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The Handbook of Art Therapy

The Handbook of Art Therapy has become the standard introductory text into
the theory and practice of art therapy in a variety of settings. The comprehensive
book concentrates on the work of art therapists and the way that art and
therapy can combine in a treatment setting to promote insight and change.
In this fourth edition, readers will gain both a historical overview of art
therapy and insight into contemporary settings in which art therapists work,
with a new chapter on the use of new technology and working online.
The authors are highly experienced in the teaching, supervision and clinical
practice of art therapy. Using first-hand accounts from therapists and patients,
they look particularly at the role of the art work in the art process and setting in
which it takes place. Chapters explore the theoretical background from which
art therapy has developed and the implications for practice including the
influence of art and psychoanalysis, creativity, aesthetics and symbolism, and the
impact of different schools of psychoanalytic theory. Also featured is an
extensive bibliography, encompassing a comprehensive coverage of the current
literature on art therapy and related subjects.
Covering basic theory and practice for clinicians and students at all levels
of training, this book remains a key text for art therapists, counsellors,
psychotherapists, psychologists and students at all levels, as well as
professionals working in other arts therapies.

Caroline Case worked with children and families in the statutory services and in
private practice for 48 years. She has published widely on her therapeutic work as
an art therapist and child and adolescent psychotherapist.

Tessa Dalley is an experienced child and adolescent psychotherapist and art

therapist currently working in Independent Practice with children, young people
and families and clinical supervisor to other practicing therapists.

Dean Reddick has over 20 years experience working with children and families in
the National Health Service, schools and in private practice. He has published
his work with children, especially his work with children in the early years.
The Handbook of Art Therapy

Fourth Edition

Caroline Case, Tessa Dalley,

and Dean Reddick
Cover image: Caroline Case: from Migration series
Fourth edition published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Caroline Case, Tessa Dalley and Dean Reddick
The right of Caroline Case, Tessa Dalley and Dean Reddick to be
identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 1992
Third edition published by Routledge 2014
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
LCCN: 2022942919

ISBN: 978-1-032-05508-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-05507-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19785-0 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197850

Typeset in Times New Roman

by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents

List of Figures vii

Preface viii
Foreword by Julia Meyerowitz-Katz x

1 Introduction 1

2 The art therapist 18

3 The art therapy room 50

4 The therapy in art therapy 72

5 The art work in art therapy 96

6 Art therapy with individual clients 124

7 An introduction to the theory of working with groups

in art therapy 142

8 Innovations in contemporary art therapy groups 160

9 Art therapy and technology 177

10 Theoretical approaches and influences on current art

therapy practice 198
vi Contents

11 Art and psychoanalysis 222

12 Development of psychoanalytic understanding 247

Bibliography 275
Index 310
Figures

2.1 Sleeping man 41

3.1 An art therapy room adapted for infant work 52
3.2 The art shed 53
3.3 The art therapy room, Hill End Hospital, St. Albans 56
4.1 Hakka walled villages, China 79
4.2 Pair 88
4.3 Bill‘n’Bob 92
5.1 Tsunami 99
5.2 Minecraft magic forest 101
5.3 Stencil 104
5.4 A group of plasticine figures on an art table 105
5.5 Figure of a girl 106
5.6 Face 107
5.7 Face 108
5.8 Face 109
5.9 Castle 110
5.10 3-D wall 114
5.11 Head 115
5.12 Red, black, yellow sequence 118
5.13 Windmills 121
5.14 We are all different 122
8.1 Home landscape 168
8.2 Cricket 169
8.3 Oak in winter 172
8.4 Camera 174
9.1 ‘Like’ icon 178
9.2 Kebab shop 181
9.3 Virus attack 182
9.4 Corvid dawn 185
9.5 Drawing on a whiteboard 190
9.6 Rainbow image 197
Preface

The Handbook of Art Therapy gives a clear account of the theory and
practice of art therapy. Hopefully this will be useful for people interested in
all aspects of art and therapy and perhaps encourage some people to embark
on training courses essential for becoming an art therapist. The purpose of
the book is to give a detailed understanding of how art therapy is practised
and the developments in theory on which this practice is based. The
Handbook is not designed to instruct a person how to be an art therapist,
or to be a ‘manual’ for practice. The breadth and depth of the material
covered makes the book valuable for practicing art therapists and other
colleagues and a useful resource for art therapy trainees.
Throughout the book, both client and therapist will be referred to
generally as ‘she’ except where a specific example is being described. This
is not necessarily to be gender specific but because the majority of art
therapists identify as female. Also, we have chosen to use the word ‘client’ to
describe the person in treatment with ‘the therapist’ but this can be
interchangeable with ‘patient’, ‘resident’, ‘member’ and does not imply
any difference in the approach, although it may reflect some difference in the
treatment setting. For readers outside the United Kingdom, reference to the
National Health Service will be through the abbreviation NHS.
We have used the term ’art work’ to refer, in general, to art made in art
therapy. This more open term is inclusive of the vast array of art works
made in sessions and goes beyond the idea of painting, sculpture and mark
making to include performance, installation, digital works and art works
made outside with natural materials and processes.
We would like to acknowledge our clients, who have so extensively
informed our practice and experience, and also the help of our colleagues
who have made contributions to the book. By working with us and giving
generously of their time in describing their particular experience, we feel that
this has enabled the text to become ‘alive’ and relate to real circumstances,
and has considerably enhanced the quality of the book. In particular, in this
new edition, we are grateful to Lydia Boon, Chris Brown, Nien-yi Chiang,
 Preface ix

Liz Fitzgerald, Anna Kälin, Carolyn Krueger, Leah McClelland, Fiona

Peacock, Ardhana Riswarie, Kate Rothwell, Sue Rubin, Sally Sayers, Karen
Sawyer, Susan Rudnik, Sally Skaife and Robin Tipple for their invaluable
help in both updating and contributing to new chapters.
The first edition of the Handbook of Art Therapy was published in 1992.
We would like to thank Routledge, in particular Gill Davies and Joanne
Forshaw, for their continual support.
Finally our thanks go to our long suffering families whose help and
support are actually immeasurable.
Foreword

I sit in front of my computer; the Zoom screen is open. While I wait for Ada, I
find myself staring at the video image of myself, and the elements of my home-
office that are visible in the screen image. It isn’t long before she appears on my
screen, and, reminding me of her hesitant greetings at the door to my
consulting room, she shyly says ‘Hi’. We have discussed how strange this is
and how I’m not in my familiar consulting room and she is in her bedroom. She
has gathered together some of her own art materials and paper and they are
spread out on the table in front of her. We have agreed that it is not the same;
she doesn’t have the art materials that I have on offer, and I am not able to
care for her art works as I do in my consulting room. However, together we
came up for a plan to keep her art work safe at home, until such time as we can
meet again in my consulting room and she will be able bring her art work
to me for safe-keeping. Ada is 11 and as it turns out, much more adept at
the workings of Zoom than I am. She quickly found a way in which to use the
setting to make art and engage in conversation with me and she settles into the
session; our work resumes.
Ada, like so many of us, has had her already precarious world turned
upside down, forever altered by the ravages of climate change and by the
world-wide pandemic. No sooner had we stumbled from the choking
darkness of the bushfires that devastated the natural environment in our
part of the world, when people like Ada, who suffers asthma, were forced
indoors because of the density of the smoke in the air, then we were confined
to our homes, in a landlocked country, because of a dangerous, hardy and
determined novel virus.
How do children like Ada, whose challenging life circumstances and
troubled inner world has brought them to art therapy, experience the
insecurity of global uncertainty and environmental threats? How do we as
clinicians, carry out our profession in these troubled and troubling times,
when the only thing that is predictable is that things are unpredictable and
the unknow-ableness of the future has been amplified? When children and
adults, clinicians and their patients face the same uncertainties, the same
 Foreword xi

disruptions, and we have to navigate them together? And specifically, how

has the profession of art therapy, historically adaptable, navigated the
adjustment to these unsettled times? What has happened to the ordinary
boundaries and frame so essential to the safe and effective practice of art
therapy? And how will the profession move forward?
In the context of this profound, shared, global uncertainty and upheaval,
it is timely that this new, Fourth Edition of the Handbook of Art Therapy,
which seeks to reaffirm as well as update developments in theory and
practice in art therapy, is being offered. It is both a theoretical and practical
overview and guide as well as being a symbol of the continuity of a robust
and reliable profession that looks to the future.
Caroline Case and Tessa Dalley, respected and authoritative veterans in
the field who have been representing art therapy on the international
landscape for decades have been joined by Dean Reddick. Dean brings with
him the richness of his experience as a clinician, academic, artist and
published author. Together, they have created a Handbook that, building on
previous editions, brings the depth and breadth of the theory and practice of
art therapy, as it is currently being practiced, to us in a clearly organised,
well-digested and accessible form.
The Handbook offers a comprehensive and detailed updated resource; it has a
broad scope with an in-depth focus rooted in psychodynamic thinking and
understanding. Earlier editions have been a valuable standard text prescribed by
university art therapy trainings, as well as other training bodies internationally, at
both undergraduate and post-graduate levels. I have no doubt that this edition
will follow in taking its place as a classic text, the go-to reference book and
primary textbook for art therapy students, in the UK and internationally. In
addition, it will be a useful resource for professionals from allied disciplines, for
instance, psychology, psychoanalysis, teaching, social work and occupational
therapy.
The Handbook is enriched by clinical examples and is well-illustrated.
Usefully, the Handbook reminds us of the fundamental cornerstones of art
therapy. For instance, explanations of what an art therapist is, how referrals,
assessment and treatments are understood and carried out; the physical
spaces and support structures necessary in order to safely and effectively
carry out art therapy including the rationale for regular, good quality
supervision, on-going professional development and art practice. The place
of art works made in art therapy and the accompanying complexity of
conscious and unconscious processes, as well as the tension between
symbolic and pre-symbolic representations in the form of concrete
identifications with the materials. Also addressed is the impact of
neurological research on the understanding of trauma-based work and on
work with children under-five years of age. Included in the Handbook are
direct contributions from contemporary art therapists working in the field in
different settings in the form of letters.
xii Foreword

The Fourth Edition of the Handbook of Art Therapy has broadened the
already substantial scope of earlier editions and describes innovations both in
terms of technique and of setting. Settings encompass traditional clinical
contexts and those outside of a clinical context, including across international
borders. Included are consulting rooms, hospitals, clinics, prisons, schools,
eating disorder units, museums and art galleries, refugee camps and, reflecting
the current concerns of climate change and interest in eco therapy and eco
psychology, nature-based work. The impact of digital technology and social
media, on art therapists, their clients and art therapy including both digital
and virtual art therapy and the many ways that art therapists have adapted
and evolved their practice, finding new ways of working with their clients is
addressed.
The scope of the Fourth Edition of the Handbook of Art Therapy reflects
the increasing tendency for art therapists to work with widely diverse ethnic,
religious and social communities. This is due to changes in demography,
migration and those displaced by social and political conflict. This rich
diversity of cultural difference requires sensitivity to problems, concerns and
difficulties specific to those individuals and communities that present in or
are living on the margins of society.
I am writing this in the Australian spring. As a nation we are emerging
from lockdown and our national and international borders are opening up –
to relatives, friends, tourists, business travelers, and of course, to COVID-
19. As I write, there is smoke in the air and I know that it is not a good day
to be outside. The smoke is the consequence of preventative back-burning in
the lead-up to the summer bush-fire season. After the devastating summer of
2019/2020 this back-burning, which is part of the ordinary maintenance of
the natural environment in Australia, has taken on a new significance. It
signals the tension between continuity of care, of what can be relied on and,
in contrast, how much is uncertain, locally and globally, that has to be
navigated.
The Fourth Edition of the Handbook of Art Therapy represents, in part,
the ongoing maintenance, necessary to support the profession of art therapy;
a reminder every time we welcome a patient into a Zoom room, or a physical
art therapy setting, that there is a solid, substantial history and framework
behind us that will support art therapy theory and practice into the future.

Julia Meyerowitz-Katz
Jungian Analyst and Art Psychotherapist
ANZSJA IAAP CCAFPAA ANZACATA
October 2021 Australia
Chapter 1

Introduction

The handbook
The handbook is designed to introduce the reader to theoretical and clinical
aspects of art therapy. This introductory chapter gives a broad outline of the
work of an art therapist and some definitions describing theoretical frame-
works which can inform the settings in which they may practise. The broad
spectrum of work undertaken by art therapists with different client groups
involves combining traditional theoretical approaches with evolving new
ideas and practice as we look to the future and adapt to ever changing social
and political situations and global events.

Definitions

What is art therapy?

Art therapy has a dual heritage from art and psychoanalysis which results in
different definitions and ways of working. Some therapists put an emphasis on
the healing properties of the art making process itself whereas others focus
more on the context of making art as a form of communication within the
developing relationship with the therapist. There are a number of definitions for
the reader to think about. These can depend on the aetiology of the therapeutic
setting, adaptation to work with a particular client group and also on the
personality and theoretical orientation of the therapist. Art therapy in the
United Kingdom has its own developmental history which is unique and differs
from the development of the profession in other countries such as the U.S.A.
The current definition from the British Association of Art Therapists
(BAAT) is as follows:

Art Therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses art media as its

primary mode of communication.
Clients who are referred to an art therapist need not have previous
experience or skill in art, the art therapist is not primarily concerned

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197850-1
2 Introduction

with making an aesthetic or diagnostic assessment of the client’s image.

