5 - Performing Byzantine Identity: Gender, Status and the Cult of the Virgin

Summary

The four markers of identity most often noted in Byzantine primary sources, both written and visual, are gender, status, stage in the life course and ethnicity. Whether someone is a woman, man or eunuch is virtually always indicated: verbally, in the written sources; visually, in imagery. Status, too, is almost always described or portrayed, either in terms of wealth (‘a poor man’, ‘a wealthy woman’), rank (‘the patrikia’[usually named] and ‘her [usually unnamed] servant’), or vocation (‘a monk’, ‘an innkeeper’, ‘a prostitute’); and because this is not always crystal clear in a picture, the designation is usually also spelled out in an accompanying inscription. Position in the life course is indicated for those not in the normative mature adult stage, both in texts (a ‘wise old man’, ‘a maiden’) and images: an excellent example is provided by a miniature in a ninthcentury copy of the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos, where an old man, a mature adult male and a beardless youth (representing the three ages of man) lower Gregory into his sarcophagus (Fig. 5.1). Ethnicity is less commonly noted, though it appears in both texts (as in the sometimes despised Paphlagonians, whom Paul Magdalino has written about, or in simple notations that so-and-so is Armenian, or Vlach, or some other designation) and imagery, as in the near-ubiquitous Persian Magi and the Black Ethiopians who appear in some images of the Mission of the Apostles, being baptised by Matthew. The two markers I am interested in here are gender and status, which – in the textual sources – inflect each other: in Byzantine society, where masculinity was the normative gender, a high-status female could nonetheless rank above a medium-status male in the social hierarchy; but, at the same time, even a female of the highest status possible (such as an empress) never lost her female attributes, and her strengths, when recognised, were often identified as masculine traits. A classic example of this is provided by Prokopios, who described one of the few powerful women he admired – Amalasuntha, Theodoric's daughter, who was regent for her young son after 526 – as ‘displaying to a great extent the masculine temper‘(Wars V, ii.3, 21).