Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Macedonian epoch (867-1081)

Education, learning, literature, and art 

Page 13

Basil I was a great builder. He erected the New Church, the Nea, which was as important an event in Basil's constructive policy as the erection of St. Sophia in that of Justinian. He constructed a new palace, the Kenourgion, and decorated it with brilliant mosaics. Basil I also restored and adorned St. Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles. St. Sophia, damaged by the earthquake of 989, was also the object of the care of the emperors of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Under the Macedonian emperors there appeared for the first time the imperial ikon-painting schools, which not only produced large numbers of ikons and decorated the walls of churches, but also engaged in illustrating manuscripts. In the time of Basil II appeared the famous Vatican Menologium, or Menology, with beautiful miniatures illustrations carried out by eight illuminators whose names are inscribed on the margins. To this epoch belong also many other interesting, original, and finely executed miniatures.

The main center of artistic developments was the city of Constantinople, but the Byzantine provinces of that period have also preserved important monuments of art, such as the dated Church of Skripu (A.D. 874), in Boeotia; a group of churches on Mount Athos, dating from the tenth or early eleventh, century; St. Luke of Stiris in Phocis (the early eleventh century); Nea Moni on Chios (the middle of the eleventh century), the monastery church of Daphni in Attica (the end of the eleventh century). In Asia Minor the numerous rock-cut churches of Cappadocia have preserved a large number of extremely interesting frescoes, many of which belong to the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The discovery and study of these Cappadocian frescoes, which revealed an astonishing wealth of mural painting, are closely connected with the name of the G. de Jerphanion, S.I., who devoted most of his life to the minute investigation of Cappadocia, a new province of Byzantine art.  

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