Dancing in the Streets of Byzantine Constantinople

PROCESSIONS

Processions-with or without dancing-were an expensive and time-consuming component of Constantinopolitan urban life.¹⁰ See Mango, 2000; Bauer, 2001; Brubaker and Wickham, 2021; all with additional bibliography. They are also an important source for our understanding of civic life, for several reasons, of which five are of particular relevance here.

First, processions are about the interaction of people with their material and topographical environment, and as such they provide evidence of how public space expanded and was made fluid. This interaction impacted both the people involved (processors and audience alike) and the material environment: the processors modulated their progress in response to their surroundings, but these surroundings were also often reconfigured to suit the requirements of the procession. This is particularly true in urban environments, and it is certainly the case for Constantinople, as Cyril Mango and Franz Alto Bauer have convincingly demonstrated for the early medieval period.¹¹ References in preceding note. On street markings and architectural modifications that may have been used to mark ceremonial sites and identify where people should stand, see Roueché, 2007; Roueché, 2002, esp. pp. 545-546. To process, and to dance, in the streets required space, and the progressive widening (at, for example, a forum) and narrowing (at, for example, a shop-filled market street such as the Makros Embolos, which still exists as Uzunçarşı, or “long market street”¹² Berger, 2000, p. 166.) of the streets of Constantinople imposed its own rhythm on the procession.

Second, in Byzantine Constantinople, processions involved a lot of people, and not only those with wealth and high social position. The participation of ordinary people is important, even if it is certainly the case that the two major sponsors of processions were the institutional church and the imperial court. Religious ceremonial had involved processions from well before the advent of Christianity, and liturgical and stational processions were incorporated by the fourth century into Christian ritual.¹³ Baldovin, 1987; Manolopoulou, 2015. Processions of all sorts grew in number and frequency from the fifth century onward,¹⁴ On processional developments between the fifth and ninth century, see Brubaker, in press. and by the tenth century, according to the typikon of the Great Church (Hagia Sophia, the main church in Constantinople), there were 66 liturgical processions every year, which works out to slightly more than once a week.¹⁵ See the lists in Baldovin, 1987, pp. 292-297; Mateos, 1963, 2, pp. 304-305 (Mateos organised the processions by date, which means that there is some overlap). Baldovin lists sixty-eight processions, two of which (nos. 32 and 61) are, however, problematic. There are also sporadic records-the first of which dates to 517-of what purported to be a weekly procession between the two major shrines to the Virgin, the Chalkoprateia and the Blachernai, led by the patriarch, but these have left no trace in the typikon of the Great Church.¹⁶ Van Esbroeck, 1988; Ševčenko, 1991, pp. 51-52. How many people walked in these liturgical processions is unclear, but participation was not restricted, and great numbers are sometimes suggested by historical accounts.¹⁷ Whether or not these reports are accurate is moot; the point is that crowds flocking to processions was a literary trope and was evidently not inconceivable to the Byzantine audience. We hear, for example, from the seventh-century historian Theophylact Simokatta that “everyone escorted the dead emperor” Tiberios to Holy Apostles (History I.2.5; Whitby and Whitby, 1986, p. 22); from the future patriarch Nikephoros, writing in the late eighth century, that “as usual, a great many people gathered for the spectacle” of Eudokia’s funeral procession in 612 (Short History §3: Mango, 1990, pp. 40-41); from the early ninth-century history Theophanes that in 602 “The emperor [Maurice] went barefoot on a litany at night with the whole city”: Theophanes, Chronicle a.m. 6093 (ed. De Boor, 1883, p. 283; Eng. trans. Mango and Scott, 1997, p. 408); from the contemporary Life of Stephen the Younger that at the investiture of Germanos as patriarch in in 715, “all the world came running, and all ages from the ancient and the old men, the adults and the young, youths and even new-borns still at their mothers’ breasts” Life of Stephen the Younger §5: Auzépy, 1997, pp. 93, 184; and, at the death of the former patriarch Tarasios in 806, that “People of every stature and age streamed together like a river to touch his bier and reverently hastened to enjoy that holy sight. And indeed had the emperor not quickly stopped the noise and the rush of the crowd through military intervention, many people would have been at risk of death, pushing as they were against one another and showing a laudable zeal for the object of their desire” Life of Tarasios §64: Efthymiadis, 1998, pp. 159, 203. While these may well be exaggerated, the enthusiastic involvement of huge crowds in modern processions was clearly, at least at times, anticipated in Byzantine Constantinople. There is no evidence that liturgical processions involved dancing.

