Being the last paper of this series devoted to the experience of young Turkish scholars at an International Byzantine Congress is a rejuvenating compliment for me. Emir Alışık who initiated the project was also a close companion during my Venice trip and his impressions had an inspiring effect on me.
If things had not changed this congress would have been the first-time experience of Istanbul as host city since the venue held in September 1955, only a week after the disastrous September 6–7, 1955.
The troubled background in which the Venice congress took shape —with Covid 19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the ‘cherry on top’—made the remote souvenirs of my own first experience as participant in an International Byzantine Congress relevant again.
Figure 1. The so-called “Pilastri Acritani” from the church of St. Polyeuktos, Constantinople, flanking the ceremonial entrance to the Basilica di San Marco, on the Piazzetta. Photo: David Hendrix.
Witnessing the End of the Soviet Union: August 8–15, 1991, Moscow
During my holidays in Istanbul in the summer of 1991 while I was still a young student of Art History and Archaeology at Paris 1-Sorbonne University, I was tempted to follow my friends Nevra Necipoğlu and Nergis Günsenin to the International Byzantine Congress in Moscow. With them, I also had planned to participate in the one-week tour to St. Petersburg and Kiev.
Figure 2. Summaries of Communications of the XVIIIth International Congress of Byzantine Studies, Moscow, August, 1991. Cover page of volume 1.
Affording a stay of two weeks at a hotel was an issue. The late Sevgi Gönül—then at the head of Sadberk Hanım Museum in Istanbul—with whom I had been acquainted through my part time job at an Ottoman Art Gallery in Paris, was encouraging my enthusiasm for Byzantine studies. Her intervention helped us get at our disposal for a week an apartment in Moscow rented for sporadic stays by a Turkish construction company based there. This marked the beginning of a memorable adventure.
Upon our arrival, we realized that it was impossible for us to stay as tourists in a private home. An official permit was necessary. Eating at a restaurant or café without reservation by a hosting hotel was not possible either. From the next morning three of us booked a single small cheap room at the university campus and we shared the costs. We continued to occupy freely the vast three-bedroom apartment. Our restaurant experiences are another story. The congress badge that we wore pridefully served as the magic “open sesame.” It seems that by mistake we were taken for some other important women from abroad booked for the week and we received high treatment.
Driven by the respective fields of my flat mates I learnt a lot about Late Byzantine Constantinople and the geographical distribution of Byzantine amphorae. It is also within this joyful atmosphere that I met for the first time the late professor Yıldız Ötüken from Hacettepe University in Ankara and her students. The outstanding moments of the stay were during the visits to Red Square, the Kremlin, and the Tretyakov Gallery in company of the names we knew from academic bibliography.
As we had no TV at home and no access to CNN we had not watched the news. After a confusion between the international and domestic airport at the two opposed extremities of the city we finished by taking a plane for “Leningrad” which had become St. Petersburg.
The Hermitage was wide open to us. I had the chance to get an appointment with Vera Zalesskaya, prolific researcher from this institution. She generously gave me the manuscript of an article in French, which was still unpublished. She also told me about the bronze pectoral crosses from the collection of Bogdan and Varvara Khanenko kept in Kiev, which had been found during the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad railway.
Kiev was our next stop. Upon our arrival, we learned that there had been a coup and that Mikhail Gorbachev had been taken hostage. The government official who opened the congress was one of the coup plotters. He was in prison by the time we left.
Mobile phones did not exist then and after long lines at the phone cabins of the hotel I succeeded to reach my parents in Istanbul to tell them not to worry. Anxiety was at its top. With resignation we were all sitting on the sofas of the lobby while the American tour guide, a former actress, was trying to cheer us up. That her major success on the screen had been her participation in the story adapted from the famous hijacking of the Italian cruise ship “Achille Lauro” was a sort of black humor! She played Mrs. Klinghoffer, whose husband was pushed overboard in a wheelchair.
The first people with whom I had a friendly exchange were David Jacoby and Rina Avner from Jerusalem. One afternoon, towards the sunset, while we were sitting next to each other in the tour bus with a freezing cold outside, Rina Avner, made the wish that if we managed to escape from Kiev, next August on the same day we would meet at the top of Mount Moses in Sinai to watch the most magnificent sunset on earth. And, in fact we really made it there by crossing the frontier at Eilat. Rina had even organized a week of hiking in the desert with a Bedouin guide and his camel. Another memorable experience.
Figure 3. A view from Mount Sinai, Egypt.
The basis of a long and fruitful friendship was also set with Bob Ousterhout. Our regular meetings in Istanbul every August included a pilgrimage for the feast of the Virgin on August 15 with my beloved ‘yaya’. Once when we went on a visit to Topkapı Palace to see the rod of Moses my grandmother said that the last time she saw it was during her primary school visit in 1923!
