Izkustvoz-Metamorphoses of ascetic texts in some depictions of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite in the Balkans from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century*

The text presents several unpublished Greek inscriptions written on the scrolls of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite from Bulgaria. The main focus falls on an inscription from the narthex of the Rozhen Monastery (sixteenth century) and its identification; parallel inscriptions observed in Athonite monasteries are discussed too. A second group of inscriptions from Bulgaria and Macedonia are also discussed, with a stronger focus on an inscription in the church St. Apostles Peter and Paul in Veliko Tarnovo. The linguistic analysis attempts to discern the patterns by which such ascetic texts are visualized and transformed along the way from their original textual source to their final destination – the wall painting.

The main topic of this article is the textual and linguistic analysis of the Greek inscriptions written on the scrolls on two depictions of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite from Bulgaria that have not been published and discussed so far. The first inscription is recorded relatively rarely; it is located in the narthex of the catholicon in Rozhen Monastery Nativity of the Mother of God, and it is dated from the sixteenth century. The inscription was discovered during restoration work in the monastery in the 1970s and 1980s. Parallel inscriptions 1 are observed in catholicons and refectories in monasteries on Mount Athos. 2 Particular attention has been devoted to the text on the scroll of the saint from the southern gallery of the metro-* A paper on this subject was read during the international conference Marginalia, Art Readings 2018, held on March 23-24 2018 at the Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia. ** csvasilev@uni-sofia.bg 1 Parallel inscriptions is used in the sense of inscriptions with same source-text, which does not mean that they are identical in appearance.
2 With regards to St. Cyriacus the Anchorite's depiction in Rozhen Monastery, v. the treatise of G. Gerov politan church of Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in the city of Veliko Tarnovo from the end of the sixteenth century. 3 A few parallels from the territory of Bulgaria and Macedonia have been examined, e. g. an inscription on a scroll of a saint from the gallery of the church Nativity of Christ in Arbanassi, from the middle of the seventeenth century. 4 The lexical analysis of all the inscriptions, the attempt to trace the origin of the texts, as well as the comparison with parallel inscriptions on one hand reveal the changes, or metamorphoses, that took place in the context; on the other, they facilitate the speculations with regards to the function of the texts, associated with the commissioners of the wall decoration and the audience, too. These speculations constitute the main focus of the study; therefore, the aim is not to seek out and describe all existing Greek inscriptions on the depictions of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite from Bulgaria or the Balkans. Such a greater academic endeavour (which could include inscriptions in Cyrillic too) could be realized at a later stage. 5 A further aim of the study is an attempt to classify the reasons for the changes in the texts, thus facilitating the definition of visualization and representation patterns for the moral-ascetic texts in post-Byzantine art. According to scholars these texts are the hardest for identification and the least studied so far. 6 Thus our understanding of the practice to include monastic inscriptions on scrolls 3 Most articles from the reference list for this monument concern the iconographic programme of the frescoes without further discussion of the inscriptions on the scrolls, v. G. Gerov, Stenopisnii at kalendar ot t sŭrkvata "Petŭr i Pavel" v Tŭrnovo, Izkustvo 3 (1985)  scriptions -as much as it is possible -is the most important step for revealing the function of the texts in the depictions of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite -as well as on the depictions of monks in general. A common depiction of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite is as a standing figure in the lower register of the narthex and of the monastery refectories, or in the naos, or the altar as well. He is depicted in this manner in the narthex of Rozhen Monastery too (Fig. 1). The name of the saint is written as follows: | . The text on the scroll is relatively well-preserved, with the exception of a few damaged letters (  Source: Μηδεὶς οἰέσθω κατ΄ ἐνέργειαν τέκνον Θεοῦ γεγονέναι, μήπω τοὺς θείους χαρακτῆρας ἐν ἑαυτῷ κτησάμενος (PG 91, col. 1444A).