Ruler processions also pre-date Christianity, and the earliest imperial processions in Constantinople were virtually indistinguishable from pre-Christian imperial processions in Rome.¹⁸ McCormick, 1986, pp. 11-79; tracks the changes from the principate to Iconoclasm. As recorded by Michael McCormick, the emperor was, in late antiquity, the focus of triumphal entries into the city; after the fifth century these became rare, and were replaced by imperially-sponsored processions that marked a variety of civic and religious events.¹⁹ McCormick, 1986, pp. 60, 92-94, 99. According to the tenth-century Book of Ceremonies, there was roughly the same number of these (65) as there were of for liturgical processions (66), spread across the year; so again over once a week.²⁰ This neat parallelism seems unlikely to be purely coincidental, but exploration is outside the confines of this chapter. The numbers of attendees remain difficult to establish. Processions within the palace were, according to sources such as the Book of Ceremonies, limited to imperial staff and “the senate” (sometimes including senators’ wives), but outside the palace, the emperor on procession was fair game for petitioners, and from the fifth century onward we find occasional references to guards intended to protect the ruler from the crowd.²¹ The Book of Ceremonies (I.1) opens with an account of the “usual” procession within the palace, and thence to Hagia Sophia: BoC 5-35; the “usual daily procession” is mentioned elsewhere in the Book of Ceremonies, e.g. BoC, 136-37, 518-22, 549 (I.24, II.1, II.11). The ‘ordinary’ processions described in the Kletorologion of Philotheos, written in 899, as taking place in the palace on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday following Easter presumably refer to the same thing: BoC, 769-72. For the crowd control officer, introduced under the emperor Anastasios (491-508), see Theophanes, Chronicle, a.m. 5999: ed. De Boor, 1883, p. 150 (Eng. trans. Mango and Scott, 1997, p. 230), who follows Theodore Lektor. The Book of Ceremonies also notes crowd control actions, e.g. Book I, chapter 10 where an official is identified as “directing the crowds of people so they are not mixed up in the [imperial] procession”: BoC, 82. There are certainly many accounts that tell us that “all the populace” greeted the emperor,²² See, e.g., the previous note, the notation in the Book of Ceremonies that, on the Tuesday after Easter, “crowds of people stand in the hippodrome praying for the emperor” (I.11; BoC, 87), and the greeting of Basil I (867-886) when he entered Constantinople recorded in Constantine Porphyrogennetos, Three treatises, Haldon, 1990, pp. 140-141. so, like liturgical processions, imperial parades may also at times have been thronged. These processions sometimes involved dancing, particularly when they were celebratory, as we shall see.

It is worth stressing that, although the focus of the procession might be either the emperor (or his representative) or the patriarch (or his representative), it is impossible to distinguish sharply between religious and state processional ceremonial: processions headed by the patriarch often incorporated the emperor, and processions headed by the emperor often ended in a church service led by the patriarch.²³ Brubaker and Wickham, 2021. But there were also processions in which neither emperor nor patriarch was involved. Weddings and funerals are obvious examples, and, in addition to these, guilds organised processions, though most of our evidence for these is from the eleventh and twelfth centuries.²⁴ For funerals, see note 8 above and note 44 below; for weddings, see note 8 above and Webb, 1997, pp. 135-140; for music played during wedding processions (on organs, stringed instruments and cymbals), see also the Book of Ceremonies. Book I, chapters 81-82: BoC, 379-380. For confraternities, see further below, and Ševčenko, 1995. These could involve dancing, and we will return to this shortly. For now, it is the sheer number of processions in medieval Constantinople that is notable, and the range of occasions that prompted them is an important indication of the magnitude of participation in processions in medieval Constantinople. Processions were not the preserve of small isolated groups of people, they were performed by, or impacted on, the great majority of the inhabitants of the city, even if not always at the same time.

Third, processions in Constantinople were interactive. The audiences are frequently mentioned in our sources, and they were not always kind to the processors. As we have already mentioned, by the fifth century, the emperor assigned a special official the task of ensuring that order was maintained during processions, but we nonetheless hear of audiences and processors engaging in physical violence and, especially, of audiences taunting the group processing.²⁵ There are many accounts of this in Theophanes, e.g.: Chronicle, a.m. 6005: ed. De Boor, 1883, pp. 159, 162-163 (Eng. trans. Mango and Scott, 1997, pp. 240, 247). For a later (eleventh-century) example, on the audience taunting a guild procession, see Christopher of Mytilene, Poem 136: Bernard and Livanos, 2018, pp. 286-303. On a more positive note, we also hear about people spontaneously joining in with the processional party, with numbers expanding as the procession moved through the city.²⁶ See, e.g., the references in note 17 above. The evidence suggests that it was hard to avoid processions (more on this in a moment) and, as importantly, that the audience and the processors were often hard to distinguish. Again, one way or another, processions in Constantinople involved virtually everyone in the city.

