a language of books and words.
But unless it was to fail it had to develop and develop quickly a whole new Set of images for the world.
The trick the genius you might say wasn't just to swap this ancient chaos with ten thousand pagan signs and symbols for a single set of Christian images but to find a quick way of spreading these Christian images and pictures right through the ancient Mediterranean.
Books books were the answer.
Books were invented at the same time that Christianity started.
Before that there were scrolls.
Now there were pages.
This is a copy of one of the oldest books in the world from the first centuries of Christianity.
Look! If you flip through it you see pictures.
They are illustrating the narrative.
If that would've been a Christian book it could have gone from one end of the Mediterranean to the other and taken a whole set of Christian pictures the story from the walls of the church.
Well that's just a copy.
These images these ancient images are so precious that real books of that age from the fifth century some of the oldest pictures in the world that've come from books are now not in books but trapped in glass.
Look! Here is Jupiter.
This is a pagan book illustrating pagan poetry and it's a picture of Jupiter the king of the gods and he's got a halo just like Christian saints will have in their pictures And he's holding a globe just like Christ will in a thousand churches.
And he's sitting under the arc of heaven as Christ does and he's king of the stars and the moon and the sun.
This is this is a pose which says to you"king".
You can't have Jesus king of the world unless He looks like a king.
That looks like a king.
That's where they're getting as it were their iconography from straight from the pagan faith.
Now look at this.
Here another one of these very precious ancient illustrations really the roots of our western art.
Think of that.
When you make gestures today when you go "Victory!" Or "Communism!" "Fascism! Bang! Bang!" You are doing universal gestures.
They get emotions in you immediately.
This said to the early Christians similar sorts of things.
Look! Here is a Roman general and his mistress and a friend having dinner.
They're sitting round a table They're got halos on.
Everybody would know this was an imperial table.
There's a there's a way of drawing tables even with a fish on a plate in the middle.
You'll see that in churches.
You'll see that same image except there it becomes the last supper.
The first imperial images to tell the stories of the Christian Bible to symbolize its faith came from this city a thousand miles to the east of Rome ancient Constantinople now Istanbul in modern Turkey.
The emperor Constantine the Great dedicated this column when he founded Constantinople in the year 330.
From that year on the city stood at the heart of Constantine's vast empire the first Christian state master of the greatest cities the world had ever seen Alexandria Antioch and Rome and the capitol of the brand new empire of Byzantium.
From the very beginning Constantinople really sizzled.
New religion new state new government everything here was up for grabs.
Amazingly enough we have a good idea of how it felt to be alive inside this city and at just this time in history.
This is a fifteen hundred year old press photo not on film though it's on ivory.
There's the pole for the poor old elephant's tusk.
The Byzantines imported ivory from India and from Africa.
This probably came from Africa because it's so enormous.
It would have come of course through Egypt up through the empire to Constantinople.
The Byzantines loved ivory.
They thought it had a texture like living skin.
This then is the only glimpse we have of life in Constantinople in about the year 420.
It's a procession.
Two priests are carrying the bones of Saint Stephen of Jerusalem on a royal carriage into the imperial palace of Byzantium.
The mighty emperor Theodosius the Second is walking with his ministers and soldiers right through the center of the city.
Theodosius' procession would have passed up this very street.
This is modern Istanbul.
In those days in the fifth century it was called Constantinople.
We're walking between the docks and the ancient center of this city.
I suspect it was much the same in those days but there would have been thousands of people watching their emperor on his way to the palace.
You know these processions especially at that time were a very tense affair.
These sort of cities these great classical cities were a thousand years old.
But the Christian bishops that ran them were starting to look at them with brand new eyes.
The times really were a changing.
They saw the rich on the way to church to tend to their souls kicking beggars out of the way by the doors of the church children mutilated by their parents to make them look more pitiful.
And they saw the rich women walking they said with a thousand "meals" swinging from their ears and they didn't like what they saw.
The Christian bishops wanted a moral city a sexless city a pure city and a more equitable city too.
So that perhaps is why the emperor isn't sitting in his carriage but walking in the street and carrying a candle with his courtiers.
And the bones of a poor man from Palestine riding in the royal coach.