The overall aim of its practitioners is to enable a client to effect change
and growth on a personal level through the use of art materials in a safe
and facilitating environment.
The relationship between the therapist and the client is of central
importance, but art therapy differs from other psychological therapies
in that it is a three way process between the client, the therapist and the
image or artefact. Thus it offers the opportunity for expression and
communication and can be particularly helpful to people who find it
hard to express their thoughts and feelings verbally.
(BAAT website 2021)

Earlier antecedents of art therapy in the 1940s, in the UK, placed emphasis on
art making itself as healing. The pioneer Adrian Hill thought that his own art
helped with his recovery from tuberculosis. Taking postcards of art work, and
also art materials, to other patients he noted the symbolic value of the subject of
their choice and their total physical engagement in art making, as well as in
thought (Hill 1948). Adamson worked in an open-studio setting which became a
sanctuary in large Victorian psychiatric institutions. Like Hill, Adamson saw art
as healing, the act of creation itself. He highly valued creativity, self-expression
and being non-judgemental and actively discouraged the therapist’s interpreta-
tions. By positioning himself as somewhere in between the patient and medical
staff, his patients took their completed images to a psychiatrist for discussion so
that the roles of making and understanding were split between two professions
(Adamson 1984). This is very different from a modern art therapist who is in-
tegrated into a multi-disciplinary team or professional network.
The emphasis on ‘free expression’ fits with other ideas regarding art
education of the time and two strands of art therapy developed in parallel.
Influenced by such innovators as Herbert Read (1943), the consideration of
expression, imagination and spontaneity in art greatly influenced the di-
rection of art teaching at that time. Such statements as ‘art should be the
basis of education’ (Read 1943: 1) had the effect of highlighting the central
nature of art in terms of its possibilities for emotional communication and
the inherent potential for therapeutic work (Waller 1984).
A pioneer from the USA, Margaret Naumberg (1953) also working in the
post-second world war era, had a different model of art therapy, favouring a
psychodynamic approach;

Art therapy is psychoanalytically oriented, recognising the fundamental

importance of the unconscious as expressed in the patients dreams, day
dreams and fantasies … … Spontaneous graphic art becomes a form of
symbolic speech which may serve as a substitute for words or as a stimulus
which leads to an increase of verbalisation in the course of therapy.
(Naumberg 1953: 3)
 Introduction 3

Unlike Adamson she put the central focus on the unconscious, spontaneous
expression and the understanding of the image within the relationship with
the therapist:

The release of spontaneous pictures is not by itself enough to complete

the process of art therapy. The patient’s capacity to understand the
meaning of his symbolic expression takes place in this process within the
transference relationship.
(1953: 5–6)

During a period of professional debate within the Association (BAAT) in

the 1990s, whether the profession should be named art therapy or art psy-
chotherapy, Schaverien (2000) usefully differentiated several different
strands of art therapy currently being practised. All three respect the innate
healing power of art but differed in the following way:

The first, art therapy, is centred on the art process but emerges from the
ground of the therapeutic relationship. The therapist in this definition
has been described as a witness to the process.
(Learmonth 1994)

In art psychotherapy, the therapeutic relationship is the centre and focus

and the pictures are more the backdrop but may illustrate or describe the
relationship. More important is the person to person transference and
counter-transference relationship.
In analytical art psychotherapy, Schaverien describes image and relationship
with the therapist as being interchangeable. Neither, has priority but inter-relate
with transference to the image, which Schaverien has described as the ‘scape-
goat transference’, as well as to the therapist (Schaverien 2000).
Working in differing contexts where some patients are non-verbal, art
therapists adapt their approach accordingly

In our work with autistic children where there are severe difficulties in
communication, the relationship between the medium, art therapist, and
client becomes more fluid and dynamic as the elements of the Art
Therapy Triangle constantly shift in their relationship to each other. In
working with children with communication disorders, the art therapist
will interact and respond as an artist involved with the art –making
process…..’ therefore in this situation they respond to and work on the
image and work to engage the child in communication through the
image.
(Evans and Rutten-Saris 1998: 57)
4 Introduction

In the previous edition of the Handbook of Art Therapy, Case and Dalley
(2014) offered the following definition:

Art therapy, or art psychotherapy as it is sometimes called, involves the

use of different art media through which a client can express and work
through the issues, problems and concerns that have brought her into
therapy. In the therapeutic relationship, the art therapist and client are
engaged in working together to understand the meaning of the art work
produced. For many clients, it is easier to use a non-verbal form of
communication and, by relating to the art therapist, make sense of their
own experience through the art object which provides a focus for
discussion, analysis and reflection. As the art work is usually concrete,
there is a memory of the therapeutic process in the making of the object
and in the interaction between therapist and client. Transference
develops within the therapeutic relationship and also between therapist,
client and the art work, giving a valuable ‘third dimension’ or three-way
communication.
(Case and Dalley 2014: 1)

Art therapists/Art Psychotherapists are artists before they train as thera-

pists. Case (2005) reflects on this:

‘Central to an art therapists understanding of images in art therapy is their

own art work. For instance, I find that art both expresses and finds forms
for feeling, but it is also a way of thinking and reflecting non-verbally. My
art work sometimes knows what I am thinking and feeling before I do.
‘Images both metaphorical and concrete, are the building blocks of
emotional learning, expressions of felt life. This develops in parallel to
verbal, abstract modes of naming and thinking’. (Case 2005a: 4). Centrally
in art therapy, this process is facilitated by the art therapist, becoming a
three-way process. Therapist and client work together, to understand the
meaning of what is made, and the developing relationship between them.
Part of the therapeutic relationship is in understanding the transference to
therapist and to the image made and the counter-transference response of
the therapist and aesthetic response to the image.

However art therapy definitions may develop and vary over time in em-
phasis, the making of art objects and images is central;

When children paint or model without fear of criticism, works of deeply

felt emotion may result. In the course of time, I have seen the healing,
integrative power of art and learnt each one’s special language from the
 Introduction 5

signs and symbols they devise. In this process, awareness of themselves

and others often comes about.
(Halliday 2013: 129)

We hope that the reader will hold these definitions in mind throughout the
Handbook and understanding will be modified and elaborated with further
thinking about art therapy in this edition.

The developing relationship between art and

psychoanalysis
Over the years, writers have explored the complex relationship between art
and psychoanalysis and how the practice of art therapy has evolved to in-
corporate both. Edwards (1989) traces the evolution of differing models of
art therapy by describing attitudes towards art, madness and psychoanalysis
back to their origins in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He de-
monstrates how ideas from other areas of enquiry, such as the use of art in
rituals, religious customs and anthropology, form a ‘more elaborate and
enduring context’ for art therapy that was in existence well in advance of its
establishment as a discrete profession.
Art history and the history of psychiatry have given rise to certain models
of art therapy practice. Edwards postulates that the codified, diagnostic
attitude towards imagery is rooted in eighteenth-century neoclassicism, and
in the ‘rational’ belief that a person’s state of mind could be read from a
picture. The depiction of feeling in art was formalised and enabled the
painter and the audience to remain uninvolved. By contrast, the nineteenth-
century romantics embraced a positive conception of the imagination and
valued the artistic representation of inner experience. This attitude is related
to a belief in the natural healing capabilities of art.
The influence of early psychoanalytic writing gave support to the idea that
art was an important means of communication, both unconscious and
conscious. For example, Jung during his own self-analysis, drew his own
dreams and fantasies and encouraged his patients to do likewise: ‘What a
doctor then does is less a question of treatment than that of developing the
creative possibilities latent in the patient himself’ (Jung 1983: 41). Jung’s
technique of active imagination – encouraging the kind of fantasy that came
into his patients’ minds when they were neither asleep nor awake at a par-
ticular time when judgement was suspended but consciousness not lost –
closely parallels that of the creative process and the inspiration of artists and
inventors. The mobilisation of the psyche through an image or a chain of
images and their related associations was observed to promote change as the
gap between conscious and unconscious, inner and outer, private and public
experience is bridged (Maclagan 2005; Schaverien 2005).
6 Introduction

This has led us to look further into psychoanalytic theory and how the art
process can be understood in a therapeutic setting. Significant to the dis-
cussion is the pioneering work of Freud with a classical analytic view of art
and primary and secondary processes. His views on art and writing are
considered in some detail in Chapter 11 alongside commentary from Anna
Freud, Gombrich, Fuller and Wolheim. The works of Marion Milner,
Donald Winnicott and Carl Jung are explored in more depth and how they
have been profoundly inspirational to art therapists.
Taking these ideas forward, the writings of other important psychoanalysts,
such as Klein, Bion, Segal, and Stokes, who consider art as a form of re-
paration moving onto symbolisation, explore further understanding with
particular consideration of the creative experience, the aesthetic experience
and the developing theory of symbolism (see Chapter 12). Processes operating
at a pre-symbolic, non-representational level in art therapy are also important
to consider as several more contemporary artists and writers have been in-
terested in exploring ‘the concreteness of the material itself’ such as Susan
Sontag, Donald Judd and Anish Kapoor. They aspire to have as direct an
experience of the art work as possible without interpretation, which some
might argue, relates back to the original ideas of Adamson in the early 1940s.

Art therapy in the UK

Art therapy in the United Kingdom is a state registered profession with the
Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). Art therapy practitioners are
bound by law to be registered with the HCPC. The British Association of Art
Therapists (BAAT) is the professional organisation for art therapists in the UK
and has its own code of ethics for professional practice. The BAAT works to
promote art therapy and has 20 regional groups, a European and international
membership and maintains a comprehensive directory of qualified art thera-
pists. The professional journal of the BAAT, The International Journal of Art
Therapy: Inscape is published biannually. Newsbriefing is also published bian-
nually and provides information and communication for the profession as a
whole. A new online Journal ATOL: Art Therapy Online was launched in 2010
which enables a wide ranging variety of publications such as videos, sound
recordings, colour images, professional discussion forums and feedback and
simultaneous translations. Both publications continue to develop new ideas,
theoretical approaches, outcomes of research studies and clinical practice as art
therapy evolves and develops in response to current domestic policy and in-
ternational social, economic and geopolitical events.
Informed by this research, practice and observation, art therapy continues
to develop more specialist theoretical approaches such as studio-based
therapy, developmental art therapy, interactive art therapy, aesthetic-based
approaches and attachment-based art therapy. All these call on the influence
of the British Independent tradition and developmental theories of Stern
 Introduction 7

which have been particularly important in looking at the impact of neuro-

logical research on the understanding of trauma, particularly with children
under five. The research base for these new ways of thinking is developing
(Gilroy 2004, 2006) with a special interest group of BAAT (ATPRN) es-
tablished to develop the research profile of the profession. This is in line with
the need for evidence-based practice and the government requirement to
participate in clinical audit activity. The main research activity is con-
centrated in the areas of outcome studies, developing clinical guidelines,
clinical observation, feedback from service users (Pounsett et al. 2006) and
case studies (Edwards 1999). This whole subject is further explored in
Chapter Two and new ideas are developed throughout the Handbook.

The art therapist

We hope to introduce the reader to the clinical practice of a qualified art
therapist who meets the required standards for registration as outlined by
the BAAT and the HCPC. Art therapists undergo professional training at
the Masters level, which includes experiential learning, academic research,
clinical placements and personal therapy. Once qualified, art therapists work
in public and voluntary sectors and increasingly in independent practice.
Approaches and orientations of art therapists vary widely, particularly in re-
lation to the client group with whom they are working. Some art therapists are
more concerned with the internal world of the client in understanding emotional
experiences and unconscious processes, while others focus more on the art
process and product of the session. Wherever the art therapist is working, a
therapeutic contract between patient and therapist provides the framework, such
as the time (the beginning and the end) of the session, the consistent space where
the work takes place and some understanding of the duration of treatment (such
as whether there is a time limit to the work). By placing boundaries around the
sessions in terms of time and place, a sense of safety, confidentiality and trust is
created, allowing the therapeutic relationship to develop (Schaverien 1989). The
maintenance of these boundaries makes room for the image to emerge in a
contained setting which enables the expression of deep feelings and experiences.
The art therapist receives regular clinical supervision by a more senior
practitioner to process material that is held in the art work and the devel-
oping transference phenomena within the session (Killick 2000; Schaverien
and Case 2007). Safekeeping of the image by the art therapist for the
duration of the treatment is, therefore, part of the boundaries and con-
tainment of the art therapy process. The different roles undertaken by art
therapists and the process of referral, assessment and treatment are ex-
plained in some depth in Chapter 2.
Art therapy takes place in many different settings with a wide variety of
client groups and the art therapy space is adapted accordingly. Every client,
whatever age and presenting difficulty, needs stability of framework in order
8 Introduction

to engage with therapeutic work and the importance of this contained,

therapeutic space is explained in Chapter 3. Over the years these settings
changed from designated art studios in large institutions to a move into the
community often in shared clinical rooms with other disciplines. The loss of
art studios or rooms, full of art materials, and the replacement by multi-
purpose clinical rooms have profoundly shaped some fundamental thinking
and development of evolving theories as art therapists have adapted to new
clinical settings.
Some of these important changes are described by contributions from
contemporary art therapists working in prisons, eating disorder units and
the most recent innovations of working with refugees seeking asylum as well
as those in temporary border camps, displaced from their homeland,
working across cultural differences with interpreters and adapting their
practice accordingly. Some art therapists have moved out of the traditional
clinical base to work in museums and art galleries, opening these institutions
to those who have been marginalised due to poverty, racism or mental
health difficulties. Those involved in nature-based work with the developing
interest in ecotherapy and ecopsychology are guided by the growing urgency
and awareness of climate change and research into the connection between
well-being and the natural world.
Art therapy continues to develop across international borders as art
therapists increasingly work with diverse ethnic, religious and social com-
munities. Contemporary work taking place outside of the statutory services
and clinical context has subsequently evolved alongside community-based
trauma and crisis response to natural or man-made disasters, social change
or political conflict due to changes in demography, migration, those dis-
placed by social and political conflict and on the margins of society.
Contributions from Indonesia, Germany and the UK describe this work in
communities traumatised from recent or ongoing events and further ela-
boration of these ideas are discussed in Chapter 10.

The art work in art therapy

The presence of the art object made within the session makes art therapy
distinct from other verbal psychotherapies. The image is of great significance
in the symbolic representation of inner experience made in the context of a
developing relationship between therapist and client. These are the essential
parameters of the art therapeutic process. The emphasis on unconscious
communication, the feelings, anxieties and concerns that surface through the
art work are worked through in the relationship between therapist and
client. Consideration of transference and counter-transference issues is an
integral part of the process. Chapter 4 considers various components of this
in some depth by exploring complex aspects of creativity and unconscious,
spontaneous expression of inner experience through images in the presence
 Introduction 9

of a therapist. Various psychoanalytic theories of Klein, Freud, Bion and

Winnicott are outlined and how the boundaries of the session, in terms of
time and space, set the therapeutic frame enabling transference and counter-
transference processes to develop both in relation to the therapist and to the
art work made. An illustrated case study describes in detail how the art
objects hold meaning non-verbally and are contained by the therapist’s re-
sponse until understanding emerges through interpretation and thought.
In this way art works made in art therapy embody thoughts and feelings and
mediate between unconscious and conscious, symbolising past, present and
future aspects of the experience of the artist/patient. The images produced in art
therapy express inner turmoil and conflict and sometimes severe mood swings,
from depression to elation, which often prompt different use of materials which
provide the means to communicate these volatile states of mind (Wadeson
1971). Case studies documented in detail illustrate quite graphically the account
of these emotional experiences (Dalley et al. 1993). The art work gives form to
what seems inexpressible or unspeakable through the process of making using
different art materials and media including working online. This may also in-
clude the therapeutic value of mess within the range of possible art materials,
and this understanding of art-making-as-process contributes to the essential
difference between art therapy and other therapies using images. Developing
ideas of embodied and diagrammatic processes provides further understanding
of the meaning within the relationship between therapist and client, and also the
art work made, through interpretation and working together over time.

