Fig. 21.—Sixth-century Candlestick.
In the sanctuary there would have been suspended large single lamps which burnt perpetually (Akoimetoi). A very fine single Byzantine lamp of this kind is shown in the fifteenth-century picture by Marco Marziale in the National Gallery, in which the interior of S. Mark’s figures as the temple. In [Fig. 20] we give a restoration of fragments of a beautiful early Christian bowl-shaped lamp bearing a votive inscription figured by Rossi. On Mount Athos Dr. Covel noticed a lamp of beaten gold set with jewels.
The treasury of S. Mark’s probably still contains lamps which hung in S. Sophia: one of especial beauty is a glass bowl with circles cut on the outside and attached to a metal rim on which is inscribed in Greek, “St. Panteleon, succour thy servant Zacchariah, Archbishop of Iberia, Amen.”[198]
In illustration of the tree-like candelabra which stood above the beam of the iconostasis, and round the ambo, we may mention the well-known classical examples. A lamp-bearer in the museum at Brussels is described as “an arbuste of considerable size and irregular trunk and branches with lamps suspended from the extremities of its boughs.” Anastasius mentions a “tree of bronze with candlesticks to the number of fifty in which were placed wax candles, thirty-six lamps as well hung from the boughs.” Paulinus also speaks of hanging candelabra at Nola “with branches like a vine bearing little glass cups which resembled burning fruit; when they were lighted it was like the sudden burst into life of spring flowers.”
Fig. 22.—Candlesticks.
Besides all these oil lamps there would have been a great number of standing candlesticks in the sanctuary. The Anonymous speaks of some the height of a man. One constant type is represented in [Fig. 21]; this is inlaid in mother-of-pearl on the apse walls at Parenzo, and is of Justinian’s time. [Fig. 22] shows two others from the Menologium. Wax candles, which are frequently mentioned, were patterned and coloured.
The miracle of the moving cross of lights mentioned by Anthony reminds us of a remarkable custom in regard to the great coronas of lights in Byzantine churches which is observed on Mount Athos, and also at Sinai, and is probably ancient. A part of the great festival service at Vatopedi consists in singing the Polyeleos. “When the last of the multitude of candles had been lighted in the great coronas under the domes, the monks fetched long poles, with which they pushed out the candelabra to the full extent that their suspending chains permitted and then let them go, the result being that in a few minutes the whole church was filled with slowly swinging lights.”[199]
The method of lighting described by the Silentiary has not changed in the unchanging East. S. Sophia is still lighted by a myriad little lamps arranged in rows, or suspended in circles. The single lamp is a small glass vessel of oil on which floats the wick; the two typical forms being like a bowl or an elongated tumbler. These cups are hung by three chains, or inserted in a ring, at the end of a metal arm, projecting from the wall or from the rim of a suspended circle.