The emperor's procession was on its way to a grand square half way between the palace and the court church I think our ivory procession would have passed through here right through the heart of the ancient city.
Now you see that Turkish bath over there? That's in about the same place as the gate on our ivory.
And see the great high dome on the gate? And see that figure of Christ that face of Christ on the gate? That was such a famous figure! It was called Christ at the Gateway the most famous and influential portrait of Christ.
It was copied from the great shining ivory statue of Zeus of the Seven Wonders.
And that was parked in a palace just over there.
Now think of our procession moving along.
You see they're going past this great portico.
Three high stories are they people peering out arches looking down swinging their incense pleased to see the saint arriving in the city to make the New Jerusalem joining heaven to earth.
And over there look! That's about the spot where the church the brand new church of Saint Stephen is being built.
It's ready to receive the relics but they haven't finished the roof and the tilers are still working away out there.
But the empress is proudly waiting by the door holding a cross.
And that is quite extraordinary.
For the first time in the ancient world the center of attention is not the emperor but an empress.
She carries the cross of victory she receives the holy relics into her church.
It's probably the virgin empress Pulcharia.
In that most ancient language signs and symbols the little ivory is telling us about an ancient revolution and one that still affects the world today.
In the first years many of Christianity's most famous pictures were made here in the grounds of the great monastery of Saint John Studious of Constantinople.
These monasteries were Pulcharia's holy battle grounds the places where she conjured up the sacred images and metaphors with which she waged her earthly arguments.
At the center of this ancient image factory one of Constantinople's oldest churches where the sacred signs and stories were put to powerful use.
Imagine that it is Easter April the 15th, 428 and that this nice new church is filled with all the nobles of Constantinople men downstairs women upstairs in the galleries.
Suddenly there was a great hush.
The imperial guard the emperor and all his family had walked into the church.
Now in the middle of these churches there's a stone pulpit.
For more than a century now preachers have been giving fire and brimstone from these pulpits using all the language all the signs and symbols of the Christian faith and the ethics of the Bible.
They laid out the whole structure of this brand new Christian empire.
And the emperor and his family listened in humility.
Right on this line here there was an altar rail.
It separated the main body of the church from the high altar.
Only the emperor and his priests were allowed in here close to the divine mystery of communion.
In 428 though things were rather different.
Theodosius the emperor was usually accompanied to the altar by his sister Pulcharia.
They're ruled together since they'd been children two frightened toddlers in a palace filled with intrigues and plots for the succession.
When she was fourteen Pulcharia had hit upon the answer.
She dedicated an altar to her own virginity and to the rule of the emperor.
From that moment on they ruled as a strange sacred couple like Joseph and Mary and there were no plots for the succession.
It'd also given Pulcharia the unique role within the church.
On that particular Easter day though things turned out rather differently.
Pulcharia's way to the altar was barred by the new patriarch of Constantinople one Nestorius.
He said that only men could enter the sanctuary.
Pulcharia was aghast Her new role as a virgin had projected women in a different way.
She was as pure as gold she said.
She had kept herself as soft as fleece to receive the holy spirit.
"Have I not given birth to God!" she cried.
Nestorius though was a man of the old school.
He preferred to see women as the daughters of Eve that unfortunate lady who dabbled in snakes and sex and sin.
"You," he said to Pulcharia, "Have given birth to Satan!" And there you have it really.
The three roles of women laid out in the early Christian church sinners virgins and mothers.
By opening the debate Pulcharia had not only advanced the role of the Virgin Mary and women in Byzantium but defined the role of women in Christendom forever.
Encouraged by Pulcharia the next full council of the church declared Mary the mother of Jesus to be Mary the mother of God.
It was a defining moment.
Nestorius' challenge to the empress Pulcharia was now seen as an insult to the Virgin Mary.
He was declared a heretic and exiled.
Thanks to Pulcharia the family of the emperor of Byzantium had become a mirror image of the holy family in the court of heaven.
That is why these medieval emperors offer their city and an image of this church Saint Sofia Byzantium's cathedral for the protection of the Virgin Mary.
Christ's mother is their mother too.
After Pulcharia the emperors of Byzantium ruled by divine right and by right of birth and all later Western kings's imitated them.