Different client groups

Throughout the Handbook, it will become clear that art therapists work with
a wide range of clients across the age range from mothers and their babies to
people in old age. Art therapists tend to specialise and adapt their practice
accordingly. For example, the art therapist working with children has an
understanding of child development and with emphasis on the importance of
the internal world of the child, attachment issues and early infantile experi-
ence. Engaging in the process of art provides the possibility of a more spon-
taneous, non-verbal means of communication through which children can
express many of the wide range of emotional and behavioural difficulties with
which they are struggling. Also well documented in the literature is the work
with children under five (Meyorowitz-Katz and Reddick (2017), children with
ADHD, Looked After Children in the care system and those with attachment
disorders and those struggling with family breakdown, bereavement and loss.
Using art, sand and water play can be particularly helpful in the assessment
and treatment of children for whom words are very frightening – for example,
disclosure work of past or present sexual abuse.
Children who have ritualistic or phobic responses to situations, or
obsessive-compulsive disorders, can be helped to use art to explore their
10 Introduction

feelings in a safe, non-threatening environment. Trauma and sudden loss for

a child can be particularly problematic when trying to make sense of con-
fusion and chaos around them. This has been particularly noticeable during
the COVID pandemic. The use of drawing and art making, including the
messy use of art materials, helps children suffering in the aftermath of dis-
asters such as the attack on the World Trade Centre, New York on 11
September 2002, the Grenfell Tower Fire 14 June 2017 and the victims of
natural disasters such as the tsunami in South-East Asia in December 2004.
This is well known from graphic images covered by newspaper reporting.
Some art therapists are employed in areas where war, conflict and political
violence is a daily experience and in trauma clinics such as the Medical
Foundation for Victims of Torture. First-hand accounts in Chapters 3 and 8
give a flavour of this complex experience and the significant role of the art
therapist in these settings.
Adolescents face particular difficulties in their developmental path from
childhood to adulthood. The nature of this transient phase can be char-
acterised by emotional confusion, unhappiness, vulnerability and distress in
the search for individuation and separation. These feelings are often ex-
pressed by acting out through alcohol and substance misuse, violent mood
swings, cutting and other self-harming behaviours including eating dis-
orders. The intensity of feeling is often difficult to contain and in a treatment
setting requires strong boundaries and specialist understanding. Art thera-
pists work within the multi-disciplinary teams of inpatient adolescent units
and also in outreach community treatment teams. As members of these
teams, the art therapist may engage the adolescent in therapeutic work in the
home. This is particularly beneficial when the disturbed adolescent is re-
sistant to treatment or help. Youth offending teams and social service youth
teams also use art therapists to structure therapeutic services for these
troubled young people.
Art therapists work with adult patients in different treatment settings such
as acute psychiatric inpatient units and community centres for people who
have a learning disability, in prisons and with young offenders. With the
closure of the Victorian psychiatric hospitals or asylums, patients are now
living in the community and some, unfortunately, become homeless and live
on the street. Open art therapy groups provide a forum for patients in the
long process of rehabilitation. Using art materials to experiment with dif-
ferent media and learn new skills such as printing, woodcarving, picture
framing, etc. is particularly helpful when working towards employment
opportunities. Working in the area of palliative care and with people who
are ageing is another important area for art therapists. Old people often feel
lonely and isolated and therapeutic work helps acceptance of old age and
infirmity by focusing on the past, recollecting significant events that hap-
pened a long time ago. For those who are terminally ill, art therapy enables
an experience of working towards acceptance of death. For younger patients
 Introduction 11

and children, who have life-threatening illnesses such as cancer or AIDS,

using art helps to express uncertainties, fears and anxieties about the future.

Art therapy in education

An important area of work for art therapists is working with children in
schools and educational settings. Traditionally, art therapists have worked
in special schools or residential units for children with emotional and be-
havioural difficulties, which tended to operate on therapeutic lines
(Robinson 1984). Since the 1981 Education Act and the integration of
children with special needs, the policy of inclusion has prompted greater
need for therapists to be located within mainstream school settings. There is
a growing recognition that working therapeutically in schools with children
who have special educational needs or challenging behaviour helps problems
associated with low self-esteem, poor academic performance and unruly
behaviour. The work of charities such as ‘Place2Be’, Loreto Drawn Together
and Arts Therapies for Children are providing group and individual art
therapy and other kinds of support to vulnerable children in nurseries and on
school premises.
Children with moderate or severe learning disabilities use the process of
art therapy differently in conveying their experience through the use of
drawing, sand, water and play. The art therapist attends to the detail of the
communications of the child who may not be able to use language. Children
on the autistic spectrum have particular social and emotional communica-
tion disorders and tend to be experienced by other people as withdrawn,
ritualistic and internally preoccupied. Change creates anxiety for the autistic
child and therefore therapeutic intervention is complex. Some autistic chil-
dren show exceptional drawing ability well beyond their chronological age
and there are well-known examples, such as Nadia (Selfe 1977). The reasons
for this remain unknown and are explored by McGregor (1990). This phe-
nomenon is of particular interest to art therapists who will occasionally
come across it in their practice. (For further reading on autism and
Asberger’s syndrome see Tustin 1981; Alvarez 1992; Rhode and Klauber
2004; Fitzgerald 2005.)
Art therapist Leah McClelland describes her work in a secondary special
needs school:

I have learned while working with children with special needs that they
are first and foremost a child and their diagnoses is the cloak they wear
rather than something that defines them.
Making the connection needed to reach the child where they feel seen
and understood is fundamental in my approach, from there I can begin
working therapeutically. Establishing basic reciprocity is part of devel-
oping a communicative relationship. I look for ways to enter the child
12 Introduction

or young person’s world rather than requiring them to join mine. This
connection is part of a creative process that looks for ways of
communication where words are limited or not used.
In one particular case, I used a skateboard which the young adult sat
on because it was the only way he could tolerate being in the room. This
autistic young man had experienced trauma and had very limited words
and understanding. There was no way he was able to sit still in the room
or give me any acknowledgement so I needed to find a way of helping
him tolerate being in the art therapy space with me. I moved him around
the space and slowly he learned the room was no threat. He needed to
communicate to me if he wanted to go fast or slow, stop or start. These
regulatory processes helped me to slowly build a relationship with him.
Once the security of the room had been established, he was able to find
stillness and was ready to allow a relationship to develop.
In another example, I have used the art materials in role-play to create
feasts. One particular student with learning difficulties had experienced
loss and deprivation. He always asked for food so I used the art
materials to create what he required. We made cherry pies out of paper
or whatever was available and cooked them on a shelf. This ritual
became a symbol in our relationship and I knew every time he wanted to
make cherry pies that what he really wanted was a connection with me
through an imaginary world.
Generally, I have always been able to find a pathway to reach the
child and experience moments of connection where we are both seen
simultaneously. In harder to reach children that are in an intensified
autistic state the connection might not be able to be established but I am
given an invite to be an observer in their reality. Often I have joined in
with their actions or sounds so I can mirror back what they are creating
in the space.
Often children with special needs are thought about through their
behaviour and not given the space to consider the emotions causing the
behaviours. I believe that every single child can find the space needed to
work therapeutically through a creative approach that meets their needs.
(Leah McClelland letter to the authors April 2021)

Individual and group work

Art therapists work with clients individually or in groups either in short term
or long term treatment. The detailed process of working with an individual
client in art therapy, through the various stages of referral, initial engage-
ment, suitability for art therapy, assessment, ongoing work and endings is
described in Chapter 6. Using the therapist’s process notes from the sessions,
one case example of working with a young child is used to follow the
 Introduction 13

developing therapeutic relationship and provide an example and some in-

sight into the process. This clearly illustrates how the art work becomes
central to the developing relationship between therapist and client and also
for the understanding and expression of the young patient’s predicament
and resolution of conflict.
Group art therapy places the creative art process at the centre of its
practice. Taking as a starting point that humans are social beings, usually
living in family groups within a wider community, art therapists need to
have a knowledge of institutional dynamics and group theory. An in-
troduction to the theory of working with groups in art therapy and the
history and development of the three main types of art therapy group,
studio-based work, group analytic art therapy and the theme-centred groups
are discussed in Chapter 7. Interpersonal and intrapsychic dynamics in
group relationships are introduced and in this way, similarities and differ-
ences to verbal group therapy are explored, particularly the unique way in
which participants in group art therapy ‘separate’ from the group to work
individually with art materials.
Developing the theoretical ideas outlined in Chapter 7, some new in-
novative art therapy groups across the age range from mother/carer and
babies to sufferers of dementia in older age have evolved. Contributions
from several art therapists describe work with colleagues and clients in these
different settings and the changes that are required both in terms of tech-
nique and setting. This includes ongoing research into the Large Art
Therapy Group that has developed from both the Open Studio approach
and from analytic verbal groups.

Art therapy and technology: the developing world

Since the last edition of the Handbook, (2014), the social and political
landscape in which the art therapist practices has changed radically.
Globalisation, Internet use, radicalisation and terrorism, climate disasters
and huge migration and displacement of people throughout the world will
continue to require new ways of thinking and understanding that inform our
practice in the future. In clinical settings, many new challenges also present
themselves. For example, the recent surge in addiction to alcohol, substance
misuse and in particular gambling, pornography and video gaming has re-
quired the development of new clinics and services to treat these distressing
and sometimes chronic symptoms for young people and adults alike.
Paedophile rings and violence against women continue to proliferate along
with the plethora of new diagnostic categories such as ‘emerging unstable
personality disorders’ and the astonishing (80%) rise in the diagnosis of
autism in young people over the last five years. The Transgender movement
and the strengthening voice of the LGBT community are important in the
context of the rapidly rising numbers of young people and adults who are
14 Introduction

referred for gender and body dysphoria. The establishment of the GIDS
(Gender Identity Disorder Service) team at the Tavistock Clinic in London
provides specialist service to these young people and their families. The
approach to this work in terms of assessment, age of consent and treatment
programmes continues to be the subject of much controversy.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced an immediate and urgent change in
work practices for all professionals and medical teams. The experience of
lockdown for families was profound with reliance on zoom and other
technology and devices for contact with the outside world. Social distancing
and wearing masks became the norm. Without the structure of normal ac-
tivities such as school, clubs, social gatherings and the workplace, some
families turned to their own resources for entertainment such as drawing,
painting and baking which resulted in a surge of interest in these areas. Some
families benefited from this experience with home education and attending
to family issues together while many others struggled with rising tensions in
households leading to the onset of mental health concerns such as anxiety,
loneliness, isolation and alienation leading to depression and in the worse
cases, suicide. Incidents of domestic abuse also rose sharply which created a
huge number of referrals to already overwhelmed services. Working through
the trauma, loss and bereavement for many families will take some years.
Recovery from the long term impact of the anxiety of family members
struggling to survive on life support machines for many months and also
traumatised and exhausted medical staff dealing with such high death rates
will take time. Other effects such as the physical symptoms of long-COVID,
overuse of screens with ‘non-verbal overload’ and also of ‘social thinning’,
the effects of sudden removal from social structures and activities are only
starting to permeate through with the return to some normality.
The backdrop of the climate change crisis is also a top priority and must
be considered with equal urgency. Many children and families discovered
outdoor activities of cycling and walking and began to take an interest in
nature and the natural world. Lockdown enabled some noticeable recovery
in the environment with lower pollution levels, turtles nesting in areas for
the first time in 30 years, fishing stocks multiplied and dolphins were seen
playing in old habitats. Some commentators have urged governments and
lobby groups to consider the climate change crisis, as urgent as the pandemic
in its threat to human existence and demand as a swift action as the inter-
national response to COVID.

The implications for art therapy

The growth in internet use and social media and a reliance on technology for
communication have had a profound impact on art therapy theory and
practice. Art therapists are evolving their practice by finding new ways of
working to embrace the technology of the future through digital and virtual
 Introduction 15

art therapy. This includes understanding the use of social communication

networks and platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat and
considering both beneficial and harmful consequences of this rapidly de-
veloping technology. The internet can provide a sense of belonging, parti-
cularly for young people, but with the implications of instant gratification
and communication without consequence or thought, invasion of privacy
and hacking, cyberbullying, the culture of the ‘influencer’ and the ‘selfie’
which many would argue feeds a climate of self-obsession and extreme an-
xiety about body image.
There is much debate on the effects of long hours of living and working
online, playing video games and excessive screen time for children and adults
alike. The question is how to maintain an imaginative creative space in the
mind and a capacity to play when it is saturated with fast-moving images and
sounds and how this affects the relationship with body senses and experience
without reflection and thought. In an introduction to her new children’s book,
JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, wrote the following:

What makes Harry Potter so popular? I never had a good answer. It has
occurred to me that much of what young people found in the Potter
books are the very same things they seek on-line: escape, excitement and
agency. The Potter books also describe a community that sees and
embraces what others might see as oddities. Who doesn’t want that?
How much more ‘seen’ can a person feel than to be told ‘you’re a
wizard’? But the great thing about a book as opposed to a social media
platform is that it puts no pressure on its reader to perform or conform.
Like a friendly common room, it’s there to retreat to, but it doesn’t
judge. It makes no crushing demands.
(Rowling Sunday Times Culture section 10.10.21 page 5)

These ideas are helpful particularly for some parents seeking to monitor or
limit the internet use by their ever more absorbed and withdrawn adolescent.
Another factor is the influence of gaming and its inherent addictive qualities,
which potentially leads to an increase in violence and uncontrollable be-
haviour in young boys. Therapists must inform themselves about the virtual
world that many clients inhabit and how this may affect the therapeutic
encounter. First-hand experiences of art therapists working during the
COVID-19 Pandemic are important in learning from this experience.
Therapists and clients alike had to adapt immediately, without training or
experience, to the circumstances of lockdown when communication and
therapeutic work was conducted entirely online. The complexities of
working virtually when it was not possible to meet physically in a clinical
space will continue to be debated for many years to come. The legacy of this
change will inform the ongoing practice as the ‘new normal’ post-pandemic
world emerges into new relatedness across the globe.
16 Introduction

Many would argue that online work is effective and can replace face to face
contact in the consulting room. Through the discussion in the book, we hope to
persuade readers that there is nothing to replace the visceral experience of being
in a room together with body language, movement, innuendo, eye contact and
space between which communicates so much of underlying feeling and affective
experience. Winnicott (1951) emphasised the importance of the role of illusion
in the development of the early infant relationship with his mother. For him,
illusion is fundamentally necessary if the baby is to have any chance of living a
meaningful life, which has a sense of feeling real. This initial experience of
illusion is the source of the capacity for generating psychical meaning and the
foundation for the development of the capacity for symbolisation and the
imaginative process. As the mother becomes real, the transitional, creative
space enables healthy development moving onto a capacity to be alone. This
develops the capacity to play and to elaborate the personal meaning of the
world of relationships and beyond. The experience of working therapeutically
on a screen challenges the building of this space between illusion and reality in
the relationship between patient and therapist which can lead to less possibility
for creativity and play and often a collapse in the potential space.
While some of these dilemmas will continue to challenge more traditional
ways of thinking which form the bedrock of our understanding and pro-
fessional roots, what is becoming clear is the increasing divergence in the
wider world between living and working online in a virtual ‘artificial’ world
of interaction in the medium of digital images and the developing interest in
the environment, eco-therapy and work outside in nature and the natural
world. Many would argue that the relationship with nature contributes to
addressing the balance for young people who spend a lot of their time on-
screen, ‘A relationship with nature, I believe, is of crucial importance, given
our contemporary society with its ever-seductive ways for our children to
disconnect, dull their senses and disappear into cyber realities at their det-
riment…’ (Boon 2021: 58) (see also Chapter 9).
Mary Jayne Rust, art therapist and psychotherapist has been the fore-
runner in developing ecopsychotherapy and the importance of the en-
vironment and the natural world in relation to understanding healthy
human experience. In a poignant quote, she describes the predicament of
children that may arise as the ‘toxic split’ that happens in childhood:

Yet from the moment children are sent to school they are taught that
indoors is the place for ‘real work’ and outdoors is for play. This lays
the foundation for a toxic split between rational, focused, linear thought
located in the mind and a more diffuse, creative consciousness which
emerges from the body-mind. Gradually we are taught that it is rational
thinking that really matters in life while play, imagination and creativity
is what happens in the gaps between real work
(Rust 2020: xvii)
 Introduction 17

This spectrum seems to be ever-widening for children and adults alike and
may lead to new areas of thinking and research in the future. We hope this
new edition of the Handbook will inspire debate, expand horizons and
further understanding of the complexity of these splits by holding in mind
the important role of art therapists, as artists and therapists, in keeping
creativity, imagination and play alive and central to our practice. There are
40 new colour illustrations and, for those interested in further reading, an
extensive reference section with publications from colleagues in the UK and
around the world.
Chapter 2

The art therapist

In this new edition of the Handbook, this chapter is divided into three parts
to give room to some of the important changes to the profession in the UK.
In Part One, we look at becoming an art therapist with sections on training,
working in an art therapy post, referral, assessment, therapeutic contract,
feedback and case conferences. The discussion on sessional work, self-
employment and independent practice reflects the current trend in how art
therapists are established in the profession. In Part Two, we look at the
work of the art therapist outside of the therapeutic session and the necessary
support structures such as clinical supervision and CPD (continuing pro­
fessional development). A section on the art therapist as an artist is included.
Part Three covers the more peripheral but essential tasks of the art therapist
in the recording of clinical work, note-taking and the storage of art work.
Lastly, the need for further research to provide evidence-based practice is
explored as a requirement for the ongoing development of the profession.

