Shrines and Schools in Byzantine Cappadocia

ABSTRACT This article has two distinct sections: the first discusses churches and the second schools in Byzantine Cappadocia. Between the fifth and the eleventh centuries the churches in this province of the empire were not only the places where the liturgy was performed, but also the social and spiritual centres of villages, towns, army garrisons, monastic complexes, etc. They fulfilled the same specific functions regardless of the purpose and scale concerning the settlements in which they were located. The article provides evidence to illustrate what these functions were and, to some extent, by which means they were accomplished. It also makes some suggestions with respect to the physical appearance of schools in the area. In so doing it allows plausible generalisations regarding the layout of other educational establishments throughout the empire. As known, there has not been substantial material published on this subject in the field of Byzantine Studies and any contribution made on this topic should be welcome.


Introduction
As a consequence of various debates regarding the paintings in the cave-churches of Cappadocia, these shrines "were eventually disassociated from their wider social and physical context." 1 One needs to examine them within their environment, so if the above statement is true, an intellectual "re-association," i.e. a re-contextualisation, is necessary. I hope this article can contribute towards such a studious process; it intends to emphasise the way churches-but also schools-in this region of Anatolia were a part of their milieu and to fathom the functions they played in their communities between the fifth 1 V. G. Kalas, "Early Explorations of Cappadocia and the Monastic Myth," Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 28 (2004): 101. and the eleventh centuries, the time when the area was under Byzantine governance. 2 By doing so, it seeks mainly to suggest a different systematisation of the information about Cappadocia published so far; to communicate some of the ideas amassed during a visit I made in the area; to publish several photographs from those I took while there; and, perhaps most importantly, to offer some intimations about what the physical setting of schools in this province of the empire would have been like. The text refers in its first part to Cappadocian shrines and comments on schools in its second.

Churches
The main thesis of this article is that, regardless of the purpose of the settlements to which they belonged (villages and towns, monasteries, military bases, etc.), the churches in Cappadocia maintained their role as community hubs throughout the Byzantine presence in the land. They were the most stable element within a changing landscape and this fact was instrumental in the survival of the people who inhabited it. These shrines were either centres of monasteries or parochial churches. I tend to think that at least some of them were simultaneously both: based on the scarce information provided by the literature (we shall expand on this topic later) 3 and on present-day practice, one can assume that a church belonging to a monastery could have served the needs of the closest town(s) and village(s) as well. I have included military chapels in the category of parochial/lay places of worship.
To facilitate the discussion about churches in Cappadocia, a map of this area and of its complexes of habitation has been inserted below ( Figure 1). 2 As is known, Caesarea was conquered by the Seljuks in 1082. We find this information, for instance, in N. Thierry, La Cappadoce de l'Antiquité au Moyen Age, Bibliothèque de l'Antiquité tardive 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 315-316. Even after this moment, the churches, especially in villages, still kept their roles-though manifested on a smaller scale-until most or all of them were closed on the occasion of the exchange of population between Greece and Turkey in 1923.  A good example to prove such a situation of multi-functionality is the church within Selime Kale Kalesi (Castle/fortress; locally also called "the cathedral within the fortress") in Peristrema/Belisırma Valley, Western Cappadocia. This is described by, among others, Robert G. Ousterhout,4 Lyn Rodley,5 and Catherine Jolivet-Lévy. 6 The large settlement was a religious site (it has, indeed, only a church, but this is vast), a place of rest for merchants who operated as far afield as trade clusters along the Silk Road, and also an administrative and military centre 7 ; it was founded in either the eighth-ninth centuries 8 or tenth-eleventh centuries 9 (sources differ as to the date Additionally she refers to J. Lafontaine-Dosogne, who gives the tenth century as the time when the paintings were accomplished. Jolivet-Lévy also indicates that M. Restle considers both the establishment of the site and the painting as pertaining to the tenth-eleventh centuries. 10 One of these diplomats on behalf of the church was George Hagiorites the Georgian, who travelled towards Caesarea and stopped in Selime for a while in 1059; Ousterhout,Visualizing Community,480. 