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Early explorations of Cappadocia and the monastic myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Veronica G. Kalas*
Affiliation:
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Extract

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European travellers and explorers who discovered Cappadocia’s exotic landscape of volcanic rock formations introduced the notion of a region populated by monks. Although written sources of the medieval period are silent in this regard, scholarship has persisted with this notion about the region ever since. Perhaps the general eighteenth- and nineteenth-century understanding of Byzantium as a period of decline following the Golden Age of Classical Antiquity reinforced the monastic interpretation. According to Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), the later history of the Roman Empire in the east was ‘a uniform tale of weakness and misery.’

Type
Critical Study
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2004

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References

Notes

1 This critical study first appeared in my dissertation, Kalas, V.Rock-Cut Architecture from the Peristrema Valley: Society and Settlement in Byzantine Cappadocia’ (New York University 2000)Google Scholar. I wish to thank the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University for a post-doctoral research fellowship that allowed me to rework this for publication. I also thank the following for their helpful comments and suggestions: Jennifer Ball, Derek Krueger, Artemis Leontis, Amy Papalexandrou and Geoffrey Schmalz.

2 Gibbon, E., The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London 1985) 17 Google Scholar. The full six volumes were first published in 1788.

3 Rodley, L., Cave Monasteries of Byzantine Cappadocia (Cambridge 1985)Google Scholar; Mathews, T. and Daskalakis-Mathews, A.-C., ‘Islamic-Style Mansions in Byzantine Cappadocia and the Development of the Inverted T-Plan’, journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 56 (1997) 294315 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Ousterhout, R., ‘Survey of the Byzantine Settlement at Çanli Kilise in Cappadocia: Results of the 1995 and 1996 Seasons’, DOP 51 (1997) 301306 Google Scholar. Results of this very exciting survey will be presented fully in his forthcoming book: A Byzantine Settlement in Cappadocia.

5 A complete list in chronological order of travellers to Cappadocia before the 1920s can be found in de Jerphanion, G., Une nouvelle province de l’art byzantin: les églises rupestres de Cappadoce, 4 vols. (Paris 1925-42) vol. 1, XXXIII-LGoogle Scholar.

6 Lucas made three trips to the east and visited Cappadocia in his latter two voyages. Lucas, P., Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas fait par ordre du Roy dans la Grèce, l’Asie Mineure, la Macédoine et l’Afrique, 2 vols. (Paris 1712)Google Scholar; idem, Troisième Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas, fait en M.DCCX1V, &c. par ordre de Louis XIV dans la Turquie, l’Asie, la Sourie, la Palestine, la Haute et la Basse Egypte, &c. 2 vols. (Rouen 1719). His ‘fable’ on the discovery of the ‘pyramidal houses’ and the accompanying engraving appears in the former publication, Lucas (1712) vol. 1, 159-164. For a summary of Lucas’ voyages and a re-edition of his first publication, see Duranton, H. (ed.), Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas dans le Levant, juin 1699-juillet 1703 (Paris 1998)Google Scholar.

7 For excerpts in English of Paul Lucas, Charles Texier, William Hamilton, William Ainsworth and George Seferis see Rifat, S., ‘Cappadocia through the Eyes of Travelers,’ Cappadocia, ed. Sözen, M. (Istanbul 2000) 482511 Google Scholar. A useful collection of essays on the genre of travel writing can be found in Hulme, P. and Youngs, T. (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Ainsworth, W., Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Armenia 2 vols. (London 1842) vol. 1, 170171 Google Scholar.

9 Hamilton, W., Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia 2 vols. (London 1842) vol. 2, 246-7Google Scholar.

10 Archives at The Institute for Asia Minor Studies in Athens and The Institute for Cappadocian Studies in Nea Karvali, near Kavala, Greece, document the lives and activities of nineteenth-century Cappadocians and can be mined for evidence of such practices. The Asia Minor refugees who were resettled in Greece in the 1920s and 1930s brought this archival material with them.

11 Tozer, H., ‘The Land of Rock-Dwellings’, Turkish Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor (London 1881) 132157 Google Scholar.

12 Kalas, V., ‘Cappadocia’, Encyclopedia of Monasticism, ed. Johnston, W.M. (Chicago 2000) 238239 Google Scholar.

13 It is important to note here that even Basil the Great and his circle of friends, because of their momentous role in ecclesiastical history, have also been abstracted from their wider social contexts. This wider social world of late Roman Cappadocia receives fresh treatment in a three-part study: Van Dam, R., Kingdom of Snow: Roman Rule and Greek Culture in Cappadocia (Philadelphia 2002)Google Scholar; idem, Families and friends in Late Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia 2003); idem, Becoming Christian: The Conversion of Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia 2003).