Pulcharia had cast that spell of power and sanctity that still surrounds the offices of government today.
She'd also changed the way that men saw women and women saw themselves.
Once more ancient images tell the story.
Pagan Greeks and Romans loved public displays of sexuality inside the city.
They seemed to hold the force of life within them.
They gave assurances of immortality.
The Christians though that gazed upon eternity just as they destroyed the pagan temples so they attacked the pagan body image.
Byzantine preachers said that the sight of barren nakedness threatened anarchy within the family and the state.
And it was covered up.
Women like Pulcharia who once had flaunted wealth and beauty at the public baths now lived a regretful celibate, in hermit's house inside their marble palaces.
No longer was each man an Alexander and every woman a Venus.
Right through the empire the cities of Byzantium were filling up with Christian piety.
Yet it was still a magic superstitious world.
A world too where those who knew the will of God held quite enormous power.
Hermits like Saint Simon of the Pillar who preached in Syria and did not hesitate to question the behavior of the emperor himself.
Since you have become arrogant Emperor and since your heart has forgotten the Lord your God who gave you the imperial crown and the imperial throne and since you have become a friend of the feckless faithless Jew then know this.
Soon you will face divine judgment and then you will raise your hands to heaven and moan! Impiety, then, brought down the wrath of God.
Piety on the other hand brought prosperity good government and victory too.
The preachers kept their eyes on the great cities and on the countryside as well.
For the people who fed and fueled Byzantium were also at the mercy of the Lord.
Deep in Turkish Anatolia this little village was once the city of Saint Michael of Ten Thousand Angels famed for its fine churches.
In Byzantium's countryside life was on a knife edge between prosperity and starvation between flesh and the Devil.
Magic stones still eased the pain of reaping and of childbirth.
Magic images half cockerel half snake all dressed in armor still kept the Evil Eye at bay.
Byzantium was built on the memories of this pagan past sometimes even from the same old stones.
Ancient demons haunted the countryside stopped up wells curdled milk and threatened plague and madness.
Many saints were really doctors ministering to a madness born of holy terror.
Their prayers drove out the ancient devils safeguarded animals and crops.
For archaeologists of course such goings on are very hard to excavate.
Yet sometimes there are clues to them still lying on the swelling earth.
Have you ever wondered what attracts archaeologists to one place rather than another? This hill is a wonderful example.
Just look at its shape.
It's a bit strange in the landscape.
Look at all these white stones.
This is building stone.
That's interesting you might think.
But then I found this.
See! It's a very rare piece of marble just like the Byzantines used to use to clad the walls of buildings.
So this is quite a rich building.
Here's a bit of the roof.
So we've got the walls and the ceiling everything you could need.
What the devil is it? Well look a bit closer and here you can find something absolutely unique.
This field is studded with tiny little bits of glass.
These bits of glass are very special.
These are mosaics and they were made from the fifth to the seventh or eighth centuries.
That makes this field unique.
Look around and you'll soon discover why such a sophisticated city church was built here deep in the countryside.
Long before the Christians took over its magic this area had been a pagan sanctuary a place of sacred springs and running waters a little paradise.
Well this is the place that's given this region its name old Turkish "Yurmai", Greek "Germia", Roman "Thermai".
That's a hot spring over there.
Once it was a great pagan shrine.
That Christian church then that Christian church on the hill with those mosaics perhaps that is its exact descendant.
It's a magic place.
Once there were many places like this in Anatolia.
Once upon a time in the early years of Christianity a pagan washer woman called Hypatia said that she would become a Christian only if she could see the face of Jesus for herself.
And straight away the story goes she found a portrait of the Lord floating in the waters of the village spring.
And she was very frightened and clutched the picture to her breast.
And then Hypatia found she had two pictures the original panel and another imprinted on her dress.
It was a miracle.
Such powerful images fallen straight from heaven and mysteriously duplicating are called achuropeta.
Tradition has it that several of them still survive.
The achuropeta in the ancient palace of the popes of Rome the great shroud of Turin.
In the sixth century Hypatia's panel painting became Byzantium's battle icon the picture to paralyze the enemy with a terrifying gaze.