11 Ousterhout,Visualizing Community,480. 12 Rodley,Cave Monasteries,[77][78][79] Jolivet-Lévy, Les églises byzantines de Cappadoce,332,332n8. In his research Hans Rott, who was the first to photograph the basilica, covered both the early Christian and Byzantine as well as Seljuk periods of Selime Kalesi. 14 The situation regarding the complex at Çanlı Kilise, the main subject of Ousterhout's book A Byzantine Settlement, provides another good example as to how churches served their communities. 15 The site is described (part of the account also applies to Selime) as containing mansions, churches, chapels, monasteries, storerooms, refectories, cisterns, shacks, barns, stables, pigeon houses, wine presses, hideouts for situations when refuge was necessary, and cemeteries. (As we shall see, most of these are elements common to an aristocratic oikos, a monastic community, a village, and a town). Çanlı Kilise's large precinct contains, among others, the church with a bell ("bell" is the meaning of the word çan); this is a constructed (masonry) building and was erected either in the eleventh or thirteenth centuries. 16 The smaller complex around St. Stephen's Church, close to Cemil in the Ürgüp area, has elements similar to the above ( Figure 2). 17 The controversies regarding the foundation of the church at the latter site and its painted decoration placed it within a temporary span of four centuries: between the seventh and the eleventh. 18    Generally speaking, all the sources referring to a medieval Byzantine oikos (a household with all its annexes)-and that includes references to Cappadocia during the empiretestifies that it consisted of vineyards, land planted with vegetables, parks, at least a church, houses which sometimes had separate apartments (koitȏnes), a hall, and various other annexes. 19 In some cases, a "wardrobe" (vestiarion) existed, and also "an outdoor dais (souphas) or a 'little building' (oikistos) to house a study-cum-library." 20 Among the concrete examples of Byzantine structures comprising some of these elements are the early tenth-century palace Myrelaion in Constantinople (which has similarities especially with Çanlı Kilise 21 ) and the "House of Botaneiates" (the Constantinopolitan palace given by Isaac ll to the Genoese). 22 To those we might add the "more ambitious non-imperial lay residence[s]" mentioned by Paul Magdalino: the palace belonging to Theodore Metochites in Constantinople that is verbally portrayed as consisting of "a complex of buildings grouped around a central courtyard with a church in the middle." 23 The neos oikos created by Basil I (reigned 867-886) and the oikos at Mangana, to which Constantine IX Monomachos (reigned 1042-1055) added that of St. George the Tropaiophoros was, according to Nikolaos Oikonomides, a palace with wonderful gardens, a monastery with the church dedicated to the aforementioned saint, a charitable institution, and a law school; 24 the latter was the extension of the university founded in 425 by Emperor Julian, and which Constantine IX Monomachos re-established in 1054. Typical in the countryside was a "manor house" ("the nucleus of every oikoproasteion" 25 ). But, as we know from the inventory of the domain at Baris given to Andronikos Doukas in 1073, this had a similar configuration to that of the above-mentioned households: a domed church, an arched cruciform hall (triklinos) with four chambers (kouboukleia), and a bath; 26 some of the residences consisted of "multi-storey houses." 27 Perhaps it is useful to emphasise with Magdalino that "the difference between the smallest 'manorhouse' and the largest urban palaces was one of degree, not of kind," 28 and that "the monastery was in more ways than one the alter ego of the secular oikos […] far from being a negation of the extended household." 29 He supports the opinion communicated via the latter sentence through Symeon the Theologian's statements that households had similarities regardless if they belong to "an aristocrat (archontikos) or pious (euagēs) oikos or a monastery," and that "not houses, not baths, not villages or vineyards and estates" distinguish lavrai and monasteries from the worldly because they also contain all of these. 30 Magdalino further adds that "[e]piscopal and monastic establishments resembled those of lay magnates not only in that the bishop's household and the cenobitc monastery formed the hub of a large complex of diverse and scattered sources of landed wealth, but also in that architecturally and functionally they had much in common." 