14 Dawkins, R., Modern Greek in Asia Minor: a study of the dialects of Siili, Cappadocia and Pharasa, with grammar, texts, translations and glossary (Cambridge 1916)Google Scholar.

15 Anagnostakis, I. and Balta, E., La Découverte de Cappadoce au le 19è siècle (Istanbul 1994)Google Scholar; Karatza, E., #Καππαδοκία: ό τελευταίος ‘ελληνισμος τής περιφέρειας Άκσερα’ι’-Γκέλβερι (Καρβάλη) (Athens 1985)Google Scholar.

16 See comments in Epstein, A. Wharton, Tokali Kilise: Tenth-Century Metropolitan Art in Byzantine Cappadocia (Washington, DC 1986) 81 Google Scholar.

17 Levidis, A., Ίστορία τής Καππαδοκίας, I: Έκκλησιαστική ίστορία (Athens 1885)Google Scholar; idem, Av έν μονολίθοις μοναΐ τής Καππαδοκίας καΐ Λυκαονίας (Constantinople 1899); Archelaos, I., #Ή Σινασος (Athens 1899)Google Scholar.

18 Apart from the historical geographers and architectural historians outlined in this section, several other nineteenth-century explorers were also concerned with more ‘scientific’ studies of the region. Particularly interested in geology, geography, and map-making were de Tchihatcheff, P., Asie Mineure, description physique, statistique et archéologique de cette contrée, 2 vols. (Paris 1860)Google Scholar, and Kiepert, H., Memoir über die Construction der karte von Kleinasien und tukisch Armenien in 6 Blatt (Berlin 1854)Google Scholar. One of the earliest archaeologists to record the prehistoric sites of central Anatolia, especially those of Cappadocia, was Chantre, E., Recherches anthropologiques dans l’Asie occidentale: missions scientifique en Transcaucasie, Asie Mineure et Syrie 1890-1894 (Lyon 1895)Google Scholar; idem, Recherches archéologiques dans l’Asie occidentale: mission en Cappadoce, 1893-1894 (Paris 1898).

19 Texier, C., ‘Cappadoce’, Asie Mineure: description géographique, historique, et archéologique des province et des villes de la chersonnèse d’Asie (Paris 1862) Livre VII, 500576 Google Scholar; Ramsay, W., ‘Roman Roads in Central Cappadocia’, ‘Roman Roads over Anti-Tauros’ and ‘Cities and Bishoprics of Cappadocia’, The Historical Geography of Asia Minor (London 1890) 267317 Google Scholar.

20 Texier, C. and Pullan, R. Popplewell, Byzantine Architecture: illustrated by examples of edifices erected in the East during the earliest ages of Christianity, with historical and archaeological descriptions (London 1864)Google Scholar; Ramsay, W. and Bell, G., The One Thousand and One Churches (London 1909)Google Scholar. For Texier and Pullan see Kleinbauer, E., Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture: An Annotated Bibliography (Boston 1992) xxxiv-xxxvGoogle Scholar; for Ramsay and Bell see Kleinbauer, Annotated Bibliography, xliii–xlvi.

21 Texier and Pullan, Byzantine Architecture, preface.

22 Ibid., 38.

23 Ibid., 39.

24 Ibid.

25 Kalas, ‘Rock-Cut Architecture’, 88-89.

26 Texier and Pullan, Byzantine Architecture, plate 4. In another impressive engraving of a landscape view at Ürgüp, a monumental three-story façade is depicted in the rock formations shown in the background. Texier, Asie Mineure, plate 55.

27 For example, Esptein, Tokali Kilise, 81, states that Texier’s ‘precisely rendered fantasies stimulated his readers’ imagination’. Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 118-119, mentions Texier’s lithograph and admits the difficulty in identifying with any certainty the original monument rendered by the drawing.

28 Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 28, figs 21, 22, was the first to record this wall at Bezir Hane and to include it as part of a courtyard complex. This complex includes a church previously described by Jerphanion, , Une nouvelle province, vol. 1, 498503 Google Scholar, and plate 137, who does not mention the complex or the façade.

29 Texier and Pullan, Byzantine Architecture, 40-41.

30 Ibid., 205.

31 Mathews and Mathews, ‘Islamic-Style Mansions’.

32 Strzygowski, J., Orient oder Rom: Beiträge zur geschickte der spätantiken und früchristlichen Kunst (Leipzig 1901)Google Scholar.

33 Strzygowski, J., Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte, Kirchenaufnahmen von J. W. Crowfoot und J. I. Smirnov (Leipzig 1903)Google Scholar.