Part one: becoming an art therapist

The art therapist faces a complex and difficult task in her clinical work. The
theory and practice of art therapy has evolved to require that practitioners are
highly trained and experienced and whose skills continue to develop after their
initial training, qualification and registration. Practising within current neo­
liberal contexts, which tend to be market-led, places further requirements on art
therapists, such as the need to provide evidence which is permissible to NICE
(the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence).
Art therapists have a considerable understanding of art processes, with a
sound knowledge of different theoretical approaches and therapeutic prac­
tices. They work in a variety of settings such as residential or community-
based adult mental health, learning disabilities for both adults and children,
child and family centres, palliative care, the prison service, mainstream and
special education and in independent practice. The diversity of the areas of
clinical practice is reflected in the training and training placements, the ex­
panding art therapy literature and also in the number of special interest
DOI: 10.4324/9781003197850-2
 The art therapist 19

groups that have developed in affiliation with The British Association of Art
Therapists. BAAT is the professional organisation for therapists in the UK
with twenty regional groups and a European and International section.
BAAT has a Code of Ethics of Professional Practice and Clinical standards.
Membership of the BAAT is not a requirement for practice but art thera­
pists must register with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC)
and adhere to HCPC standards of conduct, performance and ethics in order
to practice in the UK. The growth of art therapy internationally and the
greater collaboration between art therapists from different countries is re­
flected in the establishment of new professional art therapy bodies such as
the European Federation of Art Therapy (EFAT) which was constituted in
2018 by art therapists from 27 different European countries.

Art therapy trainings

Art therapy has emerged as a profession through the different disciplines of
art, psychiatry and art education. This early history can be found in the
previous edition of the Handbook (Case and Dalley 2014). The growing
understanding, that art therapy had many basic links with psychotherapy,
led to the establishment of specialist training in art therapy in the early 1970s
(Waller 1991).
Most contemporary qualifying UK Art Therapy training relies on the
requirement of a first degree in art design (or equivalent) where much of
the foundation work in terms of personal understanding, aesthetic ap­
preciation, critical awareness and creative problem-solving will be
achieved. Without this foundation, the art base of the profession of art
therapy is eroded. It also requires art therapists to have gained a high
degree of personal understanding in terms of their own creative and in­
ternal processes (Gilroy 2004):

At the best art colleges in the UK, the student learns to court
discomfort, to abandon obvious or well-tried solutions and to test
that which is new and different in her experience. Such an approach
fosters emergence of inner reality, however chaotic, this being shaped
into outer, more objective, imagery and objects once the raw material is
manifest.
(Schaverien 1989: 147)

The experience of art training allows the future art therapist to develop in an
environment which is to some degree an anarchic one. This ensures that the
student emerges with some understanding of how one proceeds in this en­
vironment and, as a result, has come to some personal decisions as to issues
such as resourcefulness, the need for boundaries, limits and rules and so on. An
art student cannot fail to have confronted at least some of these issues in her
20 The art therapist

educational journey. Schaverien (1989) suggests that the artist/therapist may

feel the need to relinquish the artist part of her experience in the face of an
institution or system dominated by the scientific approach. In this situation, it is
helpful to establish that what artists bring to therapy is special and unique in
terms of its therapeutic value and contribution (Maclagan 2005).

Current training courses for qualification

There are ten training centres in the UK and Northern Ireland which offer
registered MA qualifying courses according to the criteria laid down by the
HCPC. These are currently located in Edinburgh (Scotland); Sheffield;
Goldsmiths College, London; Roehampton College, London; Institute of
Arts in Therapy and Education, London; Derby; Chester; Hertfordshire;
Newport (Wales) and Belfast (N.Ireland). The Institute of Art Therapy
training in London differs in that a first degree is required but it does not
have to be in the arts while The Integrative Arts Therapy Training uses
seven art forms; Art, Drama/Puppetry, Sculpture/Clay, Poetry, Sandplay,
Music and Bodywork/Movement.
There are also many other established and emerging trainings outside of
the United Kingdom.

Components of the art therapy training

Pre-course experience
Entry to the postgraduate art therapy training programmes requires a first
degree in art and design (except in IATE). There are special entry criteria for
teachers and honours graduates from medicine, social science and huma­
nities, and those without degrees but with a working background. The
minimum age for applicants is 23 but maturity and life experience is seen as
a valuable asset. A minimum of one year’s clinical experience is required.
Many applicants will be mature and may have a previous professional
qualification in the caring professions or may have gone into very different
work after their first degree and have decided to retrain, seeking a new di­
rection or returning to work after having a family. An art portfolio is pre­
sented at an interview to show an ongoing commitment to a personal art
process. It is preferable that applicants have previous or current experience
in personal or group therapy. Personal therapy is a requirement for the
duration of the training and is seen as a necessary component of the stu­
dents’ learning process. The courses are demanding both personally and
academically. The student has to make fundamental adjustments in devel­
oping a professional identity as an art therapist during the training.
Before applying for training it is wise to gain some experience in art
therapy. A good way of doing this is to attend one of the Introductory
 The art therapist 21

courses and Foundation Certificate in Arts Therapies which offer a good

introduction to the art therapy process and its clinical applications. The
BAAT also offers short courses on a variety of different topics. Attendance
in one or more of the above such courses is highly recommended prior to
making an application to one of the training programmes.

MA in art therapy
The current MA programmes are two years full time or three years part-
time. The philosophy of the MA programme places the making of art and its
relationship to therapeutic practice as central to the training. Key elements
in the training are experiential groups and studio practice to facilitate the
ongoing development of the artist within the art therapist. The MA pro­
gramme offers students a broad theoretical foundation in the key principles
of art therapy theories, relating to psychodynamic and humanistic psy­
chotherapies. These theoretical studies also include child development,
psychology, attachment theory, psychiatry, cultural theory and neuro-
science which all form the background knowledge of the art therapist.
Placement experiences and supervision develop an understanding of clinical
work and the professional role of the art therapist. Training art therapists
undertake research projects, both qualitative and quantitative, relevant to
clinical practice. The integration of the programme components is regarded
as essential so that the trainee art therapist will graduate from the course
having developed their own orientation as an art therapist. This commit­
ment to personal growth and creative development of the art therapist can
be at odds with the current preponderance of outcome measures. Art
therapy training helps trainees develop reflective capacities in order to take a
critical, reflective stance towards the contexts in which they practice.

Training units

Experiential learning
Studio practice provides students with the time and space to develop their
own art practice within the context of therapeutic training. Students are
required to put on their own art exhibition at some point in their training to
give a focus to this aspect of their development. Art Therapy Workshops
give experience of a range of approaches and therapeutic interventions used
in different clinical settings. The training groups offer experience of a closed
group, run on psychodynamic lines, where students can develop an under­
standing of psychotherapeutic group processes that are both verbal and
non-verbal. Students will be asked to do a piece of reflective work on these
experiences to demonstrate understanding of the image and the dynamics
around its making in these contexts.
22 The art therapist

Art therapy theory and research

Art therapy theory is based on the two main components of the art therapeutic
relationship – the relationship between client and therapist and the art work
made. The theory of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, with transference and
counter-transference phenomena, is combined with the understanding of
symbolism and symbolic communication, be this in words, pictures or through
the making of objects. This includes an understanding of pictorial imagery and
its interrelationship with intra-psychic, interpersonal and cultural dynamics.
Lectures and seminars introduce the students to psycho-therapeutic principles
and concepts of art-making that provide a framework for understanding the
context in which art therapy is practised and researched. These theories and
those in related fields mentioned above will be discussed in seminars and tu­
torials and assessed by written essays. Research methodology, literature sear­
ches and book reviews help prepare the art therapist for the need to produce
evidence as to the efficacy of art therapy interventions and to contribute to
developing theory in the future. There is an increased requirement for evidence-
based practice and small research projects are an important component of
training. This may lead to further specialisation in a particular field of enquiry
and study at the PhD level in the future (Gilroy 2006).

Clinical placement and supervision

Clinical placement experience is a total of at least 100 days, usually 60 days per
year for full-time students and 40 days for part-time students. Clinical placements
are offered in a wide range of settings offering therapeutic provision, which may
include mental health and learning disability services, prisons and secure provision
for adults and adolescents to special education, palliative care and child and family
centres. Students will have weekly on-site supervision with either an art therapist
or another professional and in a small group in college. Towards the end of the
training, workshops are provided to prepare students for practice and seeking
work. Students are assessed on their clinical experience by the clinical supervisor
and by their visiting college tutor as well as by written placement reports.
Even though observational studies are not a course requirement, many art
therapists, particularly those interested in working with children, undertake
some training in the practice of infant observation. The practice of sys­
tematic observation of the development of infants provides the observer
with an opportunity to encounter primitive emotional states in the infant
and family. The observer’s own response to this experience is helpful in
preparing potential therapists for clinical work (Rustin et al. 1997).

Personal therapy
Personal therapy is a course requirement and a central training component.
Communication between the college and the therapist confirms weekly
 The art therapist 23

attendance. The trainee takes responsibility to find a suitable therapist and for
payment. Colleges will give guidance on therapists with approved qualifications
and registration of the therapist. The therapist needs to be someone who values
working with different aspects of imagery whether two or three dimensional,
performative or mental and dream imagery. Individual personal therapy gives an
important experiential contrast to the art therapy training groups on the course
and first-hand experience of being a client/patient that will be important to draw
on when working with clients. In this way, the personal therapy of the trainee is
for the protection of both client and future therapist. Providing a therapeutic
model for processing complex emotional issues develops resilience when working
in often stressful environments as a therapist. As a source of emotional growth
and development, personal therapy gives personal support and understanding
throughout the training which may be a time of emotional upheaval. The courses
are demanding on every level and challenge previous assumptions as well as
psychological defences and habitual ways of managing conflict, emotion and
psychological pain. If a trainee therapist has unresolved issues or conflicts of her
own, then this renders her less able to be emotionally available and open to
working with a client whose own issues touch on similar areas.

The qualified art therapist

On completion of the training and qualification, the art therapist must register
with the HCPC in order to practice. Membership of this professional body
ensures the maintenance of professional and clinical standards and public
protection by offering access to formal and rigorous complaint procedures for
both patient and practitioner. Art Therapists might also register with other
therapy bodies such as the BACP (British Association of Counselling and
Psychotherapy) or the BAAT (British Association of Art Therapists). It is a
good idea to join a Trade Union, which will be determined by personal choice
and the context in which the art therapist practices.
Newly qualified art therapists find employment in a multitude of settings,
sometimes setting up art therapy work in their current jobs (e.g. negotiating
to work a day a week as an art therapist in a school where the newly qua­
lified art therapist also works as a teaching assistant). Many advertised art
therapy posts are part-time although substantial full-time posts also exist
especially in the National Health Service. Sometimes art therapists who
trained and qualified together create art therapy services such as ‘Creating
Links’, a service developed by a group of art therapists who offered training
to institutions and community groups around displacement and trauma.
Leaving the intensity of an art therapy training where the student has close,
regular supervision, studio space, experiential groups and the support of
tutors and peers can be daunting and disorientating and it is important that
newly qualified art therapists find ways in which to continue to develop as
therapists and receive support, education and encouragement. Attending
24 The art therapist

workshops, conferences, seminars, lectures and experiential groups post

qualifying is essential. Reading books and journals and writing for pub­
lication is also an important component of post qualifying life as an art
therapist. Continuing in personal therapy might also be important. Setting
up peer groups is an inexpensive way to provide supervision, support and
spaces for discussion, art-making and reflection.

Working as an art therapist

Art therapists work in many different settings and contexts, with differing
populations and a variety of employment contexts. In some situations, the
art therapist is a member of a multi-disciplinary team where the clinical
work is conducted alongside colleagues of differing disciplines with a good
professional understanding between them. The referral to the art therapist
will arise out of discussions and decisions in the team and there will be
clearly defined protocols and procedures for referral, assessment and
treatment. The team’s support will be helpful in setting up the art therapy
contract and beginning the relationship between client and therapist.
Support between colleagues also facilitates the work in progress, particularly
if another colleague is seeing another member of the family such as the
parent of a child in individual therapy.
Alternatively, the art therapist might be working in isolation, in a large
hospital for example. Even though staff nearest to the interests of the patient
might be supportive of the referral, it is sometimes the case that due to
changing shifts, different ward personnel do not have the same under­
standing and therefore the work will not be so clearly supported. This can be
mitigated by maintaining good communication. It is hard to overemphasise
the importance of keeping good contact and updating all who are concerned
with the patient whether in a care home, a hospital or a school. Ward dy­
namics are complex and patients have many different appointments with
medical and allied staff. In a school, curriculum and timetable pressures can
impact the creation of a regular art therapy space for a child.
In most teams, staff may have differing pay, conditions and status, so
there is a need for a good understanding of institutional dynamics and de­
fences (Menzies 1977; Sayers 2020). Art therapists support their colleagues
through training, consultations, providing reflective spaces and joint
working. Creating a multi-disciplinary team in the setting can be an im­
portant process for the art therapist and colleagues and for the institution as
a whole. Such a group can function as a referral meeting, a place to allocate
resources, review cases and plan interventions and training. The TAC (or
TAF) meetings (Team Around the Child) in social care contexts offer an
equivalent opportunity for collaboration and joined-up thinking about a
child or family.
 The art therapist 25

Self-employment
A number of art therapists are self-employed. Where few qualifying art
therapists are able to get full-time jobs in the statutory services on leaving a
training course, many may be at least partially employed through sessional,
freelance or independent practice work. It used to be quite common in the
earlier years of art therapy for art therapists to be offered employment
following on from a college placement sometimes as the sole therapist or to
become a member of a department and team. In this scenario, the ‘em­
bryonic’ art therapist benefits and learns from built-in support structures of
the institution and clinical team. To leave a course and go into sessional
work or freelance work lacks the same support systems in the workplace and
requires resilience for independent working which might be familiar from
practising as an artist. Art therapists who are self-employed or working on a
sessional or independent basis must take out their own insurance cover.
The BAAT website has accessible and useful guidelines for self-employed
status available to qualified members. Unlike ‘an employee’ who has stat­
utory employment rights, self-employed people do not receive sick pay,
holiday or maternity pay and are responsible for their own annual income
tax returns, national insurance and payment invoices. Some expenses can be
offset against tax which might include professional membership fees, in­
surance, costs to do with training, supervision and continuing professional
development and postage, telephone and travel.
Art therapists in this situation may have several different sessional hours
for varying organisations which requires good networking skills and time
management. This peripatetic way of working can be complex but can build
a broad range of clinical experience, and opportunities for net-working
which may lead to a more permanent job. (See letter from Watts 2013 giving
an account of her work with homeless children, young people and families in
their homes.)