The textual analysis reveals that the text comes from a work by Thallassius the Abbot who lived in the seventh century -a hermit, abbot of a monastery in the Libyan Desert, friend and mentor of St. Maximos the Confessor. Only one work by Thalassius survives to the present day: Περὶ ἀγάπης καὶ ἐγκρατείας καὶ τῆς κατὰ νοῦν πολιτείας (About love, self-restraint and government of the mind) in four books, each containing 100 ascetic reflections. 8 The work has a moral-ascetic content written in epigrammatic style. The text from the scroll of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite in the narthex of Rozhen Monastery is sentence 58 from the second group ('centuria' , a group of one hundred sayings). Here is its translation: Let no one think that through energy (κατ' ἐνέργειαν) he can become child of the Lord without accepting within himself the Divine marks.
This sentence reveals the similarity between Thalassius' views and Maximos the Confessor's theological philosophical system, as well as his teachings about Divine energy (or energies), that is at least partially cognoscible -in contrast to the incognoscible essence of God, -because it 'surrounds God' , i.e. the energy is God's grace or the activity of this incognoscible essence. 9 The sentence describes the entire process of transfiguration and deification (θέωσις) of man where the mind is liberated from its own energies in order to accept fully the energies of Divinity (or the marks of Divinity). This is the experiential perceiving of God, where man receives knowledge not of God's incognoscible essence but precisely of the things that 'surround God' -a state that in Maximos the Confessor's system is defined as the highest mystical state.
The preceding and the following passages of this same second centuria of Thalassius' work can contribute to a further clarification of the meaning of the text. The preceding sentence reads: We were given the opportunity to become God's children; however, we will not be so, should we not leave our passions behind. 10 The following sentence states: Similarity in appearancebe it to good or evil, makes man a son of either God or Satan. 11 So, achieving the 'Divine marks' is related to tearing oneself away from the movement towards evil and from egotism, and to reaching a state of love that allows man to unify with God. Let us come back to Thalassius' own words (Sentence 88): That man is God's son, who has likened himself to Him through grace, wisdom, power and righteousness. 12 In this sense, the 'Divine marks' can be achieved via and at the expense of man's removal from his passions.
The manner in which the text is written in the narthex of Rozhen Monastery suggests that the writer understood its content either only partially or not at all, probably due to its archaic, high linguistic style. Another possibility is that the writer has reproduced mechanically the inaccuracies present in the manual (the hermeneia) that he used.
Two mistakes in the text of the inscription in Rozhen Monastery make it almost impossible for the reader to understand the synthesized and meaningful message of the source: 1. the complete confusion of the verb form οἰέσθω (an additional epsilon is written in the beginning of the lexeme); 2. the term ἐνέργεια (energy), which is key to the understanding of the text, has been rendered as ὄργανον (organ), probably due to graphic similarities; however, this new rendering obliterates the initial meaning of the saying.
A parallel of this inscription is found written on the scroll of St. Chariton the Confessor (Greek ὅσιος Χαρίτων ὁ ὁμολογητής, celebrated on September 28 13 ) in the catholicon of Dionysiou Monastery (1546/47). There the text is written without digressions from the historic Greek orthography: 14 We find the same text in the refectory of Dionysiou Monastery (after 1552) too, on the scroll of St. Chariton. 15 The close celebration dates of the two saints -September 28 for St. Chariton, and September 29 for St. Cyriacus the Anchorite, lead us to the speculation that the use of the same text on their scrolls is in direct connection with their depiction next to each other in the calendar cycle; in the process, an identical text could have been 'exchanged' between the two depictions. On the first layer of wall painting in the monastery Dormition of the Mother of God in Gračanica (about 1321), both monks have been depicted together on the north-eastern column (one of the four central columns in the nave) within the framework of the calendar cycle (menology). Unfortunately, neither is depicted holding a scroll with text. 16 The parallel between the two inscriptions in Dionysiou Monastery and the inscription in Rozhen Monastery undoubtedly serves as a further confirmation of the spiritual connections between Mount Athos and the region of Melnik that became stronger from the fourteenth century onwards, as well as of the presence of Greek painters working in Rozhen Monastery in the sixteenth century.