31 The Roles Fulfilled by Churches in Cappadocia from the Fifth to the Eleventh Century We shall now indicate the ways in which, in addition to being the spaces where the liturgy was celebrated, the churches in Cappadocia served communities such as those described above. One function they fulfilled was to be the means through which the patrons expressed their piety and the hope of forgiveness of their sins. The founders did this not only by establishing the churches themselves (adapting the caves and constructing some of the masonry), but also by commissioning inscriptions and images, and making various donations (books, vestments, furniture, land, etc.). Concerning the inscriptions, a well-preserved one exists in Göreme church 21, which is dedicated to St. Catherine, where the woman Anna addresses the saint directly; similar texts are to be found in the hermitage of Niketas-an invocation to the Theotokos is to be found there 32 -and also in St. Eustathios church. 33 With regard to the patronage of works of iconography, I should remind readers again that this part of Anatolia "was an important province of the Byzantine Empire" and "a vibrant area of habitation, with hundreds of settlements, churches, and monasteries carved into the rocky landscape. More than seven hundreds alone have been counted in the region, many of them preserving impressive ensembles of fresco decoration." 34 It is important to mention the presence of Byzantines from the Phocas family in Cappadocia during the tenth and eleventh century and the foundations carried out and embellished by them. Two inscriptions in the New Tokalı Church/Tokalı Kilise in Göreme (Figure 4), painted in the middle of the tenth century, indicate that it was decorated by "Constantine, Nicephore and Leon, sons of Constantine. The fresco painters signed their works in spite of the fact that canonically they were not supposed to do so. This is not the only instance where the rules were not strictly observed; in general, an iconographer was known through his work, 36 so the churches themselves made this type of creator known.
36 Before the twentieth century, icon and fresco painters were exclusively men.
The written dedications in the abovementioned New Tokalı Church are situated as follows: one on the cornice of the nave and the other in the northern apse. The family name of the patron is not mentioned, but since that was rather the norm in Byzantium and, as Catherine Jolivet-Lévy reveals, the three names of the funders are-with Bardas-well attested in the family of Phocas, it is very likely that this church is their creation, and that they extended the building of the Old Tokalı (or, as Nicole Thierry calls it, Tokalı l; she speaks about these two connected foundations in terms of Tokalı l and Tokalı 2). It has been scholarly acknowledged that the same epigraphic sources testify that this "new" church at Göreme belonged to a monastery dedicated to the Archangels. The quality of the painting within and the use of lapis lazuli and of gold and silver for a few of the haloes point to rich patrons, and the Phocas were so. Jolivet-Lévy thinks that the iconographers might have been brought from Constantinople. She suggests that it was Constantine, one of the three sons of Bardas Phocas, who initiated the building of this church. He was taken prisoner in 953 and died in Aleppo. It is very probable that Leon and Nicephoros continued his work; they might have been his sons, as the inscriptions seem to imply, but it is also possible that they were his brothers. existence of cave-churches and buildings bearing traces of inhabitancy as well as that of the palaeographic and iconographic elements as those mentioned here-all reflecting aspects of the ethos of the Empire-has enticed the attention of a few researchers from as early on as the nineteenth century and has retained the interest of contemporary scholars. In consequence of surveying the literature in the field, Kalas concludes with good reason that "[i]n many ways, Cappadocia is one of the birthplaces of the modern study of Byzantine architecture." 40 With respect to the lack of decoration peculiar to some churches in the area, she underlines that their aniconicity does not necessarily mean that they were built before the iconoclastic controversy. 41 In saying this she dialogues with Nicole Thierry, who usually places the construction of these shrines in the historical period when iconodoules and iconoclasts debated. 42 As a part of the discussion about the unornamented churches, Ousterhout comments that Thierry "likes" to place in the pre-iconoclastic era those with "nonfigural painted or carved decoration" although "none is securely dated." 43 Among the decorated churches of which embellishment would have attracted people and brought recognition to the fresco-painters, worth mentioning is that of Kızıl Çukur in the Çavuşin region, founded in the sixth-seventh century (there is still a controversy about this dating). 44 The monument contains a depiction of the mariological cycle in its northern chapel, which is dedicated to Anne and Joachim. Ten scenes of the initial twelve have survived (among them that which contains the famous representation of Anna pregnant). Thierry and many other researchers such as Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne, 45   Thierry emphasises that some of the paintings in the chapel reflect the christological debate of the seventh century: they allude to the compromise reached by Emperor Heraclius (610-641) and the church to alleviate the disagreements among the religious groups peculiar to that time. Also the mariological depictions at Kizıl Çukur enumerated above express theological notions. The French scholar comments on their representation in this church: The thirteen scenes of the story [about Mary's life] are exceptionally complemented by a Virgin in the mandorla painted on the eastern tympanum, flanked by two inclined angels (pl. 37, fig.  88). Glory is an Old Testament attribute of the Divinity (Ezek. 1, 28; 43, 4) and the extent to which it applies to the Mother of God is still being discussed. 