Independent practice
How does private or independent practice differ? An art therapist is con­
tracted and paid by an organisation and works with other team members
who have shared ‘duty of care’ and joint clinical responsibility for the client.
In independent practice a contract is made directly with the client and
payment is made directly to the therapist. Independent work with children
requires agreement from the parent or carer. It is advisable to extend this to
the wider members of the family if the parents are not living together.
Contact with relevant community and medical professionals, such as the
referrer or, with permission, the client’s General Practitioner, is also advised
at the outset and closure of the work regarding the therapeutic agreement
and outcome. The art therapist, either works from a consulting room, which
26 The art therapist

ideally has its own entrance and toilet facilities, so there is no intrusion from
others in the building or sometimes the consulting room is part of a larger
clinic in a mixed therapeutic setting with other practitioners.
Once qualified and HCPC registered, an art therapist can establish an
independent practice. BAAT compiles an up to date list of registered in­
dependent practitioners and supervisors and requires members to have two
years full-time equivalent experience of employment post training before
applying for registration. We would recommend taking the BAAT course in
Private Practice and to have more than this minimum post-qualification
experience. Independent practice requires good support systems, personal
therapy as well as supervision. It can feel isolated without colleagues or
access to consultation with a multi-disciplinary team, so that it is essential to
keep contact with peers, engage with a local BAAT group and be committed
to Continuing Professional Development.

Working with clients: referral

In all clinical settings, patients are referred to art therapy for an initial assess­
ment to establish suitability for treatment. According to the way the art
therapist works, she must have an appropriate procedure for these referrals. A
referral form is useful to summarise concerns about the patient and expecta­
tions from an art therapy intervention. It is useful for the art therapist to have a
summary of the current presenting problem, past history and risk assessment,
previous interventions and how successful or not they have been.
In some institutional settings, the patient will have already had a generic
assessment and the referral will be to the art therapist as a specialist. Art
therapists may be accepting referrals from a multi-disciplinary team in which
consideration is given to the appropriate therapeutic approach or it may be
in a situation where there is less therapeutic understanding. In this latter
case, a patient may be referred as there is a ‘worry’ about them without a
clear understanding of what may be causing the behaviour. In keeping with
good communication it is helpful to have a referral discussion and meet with
the referrer and the patient (and family in the case of children) to discuss
hopes and expectations. It may be necessary to contact partner agencies such
as social workers at the point of referral in order to have a planned approach
to working with the referred person.
In the early days of art therapy, the idea was prevalent that referrals were
made on the basis that the patient was good at art – or showed some interest
in this activity. Many times the comments have been overheard that ‘This
patient should go to art therapy’, ‘Have you seen how good she is at art’? or
‘She really enjoys it’. Connected to this is the idea that the art therapist is
primarily concerned with making aesthetic or diagnostic assessment of the
client’s art work. However, the criteria for accepting patients into art
therapy are manifold and require careful consideration by both therapist
 The art therapist 27

and patient. Gilroy et al. (2012) summarises the current thinking on suit­
ability for different modes of art therapy discussing not only the indications
and contraindications but also the differing viewpoints in the literature.
Working with referrers to improve the quality of referrals can be helpful,
especially in non-clinical settings such as schools where the referrers might
not have a clear understanding of art therapy. Well-designed referral forms
can help by asking for useful and relevant information (e.g. asking the re­
ferrer to list other agencies and professionals who might be involved with the
referred person).

Handling information, data protection and storage

In 2018 new legislation updated the Data Protection Act of 1998 and in­
cluded the European General Data Protection Regulation. The Data
Protection Act of 2018 sets out specific requirements for the storage, sharing
and use of people’s information (their data). Art therapists have a duty to
inform their patients of how their data will be stored, for how long and how
their data will be used. This includes the storage of information from referral
forms, for example, or the storage of photos (digital or otherwise) of pa­
tients’ art works. Electronic and hard copy storage of data must be secure
and in accordance with the Act. The BAAT website has resources to help art
therapists manage patient data in accordance with the legal obligations set
out in the Data Protection Act 2018.

Meeting the client: assessment

A period of assessment is important to establish therapeutic contact. In this
way, the patient does not feel coerced into coming – nor does the therapist
feel obliged to accept the patient. There can be pressure in an institution to
accept referrals, as staff and resources are limited. Long waiting lists add
considerable weight to allocation decisions. The assessment for art therapy
takes into account the patient’s presentation, symptoms and current situa­
tion. Assessment is a mutual and collaborative process and is a discrete piece
of work before a decision is made regarding treatment. There is a pause for
reflection and feedback and an agreement on whether or not to begin on­
going art therapy. Alternatively, art therapy may not after all be the treat­
ment of choice. This decision is reached initially between art therapist and
patient and further discussions ensue with referrers as to other treatment
possibilities and modalities.
First impressions of the client are very important. The first meeting in any
relationship has an effect on both people. The same happens between
therapist and client – what is the response of the therapist to the client and
what is the client’s response to the therapist? This will mark the beginning of
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
Constantinople, trampled on his enemies, avowed his correspondence
with the empress, and, without degrading her sons, assumed, with the
title of Augustus, the pre-eminence of rank and the plenitude of power.
But his marriage with Theophano was refused by the same patriarch
who had placed the crown on his head; by his second nuptials he
incurred a year of canonical penance; a bar of spiritual affinity was
opposed to their celebration; and some evasion and perjury were
required to silence the scruples of the clergy and people. The popularity
of the emperor was lost in the purple; in a reign of six years he
provoked the hatred of strangers and subjects, and the hypocrisy and
avarice of the first Nicephorus were revived in his successor. In the use
of his patrimony, the generous temper of Nicephorus had been proved,
and the revenue was strictly applied to the service of the state; each
spring the emperor marched in person against the Saracens, and every
Roman might compute the employment of his taxes in triumphs,
conquests, and the security of the Eastern barrier.g

THE WARS OF NICEPHORUS

The darling object of Nicephorus was to break the power of the

Saracens, and extend the frontiers of the empire in Syria and
Mesopotamia. In the spring of 964, he assembled an army against
Tarsus, which was the fortress that covered the Syrian frontier. Next year
(965), Nicephorus again formed the siege of Tarsus with an army of
forty thousand men. The place was inadequately supplied with
provisions; and though the inhabitants were a warlike race, who had
long carried on incursions into the Byzantine territory, they were
compelled to abandon their native city, and retire into Syria, carrying
with them only their personal clothing. A rich cross, which the Saracens
had taken when they destroyed the Byzantine army under Stypiotes in
the year 877, was recovered and placed in the church of St. Sophia at
Constantinople. The bronze gates of Tarsus and Mopsuestia, which were
of rich workmanship, were also removed and placed by Nicephorus in
the new citadel he had constructed to defend the palace. In the same
year Cyprus was reconquered by an expedition under the command of
the patrician Nicetas.
 For two years the emperor was occupied at
[965-968 a.d.] Constantinople by the civil administration of the
empire, by a threatened invasion of the Hungarians,
and by disputes with the king of Bulgaria; but in 968 he again resumed
the command of the army in the East. Early in spring he marched past
Antioch at the head of eighty thousand men, and without stopping to
besiege that city, he rendered himself master of the fortified places in its
neighbourhood, in order to cut it off from all relief from the caliph of
Baghdad. He then pushed forward his conquests; Laodicea, Hierapolis,
Aleppo, Arca, and Emesa were taken, and Tripolis and Damascus paid
tribute to save their territory from being laid waste. In this campaign
many relics were surrendered by the Mohammedans. In consequence of
the approach of winter, the emperor led his army into winter quarters,
and deferred forming the siege of Antioch until the ensuing spring. He
left the patrician Burtzes in a fort on the Black Mountain, with orders to
watch the city and prevent the inhabitants from collecting provisions and
military stores. The remainder of the army, under the command of Peter,
was stationed in Cilicia. As he was anxious to reserve to himself the
glory of restoring Antioch to the empire, he ordered his lieutenants not
to attack the city during his absence. But one of the spies employed by
Burtzes brought him the measure of the height of a tower which it was
easy to approach, and the temptation to take the place by surprise was
not to be resisted. Accordingly, on a dark winter night while there was a
heavy fall of snow, Burtzes placed himself at the head of three hundred
chosen men, and gained possession of two of the towers of Antioch. He
immediately sent off a courier to Peter, requesting him to advance and
take possession of the city; but Peter, from fear of the emperor’s
jealousy, delayed moving to the assistance of Burtzes for three days.
During this interval, however, Burtzes defended himself against the
repeated attacks of the whole population, though with great difficulty.
The Byzantine army at length arrived, and Antioch was annexed to the
empire after having remained 328 years in the power of the Saracens.
The emperor Nicephorus, instead of rewarding Burtzes for his energy,
dismissed both him and Peter from their commands.
The Fatimite caliph Moëz reigned at Kairowan, and was already
contemplating the conquest of Egypt. Nicephorus not only refused to
pay him the tribute of eleven thousand gold byzants, stipulated by
Romanus I, but even sent an expedition to wrest Sicily from the
Saracens. The chief command was entrusted to Nicetas, who had
conquered Cyprus; and the army, consisting chiefly of cavalry, was more
particularly placed under the orders of Manuel Phocas, the emperor’s
cousin, a daring officer. The troops were landed on the eastern coast,
and Manuel rashly advanced, until he was surrounded by the enemy and
slain. Nicetas also had made so little preparation to defend his position
that his camp was stormed and he himself taken prisoner and sent to
Africa.
The affairs of Italy were, as usual, embroiled by
[965-969 a.d.] local causes. Otto, the emperor of the West,
appeared at the head of an army in Apulia, and
having secured the assistance of Pandulf, prince of Beneventum, called
Ironhead, carried on the war with frequent vicissitudes of fortune.
Ironhead was taken prisoner by the Byzantine general, and sent captive
to Constantinople. But the tyrannical conduct of the Byzantine officials
lost all that was gained by the superior discipline of the troops, and
favoured the progress of the German arms. Society had fallen into such
a state of isolation that men were more eager to obtain immunity from
all taxation than protection for industry and property, and the
advantages of the Byzantine administration ceased to be appreciated.
The European provinces of the empire were threatened with invasion
both by the Hungarians and Bulgarians. In 966 Nicephorus was apprised
of the intention of the Hungarians, and he solicited the assistance of
Peter, king of Bulgaria, to prevent their passing the Danube. Peter
refused, for he had been compelled to conclude a treaty of peace with
the Hungarians, who had invaded Bulgaria a short time before. It is
even said that Peter took advantage of the difficulty in which Nicephorus
appeared to be placed, by the numerous wars that occupied his troops,
to demand payment of the tribute Romanus I had promised to Simeon.
Nicephorus, in order to punish the insolence of one whom he regarded
as his inferior, sent Calocyres, the son of the governor of Cherson, as
ambassador to Russia, to invite Sviatoslaff, the Varangian prince of Kieff,
to invade Bulgaria, and entrusted him with a sum of fifteen hundred
pounds’ weight of gold, to pay the expenses of the expedition. Calocyres
proved a traitor: he formed an alliance with Sviatoslaff, proclaimed
himself emperor, and involved the empire in a bloody war with the
Russians.
With all his defects, Nicephorus was one of the most virtuous men
and conscientious sovereigns that ever occupied the throne of
Constantinople. Though born of one of the noblest and wealthiest
families of the Eastern Empire, and sure of obtaining the highest offices
at a proud and luxurious court, he chose a life of hardship in pursuit of
military glory; and a contemporary historian, Leo Diaconus,o who wrote
after his family had been ruined by proscription and his name had
become odious, observes, that no one had ever seen him indulge in
revelry or debauchery even in his youth.n
Among the warriors who promoted his elevation, and served under his
standard, a noble and valiant Armenian had deserved and obtained the
most eminent rewards. The stature of Joannes Zimisces was below the
ordinary standard; but this diminutive body was endowed with strength,
beauty, and the soul of a hero. By the jealousy of the emperor’s brother,
he was degraded from the office of general of the East, to that of
director of the posts, and his murmurs were chastised with disgrace and
exile. But Zimisces was ranked among the numerous lovers of the
empress. On her intercession he was permitted to reside at Chalcedon,
in the neighbourhood of the capital; her bounty was repaid in his
clandestine and amorous visits to the palace; and Theophano consented
with alacrity to the death of an ugly and penurious husband. Some bold
and trusty conspirators were concealed in her most private chambers; in
the darkness of a winter night Zimisces, with his principal companions,
embarked in a small boat, traversed the Bosporus, landed at the palace
stairs, and silently ascended a ladder of ropes, which was cast down by
the female attendants. Neither his own suspicions, nor the warnings of
his friends, nor the tardy aid of his brother Leo, nor the fortress which
he had erected in the palace, could protect Nicephorus from a domestic
foe, at whose voice every door was opened to the assassins. As he slept
on a bearskin on the ground, he was roused by their noisy intrusion, and
thirty daggers glittered before his eyes.
It is doubtful whether Zimisces imbrued his hands in the blood of his
sovereign; but he enjoyed the inhuman spectacle of revenge. The
murder was protracted by insult and cruelty; and as soon as the head of
Nicephorus was shown from the window, the tumult was hushed, and
the Armenian was emperor of the East. On the day of his coronation, he
was stopped on the threshold of St. Sophia by the intrepid patriarch;
who charged his conscience with the deed of treason and blood; and
required, as a sign of repentance, that he should separate himself from
his more criminal associate. This sally of apostolical zeal was not
offensive to the prince, since he could neither love nor trust a woman
who had repeatedly violated the most sacred obligations; and
Theophano, instead of sharing his imperial fortune, was dismissed with
ignominy from his bed and palace.
In their last interview, she displayed a frantic and impotent rage;
accused the ingratitude of her lover; assaulted with words and blows her
son Basil, as he stood silent and submissive in the presence of a
superior colleague; and avowed her own prostitution in proclaiming the
illegitimacy of his birth. The public indignation was appeased by her
exile and the punishment of the meaner accomplices; the death of an
unpopular prince was forgiven; and the guilt of Zimisces was forgotten
in the splendour of his virtues. Perhaps his profusion was less useful to
the state than the avarice of Nicephorus; but his gentle and generous
behaviour delighted all who approached his person; and it was only in
the paths of victory that he trod in the footsteps of his predecessor. The
greatest part of his reign was employed in the camp and the field. His
personal valour and activity were signalised on the Danube and the
Tigris, the ancient boundaries of the Roman world; and by his double
triumph over the Russians and the Saracens, he deserved the titles of
saviour of the empire and conqueror of the East.g