Besides the image of St. Chariton, in the catholicon and in the refectory of Dionysiou Monastery there are two depictions of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite, too. 17 Their examination might give a more complete idea about the function of the two texts used in depictions of St. Cyriacus in general. They are identical to each other, and to another inscription, written in the refectory of Docheiariou Mon- 13 Delehaye, Synaxarium, 85-86. 14 The inscription was deciphered from a photograph in: Π. Δαμούλος astery on Mount Athos (1675/76). The inscription written on the scroll of this full-size image of the saint in the refectory of Docheiariou Monastery, located in the lower register on the western wall, was published without further discussion by I. Tablákēs as follows: | | | | | | . 18 Once again, the contents of the inscription are within the context of ascetic thought: Blessed is he who is exalted in virtue but humble in his mind. He will be counted among the number of the angels. The source of the text is Admonitions by St. Neilos of Ankyra 19 (ἅγιος Νεῖλος ὁ ἀσκητής, celebrated on November 12), a disciple of St. John Chrysostom that lived in the fifth century. The work consists of about 200 short sentences -admonitions, probably written by St. Nеilos' disciples in the form of an anthology. The full title of the work is: Γνῶμαι ἀπάγουσαι τῶν φθαρτῶν καὶ κολλῶσαι τοῖς ἀφθάρτοις τὸν ἄνθρωπον (Admonitions to guide man away from the corruptible and connect him with the incorruptible). 20 Admonition #91 states: Μακάριος ὁ τὸν βίον ἔχων ὑψηλὸν, ταπεινὸν δὲ τὸ φρόνημα, Χριστὸν γὰρ μιμεῖται, καὶ αὐτῷ συγκαθέζεται (PG 79, col. 1248(PG 79, col. -1249. A possibly more correct version of this sentence, where the verb is used in the future tense, instead of the present (συγκαθέζεται), was published by I. Suaresius: Μακάριος ὁ τὸν βίον ὑψηλὸν ἔχων, ταπεινὸν δὲ τὸ φρόνημα, Χριστὸν γὰρ μιμεῖται, καὶ αὐτῷ συγκαθίσεται. 21 Translation: Blessed is he who has had an exalted life but is humble in his mind. For he follows the example of Christ and will sit at His side.
A shorter version of this admonition is found in the well-known anthology composed by St. Maximos the Confessor under the title: Κεφάλαια θεολογικὰ ἤτοι ἐκλογαὶ ἐκ διαφόρων βιβλίων τῶν τε καθ' ἡμᾶς καὶ τῶν θύραθεν, Chapters on theology in 71 speeches or talks structured thematically around sentences from the Holy Scripture and the writings of the Holy Fathers. 22 Here the sentence reads as follows: Blessed is he who has an exalted life but a humble mind. 23 The passage is taken from Speech #49, titled Περὶ ταπεινοφροσύνης (On Humility), and beginning with a quote from the Gospel according to Luke: For whosoever exalted himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted (L 14:11). 24 The linguistic analysis reveals that the style of both admonitions has been preserved in the inscription; in the first sentence the coincidence is almost complete, with the exception of the missing word 'virtue' . In the second sentence of the inscription there is a change: in the original the humble person is compared to Jesus, whereas in the 18  inscription he is compared to an angel. This is yet another example of a metamorphosis of the message of identical text in different contexts: that of the medieval manuscript and that of the inscription on the wall painting.
It is important to emphasize that not all sentences in the collection of St. Maximos the Confessor come from the writings of the Holy Fathers; it is a mixed collection of sayings from different times and origin. On one hand this makes this type of Byzantine collections highly popular, and on the other it makes them suitable for use in Christian painting.
