The Impact of 1918 on Bulgaria

Among the states that participated in World War I, Bulgaria is an interesting case, being the only Slavic and the only small state allied with the Central Powers. In addition, Bulgaria was the first member of the Quadruple Alliance that admitted their defeat with the Armistice of Thessaloniki (16/29 Sep 1918). The armistice signed in the Greek Macedonia capital ended not just Bulgaria’s three years involvement in the Great War, alongside Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, but also a longer period of violent confrontations if we include the two Balkan Wars too (1912-1913). After the implication in these successive conflicts, the small Slavic state had seen significant human and material losses (155,000 deaths on the battlefields, 400,000 wounded, and over 155,000 deaths due to diseases). One in six men aged 20 to 50 lost their lives during the period October 1912 to September 1918. The hereby study deals with the effects of these losses, sufferings and deprivations (doubled by the bitterness of defeat but also by hopes of winning the victor’s benevolence) at different layers: the army, the civilian population, the political life and the diplomacy. The study does not lack references to the “Dobrudjan Issue”, which dominated the Romanian-Bulgarian relations for almost the entire period 1878-1940. The bibliography includes contributions by prestigious specialists in Bulgarian and Balkan history, written or translated in Bulgarian, Romanian, English, French or Italian, completed with Romanian military documents.


Introduction
At the start of the 20 th century, Bulgaria (an independent kingdom since October 1908) was a small state in Southeastern Europe, weakly urbanized, with an undeveloped industry and inhabited by a large mass of landowners with small properties. Unlike neighboring Romania, Tsarist Russia, or the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there were no major social cleavages, although the efforts towards the development of cities, industry, railways and the army had led to an excessive taxation for the peasantry. Compared with the neighboring Christian-Orthodox states, Bulgaria displayed a higher rate of literacy, a more pronounced tendency of the peasantry to associate within cooperatives, as well as a lower degree of religiosity. The Bulgarian state's surface at the beginning of the First World War was about 114,000 km², compared to 96,345 km², before the First Balkan War (1912).
In the last year, according to Bulgarian statistics, reproduced in a Romanian military document (a synthesis report of the Romanian military attaché in Sofia, Captain Florea Ţenescu, from 1915), Bulgaria's population was 4,742,000, of which 3,794,794 were ethnic Bulgarians, about 500,000 Turks (over 10%), 120,000 Gypsies (2,5%), 79,897 Romanians, 43,000 Greeks and 40,000 Jews. The share of urban population was 19.2%. 1 After the Balkan Wars, Bulgaria gained a small part of the Historic Macedonia (The Pirin area) and Western Thrace from the Ottoman Empire, and, implicitly, an exit to the Aegean Sea, but lost Southern Dobrudja to Romania. These territorial changes did not substantially affect the ethnic structure of the Bulgarian population, because Western Thrace and Southern Dobrudja had a similar ethnic composition (a mixture between Turkish Muslims and Bulgarians).
The Romanian ethnics were concentrated in the northwest of the country (Vidin -Vratsa -Pleven), very few were lived in Southern Dobrudja, lost in 1913, while the Greeks lived mostly in the Plovdiv area and on the Black Sea coast, and the Jews formed an eminently urban community. 2 From a political perspective, the modern Bulgarian national state was organized as a constitutional monarchy, like the neighboring Christian states, Romania, Greece and Serbia. The Constitution of Turnovo, adopted in 1879 and revised in favor of the monarch in 1893 and 1911, stated the principles of separation of powers in the state, political pluralism, respect for citizens' rights and freedoms, communal autonomy and universal male vote. 3 These generous constitutional provisions did not prevent authoritarian manifestations, instability and acts of violence, which translated into a series of political assassinations.
The post-Ottoman Bulgaria was marked by the antagonism between Russophiles and Russophobes, the two orientations being rather equal as popular support.

Years of war
After one year of neutrality, in the autumn of 1915, after a secret treaty of alliance with the Central Powers and the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria entered the Great War on their side. The decision was made by King Ferdinand I of Saxe Coburg -Gotha (1861-1948, reigning between 1887-1918, until 1908 prince/knyaz) and by the P.M. Vasil Radoslavov (1854Radoslavov ( -1929, leader of a Russophobe liberal party. The motivation for this option is very well presented by the historian Simeon Damjanov: "The biggest concession made by the Powers of Entente to Bulgaria was to promise that, after the end of the war, in the context of an enlargement of Serbia over Austro-Hungary and of Greece over the Ottoman Empire, they would exert pressures on the two countries for territorial compensation in favor of Bulgaria, while Bulgarians wanted the immediate occupation of the claimed areas." 4 The prospect of substantial and rapid territorial gains had proved decisive for the Sofia governors and a part of public opinion. Indeed, on entering the great conflagration on the side of Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire ("the secular enemy" until 1913), Bulgaria immediately gained 160 villages and towns (including the Adrianople) from Eastern Thrace, up to the Enos-Midia line, ceded by the Ottoman state. In the following weeks, after the defeat of the Serbian troops, they managed to occupy Vardarian Macedonia and Pomoravia (the Western Timok Valley). Other territorial aspirations concerned the entire Dobrudja (not only the territory lost in 1913) and the Aegean Macedonia. 5 The Sofia governors ignored the ethno-demographic realities and, in the case of Macedonia, the identity of those from the claimed territories, starting from their own vision on the history of the Balkans. In addition, they did not correctly assess the global balance of power and the winning chances of the two confronting camps as well as the military and economic potential of their own country in the event of prolonged hostilities.
As a result, in September 1918, about 40% of Bulgaria's entire male population was under arms. The Bulgarian army's losses during the three years of involvement in World War I amounted to about 100,000 dead and 200,000 injured, in addition to the human sacrifices of the Balkan Wars (58,000 dead and 105,000 injured), resulting a total of about 160,000 dead and 300,000 injured for a population of nearly 5 million. 6 Grain production dropped by half in three years (1915)(1916)(1917)(1918), from 2.7 million tons to 1.4 million tons 7 , and the price index for basic products, with the reference year 1914 (= 100), increased continuously to 200 (1916), 500 (January 1918) to reach the level of 870 8 in July 1918. Bulgarian exports also recorded a sharp decline from 184 million lev in 1911 to 44 million in 1918; malnutrition caused daily deaths in cities and the national currency was affected by an unstoppable inflation. 9 In this context, the Bulgarian hopes were related to the extension of jurisdiction over Northern Dobrudja (in the autumn of 1916, the Quadruple Alliance had occupied the entire Dobrudja, but only the southern part was entrusted to Bulgaria). This territory was seen as a possible supplementary source of food and other supplies. 10 The Bulgarian aspirations over Northern Dobrudja involved expelling Romania from the Black Sea, went beyond the 1915 treaty, and were confronted with the objections of other members of the Quadruple Alliance. The most transparent opposition came from the representatives of the Ottoman Empire, followed by a series of political and especially military German notabilities (Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Mackensen etc.), invoking geopolitical reasons and the danger of a Russian-Bulgarian (or, possibly, Ukrainian-Bulgarian) territorial junction. 11 The geopolitical realities and the Slavophobia of some decision-makers from Berlin and Vienna were speculated by the Romanian politician Alexandru Marghiloman (1854Marghiloman ( -1925 Art, 1990. 6 John D. Bell, Peasants in power. Alexander Stamboliiski and the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union 1899-1923, Princetown University Press, Princetown-New Jersy, 1977 Barbara Jelavich, Istoria Balcanilor. Secolul XX: 1887-1982 Sofia, 2006, p. 168 and Žeko Popov, Dobrudža: okupirana, osvobodena, otneta (1913-1918) [Dobrudja: Occupied, liberated, stolen (1913-1918], selfediting, Velbužd, 2008, p. 244. 4 conservative and a Germanophile. This is clearly shown by the basic text of the memo submitted by him at the beginning of March 1918 to the representatives of the Central Powers, a document centered on the problem of Dobrudja. 12 Some German officials, including the Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann, presented the idea that Northern Dobrudja would be redeemed (in its own right) by Romania from Bulgaria, by paying a sum of money to help the Bulgarian economy. 13 The Bulgarian attempts to obtain the entire Dobrudja ended in three consecutive failures in the first months of 1918: Brest-Litovsk (19 February/4 March 1918, Buftea 20 February/5 March andBucharest 24 April/7 May 1918). The first treaty did not include any reference to Dobrudja and other Bulgarian territorial aspirations, 14 and the other two granted Bulgaria only the territory lost in 1913 and a strip from the Constanța County; the rest of Dobrudja would be run by a condominium of the Quadruple Alliance and Romania's access to the Black Sea would be assured by the Cernavoda-Constanţa corridor. 15 The failure in the Dobrudjan issue was followed by a series of local defeats with major psychological impact, on the Macedonian front 16 . The Radoslavov government quickly lost its parliamentary majority and, after unsuccessful reconciliation attempts with the Agrarians and Democrats, who had opposed the 1915 decision, it resigned on 15 June 1918. 17 The causal relationship between the failure of the Dobrudjan problem, in the context of the repercussions of the war, and the fall of the Vasil Radoslavov government is noted by many Bulgarian and Balkans Western historians. 18 Alexandur Malinov, born in 1867, in a Bulgarian village in Southern Bessarabia, the leader of the Democratic Party, and known as an Ententophil, 19 became the leader of the government.
The new government included eight Democrats and two Radicals, no clear majority in The Săbranje (Parliament) and was viewed with suspicion by the king. 20 Without ever summoning the Parliament, the new P.M. received some tacit support from The Bulgarian National Agrarian Union (BANU), led by Al. Stamboliiski (born 1879Stamboliiski (born -d. 1923), imprisoned in 1915 for an offense to the monarch. However, it was not possible to attract all the Agrarians to the government, because the conditions imposed by Stamboliiski (initially, the release of all his imprisoned comrades and then, also, an immediate armistice) were unacceptable to the king. 21 The appointment of Malinov as P.M. was more a gesture of pressure on the Central Powers than a real move away from them. "The new government was not alien to certain contacts with The Entente, but it wanted the country to keep Dobrudja, Macedonia, Thrace and Pomoravia, and therefore continued the cooperation with Germany", wrote the Bulgarian historian Krăstjo Mančev. 22 In some Bulgarian circles, The 14 Points, declared by President W. Wilson on 26 December/8 January 1918, had led to some hopes, due to ambiguous and prolix formulations in the document, in particular, Article XI, on the Balkans 23 (Romania, Serbia and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into). Moreover, the U.S. were not at war with Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire.
In the spring of 1918, when Romania had become lost to the Entente, several ideas circulated in several French newspapers regarding a separate peace with Bulgaria, which got Southern Dobrudja, a greater access to the Aegean Sea and even a part of Macedonia. David Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour agreed to the project of unification and federalization of historic Macedonia, under Anglo-American protection, initiated by some socialist circles, but disapproved by Eleftherios Venizelos and Nikola Pašić. 24 Other Bulgarian hopes were linked to Ukraine, by virtue of the common Slavic origin and the adversity of both states towards Romania in Dobrudja and Bessarabia respectively. 25 Meanwhile, in June, the energetic and ambitious general Franchet d'Esperay became the commander of the military forces of the Entente in the Balkans (the front of Thessaloniki), replacing general Guillaume, who had replaced himself, at the end of 1917, another French general, Maurice Sarraill. 26 During the second half of July 1918, the decisive and irreversible change of the course of war took place on the Franco-Belgian and Italian fronts, in favor of the Entente Powers. 27 At that time, the bread ration of the Bulgarian soldier was 600 grams, containing 80-90% flour, and even corncobs, less of wheat, and about half of them lacked the appropriate footwear. 28 The riots of women in different cities (May 1918) were followed by a steady increase in the rate of desertions, the fugitives often seeking to establish ties with Agrarians or other radical parties. 29 21 John D. Bell,op. cit., Apud C-tin Iordan,op. cit.,p. 38. 23 R.J. Crampton,op. cit.,p. 63. 24 Ivan Ilčev,op. cit., Oleh S. Fedyshyn, Germany`s Drive to East and the Ukrainian Revolution: 1917-1918, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1971 The Bulgarian Army …, p. 289-292 27 Mircea N. Popa, Primul Război Mondial (1914-1918 [The First World War (1914-1918], Bucharest, Scientific and Encyclopedic Publishing House, 1979, pp. 408-412, 511-515. 28 Bălgaskata armija…, [The Bulgarian Army …], p. 289-292. 29 R.J. Crampton,op. cit., Under these conditions, at the beginning of August, Al. Malinov drew the king's attention to the political-military evolution, raising the issue of pulling out of the war. 30 A period of probing with the Entente Powers was initiated, with an important role being played by former Prime Minister Ivan Ev. Gešov (1859, the head of the Bulgarian Red Cross, who was in neutral Switzerland for treatment. 31 Moreover, in the summer of 1918, in the context of the de facto rupture of the alliance with the Romanian state, in Paris, London and Washington prevailed the conviction that Southern Dobrudja should be returned to Bulgaria, with the possible exception of Silistra, a solution considered in accordance with the ethnic principle. 32 In September, events were precipitating. At the middle of the month, Franchet d'Esperay's army, comprising of 28 divisions, including 9 Greek, 8 French, 6 Serbian, 4 British and one Italian, 33 started the offensive. As Leften S. Stavrianos noted, the two camps on the Macedonian front were roughly equal in numbers and as artillery power, but the Bulgarians were clearly inferior in regards to aviation and their morale was strongly shaken by material shortcomings. 34 We will not insist on the details of the battles, but the Bulgarians were clearly on the losing side. On 25 September 1918, the Entente troops reached the Bitola-Prilep-Veles line. 35 The degradation of the situation on the Macedonian front had three immediate consequences. Thus, the Bulgarian government accepted the Ottoman Empire's claim to return the territory obtained from it three years before in exchange for the Ottoman agreement concerning the incorporation of Northern Dobrudja into Bulgaria. After this, Protocol No. 21 was signed in Berlin, in the evening of 25 September 1918; through this act, Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire recognized Bulgaria's "rights" over the entire Dobrudja. 36 A second consequence was the decision to initiate the negotiations with the Entente in order to sign the armistice, a decision also made on 25 September 1918. Mediated by the Americans, the armistice was signed on 29 September in Thessaloniki and provided, among other things, the demobilization of the Bulgarian army, with some exceptions, including some units destined for Dobrudja. Temporarily, the Entente accepted the Bulgarian administration of Dobrudja 37 . The Romanian historian Constantin Iordan explains this decision of the Entente through the imperative of mobilizing its own forces against the Central Powers and the Ottoman Empire, on one hand, and, on the other hand, by the fact that Romania was still governed by the Germanophile cabinet headed by Al. Marghiloman. 38 A third consequence was the beginning of an agrarian-republican military rebellion, with its epicenter in the Radomir area, at 40 km (25 miles) N-W from Sofia. Still, the revolt was finally defeated. In the opinion of R. J. Crampton, the main causes for this conclusion were:  The lack of organization and operability of the rebels, which allowed rapid regrouping of the monarch's loyal forces (fanatical Macedonians led by Al. 30 Markov,op. cit.,p. 300,Ž. Popov,op. cit.,p. 254. 37 St. Ančev,op. cit., Constantin Iordan,op. cit.,p. 255. Protogerov) and the German 217 th Division, equipped with machine guns and heavy artillery;  The passive attitude of the Tesnjaks (the radical socialists, the future Communists), who considered agrarianism a petite bourgeoisie, reactionary doctrine;  The hesitations and oscillations of agrarian leader Al. Stamboliiski, who, on 25 September, agreed to contribute to the calming of the rebels in return for his release from prison, then declared himself the President of the Republic, and finally disavowed the rebels who were on the verge of being defeated;  The impending completion of the main demands of the participants in the uprising: the signing of the ceasefire, on 25 September, and the abdication of Ferdinand I on 3 October. 39 By agreeing with the ceasefire, Ferdinand I of Bulgaria lost the support of the Central Powers, but without gaining favor with the Entente. Thus, his presence on the throne was no longer desired by either of the two (still) belligerent camps. The new sovereign, Boris III (1894 -1943, 1918-1943), after taking the oath, on the first day of the reign, 4 October 1918, issued the Royal Decree no. 1, on the general demobilization, until 15 October 1918, with the exception of three infantry divisions, including the 4 th Preslav Division, stationed in Dobrudja, in the Hârşova -Cernavoda -Medgidia -Silistra area 40 . In parallel, Serbian troops entered Niš on 12 October and on 1 November they arrived in Belgrade 41 .
On 17 October, the government underwent a substantial change and gained a much wider membership: 4 Democrats, 1 Radical, 1 Social Democrat, 1 Agrarian and 1 Popular, in the person of the new Foreign Minister, Teodor Teodorov. 42 The Agrarians, freshly entangled in government, and the Tesnjaks, hostile to any collaboration with bourgeois parties, demanded the immediate amnesty for all political offenses during 1915-1918 and the punishment of those guilty for the "national catastrophe". 43 In this context, on 20 November 1918, The Entente demanded on Bulgaria to evacuate the administration and all the military forces from Dobrudja (up to the border line established in 1913), until the Peace Conference would decide the status of this province. The return of the Romanian civil administration in Dobrudja would be met with violent protests by the ethnic Bulgarians from the province, at the turn of 1918-1919. 44 The immediate effect of General Paul Chrétien's note is the resignation of the Malinov II government, but not Bulgaria's fall to bolshevism, as the American consul Dominic Murphy feared. 45 On 29 November, a new coalition government is formed, led by Teodor Teodorov, bringing together six political parties (the Liberal-Progressives also took part), with a more consistent representation of the Agrarians. The new government granted a general political amnesty, which came into force on January 1, 1919, when the Agrarian leader Al. Stamboliiski took 39 R.J. Crampton,op. cit.,; also see John D. Bell,op. cit., G. Markov,op. cit.,p. 339. 41 L.S. Stavrianos,op. cit.,p. 569. 42 E. Statelova,St. Grănčarov,op. cit.,T.V. Tašev,op. cit., Dimitrina Petrova, Samostojatelnoto upravlenie na BZNS 1920-1923 Ančev,op. cit.,p. 44 and Ž. Popov,op. cit., St. Ančev,op. cit.,p. 35. over the minister seat reserved for him. 46 At the end of 1918, Stamboliiski's BANU was the most powerful political party in the country, with 77,298 members grouped in about 2,000 local organizations (družbi), half of whom had been set up at the end of the war. Of the party members, 84% owned less than 10 hectares of arable land, and only 0.5%, over 50 hectares. 47

Epilogue
The systematic and tenacious attempts of some Bulgarian politicians and propaganda to gain the goodwill of Entente, although not without a certain echo, have remained, however, ultimately without any practical effect within the Peace Conference in Paris. The Treaty of Neuillysur-Seine of 27 November 1919 is considered by the Bulgarians to be the "second national catastrophe", only a few years after the first, namely the Treaty of Bucharest (28 July/10 August 1913) following the Balkan Wars. Under the leadership of Al. Stamboliiski, the Agrarian Union would become the main, then the only political governing force after the parliamentary elections of 17 August 1919 and 28 March 1920 respectively. The government's authoritarianism and the radicalism of its reforms would deeply divide the Bulgarian society, culminating with a bloody coup d etat in June 1923. Finally, King Boris would overcome the period of uncertainty of the first five years of the Interwar period, after which he would gradually become a very capable actor, both in the domestic and in the foreign policy.

Conclusions
For Bulgaria, 1918 was the end of a series of wars that began in autumn of 1912 and resulted in heavy human and material losses. The last war, like the previous one, ended with the defeat of the country, but after the Armistice in Thessaloniki (29 September 1918) the military losses and, to a certain extent, the deprivation of the civilian population, ended. The maturity for the 1915 political option was postponed by 14 months, until the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine was signed. Also postponed, by about 20 months, was the very predictable revolution following the lost war, if we indeed consider the measures taken by the single party government led by Stamboliiski (21 May 1920 -9 June 1923) as a "peasant revolution". Finally, the year 1918 marked the uncertain beginning of the reign of the most capable Bulgarian monarch after 1878, Boris III.

The origins and meaning of Proto-Christian art
The newly established Christian religion was disseminated over Roman territory in the first few centuries of the first millennium through the words of the semi-legendary apostolic missionaries, finally taking shape by the beginning of the third century and forming its traditions, including iconography.
Using Christian authors as inspiration, the image-makers of late antiquity expressed themselves in the visual or verbal language which was in use around them. In any religion, devotional representation becomes a cross-disciplinary subject of research, due to the multiplicity of interpretations: it can be examined from the point of view of history, art history, philosophy and theology, culture and sociology.
Applying the approach of iconographic studies to this period, one can observe that the primary goal of the visuals was the transmission of information -firstly as religious content and secondly in the proliferation of different forms of piety. The main characters were already recognized by the believers through the inscription of scenes according to the images in the Roman catacombs or marble sarcophagus reliefs. They could be represented in different media, such as sculptural figures, high reliefs or icons, with the same stylistic features.
It is undeniable that multiple features which are inseparable from imperial Greco-Roman imagery passed into the Christian iconographic language as words, expressions, and syntactical or metrical constructions of the first centuries, and that Aramaean, Koine Greek and Latin were interpolated into the language of the Christian Church Fathers and early theologians. 1 This logical postulate deserves our attention because the first Christian images and texts were created to be understood and accepted by their contemporaries. This can be easily verified by the visual comparison of Christian images which follow the rules of late antiquity in the presentation of human figures, their posture, physical type, costume and habitual gestures and attitudes, accessories and architectural details, with those of the East.
Religious art, evoking religious values and beliefs, sooner or later becomes an intimate part of any tradition. Vladimir Lossky and Leonid Uspensky explain in their works that there are three parts in Christian tradition which are not certified by the Scriptures. These traditions are based on the amalgamation of Jewish, Greek and Roman beliefs and practices during the first to third centuries CE. This idea can be equally applied to the domain of the visual. Often based on the scriptural category, depictions should be in a recognizable form in the essence and significance of a spiritual experience by the believers. 2

Jewish hostility and Greek visuals
With the expansion of the Roman Empire, different foreign temples and cults were tolerated in Rome, and synagogues were no exception. Later, Christianity was authorized by the same predisposition. These principles were not new in the history of the Mediterranean region.
Greek philosophical definitions were embedded in Christian ideology from the beginning, to such an extent that they could not later be separated. The idea of the "unseen God", which was not innovative for progressive Greek elitist thought of the first millennium, found its record in the Acts of the Apostles in the episode with "Agnostos Theos" (Gr. Ἄγνωστος Θεός). 3 Previously, in the fourth century BCE, due to the military campaigns of Alexander the Great, 4 Greek culture had spread from the Mediterranean Sea as far as the territory of what is now East Pakistan. This movement was historically named "Hellenization", and it reshaped the map of the ancient world. As a result of Hellenization, reciprocal influences can easily be traced in language and in the social and civic organizations of the state.
This cosmopolitan idea of the unity of the territories was perfectly reflected in the Gospels. What distinguished Christianity from previous religious concepts was its modernity and its ability to adapt to the global situation -that is, the new belief proclaimed itself as being for all, with an emphasis on tolerance and humanism: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And because you belong to Christ, you are Abraham's descendants, and you are heirs according to God's promise" (Galatians 3:28-29). Jewish hostility towards the Christian images could not sustain the pressure of the rich visual artistic environment around Judea.
Sr. Charles Murray in her fundamental research on early Christian iconography notes that the Decalogue prohibitions should be seen as local and temporary. 5 The presence at the core of the Judaic community of Jewish individuals who were more flexible in matters of religion, prepared to sponsor the representations of animals and human beings and even of the hand of God, was found at the beginning of the first millennium in remote public synagogues -above all, in that of Dura-Europos. All the evidence points to the orthodox and pious nature of the Jewish community who officially sponsored the amazing fresco decoration found there.
The Christian community shared the same location and, unlike the Jews, they could justify the depictions through the incarnation of the Son of God which made it possible for God to be represented. St Paul summarized this idea in his Epistle to the Colossians: "He [Jesus] is the image [icon] of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15).
The embodiment of the Absolute in Jesus removed the distance as well as the distinctions between God and the human. This link helped to accommodate the aniconism requirement of Judaism and the Greco-Roman visual heritage. St Basil the Great in the fourth century and John of Damascus in the seventh century, in opposition to Tertullian, claimed of holy images that "the honor given to the image reaches back to the original". 6 The most ancient icons belong to the monastery of Saint Catherine, built on the orders of the Emperor Justinian on Mount Sinai. On stylistic grounds, the earliest tentative date is given to a Virgin and Child between two saints with two very Hellenistic-looking angels. This icon is attributed to the sixth century. The Virgin is depicted in the place of an empress, St Peter in the place of a first consul, and St John (in question) as a second consul. Mary, placed on the throne, wears a formal costume with pearls and precious stones.
The mark of imperial iconography in Christian art is recognizable everywhere in different ways: in the appropriation of themes and subjects, in the borrowings of iconographic details, and in the usage of more remote models for the creation of analogous images. 7 Christ, sitting solemnly on a throne, wears a crown, makes the sign of benediction, and is surrounded by angels or saints standing along both sides. Chronological dating is the major problem in the study of icons, particularly those of the Byzantine period because of the stylistically strong traditional features, and radiocarbon dating is not efficient due to the constant renovation of the varnish.

Central Asian Greco-Indian influence
In addition to the evident influence of the Roman imperial cult on early Christian visuals, as described above, another strong impact that should not be ignored is the oriental source of the Parthian Empire (Persian-Hellenistic), later known as the Bactrian (Indo-Greek) kingdom. To understand its effect on early Christian art, a short historical overview is needed.
The story of this crossroads region begins with the legendary founding of the cities of Taxia (Panjab, Pakistan), Kapisa (Afghanistan) and Purushapura (Pakistan) and goes back to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Later, this region was commonly known by the term Gandhara. It became one of the six mahajanapadas (states) of ancient India, referred to in Rigveda (RV 1.126.7) and Atharvavdeda (AV 5.22.14). Conquered by the Achaemenid Empire in the sixth century BCE, this territory became the northwest satrapy, with its capital at Pushkalavati.
By 380 BCE the Persian rule of these regions had weakened. The centralized Gandhara broke into many small kingdoms and finally, in 327 BCE, the Macedonian king Alexander the Great conquered Gandhara along with the Indian satrapies of the Persian Empire. After the death of Alexander, his enormous rapidly established empire crumbled at once and was divided up among his generals, proclaimed as diadochi.
The Roman imperial territory which proliferated mainly to the west from its capital of Rome, never reached the size of Alexander's possessions. In the first centuries CE, the territory of the Roman Empire stretched only around the basin of the Mediterranean Sea, covering the western part of Europe and extending as far as the territory of the northern Celtic tribes. Alexander spread the Greek territory by his invasion of the Eastern part of the known world and that is why the Latin influence on these territories was minimal, known later only by the protracted Roman-Parthian wars (54 BCE -217 CE). It should also be noted that Ionian Greeks had been familiar to the Eastern world for centuries before the Macedonian army reached this region. Described by the word "yoana" by the Persians, the precise word "yauna" was mentioned in the Mahabharata, 8 which described the events of the ninth and eighth centuries BCE. 9 As a result of his education received from Aristotle, Alexander had a more cultural approach than any other conqueror towards the vanquished territories, in a process that would nowadays be termed colonization. The installation of Greek military settlements, and the subsequent founding of cities from plans drawn in the sand, offered huge opportunities to architects, sculptors and painters. The adopted Greek culture built on the Achaemenid heritage of well administered autonomous satraps, providing a fusion of artistic styles, sartorial habits and lifestyles.
Based on the art of the Parthian Empire, three major artistic styles emerged: Gandhara (Afghanistan, Pakistan), Mathura (Uttar Pradesh) and Khalchayan (modern Uzbekistan). This combined region, primarily known as the cradle of Buddhism, had a strategic location for the spread of Buddhism to Central and Eastern Asia. Two examples of the Greek contribution to the proliferation of Buddhism are evident.
King Chandragupta (reign: 321-298 BCE), the founder of the Maurya Empire, may have witnessed Alexander's invasion in his childhood in Taxila; at a later date, when he had become ruler, he married the daughter of Seleucus I Nicator (c. 358-281 BCE), one of Alexander's diadochi. Emperor Ashoka the Great (reign c. 268-232 BCE), the grandson of King Chandragupta, converted to Buddhism and largely contributed to the fast spread of the religion.
Another notable example was King Menander I (c. 165/155-130 BCE), known in Indian Pali sources as Milinda. Initially the king of Bactria, he successfully conquered the nearby territory and founded the Indo-Greek Kingdom, known locally as Yavanarajya (Kingdom of Yavanas). The Greek historian Strabo wrote of King Menander: "[he] conquered more tribes than Alexander [the Great]". 10 Menander and his court 11 also converted to the Buddhist faith, and he became the patron of the religion. According to the Pali texts, 12 culture flourished under his rule, and knowledge of Greek philosophy, medicine, law, astronomy, art, music and poetry was harmoniously exchanged with those of Hindu-Buddhist heritage. The basic representation of this time around 100 BCE is aniconic, involving Buddhist symbols such as buddhapada (the foot of Buddha), drahmachakra (the wheel of Drahnma) and stupas. The majority of researchers attribute the phenomenon of the iconic representation of Buddha to the Gandhara artistic tradition under the Kushan Empire during the rule of Kaniska I (128-160 CE), but Benjamin Rowland in his milestone article asserts that "on the basis of the actual fragments and remains found under reliable archaeological conditions, there is every indication that Gandhara schools of sculpture came into existence before the reign of Kaniska." 13 It is highly probable that the Greeks were the first to give the prototypes not only to Roman but also to Indian Buddhist sculptors. The chronological dating of the first known Greco-Buddhist statues is uncertain, but the finest and most iconic one, dated first to second century CE, is exhibited in the Tokyo National Museum.
The region of Gandhara, which was the center of Bactrian Zoroastrianism and Hinduism, included minorities of Jews and Christians in its cosmopolitan population. Famed for its local tradition of Greco-Buddhist Art, Gandhara attained its height from the first to the fifth century under the Kushan Empire and flourished at the crossroads of Asia, connecting trade routes and absorbing cultural influences from diverse civilizations. It could be considered as the longestliving independent Greek colony in the world, due to its official usage of the Greek alphabet.
Greco-Buddhist sculpture under the generic name of Gandhara was a stylistic evolution of this hybrid school. Antique sculpture in Northwestern India and Iran appears to have been a considerable part of the stylistic development of the later antique world. The great majority of these co-called Greco-Buddhist sculptures made a sudden and intensive mass appearance at the beginning of the second century CE. This provided Rowland with the reason for his supposition that they were entirely imported from the Roman East, because the best examples stylistically correspond to the works of Syrian artisans of the time of the Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Septimius Severus. 14 According to the Greco-Roman document "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea", which described the possibilities of navigation and trading opportunities of the different regions, including the Indian subcontinent, this probability cannot be denied; nevertheless, no archaeological evidence has been found. 15 The role of Gandhara in the evolution of the image of the Buddha has been a point of considerable disagreement among scholars. The Gandhara school drew upon the anthropomorphic traditions of Greco-Roman religions and represented Buddha with a youthful Olympian god-like face, dressed in garments resembling those observed on Roman imperial statues. The Gandhara depiction of the seated Buddha was less successful, later becoming the interpretation of Maitreya. 16 The naturalistic representation of a garment with easy, free and form-revealing folds is characteristic of the Hellenistic period and also a mark of the carving of drapery in Roman art of the first century CE. Seeing the combination of many different visual inspirations, various scholars who studied the available artefacts at the beginning of the twentieth century proposed different hypotheses, often influenced by their own political and ethnic origin.