Fourth, processions were sensory experiences. Music was played, drums were beaten, and people chanted or sang or raised acclamations; horses clip-clopped along the routes, and chariots sometimes banged along the stone streets. Incense was burnt, and roses and sweet-smelling herbs were strewn along the routes,²⁷ See, e.g., the Book of Ceremonies I.1 (route strewn “with boxwood and sweet-smelling flowers,” I.18 (“sweet-smelling flowers”) and the children with crowns of flowers who greeted the emperor Theophilos (829-842) on his return from a military campaign: BoC, 6, 111; Three treatises, Haldon, 1990, pp. 150-151. See also note 30 below. which may have mitigated the stench of the crowd and the horses. People and animals bumped into each other, and into the buildings along the routes.²⁸ See, e.g., the danger from crowds noted in the description of Tarasios’s funeral in note 17 above. Food was sometimes distributed, though normally at the end of the procession (which is also when the host was consumed at certain liturgical processions as well).²⁹ See, e.g., the Book of Ceremonies I.70 (vegetables, cakes and fish piled up in hippodrome for people to take after the races celebrating the foundation of Constantinople on 11 May; the charioteers had meanwhile gone off dancing into the streets): BoC, 343-345. Processions ending with the distribution of food otherwise restrict the recipients to the élite: e.g. I.33 (two apples and a cinnamon stick to all patrikioi on Holy Thursday); I.78 (vintage festival, with grapes distributed to the élite by the emperor): BoC, 178, 373-375 Sight was obviously involved, not only from the ever-changing vision of the cityscape that the procession entered, but in addition the routes were routinely decorated with garlands, textiles and metalwork, hanging from the porticoes along the streets and the windows of buildings,³⁰ This is referenced frequently in the Book of Ceremonies but also mentioned in passing in other sources, e.g. the seventh-century Theophylact Simokatta, History I.10.10: “the city celebrated for seven days and was garlanded with silver vessels […] flutes, pipes and lyres sounded” (Eng. trans. Whitby and Whitby, 1986, p. 34). The Book of Ceremonies provides additional detail. We learn that at the return of Theophilos (829-842) from campaign, the city was adorned like “bridal canopy, with various skaramaggia [silks] and hangings, silver candelabra, and variegated flowers and roses” (Three treatises, Haldon, 1990, pp. 146-147), while on Basil’s return in 878, “the eparch of the city had prepared the city in advance, garlanding the route from the Golden Gate as far as the Chalke with laurel and rosemary and myrtle and roses and other flowers, also with a variety of skaramaggia and silk hangings and candelabra; he similarly strewed the ground, which was completely covered in flowers” (ibid., pp. 140-141). Records of tenth-century ceremonies are similar, telling us, for example, that the “clothing merchants and silver-dealers decorate [the route] … with silks and other valuable cloths and robes, and adorn it with all kinds of gold and silver vessels” (I.1; BoC, 12) and “Note that, as usual for processions, [the passages] were trimmed with laurel in the form of little crosses and wreaths […] They were also trimmed with the rest of the flowers which the season provided then. The pavements were liberally strewn with ivy and laurel, and the more special ones with myrtle and rosemary;” on this occasion, which was a reception for which the room was decorated as if for a procession, the floor was sprinkled with rosewater and lined with Persian cloths on the floor (II.15; BoC, 574-575). Even the horses were decorated (I.10, I.17; BoC, 80-81, 99, 105). and from the tenth century onward icons were routinely made the visual focus of both ecclesiastical and guild processions.³¹ See Ševčenko, 1991. Descriptions and images of processions provide some of our best evidence for the sensory lives of medieval people, though one that has not yet been exploited by recent studies on the senses in Byzantium.

Fifth, processions provide evidence of participation on multiple social registers, from the imperial family and their retinue and the patriarch, to ordinary people (both in the processions and in the audiences) and the workers who decorated the streets and cleaned up afterwards. Most of these people are invisible in high-status documents, but even courtly protocol occasionally mentions the workers and the cleaners.³² See, e.g., the long description of workers building and decorating the stage set for the celebration of the accession of Justin II in 565: Flavius Cresconius Corippus, In laudem Iustini Augusti minoris, IV.1-89, ed. Cameron, 1976b, pp. 73-76, 110-111. For later examples, see Theophanes (early ninth century), who, talking about the decoration of the hippodrome during the reign of Phokas (602-610), says in passing that “the decorators [grammistai] had done it according to custom” (Theophanes, Chronicle, a.m. 6099: ed. De Boor, 1883, p. 294; Eng. trans. Mango and Scott, 1997, p. 423) and the tenth-century reference to “the craftsmen of the two factions” below and note 51. Processions thus give us rare, if oblique, glimpses of the great majority of urban dwellers of Constantinople.

One final note before we turn to processions and dancing: processions followed two main routes, established by the mid-fifth century and in use, at least sporadically, ever after. The first of these ran from the military grounds at Hebdomon (sited, as its name suggests, at the seventh milestone outside the city), through the Golden Gate, to Constantine’s Forum and on to the Great Palace. A second branch led from the Charisios Gate (now Edirne kapı) past Constantine’s mausoleum and the church of the Holy Apostles and met up with the main road at the Forum of Theodosios.³³ See Mango, 2000; Bauer, 2001. It is evident from the sources, however, that processions often deviated from these routes, and that there were many other routes as well. Examination of the best-attested routes between the mid-fifth century and the year 1000 makes it clear that large portions of the city were periodically invaded by processions.³⁴ See the map in Brubaker, in press, where references to the routes and the sources that describe them appear. Given the noise that accompanied them, it must have been virtually impossible to avoid processions in medieval Constantinople.