The next inscription studied in the present article is written on the southern gallery of the church Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Veliko Tarnovo, where St. Cyriacus the Anchorite ( | ) is depicted in full size among the images of St. Symeon the Stylite and probably of St. Theodore of Studios, as we can assume from the contents of the inscription of his scroll, namely, a standardized text recommended for St. Theodore the Studios in the hermeneias (Fig. 3). The inscription is Fig. 3. St. Cyriacus the Anchorite,Holy Apostles Peter and Paul,Veliko Tarnovo,southern gallery (photo: Ts. Vasilev) relatively well-preserved with the exception of lines 6 and 7, which are partially obliterated (Fig. 4) Unfortunately, the attempts to specify the literary source of this text so far have not been satisfactory. A short version of the text has been observed in a manuscript from the fourteenth century from the collection of Bibliotheca Vallicelliana in Rome; it is inventoried as #66 in the inventory by E. Martini, in a paragraph titled στίχοι καί ἀποφθέγματα τῶν ἁγίων πατέρων (Verses and Sayings of the Holy Fathers), and the quote in question has been ascribed to St. Euthymios the Great (Εὐθύμιος ὁ μέγας) but it is substantially shorter: Ὑπνοῦντας ἄνδρας εὐχερῶς. 25 In the post-Byzantine Greek hermeneia known as the Second Jerusalem Manuscript and published by A. Papadópoulos-Kerameús, the text is described as a recommended inscription for the scroll of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite. The text of the hermeneia reads: ὑπνοῦντας ἄνδρας εὐχερῶς κλέπτης θλίβει, κόσμόυ δε τοὺς θέλοντας ἀσκεῖν πλησίον συλᾷ νοητὸς κλεπτόνους νυκτιλόχος. 26 Translation: The men that are asleep are easily oppressed by the thief, and those who wish to dwell close to the world will be robbed by the thief of the mind who will ambush them in the night.
The comparison between the texts from the inscription in the church Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and from the hermeneia reveals the following linguistic features: 1. The text of the inscription is shortened and incomplete, ending abruptly after the present participle θέλ [οντας]. This hinders greatly the understanding of the second sentence -starting with the lexeme κόσμόυ, -which gives meaning to the message as a whole. This particular sentence bears the moral-ascetic admonition, aimed solely to the monks -it urges the monk willing to achieve the goals of a life in contemplation of God to isolate himself from the world in order to forget it more easily; also, he must be cautious and protect his mind from any worldly thoughts and passions that may appear as 'raiders' of his inner peace and his contemplative disposition.
2. An additional lexeme has been included in the inscription: εὔθυνα (or εὐθύνη, if we accept its later version); in Medieval Greek it means 'responsibility, punishment' , and in this context it might also mean 'church punishment, penance' . 27 It would mean that the original ascetic meaning of the text has been replaced, and through this metamorphosis it becomes universal for all laymen: 'those who sleep during their responsibilty or penance' are 25 Cf. Е. Martini. Catalogo di manoscritii greci esistenti nelle biblioteche italiane II, Milano 1902, 107. 26 Διονυσίου του εκ Φουρνά, Ερμηνεία της ζωγραφικής τέχνης, ed. Α. Παπαδοπούλος-Κεραμέως, Εν Πετρουπόλει 1909, 286. In this publication the adjective νυκτιλόχος (a combination of the nouns νυξ, 'night' + λόχος, 'ambush') has been written incorrectly as νυκτολόχος. 27 However it should be noted that the meaning 'church punishment' has not been attested by me in other Medieval Christian inscriptions, so this meaning is only a speculation. those Christians who do not abide by the instructions of their spiritual father -an act that is inconceivable for a monk-hermit, and is more typical of a layman who has already sinned and must be awakened. Such a message corresponds fully with the purpose of a metropolitan city church such as Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, namely a church in which bishopric services were held, and, being located in the city, attended by laymen. This might also be an indication of the relative freedom that the painter scribe or the commissioner of the wall decoration had -if we accept that one of them added the lexeme coauthoring the text (i.e. the writer did not copy it from a hermeneia where the change was already present). Of course, this should be regarded merely as a speculation, as far as an exact counterpart of the inscription from Veliko Tarnovo is not known to me.
