Abstract:

In the city of Antioch-on-the-Orontes in 387 c.e., statues of the emperor Theodosius I and his family were destroyed by a crowd angered by a recent tax increase, resulting in a series of imperial punishments enacted upon the city. In the months after the event, two prominent residents, the pagan author Libanius and the Christian priest John Chrysostom, wrote (in the case of Libanius) and preached (in the case of Chrysostom) in response to the destruction of the statues and the ensuing punishments. This article focuses on the varied understandings of the power and presence of imperial portraits written into Libanius's and Chrysostom's texts. In contrast with Libanius's traditional understanding of the statue as a surrogate for the venerable subject it represented, Chrysostom instead argues that the living human is superior to the lifeless statue, as we are created "in the image of God" by the supreme artist himself. By marshaling Neoplatonic ideas and pagan critiques of statuary, as well as Christian doctrine, Chrysostom seeks to convince his congregants and later readers still attached to the imperial statue cult that the faithful, rather than graven images, are what matter. Writing in a period in which Christianity was ascendant, and in which some cult statues of the pagan gods were targeted for destruction, Chrysostom's homilies provide a unique window into late fourth-century conceptions of portrait statues, which though different from statues of divine subjects were potentially problematic sites of animation and veneration. Read closely against each other, Libanius's and Chrysostom's texts supplement our understanding of the factors behind the subsequent decline in the production and display of portrait statues, as well as changing ideas about three-dimensional representation in a Christian empire.

摘要：

公元 387 年，在奥龙特斯河畔的安条克市，皇帝狄奥多西一世及其家人的雕像被因最近增税而愤怒的人群摧毁，导致帝国对该市实施了一系列惩罚。事件发生后的几个月里，两位著名居民，异教作家利巴尼乌斯和基督教牧师约翰·金口，写信（就利巴尼乌斯而言）并布道（就金口而言），以回应雕像被毁和随后发生的事件。惩罚。本文重点讨论对利巴尼乌斯和克里索斯托文本中所写的帝国肖像的力量和存在的不同理解。利巴尼乌斯将雕像视为其所代表的受人尊敬的主体的替代品，与利巴尼乌斯的传统理解相反，克里索斯托认为，活人优于无生命的雕像，因为我们是“按照上帝的形象”创造的。由至高无上的艺术家亲自创作。通过整合新柏拉图主义思想和异教对雕像的批评以及基督教教义，金口试图说服他的教众和后来仍然依附于帝国雕像崇拜的读者，让他们相信，最重要的是忠实的信徒，而不是雕刻的图像。金口的讲道是在基督教盛行的时期写作的，在这个时期，一些异教神的崇拜雕像成为了被摧毁的目标，克里索斯托的讲道为了解四世纪晚期肖像雕像的概念提供了一个独特的窗口，尽管肖像雕像与雕像不同神圣主题是动画和崇拜的潜在问题场所。仔细对比阅读，利巴尼乌斯和克里索斯托姆的文本补充了我们对随后肖像雕像制作和展示下降背后因素的理解，也改变了关于基督教三维表现的观念。帝国。