FOOTNOTES

[42] [Isauria is an obsolete name referring to a district in Asia

Minor bounded by Cilicia, Lycaonia, Phrygia, and Pisidia. The region
was cold and rugged and the Isaurians accordingly independent and
fond of raids. In 75 b.c., the Roman proconsul, P. Servilius, brought
them to terms and received the epithet Isauricus, but the Romans
were eventually glad to grant them freedom in return for peace.
Justinian claimed to have subdued them. Two emperors came from
Isauria, Zeno (474-495) and the epoch-making Leo.
 Hertzbergb says that Leo was called Isaurian “probably from the
nativity of his parents,” and thinks he was “born about 675 at
Germanicia, on the borders of Cappadocia, Armenia, and Syria,”
whence he was taken to Mesembria in Thrace by his parents after the
Arab invasion. K. Schenk,c however, says, “I employ the epithet
consecrated by the error of centuries, although Leo was sprung from
Germanicia, and therefore is a Syrian.” Gelzerd accordingly calls Leo
“the Syrian (Isaurian) emperor.” He calls the accession of Leo “a
moment of true world-historical meaning.”]
[43] [Clintone says, “The empire of Rome, properly so called, ends
at 476 a.d.,” which is the third year of Zeno. Numismatists, like
Saulcy,f place the commencement of the Byzantine Empire in the
reign of Anastasius I. Gibbong tells us, “Tiberius by the Arabs, and
Maurice by the Italians, are distinguished as the first of the Greek
Cæsars, as the founders of a new dynasty and empire. The silent
revolution was accomplished before the death of Heraclius.” Bury,h on
the other hand, vehemently denies the justice of using the word
“Byzantine” at all, saying “no Byzantine Empire ever began to exist;
the Roman Empire did not come to an end until 1453.” He accordingly
clings to the expression “Later Roman Empire.” None the less, since
Finlayi finds the word Byzantine a convenient term and places its
proper beginning here, and since so many other historians old and
new have given the word authority, it may well be allowed to stand.]
[44] Theodosius ended his life at Ephesus, where he was buried in
the church of St. Philip. He ordered that his tombstone should bear
no inscription but the word ΥΓΕΙΑ (Health).
[45] [This was in August, 717, according to western authorities,
though the Arabs set it in 716.]

[46] [On the 8th of October, according to Theophanes.j]

[47] [According to Hefelem this commonly accepted statement is
not true, since Leo’s first order was the total abolition of images.]
[48] [June, 741, is the date usually assigned to Leo’s death, but
Buryh thinks that Theophanesj made a miscalculation, and he reckons
from a solar eclipse and an Easter date, that Leo’s death actually
occurred in 740.]
[49] [According to other accounts, he actually smote the statue in
the face three times.]
[50] [His brother-in-law Artavasdos rebelled shortly after his
accession and held Constantinople for two years before he could be
expelled and imprisoned in a monastery.]
[51] [So Nicephorusk says, but Theophanesj says they returned
unmolested.]
[52] [During the reigns of Leo IV, Constantine VI, and Irene there
were frequent conflicts with the Saracens, the Bulgarians, and with
the troops of Charlemagne, who at one time purposed to reunite the
old Roman Empire by marrying Irene, on which Buryh comments that
such a marriage of ill-assorted nations would have been followed by a
speedy divorce.]
[53] [He called a General Council which anathematised Tarasius
and Nicephorus, and, repealing the acts of the Council of Nicæa,
reasserted those of 754.]
[54] [“‘Crete and Sicily’ were conquered by the Saracens without
offering the resistance that might have been expected from the
wealth and number of their inhabitants. Indeed, we are compelled to
infer that the change from the orthodox sway of the emperors of
Constantinople to the domination of the Mohammedans was not
considered by the majority of the Greeks of Crete and Sicily so severe
a calamity as we generally believe.”—Finlay.n]
[55] [“It is the boast of orthodox historians that ten thousand
Paulicians perished in this manner. Far greater numbers, however,
escaped into the province of Melitene, where the Saracen emir
granted them protection, and assisted them to plan schemes of
revenge.”—Finlay.n]
[56] [Finlayn thinks that some of these stories may be the
inventions of flatterers of Michael’s assassin and successor, Basil.]
[57] [“Basil founded,” says Finlayn, “the largest dynasty that ruled
in the Byzantine empire.”]
[58] [The Saracens were driven out of various Italian strongholds
which gave allegiance to Constantinople. But Sicily was lost in 878,
and though Cyprus was regained, it was also lost again.]
[59] [That is, the colony of Paulician fugitives formed at Tephrike
after the persecutions of Theodora.]
[60] [“The Basilica remained the law of the Byzantine empire,” says
Finlay,n “till its conquest by the Franks, and it continued in use as the
national law of the Greeks at Nicæa, Constantinople, and Trebizond
and in the Morea, until they were conquered by the Ottomans.”]
[61] [Constantine was proclaimed Augustus in 868 and died in 879.
He was the eighth of the name according to Eckhel and the ninth
 according to Humphreys.]
[62] [During the regency the Byzantines won a battle in Caria, and
invaded Saracen territory with success.]

[63] [According to Finlay,n Romanus had sailed away without a

battle, after the land-forces had been crushingly defeated by the
Bulgarian king, Simeon, at Achelous, 917. In 921, and again in 923,
Simeon penetrated to the walls of Constantinople. In 934 and in 943
the Hungarians had like success, being bought off on both occasions.
In 963, however, they were defeated. The Italian provinces
underwent similar vicissitudes.]

CHAPTER VIII
GLORY AND DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
[969-1204 a.d.]

The Russian war was the great event of the reign of Joannes
Zimisces. The military fame of the Byzantine emperor, who was
unquestionably the ablest general of his time, the greatness of the
Russian nation, whose power now overshadows Europe, the scene of
the contest, destined in our day to be again the battle-field of Russian
armies, and the political interest which attaches to the first attempt of a
Russian prince to march by land to Constantinople, all combine to give a
practical as well as a romantic interest to this war.
The first Russian naval expedition against Constantinople in 865 would
probably have been followed by a series of plundering excursions, like
those carried on by the Danes and Normans on the coasts of England
and France, had not the Turkish tribe called the Patzinaks rendered
themselves masters of the lower course of the Dnieper, and become
instruments in the hands of the emperors to arrest the activity of the
bold Varangians. The northern rulers of Kieff were the same rude
warriors that infested England and France, but the Russian people was
then in a more advanced state of society than the mass of the
population in Britain and Gaul. The majority of the Russians were
freemen; the majority of the inhabitants of Britain and Gaul were serfs.
After the defeat in 865, the Russians induced their rulers to send
envoys to Constantinople to renew commercial intercourse, and invite
Christian missionaries to visit their country; and no inconsiderable
portion of the people embraced Christianity, though the Christian religion
continued long after better known to the Russian merchants than to the
Varangian warriors. The commercial relations of the Russians with
Cherson and Constantinople were now carried on directly, and numbers
of Russian traders took up their residence in these cities. The first
commercial treaty between the Russians of Kieff and the Byzantine
Empire was concluded in the reign of Basil I. The intercourse increased
from that time. In the year 902, seven hundred Russians are mentioned
as serving on board the Byzantine fleet with high pay; in 935, seven
Russian vessels, with 415 men, formed part of a Byzantine expedition to
Italy; and in 949, six Russian vessels, with 629 men, were engaged in
the unsuccessful expedition of Gongyles against Crete. In 966, a corps
of Russians accompanied the unfortunate expedition of Nicetas to Sicily.
There can be no doubt that these were all Varangians, familiar, like the
Danes and Normans in the West, with the dangers of the sea, and not
native Russians, whose services on board the fleet could have been of
little value to the masters of Greece.
But to return to the history of the Byzantine wars
[907-944 a.d.] with the Russians. In the year 907, Oleg, who was
regent of Kieff during the minority of Igor the son of Ruric, assembled
an army of Varangians, Slavonians, and Croatians, and, collecting two
thousand vessels or boats of the kind then used on the northern shore
of the Euxine, advanced to attack Constantinople. The exploits of this
army, which pretended to aspire at the conquest of Tzaragrad, or the
City of the Cæsars, were confined to plundering the country round
Constantinople; and it is not improbable that the expedition was
undertaken to obtain indemnity for some commercial losses sustained by
imperial negligence, monopoly, or oppression. The subjects of the
emperor were murdered, and the Russians amused themselves with
torturing their captives in the most barbarous manner. At length Leo
purchased their retreat by the payment of a large sum of money. Such is
the account transmitted to us by the Russian monk Nestor, for no
Byzantine writer notices the expedition, which was doubtless nothing
more than a plundering incursion, in which the city of Constantinople
was not exposed to any danger. These hostilities were terminated by a
commercial treaty in 912, and its conditions are recorded in detail by
Nestor.
In the year 941, Igor made an attack on Constantinople, impelled
either by the spirit of adventure, which was the charm of existence
among all the tribes of Northmen, or else roused to revenge by some
violation of the treaty of 912. The Russian flotilla, consisting of
innumerable small vessels, made its appearance in the Bosporus while
the Byzantine fleet was absent in the Archipelago. Igor landed at
different places on the coast of Thrace and Bithynia, ravaging and
plundering the country; the inhabitants were treated with incredible
cruelty; some were crucified, others were burned alive, the Greek priests
were killed by driving nails into their heads, and the churches were
destroyed. Only fifteen ships remained at Constantinople, but these
were soon fitted up with additional tubes for shooting Greek fire. This
force, trifling as it was in number, gave the Byzantines an immediate
superiority at sea, and the patrician Theophanes sailed out of the port to
attack the Russians. Igor, seeing the small number of the enemy’s ships,
surrounded them on all sides, and endeavoured to carry them by
boarding; but the Greek fire became only so much more available
against boats and men crowded together, and the attack was repulsed
with fearful loss. In the meantime, some of the Russians who landed in
Bithynia were defeated by Bardas Phocas and Joannes Curcuas, and
those who escaped from the naval defeat were pursued and slaughtered
on the coast of Thrace without mercy. The emperor Romanus ordered all
the prisoners brought to Constantinople to be beheaded. Theophanes
overtook the fugitive ships in the month of September, and the relics of
the expedition were destroyed, Igor effecting his escape with only a few
boats. The Russian chronicle of Nestor says that, in the year 944, Igor,
assisted by other Varangians, and by the Patzinaks, prepared a second
expedition, but that the inhabitants of Cherson so alarmed the emperor
Romanus by their reports of its magnitude, that he sent ambassadors,
who met Igor at the mouth of the Danube, and sued for peace on terms
to which Igor and his boyards consented. This is probably merely a salve
applied to the vanity of the people of Kieff by their chronicler; but it is
certain that a treaty of peace was concluded between the emperors of
Constantinople and the princes of Kieff in the year 945.
The cruelty of the Varangian prince Igor, after his
[944-970 a.d.] return to Russia, caused him to be murdered by his
rebellious subjects.[64] Olga, his widow, became
regent for their son Sviatoslaff. She embraced the Christian religion, and
visited Constantinople in 957, where she was baptized. The emperor
Constantine Porphyrogenitus has left us an account of the ceremony of
her reception at the Byzantine court. A Russian monk has preserved the
commercial treaties of the empire; a Byzantine emperor records the
pageantry that amused a Russian princess. The high position occupied
by the court of Kieff in the tenth century is also attested by the style
with which it was addressed by the court of Constantinople. The golden
bulls of the Roman emperor of the East, addressed to the prince of
Russia, were ornamented with a pendent seal equal in size to a double
solidus, like those addressed to the kings of France.

THE RUSSIAN WAR (970-971 A.D.)