For comparison, the same text -but in its version from the Second Jerusalem Manuscript -can be seen on the scroll of another saint: St. Antony the Great, from the western wall of the narthex of the church St. Niketas (around 1324) by the village of Banjani (Fig. 5) near Skopje. The inscription on the scroll of St. Antony the Great (Fig. 6) was published by M. Marković without a discussion on the text. 28 For the purposes of the linguistic analysis I include the following diplomatic transcription: ὑπνοῦν|τας ἄνδρας εὐχερôς κλέπτης | θλίβει. κόσμου (δε) | τ(οὺς) θέλωντας | ἀσκῆν πλησί(ον) | σιλᾷ νοιτὸς κλε|-πτόνο<υ>ς νηκτηλό<γ>|χο<υ>ς.
The comparison between the post-Byzantine inscription from the church Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Veliko Tarnovo and the inscriptions from the Byzantine period indisputably demonstrates a more elaborate execution of the inscriptions in the churches Holy Mother of God -Peribleptos, St. Niketas near Banjani, and Sts. Constantine and Helen in Ohrid. Despite some phonetic transcriptions and minute discrepancies the three inscriptions from vicinity of Skopje and from Ohrid have fully preserved the implied meaning of the text with the necessary attention to all diacritics and graphic details. This allowed the reading audience to understand fully the meaning of the message.
This, however, is not the case with the post-Byzantine image of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite with a Greek inscription in the gallery of the church of Nativity of Christ in the village of Arbanassi from the middle of the seventeenth century (Fig. 10). Unfortunately the text of the inscription is partially obliterated but even in its original form it was composed of two or three words, thus depriving the reader of the chance to understand the meaning of the message:   God -Peribleptos church, Ohrid, nave (photo: Ts. Vasilev) It appears that the inscription started with the first words from the admonition to be written on the scroll of St. Cyriacus the Anchorite from the Second Jerusalem Manuscript.
This type of metamorphosis of the text could be categorized as a shortening resulting in a loss of communicativeness of the text; it is typical for many post-Byzantine monuments. This implies that this type of inscriptions were not intended to be read by the audience but at the same time they preserved some distant connection with the texts, recommended in the hermeneias.
In the context of all the above observations the metamorphoses of the texts, the changes of the bearer of the message allow us to outline some patterns in the reproduction or the visualization of moral-ascetic texts in the post-Byzantine period.
Evidently the 'scribes' (or the artists who were responsible for writing the inscriptions), had at their disposal a textual base or a source-text, i.e. a text from a hermeneia, in which the connection to the original (or the source) was lost. As the identification of the texts in the present study show, the texts on the monks' scrolls were taken from mixed collections or anthologies with short wise sentences with instructive function -a highly popular genre in the medieval Byzantine literature. One such collection that was used frequently by painters from the Byzantine and the post-Byzantine periods undoubtedly is Apophthegmata patrum. 31 Due to different factors the textual base has been altered in several ways:  and Docheiariou. This type of metamorphosis requires competent artists, capable of adequate work with the text in order to alter and complement it. 2. Adaptation that alters the meaning of the original, for example the inscription from the church Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Veliko Tarnovo, where the text has been transformed from strictly ascetic to more universal. In strictly ascetic and monastic admonitions in the medieval Byzantine tradition the direct connection with the Divine is of the utmost importance and they rarely treat anything but the personal deed.
Of course, the distinction between the first two patterns is relative and elusive.
3. Disrupting the communicativeness and the meaning of the text due to incapacity to understand its original meaning. This is clearly exemplified by the inscription in the narthex of Rozhen Monastery where the linguistic problems of the text are easily identified after a textual analysis and correct identification of the text. 4. The last type of interference can be categorized as shortening resulting in a complete loss of the communicativeness of the text. It is illustrated by the example from the church Nativity of Christ in Arbanassi. It could be the result of incompetence or of intentional shortening depending on the requirements and expectations of the audience.
Without doubt the use and adaptation of medieval ascetic texts for the purposes of church wall painting is an extremely complex subject that poses many challenges. Many of those are connected to the correct identification and attribution of the texts used in fresco inscriptions; those have undergone serious changes that are difficult to track. The metamorphoses of the message and the changes of the bearer of the scroll pose a further challenge to the identification of the text but at the same time they provide the clearest evidence for the stability of the epigrammatic genre and the moral-ascetic admonition. This stability apparently is rooted in the universal Christian themes and topics that the genre refers to.