34 Strzygowski, ‘Der Hufeisenbogen’, Kleinasien, 29-31, Abb. 23.

35 Strzygowski, ‘Die Höhlenbauten Kappadokiens’, Kleinasien, 149-153.

36 Strzygowski, Kleinasien, 149; see also Gough, M., ‘The Monastery of Eski Gümüfl: A Preliminary Report,’ Anatolian Studies 14 (1964) 147-61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The Monastery of Eski Gümüfl: Second Preliminary Report’, Anatolian Studies 15 (1965) 157-64; idem, ‘The Monastery of Eski Gümüfl,’ Archaeology 18 (1965) 254-63; Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 103-118.

37 Strzygowski, Kleinasien, 149, Abb. 116; see also Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 45-18.

38 Strzygowski, Kleinasien, 151, Abb. 118, 119; see also Rodley, Cave Monasteries, 56-63.

39 Strzygowski, Kleinasien, 151-152.

40 For a full discussion of Strzygowski in historiography see Maranci, C., Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of Race and Nation (Leuven 2001)Google Scholar; see also Kleinbauer, Annotated Bibliography, lxxi-lxxxi.

41 Ramsay and Bell, The One Thousand and One Churches and especially the section on ‘Monasteries’, 456-472; see also G. Bell, ‘Notes on a Journey through Cilicia and Lycaonia’, Revue Archéologique (1906) part 1, 385-114; part 2, 225-52, 390-401.

42 Bell, Lady (ed.), The Letters of Gertrude Bell (London 1930) 206 Google Scholar.

43 For a discussion of Gertrude Bell and her contemporary British archaeologists like T.E Lawrence and David Hogarth as ‘Orientalists’, see Said, E., Orientalism (New York 1994) 197 Google Scholar, 224-5, 229-31.

44 For the history of travel literature on Greece, for example, see Eisner, R., Travelers to an Antique Land: the History and Literature of Travel to Greece (Ann Arbor 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Ramsay and Bell, The One Thousand and One Churches, 451, fig. 348.

46 For a popular biography of Gertrude Bell, see Wallach, J., Desert Queen (New York 1996)Google Scholar.

47 Rott, H., Kleinasiatische Denkmäler aus Pisidien, Pamphylien, Kappadokien, Lykien (Leipzig 1908)Google Scholar; see also Kleinbauer, Annotated Bibliography, xlv.

48 Rott, ‘Durch Kappadokien’, Kleinasiatische Denkmäler, 81-294.

49 Rott, Kleinasiatische Denkmäler, 265, Abb. 97.

50 The poem was ‘rediscovered’ in 1869; see Beaton, R., The Medieval Greek Romance (London 1996) 35 Google Scholar; and Digenes Akrites ed. and tr. Mavrogordato, J. (Oxford 1956)Google Scholar introduction.

51 For this history see Kaplan, M., ‘Les grands propriétaires de Cappadoce (Vl-XIe siècle)’, Le aree omogenee della civiltà rupestre nell’ambito dell’Impero bizantino: la Cappadocia (Galatina 1981) 125158 Google Scholar; Cheynet, J.-C., Pouvoir et Contestations à Byzance (963-1210) (Paris 1990)Google Scholar; and Whittow, M., The Making of Byzantium 600-1025 (Berkeley 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Jerphanion, Une nouvelle province; see also Ruggieri, V., Guillaume de Jerphanion et la Turquie de jadis (Rubettino 1997)Google Scholar for another contemporary reassessment of Jerphanion’s contribution.

53 de Jerphanion, G., ‘Sur une question de méthode: a propos de la datation des peintures cappadociènnes’, Orientálta Christiana Periodica 3 (1937) 141-60Google Scholar.

54 Brehier, L., ‘Les églises rupestres de Cappadoce et leur témoignage’, Révue archéologique 5, 25 (1927) 1–47Google Scholar; idem, ‘Les peintures des églises rupestres de Cappadoce: L’oeuvre archéologique du R.P. Guillaume de Jerphanion,’ Orientalia Christiana Periodica 4 (1938) 577-84; C. Diehl, review of Jerphanion, Une nouvelle province in Journal des Savants (1927) 97; Wiegand, E., ‘Zur Datierung der Kappadokischen Hohlenmalereien’, Byzantinishe Zeitschrift 36 (1936) 337-97Google Scholar; idem, review of Jerphanion, Une nouvelle province in Byzantinische Zeitschrift (1935) 131-135.

55 Thierry, M. and Thierry, N., Nouvelles églises rupestres de Cappadoce: Région du Hasan Dani (Paris 1963)Google Scholar; Thierry, N., Peintures d’Asie Mineure et de Transcaucasie aux Xe et Xle siècles (London 1977)Google Scholar; idem, Haut Moyen-Age en Cappadoce: les églises de la région de Çavusin (Paris 1983) 2 vols.

56 Wharton, A.J., Art of Empire: Painting and Architecture of the Byzantine Periphery: a Comparative Study of Four Provinces (University Park, PA 1988)Google Scholar.

