| This dissertation offers a new approach to the study of state-mandated punishment in Byzantine Constantinople. The overarching premise posits public punishment as a form of art, or visual rhetoric, akin to figural arts, imperial ceremonies, and various literary genres used for the expression of political, social, and religious ideology. Stressing the visual nature of punishment spectacles, two main media for the art of punishment are explored---the human body of the condemned and the architectural body of the city. The first chapter analyzes the body of a condemned usurper vis-a-vis that of the emperor, and explores the iconography of a body that was read in terms of its missing or altered parts. The following chapter explores the public spaces upon which the memories of violence were metaphorically engraved during moments of punishment. As a result, the city's topography of punishment emerges as a background for displaying the relationship between the living bodies of the emperor and the criminal. Situating the visual experience of punishment within the larger visual culture of Constantinople, the last two chapters further elucidate the neglected relationship between public punishment and two iconographic categories of Byzantine art---the Last Judgment and martyrdom. |