With such miraculous signs and symbols how could the Byzantines ever lose? Yet lose they did.
And with that loss Byzantium and all its signs and symbols were forever changed.
These are the ruins of a Byzantine border fortress set right upon the edge of the Syrian desert.
In the seventh century the East exploded.
The Byzantines moved on Persia and the Persian armies moved towards Byzantium.
Vast battles rolled back and forth across these plains for a quarter of a century and more.
These majesterial armies with their gold and silver and their standards and their generals all the panoply of ancient war and at the end of it all of Persia was destroyed and all of Byzantium had been sacked except one city that of Constantinople.
And at the same time that this tremendous battle was going on small tribes were infiltrating up through the empire.
One of them brought bubonic plague.
It was so bad in Constantinople that ten thousand people a day died from it.
The bodies were piled in a fortress and the terrible smell of death hung over the city.
One of these tribes from a Byzantine trading city in Arabia found a great prophet in their midst Muhammad.
Muhammad had the ability to turn a personal religious revelation into an immediate political reality.
Fired by his genius the armies of Islam swept through the devastated landscapes of the East.
In 636 in a gigantic battle on the Golan Heights in Syria the Byzantines were crushed.
Not long after the best part of the Byzantine Empire that vast empire that once had run from Spain to Syria was ruled by Arab Kurds.
At the same time the nation of the Slavs had broken through the northern Byzantine defenses on the Danube and were raiding south down into Greece and even threatening Constantinople.
Old Byzantium was completely broken.
An ancient way of life was coming to an end.
The story of the Syrian city of Apamea could serve for a hundred others.
Apamea had been a huge rich city for a thousand years.
In pagan times it had a sprinkling of philosophers and fine temples.
Antony and Cleopatra came here on their honeymoon.
Byzantine Apamea too had its share of elegance of churches relics and fire eating bishops.
There'd been hundreds of cities like Apamea throughout the Empire of Byzantium.
But now after the great wars they all collapsed.
It's very difficult to see a disaster in archaeology.
Things stop.
All you get is ash.
In the Byzantine Empire coinage practically stopped being issued.
This meant that nobody could collect taxes nobody could mend anything anymore there were no inscriptions.
History practically stopped.
After the seventh century the survivors came back into the ruins and started to build little houses and small fortresses amongst the great spines of the broken cities.
At that point in the world Constantinople was the only imperial city left unconquered.
You could say that Byzantium had changed from an empire of cities to an empire of fortresses.
Much of seventh century Constantinople must have looked like this.
Old Monunvassier in southern Greece.
The city's walls protected refugees from the lost empire soldiers craftsmen landowners.
Its churches were filled with images from ten thousand distant shrines.
Its open squares and public highways were choking up with curving lanes and little alleyways.
The scale of life had changed completely.
People now stayed by the family fireside read books in silence by themselves cultivated their songs engaged in clandestine love affairs.
Even patterns of eating and drinking changed.
Take bread for example.
Corn in Constantinople largely came from Egypt.
After the Arab invasions there was no corn from Egypt no free bread handouts first time in hundreds of years.
Worse than that the wheat that came from the north actually tasted different.
But it rose.
It rose like modern bread and that's really where the modern loaf starts in.
But it wasn't just the food you eat.
It was actually the way you ate it.
Ancient people had sat on couches and been served by slaves.
They didn't really have knives and forks.
There was nowhere to put them.
Now with chairs and tables people were sitting down so that the great classical spoons were filed down to make a little fork with which you could prod the food.
Pretty soon people would be cutting their own food up with knives.
Other changes too with the loss of Syria to the Arabs practically all the olive oil trade dried up.
So you had to light your house with candles.
They were quite expensive.
Not so many fry ups either.
There were more boiled foods now from the north.
Northern foods called more for beef than pork.
The Northerners too brought different clothes with them.
Byzantium was cold.
People took up wearing trousers for the first time.
And those tough guys from the North with their long hair began to be copied by the Byzantines.
If you want to look cool and groovy and wild you look like a Northerner.
The old classical world was disappearing.
Behind the high stone walls there was uncertainty and stress and fear.
And in the age old way Byzantium expressed this change of mood with the signs and symbols of its faith.
This is a very good example of what I mean.
In its day this coin was absolutely unique.
Instead of having a picture of the emperor on the front it had a picture of the Christ that was over the palace gate.
It's extraordinary.
Nobody knows why it was done.
One sure thing it did.
It cut the Arabs off from using it because they didn't agree with religious portraits.
So the Byzantine exchequer was sort of shut off from them from this moment because the coins had a picture of Christ on them.
There's another side to this too.
There were lots of Byzantines at the same time who didn't like pictures of Christ.
There was a debate broke out inside Byzantium whether it was a good idea or not a good idea to have images.
It was a debate that went on with blindings burnings maimings and ferocity for over a hundred years and it changed Byzantium forever.
By the eighth century after the invasion of Byzantium Constantinople the ancient capitol stood at the center of a gathering storm.
The storm called iconoclasm which means quite literally the destruction of the images.
In the year 730 there was a whole lot of agitated people milling around in this square.
They'd come here because they heard that the emperor wanted to take down the great picture of Christ that hung above the palace gateway.
They loved the picture.
They didn't want it taken down.
It healed the sick.
Now this painting stood under the great high arches of the palace gates somewhere over there.
And a soldier put up a ladder to go and get the painting and somebody rushed out of the crowd and pushed the ladder down and killed the soldier.
But the other soldiers took the painting down and arrested the person who had killed their friend and they had her executed.
And Saint Theodosia the virgin martyr became the first victim of iconoclasm.
Iconoclasm the cataclysm of the paintings.
This movement that started in the palace of Byzantium to destroy all holy images.
Thirty years after they took the picture down from the palace the iconoclasts that is the people who were destroying the images went through the great church itself.
The patriarch was murdered.
All the images were taken down.
And though the angels came down from heaven so it was said and beat the impious emperors the iconoclasm continued.
Glass mosaics were pounded into dust.
Books were ripped apart wooden panel paintings chopped into pieces and the blood of the holy images so it was said soaked the clothing of the iconoclasts.
It wasn't only little things either.
The monuments of this city were actually covered in images This for example was part of a great milestone that stood at the center of the city.
The emperor decreed that the sacred image of the Virgin that it contained should be scraped away and a picture of his favorite charioteer put up in its place.
What on earth was going on? Once more signs and symbols tell the story.
About the year 750 that same emperor who so hated holy images restored this fine old church Saint Irene's in Constantinople.
The plain cross was the measure of the man.
The pious emperor Constantine the Fifth a single minded soldier.
Like other emperors and generals at the time Constantine the Fifth believed that sacred pictures were evil in the sight of God.
The church contains no other images.
We move in a dangerous and mysterious age.
Part of the dark mystery of iconoclasm was actually solved a few years ago in the Vatican library by the study of this old book.
Now this book well it was clearly more than a thousand years old.
But the text in it was twice as old as that and more This is called Ptolemy's Handy Tables and it was written in ancient Alexandrian Egypt.
And it describes all the passages of the stars and the sun and the moon through the sky.
What was so remarkable about this copy of it was not simply its beauty but also the fact that it had been written at the height of iconoclasm right at that burning beginning when every image in the churches were being destroyed.
Now the key of this book and the central image of it is this beautiful plate in the front And it shows you it's a sort of a diagram from the most ancient world of astrology.
There's the zodiac signs around the edge.
All those wonderful old signs all added together to make a sort of cosmos.
And in the middle this iconoclast artist has actually painted Apollo the sun god.
This is the ancient Greek world.
It revolves around the sun.
And there's Apollo in his chariot sailing through the sky.
Isn't that extraordinary? These pious emperors who think so deeply and so hard about Christianity put Apollo in his chariot at the center of the universe.
Why do you think they've done that? The truth is of course this man is interested in these old pagan values.
He's thinking of luck.
Charioteers his favorite charioteers ran races and won them in the center of Constantinople.
The charioteers brought luck and victory to his city And that's what these iconoclasts wanted.
They wanted a pure Christianity.
But they wanted that most ancient virtue luck.
In the great spasm of iconoclasm that passed through Byzantium in the seven hundreds the monasteries and nunneries along this lonely coastline to the south of Constantinople sheltered both artists and the holy images.