We have seen that the emperor Nicephorus II

[970-971 a.d.] sent the patrician Calocyres to excite Sviatoslaff to
invade Bulgaria, and that the Byzantine ambassador
proved a traitor, and assumed the purple. Sviatoslaff soon invaded
Bulgaria at the head of a powerful army, which the gold brought by
Calocyres assisted him to equip, and defeated the Bulgarian army in a
great battle, 968 a.d. Peter, king of Bulgaria, died shortly after, and the
country was involved in civil broils; taking advantage of which,
Sviatoslaff took Presthlava the capital, and rendered himself master of
the whole kingdom.
Nicephorus now formed an alliance with the Bulgarians, and was
preparing to defend them against the Russians, when Sviatoslaff was
compelled to return home, in order to defend his capital against the
Patzinaks. Nicephorus assisted Boris and Romanus, the sons of Peter, to
recover Bulgaria, and concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with
Boris, who occupied the throne. After the assassination of Nicephorus,
Sviatoslaff returned to invade Bulgaria with an army of sixty thousand
men, and his enterprise assumed the character of one of those great
invasions which had torn whole provinces from the Western Empire. His
army was increased by a treaty with the Patzinaks and an alliance with
the Hungarians, so that they began to dream of the conquest of
Constantinople, and hoped to transfer the empire of the East from the
Romans of Byzantium to the Russians. It was fortunate for the Byzantine
Empire that it was ruled by a soldier who knew how to profit by its
superiority in tactics and discipline. The Russian was not ignorant of
strategy, and having secured his flank by his alliance with the
Hungarians, he entered Thrace by the western passes of Mount Hæmus,
then the most frequented road between Germany and Constantinople,
and that by which the Hungarians were in the habit of making their
plundering incursions into the empire.
Joannes Zimisces was occupied in the East when Sviatoslaff
completed the second conquest of Bulgaria and passed Mount Hæmus,
expecting to subdue Thrace during the emperor’s absence with equal
ease, 970 a.d. The empire was still suffering from famine. Sviatoslaff
took Philippopolis, and murdered twenty thousand of the inhabitants. An
embassy sent by Zimisces was dismissed with a demand of tribute, and
the Russian army advanced to Arcadiopolis, where one division was
defeated by Bardas Sclerus, and the remainder retired again behind
Mount Hæmus.
In the following spring, 971, the emperor Joannes took the field at the
head of an army of fifteen thousand infantry and thirteen thousand
cavalry, besides a body-guard of chosen troops called the Immortals,
and a powerful battery of field and siege engines.[65] A fleet of three
hundred galleys, attended by many smaller vessels, was despatched to
enter the Danube and cut off the communications of the Russians with
their own country.[66]
The emperor Joannes marched from Hadrianopolis just before Easter,
when it was not expected that a Byzantine emperor would take the field.
He knew that the passes on the great eastern road had been left
unguarded by the Russians, and he led his army through all the defiles
of Mount Hæmus without encountering any difficulty. The Russian
troops stationed at Presthlava, who ought to have guarded the passes,
marched out to meet the emperor when they heard he had entered
Bulgaria. Their whole army consisted of infantry, but the soldiers were
covered with chain armour, and accustomed to resist the light cavalry of
the Patzinaks and other Turkish tribes.[67] They proved, however, no
match for the heavy-armed lancers of the imperial army; and, after a
vigorous resistance, were completely routed by Joannes Zimisces,
leaving eighty-five hundred men on the field of battle. On the following
day Presthlava was taken by escalade, and a body of seven thousand
Russians and Bulgarians, who attempted to defend the royal palace,
which was fortified as a citadel, were put to the sword after a gallant
defence. Sphengelos, who commanded this division of the Russian force,
and the traitor Calocyres, succeeded in escaping to Dorystolon, where
Sviatoslaff had concentrated the rest of the army; but Boris, king of
Bulgaria, with all his family, was taken prisoner in his capital.
The emperor, after celebrating Easter in Presthlava, advanced by
Pliscova and Dinea to Dorystolon, where Sviatoslaff still hoped for
victory, though his position was becoming daily more dangerous. The
Byzantine fleet entered the Danube and took up its station opposite the
city, cutting off all the communications of the Russians by water, at the
same time that the emperor encamped before the walls and blockaded
them by land. Zimisces, knowing he had to deal with a desperate
enemy, fortified his camp with a ditch and rampart according to the old
Roman model, which was traditionally preserved by the Byzantine
engineers. The Russians enclosed within the walls of Dorystolon were
more numerous than their besiegers, and Sviatoslaff hoped to be able to
open his communications with the
surrounding country, by bringing on
a general engagement in the plain
before all the defences of the
enemy’s camp were completed. He
expected to defeat the attacks of
the Byzantine cavalry by forming his
men in squares, and, as the Russian
soldiers were covered by long
shields that reached to their feet, he
expected to be able, by advancing
his squares like moving towers, to
clear the plain of the enemy. But
while the Byzantine legions met the
Russians in front, the heavy-armed
cavalry assailed them with their long
Types of early Chain Armour.
spears in flank, and the archers and
slingers under cover watched coolly
to transfix every man where an
opening allowed their missiles to penetrate. The battle nevertheless
lasted all day, but in the evening the Russians were compelled, in spite
of their desperate valour, to retire into Dorystolon without having
effected anything.
The infantry of the north now began to feel its inferiority to the
veteran cavalry of Asia sheathed in plate armour, and disciplined by long
campaigns against the Saracens. Sviatoslaff, however, continued to
defend himself by a series of battles rather than sorties, in which he
made desperate efforts to break through the ranks of the besiegers in
vain, until at length it became evident that he must either conclude
peace, die on the field of battle, or be starved to death in Dorystolon.
Before resigning himself to his fate, he made a last effort to cut his way
through the Byzantine army; and on this occasion the Russians fought
with such desperation that contemporaries ascribed the victory of the
Byzantine troops, not to the superior tactics of the emperor, nor to the
discipline of a veteran army, but to the personal assistance of St.
Theodore, who found it necessary to lead the charge of the Roman
lancers, and shiver a spear with the Russians himself, before their
phalanx could be broken. The victory was complete, and Sviatoslaff sent
ambassadors to the emperor to offer terms of peace.
The siege of Dorystolon had now lasted more than two months, and
the Russian army, though reduced by repeated losses, still amounted to
twenty-two thousand men. The valour and contempt of death which the
Varangians had displayed in the contest, convinced the emperor that it
would cause the loss of many brave veterans to insist on their laying
down their arms; he was therefore willing to come to terms, and peace
was concluded on condition that Sviatoslaff should yield up Dorystolon,
with all the plunder, slaves, and prisoners in possession of the Russians,
and engage to swear perpetual amity with the empire, and never to
invade either the territory of Cherson or the kingdom of Bulgaria; while,
on the other hand, the emperor Joannes engaged to allow the Russians
to descend the Danube in their boats, to supply them with two medimni
of wheat for each surviving soldier to enable them to return home
without dispersing to plunder for their subsistence, and to renew the old
commercial treaties between Kieff and Constantinople, July, 971.
After the treaty was concluded, Sviatoslaff desired to have a personal
interview with his conqueror. Joannes rode down to the bank of the
Danube clad in splendid armour, and accompanied by a brilliant suite of
guards on horseback. The short figure of the emperor was no
disadvantage where he was distinguished by the beauty of his charger
and the splendour of his arms, while his fair countenance, light hair, and
piercing blue eyes fixed the attention of all on his bold and good-
humoured face, which contrasted well with the dark, sombre visages of
his attendants. Sviatoslaff arrived by water in a boat, which he steered
himself by an oar. His dress was white, differing in no way from that of
those under him, except in being cleaner. Sitting in the stern of his boat,
he conversed for a short time with the emperor, who remained on
horseback close to the beach. The appearance of the bold Varangian
excited much curiosity, and is thus described by a historian who was
intimate with many of those who were present at the interview: The
Russian was of the middle stature, well formed, with strong neck and
broad chest. His eyes were blue, his eyebrows thick, his nose flat, and
his beard shaved, but his upper lip was shaded with long and thick
mustaches. The hair of his head was cropped close, except two long
locks which hung down on each side of his face, and were thus worn as
a mark of his Scandinavian race. In his ears he wore golden earrings.
Sviatoslaff immediately quitted Dorystolon, but he was obliged to
winter on the shores of the Euxine, and famine thinned his ranks. In
spring he attempted to force his way through the territory of the
Patzinaks with his diminished army. He was defeated, and perished near
the cataracts of the Dnieper. Kour, prince of the Patzinaks, became the
possessor of his skull, which he shaped into a drinking-cup, and adorned
with the moral maxim, doubtless not less suitable to his own skull, had it
fallen into the hands of others, “He who covets the property of others,
oft loses his own.” We have already had occasion to record that the skull
of the Byzantine emperor, Nicephorus I, had ornamented the festivals of
a Bulgarian king; that of a Russian sovereign now figured in the tents of
a Turkish tribe.
The results of the campaign were as
[971-988 a.d.] advantageous to the Byzantine Empire as they were
glorious to the emperor Joannes. Bulgaria was
conquered, a strong garrison established in Dorystolon, and the Danube
once more became the frontier of the Roman Empire. The peace with
the Russians was uninterrupted until about the year 988, when, from
some unknown cause of quarrel, Vladimir the son of Sviatoslaff attacked
and gained possession of Cherson by cutting off the water.
The Greek city of Cherson, situated on the extreme verge of ancient
civilisation, escaped for ages from the impoverishment and
demoralisation into which the Hellenic race was precipitated by the
Roman system of concentrating all power in the capital of the empire.
Cherson was governed for centuries by its own elective magistrates, and
it was not until towards the middle of the ninth century that the
emperor Theophilus destroyed its independence. When Vladimir the
sovereign of Russia attacked it in 988, it was betrayed into his hands by
a priest, who informed him how to cut off the water. The great object of
ambition of all the princes of the East, from the time of Heraclius to that
of the last Comnenus of Trebizond, was to form matrimonial alliances
with the imperial family. Vladimir obtained the hand of Anne, the sister
of the emperors Basil II and Constantine IX, and was baptized and
married in the church of the Panaghia at Cherson. To soothe the vanity
of the empire, he pretended to retain possession of his conquest as the
dowry of his wife. Many of the priests who converted the Russians to
Christianity, and many of the artists who adorned the earliest Russian
churches with paintings and mosaics, were natives of Cherson. The
church raised Vladimir to the rank of a saint; the Russians conferred on
him the title of “the great.”
Joannes Zimisces, having terminated the Russian War, compelled Boris
to resign the crown of Bulgaria, and accept the title of “magister,” as a
pensioner of the Byzantine court. The frontier of the Eastern Empire was
once more extended to the Danube.

WAR WITH THE SARACENS (972-976 A.D.)

The Saracen War had been carried on vigorously

[972-975 a.d.] on the frontiers of Syria, while the emperor Joannes
was occupied with the Russian campaign. The
continued successes of the Byzantine arms had so alarmed the
Mohammedan princes, that an extensive confederacy was formed to
recover Antioch, and the command of the army of the caliph was
entrusted to Zoher, the lieutenant of the Fatimites in Egypt. The imperial
army was led by the patrician Nicolaus, a man of great military skill, who
had been a eunuch in the household of Joannes Zimisces; and he
defeated the Saracens in a pitched battle, and saved Antioch for a time.
But in the following year (973) the conquest of Nisibis filled the city of
Baghdad with such consternation, that a levy of all Mussulmans was
ordered to march against the Christians. The Byzantine troops in
Mesopotamia were commanded by an Armenian named Temelek Melchi,
who was completely routed near Amida. He was himself taken prisoner,
and died after a year’s confinement.
With all his talents as a general, Joannes does not appear to have
possessed the same control over the general administration as
Nicephorus; and many of the cities conquered by his predecessor, in
which the majority of the inhabitants were Mohammedans, succeeded in
throwing off the Byzantine yoke. Even Antioch declared itself
independent. A great effort became necessary to regain the ground that
had been lost; and, to make this, Joannes Zimisces took the command
of the Byzantine army in person in the year 974. He marched in one
campaign from Mount Taurus to the banks of the Tigris, and from the
banks of the Tigris back into Syria, as far as Mount Lebanon, carrying
his victorious arms, according to the vaunting inaccuracy of the
Byzantine geographical nomenclature, into Palestine. His last campaign,
in the following year, was the most brilliant of his exploits. In
Mesopotamia he regained possession of Amida and Martyropolis; but
these cities contained so few Christian inhabitants that he was obliged
to leave the administration in the hands of Saracen emirs, who were
charged with the collection of the tribute and taxes. Nisibis he found
deserted, and from it he marched by Edessa to Hierapolis or Membig,
where he captured many valuable relics, among which the shoes of
Jesus, and the hair of John the Baptist, are especially enumerated. From
Hierapolis Joannes marched to Apamea, Emesa, and Baalbec, without
meeting any serious opposition. The emir of Damascus sent valuable
presents, and agreed to pay an annual tribute to escape a visit.
The emperor then crossed Mount Lebanon, storming the fortress of
Borzo, which commanded the pass, and, descending to the sea-coast,
laid siege to Berytus, which soon surrendered, and in which he found an
image of the crucifixion that he deemed worthy of being sent to
Constantinople. From Berytus he marched northward to Tripolis, which
he besieged in vain for forty days. The valour of the garrison and the
strength of the fortifications compelled him to raise the siege; but his
retreat was ascribed to fear of a comet, which illuminated the sky with a
strange brilliancy. As it was now September, he wished to place his
worn-out troops in winter quarters in Antioch; but the inhabitants shut
the gates against him. To punish them for their revolt, he had the folly
to ravage their territory, and cut down their fruit trees; forgetting, in his
barbarous and impolitic revenge, that he was ruining his own empire.
Burtzes was left to reconquer Antioch for the second time; which,
however, he did not effect until after the death of the emperor Joannes.
The army was then placed in winter quarters on
[975-976 a.d.] the frontiers of Cilicia, and the emperor hastened to
return to Constantinople. On the journey, as he
passed the fertile plains of Longias and Dryze, in the vicinity of Anazarba
and Podandus, he saw them covered with flocks and herds, with well-
fortified farmyards, but no smiling villages. He inquired with wonder to
whom the country belonged, in which pasturage was conducted on so
grand a scale; and he learned that the greater part of the province had
been acquired by the president Basilios in donations from himself and
his predecessor, Nicephorus. Amazed at the enormous accumulation of
property in the hands of one individual, he exclaimed, “Alas! the wealth
of the empire is wasted, the strength of the armies is exhausted, and
the Roman emperors toil like mercenaries, to add to the riches of an
insatiable eunuch!” This speech was reported to the president. He
considered that he had raised both Nicephorus and Joannes to the
throne; his interest now required that it should return to its rightful
master, and that the young Basil should enjoy his heritage. The emperor
Joannes stopped on his way to Constantinople at the palace of
Romanus, a grandson of Romanus I; and it is said he there drank of a
poisoned cup presented to him by a servant gained by the president.
Certain it is that Joannes Zimisces reached the capital in a dying state,
and expired on the 10th of January, 976, at the age of fifty-one.e

THE APEX OF GLORY

“The period of greatest Byzantine power,” says Gelzer,f “is reached in

the reigns of Nicephorus II (963-969), Joannes Zimisces (969-976), and
Basil Bulgaroctonus (976-1025).” Finlaye also calls it the “Period of
Conquest and Military Glory.” That the glory was understood at the time
is evident from the enthusiastic outbursts of the anonymous continuator
of Georgius Monachus.g Of Nicephorus Phocas he says, “Then Phocas
flashed like lightning and stormed against the enemies of the Romans.
He ravaged, burned, and led into captivity the cities and lands of the
barbarians. Myriads of foreign lands he smote, and broadened the realm
and the might of the Romans. The Arabs trembled, the Armenians and
Syrians shook, the Saracens were scared and the Turks took flight; and
the Romans seized their strongholds and provinces, and Phocas’ name
was fearful to all.” Of Zimisces the same chronicler is equally
enthusiastic: “And the nations were in great fright before Zimisces’ fury.
And he spread the realm of the Romans abroad; the Saracens and
Armenians fled; the Persians shook and from all sides brought him gifts;
they begged him for mercy and peace. He led even to Edessa and to the
river Euphrates; and the earth was full of the tents of the Romans.
Syrians and Phœnicians were trampled by the Roman steeds. He fetched
home mighty victories, and the sword of Christ mowed like a scythe.”
And yet in Zimisces, Gelzer sees a retrogression of empire and an
expansion of feudalism; more and more he sees that the old Roman
military and civil state takes on a military and aristocratic physiognomy.
After his death the movement continued with usury.a
The premature death of Zimisces was a loss, rather than a benefit, to
the sons of Romanus II. Their want of experience detained them twelve
years longer the obscure and voluntary pupils of a minister, who
extended his reign by persuading them to indulge the pleasures of
youth, and to disdain the labours of government. In this silken web, the
weakness of Constantine was forever entangled; but his elder brother
felt the impulse of genius and the desire of action; he frowned, and the
minister was no more. Basil was the acknowledged sovereign of
Constantinople and the provinces of Europe; but Asia was oppressed by
two veteran generals, Phocas and Sclerus, who, alternately friends and
enemies, subjects and rebels, maintained their independence, and
laboured to emulate the example of successful usurpation.

War Galley, Eighth and Ninth Centuries

Against these domestic enemies, the son of Romanus first drew his
sword, and they trembled in the presence of a lawful and high-spirited
prince. The first, in the front of battle, was thrown from his horse by the
stroke of poison, or an arrow; the second, who had been twice loaded
with chains, and twice invested with the purple, was desirous of ending
in peace the small remainder of his days. As the aged suppliant
approached the throne, with dim eyes and faltering steps, leaning on his
two attendants, the emperor exclaimed, in the insolence of youth and
power: “And is this the man who has so long been the object of our
terror?” After he had confirmed his own authority and the peace of the
empire, the trophies of Nicephorus and Zimisces would not suffer their
royal pupil to sleep in the palace. His long and frequent expeditions
against the Saracens were rather glorious than useful to the empire; but
the final destruction of the kingdom of Bulgaria appears, since the time
of Belisarius, the most important triumph of the Roman arms.h

BASIL II AND HIS SUCCESSORS (976-1054 A.D.)