51 The mosaic in the apse of the Cypriot church of Panagia Kanakaria Lythrankomi which visually narrates the christological cycle is also worthy of mention. This is considered by Marina Sacopoulo to be "an attempt to illustrate the two natures of Christ, who 'inserted' divinity into humanity and is supposed to constitute the Orthodox response to the Monophysites." 52 Dimitri Obolesky,53  a tricephalous man, an iconographic motif she sees as being one of the elements that constitutes the mark of Western influence on Byzantine iconography. I consider its rendering to be an experiment. Hagiography was also employed to mirror contemporary theological debates. The bestknown example from this point is the iconographical scene "Paul and Peter Embracing" that occurred during the preparations for the Council of Ferrara (more precisely, Basel-Ferrara-Florence), which attempted a rapprochement between Eastern and Western Christianity 1431-1449. 56 Debates have also taken place in scholarship as to whether the decorations in Saint Appolinare Nuovo, Ravenna, reflect Arian or Nestorian ideas. 57 It should be underlined that a large array of iconographic themes exists in Cappadocian churches. As stated throughout the article, the dating of certain frescoes that represent these has been controversial; the exemplars I have seen left me with the strong impression that some of them were executed before any iconographic typicon or Hermeneia reached the area. In some early buildings one finds the entire cycle of the Life of Jesus and/or of Mary painted in continuous uninterrupted registers, with no concern for where the scenes best serve the needs of the believer. Moreover, some of the episodes shown were based on apocryphal sources or oral tradition (as opposed to the Bible itself). This is the case, for instance, with the scene "Crucifixion" in Kokar Church (dated, depending on the source, to between the second half of the ninth century and the second half of the eleventh 58 ) in which Jesus is represented clothed (Figure 6).  Another instance is a particular fresco rendering the "Flight to Egypt" in the Old Tokalı Church, Göreme 60 that depicts a young man leading the donkey on which Mary travels ( Figure 7); a similar scene exists in Pürenlı Seki the decoration of which had been attributed to the first half of the tenth century ( Figure 8). 61 59 Jolivet-Lévy, Les églises byzantines de Cappadoce, 303. 60 Jolivet-Lévy, Les églises byzantines de Cappadoce, 96; she specifies that the frescoes were accomplished by Saint John of Güllü dere in 913-920. She adds that those in the north-east niche are "probably anterior to those." 61 Jolivet-Lévy, Les églises byzantines de Cappadoce, 305; she makes a note with respect to the controversies surrounding such a dating.   Hagiography is well represented in churches founded during the Byzantine period of Cappadocia. For instance, Gregory of Nyssa is depicted full-length in a fresco at Yılanlı Kilise, Figure 10. He is represented next to the Virgin and among other religious figures. It is probable that this church was dedicated to St. Mary because her image has a significant place within the building. The decoration of this edifice has been dated to the tenth century 66 and it is to be assumed that the particular mural described here belongs to the same period. The other illustration referring to saints is from the Church of St. Theodore. 67 Here Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen are represented, and the rarely painted Eustache of Sebasta/Sebasteia also appears; Figure 11.  As suggested earlier, the churches in Cappadocia also served the spiritual necessities of army garrisons. The reality that a military presence was a fundamental part of the landscape is obvious from the fact that many settlements were strategically placed and also that some were fortified in a manner that reveals martial expertise (we have seen this with respect to Selime). Also palaeography and iconography provide evidence that testifies to the presence of soldiers and of their religious needs. In this context, James Crow's study concerning the distribution of inscriptions referring to garrisons along the borders is to be remarked upon; most of those are in Greek. 68 In terms of iconography, the depiction of military saints in various churches throughout Cappadocia (for instance, in St. George Church, Göreme site) could be an indication that either the patrons or the attendants had connections with the army or were soldiers. Fatma Gül Öztürk considers that some of the architectural structures in Cappadocia were "mansions of the landowning elites with military associations who dominated the region during the 10th and 11th centuries." 69 In addition to the main shrines about which we have spoken above, a multitude of smaller churches existed in various settlements. They would have also welcomed not

