How Do We Deal With Secrecy?

The Secret History, by the court historian Procopius, is a medieval tell-all.

Detailing the reign of Emperor Justinian I, and his wife Empress Theodora, in 6th-century Constantinople—present-day Istanbul, Turkey—the Secret History scandalously reports on the behind-the-scenes of the powerful Byzantine empire. A major port of trade, Constantinople was one of the largest and most cosmopolitan cities of the medieval Mediterranean world.

In the pages of the Secret History, Procopius documents the flamboyant sexual displays of the Empress Theodora and Justinian’s imperial incompetence. “It goes from this intense slut shaming of the empress to how terrible Justinian was as a ruler,” says art historian Roland Betancourt, who recently gave a talk at Getty about secrecy in the Byzantine empire, “and then going like, ‘Oh yeah, and in the middle of the night, Justinian actually walked around the palace and his head floated off his body.’”

While many medievalists dismiss the document as an insignificant text, Betancourt is interested in what questions it raises about the eternal allure of secrecy, and how secret knowledge is transmitted. “Understanding how you get from critiques of poor policy decisions to statements suggesting that the emperor was literally a demon, all in the same text is a very powerful thing to consider.” (In Time, Betancourt writes about conspiracy theories and how “the Secret History is a cautionary tale about how certain strategies of hatred persist over time.”)

For Betancourt, the work of the art historian is to confront these secrets of the past, or at least try to understand how they worked. How were secrets divulged, and how were they obscured? What does art reveal—and what does it not?

From the relics of the True Cross to the classified ingredients of Greek fire—a flame that could burn on water—secrets were plentiful in Byzantium. The emperor's throne in the Great Palace's reception hall was said to be composed of a series of automata, or medieval robots, that would slowly elevate the emperor up into the air until he was floating suspended, flanked by gilded lions and singing mechanical birds. “Think, Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland,” Betancourt says.

And the Mandylion was a sacred cloth believed to bear a miraculous image of Jesus Christ, his image allegedly imprinted when he used the linen towel to wipe his face. But the relic (like many of them) is kept concealed from public view, seen only by an anointed few, and what it actually looked like—what scholars argue were really only a few smudges–was kept hidden.

While medieval secrets were used to convey the sanctity of the divine, and the immensity of military and imperial power, they also protected identities. Betancourt describes the story of Marinos, a saint assigned female at birth who, cutting their hair, changed their name to enter an all-male monastery. Marinos’s story, and stories like theirs, provide powerful evidence for pre-modern transgender lives.

“Across these stories, these trans monks often beg that their past not be revealed to the community,” Betancourt says. To be a scholar of queer and trans history, he notes, is to grapple with these silences, “the simultaneously joyful and painful speculation of what might have been and what we cannot know.”

The biggest secret of Byzantium may be the whole empire itself. “The word Byzantine today often means something overly complex and convoluted, one shrouded in secrecy and bureaucratic,” Betancourt says. Even the word—Byzantium—was one invented by early modern thinkers to describe “an empire that didn’t fit the mold of what Western historians wanted it to be.” The Byzantines, in fact, called themselves Romans. Subject throughout history to Orientalist tropes, the Byzantine empire is still often misunderstood.

But it is in these complexities that Byzantine art has the most to show us about our worlds and theirs, Betancourt says. “How do we responsibly deal with secrecy? How do we deal with what we don’t know? How do we use modern ideas to think about the past?” Centuries later, these secrets still continue to provoke wonder and speculation, inviting us to consider the people whose lives we may never fully know, but can begin to imagine and recreate.

Watch Roland Betancourt’s lecture, The Secrets We Keep, delivered as the annual Thomas and Barbara Gaehtgens lecture at the Getty Research Institute. And discover more in his recent book on the topic, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages.