Nine Plates, Two Adventūs and One True Cross Richard Maguire (University of East Anglia, UK)
JERUSALEM IS WIDELY accepted as the pre-eminent locus sanctus of the religion enfranchised by Constantine and Licinius in 313. Emperors invested in Christendom’s emblematic capital, but were otherwise entirely absent from it. According to the early seventhcentury court poet, George of Pisidia, ‘No emperor of the Christians, in human memory, had come to Jerusalem’ until the Emperor Heraclius (r.610-641) returned a relic of the True Cross to the Holy Sepulchre in 630 (Kaegi 2003, 206; Drijvers 2002, 178; Spain 1977, 302; Kiilerich 2001, 172). From 612 to 628, according to Kaegi, Heraclius was ‘criss-crossing parts of Anatolia and the Tauros and the Amanos ranges’ as part of his long expedition against the Sasanian Persians.14 Emperors, so mobile in pursuit of military victory, appear to have been averse to visiting the metropolis which instantiated the faith they principally embodied? Do the so-called David Plates from the Second Cyprus treasure shed light on this peculiar anomaly and, conversely, how might Heraclius’ Jerusalem adventus impact on our reading of the plates.
14
For the preference ‘expedition’ over ‘campaign’ see George of Pisidia’s narrative, Expeditio Persica, trans. Pertusi 1959: 84-136, composed shortly after the end of the Byzantine-Persian war in 628.
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