DANCING

Dancing as part of public rituals had a long history in antiquity and some of these roles survived Christianity.³⁵ Webb, 2008. As Ruth Webb has shown, mime and pantomime, both of which involved dance, were the chief late antique legacies of ancient theatre: mime assimilated comedy and pantomime-sometimes called “rhythmic tragic dancing” in inscriptions-swallowed tragedy.³⁶ Ibid., pp. 2-4, with a more detailed discussion at pp. 24-43. Pantomime and mime were originally performed in theatres, but by around 400, as Alan Cameron demonstrated long ago, they had moved to the hippodrome, alongside chariot racing.³⁷ Cameron, 1976a, esp. pp. 193-229. The dancing associated with the circus could-and did-lead to violence, for which reason it was routinely banned, and the dancers exiled. As Webb noted, none of the sanctions were successful:

Dancing was not, however, always condemned, even that associated with the hippodrome, where it was performed both by pantomime artists and by the charioteers themselves.³⁹ Though it often was condemned, and Alan Cameron argued that the violence associated with the theatre, and later the hippodrome, was initiated by the pantomime dancers, not the charioteers: Cameron, 1976a, pp. 225-227. For an excellent overview, with an updated bibliography and good illustrations of the performers accompanying the races, see Roueché, 2010. It is often allied with the factions, the supporters of the four teams of chariot racers of which the main pair were the Blues and the Greens. In addition to supporting their own dancers (pantomimes), who apparently performed between races (as seen on the reliefs from the obelisk base erected in the late fourth century for Theodosios I (379-395) that still survives in the hippodrome in Constantinople (Fig. 1),⁴⁰ Pantomimes who performed on stage were men, though they often impersonated women (Webb, 2008, pp. 58-94), but it appears from the obelisk base - and other images as well - that the dancers associated with the factions could also be female. members of the factions and the charioteers themselves also danced as part of victory festivities, in celebration of either the winning charioteer or, on various occasions, the emperor. The seventh-century historian Theophylakt Simokatta, for example, tells us that, on hearing that imperial troops had defeated the Persians outside Nisibis, the emperor Herakleios “decreed that chariot-races should be held and ordered the factions to dance in triumph as is the custom for Romans when they celebrate.”⁴¹History iii.6.5; Eng. trans. Whitby and Whitby, 1986, p. 80. For further discussion of the association between dancing and victory, see Webb, 2008, p. 146. For textile images, see Maguire, 1999.

Not all dancing, however, was associated with the organised performances of the hippodrome. The role of spontaneous dancing at celebrations is clear from John Chrysostom (ca 400), who casually refers to dancing in the streets to celebrate a military triumph.⁴²Expositiones in Psalmos 7.15 (ca 400): PG 55.104. For textile images of victorious warriors dancing, see Maguire, 1999. It is particularly eloquently expressed by Corippus, in his In praise of Justin II, written in 565:

After this, with one notable exception, until the tenth century there is little written information on dancing except condemnations from the church. Already in the fifth century, churchmen associated dancing with un-Christian behaviour: Chrysostom (among others) complained about women dancing at funerals, which he saw as a pagan hold-over;⁴⁴ For discussion and additional examples of complaints about “the wild dancing of mourning women” see Alexiou, 1974, pp. 28-30, 213 n. 22. Sokrates tells us the Cyril drove the Jews out of Alexandria in the 420s because they were promoting “an evil that has become very popular in almost all cities, a fondness for dancing exhibitions.”⁴⁵History of the Church VII.13. On churchmen associating Jews and pagans with dancing, see also Webb, 2008, p. 202. Canon 62 of the Council in Trullo (691/2) famously forbade public exhibitions of dancing: “we abolish public dances by women, which may cause great harm and mischief, and also the dances and rites performed either by men or women in the name of those whom the pagans falsely called gods.”⁴⁶ Nedungatt and Featherstone, 1995, pp. 142-143. This passage has been much commented on: see, e.g., Webb, 1997, pp. 120 and 130-132; Herrin, 1992; repr. with bibliographical additions in Herrin, 2013. The distinction is gendered: under no circumstances should women move rhythmically in public, while for men (and also women, but this is a secondary consideration) the major objection was involvement in pre-Christian rituals. Both Corippus’s Praise and the Trullan ruling indicate that the earlier condemnations of performative dancing by patriarch Nestorios and the emperor Anastasios I (noted above) had proven ineffective. And, as Nicoletta Isar has observed, churchmen who routinely condemned inappropriate dancing also regularly invoked the celestial dance of angels around the lord.⁴⁷ Isar, 2011, pp. 26-48. It is clear that dancing could be either appropriate or inappropriate, depending on the context in which it was performed: in his sermon on Matthew 48 (ca 400), John Chrysostom wrote “Where there is dance there is the devil” but, later in the same sermon, noted that “God gave us feet […] not so that we could disfigure out bodies, not so that we could prance like camels […] but so that we might dance with angels.”⁴⁸PG 58.491, 493; Eng. trans. from Webb, 2008, p. 163. For additional discussion, and a slightly different translation, Isar, 2011, p. 42. In any event, both textual evidence from the tenth century and images that show dancing as part of a procession suggest that the Trullo churchmen were no more successful than had been the patriarch Nestorios and the emperor Anastasios before them.