Schools in Byzantine Cappadocia: Their Physical Setting
Athanasios Markopoulos, who mentions the scarcity of publications (and information in general) concerning the physical setting of schools in Byzantium, states that " [l]ittle is known about the places in which [these] were housed." 72 But we also need to underline with the same scholar, that "[a]s many grammatistai were members of the clergy, it is quite likely that lessons were widely conducted in churches or the courtyards of monasteries." 73 With this in mind when, next to the church of St. Stephen, I came across a room from the sixth-seventh centuries that had in front of it the notice "Refectory and school" (Figure 12a), despite the caution we are advised to manifest towards local signs, I became alert.   The arrangement of benches and niches within this space ( Figure 12b) allows one to say that it would have been appropriate and convenient for use as a classroom. After reading Libanius's text in which he offers a short account, as further shown, about the physical setting of his school in Antioch, which is not far from Cappadocia (he does this in Oration 22 to Ellebichus), 74 this enclosure seemed to me to be the closest approximation concerning the layout of such a room in fourth-century Byzantium, the period in which Libanius (314-393/4) lived and wrote. In this text by him, in Or. 22.31, there is a description of the city hall (and of its immediate surroundings) which is significant for our discussion because this is the place in which Libanius held his classes (after he taught for a while in his own home). The government-accommodated school is presented as follows: "This allowed them [the administrative council of Antioch] the use of the city-hall where there was a covered theatre, and four colonnades with a central courtyard which had been turned into a garden with vines, figs and other trees, and different kinds of green-stuff." 75 From the elements introduced here by this ancient teacher of rhetoric we learn enough to allow ourselves to acknowledge the material similarities between the school building in Antioch and structures around churches in Cappadocia, like those in Figures 13 and 14 (nevertheless, the space in St. Steven's complex is only about one hundred years later than the Antiochian teaching area), one can feel justified to assume that the Anatolian buildings in the images below were part of schools. If we take into consideration the slow pace in the development of construction techniques in the area due to the harsh climate which Basil of Caesarea speaks about, 76 a fourth-century school in Antioch and a sixth-century one in Cappadocia could not have been very different; the images in Figure 14, from Gümusler Monastery, Cappadocia, suggest that this statement can be true even of a thirteenth-century school.    When reading the commentaries about the educational system in Byzantium made by various researchers, 77 it is also easy to observe the similitudes between today's system of attracting students to the university as well as the practice of writing letters of recommendation and the educational networking in general 78 and that which existed in Byzantine Cappadocia and Antioch. Likewise, it is noticeable that all these features are essentially the same as those contemporary to our classrooms and refectories. Also, if we look at the images of the numerous refectories that Ousterhout presents within the publication Visualizing Community, 79 we observe that all of them look like the room from St. Stephen's complex ( Figure 15). This suggests that many if not all such spaces might have served as schools as well as refectories.

Conclusion
By way of conclusion, I can reiterate that the fashion in which places of human habitation are arranged reveals something of what people had in mind when they initiated their foundations, and this also applies to schools and church buildings, in particular to the Christian shrines considered in this article. These are an expression of the needs and aspirations of the people who both constructed them, and attended and benefitted from their services. Hopefully, the analysis I have undertaken concerning the functionality of the churches in this Byzantine province has shown that the variety in their dimensions, shapes, and decoration would have allowed them to serve both as centres of monastic life and places of worship for the laity. Certainly they, and also the schools, were a factor of cohesion for people-and still are so in those places where they are allowed to operate today. Church functionality in Cappadocia will increase, from this perspective, when more shrines are re-opened (this is happening more frequently now than was the case ten years ago).