The reign of Basil II is the culminating point of

[976-981 a.d.] Byzantine greatness. The eagles of Constantinople
flew during his life, in a long career of victory, from
the banks of the Danube to those of the Euphrates, and from the
mountains of Armenia to the shores of Italy. Basil’s indomitable courage,
terrific cruelty, indifference to art and literature, and religious
superstition, all combine to render him a true type of his empire and
age. The great object of his policy was to consolidate the unity of the
administration in Europe by the complete subjection of the Bulgarians
and Slavonians, whom similarity of language had almost blended into
one nation, and had completely united in hostility to the imperial
government.
Four sons of a Bulgarian noble of the highest rank had commenced a
revolutionary movement in Bulgaria against the royal family, after the
death of Peter and the first victories of the Russians. In order to put an
end to these troubles, Nicephorus II had, on the retreat of Sviatoslaff,
replaced Boris, the son of Peter, on the throne of Bulgaria; and when the
Russians returned, Boris submitted to their domination. Shortly after the
death of Joannes I (Zimisces), the Bulgarian leaders again roused the
people to a struggle for independence. Boris, who escaped from
Constantinople to attempt recovering his paternal throne, was
accidentally slain, and the four brothers again became the chiefs of the
nation. In a short time three perished, and Samuel, who alone
remained, assumed the title of king. The forces of the empire were
occupied with the rebellion of Sclerus, so that the vigour and military
talents of Samuel succeeded both in expelling the Byzantine authorities
from Bulgaria, and in rousing the Slavonians of Macedonia to throw off
the Byzantine yoke. Samuel then invaded Thessaly, and extended his
plundering excursions over those parts of Greece and the Peloponnesus
still inhabited by the Hellenic race. He carried away the inhabitants of
Larissa in order to people the town of Prespa, which he then proposed
to make his capital, with intelligent artisans and manufacturers; and, in
order to attach them to their new residence by ties of old superstition,
he removed to Prespa the body of their protecting martyr, St. Achilles,
who some pretended had been a Roman soldier, and others a Greek
archbishop. Samuel showed himself, both in ability and courage, a rival
worthy of Basil; and the empire of the East seemed for some time in
danger of being transferred from the Byzantine Romans to the Slavonian
Bulgarians.
In the year 981, the emperor Basil made his first
[981-1001 a.d.] campaign against the new Bulgarian monarchy in
person. His plan of operations was to secure the
great western passes through Mount Hæmus, on the road from
Philippopolis to Sardica, and by the conquest of the latter city he hoped
to cut off the communication between the Bulgarians north of Mount
Hæmus and the Slavonians in Macedonia. But his military inexperience,
and the relaxed discipline of the army, caused this well-conceived plan
to fail. Sardica was besieged in vain for twenty days. The negligence of
the officers and the disobedience of the soldiers caused several foraging
parties to be cut off; the besieged burned the engines of the besiegers
in a victorious sortie, and the emperor felt the necessity of commencing
his retreat. As his army was passing the defiles of Hæmus, it was
assailed by the troops Samuel had collected to watch his operations, and
completely routed. The baggage and military chest, the emperor’s plate
and tents, all fell into the hands of the Bulgarian king, and Basil himself
escaped with some difficulty to Philippopolis, where he collected the
relics of the fugitives. Leo Diaconus,b the Byzantine historian, who
accompanied the expedition as one of the clergy of the imperial chapel,
and was fortunate enough to escape the pursuit, has left a short but
authentic notice of this first disastrous campaign of Basil, the slayer of
the Bulgarians, in his Historia.[68]
The reorganisation of his army, the regulation of the internal
administration of the empire, the rebellion of Phocas, and the wars in
Italy and on the Asiatic frontier, prevented Basil from attacking Samuel
in person for many years. Still a part of the imperial forces carried on
this war, and Samuel soon perceived that he was unable to resist the
Byzantine generals in the plains of Bulgaria, where the heavy cavalry,
military engines, and superior discipline of the imperial armies could all
be employed to advantage. He resolved, therefore, to transfer the seat
of the Bulgarian government to a more inaccessible position, at Achrida.
Here, therefore, Samuel established the capital of the Bulgaro-Slavonian
kingdom he founded.
The dominions of Samuel soon became as extensive as the European
portion of the dominions of Basil. The possessions of the two monarchs
ran into one another in a very irregular form, and both were inhabited
by a variety of races, in different states of civilisation, bound together by
few sympathies, and no common attachment to national institutions.
Samuel was master of almost the whole of ancient Bulgaria, the
emperor retaining possession of little more than the fortress of
Dorystolon, the forts at the mouth of the Danube, and the passes of
Mount Hæmus. But the strength of the Bulgarian king lay in his
possessions in the upper part of Macedonia, in Epirus, and the southern
part of Illyricum, in the chain of Pindus, and in mountains that overlook
the northern and western slopes of the great plains of Thessalonica and
Thessaly. He was indefatigable in forming a large military force, and
employing it constantly in ravaging the plain of Thessaly, and attacking
the Greek cities.
In 996 he marched rapidly through Thessaly, Bœotia, and Attica, into
the Peloponnesus; but the towns everywhere shut their gates, and
prepared for a long defence, so that he could effect nothing beyond
plundering and laying waste the open country. In the meantime, the
emperor sent Nicephorus Uranus, with all the force he should be able to
collect, in pursuit of Samuel. Uranus entered Thessaly, and pushed
rapidly southward to the banks of the Sperchius, where he found
Samuel encamped on the other side, hastening home with the plunder
of Greece. In the night the people showed Uranus a ford, by which he
passed the river and surprised the Bulgarians in their camp. Samuel and
his son Gabriel escaped with the greatest difficulty. The Bulgarian army
was completely annihilated, and all the plunder and slaves made during
the expedition fell into the hands of Uranus, in the year 996 a.d. This
great defeat paralysed the military operations of Samuel for some time.
Basil at length arranged the external relations of the empire in such a
way that he was able to assemble a large army for the military
operations against the kingdom of Achrida, which he determined to
conduct in person. The Slavonians now formed the most numerous part
of the population of the country between the Danube, the Ægean, and
the Adriatic, and they were in possession of the line of mountains that
runs from Dyrrhachium, in a variety of chains, to the vicinity of
Constantinople. Basil saw many signs that the whole Slavonic race in
these countries was united in opposition to the Byzantine government,
so that the existence of his empire demanded the conquest of the
Bulgaro-Slavonian kingdom which Samuel had founded. To this arduous
task he devoted himself with his usual energy.
In the year 1000, his generals were ordered to enter Bulgaria by the
eastern passes of Mount Hæmus; and in this campaign they took the
cities of greater and lesser Presthlava and Pliscova, the ancient capitals
of Bulgaria. In the following year, the emperor took upon himself the
direction of the army destined to act against Samuel. Fixing his
headquarters at Thessalonica, he recovered possession of the fortresses
of Vodena, Berœa, and Servia.
In the following campaign (1002), the emperor
[1001-1014 a.d.] changed the field of operations, and, marching from
Philippopolis through the western passes of Mount
Hæmus, occupied the whole line of road as far as the Danube, and cut
Samuel off from all communication with the plains of Bulgaria. Samuel
formed a bold enterprise, which he hoped would compel Basil to raise
the siege of Widdin, or, at all events, enable him to inflict a deep wound
on the empire. By a long march into the heart of the empire, Samuel
rendered himself master of great booty. His success prevented his
returning as rapidly as he had advanced, but he succeeded in passing
the garrison of Philippopolis and crossing the Strymon and the Wardar in
safety, when Basil suddenly overtook him at the head of the Byzantine
army. Samuel was encamped under the walls of Scupi; Basil crossed the
river, stormed the Bulgarian camp, captured the military chest and
stores, and recovered the plunder of Hadrianopolis. He had thus the
satisfaction of avenging the defeat he had suffered from Samuel, one-
and-twenty years before, in the passes of Mount Hæmus.
In the year 1014, Basil considered everything
[1014-1019 a.d.] ready for a final effort to complete the subjection of
the Slavonian population of the mountainous
districts round the upper valley of the Strymon. The emperor is said to
have taken fifteen thousand prisoners, and, that he might revenge the
sufferings of his subjects from the ravages of the Bulgarians and
Slavonians, he gratified his own cruelty by an act of vengeance, which
has most justly entailed infamy on his name. His frightful inhumanity
has forced history to turn with disgust from his conduct, and almost
buried the records of his military achievements in oblivion. On this
occasion he ordered the eyes of all his prisoners to be put out, leaving a
single eye to the leader of every hundred, and in this condition he sent
the wretched captives forth to seek their king or perish on the way.
When they approached Achrida, a rumour that the prisoners had been
released induced Samuel to go out to meet them. On learning the full
extent of the calamity, he fell senseless to the ground, overpowered with
rage and grief, and died two days after. He is said to have murdered his
own brother to secure possession of his throne, so that his heart was
broken by the first touch of humanity it ever felt.[69]
The cruelty of Basil awakened an energetic resistance on the part of
the Slavonians and Bulgarians, and Gabriel Radomir, the brave son of
Samuel, was enabled to offer unexpected obstacles to the progress of
the Byzantine armies.
Gabriel, the king of Achrida, though brave, alienated the favour of his
subjects by his imprudence, and his cousin, John Ladislas, whose life he
had saved in youth, was base enough to become his murderer, in order
to gain possession of the throne. Ladislas, in order to gain time, both for
strengthening himself on the throne and resisting the Byzantine
invasion, sent ambassadors to Basil with favourable offers of peace; but
the emperor, satisfied that the struggle between the Slavonians and
Greeks could only be terminated by the conquest of one, rejected all
terms but absolute submission, and pushed on his operations with his
usual vigour. After laying waste all the country round Ostrovos and
Moliskos that was peopled by Slavonians, and repairing the fortifications
of Berœa which had fallen to decay, he captured Setaina, where Samuel
had formed great magazines of wheat. These magazines were kept well
filled by Ladislas, so that Basil became master of so great a store that
he divided it among his troops. At last the king of Achrida approached
the emperor at the head of a considerable army, and a part of the
imperial troops was drawn into an ambuscade. The emperor happened
to be himself with the advanced division of the army. He instantly
mounted his horse and led the troops about him to the scene of action,
sending orders for all the other divisions to hasten forward to support
him. His sudden appearance at the head of a strong body of the heavy-
armed lancers of the Byzantine army, the fury of his charge, the terror
his very name inspired, and the cry, “The emperor is upon us!” soon
spread confusion through the Bulgarian ranks, and decisively changed
the fortune of the day (1018).
Ladislas, whose affairs were becoming desperate, made an attempt to
restore his credit by laying siege to Dyrrhachium. Its possession would
have enabled him to open communications with the enemies of Basil in
Italy, and even with the Saracens of Sicily and Africa, but he was slain
soon after the commencement of the siege. The Bulgarian leaders gave
up all hope of resistance. The emperor continued to advance by Scupi,
Stypeia, and Prosakon, and on reaching Achrida he was received rather
as the lawful sovereign than as a foreign conqueror. He immediately
took possession of all the treasures Samuel had amassed; the gold
alone amounted to one hundred centners (this sum is not quite equal to
$480,000 or $2,400,000), and with this he paid all the arrears due to his
troops, and rewarded them with a donative for their long and gallant
service in this arduous war. Almost the whole of the royal family of
Achrida submitted, and received the most generous treatment. Three
sons of Ladislas, who escaped to Mount Tmorus, and attempted to
prolong the contest, were soon captured. The noble Bulgarians hastened
to make their submission, and many were honoured with rank at the
imperial court.
 Nothing, indeed, proves more decidedly the absence of all Greek
nationality in the Byzantine administration at this period, than the facility
with which all foreigners obtained favour at the court of Constantinople;
nor can anything be more conclusive of the fact that the centralisation of
power in the person of the emperor, as completed by the Basilian
dynasty, had now destroyed the administrative centralisation of the old
Roman imperial system, for we have proofs that a considerable Greek
population still occupied the cities of Thrace and Macedonia, though
Greek feelings had little influence on the government.
After passing the winter in his new conquests, Basil made a progress
through Greece. At Zetunium he visited the field of battle where the
power of Samuel had been first broken by the victory of Nicephorus
Uranus, and found the ground still strewed with the bones of the slain.
The wall that defended the pass of Thermopylæ retained its ancient
name, Scelos; and its masonry, which dated from Hellenic days, excited
the emperor’s admiration. At last Basil arrived within the walls of Athens,
and he was the only emperor who for several ages honoured that city
with a visit. Many magnificent structures in the town, and the whole of
the temples in the Acropolis, had then hardly suffered any rude touches
from the hand of time. If the original splendour of the external painting
and gilding which had once adorned the Parthenon of Pericles had
faded, the mural paintings of saints, martyrs, emperors, and empresses,
that covered the interior of the cella, gave a new interest to the church
of the Virgin, into which it had been transformed. The mind of Basil,
though insensible to Hellenic literature, was deeply sensible of religious
impressions, and the glorious combination of the variety of beauty in art
and nature that he saw in the Acropolis touched his stern soul. He
testified his feelings by splendid gifts to the city, and rich dedications at
the shrine of the Virgin in the Parthenon.
From Greece the emperor returned to Constantinople, where he
indulged himself in the pomp of a triumph, making his entry into his
capital by the Golden Gate, and listening with satisfaction to the cries of
the populace, who applauded his cruelty by saluting him with the title of
“The Slayer of the Bulgarians” [Bulgaroctonus].e
Yet his subjects detested the rapacious and rigid
[1019-1028 a.d.] avarice of Basil; and in the imperfect narrative of
his exploits, we can only discern the courage, patience, and
ferociousness of a soldier. After the first license of his youth, Basil II
devoted his life, in the palace and the camp, to the penance of a hermit,
wore the monastic habit under his robes and armour, observed a vow of
continence, and imposed on his appetites a perpetual abstinence from
wine and flesh. In the sixty-eighth year of his age, his martial spirit
urged him to embark in person for a holy war against the Saracens of
Sicily; he was prevented by death, and Basil, surnamed “the slayer of
the Bulgarians,” was dismissed from the world with the blessings of the
clergy and the curses of the people. After his decease, in 1025, his
brother Constantine IX enjoyed, about three years, the power, or rather
the pleasures, of royalty; and his only care was the settlement of the
succession. He had enjoyed sixty-six years the title of Augustus; and the
reign of the two brothers is the longest, and most obscure, of the
Byzantine history.
A lineal succession of five emperors, in a period
[1028-1042 a.d.] of 160 years, had attached the loyalty of the Greeks
to the Macedonian dynasty, which had been thrice
respected by the usurpers of their power. After the death of Constantine
IX, the last male of the royal race, a new and broken scene presents
itself, and the accumulated years of twelve emperors do not equal the
space of his single reign. Constantine had only three daughters. When
their marriage was discussed in the council of their dying father, the cold
or pious Theodora refused to give an heir to the empire, but her sister
Zoe presented herself a willing victim at the altar. Romanus Argyrus, a
patrician of a graceful person and fair reputation, was chosen for her
husband, and, on his declining that honour, was informed that blindness
or death was the second alternative. The motive of his reluctance was
conjugal affection; but his faithful wife sacrificed her own happiness to
his safety and greatness; and her entrance into a monastery removed
the only bar to the imperial nuptials.
After the decease of Constantine, the sceptre devolved to Romanus
III; but his labours at home and abroad[70] were equally feeble and
fruitless; and the mature age, the forty-eight years of Zoe, was less
favourable to the hopes of pregnancy than to the indulgence of
pleasure. Her favourite chamberlain was a handsome Paphlagonian of