Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

court and culture 161
Theoderic, even the founders of post-Roman kingdoms might be intimately
familiar with it. Their descendants, like the Vandal king Hilderic,
might well have spent time and formed friendships there. Within the
empire, constant emphasis on the emperor’s omnipotence encouraged a
stream of suppliants from the provinces who lobbied for various privileges
or policies, whence, inevitably, wider exposure for the latest court trends
among local élites. The court’s lifestyle and its high fashion reverberated far
afield, to judge from the inspiration detected in a Merovingian queen’s
burial gown long after direct contacts with foreign élites had decreased. 132
In the capital, competition for visibility among the élite fuelled the
demand for prestigious expenditure, as even the shreds of surviving evidence
show. The general Ardabur and his Roman wife commissioned liturgical
silver to satisfy a vow, and an emperor’s daughter, Anicia Juliana, to
whom a pope might turn when negotiating a rapprochement with the court,
rivalled Justin I himself with her opulent shrine to St Polyeuctus. Justinian’s
lavish expenditure in the capital was followed by the remarkably extensive
artistic patronage of his nephew. It is characteristic of the age that the
balance of munificence shifts from the old civil projects of baths and theatres
to religious buildings. These conditions fostered powerful cultural currents
which spurred imitation in distant élites, as links between innovative
sculptural decoration at St Polyeuctus and projects in the Ostrogothic
kingdom indicate. 133
Political practice dictated that the court have easy access to metalworkers
and artists. As soon as Anastasius emerged as Zeno’s successor, the
future emperor was sequestered with engravers and painters, surely to publicize
his accession throughout the empire by coinage and official portraits
whose arrival stimulated so many provincial rituals. 134 Standard governmental
procedure thus diffused art to the provinces, as did the direct imperial
patronage of distant shrines and sites practised by Justinian:
Constantinopolitan influence has been detected in the spectacular mosaics
he commissioned at Sinai in the monastery of St Catherine. 135 Justinian’s
construction of churches in Africa dedicated to the Virgin lent impetus to
a cult of Mary which mirrored developments in the capital, while the charateristically
Constantinopolitan saints’ cults that took root at Ravenna
from the fifth century have been ascribed to the court. 136
The links between court and culture are especially clear in literature.
Some Latin manuscripts connected to Constantinople testify to that court’s
132 Viereck (1981) 90–2.
133 Demandt (1986); Cameron (1980); Mango, Développement 52; Harrison (1986) 415 and 420; cf.
Deichmann (1976–89) ii.3.273–6. 134 Const. Porph. De Cer. i.92,cf.i.87; Kruse (1934).
135 Forsyth and Weitzmann (1966) 16.
136 Procop. Buildings vi.2.20, 4.4, 5.9, 7.16, cf. Cameron, Averil (1978) for Gaul; Deichmann
(1976–89) ii.3.176–7.
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