In the world between late antiquity and the medieval period, the line between religion and magic was blurry at best. Byzantine Christians wore crossesโbut they also wore lead tablets inscribed with mysterious symbols, believing these objects could ward off illness, demons, and the dreaded evil eye.
The Power of Lead
Why lead? To modern eyes, it seems an odd choice for jewelry. But in ancient magical thinking, lead held special properties. Its heaviness and dull color associated it with Saturn and the underworld. More practically, lead was used in defixionesโcurse tablets buried to bind enemies or rivals. An amulet made of lead carried that binding power, but turned protective: it could bind evil away from the wearer.
Charaktรชres: The Language of Magic
The inscriptions on Byzantine amulets often look like writing but resist easy reading. Scholars call these marks charaktรชresโmagical characters that werenโt meant to be โreadโ in the conventional sense. They might include:
Greek vowel sequences โ Strings like ฮฮฮฮฮฮฅฮฉ appear frequently. The seven Greek vowels were associated with the seven planets and held cosmic significance. Repeating them invoked celestial protection.
Voces magicae โ โMagical wordsโ that sound like nonsense but carried power through their very strangeness. Names like ABLANATHANALBA (a palindrome) or IAO (a form of the divine name) appear across Mediterranean magical traditions.
Pseudo-script โ Marks that resemble letters but arenโt quite. These may have been copied by craftsmen who couldnโt read the originals, or they may have been deliberately obscureโthe less comprehensible, the more powerful.
Serpents and Protection
The reverse of many amulets shows intertwined serpents or similar protective imagery. Serpents were deeply ambivalent symbols: dangerous, but also healing (think of the Rod of Asclepius). On amulets, they typically represented protection, their coiling forms creating a barrier against evil.
Other common motifs included:
- The Chnoubis โ A lion-headed serpent with solar rays, borrowed from Egyptian tradition
- Solomon riding โ The biblical king, legendary for commanding demons, shown on horseback trampling evil
- The Holy Rider โ A saint (often unnamed) spearing a demon or the evil eye itself
Between Faith and Fear
These amulets reveal a world where official Christianity coexisted with older magical practices. Church authorities periodically condemned such objectsโthe Council of Laodicea (4th century) forbade clergy from making โphylacteriesโโbut the prohibitions themselves prove how widespread the practice was.
For ordinary people facing illness, childbirth, travel, or simply the anxieties of daily life, an inscribed lead tablet offered tangible protection. You could hold it, wear it, feel its weight against your chest. In a world without antibiotics or insurance, that mattered.
The amulets that survive are small witnesses to very human fearsโand the creative, syncretic ways people tried to address them.