For centuries, Western Europe has refused to see Byzantium as a European empire, but as a distant and dubious other; an incomprehensible and effeminate land ruled by duplicitous eunuchs, loose morals, a corrupt church and tyrannical rulers. However, Robin Cormack, the curator of the Byzantium exhibition in London, hopes to see this civilisation demystified and reappraised as part of Europe’s common history.

The exhibition is contributing to a significant change in the understanding of one of history’s most invoked but least understood civilisations. Voltaire famously condemned it as “a worthless collection of declamations and miracles, a disgrace for the human mind”. Others, instead of insulting Byzantium chose to distance it, most famously Yeats who, in Sailing to Byzantium, depicted it as an Oriental land of “sensual music” and “gold mosaics”. Even ‘Byzantium’ is a misleading term, never used by the civilisation itself, which continued to call itself the ‘Roman Empire’ up until the fifteenth century. London’s last Byzantine exhibition was in 1958, and Cormack claims that this exhibition’s aims are markedly different. “As I see it, fifty years ago, what they emphasised was the difference from Europe, whereas I think this exhibition tries to show exactly the opposite: that it is actually quite familiar.”

Robin Cormack is a Professor of Art History at the Courthauld Institute, but lives in Cambridge with his wife, Mary Beard. Having spent five years putting this exhibition together, he clearly hopes it will have a big effect. “The difference is in 1958 nowhere in the eastern Mediterranean was in the European Union,” he tells me, but “now we’re thinking of even including Turkey in the EU, so our whole perception of our past has changed.”

One salient reason for this is that Byzantium linked the achievements of the classical world with medieval Europe, making a vital contribution to the Renaissance. It was due to Byzantine scholars that Plato was rediscovered in fifteenth century Italy, and the cultural exchange between East and West was crucial in the development of Italian art. Byzantium’s cultural achievements are on full display at this exhibition. There are icons of such intricate painting that it looks as though golden thread has been woven through them, and the prized piece, an incense burner shaped like a domed church, has had visitors entranced by its witty creativity.

However, to see the most impressive artefact of Byzantium, one has to visit Istanbul. Hagia Sophia was built in four years, but one thousand years after its completion it was still the largest domed cathedral in the world. In 1453 George Sphrantzes described it as “the handiwork of God, a marvellous and worthy work, the delight of the whole earth”. It still stands today as a monumental feat of human ingenuity.

So why has it taken so long for us to take Byzantium seriously? According to Cormack, it has much to do with the myopia of the Enlightenment. “It is a faith culture,” he tells me, “and from the Enlightenment up to Richard Dawkins there are people who don’t like faith cultures.” In contemporary newspapers, ‘Byzantine’ is now used as a term to mean irrational bureaucracy. But as Cormack is quick to remind me, “Byzantine bureaucracy absolutely pales in comparison to Gordon Brown’s bureaucracy!”

One of the organisers has claimed that a “pretty good percentage of all that survives” of the Byzantine Empire is held in this exhibition. This is an extraordinary thought: an Empire that lasted for over one thousand years and spread from Egypt to Spain could leave so little trace that a significant portion of its remains can be housed in one moderately sized exhibition. You can see a beautiful collection of icons from the monastery of St Catherine in Sinia which were not even known about until the 1960s, but are now seen as the best of their type in the world. In Sinia they joke that where Moses said you should not have graven images, they’ve got the best. With so much more still to be discovered, Cormack confidently claims that “Byzantine is the fastest growing field in the history of art.”

With no real modern heir, organising an exhibition of Byzantium’s disparate artefacts is particularly testing. “Every day that you are doing an exhibition there is something that happens, there’s some kind of crisis,” Cormack tells me. “The Georgian war meant we didn’t get the Georgian objects... We got a phone call from a woman saying ‘I’m the new minister of culture, the previous one agreed but I’m not going to agree.’” He tells me of attempting to secure objects from Mount Athos, but being thwarted because all twenty monasteries had to agree to any one object being taken. Sinia only lent objects on the agreement that two of their monks are put up in a London hotel for the duration of the exhibition. Cormack explains: “If you go into the exhibition early each day you’ll see Father Porphilius or Father Neilus checking up on their icons.”

This is obviously a frustrating aspect of the job, as Cormack tells me: “Specialists when they’re giving reviews will say ‘why didn’t they have this’ and curators always get annoyed because we probably spent weeks and weeks trying to get it. We probably flew to the museum only for it to be refused. But you can’t say ‘by the way, here’s a list of things we asked for and didn’t get.’”

However, of the six hundred objects they initially set out to get, the exhibition got three hundred, a result Cormack tells me he is “very pleased”with. Nonetheless, he is sad that they could not locate a knife and fork. “Byzantium did invent the knife and fork, but we couldn’t find any.” This brings him on to one of the most challenging rooms in the exhibition: “It was very hard to do the room we called At Home, and actually to try and find out what being an ordinary person was like.” The one incredibly rare piece they found was a child’s tunic, borrowed from the Benaki Museum in Athens. It has a striking impression on the viewer, reminding you that behind the mystery and the riches of Byzantium were real people.

A Cambridge historian has compared history to doing a jigsaw puzzle where most of the pieces are missing, an analogy that rings particularly true for Byzantium. As Cormack tells me, “There isn’t a history of Byzantium, absolutely no one agrees about anything about Byzantium.” However, that does not mean there is not still much for the open minded to learn. “I personally am not a religious man,” Cormack explains. “I don’t work in Byzantium because I am a Christian, I work in Byzantium because I think it is interesting.” He eagerly tells me how an understanding of Byzantium can be applied to the modern world, in particular Russia. “It’s extremely interesting studying Putin because Putin is an Orthodox Christian with a monk advisor, and promotion of the church in Russia is something Putin is very interested in. I think it’s very difficult for us to understand Russia, but if you see it through the eyes of Byzantium it’s a little bit easier to understand their aspirations and interests and diplomacy.”

The exhibition is of such unusual importance that it has been extended for two more months. With around three thousand paying visitors each day, “a lot of people will have had a touch of Byzantium in their lives,” Cormack beams.
Western Europe has a selective memory. Many subjects are studied into the ground, and the clamour of competing voices creates a disorientating din. However, in the case of Byzantium, there is a huge amount left to be said.