DANCING FOR VICTORY

Dancing associated with triumphal and victory processions, after the late antique evidence that we have already looked at, resurfaces in the tenth-century Book of Ceremonies. Here, Book I (§69) outlines the protocol for chariot races, and notes that the charioteer “dances as usual after a victory,” while the winning team members “dance on chariots” (surely a rather precarious activity) as they parade around the turning post.⁴⁹BoC, 329-330. The following chapter (§70) provides the specific example of the races held on the birthday of the city, 11 May, and tells us that the victorious team “having danced as far as the turning-post” goes up to the Stama and asks permission “to go out and dance in the street, and when they have been granted the request by the emperor they go out into the Mese,” the main thoroughfare of the city.⁵⁰BoC, 345. Book II, chapter 15 records the hippodrome race that marked an exchange of prisoners between Byzantium and the Abbasids in 946, during the reign of Romanos II and Constantine VII, and tells us “When the Blue faction was victorious, a dance was held as prescribed for the vegetable hippodrome festival [part of the 11 May birthday celebrations], that is to say, with the victors escorted by the four scene-painters and all the craftsmen of the two factions […].”⁵¹BoC, 590. The hippodrome festival itself is described in Book I (§71), and here again the victorious charioteers dance around the Stama in their chariots, and then “they go away dancing in the streets.”⁵²BoC, 353. Toward the end of this long and rather repetitive chapter-a mishmash which Gilbert Dagron suggested is composed of extracts from different periods concerning a variety of celebrations⁵³BoC, 349-359; Dagron et al., 2000, p. 72, n. 242. I thank John Haldon for providing me with a PDF of this volume during the period when libraries were closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.-is a sequence of almost antiphonal responses between “the cheerleaders” (hoi kraktai) and “the people” (ho laos) that expands on this same sequence. The cheerleaders say “Let us go away and dance, rulers, if you command it” and, after acclaiming the rulers, the official in charge of the hippodrome (the aktouarios) crowns the victorious charioteers and tells them to “Dance in proper order,” to which the cheerleaders respond “We shall dance in proper order while you live, rulers.” The factions (and, apparently, the people) then leave the hippodrome, and go to the churches favoured by the Blues and Greens, respectively.⁵⁴BoC, 357. Here the actual dancing in the streets is not mentioned, but we are probably meant to infer, from the preceding passages, that the factions (and the people?) danced in the streets and then went to (or danced on their way to) church. In any event, if these accounts record actual behaviour, there was indeed regular dancing in the streets of Constantinople in the tenth century, and thus, presumably, continuously from the fifth and sixth.⁵⁵ As noted already, almost as asides (which is presumably why their remarks have had little resonance), by both Angeliki Laiou and Gilbert Dagron: Laiou, 1986, p. 112, n. 3; Dagron, 2000, pp. 158, 167-168 and n. 357.

BYZANTINE IMAGES OF DANCING IN PROCESSIONS

This continuity is equally demonstrated by images.⁵⁶ In addition to the references in the following notes, for images of dancers see also Steppan, 1997; Isar, 2011; and Roueché, 2010. The dancing women portrayed on the base of the Theodosian obelisk in the hippodrome (Fig. 1) seem to be providing localised entertainment rather than moving as part of a parade, and a later parallel to dancing as entertainment divorced from any obvious processional setting is provided by the dancing women on the so-called crown of Constantine Monomachos (Fig. 2).⁵⁷ The meaning of the two dancers is unclear, but given the customary linking of dance and celebration/victory they are certainly appropriate in an imperial setting. On the enamels, see Evans and Wixom, 1997, pp. 210-212; and esp. Maguire, 1997-1998, where they are identified as personifications. This is the place to mention the dancing muses (and animals) that decorated the tent of the sebastokratorissa Eirene, on which see Anderson and Jeffreys, 1997; Mullett, 2013a; 2013b; 2018. In contrast, late antique textiles and a sequence of images from the ninth century onwards clearly depict dancing as part of processions associated with triumphs or victory celebrations-as, indeed, are the dancers on the obelisk base, though without the processional aspect. The late antique examples, which I will not focus on here, have been studied and published by Eunice Dauterman Maguire;⁵⁸ Maguire, 1999, pp. 87-131. the later examples appear in two contexts: representations of David’s entry into Jerusalem after the defeat of Goliath, and, based on this, a triumphal imperial entry into a city on a late Byzantine ivory pyxis at Dumbarton Oaks; and miniatures of the Crossing of the Red Sea with the dance of Miriam.

