ABSTRACT
Images of the Virgin appear on many types of domestic objects in the early Byzantine period, particularly on clothing and jewellery. These objects raise some interesting questions about the unofficial, private cult of the Virgin in the early Byzantine period. Some of these issues have been raised already by historians, who have worked from the evidence of texts, but, to my knowledge, art historians, working from the material culture, have not addressed them. The questions that will be considered here are three in number. First, there is the problem of chronology. Was the visual cult of the Virgin, in the sense of people invoking her aid through images, a phenomenon that appeared first at the upper levels of society, and did it only subsequently trickle down to the popular level? Or was the movement the other way around, that is, was the visual cult of the Virgin in the first place a popular movement, which was only subsequently co-opted by the powerful and made an instrument of their authority? Alternatively, were the official and the popular cults of the Virgin both contemporary manifestations of the same cultural phenomenon?1
