Some Traits of Ekphrasis Interweaving with Hierotopy in Theodore Metochites’ Monastery Descriptions

Abstract

The article addresses Theodore Metochites’ assessment of the phenomenon of monastery and monastic life (mostly according to Chapter 40 of his Sententious Notes) in juxtaposition with his predecessors in the ekphrastic genre, such as Michael the Rhetor. The descriptions in question and the “conceptual portrait” of the monastic institution(s) and of the monk as an ascetic draw on a centuries-long Late Antique Jewish and, later on, Christian tradition of conceptualizing Temple, firstly that of Solomon, but then also every Christian one (first of all, St Sophia of Constantinople), as: a) a focal point of the believers’ life; b) antitype of the Heavenly Temple, i. e., of the New Jerusalem, the Divine Tabernacle, whereas its eschatological coming will be seen by the just in the Kingdom of God, according to the Bible. For Theodore, monastery is both spiritual and sensorial realization of the Divine Kingdom on earth, being a brilliant and luminous sacred space. In its description, which is being used by the author as a tool of its contraposition to the turmoil of the theatrum mundi (kosmikon theatron), some traits of hierotopicity are clearly to be seen. The description was carried out in the genre of ekphrasis, but different features of other genres as well (such as philosophical & theological essay or threnos) are discernible there. Metochites cries out that now all the Church buildings and monasteries are destroyed or put in disorder, all their magnificence remaining in the past, and it is Joseph Bryennios in the fifteenth century who picks up the corresponding topics. Also typical for the style of Metochites’ thought are some allusions at Pseudo-­Dionysius the Areopagite. Theodore’s Notes with its Ch. 40 allow us to support the fresher speculations of Byzantinists concerning creative freedom and wild imagination of those Byzantine intellectuals and polymaths who, like the Great logothete, used to construe their own virtual worlds and attract those keen on reading to them.