Images that visualise dancing as part of a victory procession illustrate David’s entry into Jerusalem after his defeat of Goliath (I Kings 18.6-7) on the ninth-century ivory box now housed in the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, in the ninth-century Sacra Parallela, and in the eleventh-century Vatican Book of Kings (Fig. 3).⁵⁹ See Meyer, 2003. For the ivory, see Maguire, 1988. For the Sacra Parallela (Paris, BNF gr. 923, f. 344v), where the image accompanies the entry “On suspicion,” with a focus on Saul’s jealousy of David’s welcome, see Weitzmann, 1979, pp. 79-80, pl. XXXII, 120; and esp. Meyer, 2003, p. 472. For the Vatican Kings (BAV gr. 333, f. 24r): Lassus, 1973, p. 53, fig. 44. In the latter, the dancers are arranged in a circle welcoming David on his return, an image that finds an echo in the miniature accompanying Psalm 151.6-7, a passage celebrating the victory over Goliath, in the (also eleventh-century) Vatican Psalter (BAV gr.752, f.449v: Fig. 4), though here the dance of Miriam is also referenced (see below).⁶⁰ De Wald, 1942, pp. 41-42, pl. LIV; I. Kalavrezou, in Evans and Wixom, 1997, pp. 206-207; Kominko, 2016, pp. 479-481. On circular dancing, see Isar, 2011, pp. 7-26, 42-48. A dancer also appears in this context in the tenth-century Paris Psalter, and musicians (but no separate dancer) in the eleventh-century Theodore Psalter.⁶¹ In the Paris Psalter, there is only a single dancer and the scene is placed within what appears to be a palace, so the dancing is not, really, shown as part of a procession. The inscription, however, is derived from I Kings 18.7, so the triumphal entry is apparently what generated the miniature. Paris BNF gr.139, f. 5v: Buchthal, 1984, p. 23, pl. 5; Cutler, 1984, p. 65, fig. 249; Meyer, 2003, p. 475 (folio misidentified). For the Theodore Psalter (London BL Add 19372, f. 191r), see Der Nersessian, 1970, p. 101 (citing additional examples), fig. 299. The late Byzantine pyxis now at Dumbarton Oaks, which shows a dancer and musicians entertaining the imperial family translates this Davidic theme into contemporary politics.⁶² S. Zwirn in Evans, 2004, pp. 30-31, provides an overview with bibliography.

The David images suggest that the victory dancing in the Book of Ceremonies was not simply a literary trope. Further to this, images of Miriam’s dance celebrating the successful crossing of the Red Sea by Moses and the Israelites (Exodus 14.21-31) provide the clearest examples of dancing as part of a procession to survive from the Byzantine empire. The earliest preserved examples survive in three ninth-century manuscripts, the Paris Gregory of 879-882 (Fig. 5) and two psalters with marginal images that are perhaps slightly earlier than this, the Khludov Psalter and Mount Athos, Pantokrator 61.⁶³ Paris, BNF gr. 510, f. 264v; Moscow, Hist. Mus. 129, f. 148v; Mount Athos, Pantokrator 61, f. 206r. All are illustrated and discussed with additional bibliography in Brubaker, 1999, pp. 339-343, figs. 28, 143, 145. The dance of Miriam is omitted in the otherwise related miniatures in the tenth-century Leo Bible (BAV reg.gr. 1, f. 46v) and Paris Psalter (Paris, BNF gr. 129, f. 419v): ibid., figs 139-140. In all three, the Israelites process to the right, away from the drowning Egyptians, while Miriam dances in celebration at the head of the parade, a reference to Exodus 15.20-21: “And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, having taken a timbrel (tympanon) in her hand-then there went forth all of the women after her with timbrels and dances. And Miriam led them, saying, let us sing to the Lord, for he has been greatly glorifed: the horse and rider has he cast into the sea.”⁶⁴ Eng. trans. from Brenton, n.d. Miriam is depicted alone, in the ninth-century miniatures, and is a striking figure, apparently whirling in abandon, arms raised and holding krotales (castanets), with her long hair streaming around her.⁶⁵ On Miriam and her instruments, see Meyer, 2009, pp. 207-208. This is a rare example of a “good” woman shown with her head uncovered in Byzantine representations, and an equally unusual portrayal of a physically active non-imperial woman.⁶⁶ On which see Brubaker, 2020. However exceptional in its Byzantine context, however, its ultimate source is clear: Mati Meyer has tracked the motif from Dionysiac imagery to the dancers on the Theodosian obelisk base, a fourth-century personification of April on a mosaic floor from Carthage, a fourth- or fifth-century wooden box from Egypt, and a maenad depicted in mosaic in a sixth-century house in Madaba.⁶⁷ Meyer, 2009, pp. 206-207. Once enfolded in a Byzantine religious context, dancing women are primarily associated with the Mosaic tradition, and appear largely in psalter illustrations.⁶⁸ See e.g. Kominko, 2016. The representation of a respectable woman abandoning herself to dance, with her head uncovered and her hair loose, would have been possible in Byzantium only in a context that sharply distanced the portrait from contemporary realities-and the Jewish Miriam, unaffected by the churchmen’s strictures against women and Jews, provides that context.