The Austrian professor of art history Josef Strzygowski, after combining examples of Palmyrene paintings and sculptures, sarcophagi of Asia Minor, early Christian ivories from Egypt and Coptic textiles, formed his Eurocentric theory and reframed his opinion by introducing the idea of 'Indo-Germanic' elements regarding the Euro-Asian contact zone. Due to his controversial efforts, Germany boasts a prominent collection of Parthian art. His findings should not be ignored, but his conclusions need to be reviewed on account of his sympathy with radical pan-Germanism. 17 In contrast with Strzygowski, the French art historian Alfred C. Foucher (1865Foucher ( -1952, traditionally named the "Father of Gandhara Studies", privileged the Greek over the Roman origin of this region. He observed: "The Indian mind has taken a part no less essential than has Greek genius in the elaboration of the model of the Monk-God. It is a case where the East and the West could have done nothing without each other." 18 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877Coomaraswamy ( -1947 firmly favored the Hindu roots of the first Buddhist depictions of the Gandhara School. The Sri Lankanborn, Coomaraswamy was an outstanding personality; educated in Great Britain, he was a scientist, scholar and art historian, and he provided the American museums with the finest collections of Indian art. He firmly devalued the artistic qualities of the sculptures of the beginning of the Christian era. 19 His unfavorable opinion towards any western influence on Indian art should be also rightly evaluated regarding the time of the Indian fight for independence and his active support of the movement. No proper independent cooperative research has been conducted over the mutual influence between Buddhism and early Christianity, using the literary and the visual primary sources. Geographically, the Greco-Bactrian kingdom had a strategic geopolitical and cultural relationship between Europe and Asia. activity, pillages and rapid urbanization devastated these archaeological sites. After the partition, these objects became Pakistani or Afghani. Pakistan more tolerant of its Buddhist legacy is protecting the sites and open to the collaboration with India and Western Universities." Soumitra Das, "The Buddhas of Pakistan", The Hindu, 14 August 2019. https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/art/the-buddhas-ofpakistan/article29234209.ece. 16 Maitreya (Sanskrit -maitrī) which literally means "friendliness", referred to the future Buddha, presently a bodhisattva residing in the Tushita heaven, who will descend to the earth to preach anew the dharma ("law") when the teachings of Gautama Buddha have completely decayed. "Maitreya", Encyclopaedia Britannica, URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maitreya-Buddhism. Accessed: 18 March 18 2020. 17 Falser, Michael "The Graeco-Buddhist style of Gandhara -a 'Storia ideologica', or: how a discourse makes a global history of art", Journal of Art Historiography, No. 13, December 2015. 18 Foucher, Alfred Charles. "The Greek origin of the image of the Buddha" in The Beginning of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology, trans. L. A. Thomas and F. W. Thomas, Humphrey Milford, London, 1914, pp. 136-137. 19 Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. "The origin of the Buddha image", The Art Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 4 (June 1927), pp. 287-329. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3046550. The only report by Strzygowski, 20 criticized for its lack of evidence, tries to connect Early Buddhist and early Christian depictions -for example, the head of Christ framed in a nimbus with Buddhist depictions of Gandhara art. 21 Foucher, in his essay "The Greek origin of the image of Buddha" cites the same two examples from Strzygowski's article: This Buddhist school finds itself by its origins in contact with our Christian art. Look at these two statues; the one represents Christ, and the other Buddha. The one was taken from a sarcophagus from Asia Minor, and is to-day to be found in Berlin; the other comes from a ruined temple in Gandhara, and is at present in Lahore. Both, with the pose of the right arm similarly draped in their mantles, are direct descendants of a common ancestor, the beautiful Greek statue of the Lateran Museum, called the Orator, in which we have long recognized a Sophocles. It is not to be doubted that, plastically speaking, they are cousins-german. The one is a Greco-Christian Christ; the other is a Greco-Buddhist Buddha. Both are, by the same right, a legacy left in extremis to the old world by the expiring Greek art. 22 The problem discussed here is in the possessing of the findings without any particular national and ethnical interest of the scholar, e.g. exclusively Indian or European, but bound up with the Gandhara phenomenon with the general history of religion and art. 23 It is interesting to observe the close parallels that exist between the Hindu-Buddhist and Christian rituals in the usage of lamps, incense, bells, rosaries, tonsures, formal gestures and liturgical music. These cultic elements probably found their way into the Christian form of worship through Alexandria and Coptic monasticism during the first few centuries of the Christian era 24 through the time of the flourishing of Buddhism in the region of Gandhara. That non-Abrahamic traditional religious elements survived in Christian practices may be traced back to a remote pre-Buddhist and non-Aryan Indian antiquity. Iconolatry, rituals, and devotion are profoundly rooted in the popular Indian non-Aryan consciousness consisting of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, and at times they are other than they were in in their initial meaning.
The relationship of the Gandhara visuals with those of Byzantine icons has not so far been investigated in depth. It is possible to present some undeniable visual comparisons to demonstrate the interrelation on the surface which came into early Byzantine art through Syria, Egypt or Armenia or other sources.
(1) Looking closely at the depiction of the characters, one can identify the resemblance in the drapery technique, as discussed by Strzygowski and developed by Foucher. The simplification of the depiction of the classic Greek drapery of the ancient formula into a simplified web, formed of surface-carving loops in a U-shape that was adopted from Gandhara sculpture, became popular in the Middle East. This technique, found in Palmyra and Gandhara, was in all probability exported to Europe. The same representation of the drape in the technique of carving is seen in the central tympanum of the royal portal of Chartres Cathedral and in the Basilica of St Mary Magdalene, formerly Vézelay Abbey, in France.
(2) Human body depictions of Buddha in Gandhara and early Christian visuals are similar in the proportion of 1 to 5 ratio of the head to the body in comparison with the standardized Egyptian, Greek and Roman depictions where the head is in 1 to 8 ratio to the body size. A reduced body size and enlarged head is the norm for standing figures in the grave stelae and memorials of Palmyra and Dura figures. 25 (3) Jesus, commonly depicted in the icons with his fingers folded in the form of the "mudra" 26 position, does not correspond to Roman oratory postures. The most common postures of Jesus in Orthodox icons are prana, prithvi, ardhapataka, shuni and sourya mudras; in Hinduism and Buddhism these mudras convey the symbol of incarnation and the presence of the divine in the performer. 27 Apart from the Gandhara influence, the only other (weak) explanation of how the yogi tradition of mudras penetrated into Byzantine ground could be through Arab travellers and writers such as the scholar Al-Biruni, 28 one of the major figures in medieval Islamic thought, who wrote about the yoga sūtras in the tenth century CE.