57 Hild, F. and Restie, M., Kappadokien (Kappadokia, Charsianon, Sebasteia und Lykandos) (Vienna 1981)Google Scholar.

58 Thierry, N., ‘De la datation des églises de Cappadoce’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 88.2 (1995) 419455 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 As is the case in her most recent book: Thierry, N., La Cappadoce de l’antiquité au moyen age (Turnhout 2002)Google Scholar. For an earlier critique of this chronological designation see Epstein, A. Wharton, ‘The Iconoclast Churches of Cappadocia’, Iconoclasm: papers given at the Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, March 1975, eds Bryer, A. and Herrin, J. (Birmingham 1977) 103-11Google Scholar.

60 Thierry, Nouvelles églises rupestres.

61 Lafontaine-Dosogne, J., ‘Note sur un voyage en Cappadoce (été 1959)’, Byzantion 28 (1959) 465-77Google Scholar; idem, ‘Nouvelles notes cappadociennes’, Byzantion 33, 1 (1963) 121-83.

62 Thierry, N., ‘Études cappadociennes: Région du Hasan Dağl, compléments pour 1974’, Cahiers Archéologiques 24 (1975) 183-90Google Scholar.

63 Giovannini, L. (ed.), Arts of Cappadocia (Geneva 1972)Google Scholar.

64 Ötüken, Y., Ihlara Vadisi (Ankara 1989)Google Scholar.

65 Jolivet-Lévy, C., Les Eglises byzantines de Cappadoce: le Programme iconographique de l’abside et de ses abords (Paris 1991)Google Scholar.

66 Jolivet-Lévy, C., Cappadoce: Mémoire de Byzance (Paris 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, La Cappadoce médiévale: images et spiritualité (Paris 2001); idem, Etudes Cappadociennes (London 2002).

67 Kostof, S., Caves of God: Cappadocia and its Churches (New York 1972)Google Scholar.

68 Cormack, R., ‘Byzantine Cappadocia: The Archaic Group of Wall Paintings’, Journal of British Archaeology 30 (1967) 19-36Google Scholar; Epstein, A. Wharton, ‘Rock-Cut Chapels in Göreme Valley, Cappadocia: the Yilanh Group and the Column Churches’, Cahiers Archéologique 24 (1975) 115135 Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Fresco Decoration of the Column Churches, Göreme Valley, Cappadocia’, Cahiers Archéologique 29 (1980-1) 27-45.

69 Epstein, A. Wharton, ‘The Problem of Provincialism: Byzantine Monasteries in Cappadocia and Monks in South Italy’, journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979) 28-46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Epstein, A. Wharton, Tokali Kilise: Tenth-Century Metropolitan Art in Byzantine Cappadocia (Washington, DC 1986)Google Scholar.

71 For a critique of the idea of provincialism in this book see the review by Lowden, J., Burlington Magazine, 131 (1989) 425 Google Scholar.

72 Restie, M., Byzantine Wall Painting in Asia Minor 3 vols, tr. Gibbons, R. (Greenwich, CT 1969)Google Scholar.

73 Restie, M., Studien zur frühbyzantinischen Architektur kappadokiens (Vienna 1979)Google Scholar.

74 Hild, F., Das byzantinischen Strassensystem in Kappadokien (Vienna 1977)Google Scholar.

75 Hild and Restie, Kappadokien.

76 Produced by H. Reschenhofer.

77 For a critique of the work by Hild and Restie see Foss, C., Speculum 59 (1984) 656662 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 For a perspective from social anthropology, see Stea, D. and Turan, M., Placemaking: Production of Built Environment in Two Cultures (Aldershot 1993)Google Scholar especially ‘Chapter Five: Cliffhangers and Troglodytes’ 164-258.

79 Toxic substances, for example, might be released into the air when tuff erodes. Inhabitants of a Carribean island with active volcanoes suffer from a disease-causing mineral found in the air; see D. Wheeler, ‘Research Notes’, The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 5, 1999) A18, and a study by a group of British scientists in Science 19 (February 1999) 1142-1144. Medieval inhabitants of Cappadocia most likely were not aware of subtle health hazards. They may have perceived more immediate dangers, however, such as rockfall and erosion that would have determined their choice of dwelling location, as is the case in modern settlement patterns.

80 Bertucci, G., Bixio, R., and Traverso, M., Le citta soterranee della Cappadocia (Genova 1995)Google Scholar; Triolet, J. and Triolet, L., Les villes souterraines de Cappadoce (Torcy 1993)Google Scholar.

81 Giovannini, Arts of Cappadocia.

82 Sözen, M. (ed.), Cappadocia (Istanbul 1998)Google Scholar.

83 Evert, L. et al., Kappadokia (Athens 1993)Google Scholar.