The eleventh-century miniature in the Vatican Psalter of the women of Israel, led by Miriam, dancing (Fig. 4) is however quite distinct.⁶⁹ See note 60 above. It accompanies the supernumerary psalm 151, which references David’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem after the slaying of Goliath, and is also located immediately before the Moses Ode (Exodus 15.1-9), which celebrates Moses leading the Israelites safely across the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptians who pursued them. The women of Israel dancing is appropriate to both contexts, though the inscriptions make it clear that it is primarily meant to evoke the dance celebrating the successful crossing of the Red Sea. In any event, the women hold each others’ wrists as they dance-and process-in a circle that, once more, recalls much older Dionysiac motifs,⁷⁰ Isar, 2011, pp. 9-18. though here not only are the women are luxuriously dressed, but they are made respectable by the elaborate hats that cover their heads, with no hair visible. It is tempting-though speculative-to see this as a visual parallel, outside the victory context, to Michael Psellos’s roughly contemporary description of women dancing as part of what appears to have been an annual guild celebration organised by female textile workers on 12 May.⁷¹ On which see Laiou, 1986. Psellos described a procession, a ritual involving images of women carding linen and weaving, and, finally, a dance in which the women held each other by the wrist, as they do in the psalter miniature, and turned from side to side.⁷² For a detailed commentary, see ibid. What is notable about Psellos’s description is, in the context of this chapter, that it once again pairs processions and dancing with women. The Agathe festival, as this was known, occurred the day after the birthday celebration in Constantinople on 11 May that, as we saw, also involved dancing in the street; it was presumably seen as a continuation of the festivities by a specialised group of workers. This is an important indication that there was more female participation in Middle Byzantine public life than one would suppose from most ecclesiastical texts, and suggests that church laws forbidding women to dance in public contexts were responses to realities rather than just examples of gendered rhetoric

DANCING AT IMPERIAL CELEBRATIONS IN THE BOOK OF CEREMONIES

The Book of Ceremonies specifically mentions dancing several times, in three distinct contexts. I have already discussed the references to victory dancing in connection with the hippodrome and charioteers; three additional passages involve the factions dancing as part of imperial celebrations; and one involves “the people” dancing as part of an imperial birthday celebration for Michael III sometime around 860.

Book I, chapter 65 is titled: “What it is necessary to observe at the dance, that is, at the banquet.”⁷³BoC, 293-296. We are told that “after the meat course” the officials in charge of proceedings (the atriklinai) “go out and lead in those who are going to take part in the dance,” in this case the Blue faction. After various acclamations, “the steward of the table turns and extends his right hand and spreads his fingers like rays and contracts them again like a bunch of grapes” and then (at this signal), the Blue faction begins to dance, “going around the table in a circle three times.” After further acclamations, the Green faction does exactly the same thing. The chapter concludes: “Note that this whole ceremonial is performed also for the banquet for the augousta.” That this was a regular performance is further suggested by the tag line that appears at the end of the preceding chapter in the Book of Ceremonies, which reads: “Note that on this day dances are not part of the banquet.”⁷⁴BoC, 293 (I.64). What is not clear, however, is whether the factions themselves danced or whether there were dancers associated with the factions who danced. In the early years of the City, dancers, paid for by the state, were associated with each faction: it is these women that we see on the obelisk of Theodosios: Fig. 1). By the seventh century, the factions had been absorbed into imperial ritual and, concomitantly, we hear no more of the pantomimes associated with them.⁷⁵ See Cameron, 1976a, pp. 297-308; Webb, 2008, pp. 217-223. But, as the Book of Ceremonies makes clear, the factions remained closely associated with celebratory and processional dancing.

Dancing is mentioned several times in the hotchpotch chapter 71 of Book I (“What it is necessary to observe when the Torch Ceremony is conducted”), which we considered earlier for its dancing victory processions.⁷⁶BoC, 349-359; Dagron, 2000, p. 72, n. 242. The chapter opens with a different kind of dancing, though it still involves the factions: “In the afternoon the two factions go into the private fountain-court of the Triconch with torches, and what is called the Torch Ceremony takes place. They dance and recite the apelatikos [an acclamation]...”⁷⁷BoC, 349. The chapter then moves on to the hippodrome festival, which involved four races, after which-as we have seen-the victors dance around the Stama and go on dancing in the street. The variety and repetition within this chapter-which suggest that multiple sources of court protocol were synthesised, though not very coherently-hint that dancing processions formed a normal and regular part of imperial ceremonial across time, and this suggestion is reinforced by the remaining two references to dancing in the Book of Ceremonies.

Book II, chapter 18 concerns the Broumalia, the ancient Dionysiac celebration of the new wine harvest, frequently condemned by both the church and, sometimes, the emperor, but regularly revived, at least until the twelfth century.⁷⁸ See F. Trombley, in Kazhdan, 1991, pp. 327-328. The opening of the chapter is missing; it resumes as the emperor and court process to the private fountain court of the Triconch in the imperial palace. Members of the court “from the magistroi [the most senior administrators] to the lowest ranking” light candles and “mass around the Sigma [a semicircular peristyle adjacent to the fountain court], dancing and chanting their particular imperial eulogies for the Broumalion.”⁷⁹BoC, 600. The text continues:

The ceremonies and dancing continue the next day, at a banquet in the Hall of Justinian (also in the imperial palace):

There follow specific details about variant arrangements for the banquet under Leo VI (886-912), and during inclement weather under Michael III (842-867), a note that Romanos I (920-944) cancelled the celebration, and that it was restored under Constantine VII (944-959), following the model of illustrious emperors of the past (listing Constantine I, Theodosios I, Marcian, Leo I and Justinian I).⁸²BoC, 604-06. Whether or not these earlier august emperors followed the formula outlined in the Book of Ceremonies, the degree of specificity concerning practices from the mid-ninth century until the time of Constantine VII, when the book was compiled, strongly suggests that at least during this period dancing processions were very familiar in the imperial court of Constantinople, a suggestion confirmed by the appearance of “a brightly lit dance” in the specifications for the festival in the Kletorologion of Philotheos, a list of titles and offices compiled in 899.⁸³BoC, 782 (BoC, 702-791 reprints Oikonomides, 1972, pp. 65-235).

