172 Part Two: Epigrams in Context
son of thunder” (after Mark 3: 17) and that he “thundered” while preaching his
divine words to the world^58. It is this very parallel between the two theologians
(the apostle and the church father) that explains why Theodore of Stoudios
refers to the thundering power of Gregory’s dogmatic doctrines in epigram 67.
The metaphors bront0n, bo! and Èchsaß all derive from this analogy.
It is also worth noticing that Theodore of Stoudios quotes himself. His
hymn on St. Gregory begins as follows: T2 soówtata / t‰ß óloger‰ß soy glwtthß
Çph, / ästraptömena / ™k to ̄ ärr8toy ó1oyß, l1mpzn, / tën oœkoym6nhn /
katel1mprynaß, / Grhgörie, / bront8saß órikt0ß / t‰ß Tri1doß tñ dögma, / kaò
p1saß äpròx / t2ß aWr6seiß mzr1naß, / Wer1rczn / Ö qeologikwtatoß^59. Tën
oœkoym6nhn = tën Üp\ oJranön, bront8saß (...)tñ dögma = bront0n t2 qe¦a t! bo!
t0n dogm1tzn, and kaò p1saß äpròx / t2ß aWr6seiß mzr1naß = kaò p1saß äpròx
mzr1naß t2ß aWr6seiß. Of course, it is difficult to decide which text was written
first, the hymn or the epigram, but it does not really matter. For vastly more
important than the question of priority is the fact that what sounds right in a
hymn can also be used for the composition of an epigram on a work of art, or
the other way around. How do we account for this interchange of genres? How
can a text move from one genre to another? It has doubtless something to do
with Byzantine perceptions of the literary and the artistic, but since there is no
good study of Byzantine aesthetics^60 , it is difficult to provide an answer. As
Maguire pointed out, hymnography and art relate to each other in Byzantium:
hymns are visualized in paint and paintings are transformed into the meta-
phorical language of hymnography^61. In Byzantium there is no fixed boundary
between literature and art. Language visualizes and the visual turns into
words. Since the visual language of icons is reflected in the imagery of hymns,
it is hardly surprising that these literary images in their turn reverberate in
epigrams on works of art. It is a sort of domino effect. But whereas there is
always a primal cause for the domino effect, a wave of falling pieces from one
end of the row to the other, here we see all sorts of influences going in opposite
directions. Hymns, art, epigrams – all these are interrelated and influence each
other, with the result that they intertwine into an undisentangable maze of
reciprocities.
The epigram is also found in a number of mid tenth-century Italian man-
uscripts containing the homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos^62 , where it no longer
serves its original purpose as a verse inscription on a picture of the saint, but
(^58) See KOMINIS 1951: 274–278; FOLLIERI 1956: 77, 80, 152 and 154; HÖRANDNER 2000: 79.
(^59) Ed. PITRA 1876–88: I, 351 (no. VIII). See SPECK 1968: 224.
(^60) G. MATHEW, Byzantine Aesthetics. London 1963, is outdated; S. AVERINCEV, L’ anima e
lo specchio. Bologna 1988, is too speculative to be of any use.
(^61) See MAGUIRE 1981: passim, esp. pp. 5–8.
(^62) See HÖRANDNER 1994b: 197–199 and SOMERS 1999: 533–542.