From the Queen of Cities to the Serenissima: August 22–27, 2022, Venice
Quasi alterum Byzantium [Almost another Constantinople], hosted “Byzantium – Bridge between Worlds”—initial title of the Istanbul venue of the congress—instead of the Queen of Cities. The freshly cleaned pillars from Anicia Juliana’s sumptuous sixth-century church of St. Polyeuktos in Constantinople greeted us upon our descent from the vaporetto while we were running to La Fenice. The theater had also risen from ashes to welcome the Byzantinists who had not been able to meet physically for a long time. A cheerful crowd gathered at the bottom of the flight of stairs leading to the theater. On the tables of the café next door, I noticed for the first time the caffè shakerato, an impressive iced shaken espresso in a transparent cocktail glass. This became the hallmark of our afternoon rituals in company of friends.
Figure 4a. Entrance to La Fenice opera house at the inauguration of the congress on Monday August, 22.
Figure 4b. From Paul Magdalino’s inaugural lecture at Teatro La Fenice: “Reflection and Elaboration on the Congress and Its Main Theme: Byzantium–Bridge between Worlds”.
Figure 4c. A gathering in front of La Fenice at the coffee break.
Quasi alterum Byzantium are words used for Venice by Cardinal Bessarion (born in Trebizond 1399/1408–1472) in his famous letter to the Venetian Doge Cristoforo Moro (1390–1471) telling him that he offers his library to the Serenissima. An avid book collector, the Renaissance humanist had pursued the goal to rescue the cultural heritage of Byzantium after 1453.[1]
Rescuing the heritage of Byzantium with the aim of exploring it and learning from it is also the motivation of Byzantinists. The twentieth-century contribution of Italian scholars was highlighted in an exhibition in Padua during the congress. Confrontations between Renaissance and contemporary scholarship were also part of our daily experience walking from the sessions at the Giobbe campus on the Cannaregio canal to the other parts of the city and the congress exhibitions. Byzantinists in the city did not go unnoticed. Their elegant red bag with the golden roundels of addorsed birds, double-headed eagles, and lions competed with the black bags of “The Milk of Dreams”, the transhistorical 2022 edition of the Venice Biennale of Art, curated by Cecilia Alemani.
Figure 5. View from the vaporetto over St. Mark’s Campanile.
Figure 6. The congress logo at the entrance of San Giobbe Campus of Ca’ Foscari University. The campus lies on the Fondamenta di Cannaregio along one of the most beautiful canals in Venice, next to Grand Canal.
Figure 7. View from the Giardini della Biennale to St. Mark’s campanile.
It was perhaps by professional deformation that I kept seeing Byzantine echoes everywhere. A part of the Biennale was located at the Arsenale, which strongly reminded me of the maritime façade of the Boukoleon. The set of monumental black and white inscriptions by Barbara Kruger (born 1945) with the striking formula “In the Beginning was Crying” ―in place of “In the Beginning Was the Word” (John 1:1)― boosted my interest in contemporary art as a key for renewing our reading of Byzantium.
Figure 8. Detail from Barbara Krugers’ site-specific installation for “The Milk of Dreams”, curated by Cecilia Alemane, at the Arsenale.
Figure 9a. Arsenale of Venice.
Figure 9b. Ancient Greek lion from Piraeus now at the Arsenale of Venice.
Interdisciplinarity in Byzantine studies was strongly highlighted in the scholarly program of the congress initially scheduled for the Istanbul venue. This marks perhaps one among the major evolutions of the field―in conjunction with the contribution of digital technology―since the congress of 1991. Access to archaeological discoveries was however an invaluable contribution of the Moscow congress. The small catalogue accompanying the exhibition on the medieval finds from Cherson is still very useful today.
First initiative following the pandemic the congress organization was very successful. On the last day Antonio Rigo was elected as President of the International Association of Byzantine Studies (AIEB) and Vienna was announced as the next host. The growing international ties between young Byzantinists and their dynamism will certainly have a great impact on the evolution of the field. Let us hope that the unfortunate setback of the 2021 Istanbul congress will serve as a boost for the future of Byzantine studies in Turkey offering a refreshed perspective on the field. Encouraging the international mobility of Turkish students and young Byzantinists within exchange programs would be a valuable investment for the future.
Weather was hot, sunsets spectacular over the Venetian lagoon as also the sunrise accompanying our water taxi ride to Marco Polo airport.
Irony of fate: on August 30, 2022, three days after the end of the congress Mikhail Gorbachev has died aged 91.
Figure 10. Sunset over the lagoon across San Giobbe campus.
Figure 11. Water taxi ride from the Cannareggio to Marco Polo Airport and the congress bag.
Brigitte Pitarakis, Centre national de la recherche scientifique
[1] Cardinal Bessarion, Letter to Senate, May 31, 1468. See Lotte Labowsky, Bessarion’s Library and the Biblioteca Marciana. Six Early Inventories (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1979), 147–49.