This is further confirmed by the final mention of dancing in the Book of Ceremonies, in Book II, chapter 35, entitled “Concerning the dance.”⁸⁴BoC, 633. It reads:

In other words, a dance was added to the ceremonial protocols of the imperial palace in the mid-ninth century, and the pattern was familiar enough that (as in Book II, chapter 18 on the Broumalia where the factions danced “following the prescribed format”) we are expected to know the formula, and are simply told that the participants “completed the whole dance.” If this followed the models we have previously discussed, which seems probable, the factions processed and danced, perhaps in a circle as they did for the Broumalia, or, less likely perhaps, in a line out onto the street, as they did for other festivals. That the circular procession is more likely is suggested by the Kletorologion, which cites dances regularly in its list of ceremonial protocols, though rarely with any detail: we hear, for example, that on the thirteenth day after Christmas, there is “a reception with a dance,” and on 21 July “hospitality in the form of a reception and great dance takes place.”⁸⁵BoC, 757, 777. That at least some of these dances involved dancing in processional circles is, however, indicated by Philotheos’s account of the activities of 30 August, during the joint rule of Leo VI and his brother Alexander (879-912), when, we are told, “half the total number” of the élite courtiers attend a banquet and “It is necessary to allocate all the rest to the dancing for the delight of the ruler. They dance in a circle in gold pectorals and devise eulogies for the pious rulers.”⁸⁶BoC, 780. From this account, it would appear that the circular dances recorded in the Book of Ceremonies had a history that was familiar enough to be recorded laconically in earlier books of protocol, and the even less detailed notations of dances elsewhere in the Kletorologion suggest that dancing, in whatever variant form, was a long-standing part of the ceremonial fabric of certain court processions.

CONCLUSION

So we may conclude that there was dancing in the streets of Constantinople, and that this frequently occurred as part of processional activities organised by the factions and by the guilds. Performance may also have been spontaneous at times, as suggested by the sixth-century text by Corippus (and possibly the eleventh-century passage by Psellos with which we opened this article), but this is not something we hear about with any regularity.

This conclusion is significant for several reasons. Perhaps most notably, it has simply never before been noticed that dancing was a regular and unremarkable part of social performance in the Byzantine capital. We are so accustomed to thinking of the Byzantines as acting within formal and hierarchical straight-jackets that it comes as a considerable surprise to realise that this was not always the case. Equally startling, from the standpoint of the traditional view of Byzantine society, is the role of women, and the accepted public participation of “respectable” women in both processions and processional dancing. In the Middle and Late Byzantine periods, images of dancing, in fact, almost invariably show women,⁸⁷ The exception is David, who is shown dancing in several miniatures in the Vatican psalter, BAV gr. 752: see Kominko, 2016. not men, though men are sometimes (though not always) responsible for the music to which the women dance.

Processions are, it seems to me, critically important to our understanding of urban life in Constantinople from the beginning until at least the take-over of the city by the Latins as a result of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. For all of the reasons outlined at the beginning of this chapter, the civic performance of processions is more revealing of the lives and activities of the whole gamut of people who lived in Constantinople-from the street cleaners to the emperor and the patriarch-than any other activity we know about. The sensory ambiance of all processions was extraordinary by modern standards. Processions were noisy from worshippers chanting the psalms or people acclaiming the emperor, not to mention the noises made by people, horses and chariots pushing their way through crowded streets and market squares, sometimes playing drums and musical instruments. They were smelly from those same markets, people and animals, a stench partially offset by incense, roses and sweet-smelling plants. Processions were frequent and physically challenging from the at times very long routes, some of which began at dusk to reach the relevant church by dawn.⁸⁸ According to Manolopoulou, 2015, p. 12; about a third of the liturgical processions listed in the typikon of Hagia Sophia covered between 3 and 10 km, with the longest being those to Hebdoman, 7 km outside the city walls. Most of them involved physical contact, not always polite, between the other people and animals processing, as well as the audience and the buildings along the route; they were visually stimulating by the decorations put up along the route or the icons and relics carried along; and sometimes, at the end, they also involved taste through the ceremony of the eucharist or, more prosaically, the consumption of food (and of course one could always self-provision along the way from the market stalls lining the route). The Constantinopolitan procession provided sensory overload, for everyone in the city, processors and audience alike. It could also provide a strong sense of community, sometimes united and sometime oppositional. Dancing as part of the performance was, so far as we can tell, always part of the communally unifying aspect of processions, bringing with it, at least on occasion, a sense of fun-another emotion rarely attributed to the Byzantines-and communal celebration. And in this respect it also did something else as well: it brought together what we might call the realm of Caesar-dancing to commemorate a victory; dancing in celebration of one’s livelihood-and the realm of God, transported by the rhythmic cadences of a sermon, or dancing in celebration with the angels.