Jewelers Of Italy

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

8. Byzantine Jewelry

When Constantine the Great, in 330 A.D had transferred the center of imperial power to Constantinople, the jewelers of the Empire were brought into contact with the great wealth of material and opulence of Oriental ornament. They were strongly influenced by it. Greco-Roman jewelry now lost its classical character and comparative simplicity and took on gorgeous color and Oriental symbolism. From the combined influences of Europe and the Orient developed Byzantine jewelry, whose characteristics were destined to last through the greater part of the Middle Ages.

Every once in a while during various periods of history the work of the jeweler has impinged on that of the clothier. Jewelry has been worn not only as an accessory but in the form of gold embroidery and insets of precious stones as an integral part of the garment itself. Such a period came in the sixth century. Of course only the very rich might indulge in the luxury and the very questionable comfort of these bejeweled garments.

In the Roman court at Constantinople, Justinian and his wife, Theodora, wore robes stiff with jewels. In their gorgeous, heavily weighted costumes there was no trace left of the soft-flowing Greek and Roman garments of earlier times. Theodora wore an elaborate diadem hung with precious stones. Ropes of pearls and emeralds encircled her throat and lay weightily upon her shoulders; and Justinian himself was scarcely outdone in splendor of jewels by his wife.

‘By the sixth century,’ says H G Wells, ‘the population of Europe and North Africa had been stirred up like sediment.’ And even when, in the course of the next two centuries the ‘sediment’ was allowed to settle down enough for various peoples to take on national characteristics, their jewelry was slow to develop any strongly localized individuality. Wherever the East and the West had mingled, the splendor of the Orient, with its symbolic mysticism, had left its mark on the jewelry of the country.

As the fabulous wealth in jewels grew, it rose like sparkling bubbles in a boiling pot to the top ranges of society, while the daily life of the common man grew ever more poverty stricken.

During miserable Dark Ages, famine and plague, always close comrades, stalked the earth together. The seventh century was one of the blackest periods of history. Bands of robbers unchecked by authority added their quota to terror and misery and no man by himself was safe. The few goldsmiths and lapidaries who had escaped with their lives either sought the protection of some powerful lord or joined certain other men who, gathering together in groups for mutual protection, lived apart in monasteries, devoting their lives to the new religion, Christianity, and to the preservation of various arts. These men were the monks. Each one was required to practise an art or a handicraft, and many of them were expert goldsmith.

Thus, in small havens of peace and safety, many knowledges of technique and art were preserved which otherwise would have been lost in the black chaos of the Dark Ages.

In the eighth century, under a decree issued by the Byzantine Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, there began an orgy of destruction aimed chiefly at the sacred images so numerously set in in the Christian Churches. Man’s inherent lust for destruction seems unquenchable, and when backed and encouraged by authority the joy smashing knows no bounds. Unhappily similar periods of delight have been frequent in history and are in force even at the present time.

With such fervent zeal did the iconoclast crusaders carry on their mission that even the artists and goldsmiths who made the offending images were included in the general havoc and had to flee for their lives. ‘The woods and caves,’ says one old record, ‘were filled with them.’

Many of them fled to France and to Germany. In Rome, monasteries welcomed the refugees and straightway set them to work, each man according to his own craft. And so it was that throughout the various countries giving asylum to artists, the Byzantine influence was brought to bear upon the arts and crafts of those countries.