Title

The syntax of spolia in byzantine thessalonike

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Abstract

The word spolia is a plural noun from the Latin spolium, meaning the hide or fleece stripped from the body of an animal. More generally, spolia referred to a soldier’s booty or the spoils of war. Architectural historians use the term today to refer to artifacts “incorporated into a setting culturally or chronologically different from that of [their] creation.”1 According to this definition, spolia are pieces of architectural material, either found on the ground or purposely gathered by stripping a standing building, which are incorporated into a new monument that is being built. The use of spolia establishes a relationshipwhether deliberately or not-with visual and architectural remains from the past. The selection of spolia and the specific uses to which they are put ought to tell us something about that relationship, at least as far as those responsible for the monuments being built are concerned.2 This chapter looks at selected examples of the use-and in one case, the telling lack of use-of architectural spolia in Thessalonike, and it proposes that a dramatic change in the meaning of the use of spolia can be detected with the end of Byzantine rule over the city in the fifteenth century.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Approaches to Byzantine Architecture and its Decoration: Studies in Honor of Slobodan Curcic

First Page

47

Last Page

56

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