(4) The depiction of a halo in the shape of a disc around the head of the portrayed, indicating the holiness of the character, became the symbol of the Uncreated Light (Greek: Ἄκτιστον Φῶς) in Christianity. The Romans used the rays to symbolize the radiance around the head of Apollo-Helios to portray him as the sun god. The aureola or mandorla (ovalshaped aureola) present on "Transfiguration" and "Harrowing of Hell" icons are first known in the artistic representations of the Indian subcontinent. The word mandorla, meaning "of the almond" in Italian, could be interrelated with the Sanskrit मण्डल, maṇḍala -literally "circle". It exists in the majority of depictions of Christ in domes and apses in Byzantine art, taking the circular shape. Examples can be seen in the Monastery of Hosios Loukas, Greece, of the eleventh century CE, in the Church of Hosios David in Thessaloniki, and in the dome of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice.  Kapisa and Gandhara, Sundeep Prakashan, Delhi, 1984. 26 Mudra (Sanskrit मु द्रा) is a term with many meanings, "seal", "mark" or "gesture"; in Buddhism and Hinduism, a symbolic gesture of the hands and fingers was used either in ceremonies and dance or in sculpture and painting. Article: Mudra, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Date Accessed: March 18, 2020. URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/mudra. 27 The example of the overlay of the interpretation of the gesture can be seen in the manual of Dionysius de Fourna (c. 1670-1744, entitled "Mount Athos Painter's Guide": "When you paint the blessing hand, do not join the three fingers together, but only cross the thumb and the fourth finger; so that the upright finger, that is to say the index finger, and the bent middle finger denote the name IC since the upright finger denotes the I, and the curved one which is next to it, the C. 27 The thumb and the fourth finger, which are crossed, with the little finger beside it, denote the name XC. Since the oblique part of the fourth finger, from where it meets the middle finger, makes the X sign and the little finger, where it is curved, the C. In this way, the name XC is shown, and through the divine providence of the creator of all things the fingers of the hand of mankind are formed in such a way, with neither more nor fewer but as many as are sufficient to signify this name." This explanation of the gesture sounds quite weak in its ambiguity. 28 Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973 -after 1050), an Iranian scholar, has been variously called the "founder of Indology" for his book Taḥqīq mā li-l-hind min maqūlah maqbūlah fī al-ʿaql aw mardhūlah ("Verifying all that the Indians recount, the reasonable and the unreasonable"), "Father of comparative religion", "Father of modern geodesy", and the first anthropologist in the time of the Islamic Golden Age. frontality" differs considerably from both ancient Eastern and Greek frontality. For both Oriental and Greek art, frontality was an exceptional treatment. With Parthian sculpture, by contrast, the frontal position became the normal treatment of the figures. Later, the same positioning of the characters was visible in the Roman-Syrian sculptures of Palmyra and was adopted into the fabric of Byzantine art. In Greco-Roman art, preference was given to the three-quarter view, distancing the character from the viewer by one hand and providing a more vivid effect of movement to the whole scene. In addition to these characteristics, it is clearly observable that the body texture is more flattened in Oriental examples and made with less precision and voluptuous structure than the facial features and often the hand details.
(6) Hierarchy in the sizing 29 of the portrayed is commonly used to convey the idea of the magnificence and majesty of the portrayed character. Such a technique was typical for Egyptian, Indian and Iranian methods and was adopted by European art from the time of the Byzantine Empire. In the scenes of the Dormition of the Mother of God and Parinirvana of Buddha in Gandhara art, Buddha and the Virgin Mary are depicted in a similar proportional size in the comparison to the other characters. The position and the compositional cliché may have originated from the iconography of the sleeping Vishnu. 30 In this realm, iconographical elements in particular have the common characteristics of the Hellenistic, Parthian and Roman crossroads, and they contributed equally to Christian iconography. The traditionally Eastern tradition of proskynesis (prostration) in front of the depiction may indicate a close cultural exchange of the East and West of the Eurasian continent.

Contribution of Manichaeism to the fast spread of Christianity
A particular movement toward the unification of Eurasian territory took place in the third and fourth centuries CE with the tenets of Mani (c. 216-274 CE) to establish a truly ecumenical and universal religion which was intended to integrate all the partial truths of previous revelations, especially those of Zoroaster, Buddha and Jesus.
Professor Grabar is skeptical concerning whether the visual imagery of Manichaeism helped the wide and fast spread of the teaching to the East and West from Babylon. While the chronological dating of the Dura baptistery belongs to 200 CE, it is clear that the earliest Manichean images could not have been produced earlier than 240 CE. Nevertheless Mani, considering himself to be the last prophet, judged the imagery to be capable of expressing ideas and assisting the propagation of the preaching, the same objectives regarding the visuals in Christianity came to the minds of the Early Church Fathers only after the fifth century CE.
Mani showed to his spectators, situated in the large territory from Europe and North Africa to the Chinese Empire, images of God and the depiction of the Last Judgement where the just are rewarded and the evil damned. It is interesting to consider that the second occurrence of a mission which sought to impress potential converts through the spectacle of the Last Judgement, inspired by a mystic's vision, concerns St Augustine of Canterbury's Christian mission to England four centuries later. Mani's positive attitude toward the visual arts helped to prepare the ground and assisted the spread of Christianity as a new religion by the syncretism of the previous faiths 31 endorsing this ambitious art, which was as unfamiliar to the Christian virtue of humility in the beginning.    Open Journal for Studies in History, 2020, 3(1), 1-24.

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