The battle for the icons ebbed and flowed throughout Byzantium like a summer storm.
But you know those pictures never really left the people.
They were too much beloved The monks really fought for them.
The monks of the great imperial monasteries of Constantinople the monks that lived here in this idyllic land along the coast of Marmara they died for those pictures.
There were icons too even in the royal palace.
The ordinary people liked them.
The people in the royal family liked them.
Constantine the Fifth's own son was married to a girl from Athens who's Irene who kept icons in the palace.
Now Irene was an interesting lady.
She wanted the icons back.
And when her son finally became emperor in his own right she took him back to the room where he's been born a room with shining porphyry and had him blinded and restored the pictures.
That terrible story of Irene wasn't the end of the iconoclasm.
Fifty years later they were still torturing people who liked pictures A painter called Lazarus had his hands forced down on sheets of red hot iron to stop him painting.
And still he got a paint brush in his crippled hand and painted a new image of the Helke Christ on the gate of the imperial palace.
And that as the people of the city knew was the restoration of the pictures.
In the year 867 on the twenty-ninth of March the patriarch of Constantinople one Foteus dedicated the first pictorial mosaic in the church of Saint Sofia Beside it in mosaic was a single sentence.
"These images that the heretics cast down are being set up again by pious emperors The iconoclasts had lost the century old debate.
Even in her image Foteus tells us the Virgin graces and delights she strengthens and she comforts us Once again the holy pictures filled Byzantium with their unearthly presence.
In Saint Sofia images of Christ were placed up in the dome and here above the church's central door where only the emperor could enter.
Not the favorite Western image the mortal Christ impaled in time upon a cross but the old familiar figure from the palace gate Christ of all time and of all places Christ lord of the cosmos.
Before this ancient image penitent emperors now prostrate themselves in awe.
Not long ago there was a better ending to this story.
Here in ancient walled city of Nicaea close to Constantinople.
In the first years of Byzantium Christian creed had been written in this pretty little city and approved here too by the first council of the church.
Over the following centuries Nicaea had filled with little churches.
One of them a miniature Saint Sofia decorated with mosaics that celebrated the return of icons after the iconoclasm.
Now though you can only see the glittering scenes in old photographs the triumphant angels the exquisite Madonna drawn over the shadow of the iconoclasts' plain cross.
All of this was blown away in the Greek and Turkish wars of 1922.
And each side still blames the other.
How is it that people can show such tremendous ferocity to such quiet beauty to such passive images? Well I think it depends upon the way you look at pictures.
You see that Virgin who stood here in the nave of this church like the one in Saint Sofia wasn't like a Western picture.
It wasn't just a picture of a woman in a blue dress sitting on the chair with a sacred baby.
It wasn't like a record of an event.
These pictures were actually intended to actually take part of the identity of the Virgin part of the eternal cosmic identity of the Virgin something was there at the beginning of time and there at the end of time.
And you had it in your church.
As every little icon every little picture throughout the empire refracted these bits of holiness throughout the empire.
The emperors didn't want that.
They wanted to gather all that dispersed holiness around their own person in the city along with the sacred relics inside their palace.
Just as they collected the taxes so they wanted that power to themselves.
The Byzantines came from one of the most ancient cultures of the Middle East.
The people wanted their images.
So the triumph of the pictures you might say is really a compromise.
The emperor gets his sacredness his divine power and his taxes in Byzantium.
And the people get their pictures.
The compromise is the most indelible aspect of the Byzantine identity.
This is a picture of a procession carrying an icon and it was made six centuries ago in the last years of Byzantium.
It gives a precious glimpse of Constantinople's most famous image of the Virgin Mary painted it was believed from the life by Saint Luke himself Underneath the sum of those who centuries before had fought iconoclasm and found their way to paradise.
Saint Theodosia the virgin martyr the abbots of the monasteries the artists they hold the pictures that they died for.
Pictures painted with such passion and precision such blazing color such quiet power.
They say that on the last night of Byzantium on the evening of Monday the twenty-eighth of May in 1453 just hours before Constantinople fell to armies of the Turks that the Virgin came down into her city for the last time and took her picture back to heaven